Chapter X…

Chapter X

A WORD FOR TYPHUS. DR. DALRYMPLE'S PECULIAR INTEREST IN THE CASE. THE NURSE'S FRONT TOOTH. AN INVALID WHO MEANT BUSINESS. SAPPS COURT AGAIN. HOW DAVE AND DOLLY LEFT THINGS BE IN MRS. PRICHARD'S ROOM. DOLLY JUNIOR'S LEGS. QUEEN VICTORIA AND PRINCE ALBERT. MRS. BURR'S RETURN. BUT SHE COULD GIVE AUNT M'RIAR A LIFT, IN SPITE OF HER INSTEP. HOW THE WRITING-TABLE HAD LOST A LEG. WHAT IT WOULD COME TO TO MAKE A SOUND JOB OF IT. BUT ONLY BY EMPTYING OUT THE THINGS INSIDE OF THE DRAWER. WHO WOULD ACT AS BAILEE? HOW A VISION VOLUNTEERED. HOW THE LOCK CAME OPEN QUITE EASY, AND MRS. BURR MADE A NEAT PACKET OF WHAT IT RELEASED, TO BE TOOK CHARGE OF BY THE VISION

It had got wind in Cavendish Square that Typhus had broken out at Number One-hundred-and-two. That was the first form rumour gave to the result of a challenge to gaol-fever, recklessly delivered by Miss Grahame in a top-attic in Drury Lane. It was unfair to Typhus, who, if not disqualified from saying a word on his own behalf, might have replied:--"I am within my rights. I know my place, I hope. I never break out in the homes of the Well-to-do. But if the Well-to-do come fussing round in the homes of the Ill-to-be, they must just take their chance of catching me. I wash my hands of all responsibility."

And no doubt the excuse would have been allowed by all fair-minded Nosologists. For although Typhus--many years before this--had laid sacrilegious hands on a High Court of Justice, giving rise to what came to be known as the "Black Assizes," all that had happened on that occasion was in a fair way of business; good, straightforward, old-fashioned contagion. If prison-warders did not sterilise persons who had been awaiting their trial for weeks in Houses of Detention--Pest-houses of Detention--you could not expect a putrid fever to adopt new rules merely to accommodate legal prejudice. And in the same way if Cavendish Square came sniffing up pestilential effluvia in Drury Lane, it was The Square's look out, not Typhus's.

Nevertheless, the Lares and Penates of The Square, who varied as individuals but remained the same as inherent principles--its Policeman, its Milk, its Wash, its Crossing-Sweeper--even after the germ of contagion had been identified beyond a doubt as a resident in Drury Lane, held fast to a belief that Typhus had been dormant at the corner house since the days of the Regency, and had seized an opportunity when nothing antiseptic was looking, to break out and send temperatures up to 106 deg. F. For, said they, when was the windows of that house opened last? Just you keep your house shut up--said they--the best part of a century, and see if something don't happen! But the person addressed always admitted everything, and never entered on the suggested experiment.

Persons of Condition--all the real Residents, that is--did not allow themselves to be needlessly alarmed, and refused to rush away into the country. There was no occasion for panic, but they would take every reasonable precaution, and give the children a little citrate of magnesia, as it was just as well to be on the safe side. And they had the drains properly seen to. Also they would be very careful not to let themselves down. That was most important. They felt quite reassured when Sir Polgey Bobson, for instance, told them that there was no risk whatever three feet from the bedside of the patient. "And upwards, I presume?" said a Wag. But Sir Polgey did not see the Wag's point. He was one of your--and other people's--solemn men.

Said Dr. Dalrymple--he whose name Dave Wardle had misremembered as Damned Tinker--to Lady Gwen, arriving at Cavendish Square in the early hours of the morning--still early, though she had been nearly four hours on the road:--"I wish now I had told you positively not to come.... But stop a minute!--you can't have got my letter?"

"Never mind that now. How is she?"

"Impossible to say anything yet, except that it is unmistakable typhus, and that there is nothing specially unfavourable. The fever won't be at its height for the best part of a week. We can say nothing about a case of this sort till the fever subsides. But you can't have got my letter--there has been no time."

"Exactly. It may have arrived by now. Sometimes the post comes at eight. I came because she telegraphed. Here's the paper."

The doctor read it. "I see," said he. "She said don't come, so you came. Creditable to your ladyship, but--excuse me!--quite mad. You are better out of the way."

"She has no friend with her."

"Well--no--she hasn't! At least--yes--she has! I shall not leave her except for special cases. They can do very well without me at the Hospital. There are plenty of young fellows at the Hospital."

Gwen appeared to apprehend something suddenly. "I see," she said. "I quite understand. I had never guessed."

He replied:--"How did you guess? I said nothing. However, I won't contradict you. Only understand right. This is all on my side. Miss Grahame knows nothing about it--isn't in it."

"Oh!" said Gwen incredulously. "Now suppose you tell me what your letter said!"

"You are sure you understand?"

"Oh dear, yes! It doesn't want much understanding. What did your letter say?"

Dr. Dalrymple's reply was substantially that it said what Gwen had anticipated. The patient was in no danger whatever, at present, and with reasonable precautions would infect nobody. He knew that her ladyship's impulse to come to her friend would be very strong, but she could do no good by coming. The wisest course would be for her to keep away, and rely on his seeing to it that the patient received the utmost care that skill and experience could provide. "I knew that if I said I should not allow you to see her, you would come by the next train. Excuse my having taken the liberty to interpret your character on a very slight acquaintance."

"Quite correct. Your interpretation did you credit. I should have come immediately. The letter you did write might have made me hesitate. Now I want to see her."

The doctor acquiesced in the inevitable. "It's rash," he said, "and unnecessary. But I suppose it's no use remonstrating?"

"Not the slightest!" said Gwen. And, indeed, the supposition was a forlorn hope, and a very spiritless one. Also, other agencies were at work. A tap at the door, that was told to come in, revealed itself as an obliging nurse whose upper front tooth was lifting her lip to look out under it at the public. Her mission was to say that Miss Grahame had heard the visitor's voice and she might speak to her through the door, but on no account come into the room. A little more nonsense of this sort, and Gwen was talking with her cousin at a respectful distance, to comply with existing prejudices; but without the slightest belief that her doing so would make any difference, one way or the other. The dreadful flavour of fever was in everything, and lemons and hothouse grapes were making believe they were cooling, and bottles that they contained sedatives, and disinfectants that they were purifying the atmosphere. It was all their gammon, and the fiend Typhus, invisible, was chuckling over their preposterous claims, and looking forward to a happy fortnight, with a favourable outcome from his point of view; or, at least, the consolation of sequelae, and a retarded convalescence.

There is a stage of fever when lassitude and uncertainty of movement and eyesight have prostrated the patient and compelled him to surrender at discretion to his nurses and medical advisers, but before the Valkyrie of Delirium are scouring the fields of his understanding, to pounce on the corpses of ideas their Odin had slain. That time was not due for many hours yet, when Gwen got speech of her cousin. She immediately appreciated that the patient was anxious to impress bystanders that this illness was all in the way of business. Also, that she was watching the development of her own symptoms as from a height apart, in the interest of Science.

"I knew I should catch it. But somebody had to, and I thought it might as well be me. I caught it from a child. A mild case. That would not make much difference. Being a woman is good. More men die than women. It's only within the last few years that typhus has been distinguished from typhoid...." After a few more useful particulars, she said:--"It was very bad of you to come. I telegraphed to you not to come, last week.... Wasn't it last week?... Well then--yesterday.... They ought never to have let you in.... There!--I get muddled when I talk...." She did, but it did not amount to wandering.

Gwen made very fair essays towards the correct thing to say; the usual exhortations to the patient to rely upon everything; acquiesce in periodical doses; absorb nourishment, however distasteful it might be on the palate, and place blind faith in everyone else, especially nurses. It was very good for a beginner; indeed, her experience of this sort of thing was almost nil. But all she got for it was:--"Don't be irritating, Gwen dear! Sit down there, where you are. Yes, that far off, because I've something to say I want to say.... No--more in front, so that I needn't move my head to see you.... Oh no--my head's all right in itself; only, when I move it, the pain won't move with it, and it drags.... Suppose I shuffle off this mortal coil?"

Gwen immediately felt it her duty to point out the improbability of anyone dying, but was a little handicapped by the circumstances attendant on Typhus Fever. She had to be concise in unreason. "Don't talk nonsense, Clo dear." The patient ignored the interruption. "Oh dear!--give me another grape to suck without having to open my eyes.... Ta!--now I can talk a little more." The obliging nurse headed Gwen off to a proper distance, and herself supplied the grape. In doing this she smiled so hard that the tooth got a good long look at Gwen, who looked another way. The patient resumed, speaking very much from her lofty position of lecturer by her own bedside.

"You see, a percentage of cases recovers, but this one may not be in it. However, the constitution is good.... No, Gwen dear, you know perfectly well I may die, so where is the use of pretending?" Whereupon Gwen conceded the possibility of Death, and the patient seemed to be easier in her mind; saying, as one who leaves trivialities, to settle down to matters of business:--"I want to talk to you about my small boy, Dave Wardle."

"Shall I go and see him at Sapps Court?"

"Yes--that's what I want. And then come back here and tell me ... promise!" She was getting very indeterminate in speech, and the nurse was signalling for the interview to close. So Gwen cut it short. But she felt she had made a binding promise. She must go to Sapps Court.

Said Gwen to Dr. Dalrymple, a few minutes later, in the sitting-room:--"I hope she hasn't talked too much." The doctor appeared to have taken temporary possession, and to have several letters to write.

"It makes very little difference," he said. "At present the decks are only being cleared for action. In a few days we shall be in the thick of it--pulse over a hundred--temperature a hundred and four--then a crisis. When it's all over, we shall be able to see how many ships are sunk."

* * * * *

Sapps Court had resumed its tranquil routine of everyday life, and the accident had nearly become a thing of the past. Not entirely, for Mrs. Prichard's portion of No. 7 still remained unoccupied, even Susan Burr remaining absent at her married niece's at Clapham. Aunt M'riar had charge, and kept a bit of fire going in the front-room, so the plaster should get a chance to dry out. Also she stood the front and back windows wide to let through a good draught of air, except, of course, it was pouring rain, and then it was no good. The front-room was a great convenience to Aunt M'riar, who now and then was embarrassed with linen to dry, relieving her from the necessity of rendering the kitchen impassable with it in the morning till she came down and took it off of the lines ready for ironing, and removed the cords on which she had hung it overnight.

Dave and Dolly were allowed upstairs during operations, on stringent conditions; or, rather, it should be said, on a stringent condition. They were to leave things be. This was honourably observed, especially by Dave, who was the soul of honour when once he gave his word. As for Dolly, she was still young, and if she did claw hold of a chemise and bring down the whole line, why, it was only that once, and we was children once ourselves. This was Uncle Mo, of course; he was that easy-going.

But whenever Aunt M'riar was not handicapping the desiccation of the walls by overcharging the atmosphere with moisture of the very wettest possible sort, Dolly and Dave could have the room to themselves, so long as they kep' their hands off the clean wallpaper; which was included in leaving be, obviously--not an intrusion of a new stipulation. They would then, being alone, go great lengths in picturing to themselves and each other the pending reappearance of Mrs. Picture and Mrs. Burr, and the delights of resuming halcyon days of old. For this strangely compounded clay, Man, scarcely waits to be quite sure he is landed in existence, before he inaugurates a glorious fiction, the golden Past, which never has been; between which and its resurrection into an equally golden Future--which never will be--he sandwiches the pewter Present, which always is, and which it is idle to pretend is worth twopence, by comparison.

"When old Mrs. Spicture comes back"--thus Dolly--"she shall set in her own chair wiv scushions, and she shall set in her own chair wiv a 'igh hup bact, and she shall set in her own chair wiv...." Here came a pause, due to inanition of distinctive features. Dolly's style was disfigured by vain repetitions, beyond a doubt.

"When old Mrs. Spicture comes back"--thus Dave, accepting the offered formula, somewhat in the spirit of the true ballad writer--"she's a-going to set in her own chair with cushions, just here!" He sat down with violence on a spot immediately below the proposed centre of gravity of the chair. "And then oy shall bring her her tea."

"No, you s'arn't! Mrs. Spicture shall set in her chair wiv scushions, and me and dolly shall tite her her tea."

Dave sat on the floor fixing two intelligent blue eyes on dolly junior's unintelligent violet ones, and holding his toes. "Dorly carn't!" said he contemptuously. "Her legs gives. Besides, she's no inside, only brand." This was a new dolly, who had replaced Struvvel Peter, who perished in the accident. His legs had been wooden, and swung several ways. This one's calves were wax, and one had come off, like a shoe. But the legs only bent one way.

Dolly the mother did not reply to Dave's insinuations against his niece, preferring the refrain of her thesis:--"When Mrs. Spicture comes back and sets in her chair wiv scushions and an Aunt-Emma-Care-Saw, Mrs. Burr she'll paw out the tea with only one lump of shoogy, and me and dolly shall cally it acrost wivout a jop spilt, and me and dolly shall stand it down on the little mognytoyble, and Mrs. Spicture she'll set in her chair wiv scushions, and dolly hand her up the stoast."

"Let me kitch her at it!" said Dave, with offensive male assumption. "Oy shall see to Mrs. Spicture's toast, and see she gets it hot. And Mrs. Burr she'll give leave to butter it, and say how much, and the soyde edge trimmed round toydy with a knoyf." All these details, safely based on items of past experience, were practically historical.

Dolly always accepted Dave's masculine airisomeness with meek equanimity, but invariably took no notice of it. This is nearly common form in well-organized households. She went on to refer to other gratifying revivals that would come about on Mrs. Picture's return. The sofy should be stood back against the wall, for dolly to be put to sleep on. And Queen Victoria she should go up on one nail, and Prince Halbert on the other. These were beautiful coloured prints, smiling fixedly across a full complement of stars and garters. The red piece of carpet would go down against the fender, and the blue piece near the window, as of yore. Dave looked forward with interest to the resurrection of Mrs. Picture's wroyting toyble with a ployce for her Boyble to lie on, and to the letters to his Granny Marrowbone in the country which would certainly be wrote at it, directly or by dictation, in the blessed revival of the past which was to come. Mrs. Burr's cat, who had travelled by request in a hamper to her married niece's at Clapham, in charge of Michael Ragstroar, would return and would then promptly have kittens in spite of doubtful sex-qualifications suggested by the name of Tommy; which kittens would belong to Dave and Dolly respectively, choice being made as soon as ever it was seen what colour they meant to be.

These speculations, which had made pleasant material for castles-in-the-air in the undisturbed hours when the children were in sole possession of the apartment, seemed to be within a measurable distance of realisation when Aunt M'riar, acting on a communication from Mrs. Burr at Clapham, proceeded to unearth the hidden furniture from the bedroom where Mr. Bartlett's careful men had interred it, and where it hadn't been getting any good, you might be sure. At least, so said Mrs. Ragstroar, who was so obliging as to lend a hand getting the things back in their places, and giving them a dust over to get the worst of the mess off. And Uncle Mo he was able to make himself useful, with a screw here and a tack there, and a glue-pot with quite a professional smell to it, so that you might easy have took him for a carpenter and joiner. For Mr. Bartlett's men, while doubtless justifying their reputation for handling everything with care due to casualties with compound fractures, had stultified their own efforts by shoving the heavy goods right atop of the light ones, and lying things down on their sides that should have been stood upright, and committing other errors of judgment. It was a singular and unaccountable thing that these men seemed to share the mantle of their employer and somehow to claim forgiveness, and get it, on the score of the inner excellence of their hearts and purity of their motives.

So that within a day or two after her young ladyship's sudden appearance at the fever-stricken mansion in Cavendish Square, Mrs. Burr put in her first appearance at Sapps Court since she went away to the Hospital. She was able to walk upon her foot, while convinced that a more rapid recovery would have taken place but for the backward state of surgical knowledge. She was confident they might have given her something at the Hospital to bring it forward, and make some local application--"put something on" was the expression. She seemed to have based an unreasonable faith in bread poultices on their successful employment in entirely different cases.

"Now what, you, got, to, lay out for, the way I look at it, ma'am,"--thus Mrs. Ragstroar, departing and bearing away the hand she had lent, to get supper ready for her own inmates--"is to do no more than you can 'elp, and eat as much as you can get." The good woman then vanished, leaving the united company's chorus to her remarks still unfinished when she reached her own door at the top of the Court. For Uncle Mo, Mr. Alibone, Aunt M'riar, and Dolly and Dave as claqueurs, were unanimous that Mrs. Burr should lie still for six months or so, relying on her capital, if any; if none, on manna from Heaven.

However, there was little likelihood of Mrs. Burr being in want of a crust, which is the theoretical minimum needed to sustain life, so long as Sapps Court recognised its liabilities when any component portion of it, considered as a residential district, fell on and crushed one of its residents' insteps. If Mr. Bartlett's repairs had come down on Mrs. Burr in the fullest sense of the expression, she would certainly--unless she outlived the impact of two hundred new stocks and three thousand old bats and closures, deceptively arranged to seem like a wall--have had the advantage, whatever it is, of decent burial, even if she had not had a married niece at Clapham, or any other relative elsewhere. So she was able to abstain without imprudence from immediate efforts to reinstate her dressmaking connection; and was able, without overtaxing her instep, to give substantial assistance to Aunt M'riar, who would have had to refuse a good deal of work just at that time except for her opportune assistance.

It was a natural corollary of this that Mrs. Prichard's tenancy should be utilised as a workshop, as Mrs. Burr was now its only occupant; and that she herself should take her meals below, with Aunt M'riar and the family. So the red and the blue carpet were not put down just yet a while, and Uncle Mo he did what he could with the screw here and the tack there, while Aunt M'riar and Mrs. Burr exercised mysterious functions, with tucks and frills and gimpings and pinkings and gaufferings, which it is beyond the powers of this story to describe accurately.

One mishap had occurred with the furniture which did not come within the scope of Uncle Mo's skill to remedy. The treasured mahogany writing-table that had so faithfully accompanied old Mrs. Picture through all her misfortunes had lost a leg. A leg, but not a foot. For the brass foot, which belonged, was found shoved away in the chest of drawers, which was enough, and more than enough, to contain the whole of the owner's scanty wardrobe. It was a cabinet-maker's job, and rather a nice one at that, to provide a new and suitable leg and attach it securely in the place of the old one. And it would come to nineteen-and-sixpence to make a job of it. The exactness of this sum will suggest the facts, that a young man in the trade, an acquaintance of Uncle Mo at The Sun, he come round to oblige, and undertook to give in a price as soon as he had the opportunity to mention it to his governor. The opportunity occurred immediately he went back to the shop. The sum was for a new leg, involving superhuman ingenuity in connecting it firmly with the pelvis; but a reg'lar sound job. Of course, there was another way of doing it, by tonguing on a new limb below the knee, and inserting a dowell for to stiffen it up. But that would come to every penny of fifteen shillings, and would be a reg'lar poor job, and would show. Nothing like doing a thing while you were about it! It saved expense in the end, and it was a fine old bit of furniture. Bit of old Gillow's!

But there was a point to be considered. The things must be took out of the drawers and the attached desk, or the governor he'd never have it at the shop. He was a person of the most delicate sensibility, who shrank from making himself responsible for anything whatever. Them drawers must be emptied out, or nothing could be done. Why--you'd only got to shake the table to hear there was papers inside!

This was a serious difficulty. It would, of course, be easy enough to write to Mrs. Prichard for the key; which, said testimony, was very small and always lived in her purse. But then all the milk would be out of the cocoanut; that metaphorical fruit being, in this case, the pleasure of surprising Mrs. Prichard with a writing-table as good as new. Open it, of course, you could! It was a locksmith's job, but the governor would send the shop's locksmith, who would do that for you while you counted half-a-dozen. The counting was optional, and in no sense necessary, nor even contributory, to the operation.

The real crux of the difficulty was not one of mechanism, but of responsibility. Who was qualified to decide on opening the desk and drawers? Who would be answerable for the safety of those papers? The only person who volunteered was Dolly, and Dolly's idea of taking care of things was to carry them about with her everywhere, and if they were in a parcel, to unpack it frequently at short intervals to make sure the contents were still in evidence. Her offer was declined.

The young man in the trade had numerous and absorbing engagements to plead as a reason for his inability to 'ang about all day for parties to make up their minds--the usurper's plea, by-the-by, for a coup d'etat--so perhaps some emissary might be found, to drop round to the shop to leave word. This young man was anxious to oblige, but altruism had its limits. Just then a knock at the door below led to Dave receiving instructions to sift it and make sure it wasn't a mistake, before a senior should descend to take it up seriously. It was not a mistake, but a lady, reported by Dave, returning out of breath, to be "one of Our Ladies,"--making the Church of Rome seem ill-off by comparison. He was seeking for an intelligent distinction between Sister Nora and Gwen, in reply to the question "Which?", when the dazzling appearance of the latter answered it for him.

"I thought I might come up without waiting to ask," said the vision--which is what she seemed, for a moment, to Sapps Court. "So I didn't ask. Is that Mrs. Picture's writing-table where Dave gets his letters written?"

Never was a more unhesitating plunge made in medias res. It had a magical effect in setting Sapps Court at its ease, and everyone saw a way to contribute to an answer, the substance of which was that the table was Mrs. Prichard's, but had lost its leg. The exact force of the but was not so clear as it might have been; this, however, was unimportant. Gwen was immediately interested in the repair of the table. Why shouldn't it be done while Mrs. Picture was away, before she came back?

A momentary frenzy of irrelevance seized Sapps Court, and a feverish desire to fix the exact date when the table-leg was disintegrated. "It wasn't broke, when it came from Skillicks," said Mrs. Burr. "That's all I know! And if you was to promise me a guinea I could say no more." Said Aunt M'riar:--"It's been stood up against the wall ever since I remembered it, and Mr. Bartlett's men assured me every care was took in moving." A murmur of testimony to Mr. Bartlett's unvarying sobriety and that of his men threatened to undermine the coherency of the conversation, but the position was saved by Uncle Mo, who seemed less infatuated than others about them. "Bartlett's ain't neither here or there," said he. "What I look at's like this,--the leg's off, and we've got to clap on a new un. Here's a young man'll see to that, and it'll come to nineteen-and-sixpence. Only who's going to take care of the letters and odd belongings of the old lady the whilst? That's a point to consider. I'd rather not, myself, if you ask me. Not without she sends the key, and that won't work, as I see it."

"I see," said Gwen. "You want to make Mrs. Picture a new table-leg, and you can't do it without opening her desk. And you can't get the key from her without saying why you want it. Isn't that it?" Universal assent. "Very well, then! You get the lock opened, and I'll take everything out with my own hands, and keep it safe for Mrs. Picture when she comes back."

This proposal was welcomed with only one reservation. None but a real live locksmith could open a lock, any more than one who is not born a turncock can release the waters that are under the earth through an unexplained hole in the road. It was, however, all within the province of the young man in the trade, who had not vanished when the vision appeared, in spite of those pressing appointments. He would go back to the shop, and send, or bring, a properly qualified operative.

Pending which, an adjournment to the little parlour below, out of all this mess, seemed desirable. Dave and Dolly were, of course, part of this, but Mrs. Burr remained upstairs after answering inquiries about her own health, and Mr. Alibone went away with the young man in search of the locksmith.

Gwen had to account for her sudden appearance. "I'm sorry to have bad news to tell you about my cousin, Miss Grahame," said she, so seriously that both her grown-up hearers spoke under their breaths to begin asking:--"She's not...?"--the rest being easily understood. Gwen replied:--"Oh no, she's not dead. But she's in the doctor's hands." Uncle Mo looked as though he thought this was nearly as bad, and Aunt M'riar was so expressive in sympathy without words that both the children became appalled, and Dolly looked inclined to cry. Gwen continued:--"She has caught a horrible fever in a dreadful place where she went to see poor people, and nobody can say yet a while what will happen. It is Typhus Fever, I'm afraid."

As Gwen uttered the deadly syllables, Uncle Mo turned away to the window, leaving some exclamation truncated. Aunt M'riar's voice became tremulous on the beginning of an unfinished sentence, and Dolly concealed a disposition to weep, because she was afraid of what Dave would say after. That young man remained stoical, but did not speak.

Presently Uncle Mo turned from the window, and said, somewhat huskily:--"I wish some of these here poor people, as they call themselves, would either go away to Aymericay, or keep their premises a bit cleaner; nobody wants 'em here that ever I've heard tell of, only Phlarnthropists."

Aunt M'riar's unfinished sentence had begun with "Gracious mercy!..." Its sequel:--"Well now--to think of a lady like that! My word! And Typhus Fever, too!"--was dependent on it, and contained an element of resignation to Destiny.

Dave struck in with irrelevant matter; as he frequently did, to throw side-lights on obscurities. "The boy at the School had fever, and came out sported all over with sports he was. You couldn't have told him from any other boy." That the other boy would be similarly spotted was, of course, understood.

Having broken the news, Gwen went on to minimise its seriousness; a time-honoured method, perhaps the best one. "Dr. Dalrymple is cheerful enough about her at present, so we mustn't be frightened. He says only very old persons never recover, and that a young woman like my cousin is quite as likely to live as to die...."

Uncle Mo caught her up with sudden shrewdness. "Then she's quite as likely to die as to live?" said he.

"Oh, Mo--Mo--don't ye say the word! Please God, Sister Nora may live for many a long day yet!" Thus Aunt M'riar, true to the traditional attitude of Life towards Death--denial of the Arch-fear to the very threshold of the tomb.

"So she may, M'riar, and many another on to that. But there's a good plenty o' things would please us that don't please God, and He's got it all His own way."

Uncle Mo, after moving about the room in an unsettled fashion, as though weighed upon by the news he had just heard, had come to an anchor at the table opposite Gwen--obsessed by Dolly, but acquiescent. As he sat there, she saw in his grizzled head against the light; in the strong hand resting on the table, moving now and then as though keeping time to some slow tune; in the other, motionless upon his knee, an image that made her ask herself the question:--"What would Samuel Johnson have been as a prizefighter?" She was not properly shocked, but perhaps that was because she was quick-witted enough to perceive that Uncle Mo had only said, in the blunt tongue of the secular world, what would have sounded an impressive utterance, in another form, from the lips of the sage of whom he had reminded her. She felt she ought to say that the Lord would assuredly--a solemn word that!--do what He liked with His own, supplying capitals. She gave it up as out of her line, and went on to business.

"Any of us may die, at any minute, Mr. Wardle," said she. "But my cousin is twenty times as likely to die as you or I, because she's got Typhus Fever, and half the cases are fatal, more or less.... They told me how many; I've forgotten.... What's that?--is it the locksmith man?" For a knock had come at the street-door, and the sound was as the sound of an operative who had to be back in half an hour or his Governor would cut up rough. He was therefore directed to go upstairs and cast his eye on the job, and the lady would come up in five minutes to see the things took out of the drawer.

"Stop a minute, Aunt M'riar," said the lady. "He mustn't make a mistake and open it, till I come. Please tell him, to make sure!" And Aunt M'riar would have started on her errand if she had not been stopped by what followed. "Or--look here! Let Dave go. You go up, Dave, and say he mustn't touch the lock till I come. Run along, and stop there to see that he does as you tell him." Whereupon, off went Dave, shouting his instructions as soon as he got to the second landing. He felt like a Police-Inspector, or a Warden of the Marches.

As soon as Dave had left tranquillity behind, Gwen set herself to anticipate an anxiety she saw Aunt M'riar wanted to express, but was hanging fire over. "You needn't be afraid about this chick, Aunt M'riar," she said. "It isn't really infectious, only contagious. You can only get it from the patient. Dr. Dalrymple says so. Like the thing you can only buy of the maker. Besides, I've hardly been in the room; they make such a fuss, and won't allow me. And I'm not living in the house at all, but at my father's in Park Lane. And I've been there to-day since Cavendish Square, so anyhow, if I give it to Dolly, my father and mother will have it too.... Oh no--she's not rumpling me at all! I like it." It was satisfactory to know that an Earl and Countess were pledged to have Typhus if Dolly caught it. Dolly evidently thought the combination of circumstances as good as a play, and a sprightly one.

Gwen was not sorry when the young ambassador came rushing back, shouting:--"The Man says--the Man says--the Man says it wouldn't take above half a minute to do, and is the loydy a-coming up? Because--because--because if the loydy oyn't a-coming up he--has--to--get back to the shop." This last was so draconically delivered that Gwen exclaimed:--"Come along, Dolly, we've got our orders!" And she actually carried that great child up all those stairs, and she going to be four next birthday!

Upstairs, the lock-expert was apologetic. "Ye see, miss," he explained, "our governor he's the sort of man it don't do to disappynt him, not however small the job may be. I don't reckon he can wait above a half an hour for anything, 'cos it gets on his narves. So we studies not puttin' of him out, at our shop." At which Gwen interrupted him, sacrificing her own interest in the well-marked character of this governor, to the business in hand; and the prospect, for him, of an early release from his anxiety.

As for the achievement which had been postponed, it really seemed a'most ridiculous when you come to think of it. Such a fuss, and those two men standing about the best part of an hour! At least, so Mrs. Burr said afterwards.

For the operation, all told, was merely this--that the young man inserted a bent wire into the lock, thereby becoming aware of its vitals. Withdrawing it, he slightly modified the prejudices of its tip; after which its reinsertion caused the lock to spring open as by magic. He wished to know, on receipt of a consideration from Gwen, whether she hadn't anything smaller, because it only came to eighteenpence for his time and his mate's, and he had no change in his pocket. Gwen explained that none was needed owing to the proximity of Christmas, and obtained thereby the good opinion of both. They expressed their feelings and departed.

And then--there was old Mrs. Picture's writing-table drawer, stood open! But only a little way, to show. For the lady's hands alone were to open it clear out, to remove the contents. Gwen felt that perhaps she had undertaken this responsibility rashly. It is rather a ticklish matter to tamper unbidden with locks.

So confident was she that old Mrs. Picture would forgive her anything, that she made no scruple of examining and reading whatever was visible. There was little beyond pens and writing-paper in the drawer, but in a desk which formed part of the table were some warrants held by the old lady as a life-annuitant, and two or three packets of letters, one carefully tied and apparently of considerable age. There was also a packet marked "Hair," and a small cardboard box. Little enough to take charge of, and soon made into a neat parcel by Mrs. Burr for Gwen to carry away in her reticule, a receptacle which in those days was almost invariably a portion of every lady's paraphernalia, high and low, rich and poor.

The desk opened with the drawer--or rather unrolled itself--a flexible wood-flap running back when it was opened, and releasing a lid that made one-half of the writing-pad when turned back. The letters were under the other half, the old packet being in a small drawer with the parcel marked "Hair." These were evidently precious. Never mind! Gwen would keep them safe.

Dave and Dolly were so delighted with the performance of opening and shutting the drawer, and seeing the cylindrical sheath slip backwards and forwards in its grooves, that they could scarcely drag themselves away to accompany their Lady to the carriage that, it appeared, was waiting for her in the beyond, outside Sapps Court.

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Chapter XI

AN INTERVIEW AT THE TOP OF A HOUSE IN PARK LANE. THE COLOSSEUM. PACTOLUS. KENSINGTON, AS NINEVEH. DERRY'S. TOMS'S. HELEN OF TROY. THE PELLEWS. RECONSIDERATION, AND JILTING. GWEN'S LOVE OF METHOD, AND HOW SHE WOULD GO TO VIENNA. A STARTLING LETTER. HOW HER FATHER READ IT ALOUD. MRS. THRALE'S REPORT OF A BRAIN CASE. HER DOG. HOW REASON REELED BEFORE THE OLD LADY'S ACCURACIES. GWEN'S GREAT-AUNT EILEEN AND THE LORD CHANCELLOR. HOW THE EARL STRUCK THE SCENT. HIS BIG EBONY CABINET. MR. NORBURY'S STORY. HOW AN EARL CAN DO A MEAN ACTION, WITH A GOOD MOTIVE. THE FORGED LETTER SEES THE LIGHT. HOW THE COUNTESS WOKE UP, AND THE EARL GOT TO BED AT LAST

When the Earl and Countess came to Park Lane, especially if their visit was a short one, and unless it was supposed to be known to themselves and their Maker only, they were on their P's and Q's. Why the new identity that came over them on those occasions was so described by her ladyship remained a secret; and, so far as we know, remains a secret still. But that was the expression she made use of more than once in conversation with her daughter.

If her statements about herself were worthy of credence, her tastes were Arcadian, and the satisfactions incidental to her position as a Countess--wealth and position, with all the world at her feet, and a most docile husband, ready to make any reasonable, and many unreasonable, sacrifices to idols of her selection--were the merest drops on the surface of Life's crucible. What her soul really longed for was a modest competence of two or three thousand a year, with a not too ostentatious house in town, say in Portland Place; or even in one of those terraces near the Colosseum in Regent's Park, with a sweet little place in Devonshire to go to and get away from the noise, concocted from specifications from the poets, with a special clause about clotted cream and new-laid eggs. Something of that sort! Then she would be able to turn her mind to some elevating employment which it would be premature to dwell on in detail to furnish a mere castle-in-the-air, but of which particulars would be forthcoming in due course. Or rather, would have been forthcoming. For now the die was cast, and a soul that could have been pastorally satisfied with a lot of the humble type indicated, had been caught in a whirl, or entangled in a mesh, or involved in a complication--whichever you like--of Extravagance, or Worldliness, or Society, or Mammon-worship, or Plutocracy, or Pactolus--or all the lot--and there was an end of the matter!

"All I can say is that I wonder you do it. I do indeed, mamma!" Thus Gwen, a week later in the story, in her bedroom at the very top of the house, which had once been a smoking-room and which it was her young ladyship's caprice to inhabit, because it looked straight over the Park towards the Palace, which still in those days was close to Kensington, its godmother. The Palace is there still, but Kensington is gone. Look about for it in the neighbourhood, if you have the heart to do so, and see if this is a lie. You will find residential flats, and you will find Barker's, and you will find Derry's, and you will find Toms's. But you will not find Kensington.

"You may wonder, Gwen! But if ever you are a married woman with an unmarried grown-up daughter in England and a married one at Vienna, and a position to keep up--I suppose that is the right expression--you will find how impossible everything is, and you will find something else to wonder about. Why--only look at that dress you are trying on!" The grown-up daughter was Gwen's elder sister, Lady Philippa, the wife of Sir Theseus Brandon, the English Ambassador at the Court of Austria. Otherwise, her ladyship was rather enigmatical.

Gwen seemed to attach a meaning to her words. "I don't think we shall ever have a daughter married to an Ambassador at Vienna. It would be too odd a coincidence for anything." This was said in the most unconcerned way, as a natural chat-sequel. What a mirror was saying about the dress, a wonderful Oriental fabric that gleamed like green diamonds, was absorbing the speaker's attention. The modiste who was fitting it had left the room to seek for pins, of which she had run dry. A low-class dressmaker would have been able to produce them from her mouth.

The Countess assumed a freezing import. It appeared to await explanation of something that had shocked and surprised her. "We!" said her ladyship, picking out the gravamen of this something. "Who are 'We' in this case?... Perhaps I did not understand what you said?..." And went on awaiting explanation, which any correct-minded British Matron will see was imperatively called for. Young ladies are expected not to refer too freely to Human Nature at any time, and to talk of "having a daughter" was sailing near the wind.

"Who are the 'We'? Why--me and Adrian, of course! At least, Adrian and I!--because of grammar. Whom did you suppose?"

The Countess underwent a sort of well-bred collapse. Her daughter did not observe it, as she was glancing at what she mentioned to herself as "The usual tight armhole, I suppose!" beneath an outstretched arm Helen might have stabbed her for in Troy. Neither did she notice the shoulder-shrug that came with the rally from this collapse, conveying an intimation to Space that one could be surprised at nothing nowadays. But the thing she ought not to have been surprised at was past discussion. Decent interment was the only course. "Who? I? I supposed nothing. No doubt it's all right!"

Gwen turned a puzzled face to her mother; then, after a moment came illumination. "Oh--I see-ee!" said she. "It's the children--our children! Dear me--one has such innocent parents, it's really quite embarrassing! Of course I shouldn't talk about them to papa, because he's supposed to know nothing about such things. But really--one's own mother!"

"Well--at least don't talk so before the person.... She's coming back--sh!"

"My dear mamma, she's got six children of her own, so how could it matter? Besides, she's French." That is to say, an Anglo-Grundy would have no jurisdiction.

The dazzling ball-dress, which the Countess had professedly climbed all those stairs to see tried on, having been disposed of satisfactorily, and carried away for finishing touches, her ladyship showed a disposition to remain and talk to her daughter. These two were on very good terms, in spite of the occasional strain which was put upon their relations by the audacity of the daughter's flights in the face of her old-fashioned mother's code of proprieties.

As soon as normal conditions had been re-established, and Miss Lutwyche, an essential to the trying on, had died respectfully away, her ladyship settled down to a chat.

"I've really hardly seen you, child, since you came tearing up from Rocester in that frantic way in the middle of the night. It's always the same in town, an absolute rush. And the way one has to mind one's P's and Q's is trying to the last degree. If it was only Society, one could see one's way. One can deal with Society, because there are rules. But People are quite another thing.... Well, my dear, you may say they are not, but look at Clotilda--there's a case in point! I assure you, hardly a minute of the day passes but I feel I ought to do something. But what? One may say it's her own fault, and so it no doubt is, in a sense. No one is under any sort of obligation to go into these horrible places, which the Authorities ought not to allow to exist. There ought to be proper people to do this kind of thing, inoculated or something, to be safe from infection.... But she is going on all right?"

"They wouldn't let me see her this morning. But Dr. Dalrymple said there was no complication, so far...."

"Oh, well, so long as there's no complication, that's all we can expect." The Countess jumped at an excuse to breathe freely. But there were other formidable contingencies. How about Constance and Cousin Percy? "Yes--they've got to be got married, somehow," said her ladyship. "It's impossible to shut one's eyes to it. I've been talking to Constance about it, and what she says is certainly true. When one's father has chronic gout, and one's stepmother severe nervous depression, one knows without further particulars how difficult it would be to be married from home. She says she simply won't be married from her Porchhammer sister's, because she gushes, and it isn't fair to Percy. Her other sister--the one with a name like Rattrap--doesn't gush, but her husband's going to stand for Stockport."

"I suppose," said Gwen, "those are both good reasons. Anyhow, you'll have to accommodate the happy couple. I see that. I suppose papa will have to give her away. If she allows Madame Pontet to groom her, she'll look eighteen. I wonder whether they couldn't manage to...."

"Couldn't manage to...?"

"Oh no, I see it would be out of the question, because of the time. I was going to say--wait for us. And then we could all have been married together." Gwen had remembered the Self-denying Ordinance, which was to last six months, and was not even inaugurated. She looked up at her mother. "Come, dear mother of mine, there's nothing to be shocked at in that!"

The Countess had risen from her seat, as though to depart. She stood looking across the wintry expanse of Hyde Park, seen through a bow-window across a balcony, with shrubs in boxes getting the full benefit of a seasonable nor'easter; and when at length she spoke, gave no direct reply. "I came up here to talk to you about it," she said. "But I see it would not be of any use. I may as well go. Did Dr. Dalrymple say when Clotilda would be out of danger? Supposing that all goes well, I mean."

"How can he tell? I'm glad I'm not a doctor with a critical case, and everyone trying to make me prophesy favourable results. It's worse for him than it is for us, anyhow, poor man!"

"Why? He's not a relation, is he?"

"No. Oh no! Perhaps if he were one.... Well--perhaps if he were, he wouldn't look so miserable.... No--they are only very old friends." The Countess had not asked; this was all brain-wave, helped by shades of expression. "I'm not supposed to know anything, you know," added Gwen, to adjust matters.

"Well--I suppose we must hope for the best," said her mother, with an implied recognition of Providence in the background; a mere civility! "Now I'm going."

"Very well then--go!" was what Gwen did not say in reply. She only thought that, if she had said it, it would have served mamma right. What she did say was:--"I know what you meant to say when you came upstairs, and you had better say it. Only I shall do nothing of the sort."

"I wish, my dear, you would be less positive. How can you know what I meant to say? Of what sort?"

"Reconsidering Adrian. Jilting him, in fact!"

"How can you know that?"

"Because you said it would not be any use talking to me about it. Just before you stopped looking out of the window, and said you might as well go."

Driven to bay, the Countess had a sudden acces of argumentative power. "Is there nothing it would be no use to talk to you about except this mad love-affair of yours?"

"Nothing so big. This is the big one. Besides, you know you did mean Adrian." As her ladyship did, she held her tongue.

Presently, having in the meantime resumed her seat, thereby admitting that her daughter was substantially right, she went on to what might be considered official publication.

"Your father and I, my dear, have had a good deal of talk about this unfortunate affair...."

"What unfortunate affair?"

"This unfortunate ... love-affair."

"Cousin Percy and Aunt Constance?"

"My dear! How can you be so ridiculous? Of course I am referring to you and Mr. Torrens."

"To me and Adrian. Precisely what I said, mamma dear! So now we can go on." The young lady managed somehow to express, by seating herself negligently on a chair with its back to her mother, that she meant to pay no attention whatever to any maternal precept. She could look at her over it, to comply with her duties as a respectful listener. But not to overdo them, she could play the treble of Haydn's Gipsy Rondo on the chair back with fingers that would have put a finishing touch on the exasperation of Helen of Troy.

Her ladyship continued:--"We are speaking of the same thing. Your father and I have had several conversations about it. As I was saying when you interrupted me--pray do not do so again!--he agrees with me entirely. In fact, he told me of his own accord that he wished you to come away with me for six months.... Yes--six! Three's ridiculous.... And that it should be quite distinctly understood that no binding engagement exists between Mr. Torrens and yourself."

"All right. I've no objection to anything being distinctly understood, so long as it is also distinctly understood that it doesn't make a particle of difference to either of us.... Yes--come in! Put them on the writing-table." This was to Miss Lutwyche, who came in, bearing letters.

"To either of you! You answer for Mr. Torrens, my dear, with a good deal of confidence. Now, do consider that the circumstances are peculiar. Suppose he were to recover his eyesight!"

"You mean he wouldn't be able to bear the shock of finding out what he'd got to marry...." She was interrupted by her mother exhibiting consciousness of the presence of Lutwyche, whose exit was overdue. A very trustworthy young woman, no doubt; but a line had to be drawn. "What are you fiddling with my letters for, Lutwyche?" said Gwen. "Do please get done and go!"

"Yes, my lady." Discreet retirement of Miss Lutwyche.

"She didn't hear, mamma. You needn't fuss."

"I was not fussing, my dear, but it's as well to.... Yes, go on with what you were saying." Because Lutwyche, being extinct, might be forgotten.

Gwen was looking round at the mirror. If Helen of Troy had seen herself in a mirror, all else being alike, what would her verdict have been? Gwen seemed fairly satisfied. "You meant Adrian might be disgusted?" said she.

The mother could not resist the pleasure of a satisfied glance at her daughter's reflection, which was not looking at her. "I meant nothing of the sort," she said. "But your father agreed with me--indeed, I am repeating his own words--that Mr. Torrens may have a false impression, having only really seen you once, under very peculiar circumstances. It is only human nature, and one has to make allowance for human nature. Now all that I am saying, and all that your father is saying, is that the circumstances are peculiar. Without some sort of reasonable guarantee that Mr. Torrens cannot recover his eyesight, I do contend that it would be in the highest degree rash to take an irrevocable step, and to condemn one--perhaps both, for I assure you I am thinking of Mr. Torrens's welfare as well as your own--to a lifetime of repentance."

"Mamma dear, don't be a humbug! You are only putting in Adrian's welfare for the sake of appearances. Much better let it alone!"

"My dear, it is not the point. If you choose to think me inhumane, you must do so. Only I must say this, that apart from the fact that I have nothing whatever against Mr. Torrens personally--except his religious views, which are lamentable--that his parents...."

"I thought you said you never knew his mother."

"No--perhaps not his mother." Her ladyship intensified the parenthetical character of this lady by putting her into smaller type and omitting punctuation:--"I can't say I ever really knew his mother and indeed hardly anything about her except that she was a Miss Abercrombie and goes plaguing on about negroes. But"--here she became normal again--"as for his father...."

"As for his father?"

"He was a constant visitor at my mother's, and I remember him very well. So there is no feeling on my part against him or his family." Her ladyship felt she had come very cleverly out of a bramble-bush she had got entangled in unawares, but she wanted to leave it behind on the road, and pushed on, speaking more earnestly:--"Indeed, my dearest child, it is of you and your happiness that I am thinking--although I know you won't believe me, and it's no use my saying anything...." At this point feelings were threatened; and Gwen, between whom and her mother there was plenty of affection, of a sort, hastened to allay--or perhaps avert--them. She shifted her seat to the sofa beside her mother, which made daughterliness more possible. A short episode of mutual extenuations followed; for had not a flavour of battle--not tigerish, but contentious--pervaded the interview?

"Very well, then, dear mother of mine," said Gwen, when this episode had come to an end. "Suppose we consider it settled that way! I'm to be tractability itself, on the distinct understanding that it commits me to nothing whatever. As for the six months' penal servitude, you and papa shall have it your own way. Only play fair--make a fair start, I mean! I like method. You have only to say when--any time after Christmas--and Adrian and I will tear ourselves asunder for six months. And then I'll accompany my mamma to Vienna, because I know that's what she wants. Only mind--honour bright!--as soon as I have dutifully forgotten Adrian for six whole months, there's to be an end of the nonsense, and I'm to marry Adrian ... and vice versa, of course! Oh no--he shan't be a cipher--I won't allow it...."

"My dear Gwendolen, I wish I could persuade you to be more serious." But her ladyship, as she rose to depart, was congratulating herself on having scored. The idea of any young lady's love-fancies surviving six months of Viennese life! She knew that fascinating capital well, and she knew also what a powerful ally she would find in her elder daughter, the Ambassadress, who was glittering there all this while as a distinct constellation.

She might just as well have retired satisfied with this brilliant prospect; only that she had, like so many of us, the postscript vice. This is the one that never will allow a conversation to be at an end. She turned to Gwen, who was already opening a letter to read, to say:--"You used the expressions 'reconsidering' and 'jilting' just now, my dear, as if they were synonymous. I think you were forgetting that it is impossible to 'jilt'--if I understand that term rightly--any man until after you have become formally engaged to him, and therefore.... However, if your letter is so very important, I can go. We can talk another time." This rather stiffly, Gwen having opened the letter, and been caught and held, apparently, by something in a legible handwriting. Whatever it was, Gwen put it down with reluctance, that she might show her sense of the importance of her mother's departure, whom she kissed and olive-branched, beyond what she accounted her lawful claims, in order to wind her up. She went with her as far as the landing, where cramped stairs ended and gradients became indulgent, and then got back as fast as she could to the reading of that letter.

It was an important letter, there could be no doubt of that, as a thick one from Irene--practically from Adrian--lay unopened on the table while she read through something on many pages that made her face go paler at each new paragraph. On its late envelope, lying opened by Irene's, was the postmark "Chorlton-under-Bradbury." But it was in a handwriting Gwen was unfamiliar with. It was not old Mrs. Picture's, which she knew quite well. For which reasons the thought had crossed her mind, when she first saw the envelope, that the old lady was seriously ill--perhaps suddenly dead. It was so very possible. Think of those delicate transparent hands, that frame whose old tenant had outstayed so many a notice to quit. Gwen's cousin, Percy Pellew, had said to her when he carried it upstairs in Cavendish Square, that it weighed absolutely nothing.

But this letter said nothing of death, nor of illness with danger of death. And yet Gwen was so disturbed by it that there was scarcely a brilliant visitor to her mother's that afternoon but said to some other brilliant visitor:--"What can be the matter with Gwen? She's not herself!" And then each corrected the other's false impression that it was the dangerous condition of her most intimate cousin and friend, Miss Clotilda Grahame; or screws loose and jammed bearings in the machinery of her love-affair, already the property of Rumour. And as each brilliant visitor was fain to seem better informed than his or her neighbour, a very large allowance of inaccuracy and misapprehension was added to the usual stock-in-trade of tittle-tattle on both these points.

There was only a short interregnum between the last departures of this brilliant throng, and the arrival of a quiet half-dozen to dinner; not a party, only a soothing half-dozen after all that noise and turmoil. So that Gwen got no chance of a talk with her father, which was what she felt very much in need of. That interregnum was only just enough to allow of a few minutes' rest before dressing for dinner. But the quiet half-dozen came, dined, and went away early; perhaps the earlier that their hostess's confessions of fatigue amounted to an appeal ad misericordiam; and Gwen was reserved and silent. When the last of the half-dozen had departed, Gwen got her opportunity. "Don't keep your father up too long, child," said the Countess, over the stair-rail. "It makes him sleep in the day, and it's bad for him." And vanished, with a well-bred yawn-noise, a trochee, the short syllable being the apology for the long one.

The Earl had allowed the quiet three, who remained with him at the dinner-table after their three quiet better-halves had retired with his wife and daughter, to do all the smoking, and had saved up for his own cigar by himself. It was his way. So Gwen knew she need not hurry through preliminaries. Of course he wanted to know about the Typhus patient, and she gave a good report, without stint. "That's all right," said he, in the tone of rejoicing which implies a double satisfaction, one for the patient's sake, one for one's own, as it is no longer a duty to be anxious.

"Why are you glaring at me so, papa darling?" said his daughter. It was a most placid glare. She should have said "looking."

"Your mamma tells me," said he, without modifying the glare, "that she has persuaded you to go with her to Vienna for six months."

"She said you wished me to go."

"She wishes you to go herself, and I wish what she wishes." This was not mere submissiveness. It was just as much loyalty and chivalry. "Is it a very terrible trial, the Self-denying Ordinance?"

Gwen answered rather stonily. "It isn't pleasant, but if you and my mother think it necessary--why, what must be, must! I'm ready to go any time. Only I must go and wind up with Adrian first ... just to console him a little! It's worse for him than for me! Just fancy him left alone for six months and never seeing me!... Oh dear!--you know what I mean." For she had made the slip that was so usual. She brushed it aside as a thing that could not be helped, and would even be sure to happen again, and continued:--"Irene has just written to me. I got her letter to-day."

"Well?"

"She makes what I think a very good suggestion--for me to go to Pensham to stay a week after Christmas, and then go in for.... What do you call it?... the Self-denying Ordinance in earnest afterwards. You don't mind?"

"Not in the least, as long as your mother agrees. Is that Miss Torrens's--Irene's--letter?"

"No. It's another one I want to speak to you about. Wait with patience!... I was going to say what exasperating parents I have inherited ... from somewhere!"

"From your grandparents, I suppose! But why?"

"Because when I say, may I do this or may I say that, you always say, 'Yes if your mother,' etcetera, and then mamma quotes you to squash me. I don't think it's playing the game."

"I think I gather from your statement, which is a little obscure, that your mamma and I are like the two proctors in Dickens's novel. Well!--it's a time-honoured arrangement as between parents, though I admit it may be exasperating to their young. What's the other letter?"

"I want to tell you about it first," said Gwen. She then told, without obscurity this time, the events which had followed the Earl's departure from the Towers a week since. "And then comes this letter," she concluded. "Isn't it terrible?"

"Let's see the letter," said the Earl. She handed it to him; and then, going behind his high chair, looked over him as he read. No one ever waits really patiently for another to read what he or she has already read. So Gwen did not. She changed the elbow she leaned on, restlessly; bit her lips, turn and turn about; pulled her bracelets round and round, and watched keenly for any chance of interposing an abbreviated precis of the text, to expedite the reading. Her father preferred to understand the letter, rather than to get through it in a hurry and try back; so he went deliberately on with it, reading it half aloud, with comments:

"AT STRIDES COTTAGE, "CHORLTON-UNDER-BRADBURY, "November 22, 1854.

"MY LADY,

"I have followed your instructions, and brought the old Mrs. Prichard here to stay until you may please to make another arrangement. My mother will gladly remain at my daughter's at her husband's farm, near Dessington, till such time as may be suitable for Mrs. Prichard to return. This I do not wish to say because I want to lose this old lady, for if your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take in saying so, she is a dear old person, and I do in truth love her, and am glad to have charge of her."

"She seems always to make conquests," said the Earl. "I acknowledge to having been epris myself."

"Yes, she really is an old darling. But go on and don't talk. It's what comes next." She pointed out the place over his shoulder, and he took the opportunity to rub his cheek against her arm, which she requited by kissing the top of his head. He read on:

"Nor yet would my mother's return make any difference, for we could accommodate, and I would take no other children just yet a while. Toby goes home to-morrow. But I will tell you there is something, and it is this, only your ladyship may be aware of it, that the old lady has delusions and a strange turn to them, in which Dr. Nash agrees with me it is more than old age, and recommends my mother, being old too, not to come back till she goes, for it would not be good for her, for anything of this sort is most trying to the nerves, and my mother is eighty-one this Christmas, just old Mrs. Prichard's own age."

"I think that's the end of the sentence," said the Earl. "I take it that Nash, who's a very sharp fellow in his own line, is quite alive to the influence of insanity on some temperaments, and knows old Mrs. Marrable well enough to say she ought not to be in the way of a lunatic.... What's that?"

"A lunatic!" For Gwen had started and shuddered at the word.

"I see no use in mincing matters. That's what the good woman is driving at. What comes next?" He read on:

"I will tell all what happened, my lady, from when she first entered the house, asking pardon for my length. It began when I was showing the toy water-mill on our mantel-shelf, which your ladyship saw with Miss Grahame. I noticed she was very agitated, but did not put it down to the sight of this toy till she said how ever could it have been my grandfather's mill, and then I only took it for so many words, and got her away to bed, and would have thought it only an upset, but for next morning, when I found her out of bed before six, no one else being up but me, measuring over the toy with her hands where it stood on the shelf, and I should not have seen her only for our dog calling attention, though a dumb animal, being as I was in the yard outside."

"I think I follow that," said the Earl. "The dog pulled her skirts, and had a lot to say and couldn't say it."

"That was it," said Gwen. "Just like Adrian's Achilles. I don't mean he's like Achilles personally. The most awful bulldog, to look at, with turn-up tusks and a nose like a cup. But go on and you'll see. 'Yard outside.'"

"I would have thought her sleep-walking, but she saw me and spoke clear, saying she could not sleep for thinking of a model of her father's mill in Essex as like this as two peas, and thought it must be the same model, only now she had laid her hands on it again she could see how small it was. She seemed so reasonable that I was in a fright directly, particularly it frightened me she should say Essex, because my grandfather's mill was in Essex, showing it was all an idea of her own...."

"I can't exactly follow that," said the Earl, and re-read the words deliberately.

"Oh, can't you see?" said Gwen. "I see. If she had said the other mill was in Lancashire, it would have seemed possible. But--both in Essex!"

"I suppose that's it. Two models of mills exactly alike, and both in Essex, is too great a tax on human credulity. On we go again! Where are we? Oh--'idea of her own.'"

"But I got her back to bed, and got her some breakfast an hour later, begging she would not talk, and she was very good and said no more. After this I moved the model out of the way, that nothing might remind her, and she was quiet and happy. So I did not send for Dr. Nash then. But when it came to afternoon, I saw it coming back. She got restless to see the model I had put by out of sight, saying she could not make out this and that, particular the two little girls. And then it was she gave me a great fright, for when I told her the two little girls was my mother and my aunt, being children under ten, over seventy years ago, and twins, she had quite a bad attack, such as I have never seen, shaking all over, and crying out, 'What is it?--What is it?' So then I sent Elizabeth next door for Dr. Nash, who came and was most kind, and Mrs. Nash after. He gave her a sedative, and said not to let her talk. He said, too, not to write to you just yet, for she might get quite right in a little while, and then he would tell you himself."

"Poor darling old Mrs. Picture!" said Gwen. "Fancy her going off like this! But I think I can see what has done it. You know, she has told me how she was one of twins, and how her father had a flour-mill in Essex."

"Did she say the name?"

"No--she's very odd about that. She never tells any names, except that her sister was Phoebe. She told me that.... Oh yes--she told me her little girl's name was Ruth." Gwen did not know the christened name of either Granny Marrable or Widow Thrale, when she said this.

"Phoebe and Ruth," said the Earl. "Pretty names! But what has done it? What can you see?... You said just now?..."

"Oh, I understand. Of course, it's the twins and the flour-mill in Essex. Such a coincidence! Enough to upset anybody's reason, let alone an old woman of eighty! Poor dear old Mrs. Picture!--she's as sane as you or I."

"Suppose we finish the letter. Where were we? 'Tell you himself'--is that it? All right!"

"Then she was quiet again, quite a long time. But when we was sitting together in the firelight after supper, she had it come on again, and I fear by my own fault, for Dr. Nash says I was in the wrong to say a word to her of any bygones. And yet it was but to clear her mind of the mixing together of Darenth Mill and this mill she remembers. For I had but just said the name of ours, and that my grandfather's name was Isaac Runciman when I saw it was coming on, she shaking and trembling and crying out like before, 'Oh, what is it? Only tell me what it is!' And then 'Our mill was Darenth Mill,' and 'Isaac Runciman was my father.' And other things she could not have known that had been no word of mine, only Dr. Nash found out why, all these things having been told to little Dave Wardle last year, and doubtless repeated childlike. And yet, my lady, though I know well where the dear old soul has gotten all these histories, seeing there is no other way possible, it is I do assure you enough to turn my own reason to hear her go on telling and telling of one thing and another all what our little boy we had here has made into tales for his amusement, such-like as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox our horses, and she had just remembered the foreman's name Muggeridge when she saw the model; it makes my head fairly spin to hear. Only I take this for my comfort, that I can see behind her words to know the tale is not of her making, but only Dave, like when she said Dave must have meant Muggeridge in his last letter, and would I find it to show her, only I could not. And like when she talked of her old piano at her father's, there I could see was our old piano my mother bought at a sale, now stood in a corner here where I had talked of it the evening I had the old lady here first. I am naming all these things that your ladyship may see I do right to keep my mother away from Strides till Mrs. Prichard goes. But I do wish to say again that that day when it comes will be a sad one for me, for I do love her dearly and that is the truth, though it is but a week and a day, and Dr. Nash does not wonder at this."

"If I remember right," said the Earl, stopping, "Nash has made some study of Insanity--written about it. He knows how very charming lunatics can be. You know your Great-Aunt Eileen fairly bewitched the Lord Chancellor when he interviewed her...."

"Did he see the lunatics himself?..."

"When they were fascinating and female--yes!... Well, what happened was that she waited to be sure he had refused to issue the Commission, and then went straight for Lady Lostwithiel's throat--her sister-in-law, you know...."

"Did that show she was mad?"

"Let us keep to the point. What does 'Muggeridge' mean?"

"I was thinking. 'Muggeridge'! But I've got Dave's last letter. I'll get it." And she was off before the Earl could say that to-morrow would do as well.

He went on smoking the bitter--and bitten--end of his cigar, which had gone slowly, owing to the reading. Instead of finishing up the letter, he went back, carefully re-reading the whole with absorbed attention. So absorbed, that Gwen, coming in quietly with a fresh handful of letters, was behind his chair unobserved, and had said:--"Well, and what do you make of it?" before he looked up at her.

"Verdict in accordance with the medical opinion, I think. But let's see Dave's letter." He took and read to himself. "I see," said he. "The cross stood for Dolly's love. A mere proxy. But he sends the real article. I like the 'homliburst,' too. Why did Dolly's lady want to towel Mrs. Spicture?... Oh, I see, it's the name of our house ... h'm--h'm--h'm!... Now where do we come to Muggeridge?... Oh, here we are! I've got it. Well--that's plain enough. Muggeridge. M, U, one G, E, R, I, J for D, G, E. That's quite plain. Can't see what you want more."

"Oh yes, it's all very easy for you, now you've been told. I couldn't make head or tail of it. And I don't wonder dear old Mrs. Picture couldn't...."

The Earl looked up suddenly. "Stop a bit!" said he. "Now where was it in Mrs. Thrale's letter. I had it just now ... here it is! 'The old lady had just remembered the foreman's name when she saw the model.' Got that?"

"Yes--but I don't see...."

"No--but listen! Dr. Nash found out that all these particulars were of Dave's communicating. Got that?"

"Yes--but still I don't see...."

"Don't chatterbox! Listen to your father. Keep those two points in mind, and then consider that when you read her Dave's letter she could not identify his misspelt name, which seems perfectly obvious and easy to me, now I know it. How could she forget it so as not to be reminded of it by a misspelt version? Can you conceive that she should fail, if she had heard the name from the child so clearly as to have it on the tip of her tongue the moment she saw the mill she only knew from Dave's description?"

"No--it certainly does seem very funny!"

"Very funny. Now let's see what the rest of the letter says." He went on reading:

"I know your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take to write at such length, seeing the cause of it, and also if I may suggest that your ladyship might send for Mrs. Bird, who lives with Mrs. Prichard, or for the parents of the little Dave Wardle, to inquire of them has she been subject to attacks or is this new. I should tell you that she has now been free from any aberration of mind, so Dr. Nash says, for nearly two days, mostly knitting quietly to herself, without talk, and sometimes laying down the needles like to think. Dr. Nash says to talk to her when she talks, but to keep her off of bygones, and the like. She has asked for things to write you a letter herself, and I have promised as soon as this is done. But I will not wait for hers to post this, as Dr. Nash says the sooner you know the better. I will now stop, again asking pardon for so long a letter, and remain, my lady, your obedient and faithful servant.

"R. THRALE"

"How very like what everyone else does!" said the Earl. "This good woman writes so close to economize paper that she leaves no room for her signature and goes in for her initial. I was wanting to know her Christian name. Do you know it? And see--she has to take more paper after all! Here's a postscript."

"P.S.--There is another reason why it is better not to have my mother back till Mrs. Prichard goes, she herself having been much upset by a man who said he was Mrs. Prichard's son, and was looking for his mother. My son-in-law, John Costrell, came over to tell me. This man had startled and alarmed my mother very much. I should be sorry he should come here to make Mrs. Prichard worse, but my mother is no doubt best away. I am not afraid of him myself, because of our dog."

"That dog is a treasure," said the Earl, re-enveloping the letter. "What are those other letters? Irene's?... And what?"

"I was trying to think of Mrs. Thrale's Christian name. I don't think I know it.... Yes--Irene's, and some papers I want you to lock up, for me." Gwen went on to tell of the inroad on Mrs. Prichard's secretaire, and explained that she was absolutely certain of forgiveness. "Only you will keep them safer than I shall, in your big ebony cabinet. I think I can trust you to give them back." She laid them on the table, gave her father an affectionate double-barrelled kiss, and went away to bed. It was very late indeed.

Mr. Norbury, in London, always outlived everyone else at night. The Earl rather found a satisfaction, at the Towers, in being the last to leave port, on a voyage over the Ocean of Sleep. In London it was otherwise, but not explicably. The genesis of usage in households is a very interesting subject, but the mere chronicler can only accept facts, not inquire into causes. Mr. Norbury always did give the Earl a send-off towards Dreamland, and saw the house deserted, before he vanished to a secret den in the basement.

"Norbury," said the Earl, sending the pilot off, metaphorically. "You know the two widows, mother and daughter, at Chorlton-under-Bradbury? Strides Cottage."

"Yes, indeed, my lord! All my life. I knew the old lady when she came from Darenth, in Essex, to marry her second husband, Marrable." Norbury gave other particulars which the story knows.

"Then Widow Thrale is not Granny Marrable's daughter, though she calls her mother?"

"That is the case, my lord. She was a pretty little girl--maybe eleven years old--and was her mother's bridesmaid.... I should say her aunt's."

"Who was her mother?"

"I have understood it was a twin sister."

"Who was her father?"

Mr. Norbury hesitated. "If your lordship would excuse, I would prefer not to say. The story came to me through two persons. My own informant had it from Thrale. But it's near twenty years ago, and I could not charge my memory, to a certainty."

"Something you don't like to tell?"

"Not except I could speak to a certainty." Mr. Norbury, evidently embarrassed, wavered respectfully.

"Was there a convict in it, certain or uncertain?"

"There was, my lord. Certain, I fear. But I am uncertain about his name. Peverell, or Deverell."

"What was he convicted of? What offence?"

"I rather think it was forgery, my lord, but I may be wrong about that. The story said his wife followed him to Van Diemen's Land, and died there?"

"That was Thrale's story?"

"Thrale's story."

"He must have known."

"Oh, he knew!"

"What is old Mrs. Marrable's Christian name?"

"I believe she was always called Phoebe. Her first married name was a very unusual one, Cropredy."

"And Widow Thrale's?"

"Ruth--Keziah Solmes calls her, I think."

His lordship made no reply; and, indeed, said never a word until he released Mr. Norbury in his dressing-room ten minutes later, being then as it were wound up for a good night's rest, and safe to go till morning. Even then the current of serious thought into which he seemed to have plunged seemed too engrossing to allow of his making a start. He remained sitting in the easy-chair before the fire, with intently knitted brows and a gaze divided between the vigorous flare to which Mr. Norbury's final benediction had incited it, and the packet of letters Gwen had given him, which he had placed on the table beside him. Behind him was what Gwen had spoken of as his big ebony cabinet. If a ghost that could not speak was then and there haunting that chamber, its tongue must have itched to remind his lordship what a satisfaction it would be to a disembodied bystander to get a peep into the cinquecento recesses of that complicated storehouse of ancient documents, which was never opened in the presence of anyone but its owner.

Gradually Gwen's packet absorbed more than its fair share of the Earl's attention; finally, seemed to engross it completely. He ended by cutting the outer string, taking the contents out, and placing them before him on the table, assorting them in groups, like with like.

There were the printed formal warrants, variously signed and attested, of some assignments or transfers--things of no interest or moment. Put them by! There were one or two new sheets covered with a child's printed efforts towards a handwriting manifestly the same as the one recently under discussion, even without the signature, "dAve wARdLe." There was a substantial accumulation of folded missives in an educated man's hand, and another in a woman's; of which last the outermost--being a folded sheet that made its own envelope--showed a receipt postmark "Macquarie. June 24, 1807," and a less visible despatch-stamp "Darenth. Nov. 30, 1806," telling its tale of over six months on the road. Then one, directed in another hand, a man's, but with the same postmarks, both of 1808, with the months undecipherable. This last seemed the most important, being tied with tape. It was the elder Daverill's successful forgery, treasured by old Maisie as the last letter from her family in England, telling of her sister Phoebe's death. All the letters were addressed to "Mrs. Thornton Daverill," the directions being only partly visible, owing to the folding.

Lest the reader should be inclined to blame the accidental possessor of these letters for doing what this story must perforce put on record, and to say that his action disgraced the Earldom of Ancester, let it remind him what the facts were that were already in his lordship's possession, and ask him whether he himself, so circumstanced, might not have felt as the Earl did--that the case was one for a sacrifice of punctilios in the face of the issues that turned upon their maintenance. Had he any right to connive at the procrastination of some wicked secret--for he had the clue--when a trivial sacrifice of self-respect might bring it to light? He could see that Mrs. Prichard must be the twin sister, somehow. But he did not see how, as yet; and he wanted confirmation and elucidation. These letters would contain both, or correction and guidance. Was he to bewilder Gwen with his own partial insights, or take on himself to sift the grist clean before he milled it for her consumption? He was not long in deciding.

Two or three slippered turns up and down the room, very cautious lest they should wake her ladyship in the adjoining one, were all the case required. Then he resumed his seat, and, deliberately taking up the taped letter, opened it and read:

"MY DEAR DAUGHTER MAISIE,

"It is with great pain that I take up my pen to acquaint you of the fatal calamity which has befallen your sister Phoebe and her husband, as well as I grieve to say of your own child Ruth, my granddaughter, all three of whom there is every reason to fear have lost their lives at sea on the sailing-packet Scheldt, from Antwerp to London, which is believed to have gone down with every soul on board in the great gale of September 30, now nearly two months since.

"You will be surprised that your sister and little girl should be on the seas, but that this should be so was doubtless the Will of God, and in compliance with His ordinances, though directly contrary to my own advice. Had due attention been paid to my wishes this might have been avoided. Here is the account of how it happened, from which you may judge for yourself:

"Your brother-in-law Cropredy's imprudence is no doubt to answer for it, he having run the risk of travelling abroad to put himself in personal communication with a house of business at Malines, a most unwholesome place for an Englishman, though no doubt healthy for foreigners. As I had forewarned him, he contracted fever in the heat of August, when ill-fed on a foreign diet, which, however suitable to them, is fatal to an English stomach, and little better than in France. The news of this illness coming to your sister, she would not be resigned to the Will of Providence, to which we should all bow rather than rashly endanger our lives, but took upon herself to decide, contrary to my remonstrance, to cross the Channel with the little girl, of whom I could have taken charge here at my own home. Merciful to say, the fever left him, having a good constitution from English living, and all was promise of a safe return, seeing the weather was favourable when the ship left the quay, and a fair wind. But of that ship no further is known, only she has not been heard of since, and doubtless is gone to the bottom in the great gale which sprung up in mid-channel, for so many have done the like. Even as the ships of Jehosaphat were broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish (Chron. II. xx. 37).

"There is, I fear, no room for hope that, short of a miracle, for the sea will not give up its dead (Rev. xx. 13), any remains should be recovered, but you may rest assured that if any come to the surface and are identified they shall be interred in the family grave where your sainted mother was laid, and reposes in the Lord, in a sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection (Acts xxiii. 6).

"Believe me, my dear daughter, to remain your affectionate father

"ISAAC RUNCIMAN.

"I have no message for my son-in-law, nor do I retain any resentment towards him, forgiving him as I wish to be forgiven (Luke vi. 37).

"DARENTH MILL, Oct. 16, 1807."

The Earl read this letter through twice--three times--and apparently his bewilderment only increased as he re-read it. At last he refolded it, as though no more light could come from more reading, and sat a moment still, thinking intently. Then he suddenly exclaimed aloud:--"Amazing," adding under his voice:--"But perfectly inexplicable!" Then, going on even less audibly:--"I must see what Hawtrey can make of this...." At which point he was taken aback by a voice through the door from the next room:--"What are you talking to yourself so for? Can't you get to bed?" Palpably the voice of an awakened Countess! He replied in a conciliatory spirit, and accepted the suggestion, first putting the letters safely away in the ebony cabinet.

* * * * *

Anyone who reads this forged letter with a full knowledge of all the circumstances will see that it was at best, from the literary and dramatic point of view, a bungling composition. But style was not called for so long as the statements were coherent. For what did the forger's wife know of what her father's style would be under these or any abnormal circumstances? Had she ever had a letter at all from him before? Even that is doubtful. The shock, moreover, was enough to unbalance the most critical judgment.

Two things are very noticeable in the letter. One that it fights shy of strong expressions of feeling, as though its fabricator had felt that danger lay that way; the other that he manifestly enjoyed his Scripture references, familiar to him by his long experience of gaol-chaplains, and warranted by his knowledge of his father-in-law. We--who write this--have referred to the passages indicated, and found the connection of ideas to be about an average sample, as coherency goes when quotation from Scripture is afoot. No doubt Maisie's husband found their selection entertaining.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XII

THE LEGAL ACUMEN OF THOTHMES. OF COURSE IT WAS ISAAC RUNCIMAN'S SIGNATURE. THE ANTIPODEAN INK. HOW LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS WAS MADE OF WOOD. HOW GWEN AND HER FATHER CAME OFF THEIR P'S AND Q'S. THE RIDDLE AS GOOD AS SOLVED. HOW GWEN GOT A LIFT TO CAVENDISH SQUARE AND HER MOTHER WENT ON TO HELP TO ABOLISH SOUTH CAROLINA. ANOTHER LIFT, IN A PILL-BOX. SAPPS COURT'S VIEWS OF THE WAR. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S HALF-SISTER'S BROTHER-IN-LAW. LIVE EELS. BALL'S POND. MRS. RILEY'S ELEVEN RELATIVES. MRS. TAPPING'S NAVAL CONNECTIONS. OLD BILLY. RUM SHRUB. LOUIS NAPOLEON AND KING SOLOMON. A PARTY IN THE BAR. WHICH WAY DID HE GO?

Said his lordship next morning to Mr. Norbury, bringing him preliminary tea at eight o'clock:--"I want to catch Mr. Hawtrey before he goes to Lincoln's Inn. Send round to say.... No--give me one of my cards and a pencil.... There!--send that round at once, because he goes early."

The result was that Mr. Hawtrey was announced while the Earl was having real breakfast with Gwen and her mother at ten, and was shown into the library. Also that the real breakfast was hurried and frustrated, that Mr. Hawtrey should not be kept waiting. For the Earl counter-ordered his last cup of tea, and went away with his fast half broken. So her ladyship sent the cup after him to the library. He sent a message back to Gwen. Would her ladyship be sure not to go out without seeing him? She would.

Mr. Hawtrey was known to Gwen as the Earl's solicitor, a man of perfectly incredible weight and importance. He was deep in the Lord Chancellor's confidence, and had boxes in tiers in his office, to read the names on which was a Whig and Tory education. If all the acres of land that had made Mr. Hawtrey's acquaintance, somehow or other, had been totalled on condition that it was fair to count twice over, the total total would have been as large as Asia, at a rough guess. His clerks--or his firm's, Humphrey and Hawtrey's--had witnessed leases, wills, transfers, and powers of attorney, numerous enough to fill the Rolls Office, but so far as was known none of them had ever been called on to attest his own signature. Personally, Mr. Hawtrey had always seemed to Gwen very like an Egyptian God or King, and she would speak of him as Thothmes and Rameses freely. Her father admitted the likeness, but protested against her levity, as this gentleman was his most trusted adviser, inherited with his title and estates. The Earldom of Ancester had always been in the habit of consulting Mr. Hawtrey about all sorts of things, not necessarily legal.

So when Gwen was sent for to her father's sanctum, and went, she was not surprised to hear that he had given Mr. Hawtrey all the particulars she had told him of Mrs. Prichard's history, and a clear outline of the incidents up to that date, ending with the seeming insanity of the old lady. "But," said the Earl, who appeared very serious, "I have given no names. I have sent for you now, Gwen, to get your consent to my making no reserves with Mr. Hawtrey, in whose advice I have great confidence." Mr. Hawtrey acknowledged this testimony, and Gwen acknowledged that gentleman's desert; each by a bow, but Gwen's was the more flexible performance.

She just hung back perceptibly over giving the carte blanche asked for. "I suppose no harm can come of it--to anybody?" said she. None whatever, apparently; so she assented.

"Very good," said the Earl. "And now, my dear, I want you, before I show it to Mr. Hawtrey, to read this letter, which I have opened on my own responsibility--nobody to blame but me! I found it among your old lady's letters you gave me to take care of."

"Oh dear!" said Gwen.

"I shall not show it to Mr. Hawtrey, unless you like. Take it and read it. No hurry." Gwen was conscious that the solicitor sat as still as his prototype Thothmes at the British Museum, and with as immovable a countenance.

She took the letter, glancing at the cover. "Who is Mrs. Thornton Daverill?" said she, quite in the dark.

"Go on and read," said the Earl.

Gwen read half to herself:--"'My dear daughter Maisie,'" and then said aloud:--"But that is Mrs. Prichard's name!"

"Read through to the end," said the Earl. And Gwen, with a painful feeling of bewilderment, obeyed orders, puzzling over phrases and sentences to find the thing she was to read for, and staggered a moment by the name "Cropredy," which she thought she must have misread. There was no clue in the letter itself, as she did not know who "Phoebe" and "Ruth" were.

Her father's observation of her face quickened as she visibly neared the end. She was quite taken aback by the signature, the moment it caught her eye. "Isaac Runciman!" she exclaimed. "Why--that's--that's ..."

"That's the name of Mrs. Marrable's father that old Mrs. Prichard lays claim to for hers," said the Earl quietly. "And this letter is written to his daughter, Mrs. Thornton Daverill, whose name is Maisie.... And old Mrs. Prichard's name is Maisie.... And this letter is in the keeping of old Mrs. Prichard." He left gaps, for his hearer to understand.

"Good God!" exclaimed Gwen. "Then old Mrs. Prichard is not mad." She could only see that much for the moment--no details. "Oh, be quiet a moment and let me think." She dropped the letter, and sat with her face in her hands, as though to shut thought in and work the puzzle out. Her father remained silent, watching her.

Presently he said, quietly still, as though to help her:--"Norbury told me last night what we did not know, that old Mrs. Marrable's name is Phoebe, and that Widow Thrale's is Ruth...."

"That old Mrs. Marrable is Phoebe and her daughter is Ruth." Gwen repeated his words, as though learning a lesson, still with her fingers crushing her eyes.

"And that Ruth is not really Phoebe's daughter but her niece. And, according to Norbury, she is the daughter of a twin sister, whose husband was transported for forgery, and who followed him to Van Diemen's Land, and died there." He raised his voice slightly to say this.

A more amazed face than Gwen's when she withdrew her fingers to fix her startled eyes upon her father, would have been almost as hard to find as a more beautiful one.

"But that is Mrs. Prichard, papa dear," she gasped. "Don't you know? The story I told you!"

"Exactly!" said the Earl.

"But the letter--the letter! Phoebe and Ruth in the letter cannot be drowned, if they are Granny Marrable and Widow Thrale." A rapid phantasmagoria of possibilities and impossibilities shot through her mind. How could order come of such a chaos?

"Excuse me," said Thothmes, speaking for the first time. "Do I understand--I assume I am admitted to confidence--do I understand that the letter states that these two women were drowned?"

"Crossing from Antwerp. Yes!"

"Then the letter is a falsehood, probably written with a bad motive."

"But by their father--their father! Impossible!"

"How does your ladyship know it was written by their father?"

"It is signed by their father--at Darenth Mill in Essex. Both say Isaac Runciman was their father."

"It is signed with Isaac Runciman's name--so I understand. Is it certain that it was signed by Isaac Runciman? May I now see the letter? And the envelope, please!--oh, the direction is on the back, of course." He held the letter in front of him, but apparently took very little notice of it. "As if," thought Gwen to herself, "he was thinking about his Dynasty."

"What do you make of it, Hawtrey?" said the Earl, but, getting no answer, waited. Silence ensued.

"Yes," said the lawyer, breaking it suddenly. He seemed to have seen his way. "Now may I ask whether we have any means of knowing what the forgery was for which this man was transported?"

"Oh yes!" said Gwen. "Old Mrs. Prichard told me what he was accused of, at least. Forging an acceptance--if that's right? I think that was it."

"But whose signature? Did she say?"

"Oh yes--I made her tell me, her father's." Then Gwen fitted the name, just heard, into its place in old Mrs. Prichard's tale, and was illuminated. "I see what you think, Mr. Hawtrey," said she, interrupting herself. The lawyer was examining the direction on the letter-sheet.

"I think I did right to pry into the letter, Gwennie," said her father; seeking, nevertheless, a salve for conscience.

"Of course you did, you darling old thing!... What, Mr. Hawtrey? You were going to say?..."

"I was going to say had you seen an odd thing in the direction. Have you noticed that the word Hobart has kept black, and all the rest has faded to the colour of the writing inside?" So it had, without a doubt, inexplicably. Mr. Hawtrey's impression was that the word was written in a different hand, perhaps filled in by someone who had been able to supply the name correctly, having been entrusted the letter to forward.

"But," said he, "the person who wrote Hobart must have been in England, and the forger of the letter was certainly in Van Diemen's Land."

"Why 'must have been in England'?"

"Bless the girl!" said the girl's father. "Why--I can see that! Of course, an Australian convict, who could do such a fine piece of forgery, would never ask another person to spell the name of an Australian town. Do you suppose he sent it to England to get an accomplice to spell 'Hobart' right for him? No--no, Hawtrey, your theory won't hold water."

"That is the case," said Thothmes, more immovably than ever. "I see I was mistaken. That point must wait. Or ... stop one minute!... may we examine the other letters?"

"I had thought," said the Earl, "of leaving them unopened. We have got what we want."

"Very proper. But I only wish to read the directions." No harm in this, anyhow. A second packet was opened. It was the one in the woman's hand, all postmarked "Darenth Mill" and "Macquarie." Then it was that Thothmes, with impassive shrewdness, made up for his blunder, with interest. He saw why the ink of one word of the forged direction was black. It was the same ink as the English directions, and, on close examination, the same hand. This had not been clear at first, as the word was mixed with the English postmark, "Darenth Mill"--so much so as not to clash with the pale hand of the forgery. "That word," said Thothmes, "was never written in Van Diemen's Land. The English stamp is on the top of it."

Gwen took it from him, and saw that this was true. "But then the rest of the direction was written in Australia," said she, "if this man wrote it at all! Oh dear, I am so puzzled." And indeed she was at her wit's end.

"I won't say another word," said Mr. Hawtrey. "I have made one blunder, and won't run any further risks. I must think about this. If you will trust me with the letter, you shall have it back to-morrow morning. I dare say your lordship will now excuse me. I have an appointment at the High Court at eleven, and it's now a quarter past.... Oh no--it's not a hanging matter.... I shall make my man drive fast.... So I will wish your ladyship a very good morning. I wish those two old ladies could have known this earlier. But better late than never!"

The Earl accompanied his legal adviser to the head of the stairs to give him a civil send off, while his daughter, white with tension of excitement and impatience, awaited his return. Coming back, he was not the least surprised that she should fall into his arms with a tempest of tears, crying out:--"Oh, papa dearest--fifty years!--think of it! All their lives! Oh, my darling old Mrs. Prichard! and Granny Marrable too--it's the same for both! Oh, think, that they were girls--yes, nearly girls, only a few years older than me, when they parted! And the horrible wickedness of the trick--the horrible, horrible wickedness! And then the dear old darling's own daughter, who has almost never seen her, thinks her mad!... No, papa dear, don't shish me down, because cry I must! Let me have a good cry over it, and I shall be better. Sit down by me, and don't let go--there!--here on the sofa, like that.... Oh dear, I wish I was made of wood, like some people, and could say better late than never!" This was the wind-up of a good deal more, and similar, expression of feeling. For tears and speech come easily to a generous impulsive nature like Gwen's, when strong sympathy and sorrow for others bid them come, though its own affliction might have made it stupefied and dumb.

Her father soothed and calmed her as he would a child; for was she not a child to him--in the nursery only the other day? "I'm not made of wood, darling, am I?" said he. And Gwen replied, refitting spars in calmer water:--"No, dear, that you are not, but Lincoln's Inn Fields is. Sitting there like an Egyptian God, with his hands on his knees!" She repacked a stray flood of gold that had escaped from its restraints--the most conspicuous record of the recent gale--and reassured her father with a liberal kiss. Then she thawed towards the legal mind. "I'm sure he's very good and kind and all that--Lincoln's Inn Fields, I mean, is--because people are. Only it's at heart they are, and I want it to come out like a rash." No doubt an interview with Dr. Dalrymple yesterday was answerable for this, having reference to the Typhus Fever patient. The eruption, he said, was subsiding favourably, and he was hourly expecting a fall in the temperature. But he had made a stand against her seeing the patient.

"If Hawtrey came out in a rash over all his clients' botherations," said the Earl, "he would very soon be in a state of confluent smallpox. What he's wanted for now is his brains. You'll see we shall have a letter from him, clearing it all up...."

"And you know what he'll say, I suppose? That is, if he's as clever as you think him!"

"I can't say that I feel absolutely certain. What do you suppose?"

Then Gwen gave a very fair conjectural review of the facts as this story knows them; saying, whenever she felt the ground insecure beneath her feet, that of course it was this way and not the other. A blessed expression that, to reinforce one's convictions!

However, she was not far wrong on any point, if the letter her father received next day from "Lincoln's Inn Fields" was right. It came by messenger, just as the family were sitting down to lunch with two or three friends, and his lordship said, "Will you excuse me?" without waiting for an answer, though one of his guests was a Rajah. Then he read the letter through, intently, while his Countess looked thunderclouds at him. "'Fore God, they are both of a tale!" said he, quoting. Then he sent it to Gwen by Norbury, who was embarrassed by her ladyship the Countess saying stiffly:--"Surely afterwards would do." But Gwen cut in with:--"No--I can't wait. Give it to me, Norbury!" And took it and read it as intently as her father had done. Having finished, she telegraphed to him, all the length of the table:--"Isn't that just what I said?" And then things went on as before. Only the Earl and his daughter had come off their P's and Q's, most lawlessly.

Here is the letter each had read, when off them:

"My dear Lord Ancester,

"I have thoroughly considered the letter, and return it herewith. I am satisfied that it is a forgery by the hand of the convict Daverill, but it is difficult to see what his object can have been, malice apart. It is clear, however, that it was to influence his wife, to what end it is impossible to say.

"The only theory I can have about the black ink is far-fetched. It is that a letter from England of that date was erased to make way for the forgery, these few black letters having been allowed to remain, not to disturb the English postmark, which partly-obscures them. You may notice some compromise or accommodation in the handwriting of the direction, evidently to slur over the difference. I suggest that the letter should be referred to some specialist in palimpsests, who may be able to detect some of the underlying original, which is absolutely invisible to me.

"If you meet with any other letter written by this ingenious penman, I suspect it will be in the pale ink of the forgery, which no doubt was as black as the English ink, when new.

"Believe me, my lord, your very faithful and obedient servant,

"JAMES HAWTREY."

"There can't be another letter of the ingenious penman's in the lot we left tied up, because he and his wife were living together, and not writing each other letters." So said Gwen afterwards, deprecating a suggestion of her father's that the packet should be opened and examined. But he replied:--"It is only to look at the colour of the ink. We won't read old Mrs. Prichard's love-letters." However, nothing was found, all these letters having been written in England except the one from Sydney inviting her to come out, which was referred to early in this story. The Sydney ink had been different--that was all.

So all the letters were tied up again and placed pro tem. in the cinquecento cabinet, to be quite safe. They had been just about to vanish therein when the Earl made his suggestion. Nothing having come of it, the documents were put away, honourably unread, and Gwen hurried off to be given a lift to Cavendish Square by her mother. Her father exacted a promise from her that she would not force her way past Dr. Dalrymple into the patient's presence, come what might! She accompanied her mother in the carriage as far as her own destination. The Countess was on a card-leaving mission in Harley Street, and devoutly hoped that Lady Blank would not be at home. In that case she might take advantage of her liberty to go to a meeting at the Duchess of Sutherland's to abolish this horrible negro slavery in America, so as not to be exceptional, which was odious; and your father--Gwen's to wit--never would exert himself about anything, and was simply wrapped up in old violins and majolica. Of course it was right to put an end to slavery, and people ought to exert themselves. Her ladyship waited in the carriage at the door till Gwen could supply an intensely authentic report--not what the servants were told to say to everybody; that was no use--of the precise condition of the patient, including the figures of the pulse and temperature, and whether she had had a good night. Gwen came back with a report from the nurse, to find Dr. Dalrymple conversing with her mother at the carriage door, and to be exhorted by him to follow her maternal example in matters of prudence. For the good lady had furnished herself with a smelling-bottle and was inhaling it religiously, as a prophylactic.

When she had departed, leaving Gwen wondering why on earth she was seized with such a desire just now to abolish negro slavery, Gwen returned into the house to await the doctor's last word about her friend. Waiting for him in the sitting-room, she read the Times, and naturally turned to the news from the Seat of War--it was then at its height--and became engrossed in the details of the Balaklava charge, a month since. The tragedy of the Crimea--every war is a tragedy--was at this time the all-engrossing topic in London and Paris, and men hung eagerly on every word that passed current as news. The reason it has so little place in this story is obvious--none of the essential events intersect. All our narrative has to tell relates to occurrences predetermined by a past that was forgotten long before Sebastopol was anticipated.

Gwen read the story of the great historical charge with a breathless interest certainly, but only as part of the playbill of a terrible drama, where the curtain was to fall on fireworks and a triumph for her own nationality; and, of course, its ally--ca se vit. Dr. Dalrymple reappeared, looking hopeful, with a good report, but too engrossed in his ease to be moved even by the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the state of the hospitals at Scutari. Where was Gwen going? To Sapps Court--where was that? Oh yes, just beyond his own destination, so he could give her a lift. And the carriage could take her on to hers and wait for her, just as easily as go home and come back for him. He might be detained a long time at the Hospital. Gwen accepted his offer gratefully, as a private brougham and a coachman made a sort of convoy. In those days young ladies were not so much at their ease without an escort, as they have been of late years. According to some authorities, the new regime is entirely due to the bicycle.

* * * * *

Sapps Court had not been itself since the exciting event of the accident; at least, so said Aunt M'riar, referring to the disappearance of Mrs. Prichard chiefly. For the identity of Sapps depended a good deal on the identity of its inhabitants, and its interests penetrated very little into the great world without. It was very little affected even by the news of the War, favourable or the reverse: its patriotism was too great for that. This must be taken to mean that its confidence in its country's power of routing its foes was so deep-seated that an equally firm belief that its armies were starving and stricken with epidemics, and armed with guns that would not go off, and commanded by the lame, halt, and blind in their second childhood, did not in the least interfere with its stability. Whatever happened, the indomitable courage of Tommy Atkins and Jack would triumph over foes, who, when all was said and done, were only foreigners. Sapps Court's faith in Jack was so great that his position was even above Tommy's. When Jack was reported to have gone ashore at Balaklava to help Tommy to get his effete and useless artillery to bear on the walls of Sebastopol, Sapps Court drew a long breath of relief. Misgivings were germinating in its bosom as to whether cholera patients could take fortresses on an empty stomach. But it would be all right now!

No doubt the Court's philosophical endurance of its share of the anxiety about the War was partly due to the fact that it hadn't got no relations there; or, at least, none to speak of. Michael Ragstroar's 'arf-sister's brother-in-law had certainly took the shilling, but Michael's father had expressed the opinion that this young man wouldn't do no good soldiering, and would only be in the way. Which had led Michael to say that this connection of his by marriage would ultimately get himself cashiered by Court Martial, for 'inderin'. Much better have stuck to chopping up live heels and makin' of 'em into pies at Ball's Pond, than go seeking glory at the cannon's mouth! Michael had not reflected on the comparative freedom of his own life, contrasted with the monotonous lot of this ill-starred young man; if, indeed, we may safely accept Micky's description of it as accurate. Sapps Court did so, and went on in the belief that the Ball's Pond recruit would prove a gene upon the movements of the allied troops in the Crimea.

The interest of the Court, therefore, in the contemporary events which were thrilling the remainder of Europe, was ethical or strategical, and one had to go outside its limits to be brought into touch with personal connecting links. But they were to be met with near at hand, for Mrs. Riley had ilivin relatives at the Sate of War, sivin of her own name, thray Donnigans, and one O'Rourke, a swate boy, though indade only a fosther-brother of her nayce Kathleen McDermott. Mrs. Tapping was unable to enumerate any near relations serving Her Majesty, but laid claim to consanguinity with distinguished officers, Generals of Division and Captains of three-deckers, all of whom had an exalted opinion of her own branch of the Family.

In the main, Sapps regarded the War as a mere Thing in the Newspapers, of which Uncle Mo heard more accurate details, at The Sun. There is nothing more unaccountable than the alacrity with which the human mind receives any statement in print, unless it is its readiness to surrender its belief on hearing a positive contradiction from a person who cannot possibly know anything about the matter. One sometimes feels forced to the conclusion that an absolute disqualification to speak on any subject is a condition precedent of procuring belief. Certainly a claim to inspiration enlists disciples quicker than the most subtle argument; acts, so to speak, as an aperient to the mind--a sort of intellectual Epsom Salts. Uncle Mo, in the simplicity of his heart, went every day for an hour to The Sun parlour, taking with him a profound belief in the latest news from the Seat of War, to have it shattered for him by the positive statements of persons who had probably not read the papers at all, and sometimes couldn't. For in those happy days there were still people who were unable to read or write.

Perhaps the only other customer in the parlour at The Sun, when Uncle Mo was smoking his pipe there, on the afternoon which saw the Countess interest herself in negro slavery, was able to read and write, unknown to his friends, who had never seen him do either. They, however, knew, or professed to feel assured, that old Billy--for that was his only ascertainable name--knew everything. This may have been their vulgar fun; but if it was, old Billy's own convictions of his omniscience were not shaken by it, any more than a creed he professed, that small doses of rum shrub, took reg'lar, kept off old age. In a certain sense he took them regularly, counting the same number in every bar, with nearly the same pauses between each dose. Whether they were really helping him against Time and Decay or not, they were making him pink and dropsical, and had not prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as of an eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty character which he ascribed to all bar parlours alike, with a cloth cap having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a beaver hat which he might have inherited from a coaching ancestor.

This afternoon he was eloquent on foreign policy. Closing one eye to accentuate the shrewd vision of the other, and shaking his head continuously to express the steadiness and persistency of his convictions, he indicted Louis Napoleon as the bete noire of European politics. "Don't you let yourself be took in, Mr. Moses," he said, "by any of these here noospapers. They're a bad lot. This here Nicholas, he's a Rooshian--so him I say nothin' about. Nor yet these here Turkeys--them and their Constant Eye No Pulls!"--this with great scorn. "None of 'em no better, I lay, than Goard A'mighty see fit to make 'em, so it ain't, so as you might say, their own fault, not in a manner of speaking. But this Louis Sneapoleum, he's your sly customer. He's as bad as the whole lot, all boiled up together in a stoo! Don't you be took in by him, Mr. Moses. Calls hisself a Coodytar! I call him ..." etcetera de rigueur, as some of old Billy's comparisons were unsavoury.

"Can't foller you all the way down the lane, Willy-um," said Uncle Mo, who could hardly be expected to identify Billy's variant of Coup d'Etat. "Ain't he our ally?"

"That's the p'int, Mr. Moses, the very p'int to not lose sight on, or where are we? He's got hisself made our ally for to get between him and the Rooshians. What he's a-drivin' at is to get us to fight his battles for him, and him to sit snug and accoomulate cucumbers like King Solomons."

Uncle Moses felt he ought to interpose on this revision of the Authorised Version of Scripture. "You haven't hit the word in the middle, mate," said he, and supplied it, correctly enough. "You can keep it in mind by thinking of them spiky beggars at the So-logical Gardens--porky pines--them as get their backs up when wexed and bristle."

"Well--corkupines, then! Have it your own way, old Mo! My back'd get up and bristle, if I was some of them! Only when it's womankind, the likes of us can't jedge, especially when French. All I can say is, him and them's got to settle it between 'em, and if they can stand his blooming moostarsh, why, it's no affair of mine." Which was so obviously true that old Billy need not have gone on muttering to himself to the same effect. One would have thought that the Tuileries had applied to him to accept an appointment as Censor Morum.

"What's old Billy grizzlin' on about?" said Mr. Jeffcoat, the host of The Sun, bringing in another go of the shrub, and a modest small pewter of mild for Uncle Mo, who was welcome at this hostelry even when, as sometimes happened, he drank nothing; so powerful was his moral influence on its status. In fact, the Sporting World, which drank freely, frequented its parlour merely to touch the hand of the great heavyweight of other days, however much he was faded and all his glories past. Then would Uncle Mo give a sketch of his celebrated scrap with Bob Brettle, which ended in neither coming to Time, simultaneously. Mo would complain of an absurd newspaper report of the fight, which said the Umpires stopped the fight. "No such a thing!" said Uncle Mo. "I stopped Bob and he stopped me, fair and square. And there we was, come to grass, and stopping there." Perhaps the old boy was dreaming back on something of this sort, rather than listening to boozy old Billy's reflections on Imperial Morality, that Mr. Jeffcoat should have repeated again:--"What's old Billy grizzling about? You pay for both, Mr. Moses? Fourpence halfpenny, thank you!"

"He's letting out at the Emperor of the French, is Billy. He'd do his dags for him, Billy would, if he could get at him. Wouldn't you, Billy? I say, Tim, whose voice was that I heard in the Bar just now, naming me by name?"

"Ah, I was just on telling you. He walks in and he says to me, when does Moses Wardle come in here, he says, and how long does he stop, mostly? And I says to him ..."

"What sort of a feller to look at?" said Uncle Mo, interrupting. "Old or young? Long? Short? Anything about him to go by?"

This called for consideration. "Not what you would call an average party. His gills was too much slewed to one side." This was illustrated by a finger hooking down the corner of the mouth. "Looked as if his best clothes was being took care of for him."

"What did he want o' me?" Uncle Mo's interest seemed roused.

"I was telling of you. When did you come and how long did you stop? Best part of an hour, I says, and you was here now. You'll find him in the parlour, I says. Go in and see, I says. And I thought to find him in here, having took my eyes off him for the moment."

"He's not been in here," said Uncle Mo, emptying his pipe prematurely, and apparently hurrying off without taking his half of mild. "Which way did he go?"

"Which way did the party go, Soozann?" said the host to his wife in the bar. Who replied:--"Couldn't say. Said he'd be back in half an hour, and went. Fancy he went to the right, but couldn't say."

"He won't be back in half an hour," said Uncle Mo. "Not if he's the man I take him for. You see, he's one of these here chaps that tells lies. You've heard o' them; seen one, p'r'aps?" Mr. Jeffcoat testified that he had, in his youth, and that rumours of their existence still reached him at odd times. Those who listen about in the byways of London will hear endless conversation on this model, always conducted with the most solemn gravity, with a perfect understanding of its inversions and perversions.

Uncle Mo hurried away, leaving instructions that his half-pint should be bestowed on any person whose tastes lay in that direction. Mr. Jeffcoat might meet with such a one. You never could tell. He hastened home as fast as his enemy Gout permitted, and saw when he turned into the short street at the end of which Sapps lay hidden, that something abnormal was afoot. There stood Dr. Dalrymple's pill-box, wondering, no doubt, why it had carried a segment of an upper circle to such a Court as this. If it had been the Doctor himself, it would not have given a thought to the matter, for it used to bear its owner to all sorts of places, from St. James's Palace to Seven Dials.

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Chapter XIII

HOW UNCLE MO WAS JUST TOO LATE. THE SHINY LADY. THE TURN THE MAN HAD GIVEN AUNT M'RIAR, AND HER APOLOGIES. DOLLY'S INTENDED HOSPITALITY TO MRS. PRICHARD ON HER RETURN. DOLLY'S DOLLY'S NEW NAME. AN ARRANGEMENT, COMMITTING NEITHER PARTY. GUINEVERE, LANCELOT, AND THE CAKE. MRS. PRICHARD INSANE?--THE IDEA! HOW GWEN READ THE LETTER ALL BUT THE POSTSCRIPT. NOTHING FOR IT BUT TO TELL! BUT HOW? FUN, TELLING THE CHILDREN. ANOTHER RECHRISTENING OF DOLLY. GWEN'S LAST EXIT FROM MRS. PRICHARD'S APARTMENTS. JOAN OF ARC'S SWORD'S SOUL. THE POSTSCRIPT. WIDOW THRALE'S DOG. WHAT THE CONVICT HAD SAID. HOW LONG DOES BONA-FIDE OMNIPOTENCE TAKE OVER A JOB?

Gwen, leaving her convoy to wait for her in the antechamber of Sapps Court, and approach No. 7 alone, heard as she knocked at the door an altercation within; Aunt M'riar's voice and a strange one, with terror in the former and threat in the latter. Had all sounded peaceful, she might have held back, to allow the interview to terminate. But catching the sound of fear in the woman's voice, and having none in her own composition, she immediately delivered a double-knock of the most unflinching sort, and followed it by pushing open the door.

She could hear Dave above, at the top window, recognising her as "The Lady." As she entered, a man who was coming out flinched before her meanly for a moment, then brushed past brutally. Aunt M'riar's face was visible where she stood back near the staircase; it was white with terror. She gasped out:--"Let him go; I'll come directly!" and ran upstairs. Gwen heard her call to the children, more collectedly, to come down, as the lady was there, and then apparently retreat into her room, shutting the door. Thereon the children came rushing down, and before she could get attention to her inquiry as to who that hideous man was, Uncle Mo had pushed the door open. He had not asked that pill-box to explain itself, but had gone straight on to No. 7. Dave met him on the threshold, in a tempest of excitement, exclaiming: --"Oy say, Uncle Mo!--the lady's here. The shoyny one. And oy say, Uncle Mo, the Man's been." The last words were in a tone to themselves, quite unlike what came before. It was as though Dave had said:--"The millennium has come, but the crops are spoiled." He added:--"Oy saw the Man, out of the top window, going away."

Uncle Mo let the millennium stand over. "Which man, old Peppermint Drops?" said he, improvising a name to express an aroma he had detected in his nephew, when he stooped to make sure he was getting his last words right.

"Whoy, the Man," Dave continued, in an undertone that might have related to the Man with the Iron Mask, "the Man me and Micky we sore in Hoyde Park, and said he was a-going to rip Micky up, and Micky he said he should call the Police-Orficers, and the gentleman said...."

"That'll do prime!" said Uncle Mo. For Dave's torrent of identification was superfluous. "I would have laid a guinea I knew his game," added he to himself. Then to Gwen, inside the house with Dolly on her knee:--"You'll excuse me, miss, my lady, these young customers they do insert theirselves--it's none so easy to find a way round 'em, as I say to M'riar.... M'riar gone out?" For it was a surprise to find the children alone entertaining company--and such company!

"There, Dolly, you hear?" said Gwen. "You're not to insert yourself between me and your uncle. Suppose we sit quiet for five minutes!" Dolly subsided. "How do you do, Mr. Wardle!... No, Aunt Maria isn't here, and I'm afraid that man coming worried her. Dave's man.... Oh yes--I saw him. He came out as I came in, three minutes ago. What is the man? Didn't I hear Dave telling how Micky said he should give him to the Police? I wish Micky had, and the Police had found out who he's murdered. Because he's murdered somebody, that man! I saw it in his eyes."

"He's a bad character," said Mo. "If he don't get locked up, it won't be any fault of mine. On'y that'll be after I've squared a little account I have against him--private affair of my own. If you'll excuse me half a minute, I'll go up and see what's got M'riar." But Uncle Mo was stopped at the stair-foot by the reappearance of Aunt M'riar at the stair-top. As they met halfway up, both paused, and Gwen heard what it was easy to guess was Aunt M'riar's tale of "the Man's" visit, and Uncle Mo's indignation. They must have conversed thus in earnest undertones for full five minutes, before Aunt M'riar said audibly:--"Now we mustn't keep the lady waiting no longer, Mo"; and both returned, making profuse apologies. The interval of their absence had been successfully and profitably filled in by an account of how Mrs. Picture had been taken to see Jones's Bull, with a rough sketch of the Bull's demeanour in her company.

Aunt M'riar made amends to the best of her abilities for her desertion. Perhaps the young lady knew what she meant when she said she had been giv' rather a turn? The young lady did indeed. Aunt M'riar hoped she had not been alarmed by her exit. Nor by the person who had gone out? No--Gwen's nerves had survived both, though certainly the person wasn't a beauty. She went on to hope that the effects of the turn he had given Aunt M'riar would not be permanent. These being pooh-poohed by both Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar, became negligible and lapsed.

"The children came running down directly after you went, Aunt Maria," said Gwen. "So I can assure you I didn't lose my temper at being left alone. I wasn't alone two minutes!" Then she gave, in reply to a general inquiry after the fever patient, inaugurated by Dave with:--"Oy say, how's Sister Nora?"--the very favourable report she had just received from Dr. Dalrymple.

Then Mrs. Prichard was rushed into the conversation by a sudden inexplicable statement of Dolly's. "When Mrs. Spicture comes back," said she, "Granny Marrowbone is to pour out Mrs. Spicture's tea. And real Cake. And stoast cut in sloyces wiv real butter."

"Don't get excited, Dolly dear," said Gwen, protesting against the amount of leg-action that accompanied this ukase. "Tell us again! Why is Granny Marrable to make tea? Granny Marrable's at her house in the country. She's not coming here with Mrs. Spicture."

"There, now, Dolly!" said Aunt M'riar. "Why don't you tell clear, a bit at a time, and get yourself understood? Granny Marrowbone's the new name, my lady, she's christened her doll, Dolly. So she should be known apart, Dolly being, as you might say, Dolly herself. Because her uncle he pointed out to her, 'Dolly,' he said, 'you're in for thinkin' out some new name for this here baby of yours, to say which is which. Or 'us you'll get that mixed up, nobody'll know!'"

"I put my oar in," said Uncle Mo, "for to avoid what they call coarmplications nowadays." He never lost an opportunity of hinting at the fallings off of the Age. "So she and Dave they turns to and thinks one out. I should have felt more like Sally or Sooky or Martilda myself. Or Queen Wictoria." The last was a gracious concession to Her Majesty; who, in the eyes of Uncle Mo, had recently come to the throne.

"No!" said Dolly firmly. "Gwanny Mawwowbone!" This was very articulately delivered, the previous, or slipshod, pronunciation having been more nearly Granny Mallowbone.

"Certainly!" said Gwen, assenting. "Dolly's dolly Dolly shall be Granny Marrowbone. Only it makes Dolly out rather old."

Dolly seemed to take exception to this. "I was four on my birfday," said she. "I shan't be five not till my next birfday, such a long, long, long, long time."

"And you'll stop four till you're five," said Gwen. "Won't you, Dolly dear? What very blue eyes the little person has!" They were fixed on the speaker with all the solemnity the contemplation of a geological period of Time inspires. The little person nodded gravely--about the Time, not about her eyes--and said:--"Ass!"

Dave thrust himself forward as an interpreter of Dolly's secret wishes, saying, to the astonishment of his aunt and uncle:--"Dorly wants to take her upstairs to show her where the tea's to be set out when Mrs. Spicture comes back."

Remonstrance was absolutely necessary, but what form could it take? Aunt M'riar was forced back on her usual resource, her lack of previous experience of a similar enormity:--"Well, I'm sure, a big boy like you to call a lady her! I never did, in all my born days!" Uncle Mo meanly threw the responsibility of the terms of an absolutely necessary amendment on the culprit himself, saying:--"You're a nice young monkey! Where's your manners? Is that what they larn you to say at school? What's a lady's name when you speak to her?" He had no one but himself to thank for the consequences. Dave, who, jointly with Dolly, was just then on the most intimate footing with the young lady, responded point-blank:--"Well--Gwen, then! She said so. Sister Gwen."

Her young ladyship's laugh rang out with such musical cordiality that the two horror-stricken faces relaxed, and Uncle Mo's got so far as the beginning of a smile. "It's all quite right," said Gwen. "I told Dave I was Gwen just this minute when you were upstairs. He's made it 'sister'--so we shan't be compromised, either of us." Whereupon Dave, quite in the dark, assented from sheer courtesy.

Aunt M'riar seemed to think it a reasonable arrangement, and Uncle Mo, with a twinkle in his eye, said:--"It's better than hollerin' out 'she' and 'her,' like a porter at a railway-station."

But her ladyship had not come solely to have a symposium with Dave and Dolly. So she suggested that both should go upstairs and rehearse the slaughter of the fatted calf; that is to say, distribute the apparatus of the banquet that was to welcome Mrs. Picture back. Dave demurred at first, on the score of his maturity, but gave way when an appeal was made to some equivalent of patriotism whose existence was taken for granted; and consented, as it were, to act on the Committee.

"Now, don't you come running down to say it's ready, not till I give leave," said Aunt M'riar, having misgivings that the apparatus might not be sufficiently--suppose we affect a knowledge of Horace, and say "Persian"--to keep the Committee employed.

"They'll be quiet enough for a bit," said Uncle Mo. Who showed insight by adding:--"They won't agree about where the things are to be put, nor what's to be the cake." For a proxy had to be found, to represent the cake. Even so Lancelot stood at the altar with Guinevere, as Arthur's understudy for the part of bridegroom.

"Do please now all sit down and be comfortable," said Gwen, as soon as tranquillity reigned. "Because I want to talk a great deal.... Yes--about Mrs. Prichard. I really should be comfortabler if you sat down.... Well--Mr. Wardle can sit on the table if he likes." So that compromise was made, and Gwen got to business. "I really hardly know how to begin telling you," she said. "What has happened is so very odd.... Oh no--I have seen to that. The woman she is with will take every care of her.... You know--Widow Thrale, Dave's Granny's daughter, who had charge of Dave--Strides Cottage, of course! I'm sure she'll be all right as far as that goes. But the whole thing is so odd.... Stop a minute!--perhaps the best way would be for me to read you Mrs. Thrale's letter that she has written me. She must be very nice." This throwing of the burden of disclosure on her correspondent seemed to Gwen to be on the line of least resistance. She was feeling bewildered already as to how on earth the two old sisters could be revealed to one another, and her mind was casting about for any and every guidance from any quarter that could lead her to the revelation naturally. There was no quarter but Sapps Court. So try it, at least!

She read straight on without interruption, except for expressions of approval or concurrence from her hearers when they heard the writer's declaration of how impressionnee she had been by the old lady, until she came to the first reference to the gist of the letter, her mental soundness. Then both broke into protest. "Delusions!" they exclaimed at once. Old Mrs. Prichard subject to delusions? Not she! Never was a saner woman, of her years, than old Mrs. Prichard!

"I only wish," said Uncle Mo, "that I may never be no madder than Goody Prichard. Why, it's enough to convince you she's in her senses only to hear her say good-arternoon!" This meant that Uncle Mo's visits upstairs had always been late in the day, and that her greeting to him would have impressed him with her sanity, had it ever been called in question.

"On'y fancy!" said Aunt M'riar indignantly. "To say Mrs. Prichard's deluded, and her living upstairs with Mrs. Burr this three years past, and Skillicks for more than that, afore ever she come here!" This only wanted the addition that Mrs. Burr had seen no sign of insanity in all these years, to be logical and intelligible.

Gwen found no fault, because she saw what was meant. But there was need for a caution. "You won't say anything of this till I tell you," said she. "Not even to Mrs. Burr. It would only make her uncomfortable." For why should all the old lady's belongings be put on the alert to discover flaws in her understanding? Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar gave the pledge asked for, and Gwen went on reading. They just recognised the water-mill as an acquaintance of last year--not as a subject of frequent conversation with Dave. Aunt M'riar seemed greatly impressed with the old lady's excursion out of bed to get at the mill-model, especially at its having occurred before six in the morning. Also by the dog.

Uncle Mo was more practically observant. When the reading came to the two mills in Essex, he turned to Aunt M'riar, saying:--"She said summat about Essex--you told me." Aunt M'riar said:--"Well, now, I couldn't say!" in the true manner of a disappointing witness. But when, some sentences later, the reference came to the two little girl twins, Uncle Mo suddenly broke in with:--"Hullo!... Never mind!--go on"; as apologizing for his interruption. Later still, unable to constrain himself any longer:--"Didn't--you--tell--me, M'riar, that Mrs. P. she told you her father lived at Darenth in Essex?"

"No, Mo, that's not the name. Durrant was the name she said." Aunt M'riar was straining at a gnat. However, solemn bigwigs have done that before now.

"Nigh enough for most folks," said Uncle Mo. "Just you think a bit and see what she said her father's name was."

"She never said his name, Mo. She never said a single name to me, not that I can call to mind, not except it was Durrant."

"Very well, then, M'riar! Now I come to my point. Didn't--you--tell--me--a'most the very first time you did anything--didn't you tell me Mrs. P. she said she was a twin. And Dave he made enquiries."

"She was a twin."

"I'm stumped," said Uncle Mo. "I was always groggy over the guessing of co-nundrums. Now, miss--my lady--what does your ladyship make of it?"

"Let me read to the end," said Gwen. "It's not very long now. Then I'll tell you." She read on and finished the letter, all but the postscript. She was saying to herself:--"If I stick so over telling these good people now, what will it be when the crisis comes?" It would be good practice, anyhow, to drive it home to Aunt M'riar. When she had quite finished what she meant to read, she went straight on, as she had promised, ignoring obstacles:--"The explanation is that Mrs. Marrable and Mrs. Prichard are twin sisters, who parted fifty years ago. About five years later Mrs. Prichard was deceived by a forged letter, telling her that her sister was drowned. My father and I found it among her papers, and read it. This Mrs. Thrale who writes to me is her own daughter, whom she left in England nearly fifty years since--a baby!... And now she thinks her mother mad--her own mother!... Oh dear!--how will they ever know? Who will tell them?"

A low whistle and a gasp respectively were all that Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were good for. A reissue of the gasp might have become "Merciful Gracious!" or some equivalent, if Uncle Mo had not nipped it in the bud, thereby to provide a fulcrum for his own speech. "'Arf a minute, M'riar! Your turn next. I want to be clear, miss--my lady--that I've got the record ack-rate. These here two ladies have been twins all their lives, unbeknown...." Uncle Mo was so bewildered that this amount of confusion was excusable.

Gwen took his meaning, instead of criticizing his form. "Not all their lives," she said. "Fifty years ago they were thirty, and it's all happened since then." She went over the ground again, not letting her hearers off even the most incredible of the facts. She was surprised and relieved to find that they seemed able to receive them, only noticing that they appeared to lean on her superior judgment. They were dumfoundered, of course; but they could believe, with such a helper for their unbelief. Were not the deep-rooted faiths of maturity, once, the child's readiness to believe its parents infallible, and would not any other indoctrination have held as firmly? Even so the rather childish minds of Dave's guardians made no question of the credibility of the tale, coming as it did from such an informant--one without a shadow of interest in the fabrication of it.

Aunt M'riar made no attempt at anything beyond mere exclamation; until, after the second detailed review of the facts, Gwen was taken aback by her saying suddenly:--"Won't it be a'most cruel, when you come to think of it?..."

"Won't what be cruel, Aunt M'riar?"

"For to tell 'em. Two such very elderly parties, and all the time gone by! I say, let the rest go! I should think twice about it. But it ain't for me to say." She seemed to have a sudden inspiration towards decision of opinion, a thing rare with her. It was due, no doubt, to her own recent experience of an unwelcome resurrection from the Past.

"'Tain't any consarn of ours to choose, M'riar. Just you go over to their side o' the hedge for a minute. Suppose you was Goody Prichard, and Goody Prichard was you!"

"Well! Suppose!"

"Which would you like? Her to bottle up, or tell?" Aunt M'riar wavered. A momentary hope of Gwen's, that perhaps Aunt M'riar's way out of the difficulty might hold good, died at its birth, killed by Uncle Mo's question.

Which would Gwen have liked, herself, in Mrs. Prichard's place? Aunt M'riar was evidently looking to her for an answer.

"I'm afraid there's no help for it, Aunt Maria," said she. "She must be told. But don't be afraid I shall leave the telling to you. I shall go back and tell her myself in a day or two."

"Will she come back here?" This question raised a new doubt. Would either of the two old twins care to leave the other, after that formidable disclosure had been achieved? It was looking too far ahead. Gwen felt that the evil of the hour was sufficient for the day, or indeed the next three weeks for that matter, and evaded the question with an answer to that effect.

Then, as no more was to be gained by talking, seeing that she could not give all her proofs in detail, she suggested that she should go up to Mrs. Prichard's room to say good-bye to Dave and Dolly. Promises could not be ignored between honourable people. Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar quite concurred. "But," said they, almost in the same breath, "are the children to know?"

Gwen had not considered the point. "No--yes--no!" she said, and then revoked. "Really, though, I don't know, after all, why they shouldn't! What harm can it do?"

What harm indeed? Mo and M'riar looked the question at each other, and neither looked a negative reply. Very good, then! Dave and Dolly were to know, but who was to tell?

Gwen considered again. Then it flashed across her mind that the disclosure of the relationship of his two Grannies could have no distressing effect on Dave. Time and Change and Death are only names, to a chick not eight years old, and nothing need be told of the means by which the sisters' lives had been cut apart. As for Dolly, she would either weep or laugh at a piece of news, according to the suggestions of her informant. Passionless narrative would leave her unaffected either way. Told as good news, this would be accepted as good, and it would be a pleasure to tell it to those babies.

"I'll tell them myself," said she. "Don't you come up. Is Mrs. Burr there?" No--Mrs. Burr was at Mrs. Ragstroar's, attending to a little job for her. Gwen vanished up the stairs, and her welcome was audible below.

She did not mince matters, and the two young folks were soon crowing with delight at her statement, made with equanimity, that she knew that Granny Marrowbone was really old Mrs. Picture's sister. She saw no reason for making the announcement thrilling. It was enough to say that each of them had been told wicked lies about the other, and been deceived by bad people, such as there was every reason to hope were not to be found in Sapps Court, or the neighbourhood. "And each of them," she added, "thought the other was dead and buried, a long time ago!" Inexplicably, she felt it easier to say dead and buried, than merely dead.

Dolly, having been recently in collision with Time, saw her way to profitable comparison. "A long, long, long time, like my birfday!" she said, suggestively but unstructurally.

"Heaps longer," said Gwen. "Heaps and heaps!" Dolly was impressed, almost cowed. She could not be even with these aeons and eras and epochs, at her time of life.

Dave burst into a shout of unrestrained glee at the discovery that his London and country Grannies were sisters. "Oy shall wroyte to say me and Dolly are glad. Ever such long letters to bofe." A moment later his face had clouded over. "Oy say!" said he, "will they be glad or sorry?"

"Glad," said Gwen venturesomely. "Why should they be sorry? You must write them very, very long letters." The mine would be sprung, she thought, before even a short letter was finished. But it was as well to be on the safe side.

Dave was feeling the germination in his mind of hitherto unexperienced thoughts about Death and Time, and he remained speechless. He shook his head with closed lips and puzzled blue eyes fixed on his questioner. She saw a little way into his mind as he looked up at her, and pinched his cheek slightly, for sympathy, with the hand that was round his neck, but said nothing. Children are so funny!

"I fink," said Dolly, "old Mrs. Spicture shall bring old Granny Marrowbone back wiv her when she comes back and sets in her harm-chair wiv scushions, and Mrs. Burr cuts the reel cake, wiv splums, in sloyces, in big sloyces and little sloyces, and Mrs. Burr pawses milluck in my little jug, and Mrs. Burr pawses tea in my little pot--ass, hot tea!--and ven Doyvy shall cally round the scups and sources, but me to paw it out"--this clause was merely to assert the supremacy of Woman in household matters--"and ven all ve persons to help veirself to shoogy ..." etc., etc. Which might have run on musically for ever, but that a difficulty arose about the names of the guests and their entertainer. It was most unfortunate that the latter should have been rechristened lately after one of the former. Her owner interpreted her to express readiness to accept another name, and that of Gweng was selected, as a compliment to the visitor.

Then it really became time for that young lady to depart. Think of that doctor's pill-box waiting all this while round the corner! So she ended what she did not suspect was her last look at old Mrs. Picture's apartment, with the fire's last spasmodic flicker helping the gas-lamp below in the Court to show Dolly, unable to tear herself away from the glorious array of preparation on the floor. There it stood, just under the empty chair with cushions, still waiting--waiting for its occupant to come again; and meanwhile a Godsend to the cat, who resumed her place the moment the intruder rose from it, with an implication that her forbearance had been great indeed to endure exclusion for so long. There was no more misgiving on the face of that little maid, putting the fiftieth touch on the perfection of her tea-cup arrangements, that her ideal entertainment would never compass realisation, than there was on the faces of the Royal Pair in their robes and decorations, gazing firmly across at Joan of Arc and St. George, in plaster, but done over bronze so you couldn't tell; precious possessions of Mrs. Burr, who was always inquiring what it would cost to repair Joan's sword--which had disintegrated and laid bare the wire in its soul--and never getting an estimate. Nor on the face of Mrs. Burr herself, coming upstairs from her job out at Mrs. Ragstroar's, and beaming--prosaically, but still beaming--on the young lady that had come to see her at the Hospital.

* * * * *

"Oh, I remember, by-the-by," said that young lady, three minutes later, having really said adieu all round to the family; including Dolly, who had suddenly awakened to the position, and overtaken her at the foot of the stairs. "I remember there was something else I wanted to ask you, Aunt Maria. Did Mrs. Prichard ever talk to you about her son?"

Was it wonderful that Aunt M'riar should start and flinch from speech, and that Uncle Mo should look preoccupied about everything outside the conversation? Can you imagine the sort of feeling an intensely truthful person like Aunt M'riar would have under such circumstances? How could she, without feeling like duplicity itself, talk about this son as though he were unknown to her, when his foul presence still hung about the room he had quitted less than an hour since? That fact, and that she had seen him, then and there, face to face with her beautiful questioner, weighed heavier on her at that moment than her own terrible relation to him, a discarded wife oppressed by an uncancelled marriage.

She had got to answer that question. "Mrs. Prichard has a son," she said. "But he's no good." This came with a jerk--perhaps with a weak hope that it might eject him from the conversation.

"She hasn't set eyes on him, didn't she say, for years past?" said old Mo, seeing that M'riar wanted help. Also with a hope of eliminating the convict. "Didn't even know whether he was living or dead, did she?"

The reply, after consideration, was:--"No-o! She said that."

And then Gwen looked from one to the other. "Oh-h!" said she. "Then probably the man was her son.... Look here! I must read you the postscript I left out." She reopened Mrs. Thrale's letter, and read that the writer's mother had been much upset by a man who laid claim to being Mrs. Prichard's son. As her eyes were on the letter, she did not see the glance of reciprocal intelligence that passed between her two listeners. But she looked up after the last word of the postscript in time to see the effect of the dog at Strides Cottage. Even as her father had been influenced, so was Uncle Mo. He appeared to breathe freer for that dog. It struck Gwen that Aunt M'riar seemed a little unenquiring and uncommunicative about this son of Mrs. Prichard's, considering all the circumstances.

When Gwen had departed, Aunt M'riar, seeing perhaps interrogation in Mo's eyes, stopped it by saying:--"Don't you ask me no more questions, not till these children are clear off to bed. I'll tell after supper." And then, just that moment, Mr. Alibone looked in, and was greatly impressed by Dave and Dolly's dramatic account of their visitor. "I've seen her, don't you know?" he said. "When you was put about to get that lock open t'other day. She's one among a million. If I was a blooming young Marquish, I should just knock at her door till she had me moved on. That's what, Mo. So might you, old man." To which Uncle Mo replied:--"They've stood us over too long, Jerry. If they don't look alive, they won't get a chance to make either of us a Marquish. I expect they're just marking time." Which Dave listened to with silent, large-eyed gravity. Some time after he expressed curiosity about the prospects of these Marquisates, and made inquiry touching the relation "marking time" had to them. Uncle Mo responded that it wouldn't be so very long now, and described the ceremonies that would accompany it--something like Lord Mayor's Show, with a flavour of Guy Fawkes Day.

However, Dave and Dolly went to bed this evening without even that inaccurate enlightenment. And presently Mr. Alibone, detecting his friend's meaning when he said he was deadly sleepy somehow to-night, took his leave and went away to finish his last pipe at The Sun.

And then Mo and M'riar were left to resume the day, and make out its meaning. "How long had the feller been here?" he asked, in order to begin somewhere.

Aunt M'riar took the question too much to heart, and embarked on an intensely accurate answer. "I couldn't say not to a minute," she said. "But if you was to put it at ten minutes, I'd have felt it safer at seven. The nearer seven the better, I should say."

"Anyhow--not a twelvemonth!" said Mo. "And there he was skearing you out of your wits, when the lady came in and di-verted of him off. Where was the two young scaramouches all the while?"

"Them I'd sent upstairs when I see who it was outside. Dave he never see him, not to look at!"

"He see him out of the top window, and knew him again. What had the beggar got to say for hisself?" This was the gist of the matter, and Uncle Mo settled down to hear it.

"He'd been to look after his mother in the country, at the place I told him--and the more fool me for telling--and he thought he spotted her, but it was some other old woman, and while he was talking to her, there to be sure and if he didn't see a police-officer after him!"

"What did he do on that?"

"Oh, he run for it, and was all but took. But he got away to the railway, and the officer followed him. And when he saw him coming up, he jumped in the wrong train, that was just starting, and got carried to Manchester. And he got back to London by the night train."

"And then he come on here, and found I was in the parlour--round at Joe Jeffcoat's. He thought he see his way to another half-a-sovereign out of you, M'riar, and that's what he come for. He thought I was safe for just the du-ration of a pipe or two."

"What brought you back, Mo?"

"Well, ye see, I heard his ugly voice out in the front bar, askin' for me. And I only thought he was a sporting c'rackter come to see what the old scrapper looked like in his old age. Then I couldn't think for a minute or two because of old Billy's clapper going, but when I did, his face came back to me atop of his voice. More by token when he never showed up! Ye see?" Aunt M'riar nodded an exact understanding of what had happened. "And then I take it he come sneaking down here to see for some cash, if he could get it. He'll come again, old girl, he'll come again! And Simeon Rowe shall put on a man in plain clothes, to watch for him when I'm away."

"Oh, Mo, don'tee say that! It was only his make-believe to frighten me. Anyone could tell that only to see him flourishin' out his knife."

"Hay--what's that?--his knife? You never told me o' that."

"Why, Mo, don't ye see, I only took it for bounce."

"What was it about his knife?"

"Just this, Mo dear! Now, don't you be excited. He says to me again:--'What are you good for, Polly Daverill?' And then I see he was handling a big knife with a buckhorn handle." M'riar was tremulous and tearful. "Oh, Mo!" she said. "Do consider! He wasn't that earnest, to be took at a chance word. He ain't so bad as you think of him. He was only showin' off like, to get the most he could."

"That's a queer way of showin' off--with a knife! P'r'aps it warn't open, though?" But it was, by M'riar's silence. "Anyways," Mo continued, "he won't come back so long as he thinks I'm here. To-morrow morning first thing I shall just drop round to the Station, and tip 'em a wink. Can't have this sort o' thing goin' on!"

M'riar's lighting of a candle seemed to hang fire. Said she:--"You'd think it a queer thing to say, if I was to say it, Mo!" And then, in reply to the natural question:--"Think what?" she continued:--"A woman's husband ain't like any other man. She's never quite done with him, as if he was nobody. It don't make any odds how bad he's been, nor yet how long ago it was.... It makes one creep to think...." She stopped abruptly, and shuddered.

"What he'll catch if he gets his deserts." Mo supplied an end for the sentence, gravely.

"Ah!--he might be.... What would it be, Mo, if he was tried and found guilty?"

"Without a recommendation to mercy? It was a capital offence. I never told it ye. Shall I tell it?"

"No--for God's sake!" Aunt M'riar stopped her ears tight as she had done before. "Don't you tell me nothing, Mo, more than I know already. That's plenty." Uncle Mo nodded, pointed to tightly closed lips to express assent, and she resumed speech with hearing. "Capital offence means ... means?..."

"Means he would go to the scragging-post, arter breakfast one morning. There's no steering out o' that fix, M'riar. He's just got to, one day, and there's an end of it!"

"And how ever could I be off knowing it at the time? Oh, but it makes me sick to think of! The night before--the night before, Mo! Supposin' I wake in the night, and think of him, and hear the clocks strike! He'll hear them too, Mo."

"Can't be off it, M'riar! But what of that? He won't be a penny the worse, and he'll know what o'clock it is." Remember that Uncle Mo had some particulars of Daverill's career that Aunt M'riar had not. For all she knew, the criminal's capital offence might have been an innocent murder--a miscarriage in the redistribution of some property--a too zealous garrotting of some fat old stockjobber. "I'm thinkin' a bit of the other party, M'riar," said Mo. He might have said more, but he was brought up short by his pledge to say nothing of the convict's last atrocity. How could he speak the thought in his mind, of the mother of the victim in a madhouse? For that had made part of the tale, as it had reached him through the police-sergeant. So he ended his speech by saying:--"What I do lies at my own door, M'riar. You're out of it. So I shan't say another word of what I will do or won't do. Only I tell you this, that if I could get a quiet half an hour with the gentleman, I'd ... What would I do?... Well!--I'd save him from the gallows--I would! Ah!--and old as I am, I'd let him keep a hold on his knife.... There--there, old lass! I do wrong to frighten ye, givin' way to bad temper. Easy does it!"

For a double terror of the woman's position was bred of that mysterious, inextinguishable love that never turns to hate, however hateful its object may become; and her dread that if this good, unwieldy giant--that was what Mo seemed--crossed his path, that jack-knife might add another to her husband's many crimes. This dread and counter-dread had sent all Aunt M'riar's blood to her heart, and she might have fallen, but that Mo's strong hand caught her in time, and landed her in a chair. "I was wrong--I was wrong!" said he gently. All the fires had died down before the pallor of her face, and his only thought was how could she be spared if the destroyer of her life was brought to justice.

They said no more; what more was there to be said? Aunt M'riar came round, refusing restoratives. Oh no, she would be all right! It was only a turn she got--that common event! They adjourned, respectively, to where Dolly and Dave were sleeping balmily, profoundly.

But Uncle Mo was discontented with the handiwork of Creation. Why should a cruel, two-edged torture be invented for, and inflicted on, an inoffensive person like M'riar? There didn't seem any sense in it. "If only," said he to his inner soul, "they'd a-let me be God A'mighty for five minutes at the first go-off, I'd a-seen to it no such a thing shouldn't happen." Less than five minutes would have been necessary, if a full and unreserved concession of omnipotence had been made.

* * * * *

Dave was a man of his word, though a very young one. He seized the earliest opportunity to indite two letters of congratulation to his honorary grandmothers, including Dolly in his rejoicing at the discovery of their relationship. He wrote as though such discoveries were an everyday occurrence.

His mistakes in spelling were few, the principal one arising from an old habit of thought connecting the words sister and cistern, which had survived Aunt M'riar's frequent attempts at correction. When he exhibited his Identical Notes to the Powers for their sanction and approval, this was pointed out to him, and an allegation that he was acting up to previous instructions disallowed nem. con. He endeavoured to lay to heart that for the future cistern was to be spelt sister, except out on the leads. A holographic adjustment of the c, and erasure of the n, was scarcely a great success, but the Powers supposed it would do. Uncle Mo opposed Aunt M'riar's suggestion that the two letters should go in one cover to Strides Cottage, for economy, as mean-spirited and parsimonious, although he had quite understood that the two Grannies were under one roof; otherwise Dave would have directed to Mrs. Picture at the Towers. So to Strides Cottage they went, some three days later.

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Chapter XIV

HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WENT BACK TO THE TOWERS, AND GWEN READ HER LETTERS IN THE TRAIN. THE TORPEYS, THE RECTOR, AND THE BISHOP. HOW THE COUNTESS SHUT HER EYES, AND GWEN HARANGUED. WHO WAS LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS? THE UP-EXPRESS, AND ITS VIRUS. HOW GWEN RESOLVED TO RUSH THE POSITION. AT STRIDES COTTAGE. HOW GWEN BECAME MORE AND MORE ALIVE TO HER DIFFICULTIES. HOW SHE WENT TO SEE DR. NASH. HIS INCREDULITY. AND HIS CONVERSION. HOW HE WOULD SEE GRANNY MARRABLE, BY ALL MEANS. BUT! HOWEVER, BY GOOD LUCK, MUGGERIDGE HAD FORGOTTEN HIS MARRIAGE VOWS, HALF A CENTURY AGO AND MORE

It was written in the Book of Fate, and printed in the Morning Post, that the Countess of Ancester was leaving for Rocestershire, and would remain over Christmas. After which she would probably pay a visit to her daughter, Lady Philippa Brandon, at Vienna. The Earl would join her at the Towers after a short stay at Bath, according to his lordship's annual custom. The Post did not commit itself as to his lordship's future movements, because Fate had not allowed the Editor to look in her Book.

And the Countess herself seemed to know no more than the Post. For when her daughter, in the railway-carriage on the way to the Towers, looked up from a letter she was reading over and over again, to say:--"I suppose it's no use trying to persuade papa to come to Vienna, after all?" her mother's answer was:--"You can try, my dear. You may have some influence with him. I have none. I suppose when we're gone, he'll just get wrapped up in his fiddles and books and old gim-cracks, as he always does the minute my eyes are off him." Gwen made no comment upon inconsistencies, becoming reabsorbed in her letter. But surely a Countess whose eyes prevent an Earl getting wrapped up in fiddles is not absolutely without influence over him.

Gwen's absorbing letter was from Irene, incorporating dictation from Adrian. The writer had found the accepted Official form:--"I am to say," convenient in practice. Thus, for instance, "I am to say that he is not counting the hours till your return, as it seems to him that the total, when reached, will be of no use to him or anyone else. He prefers to accept our estimate of the interval as authentic, and to deduct each hour as it passes. He is at eighty-six now, and expects to be at sixty-two at this time to-morrow, assuming that he can trust the clock while he's asleep." Gwen inferred that the amanuensis had protested, to go on to a more interesting point, as the letter continued:--"Adrian and I have been talking over what do you think, Gwen dear? Try and guess before you turn over this page I'm just at the end of...." Dots ended the page, and the next began:--"Give it up? Well--only, if I tell you, you must throw this letter in the fire when you have read it--I'm more than half convinced that there was once a tendresse, to put it mildly, between our respective papa and mamma--that is, our respective papa and your respective mamma--not the other way, that's ridiculous! And Adrian is coming to my way of thinking, after what happened yesterday. It was at dessert, and papa was quite loquacious, for him--in his best form, saying:--'Niggers, niggers, niggers! What does that blessed Duchess of Sutherland want to liberate niggers for? Much better wollop 'em!' The Duchess was, he said, an hysterical female. Mamma was unmoved and superior. Perhaps papa would call Lady Ancester hysterical, too. She was at Stafford House, and was most enthusiastic. She had promised to drive over as soon as she came back, to talk about Negro slavery, and see if something could not be done in the neighbourhood. Mamma hoped she would interest the Torpeys and the Rector and the Bishop. Only the point was that the moment our mamma mentioned yours, papa shut up with a snap, and never said another word. It struck me exactly as it struck Adrian. And when we came to talk it over we agreed that, if it were, it would account for our having been such strangers till last year."

Gwen was roused from weighing the possibilities of the truth of this surmise by the voice of one of its subjects. "How very engrossing our letters seem to be this morning!" said the Countess, with a certain air of courteous toleration, as of seniority on Olympus. "But perhaps I have no right to inquire." This with empressement.

"Don't be so civil, mamma dear, please!" said Gwen. "I do hate civility.... No, there's nothing of interest. Yes--there is. Lady Torrens says she hopes you won't forget your promise to come and talk about abolishing negroes. I didn't know you were going to."

The Countess skipped details. "Let me see the letter," said she, forsaking her detached superiority. She began to polish a double eyeglass prematurely.

"Can't show the letter," said Gwen equably, as one secure in her rights. "That's all--what I've told you! Says you promised to drive over and talk, and she hoped to interest you--oh no!--it's not you, it's the Torpeys are to be interested."

"Oh--the Torpeys," said the Countess freezingly. Because it was humiliating to have to put away those double eyeglasses. "Perhaps if there is anything else of interest you will tell me. Do not trouble to read the whole."

"But did you promise to drive over to Pensham? Because, if you did, we may just as well go together. With all those men at the Towers, I shall have to bespeak Tom Kettering and the mare."

"I think something was said about my going over. But I certainly made no promise." Her ladyship reflected a moment, and then said:--"I think we had better be free lances. I am most uncertain. It's a long drive. If I do go, I shall lunch at the Parysforts, which is more than half-way, and go on in the afternoon to your aunt at Poynders. Then I need not come back till the day after. I could call at Pensham by the way."

"I won't go to old Goody Parysforts--so that settles the matter! When shall I tell Adrian's mamma you are coming?"

"Are you going there at once?"

"Yes--to-morrow. I must see Adrian to talk to him about my old ladies, before I talk to either of them." Thereupon the Countess became prodigiously interested in the story of the twins, a subject about which she had been languid hitherto, and her daughter was not sorry, because she did not want to be asked again what Irene had said, which might have involved her in reading that young lady's text aloud, with extemporised emendations, possibly complex. She put that letter away, to re-read another time, and took out another one. "I've had this," she said, "from old Mrs. Prichard. But there's nothing in it!"

"Nothing in it?"

"Nothing about what Widow Thrale told us in hers. Nothing about Mrs. Thrale thinking she had gone dotty."

The Countess, with a passing rebuke of her daughter's phraseology, asked to be reminded of the story. Gwen, embarking on a resume, was interrupted by a tunnel, and then had hardly begun again when the train rushed into a second section of it, which had slipped or been blown further along the line. However, Peace ensued, in a land where, to all appearance, notice-boards were dictating slow speeds from interested motives, as there was no reason in life against quick ones. Gwen took advantage of it to read Mrs. Prichard's letter aloud, with comments. This was the letter:--

"'MY DEAR LADY,

"'I am looking forward to your return, and longing for it, for I have much to tell you. I cannot tell of it all now, but I can tell you what is such a happiness to tell, of the sweet kindness of this dear young woman who takes such care of me. A many have been very very kind to me, and what return have I to make, since my dear husband died?'...

"Her dear husband, don't you see, mamma, was the infamous monster that wrote the forged letter that did it all.... Papa read it to you, didn't he?"

"My dear, it's no use asking me what your father read or did not read to me, for really the last few days have been such a whirl. It always is, in London. However, go on! I know the letter you mean--what you were telling me about. Only I can't say I made head or tail of it at the time. Go on!" Her ladyship composed herself to listen with her eyes shut, and Gwen read on:--

"'But never, no never, was such patient kindness to a tiresome old woman, because that is what I am, and I know, my dear. I know, my dear, that I owe this to you, and it is for your sake, but it ought to be, and that is right. I do not say things always like I want to. She says her own mother is no use to her, because she is so strong and never ill, and I am good to nurse. But she is coming back very soon, and I shall see her. She is my Davy's other Granny, you know, and I am sure she must be good. I cannot write more, but oh, how good you have been to me!

"'Your loving and dutiful "'MAISIE PRICHARD.

"'I must say this to you, that she lets me call her her name Ruth. That was my child's I left at our Dolly's age, who was drowned.'

"Now are you sure, mamma," said Gwen, not without severity, "that you quite understand that it's the same Ruth? That this Widow Thrale is the little girl that old Mrs. Prichard has gone on believing drowned, all these years? Are you quite clear that old Granny Marrable actually is the twin sister she has not seen for fifty years? Are you certain...?"

"My dear Gwen, I beg you won't harangue. Besides, I can't hear you because the train's going quick again. It always does, just here.... No--I understand perfectly. These two old persons have not seen each other for fifty years, and it's very interesting. Only I don't see what they have to complain of. They have only got to be told, and made to understand how the mistake came about. I think they ought to be told, you know."

"Oh dear, what funny things maternal parents are! Mamma dear, you are just like Thothmes, who said:--'Better late than never'!"

"Who is 'Thothmes'?" Her ladyship knew perfectly well.

"Well--Lincoln's Inn Fields--if you prefer it! Mr. Hawtrey. He's like a cork that won't come out. I cannot understand people like you and Mr. Hawtrey. I suppose you will say that you and he are not in it, and I am?"

"I shall say nothing, my dear. I never do." The Countess retired to the Zenith, meekly. The train was picking up its spirits, audibly, but cautiously. The flank fire of hints about speed had subsided, and it had all the world before it, subject to keeping on the line and screeching when called on to do so by the Company.

"I wonder," said Gwen, "whether you have realised that that dear old soul is calling her own daughter Ruth 'Ruth,' without knowing who she is."

"Oh dear yes--perfectly! But suppose she is--what does it matter?" The conversation was cut short by the more than hysterical violence of the up-express, which was probably the thing that passed, invisible owing to its speed, before its victims could do more than quail and shiver. When it had shrieked and rattled itself out of hearing, it was evident that it had bitten Gwen's engine and poisoned its disposition, for madness set in, and it dragged her train over oily lines and clicketty lines alike at a speed that made conversation impossible.

Gwen was panting to start upon the bewildering task she had before her, but only to put it to the proof, and end the tension. It was impossible to keep the two old twins in the dark, and it seemed to her that delay might make matters worse. As for ingenious schemes to reveal the strange story gradually, some did occur to her, but none bore reconsideration. Probably disaster lay in ambush behind over-ingenuity. Go gently but firmly to the point--that seemed to her a safe rule for guidance. If she could only anchor her dear old fairy godmother in a haven of calm knowledge of the facts, she was less distressingly concerned about the sister and daughter. The former of these was the more prickly thorn of anxiety. Still, she was a wonderfully strong old lady--not like old Mrs. Picture, a semi-invalid. As for the latter, she scarcely deserved to be thought a thorn at all. She might even be relied on to put her feelings in her pocket and help.

Yes--that was an idea! How would it be to make Widow Thrale know the truth first, and then simply tell her that help she must, and there an end! Gwen acted on the impulse produced in her mind during the last twenty minutes of her journey, in which conversation with her mother continued a discomfort, owing to the strong effect which the poisoned tooth or bad example of the down-train express had produced on her own hitherto temperate and reasonable engine. On arriving at Grantley Thorpe she changed her mind about seeing Adrian before visiting Strides Cottage, and petitioned Mr. Sandys, the Station-master, for writing materials, and asked him to send the letter she then and there wrote, by bearer, to Widow Thrale at Chorlton; not because the distance of Strides Cottage from the main road was a serious obstacle to its personal delivery on the way home, but because she wished to avoid seeing any of its occupants until a full interview was possible. Also, she wanted Widow Thrale to be prepared for something unusual. Her letter was:--"I am coming to you to-morrow. I want to talk about dear old Mrs. Prichard, but do not show her this or say anything till I see you. And do not be uneasy or alarmed." She half fancied when she had written it that the last words were too soothing. But this was a mistake. Nothing rouses alarm alike reassurance.

It was a relief to her, between this and an early start for Chorlton next day, to be dragged forcibly away from her dominant anxiety. The Colonel's shooting-party was still in possession at the Towers, though its numbers were dwindling daily. It had never had its full complement, as so many who might have gone to swell it were fighting in the ranks before Sebastopol, or in hospital at Balaklava, cholera-stricken perhaps; or, nominally, waiting till resurrection-time in the cemetery there, or by the Alma, for the grass of a new year to cover them in; but maybe actually--and likelier too--in some strange inconceivable Hades; poor cold ghosts in the dark, marvelling at the crass stupidity of Cain, and even throwing doubts on "glory."

The Colonel's party, belonging to the class that is ready to send all its sons that can bag game or ride to hounds, to be food for powder themselves in any dispute made and provided, was sadly denuded of the young man element, and he himself was fretting with impatience at the medical verdict that had disqualified him for rejoining his regiment with a half-healed lung. But the middle-aged majority, and the civilian juniors--including a shooting parson--could talk of nothing but the War.

Some of us who are old enough will recall easily their own consciousness of the universal war-cloud at this time, when reminded that the details of Inkerman were only lately to hand, and that Florence Nightingale had not long begun to work in the hospital at Scutari. But the immediate excitement of the moment, when the two ladies joined the dinner-party that evening at the Towers, was the frightful storm of which Gwen had already had the first news, which had strewn the coast of the Chersonese with over thirty English wrecks, and sent stores and war material costing millions to the bottom of the Black Sea. She was glad, however, to hear that it was certain that the Agamemnon had been got off the rocks at Balaklava, as she had understood that Granny Marrable had a grandson on the ship.

* * * * *

The time was close at hand, within an hour, when Gwen would have to find words to tell her strange impossible story, if not to that dear old silver hair--to those grave peaceful eyes,--at least to one whose measure of her whole life must perforce be changed by it. What would it mean, to Widow Thrale, to have such a subversive fact suddenly sprung upon her?

More than once in her ride to Chorlton it needed all her courage to crush the impulse to tell Tom Kettering to turn the mare round and drive back to the Towers. It would have been so easy to forge some excuse to save her face, and postpone the embarrassing hour till to-morrow. But to what end? It would be absolutely out of the question to leave the sisters in ignorance of each other, even supposing the circumstances made continued ignorance possible. The risks to the health or brain-power of either would surely be greater if the eclaircissement were left to haphazard, than if she were controlling it with a previous knowledge of all the facts. Perhaps Gwen was not aware how much her inborn temperament had to do with her conclusions. Had she been a soldier, she would have volunteered to go on every forlorn hope, on principle. No doubt an "hysterical" temperament, as it is so common among women! But it is a form of hysteria that exists also among men.

Whether or no, here she was at the gate of Strides Cottage, and it was now too late to think of going back. Tom Kettering was requesting the mare, in stable language, not to kick terra firma, or otherwise object to standing, till he had assisted the lady down. She was down without assistance before the mare was convinced of sin, so Tom touched his hat vaguely, but committed himself to nothing. He appeared to understand--as he didn't say he didn't, when instructed--that he was to wait five minutes; and then, if nothing appeared to the contrary, employ himself and the mare in any way they could agree upon, for an hour; and then return to pick her up.

The cat, the only inmate visible at Strides, rose from the threshold to welcome the visitor, with explanations perfectly clear to Gwen--who understood cats--that if it had been within her power to reach the door-latch, she would have opened the door, entirely to accommodate her ladyship. She had no mixture of motives, arising from having been shut out. Gwen threw doubt on this; as, having rung the bell, she waited. She might have rung again but for Elizabeth-next-door; who, coming out with advisory powers, said that Mrs. Thrale was probably engaged with the old lady, but that she herself would go straight in if she was her ladyship. Not being able to reach the latch herself over the privet-hedge between them, the good woman was coming round to open the door, but went back when Gwen anticipated her, and entering the empty front-room, heard the voices in the bedroom behind. How strange it seemed to her, to wait there, overhearing them, and knowing that the old voice was that of a mother speaking to her unknown daughter, and that each was unsuspicious of the other.

The dog who trotted in from the passage between the rooms or beyond it, was no doubt the one Gwen had heard of. He examined her slightly, seemed satisfied, and disappeared as he had come. The cat chose the most comfortable corner by the fire, and went to sleep in it without hesitation. The fire crackled with new dry wood, and exploded a chance wet billet into jets of steam, under a kettle whose lid was tremulous from intermittent stress below.

Otherwise, nothing interfered with the two voices in the room beyond; the mother's, weak with age, but cheerful enough, no unhappy sound about it; the daughter's, cheerful, robust, and musical, rallying and encouraging her as a child, perhaps about some dress obstacle or mystery. The effect on Gwen of listening to them was painful. To hear them, knowing the truth, made that knowledge almost unendurable. Could she possess her soul in peace until what she supposed to be the old lady's toilette was complete?

The question was decided by the dog, who was applying for admission at the door beyond the passage, somewhat diffidently and cautiously. Gwen could just see him, exploring along the door-crack with his nose. Presently, remaining unnoticed from within, he made his voice audible--barely audible, not to create alarm needlessly. It was only to oblige; he had no misgivings about the visitor.

Then Gwen, conceiving that a change in the voices implied that his application had been heard, helped the applicant, by a word or two to identify herself; adding that she was in no hurry, and would wait. Then followed more change in the voices; the mother's exclamation of pleasure; the daughter's recognition of her visitor's dues of courtesy and deference, and their claim for a prompt discharge. Then an opened door, and Widow Thrale herself, not too much overpowered by her obligations to leave the dog's explanations and apologies unacknowledged. The utter unconsciousness this showed of the thing that was to come almost made Gwen feel that the strain on her powers of self-control might become greater than she could bear, and that she might break out with some premature disclosure which would only seem sheer madness to her unprepared hearer.

She could hold out a little yet, though.... Well!--she had got to manage it, by hook or by crook. So--courage! Five minutes of normal causeries, mere currencies of speech, and then the match to the train!

She evolved, with some difficulty, the manner which would be correct in their relative positions; accepted the curtsey before stretching out a hand, guaranteed Olympian, to the plains below. "My dear Mrs. Thrale," said she, choking back excitement to chat-point, "I really am more grateful to you than I can say for taking charge of this dear old lady. I was quite at my wits' end what to do with her. You see, I had to go up to London, because of my cousin's illness--Sister Nora, you know--and it was in the middle of the night, and I was afraid the dear old soul would be uncomfortable at the Towers." She made some pretence of languid indifference to conventional precisions, and of complete superiority to scruples about confessing an error, by adding:--"Most likely I was wrong. One is, usually. But it never seems to matter.... Let's see--what was I saying? Oh--how very kind it was of you to solve the difficulty for me.... Well--to help me out of the scrape!" For Mrs. Thrale had looked the doubt in her mind--could Gurth the Swineherd "solve a difficulty" for Coeur de Lion? She could only do Anglo-Saxon things, legitimately. The point was, however, covered by Gwen's amendment.

Mrs. Thrale had begun a smile of approbation at the phrase "dear old lady," and had felt bound to suspend it for Sister Nora's illness. That was a parenthesis, soon disposed of. The revival of the smile was easy, on the words "dear old soul." She was that, there was no doubt of it, said Mrs. Thrale, adding:--"'Tis for me to be grateful to your ladyship for allowing me the charge of her. I hope your ladyship may not be thinking of taking her away, just yet-a-while?"

"I think not, just at present.... We shall be able to talk of that.... Tell me--how has she been? Because of your letter."

"There now!--when I got your ladyship's note last night I felt a'most ashamed of writing that I had been uneasy or alarmed." Gwen saw that her yesterday's attempt at premonition had missed fire, and Mrs. Thrale added:--"Because--not a word!"

"How do you mean? I don't quite understand."

"She's never said a word since. Not that sort of word! She's just never spoke of the mill, nor Muggeridge, nor my grandfather. And I have said nothing to her, by reason of Dr. Nash's advice. 'Never you talk to a mental patient about their delusions!'--that's what Dr. Nash says. So I never said one word."

Gwen felt sorry she had not made her note of alarm more definite. For the absolute faith of the speaker in her own belief and Dr. Nash's professional infallibility, that a dropped voice and confidential manner seemed to erect as a barrier to enlightenment, made her feel more at a loss than ever how to act. Would it not, after all, be easiest to risk the whole, and speak at once to the old lady herself? She prefigured in her mind the greater ease of telling her story when she could make her own love a palliative to the shock of the revelation, could take on her bosom the old head, stunned and dumfoundered; could soothe the weakness of the poor old hand with the strength and youth of her own. But into that image came a disturbing whim--call it so!--a question from without, not bred of her own mind:--"Is not this the daughter's right?--the prerogative of the flesh and blood that stands before you?" Perhaps Gwen was whimsical sometimes.

If Widow Thrale had said one word to pave the way--had spoken, for instance, of the unaccountableness of the old lady's memories--Gwen might have seen daylight through the wood. But this placid immovable ascription of the whole of them to brain-disorder was an Ituri forest of preconceptions, shutting out every gleam of suggested truth.

A sudden idea occurred to her. Her father had spoken well of Dr. Nash--of his abilities, at least--and he seemed very much in Mrs. Thrale's good books. Could she not get him to help, or at least to take his measure as a confidant in her difficulty before condemning him as impossible?

So quickly did all this pass through her mind that the words "I think I should like to see Dr. Nash" seemed to follow naturally. Mrs. Thrale welcomed the idea.

"But he'll be gone," said she. "He goes to see his patient at Dessington Manor at eleven. And if he was sent for it is very like he could not come, even for your ladyship. Because his sick folk he sees at the surgery they will have their money's worth. Indeed, I think the poor man's worked off his legs."

"I see," said Gwen. "I shall go and see him myself, at once." She breathed freer for the respite, and the prospect of help. "But there's plenty of time if I look sharp. Would you tell Tom outside that he's not to run away. I shall want him? May I go through to see her? Is she getting up?"

She was up, apparently, in the accepted sense of the word; though she had collapsed with the effort of becoming so; and was now down, in the literal sense, lying on the bed under contract not to move till Mrs. Thrale returned with a cup of supplementary arrowroot. She had had a very poor breakfast. Certainly, her ladyship might go in.

"Oh, my dear, my dear, I am so glad you are come!" It was the voice of a great relief that came from the figure on the bed; the voice of one who had waited long, of a traveller who sees his haven, a castaway adrift who spies a sail.

"Now, dear Mrs. Picture, you are not to get up, but lie still till I come back. I'm going to try to catch Dr. Nash, and must hurry off. But I am coming back."

"Oh--all right!" There was disappointment in her tone, but it was docility itself. She added, however, with the barest trace of remonstrance:--"I'm quite well, you know. I don't want the doctor."

Gwen laughed. "Oh no--it's not for you! I've ... I've a message for him. I shall soon be back." An excusable fiction, she thought, under the circumstances.

She was only just in time to catch Dr. Nash, whose gig was already in possession of him at his garden-gate with a palpably medical lamp over it, and a "surgery bell" whose polish seemed to guarantee its owner's prescriptions. "Get down and talk to me in the house," said her young ladyship. "Who is it you were going to? Anyone serious?"

"Only Sir Cropton Fuller."

"He can wait.... Can't he?"

"He'll have to. No hurry!" The doctor found time to add, between the gate and the house:--"I go to see him every day to prevent his taking medicine. He's extremely well. I don't get many cases of illness, among my patients." He turned round to look at Gwen, on the doorstep. "Your ladyship doesn't look very bad," said he.

Gwen shook her head. "It's nothing to do with me," she said. "Nor with illness! It's old Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage."

The doctor stood a moment, latchkey in hand. "The old lady whose mind is giving way?" said he. He had knitted his brows a little; and, having spoken, he knitted his lips a little.

"We are speaking of the same person," said Gwen. She followed the doctor into his parlour, and accepted the seat he offered. He stood facing her, not relaxing his expression, which worked out as a sort of mild grimness, tempered by a tune which his thumbs in the armpits of his waistcoat enabled him to play on its top-pockets. It was a slow tune. Gwen continued:--"But her mind is not giving way."

The doctor let that expression subside into mere seriousness. He took a chair, to say:--"Your ladyship has, perhaps, not heard all particulars of the case."

"Every word."

"You surprise me. Are you aware that this poor old person is under a delusion about her own parentage? She fancies herself the daughter of Isaac Runciman, the father of old Mrs. Marrable, the mother of Widow Thrale."

"She is his daughter."

The doctor nearly sprang out of his chair with surprise, but an insecure foothold made the chair jump instead.

"But it's impossible--it's impossible!" he cried. "How could Mrs. Marrable have a sister alive and not know it?"

"That is what I am going to explain to you, Dr. Nash. And Sir Cropton Fuller will have to wait, as you said."

"But the thing's impossible in itself. Only look at this!..."

"Please consider Sir Cropton Fuller. You won't think it so impossible when you know it has happened." The doctor listened for the symptoms with perceptibly less than his normal appearance of knowing it all beforehand. Gwen proceeded, and told with creditable brevity and clearness, the succession of events the story has given, for its own reasons, by fits and starts.

It could not be accepted as it stood, consistently with male dignity. The superior judicial powers of that estimable sex called for assertion. First, suspension of opinion--no hasty judgments! "A most extraordinary story! A most extra_or_dinary story! But scarcely to be accepted.... You'll excuse my plain speech?..."

"Please don't use any other! The matter's too serious."

"Scarcely to be accepted without a close examination of the evidence."

"Unquestionably. Does any point occur to you?"

Now Dr. Nash had nothing ready. "Well," he said, dubiously, "in such a very difficult matter it might be rash...." Then he thought of something to say, suddenly. "Well--yes! It certainly does occur to me that ... No--perhaps not--perhaps not!..."

"What were you going to say?"

"That there is no direct proof that the forged letter was ever sent to Australia." This sounded well, and appeared like a tribute to correctness and caution. It meant nothing whatever.

"Only the Australian postmark," said Gwen. "I have got it here, but it's rather alarming--the responsibility."

"If it was written, as you say, over an effaced original, it might have been done just as easily in England." The doctor was reading the direction, not opening the letter.

"Not by a forger at the Antipodes!" said Gwen.

"I meant afterwards--when--when Mrs. Prichard was in England?"

"She brought the letter with her when she came. It couldn't have been forged afterwards."

The doctor gave it up. Masculine superiority would have to stand over. But he couldn't see his way, on human grounds, profundity apart. "What is so horribly staggering," said he, "is that after fifty years these two should actually see each other and still be in the dark. And the way it came about! The amazing coincidences!" The doctor spoke as if such unblushing coincidences ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Gwen took this to be his meaning, apparently. "I can't help it, Dr. Nash," she said. "If they had told me they were going to happen, I might have been able to do something. Besides, there was only one, if you come to think of it--the little boy being sent to Widow Thrale's to convalesce. It was my cousin, Miss Grahame, who did it.... Yes, thank you!--she is going on very well, and Dr. Dalrymple hopes she will make a very good recovery. He fussed a good deal about her lungs, but they seem all right...." The conversation fluctuated to Typhus Fever for a moment, but was soon recalled by the young lady, whose visit had a definite purpose. "Now, Dr. Nash, I have a favour to ask of you, which is what I came for. It occurred to me when I heard that you would be going to Dessington Manor this morning." The doctor professed his readiness, or eagerness, to do anything in his power to oblige Lady Gwendolen Rivers, but evidently had no idea what it could possibly be. "You will be close to Costrell's farm, where the other old lady is staying with her granddaughter?"

"I shall. But what can I do?"

"You can, perhaps, help me in the very difficult job of making the truth known to her and her sister. I say perhaps, because you may find you can do nothing. I shall not blame you if you fail. But you can at least try."

It would have been difficult to refuse anything to the animated beauty of his petitioner, even if she had been the humblest of his village patients. The doctor pledged himself to make the attempt, without hesitation, saying to himself as he did so that this would be a wonderful woman some day, with a little more experience and maturity. "But," said he, "I never promised to do anything with a vaguer idea of what I was to do, nor how I was to set about it."

Gwen's earnestness had no pause for a smile. "It is easier than you think," she said, "if you only make up your mind to it. It is easy for you, because your medical interest in old Mrs. Prichard's case makes it possible for you to entamer the conversation. You see what I mean?"

"Perfectly--I think. But I don't see how that will _entamer___ old Mrs. Marrable. Won't the conversation end where it began?"

"I think not--not necessarily. I will forgive you if it does. Consider that the apparent proof of delusion in my old lady's mind is that she has told things about her childhood which are either bona-fide recollections, or have been derived from the little boy...."

"Dave Wardle. So I understood from Widow Thrale. She has told me all the things as they happened. In fact, I have been able to call in every day. The case seemed very interesting as a case of delusion, because some of the common characteristics were wanting. It loses that interest now, certainly, but.... However, you were saying, when I interrupted?..."

"I was saying that unless these ideas could be traced to Dave Wardle, they must have come out of Mrs. Prichard's own head. Is it not natural that you should want to hear from Granny Marrable what she recollects having said to the child?"

The doctor cogitated a moment, then gave a short staccato nod. "I see," said he, in a short staccato manner. "Yes. That might do something for us. At any rate, I can try it.... I beg your pardon."

Gwen had just begun again, but paused as the doctor looked at his watch. She continued:--"I cannot find anything that she might not have easily said to a small boy. I wish I could. Her recollection of not having said anything won't be certainty. But even inquiring about what she doesn't recollect would give an opening. Did Mrs. Prichard say nothing to you about her early life at the mill?"

"She said a good deal, because I encouraged her to talk, to convince myself of her delusion.... Could I recollect some of it? I think so. Or stay--I have my notes of the case." He produced a book. "Here we are. 'Mrs. Maisie Prichard, eighty-one. Has delusions. Thinks mill was her father's. It was Widow Thrale's grandfather's. Knows horses Pitt and Fox. Knows Muggeridge waggoner. Has names correct. Qy.:--from child Wardle last year? M. was dismissed soon after. Asked try recollect what for.' I am giving your ladyship the abbreviations as written."

"Quite right. Is there more?" For evidently there was. Gwen could see the page.

"She remembered that he was dismissed for ... irregularity."

Gwen suspected suppression. "What sort? Did he drink? Let me see the book. I won't read the other cases." And so all-powerful was beauty, or the traces of Feudalism, that this middle-aged M.R.C.S. actually surrendered his private notes of cases into these most unprofessional hands. Gwen pointed to the unread sequel, triumphantly. "There!" she exclaimed. "The very thing we want! You may be sure that neither Granny Marrable nor her daughter ever told a chick of seven years old of that defect in Mr. Muggeridge's character." For what Gwen had not read aloud was:--"Mug. broke 7th: Comm:"

The doctor was perhaps feeling that masculine profundity had not shone, and that he ought to do something to redeem its credit. For his comment, rather judicial in tone, was:--"Yes--but Widow Thrale was not able to confirm this ... blemish on Mr. Muggeridge's reputation."

"Now, my dear Dr. Nash, why should she be able to confirm a thing that happened when her mother was ten years old?"

The doctor surrendered at discretion--perhaps resolved not to repeat the attempt to reinstate the male intellect. "Of course not!" said he. "Perfectly correct. Very good! I'll try, then, to make use of that. I understand your object to be that old Granny Marrable shall come to know that she and Mrs. Prichard are sisters, as gradually as possible. I may not succeed, but I'll do my best. Ticklish job, rather! Now I suppose I ought to look after Sir Cropton Fuller."

Five minutes after saying which the doctor's gig was doing its best to arrive in time to prevent that valetudinarian swallowing five grains of calomel, or something of the sort, on his own responsibility.

* * * * *

Gwen had felt a misgiving that her expedition to Dr. Nash had really been a cowardly undertaking, because she had flinched from her task at the critical moment. Well--suppose she had! It might turn out a fortunate piece of poltroonery, if Dr. Nash contrived to break the ice for her with the other old sister. But the cowardice was beginning again, now that every stride of the mare was taking her nearer to her formidable task. Desperation was taking the place of mere Resolve, thrusting her aside as too weak for service in the field, useless outside the ramparts. Oh, but if only some happy accident would pave the way for speech, would enable her to say to herself:--"I have said the first word! I cannot go back now, if I would!"

On the way to Strides Cottage again! Nearer and nearer now, that moment that must come, and put an end to all this puling hesitation. She could not help the thought that rose in her mind:--"This that I do--this reuniting of two souls long parted by a living death--may it not be what Death does every day for many a world-worn survivor of a half-forgotten parting in a remote past?" For, indeed, it seemed to her that these two had risen from the dead, and that for all she knew each might say of the other:--"It is not she." For what is Death but the withdrawal from sight and touch and hearing of the evidence of Some One Else? What less had come to pass for old Maisie and Phoebe, fifty years ago? How is it with us all in that mysterious Beyond, that for the want of a better name we call a Hereafter, when ghost meets ghost, and either lacks the means of recognition?

She knew the trick of that latch now, and went in.

The room was empty of all but the cat, who seemed self-absorbed; silent but for a singing kettle and a chirping cricket. Probably Widow Thrale was in the bedroom. Gwen crossed the passage, and gently opening the door, looked in. Only the old lady herself was there, upon the bed, so still that Gwen half feared at first she had died in her sleep. No--all was well! She wondered a moment at the silver hair, the motionless hands, alabaster but for the blue veins, the frailty of the whole, and its long past of eighty years, those years of strange vicissitude. And through them all no one thing so strange as what she was to know on waking!

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