Chapter XX…

Chapter XX

HOW GRANNY MARRABLE THOUGHT SHE OUGHT NOT TO GO TO SLEEP, BUT DID. HOW A CRICKET WAS STILL AT IT, WHEN SHE WAKED. HOW MAISIE WAKED TOO. HOW THEY REMEMBERED THINGS TOGETHER, IN THE NIGHT. A SKULL TWENTY-SEVEN INCHES ROUND. HOW PHOEBE COULD NOT FORGIVE HER BROTHER-IN-LAW, GOD OR NO! HOW IT HAD ALL BEEN MAISIE'S FAULT. THE OTHER LETTER, IN THE WORKBOX, BEHIND THE SCISSORS. THE STORY OF THE SCORPION. ALL TRUE! ONLY IT WAS MRS. STENNIS, WHO DIED IN AGONY. ELIZABETH-NEXT-DOOR'S IMMOVABLE HUSBAND. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WAS RELIEVED ABOUT THAT SCORPION. HOW MAISIE'S HUSBAND HAD REALLY HAD A DEVIL--A BLACK MAN'S--WHICH MAISIE'S SON HAD INHERITED. A NEW INFECTION IN THINE EYE. HOW RUTH WENT FOR THE DOCTOR. HOW HE RECOMMENDED GWEN, AS WELL AS THE MIXTURE

The two old twins knew it all now, so far as it would ever be a matter of knowledge. They had got at the heart of each other's identity, before either really understood the cruel machination that had cancelled the life of either for the other.

Ruth Thrale left them alone together, and went back to force herself to eat. Keziah wanted to get back to her old man, and how could she go, unless Ruth kept in trim to attend to her two charges? Who could say that old Phoebe, at eighty, would not give in under the strain? Ruth had always a happy faculty of self-forgetfulness; and now, badly as she had felt the shock, she so completely lost sight of herself in the thought of the greater trouble of the principal actors, as to be fully alive to the one great need ahead, that of guarding and preserving what was left of the old life, the tending of which had come so strangely upon her. She refused Keziah's offer to remain on. Elizabeth-next-door, she said, was always at hand for emergencies.

Keziah stayed late enough to see all arranged for the night, ending with a more or less successful effort to get old Maisie to swallow arrowroot. She helped Ruth to establish the Granny in her own high-backed chair beside her sister--for neither would relinquish the other's hand--and took advantage of a very late return of Brantock, the carrier, to convey her home, where she arrived after midnight.

All know the feeling that surely must have been that of at least one of the old sisters, that sleep ought to be for some mysterious reason combated, or nonsuited rather, when the mind is at odds with grave events. One rises rebellious against its power, when it steals a march on wakefulness, catching the keenest vigilance unawares. There was no reason why Granny Marrable should not sleep in her own arm-chair--which she would say was every bit as good as bed, and used accordingly--except that yielding meant surrender of the faculties to unconsciousness of a problem not yet understood, with the sickening prospect of finding it unanswered on awakening. That seemed to be reason enough for many resentful recoils from the very portals of sleep; serving no end, as Maisie had been overcome without a contest, and lay still as an effigy on a tomb. A vague fear that she might die unwatched, looking so like Death already, may have touched Phoebe's mind. But fears and unsolved riddles alike melted away and vanished in the end; and when Ruth Thrale, an hour later, starting restless from her own couch near by, looked in to satisfy herself that all was well, both might have been leagues away in a dream-world, for any consciousness they showed of her presence.

That was on the stroke of one; and for two full hours after all was silence, but for the records of the clock at its intervals, and the cricket dwelling on the same theme our forefathers heard and gave no heed to, a thousand years ago. Then old Phoebe woke to wonder, for a blank moment, what had happened that she should be sitting there alone, with the lazy flicker of a charred faggot helping out a dim, industrious rushlight in a shade. But only till she saw that she was not alone. It all came back then. The figure on the bed!--not dead, surely?

No--for the hand she held was warm enough to reassure her. It had been the terror of a moment, that this changed creature, with memories that none but Maisie could have known, had flashed into her life to vanish from it, and leave her bewildered, almost without a word of that inexplicable past. Only of a moment, for the hand she held tightened on hers, and the still face that was, and was not, her dead sister's turned to her, looked at her open-eyed, and spoke.

"I think I am not dreaming now, but I was.... I was dreaming of Phoebe, years ago.... But you are Phoebe. Say that I am Maisie, that I may hear you. Say it!"

"Oh, my darling!--I know you are Maisie. But it is so hard to know."

"Yes--it is all so hard to know--so hard to think! But I know it is true.... Oh, Phoebe, where do you think I was but now, in my dream?... Yes, where?--What place?... Guess!"

"I cannot tell ... back in the old time?"

"Back in the old time--back in the old place. I was shelling peas to help old Keturah--old Keturah that had had three husbands, and her old husband then was the sexton, and he had buried them all three! We were there, under her porch ... with the honeysuckle all in flower--and, oh, the smell of it in the heat!--it was all there in my dream! And you were there. Oh, Phoebe darling, how beautiful you were! We were seventeen."

"Ah, my dear, I know when that was. 'Twas the day they came--came first. Oh, God be good to us!"

"Oh, Phoebe dear, why be so heartbroken? It was a merry time. Thank God for it with me, darling!... Ay, I know--all over now!..."

"I mind it well, dear. They came up on their horses."

"Thornton and Ralph. And made a pretext they would like to see inside the Church. Because old Keturah had the key."

"But 'twas an untruth! Little care they had for inside the Church! 'Twas ourselves, and they knew it."

"Oh, Phoebe!--but we knew it too! I had no chance to dream how we showed them the Church and the crypt, for I woke up. Ah, but 'tis long ago now!--sixty-two--sixty-three years! I wonder, is the stack of bones in the crypt now that was then? There was a big skull that measured twenty-seven inches."

"That it was! Twenty-seven. Now, to think of us young creatures handling those old bones!"

"Then it was not long but they came again on their horses, and this time it was that their father the Squire would see father righted in his lawsuit about the upper waters of the millstream. That was how Thornton made a friend of father. And then it was we played them our trick, to say which was which. We changed our frocks, and they were none the wiser."

A recollection stirred in old Phoebe's mind, that could almost bring a smile to her lips, even now. "Ralph never was any the wiser. He went away to the Indies, and died there.... But not afore he told to my husband how Thornton came to tell us apart.... How did he? Why, darling, 'twas the way you would give him all your hand, and I stinted him of mine."

"You never loved him, Phoebe."

"Was I not in the right of it, Maisie?" She then felt the words were hasty, and would have been glad to recall them. She waited for an answer, but none came. The fire was all but out, and the morning chill was in the air. She rose from the bedside and crossed the room to help it from extinction. But she felt very shaky on her feet.

A little rearrangement convinced the fire that it had been premature; and an outlying faggot, brought into hotchpot, decided as an after-thought that it could flare. "I am coming back," said Granny Marrable. She was afraid her sister would think she was going to be left alone. But there was no need, for when she reached her chair again--and she was glad to do so--old Maisie was just as she had left her, quite tranquil and seeming collected, but with her eyes open, watching the welcome light of the new flicker. One strange thing in this interview was that her weakness seemed better able to endure the strain of the position than her sister's strength.

She picked up the thread of the conversation where that interlude of the fire had left it. "You never loved Thornton, Phoebe dearest. But he was mine, for my love. He was kind and good to me, all those days out there in the bush, till I lost him. He was a lawbreaker, I know, but he paid his penalty. And was I not to forgive, when I loved him? God forgives, Phoebe." Half of what she had come to know had slipped away from her already; and, though she was accepting her sister as a living reality, the forged letter, the cause of all, was forgotten.

Granny Marrable, on the contrary, kept in all her bewilderment a firm hold on the wickedness of Daverill the father. It was he that had done it all, and no other. Conceivably, her having set eyes on Daverill the son had made this hold the firmer. To her the name meant treachery and cruelty. Even in this worst plight of a mind in Chaos, she could not bear to see the rugged edges of a truth trimmed off, to soften judgment of a wicked deed. But had she been at her best, she might have borne it this time to spare her sister the pain of sharing her knowledge, if such ignorance was possible. As it was, she could not help saying:--"God forgives, Maisie, and I would have forgiven, if I could have had you back when he was past the need of you. Oh, to think of the long years we might still have had, but for his deception!"

"My dear, it may be you are right. But all my head is gone for thinking. You are there, and that is all I know. How could I?... What is it all?"

The despair in her voice did not unnerve her sister more. Rather, if anything, it strengthened her, as did anything that drew her own mind out of itself to think only of her fellow-sufferer. She could but answer, hesitatingly:--"My dear, was I not here all the while you thought me dead?... If you had known ... oh, if you had known!... you might have come." She could not keep back the sound of her despair in her own voice.

Maisie started spasmodically from her pillow.

"Oh, God have mercy on me! Save me, Phoebe, save me!" she cried. She clung with both hands to her sister, and gasped for breath. Then the paroxysm of her excitement passed, and she sank back, whispering aloud in broken speech:--"I mean ... it came back to me ... the tale ... the letter.... Oh, but it cannot be true!... Tell it me again--tell me what you know."

Phoebe's response flagged. What could her old brain be said to know, yet, in such a whirl? "I'll try, my dear, to say it out right, for you to hear. But 'tis a hard thing to know, and 'tis hard to have to know it. Dr. Nash said it to me, that it was Thornton, your husband. And our young lady of the Towers--she, my dear, you know, that is Lady Gwendolen Rivers--said it to me again." Old Maisie clung closer to the hand she held, and trembled so that Phoebe stopped, saying:--"Ought I to tell?"

"Yes--go on! You know, dear, I know it all--half know it--but I cannot hold it for long--it goes. Go on!"

"He wrote to me--he wrote to you--saying, we were dead. O God, forgive him for his cruelty! Why, oh why?" She fixed her eyes on her sister, and seemed to wait for an answer to the question.

And yet she wondered in her heart when the answer came. It came with a light that broke through the speaker's face, a sound of relief in her words:--"It was his love for me, Phoebe dearest--it was his love for me! He would not have me go from him to my sister in England, even for the time I would have wanted, to see her again. The fault was mine, dear, the fault was mine! I was ever on at him--plaguing--plaguing him to spare me for the time. Oh--'twas I that did it!"

Let her believe it! Let her see a merit in it for the man she loved! That was Phoebe's thought.

"He was always good to me," Maisie continued. "He never thought of what might come of it. All his desire was I should not leave him. Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, if only I might have died there and then, out in the Colony!"

"To see me no more? Not this once? I thank God that has spared ye to me, Maisie, just but to hear your voice and hold your hand and kiss your face. If I be dreaming, I be dreaming. Only I would not wake, not I. But I can scarce bear myself for the wonderment of it all. How could you come back alone--my Maisie, alone and old!--back again to England--in a ship--through the storms?" For all the mind that Granny Marrable had left after the bewildering shock was aching to know more.

Old Maisie was almost too weak for anything like curiosity about the past; she simply submitted--acquiesced. This was her sister, not dead by some miracle. When in dreams we see again the departed, do we speak of the interim? Surely never? Neither did Maisie. She could not even look forward to knowing more. She could talk on, with no difficulty of speech--indeed, seemed talkative. She could reply now to Phoebe's question:--"But, my dear, I was not alone, nor old. I was not much older than my Ruth that I have found.... Where is she?--she is not gone?" She looked round, frightened, trying to raise herself.

"She is gone away to sleep. It is night, you know. There goes the clock. Four. She will come again.... But, oh, Maisie, was it as long ago as that? 'Tis but a very little while back Ruth turned fifty."

"Is my girl turned of fifty, then?--yes! it must be so. Fifty years past I landed ashore in Hobart Town, and it was a babe of four I had to leave behind. Well--I was a bit older. I was fifty-seven when I lost my son." This seemed to mean the death of some son unknown to Granny Marrable. The convict was never farther from her mind. "'Tis twenty-five years I have been in England--all of twenty-five years, Phoebe."

"Oh, God have pity on us all! Twenty-five years!" It was a cry of pain turned into words. Had she had to say what stung her most, she would probably have said the thought that Maisie might have seen her daughter's wedding, or at least the babyhood of her children. So much there was to tell!--would she live to hear it? And so much to hear!--would she live to tell it? She could not understand her sister's words that followed:--"All of twenty years alone," referring to the period since her son's transportation. It was really longer. But memory of figures is insecure in hours of trial.

Maisie continued:--"When I came back, I went straight to our old home, long ago--to Darenth Mill, to hear what I might, and old Keturah was dead, and her husband was dead, and ne'er a soul knew aught to tell me. And there was father's grave in the churchyard, and no other. So what could I think but what the letter said, that all were drowned in the cruel sea, your husband Nicholas, and my little one, all three?"

"And the letter said that--the letter he made up?"

"The letter said that, and I read it. It had black seals, and I broke them and read it. And it was from father, and said you were drowned ... drowned ... Yes!--Phoebe drowned ... and my little Ruth, and ... Oh, Phoebe, how can this be you?" The panic came again in her voice, and again she clutched spasmodically at the hand she held. But it passed, leaving her only able to speak faintly. "I kept it in my table-drawer.... It must be there still." She had only half got the truth.

Granny Marrable tried to make it clear, so far as she could. "You forget, dear. Her ladyship has the letter, and Dr. Nash knows. Lady Gwendolen who brought you here...."

It was a happy reference. A light broke over the old face on the pillow, and there was ease in the voice that said:--"She is one of God's Angels. I knew it by her golden hair. When will she come?"

"Very soon. To-morrow, perhaps. 'Twas her ladyship told you--was it not? Oh, you remember?"

"My dear, she told it me like a story, and her face was white. But it was all clear to me then, for I could not know who the bad man was--the bad man who made two sisters each think the other dead. And I was for helping her to tell them. Oh, may God bless her for her beautiful face--so pale it was! And then she told me 'twas written by my husband." Some new puzzle confronted her, and she repeated, haltingly:--"By ... my ... husband!" Then quite suddenly, struck by a new idea:--"But was it? How could she know?"

"My dear, she showed it to her father, the Earl, and they were of one mind. His lordship read the letter. Dr. Nash told me. But it was Thornton's own letter to me that said you were dead. I have got it still." She was stopped by the return of Ruth Thrale, who had been half waked by her mother's raised voice five minutes since, and had struggled to complete consciousness under the sense of some burden of duty awaiting her outside the happy oblivion of her stinted sleep. "How has she been?" was her question on entering.

Granny Marrable could not give any clear account of the past hour of talk; it was growing hazy to her, as reaction after excitement told, more and more. Ruth asked no further questions, and urged her to go and lie down--was ready to force her to do it, but she conceded the point, and was just going, when her sister stopped her, speaking clearly, without moving on the pillow.

"What was the letter?"

"What letter is she speaking of?" said Ruth.

Granny Marrable said with an effort:--"The letter that said she was dead."

"Show it to me--show it me now, with the light! You have got it."

"Yes. I said to her that I had got it. But it is put away." This was under Granny Marrable's breath, that old Maisie should not hear.

But she heard, and turned her head. "Oh, Phoebe, let me see it! Can it not be got? Cannot Ruth get it?" She seemed feverishly alive, for the moment, to all that was passing.

Ruth, thinking it would be better to satisfy her if possible, said:--"Is it hard to find? Could I not get it?" To which old Phoebe replied:--"I know where it is to lay hands on at once. But I grudge setting eyes on it now, and that's the truth." Ruth wondered at this--it made her mother's eagerness to see it seem the stranger. The story is always on the edge of calling old Maisie Ruth's "new mother." Her mind was reeling under the consciousness of two mothers with a like claim--a bewildering thought! She wavered between them, and was relieved when the speaker continued:--"You may unlock my old workbox over yonder. The letter be inside the lid, behind the scissors. I'll begone to lie down a bit on your bed, child!" Was old Phoebe running away from that letter?

Ruth knew the trick of that workbox of old. It brought back her early childhood to find the key concealed in a little slot beneath it; hidden behind a corner of green cloth beyond suspicion; that opened, for all that, when the edge was coaxed with a finger-nail. It had been her first experience of a secret, and a fascination hung about it still. That confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later years. It crossed Ruth's mind as she found the key, how, a year ago, when the interior of this box was shown to Dave Wardle by his country Granny, his delight in it, and its smell of otto of roses that never failed, had stirred forgotten memories; and this recollection, with the mystery of that vanished mother still on earth--close at hand, there in the room!--made her almost dread to raise the box-lid. But she dared it, and found the letter, though her brain whirled at the entanglements of life and time, and she winced at the past as though scorched by a spiritual flame. It took her breath away to think what she had sought and found; the hideous instrument of a wickedness almost inconceivable--her own father's!

"Oh, how I hope it is that! Bring it--bring it, my dear, my Ruth--my Ruth for me, now! Yes--show it me with the light, like that." Thus old Maisie, struggling to raise herself on the bed, but with a dangerous spot of colour on her cheek, lately so pale, that said fever. Ruth trembled to admit the word to her mind; for, think of her mother's age, and the strain upon her, worse than her own!

Nevertheless, it was best to indulge this strong wish; might, indeed, be dangerous to oppose it. Ruth bolstered up the weak old frame with pillows, and lit two candles to give the letter its best chance to be read. She found her mother's spectacles, though in doubt whether they could enable her to read the dim writing, written with a vanishing ink, even paler than the forged letter Gwen and her father had unearthed. Possibly the ink had run short, and was diluted.

Old Maisie strove to read the writing, gasping with an eagerness her daughter found it hard to understand; but failed to decipher anything beyond, "My dear Sister-in-law." She dropped the letter, saying feebly:--"Read--you read!"

Then Ruth read:--

"'I take up my pen to write you fuller particulars of the great calamity that has befallen me. For I am, as my previous letter will have told you, if it has reached you ere this, a widower. I am endeavouring to bear with resignation the lot it has pleased God to visit upon me, but in the first agonies of my grief at the loss of my beloved helpmeet I was so overwhelmed as to be scarce able to put pen to paper. I am now more calm and resigned to His will, and will endeavour to supply the omission.

"'My dear Maisie was in perfect health and spirits when she went to visit a friend, Mary Ann Stennis, the wife of a sheep-farmer, less than thirty miles from where I now write, on the Upper Derwent, one of the few women in this wild country that was a fit associate for her. She was to have started home in a few days' time, but the horse that should have carried her, the only one she could ride, being a timid horsewoman, went lame and made a delay, but for which delay it may be God would have spared her to me. But His will be done! It seems she was playing with the baby of a native black, there being a camp or tribe of them near at hand, she being greatly diverted with the little monster, when its sister, but little older than itself, found a scorpion beneath a stone, and set it to bite its little brother. Thereupon Maisie, always courageous and kindhearted, must needs snatch at this most dangerous vermin, to throw it at a distance from the children....'"

Old Maisie interrupted the reader. Her face was intent, and her eyes gleamed with an unhealthy, feverish light. "Stop, my dear," said she. "This is all true."

"All true!" Surely her mind was giving way. So thought Ruth, and shuddered at the gruesome thought. "Mother--mother--how can it be true?"

"All quite true, my dear, but for one thing! All true but for who it was! It was not I--it was Mary Ann was at play with little Saku. And the scorpion bit her hand, and she died of the bite.... Yes--go on! Read it all!" For Ruth had begun:--"Shall I--must I?" as though the reading it was unendurable.

She resumed, with an effort:--

"'But got bitten in the arm. At first she made light of the wound, for the reptile was so small. But it became badly inflamed, and no doctor was at hand. The black mother of Saku, the baby, prayed to be allowed to summon the conjurer doctor of the tribe, who would suck the wound. But Maisie would not have this, so only external applications were made ...'"

Old Maisie interrupted:--"That is not so," she said. "Roomoro, the doctor, sucked hard at the bite, and spat out the poison in a hole in the ground, to bury the evil spirit. But it was no good. Poor Mary Ann Stennis died a week after. I mind it well."

Ruth thought to herself:--"Is this a feverish dream?" and wavered on the answer. The tale her mother told of the black medicine-man was nightmare-like. All this, fifty years ago! Her head swam too much for speech, reading apart. She could continue, mechanically:--

"' ... Only external applications were made, which proved useless, as is almost invariably the case with poisonous bites. Next day it became evident that the poison was spreading up the arm, and a black runner was despatched to summon me, but he could not cover the ground in less than three hours, and when he arrived I was on my way to Bothwell, some twenty miles in another direction, so he did not overtake me until the evening. I was then detained a day, so that it was over forty-eight hours before I arrived at Stennis's. It was then too late for effectual remedy, and my dear wife died in my arms within a week of the scorpion bite....'"

"That is not true--it was over a week." Was Maisie really alive to the facts, to be caught by so small a point? She had seen a simple thing that could be said. That is all the story can think.

Ruth said:--"Here is more--only a little!" and continued:--

"'I am thankful to say that, considering the nature of the case, her sufferings were slight, and she passed away peacefully, desiring with her last breath that I should convey to you the assurance of her unchanged affection.'

"It is untrue--it is untrue!" moaned Maisie. "Mary Ann died in great pain, from the poison of the bite working in the blood." She seemed to grasp very little of the facts, for she added:--"But was he not good, to hide the pain for Phoebe's sake?" Her mind was catching at fragments, to understand, and failed.

There was another letter, which Ruth opened, of an earlier date. It was a merely formal announcement of the death. She put back the letters in the workbox-lid, behind the scissors; replaced the workbox on its table as before, and returned to her mother. She was glad to find her still, with her eyes closed; but with that red spot on her cheek, unchanged. It was best to favour every approach of sleep, and this might be one. Ruth sat silent, all her faculties crippled, and every feeling stunned, by what she had gone through since Gwen's first arrival yesterday.

This terrible night had worn itself out, and she knew that that clock-warning meant six, when the stroke should come. But there was no daylight yet. Those movements in the kitchen must be Elizabeth-next-door, come according to promise. That was what the guardian-dog from without meant, pushing his way through the bedroom-door, reporting an incomer whom he knew, and had sanctioned. He communicated the fact to his satisfaction, and returned to his post, leaving his mistress the better for his human sympathy, which seemed to claim knowledge of passing event. It comforted her to feel that the day was in hand, and that its light would come. Who could say but its ending might find her convinced that this was all true? Blank, sickening doubts of the meaning of everything flitted across her mind, and she longed to settle down to realities, to be able to love this new mother without flinching. For that was what she felt, that the mystery of this resurrection seared or burnt her. One thing only soothed her--that this was dear old Mrs. Prichard whom she had learned to love before its bewilderments were sprung upon her. That made it easier to bear.

Presently she roused herself, for, was not this morning? A grey twilight, not over-misty for the time of year, was what a raised window-curtain showed her, and she let it fall to deal with it in earnest, and relieve the blind from duty. Then she made sure, by the new light, that all was well with old Maisie--mere silence, no insensibility--and went out to speak with Elizabeth-next-door, and get more wood for the fire. But first she blew out the candles and the rushlight, already dying spasmodically.

Elizabeth-next-door was a strengthening influence, able to look facts in the face. She almost elided forewords and inquiries, to come to her strong point, the way she had used the strange story to produce surprise in her husband; a worthy man, but imperturbable by anything short of earthquakes or thunderbolts. "Ye may sa-ay your vairy worst to Sam," said Elizabeth, "and he'll just sa-ay back, 'Think a doan't knaw that,' he'll say, 'afower ever yow were born?' and just gwarn with his sooper. And I give ye my word, Widow Thrale, I no swooner told it him than there he sat! An' if he come down on our ta-able wi' th' fla-at of his ha-and once, that he did thrice and mower, afower he could sa-ay one word. He did, and went nigh to break it, but it be o-ak two-inch thick a'mo-ast. Then a said, 'twas enough to wa-aken oop a ma-an all through the night, he did!" He seemed, however, not to have suffered in this way, for his wife added:--"Wa-aken him oop? Not Sam, I lay! Ta-akes a souse o' cold pig to wa-aken up Sam afower t' marnin!" Ruth felt braced by this bringing of the event within human possibilities. Improbable possibilities surprise. Impossible events stun.

She co-operated in domesticities with her useful neighbour, glancing once or twice at the figure on the bed, and reinforced in the belief that all was safe there, for the time. For she saw what seemed slight natural movement, for ease. Presently she went to hear how it fared with her other mother, her normal one. The cross purposes of her relations to the two old sisters were an entanglement of perplexities.

Granny Marrable, asleep when Ruth looked stealthily in at her, was waked by a creak with which the door just contrived to disappoint hopes of a noiseless escape. She called after her:--"Yes, who's that?" Whereupon Ruth returned. It was their first real word alone since the disclosure.

"Oh, mother, have you slept?" She kissed the old worn-out face tenderly; feeling somehow the reserve of strength behind the response she met. "Oh, can you--can you--make it out?... Yes, she is lying still. She has seen that letter." She dropped her voice, and shuddered to name it.

"My dear," said Granny Marrable, answering her question, "I cannot say truly yet that I can make it out. But I thank God for letting me be able to know that this must be Maisie. For I know her for Maisie, when she talks of the bygone time. And that letter--God is good, for that! For it was that told of how she died--that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away in such pain--never in all these years! And now I know it for an untruth. I thank God for that, at least!"

"She says," said Ruth, checkmated in an attempt to use any name she could call her real mother by, without some self-blame for the utterance, "she says the story is one-half true, but 'twas her best friend died of the bite--not she! But she died in great suffering."

"Ah--the poor thing! Mary Ann Stennis."

"That was the name."

"Will she be able to tell more? Will she tell us who her husband was?"

"Her husband!" Ruth thought this was new trouble--that the Granny's head had given way under the strain. "Her husband was my father, mother," said she. "Think!"

But old Phoebe was quite clear. "I am all right, child," said she reassuringly. "Her second husband. Marrable was my second, you know, else I would still have been Cropredy. Why is she not Daverill?"

Ruth was really the less clear of the two. "Oh yes!" said she wonderingly. "She is Mrs. Prichard, still."

"Please God we shall know all!... What was that?"

"I must go to her.... Come!" For old Maisie had called out. Her daughter went back to her quickly, and Granny Marrable followed, not far behind.

"Come, dear, come.... I called for you to know.... Come, Phoebe, come near, and let me tell you.... He was not so wicked.... Oh no, oh no--it was none of his own doing--I shall be able ... directly...." Thus old Maisie, gasping for breath, and falling back on the pillow from which she had part risen. The hectic flush in her face was greater, and her eyes were wild under her tangle of beautiful silver hair. Both were afraid for her, for each knew what fever might, mean. They might lose her, almost without a renewal of life together.

Still, it might be no more than the agitation of a moment, a passing phase. They tried to pacify her. How could the letter be none of Daverill's own doing? But she would not be soothed--would say the thing she had set her mind to say, but failed to find the words or breath for. What was it she was trying to say? Was it about the letter?

Elizabeth-next-door came into the room, tentatively. Ostensible reason, inquiry about breakfast; actual reason, curiosity. Sounds of speech under stress had aroused, and a glance at old Maisie intensified it. Widow Thrale would come directly, but for the moment was intent on hearing what Mrs. Prichard was saying. To Elizabeth, Maisie continued Mrs. Prichard.

She would not leave unsaid this thing she was bent on:--"No, dear! No, dear! It does not hurt me to talk, but I want time.... I will tell you ... I must tell you.... I know it.... It was not his own doing.... He was set on to do it by a devil that possessed him.... There are devils loose among the blacks...."

The pulse in the hand Ruth held was easy to find. Yes, that was fever! Ruth left her to speak with Elizabeth, and the hand went over to its fellow, in Granny Marrable's.

"Phoebe, dearest, that is so--and in those days there were a many blacks. But they were fewer and fewer after that, and none in our part when we came away, my son and I.... Phoebe!"

"What, dearest?"

"You must say nothing of him to Ruth. He was her brother."

"Say nothing of him to Ruth--why not?" She had lost sight of her adventure with the convict, and did not identify him. She may have fancied some other son accompanied her sister home.

"Yes--yes--nothing to her! He is not fit to speak of--not fit to think of.... Do not ask about him. Forget him! I do not know if he be alive or dead."

Then an image of the convict, or madman, flashed across Phoebe's mind. She dared not talk of him now, with that wild light and hectic flush in her sister's face; it would only make bad worse. But a recollection of her first association of him with the maniac in the Gadarene tombs was quick on the heels of this image, and prompted her to say:--"Had no evil spirit power over him, then, as well as his father?"

The wild expression on old Maisie's face died down, and gave place to one that was peace itself by comparison. "I see it all now," said she. "Yes--you are right! It was after his father's death he became so wicked." It was the devil that possessed his father, driven out to seek a home, and finding it in the son. That was apparently what her words implied, but there was too much of delirium in her speech and seeming to justify their being taken as expressing a serious thought.

Old Phoebe sat beside her, trying now and again with quiet voice and manner to soothe and hush away the terrible memories of the audacious deception to which each owed a lifelong loss of the other. But when fever seizes on the blood, it will not relax its hold for words.

One effect of this was good, in a sense. It is true, as the poet said, that one fire burns out another's burning--or at any rate that one pain is deadened by another anguish--and it was a Godsend to Granny Marrable and Ruth Thrale that an acupression of immediate anxiety should come to counteract their bewilderment, and to extinguish for the time the conflagration of a thousand questions--whys, whens, and wherefores innumerable--in their overburdened minds. Visible fever in the delicate frame, to which it seemed the slightest shock might mean death, was a summons to them to put aside every possible thought but that of preserving what Time had spared so long, though Chance had been so cruel an oppressor. It would be the cruellest stroke of all that she should be thus strangely restored to them, only to be snatched away in an hour.

Presently she seemed quieter; the fever came in gusts, and rose and fell. She had once or twice seemed almost incoherent, but it passed away. Meanwhile Granny Marrable's memory of that madman or criminal, who had at least known the woman he claimed as his mother well enough to be mystified by her twin sister, rankled in her mind, and made it harder and harder for her to postpone speech about him. She would not tell the incident--she was clear of that--but would it harm Maisie to talk of him? She asked herself the question the next time her sister referred to him, and could not refrain from letting her speech about him finish.

It came of her mind drifting back to that crazy notion of an evil spirit wandering to seek a home; as the hermit-crab, dispossessed of one shell, goes in search of another. After a lull which had looked for a moment like coming sleep, she said with an astonishing calmness:--"But do you not see, Phoebe dear, do you not see how good his father must have been, to do no worse than he did? See what the devil that possessed him could do with Ralph--my youngest, he was; Isaac died--a good boy, quite a good boy, till I lost his father! Oh--see what he came to do!"

"He ... he was sent to prison, was he not?" After saying it, old Phoebe was afraid she might have to tell the whole tale of how she knew it. But she need not have feared. Old Maisie was in a kind of dreamland, only half-cognisant of what was going on about her.

Her faint voice wandered on. "I was not thinking of that. That was nothing! He stole some money, and it cost him dear.... No!--it was worse than that--a bad thing!... It was not the girl's fault.... Emma was a good girl...."

Granny Marrable was injudicious. But it was an automatic want of judgment, bred of mind-strain. She could not help saying:--"Was that Emma Drax?" For the name, which she had heard from the convict, had hung on her mind, always setting her to work to fashion some horrible story for its owner.

"Yes--Emma Drax.... They found her guilty.... I do not mean that.... What is it I mean?... I mean they laid it all at her door.... Men do!" This seemed half wandering, and Granny Marrable hoped it meant a return of sleep. She was disappointed. For old Maisie became more restless and hot, starting convulsively, catching at her hand, and exclaiming:--"But how came you to know?--how came you to know? You were not there then. Oh, Phoebe dearest, you were not there then." She kept on saying this, and Granny Marrable despaired of finding words to explain, under such circumstances. The tale of her meeting with the convict was too complex. She thought to herself that she might say that Maisie had spoken the name as a dream-word, waking. But that would have been a fib, and fibs were not her line.

* * * * *

"I went myself to get him," said Ruth, reappearing after a longer absence than old Phoebe had anticipated. She was removing an out-of-door cloak, and an extempore headwrap, when she entered the room. "How is she?" she asked.

Old Phoebe shook her head doubtfully. "Whom did you go for, child? The doctor? I'm glad."

"I thought it better.... Mother darling!--how are you?" She knelt by the bed, held the burning hands, looked into the wild eyes. "Yes--I did quite right," she said.

* * * * *

Dr. Nash came, not many minutes later. Whether the mixture to be taken every two hours, fifty years ago, was the same as would have been given now, does not concern the story. It, or the reassurance of the doctor's visit, had a sedative effect; and old Maisie seemed to sleep, to the great satisfaction of her nurses. What really did credit to his professional skill was that he perceived that a visit from Lady Gwendolen would be beneficial. A message was sent at once to John Costrell, saying that an accompanying letter was to be taken promptly to the Towers, to catch her ladyship before she went out. We have seen that it reached her in time.

"You found that all I told you was true, Granny Marrable," said the doctor, after promising to return in time to catch her ladyship.

"I shall live to believe it true, doctor, please God!"

"Tut tut! You see that it is true."

"Yes, indeed, and I know that yonder is Maisie, come back to life. I know it by thinking; but 'tis all I can do, not to think her still dead."

"She can talk, I suppose--recollects things? Things when you were kids?"

"God 'a' mercy, yes, doctor! Why--hasn't she told me how she drew my tooth, with a bit of silk and a candle, and knew which drawer-knob it was, and the days she saw her husband first, a-horseback?... Oh, merciful Heavens, how had he the heart?"

"Some chaps have the Devil in 'em, and that's the truth!"

"That's what she says. She just made my flesh creep, a-telling how the devils come out of the black savages, to seize on Christians!"

But the doctor was not prepared to be taken at his word, in this way. Devils are good toys for speech, but they are not to be real. "Lot of rum superstitions in those parts!" said he. "Now look you here, ma'am! When I come back, I shall expect to hear that you and your daughter.... Oh ah!--she's not your daughter! What the deuce is she?"

"Ruth has always been my niece, but we have gone near to forget it, times and again. 'Tis so many a long year!"

"Well--I shall expect to hear that you and your niece have had a substantial breakfast. You understand--substantial! And you must make her take milk, or gruel. You'll find she won't eat."

"Beef-tea?"

"No--at least, have some ready, in case. But her temperature is too high. Especially at her time of life!" The doctor walked briskly away. He had not had the gig out, for such a short distance.

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Chapter XXI

CHRISTMAS AND THE GREEK KALENDS. O NOBIS PRAETERITOS! THE WRITING-TABLE BACK. AN INFLEXIBLE GOVERNOR. HOW MR. JERRY DID NOT GO TO THE WORKHOUSE. BUT HOW CAME M'RIAR TO BE SO SHORT? THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA. UNCLE MO'S COLDBATH FIELDS FRIEND, AND HIS ALLOWANCE. UNCLE MO ON KEEPING ONE'S WORD. AND KEEPING ITS MEANING. JERRY'S CONSCIENTIOUS TREACHERY, AND HIS INTERVIEW WITH MR. ROWE. HOW M'RIAR HAD PROMISED LOVE, HONOUR, AND OBEDIENCE TO A THING A DEVIL HAD TAKEN A LONG LEASE OF. HOW SHE SENT A NOTE TO IT, BY MICHAEL RAGSTROAR. WHO REALISED THREE-HALFPENCE. HOW MISS HAWKINS, JEALOUSY MAD, TINKERED AUNT M'RIAR'S NOTE. EVE'S CIVILITY TO THE SERPENT. MUCH ABOUT NORFOLK ISLAND. DAVERILL'S SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND, AND ITS CAUSES

Sapps Court was looking forward to Christmas with mixed feelings, considered as a Court. The feelings of each resident were in some cases quite defined or definable; as for instance Dave's and Dolly's. The children had required from their seniors a trustworthy assurance of the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, and had only succeeded in obtaining from Aunt M'riar a vague statement. Mrs. Prichard was a-coming some day, and that was plenty for children to know at their time of life. They might have remained humbly contented with their ignorance, if Uncle Mo had not added:--"So's Christmas!" meaning thereby the metaphorical Christmas used as an equivalent of the Greek Kalends. He overlooked, for rhetorical purposes, the near approach of the actual festival; and Dave and Dolly accepted this as fixing the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, to a nicety. The event was looked forward to as millennial; as a restoration of a golden age before her departure. For no child is so young as not to laudare a tempus actum; indeed, it is a fiction that almost begins with speech, that the restoration of the Past is the first duty of the Future.

Dolly never tired of recasting the arrangement of the tea-festivity that was to celebrate the event, discovering in each new disposition of the insufficient cups and unstable teapot a fresh satisfaction to gloat over, and imputing feelings in sympathy with her own to her offspring Gweng. It was fortunate for Gweng that her mamma understood her so thoroughly, as otherwise her fixed expression of a maximum of joy at all things in Heaven and Earth gave no clue to any emotions due to events of the moment. Even when her eyes were closed by manipulation of her spinal cord, and opened suddenly on a new and brilliant combination, any candid spectator must have admitted her stoicism--rapturous perhaps, but still stoicism. It was alleged--by her mamma--that she shed tears when Dave selfishly obstructed her line of sight. This was disputed by Dave, whom contact with an unfeeling World was hardening to a cruel literalism.

Dave, when he was not scheming a display of recent Academical acquirements to Mrs. Prichard, dwelt a good deal on the bad faith of the postman, who had not brought him the two letters he certainly had a right to expect, one from each of his Grannies. He had treasured the anticipation of reading their respective expressions of joyful gratitude at their discovery of their relationship, and no letter had come! Small blame to Dave that he laid this at the door of the postman; others have done the self-same thing, on the other side of their teens! The only adverse possibility that crossed his infant mind was that his Grannies were sorry, not glad; because really grown-up people were so queer, you never could be even with them. The laceration of a lost half-century was a thing that could not enter into the calculations of a septennarian. He had not tried Time, and Time had not tried him. He had odd misgivings, now and again, that there might be in this matter something outside his experience. But he did not indulge in useless speculation. The proximity of Christmas made it unnecessary.

Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar accepted the season as one beneficial to trade; production taking the form of a profusion of little muslin dresses for small girls at Christmas Trees and parties with a Conjurer--dresses in which the fullest possibilities of the human flounce became accomplished facts, and the last word was said about bows of coloured ribbons. To look at them was to breathe an involuntary prayer for eiderdown enclosures that would keep the poppet inside warm without disparagement to her glorious finery. Sapps Court under their influence became eloquent of quadrilles; "Les Rats" and the Lancers, jangled by four hands eternally on pianos no powers of sleep could outwit, and no execration do justice to. They murmured tales of crackers with mottoes; also of too much rich cake and trifle and lemonade, and consequences. So much space was needed to preserve them unsoiled and uncrushed until consigned to their purchasers, that Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar felt grateful for the unrestricted run of Mrs. Prichard's apartment, although both also felt anxious to see her at home again.

Mrs. Prichard's writing-table came back, done beautiful. Only the young man he refused to leave it without the money. He was compelled to this course by the idiosyncrasies of his employer. "You see," said he to Uncle Mo, with an appearance of concentrating accuracy by a shrewd insight, "it's like this it is, just like I tell you. Our Governor he's as good a feller--in hisself mind you!--as you'll come across this side o' Whitechapel. Only he's just got this one pecooliarity--like a bee has in his bonnet, as the sayin' is--he won't give no credit, not so much as to his own wife; or his medical adwiser, if you come to that. 'Cash across invoice'--that's his motter. And as for moving of him, you might just as easy move Mongblong." It is not impossible that this young man's familiarity with Mont Blanc was more apparent than real; perhaps founded on Albert Smith's entertainment of that name, which was popular at that time in London. The young man went on to say that he himself was trustful to a fault, and that if it depended on him, a'most any arrangement could be come to. But you had to take a party as you found him, and there it was!

Uncle Mo said:--"If you'd said you was a-coming with it, mate, I'd have made a p'int of having the cash ready. My salary's doo to-morrow." He was looking rather ruefully at an insufficient sum in the palm of his hand, the scrapings of more than one pocket.

The young man said:--"It's the Governor, Mr. Moses. But if you'll square the 'ire of the trolley, I'll run it back to the shop, and you can say when you're ready for it."

Uncle Mo seemed very reluctant to allow the bird to go back into the bush. He went to the stairfoot, and called to Aunt M'riar, upstairs, making ribbons into rosettes, and giving Dolly the snippings. He never took his eye off the coins in his palm, as though to maintain them as integral factors of the business in hand. "Got any small change, M'riar?" said he.

"How much do you want, Mo?"

"Six. And three. Can you do six-and three?"

"Stop till I see, Mo." Aunt M'riar descended from above, and went into her bedroom. But she did not find six-and-three. For she came out saying:--"I can't only do five-and-nine, Mo. Can't you make out with that?"

Uncle Mo still looked at the twelve-and-nine he already had in hand, as though it was a peculiar twelve-and-nine, that might consent for once to make nineteen shillings, the sum required, when added to Aunt M'riar's contribution; but he was obliged to yield to the inflexible nature of Arithmetic. "Sixpence short, I make it," said he. Then to the young man whose employer was like Mont Blanc:--"You'll have to fetch it round again to-morrow, any time after two o'clock." This was, however, rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Jerry, who was able to contribute the six-and-three, without, as he said, going to the workhouse. So Mrs. Prichard's old table, with a new leg so nobody could ever have told, and a touch of fresh polish as good as new, was restored to its old place, to join in the general anticipation of its owner's return.

But however M'riar come to be so short of cash Uncle Mo, smoking an afternoon pipe as of old with Mr. Jerry, could not say, not if the Emperor of Roosher was to ask him. Not that shortness of cash was unusual in Sapps Court, but that he had supposed that M'riar was rather better off than usual, owing to recent liquidations by the firm for whom she and Mrs. Burr were at work upstairs. Mr. Jerry urged him on no account to fret his kidneys about mundane trifles of this sort. Everything, without exception, came to the same thing in the end, and weak concessions to monetary anxiety only provided food for Repentance.

Uncle Mo explained that his uneasiness was not due to ways and means, or the want of them, but to a misgiving that Aunt M'riar's money was "got from her."

Now in his frequent confabs with Mr. Jerry, Uncle Mo had let fall many suggestions of the sinister influence at work on Aunt M'riar; and Mr. Jerry, being a shrewd observer, and collating these suggestions with what had come to him otherwise, had formed his own opinions about the nature of this influence. So it was no wonder that in answer to Uncle Mo he nodded his head very frequently, as one who not only assents to a fact, but rather lays claim to having been its first discoverer. "What did I tell you, Mo?" said he.

"Concernuating? Of? What?" said Uncle Mo in three separate sentences, each one accompanied by a tap of his pipe-bowl on the wooden table at The Sun parlour. The third qualified it for refilling. You will see, if you are attentive and observant, that this was Mo's first pipe that afternoon; as, if the ashes had been hot, he would not have emptied them on that table, but rather on the hob, or in the brazen spittoon.

"Him," said Mr. Jerry, too briefly. For he felt bound to add:--"Coldbath Fields. Anyone giving information that will lead to apprehension of, will receive the above reward. Your friend, you know!"

"My friend's the man, Jerry. Supposin'--just for argewment--I fist that friend o' mine Monday morning, I'll make him an allowance'll last him over Sunday. You wouldn't think it of me, Jerry, but I'm a bad-tempered man, underneath the skin. And when I see our old girl M'riar run away with like by an infernal scoundrel.... Well, Jerry, I lose my temper! That I do." And Uncle Mo seemed to need the pipe he was lighting, to calm him.

"He's where her money goes, Mo--that's it, ain't it?"

"That's about it, sir. So p'hraps when I say I don't know how M'riar come to be so short of cash, I ought to say I do know. Because I do know, as flat as ever so much Gospel." So the Emperor of Russia might not have remained unenlightened.

Mr. Jerry reflected. "You say he hasn't been near the Court again, Mo?"

"Not since that last time I told you about. What M'riar told me of. When he showed his knife to frighten her. I couldn't be off telling Sim Rowe, at the Station, about it, because of the children; and he's keeping an eye. But the beggar's not been anigh the Court since. Nor I don't suppose he'll come."

"But when ever does he see M'riar, to get at her savings?--that's what I'd like to know. Eh, Mo?"

"M'riar ain't tied to the house. She's free to come and go. I don't take kindly to prying and spying on her."

A long chat which followed evolved a clear view of the position. After Mo's interview with Aunt M'riar just before Gwen's visit, he had applied to his friend the Police-Inspector, with the result that the Court had been the subject of a continuous veiled vigilance. He had, however, been so far swayed by the distress of Aunt M'riar at the possibility that she might actually witness the capture of her criminal husband, that he never revealed to Simeon Rowe that she had an interest in defeating his enterprise. The consequence was that every plain-clothes emissary put himself into direct personal communication with her, thereby ensuring the absence of Daverill from Sapps Court. She was of course guilty of a certain amount of duplicity in all this, and it weighed heavily on her conscience. But there was something to be said by way of excuse. He was--or had been--her husband, and she did not know the worst of his crimes. Had she done so, she might possibly have been ready to give him up to justice. But as Mo had told her this much, that his last achievement might lead him to the condemned cell, and its sequel, and she nevertheless shrank from betraying him, probably nothing short of the knowledge of the age and sex of his last victim would have caused her to do so. She had in her mind an image of a good, honest, old-fashioned murder; a strained episode in some burglary; perhaps not premeditated, but brought about by an indiscreet interruption of a fussy householder. There are felonies and felonies.

Mr. Jerry's conversation with Uncle Mo in the Sun parlour gave him an insight into this. "Look'ee here, Mo," said he. "So long as the Court's watched, so long this here gentleman won't come anigh it. He's dodged the London police long enough to be too clever for that. But so long as he keeps touch with M'riar, you've got touch of him."

Uncle Mo seemed to consider this profoundly. "Not if I keep square with M'riar," said he at last.

"How do you make that out, Mo?"

"I've as good as promised the old girl that she shan't have any hand in it. She's out of it."

"Then keep her out of it. But only you give the tip to Sim Rowe that M'riar's in with him, and that he's putting the screw on her, and Sim he'll do the rest. Twig?" Conscious casuistry always closes one eye, and Mr. Jerry closed his.

"That's one idea of keeping square, Jerry, but it ain't mine."

"What's wrong with it, Mo?" Mr. Jerry's confidence in his suggestion had flagged, and his eye had reopened slowly.

"M'riar's not to have any hand in it--that's her stipulation. According-ly to my ideas, Jerry, either you take advantage, or you don't. Don't's the word, this time. If I bring M'riar in at all, it's all one which of two ways I do it. She's out of it."

Mr. Jerry began, feebly:--"You can't do more than keep your word, Mo...."

"Yes, you can, Jerry. You can keep your meanin'. And you can do more than that. You can keep to what the other party thought you meant, when you know. I know, this time. I ain't in a Court o' Justice, Jerry, dodgin' about, and I know when I'm square, by the feel. M'riar's out of it, and she shall stop out." Uncle Mo was not referring only to the evasions of witnesses on oath, which he regarded as natural, but to a general habit of untruth, and subtle perversion of obvious meanings, which he ascribed not only to counsel learned in the Law, but to the Bench itself.

"Don't you want this chap to dance the Newgate hornpipe, Mo?"

"Don't I, neither?" Uncle Mo smoked peacefully, gazing on the fire. The silhouette of a hanged man, kicking, floated before his mind's eye, and soothed him. But he made a reservation. "After him and me have had a quiet half-an-hour together!"

Mr. Jerry was suddenly conscious of a new danger. "I say, Mo," said he. "None of that, if you please!"

"None o' what?"

"This customer's not your sort. He's a bad kind. Bad before he was first lagged, and none the better for the company he's kept since! You're an elderly man now, Mo, and I'll go bail you haven't so much as put on the gloves for ten years past. And suppose you had, ever so! Who's to know he hasn't got a Colt in his pocket, or a bowie-knife?" Those of us who remember the fifties will recall how tightly revolvers clung to the name of their patentee, and the sort of moral turpitude that attached to their use. They were regarded as giving a mean advantage to murderers; who otherwise, if they murdered fair, and were respectably hanged, merely filled roles necessary to History and the Drama.

"Couldn't say about the barking-iron," said Uncle Mo. "He's got a nasty sort of a knife, because he was flourishing of it out once to frighten M'riar. I'll give him that." Meaning--the advantage of the weapon. A trivial concession from a survivor of the best days of the Fancy! "Ye see, Jerry," he continued, "he'll have to come within arm's length, to use it. I'll see to him! Him and his carving-knives!"

But Mr. Jerry was far from easy about his friend, who seemed to him over-confident. He had passed his life in sporting circles, and though he himself had seen more of jockeys than prizefighters, their respective circumferences intersected; and more than one case had come to his knowledge of a veteran of the Ring unconscious of his decadence, who had boastfully defied a junior, and made the painful discovery of the degree to which youth can outclass age. This was scarcely a case of youth or extreme age, but the twenty years that parted them were all-sufficient.

He began to seek in his inner conscience excuses for a course of action which would--he was quite candid with himself--have a close resemblance to treachery. But would not a little straightforward treachery be not only very expedient, but rather moral? Were high principles a sine qua non to such a humble individual as himself, a "bookmaker" on race-courses, a billiard-marker elsewhere in their breathing-times? Though indeed Mr. Jerry in his chequered life had seen many other phases of employment--chiefly, whenever he had the choice, within the zone of horsiness. For he had a mysterious sympathetic knowledge of the horse. If pressed to give an account of himself, he was often compelled to admit that he was doing nothing particular, but was on the lookout. He might indicate that he was getting sick of this sort of thing, and would take the next chance that turned up; would, as it were, close with Fate. There had never been a moment in his sixty odd years of life--for he was very little Uncle Mo's junior--when he had not been on the eve of a lucrative permanency. It had never come; and never could, in the nature of things. Nevertheless, the evanescencies that came and went and chequered his career were not quite unremunerative, though they were hardly lucrative. If he was ever hard up, he certainly never confessed to it.

He, however, looking back on his own antecedents to determine from them how straitlaced a morality conscience called for, decided, in view of the possibility of a collision between his friend and this ex-convict, that he would be quite justified in treating Aunt M'riar's feelings as negligible, set against the risk incurred by deferring to them as his friend had done. No doubt Mo's confidence had been reposed in him under the seal of an honourable secrecy, but to honour it under the circumstances seemed to him to be "cutting it rather fine." He resolved to sacrifice his integrity on the altar of friendship, and sought out Mr. Simeon Rowe, who will be remembered as the Thames Policeman who was rowing stroke at Hammersmith that day when his chief, Ibbetson, lost his life in the attempt to capture Daverill; and who had more recently been identified by Mo as the son of an old friend. Jerry made a full communication of the case as known to him; giving as his own motive for doing so, the wish to shield Mo from the possible consequences of his own rash over-confidence.

"I collect from what you tell me," said the Police-Inspector, "that my men have been going on the wrong tack. That's about it, Mr. Alibone, isn't it?"

"That's one way of putting it, Mr. Rowe. Anyhow, they were bound to be let in. Why, who was to guess Aunt M'riar? And the reason!"

"They'll have to look a little sharper, that's all." It suited the Inspector to lay the blame of failure on his subordinates. This is a prerogative of seniors in office. Successes are officially credited to the foresight of headquarters--failures debited to the incompetence of subordinates. Mr. Rowe's attitude was merely human. He expressed as much acknowledgment of indebtedness to Mr. Jerry as was consistent with official dignity, adding without emotion:--"I've been suspecting some game of the kind." However, he unbent so far as to admit that this culprit had given a sight of trouble; and, as Mr. Jerry was an old acquaintance, resumed some incidents of the convict's career, not without admiration. But it was admiration of a purely professional sort, consistent with strong moral loathing of its object. "He's a born devil, if ever there was one," said he. "I must say I like him. Why--look how he slipped through their fingers at Clerkenwell! That was after we caught him at Hammersmith. That was genius, sir, nothing short of genius!"

"Dressed himself in his own warder's clothes, didn't he, and just walked over the course? What's become of your man he knocked on the head with his leg-iron?"

"Oh--him? He's got his pension, you know. But he's not good for any sort of work. He's alive--that's all! Yes--when Mr. Wix pays his next visit at the Old Bailey, there'll be several charges against him. He'll make a good show. I'll give him three months." By which he meant that, with all allowances made for detention and trial, Mr. Wix would end his career at the time stated. He went on to refer to other incidents of which the story has cognisance. He had been inclined to be down on his old chief Ibbetson, who was drowned in his attempt to capture Wix, because he had availed himself of a helping hand held out to him to drag its owner into custody. Well--he would think so still if it had not been for some delicate shades of character Mr. Wix had revealed since. How did he, Simeon Rowe, know what Ibbetson knew against the ex-convict? Some Walthamstow business, as like as not! It was wonderful what a faculty this man had for slipping through your fingers. He had been all but caught by one of our men, in the country, only the other day. He was at the railway-station waiting for the up-train, due in a quarter of an hour, and he saw our man driving up in a gig. At this point Mr. Rowe stopped, looking amused.

"Did he run?" said Mr. Jerry.

"Not he! He made a mistake in his train. Jumped into the Manchester express that was just leaving, and got carried off before our man reached the station. At Manchester he explained his mistake, and used his return ticket without extra charge to come back to London. Our man knew he would do that, and waited for him at Euston. But he knew one better. Missed his train again at Harrow--just got out for a minute, you know, when it stopped--and walked the rest of the way!"

Ralph Daverill must have had a curious insight into human nature, to know by the amount of his inspection of that police-officer--the one who had ridden after him from Grantley Thorpe--whether he would pursue him to Manchester or try to capture him at Euston. How could he tell that the officer was not clever enough to know exactly how clever his quarry would decide he was?

* * * * *

Aunt M'riar, haunted always by a nightmare--by the terrible dream of a scaffold, and on it the man who had been her husband, with all the attendant horrors familiar to an age when public executions still gratified its human, or inhuman interest--was unable to get relief by confiding her trouble to others. She dared to say no more than what she had already said to Uncle Mo, as she knew he was in communication with his friend the police-officer and she wanted only just as much to be disclosed about the convict as would safeguard Sapps Court from another of his visits, but at the same time would not lead to his capture. If she had thought his suggestions of intimidation serious, no doubt she would have put aside her scruples, and made it her first object that he should be brought to justice. But she regarded them as empty threats, uttered solely to extort money.

She knew she could rely on Mo's kindness of heart to stretch many points to meet her feelings, but she felt very uncertain whether even his kind-heartedness would go the length of her demand for it. He might consider that a wife's feelings for a husband--and such a husband!--might be carried too far, might even be classified as superstition, that last infirmity of incorrect minds. If she could only make sure that the convict should never show his face again in Sapps Court, she would sacrifice her small remainders of money, earned in runs of luck, to keep him at a distance. An attitude of compromise between complete repudiation of him, and misleading his pursuers, was at least possible. But it involved a slight amount of duplicity in dealing with Mo, and this made Aunt M'riar supremely uncomfortable. She was perfectly miserable about it. But there!--had she not committed herself to an impracticable constancy, with a real altar and a real parson? That was it. She had promised, five-and-twenty years ago, to love, honour, and obey a self-engrossed pleasure-seeker, and time and crime and the canker of a gaol had developed a devil in him, who was by now a fine representative sample--a "record devil" our modern advanced speech might have called him--who had fairly stamped out whatever uncongenial trace of good may have existed originally in the premises he had secured on an indefinite lease. It was superstition on Aunt M'riar's part, but of a sort that is aided and abetted by a system that has served the purposes of the priesthoods all the world over since the world began, and means to last your time and mine--the more's the pity!

It was the day after her conversation with Mo about the convict--the day, that is, after Gwen's last visit to Sapps Court--that Aunt M'riar said to Dave, just departing to absorb erudition at his School, that if he should see Michael Ragstroar he might tell him she had a note for his, Michael's, aunt at Hammersmith; and if he was a-going there Sunday, he might just every bit as well make himself useful, and carry it and save the postage. Dave said:--"Whoy shouldn't oy carry it?" An aspiration crushed by Aunt M'riar with:--"Because you're seven!" So Dave, whose nature was as docile as his eyes were blue, undertook to deliver the message; and Michael presented himself in consequence, just after Uncle Mo had took a turn out to see for a newspaper, for to know some more of what was going on in the Crimaera. It was just as well Uncle Mo had, because when it's two, you don't have to consider. If this is obscure, Aunt M'riar, who used the phrase, is responsible, not the story. Its opinion is, that she meant that the absence of a third person left her freer to speak. Perhaps if Mo had been present she would merely have handed Micky the letter directed to his aunt, which would have been palpably no concern of Uncle Mo's, inquirin' and askin' questions.

As it was, she accompanied it with verbal instructions:--"Now you know what you've got to do, young Micky. You've just got to give this letter to your great-aunt Treadwell. And when she sees inside of it, she'll find it ain't for her, but a party."

"What sort of a party, that's the p'int? Don't b'leeve my great-aunt knows no parties. Them she knows is inside of her farmily. Nevoos, sim'lar to myself as you might say. Or hequal value." An Academical degree would have qualified Micky to say "or its equivalent." The expression he used had its source in exchange transactions of turnips and carrots and greens, anticipating varied calls for each in different markets.

"She may know the address of the lady she'll find in this envelope. And if she don't, all you got to do is to bring the letter back."

"Suppose she don't know the address and I do, am I to tell her, or 'old my tongue?"

"Now which do you think? I do declare you boys I never! Nor yet anyone else! Why, if she don't know the address and you do, all you got to do then is take the letter and leave it."

"Without any address wrote? Wery good! 'Ave it your own way, missis. 'And it over."

Aunt M'riar handed it over. But before Micky was half-way up the Court, she called him back. "Maybe you know the party's name? Miss Julia Hawkins--on the waterside, Hammersmith."

"Her! Not know her! Juliarawkins. Why, she's next door!"

"But do you know her--to speak to?"

"Rarther! We're on torkin terms, me and Juliar. Werry often stop I do, to pass the time of day with Jooli_ar_." An intensification in the accent on the name seemed to add to his claim to familiarity with its owner. "Keeps the little tiddley-wink next door. Licensed 'ouse. That's where they took Wix--him as got out of quod--him as come down the Court to look up a widder."

Aunt M'riar considered a moment whether it would not be better to instruct Micky to find out Daverill and deliver her letter to him in person. She decided on adhering to the convict's instructions. If she had understood his past relations with Miss Hawkins she might have decided otherwise. She affected not to hear Micky's allusion to him, merely enjoining the boy to hand her letter in over the bar to its Egeria. "You won't have any call for to trouble your aunt," said she. For she felt that the fewer the cooks, the better the broth. Questioned as to when he would deliver the letter, Micky appeared to turn over in his mind a voluminous register of appointments. But he could stand them all over, to oblige, and would see if he couldn't make it convenient to go over Sunday morning. Nothing was impossible to a good business head.

As the appointments had absolutely no existence except in his imagination--though perhaps costermonging, at its lowest ebb, still claimed his services--he was able to make it very convenient indeed to visit his Aunt Elizabeth. History repeats itself, and the incident of the half-and-half happened again, point for point, until settlement-time came, and then a variation crept in.

"I got a letter for you, missis," said Micky.

"Sure it ain't for somebody else? Let's have a look at it."

"No 'urry! Tork it over first--that's my marxim! Look ye here. Miss Juliar, this is my way of putting of it. Here's three-halfpence, over the beer. Here's the corner of the letter, stickin' out of my porket. Now which'll you have, the letter or the three-halfpence? Make your ch'ice. All square and no deception!"

"Well--the impidence of the child! Who's to know the letter's for me onlest I see the direction? Who gave it you to give me?"

"Miss Wardle down our Court. Same I told you of--where the old widder-woman hangs out. Him the police are after's mother!" Micky was so confident of the success of this communication that he began picking up the three-halfpence to restore them to his pocket, and stood holding the corner of the letter to draw it out as soon as his terms were accepted. The acceptance came unconditionally, with a nod; and Micky departed with his jug.

What were the contents of this letter to Mr. Wix, care of Miss Julia Hawkins, at The Pigeons? That was all the direction on the envelope, originally covered by another, addressed to Micky's great-aunt. It was worded as Daverill had worded it in a hurried parting word to Aunt M'riar, given when Gwen's knock had cut his visit short. This letter, in an uneducated woman's hand, excited Miss Hawkins's curiosity. Of course it might only be from the old woman he supposed to be his mother. If so, there did not seem to be any reasonable objection to her reading it. If otherwise, she felt that there were many reasonable objections to leaving it unread. Anyhow there was a kettle steaming on the fire in the bar, and if she held the letter over the spout to see if it would open easy, she would be still in a position to shut it up again and deliver it with a guiltless conscience. Eve, no doubt, felt that she could handle the apple and go on resisting temptation, so as not to seem rude to the Serpent. The steam was not wanted for long, the envelope flap curling up in a most obliging manner, and leaving all clear for investigation. Miss Hawkins laid the letter down to dry quite dry, before fingering it. Remember to bear this in mind in opening other people's letters this way. The slightest touch on paper moistened by steam may remain as a tell-tale.

This woman was so cautious that she left the paper untouched where she had laid it on the table while she conferred with a recently installed potboy on points of commercial economy. When she returned it was dry beyond suspicion, and she drew the letter out to see if it contained anything she need hesitate to read. She felt that she was keeping in view what is due to the sensitive conscience of an honourable person.

The note she read was short, written so that the lines fell thus:--

"RALPH DAVERILL--The police are on the look out for you and it is now not safe to come to the Court--This is written by your wife to say you will run great risk of being took if you come-- For you to know who I am I write my name--

POLLY DAVERILL. Sapps Court Dec 9 1854."

The lines were ill-spaced, so that blanks were left as shown. At the end of the second, a crowded line, the word not was blurred on the paper-edge, and looked like a repetition of the previous word.

One does not see without thought, why this letter sent its reader's heart beating furiously. Why should she turn scarlet with anger and all but draw blood from a bitten lip? She knew perfectly well that this gutter Don Juan's depravity could boast as many victims as his enforced prison life had left possible to him. But no particular one had ever become concrete to her, and jealousy of a multitude, no one better off than herself, had never rankled. Jealousy of Heaven-knows-who is a wishy-washy passion. Supply a definite object, and it may become vitriolic. Polly Daverill, whoever she was, was definite, and might be the wife the convict had acknowledged--or rather claimed--when he first made Miss Julia's acquaintance, over twenty years ago.

The lip was perhaps saved from bloodletting by an idea which crossed the mind of the biter. A look of satisfaction grew and grew as she contemplated the letter; not for its meaning--that was soon clear. It was something in the handwriting; something that made her hide half-words with a finger-point, and vary her angle of inspection. Then she said, aloud to herself:--"Yes!" as though she had come to a decision.

She examined an inkstand that the dried ink of ages had encrusted, beyond redemption, in a sunken cavity of restraint in an inktray overstocked with extinct and senile pens. Its residuum of black fluid had been glutinous ever since Miss Julia had known it; ever since she had written, as a student, that Bounty Commanded Esteem all down one page of a copybook. The pens were quill pens past mending, or overwhelmed by too heartfelt nibs; or magnum bonums whose upstrokes were morally as wide as Portland Place, or parvum malums that perforated syllables and spluttered. The penwiper was non-absorbent, and generally contrived to return the drop it refused to partake of on the hands of incautious scribes, who rarely obtained soap and hot water time enough to do any good.

Miss Julia first remedied the ink. A memory of breakfast unremoved still hung about the parlour table--a teapot and a slop basin. The former supplied a diluent, the latter a haven for the indisputably used-up quill whose feather served to incorporate it with the black coagulum. With the resultant fluid you could make a mark about the same blackness as what the letter was, using by preference the newest magnum bonum pen, which was all right in itself, only stuck on an old wooden handle that scribes of recent years had gnawed.

What this woman's jealous violence was prompting her to do was to alter this letter so as to encourage its recipient to put himself in danger of capture. It was an easy task, as the only words she had to insert could be copies from what was already written. The first line required the word not at the end, the fourth the word no. The only other change needed was the erasure of the word not, in the second line, which already looked like an accidental repetition of now. Was an erasure advisable? she decided against it, cleverly. She merely drew her pen through the not, leaving the first two letters intentionally visible, and blurring the last. She then re-enveloped the letter, much pleased with the result, and wrote a short note in pencil to accompany it; then hunted up an envelope large enough to take both, and directed it to W. at the Post Office, East Croydon. This was the last address the convict had given. Where he was actually living she did not know.

Her own letter to him was:--"The enclosed has come for you. I write this in pencil because I cannot find any ink." It was a little stroke of genius worthy of her correspondent's father. Nothing but clairvoyance could have bred suspicion in him. Micky reappeared that evening in Sapps Court, and found an opportunity to convey to Aunt M'riar that he had obeyed his instructions. He did so with an air of mystery and an undertone of intelligence, saying briefly:--"That party, missis! She's got the letter."

"Did you give it her?" said Aunt M'riar.

"I see to it that she got it," said Micky with reserve. "You'll find it all correct, just as I say." This attitude was more important than the bald, unqualified statement that he had left the letter when he fetched the beer, and Micky enjoyed himself over it proportionately.

* * * * *

Aunt M'riar was easier in her mind, as she felt pretty confident that the letter would reach its destination. She had killed two birds with one stone--so she believed. She had saved Daverill from the police, so far at least as their watchfulness of Sapps Court was concerned, and had also saved Uncle Mo from possible collision with him, an event she dreaded even more than a repetition of those hideous interviews with a creature that neither was nor was not her husband; a thing with a spurious identity; a horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own life had once been grafted. Could woman think a worse thought of man than hers of him, when she thanked God that at least the only fruit of that graft had been nipped in the bud? And yet no such thought had crossed her mind in all these years in which he had been to her no more than a memory. A memory of a dissolute, imperfect creature--yes! but lovable enough for all that. Not indeed without a sort of charm for any passing friend, quite short of any spell akin to love. How could this monstrous personality have grown upon him, yet left him indisputably the same man? The dreadful change in the identity of the maniac--the maniac proper, the victim of brain-disease--is at least complete; so complete often as to force the idea of possession on minds reluctant to receive it. This man remained himself, but it was as though this identity had been saturated with evil--had soaked it up as the sponge soaks water. There was nothing in the old self M'riar remembered to make her glad his child was not born alive. There was everything in his seeming of to-day to make her shudder at the thought that it might have lived.

The cause of the change is not far to seek. He had lived for twenty years in Norfolk Island as a convict; for fourteen years certainly as an inmate of the prisons, even if a period of qualified liberty preceded his discharge and return to Sydney. He was by that time practically damned beyond redemption, and his brilliant career as a bushranger followed as a matter of course.

Those who have read anything of the story of the penal settlements in the early part of last century may--even must--remember the tale told by the Catholic priest who went to give absolution to a whole gang of convicts who were to be hanged for mutiny. He carried with him a boon--a message of mercy--for half the number; for they had been pardoned; that is to say, had permission now to live on as denizens of a hell on earth. As it turned out, the only message of mercy he had to give was the one contained or implied in an official absolution from sin, and it is possible that belief in its validity occasioned the outburst of rejoicing that greeted its announcement. For there was no rejoicing among the recipients of His Majesty's clemency--heart-broken silence alone, and chill despair! For they were to remain on the rack, while their more fortunate fellows could look forward to a joyous gallows, with possibilities beyond, from which Hell had been officially excluded. It is but right to add that the Reverend Father did not ascribe the exultant satisfaction of his clients--if that is the word--to anything but the anticipation of escape from torture. He was too truthful.

If the nearest dates the story has obtained are trustworthy, Daverill's actual term in Norfolk Island may have been fourteen years; it certainly came to an end in the early forties. But he must have been there at the time of the above incident, as it happened circa 1836-37. The powers of the sea-girt tropical Paradise to sterilise every Divine impulse must have been at their best in his time, and he seems to have been a favourable subject for the virus of diabolism, which was got by Good Intentions out of Expediency. The latter must have been carrying on with Cowardice, though, to account for Respectability's choice, for her convicts, of an excruciating life rather than a painless death. Possibly the Cowardice of the whole Christian world, which accounts Death the greatest of possible evils.

The life of a bushranger in New South Wales, which fills in the end of his Australian career, did not tend to the development of any stray germ of a soul that the prison-fires had not scorched out of old Maisie's son. Small wonder it was so! Conceive the glorious freedom of wickedness unrestrained, after the stived-up atmosphere of the gaol, with its maddening Sunday chapel and its hideous possibilities of public torture for any revolt against the unendurable routine. We, nowadays, read with a shudder of the enormities that were common in the prisons of past times--we, who only know of their modern substitutes. For the last traces of torture, such as was common long after the moyen age, as generally understood, have vanished from the administration of our gaols before a vivified spirit of Christianity, and the enlightenment consequent on the Advance of Science.[A] After fourteen years of such a life, how glorious must have been the opportunities the freedom of the Bush afforded to an instinctive miscreant, still in the prime of life, and artificially debarred for so long from the indulgence of a natural bent for wickedness; not yet ennuye by the monotony of crime in practice, which often leads to a reaction, occasionally accompanied by worldly success. There was, however, about Daverill a redeeming point. He was incorrigibly bad. He never played false to his father the Devil, and the lusts of his father he did do, to the very last, never disgracing himself by the slightest wavering towards repentance.

[Footnote A: This appears to have been written about 1910.]

Probably his return from Sydney to England was as much an escape from his own associates in crime, with whom some dishonourable transactions had made him unpopular, as a flight from the officers of Justice. A story is told, too intricate to follow out, of a close resemblance between himself and a friend in his line of business. This was utilised ingeniously for the establishment of alibi's, the name of Wix being adopted by both. Daverill had, however, really behaved in a very shady way, having achieved this man's execution for a capital crime of his own. Ibbetson, the Thames police-sergeant whose death he occasioned later, was no doubt in Sydney at this time, and may have identified him from having been present at the hanging of his counterpart, whose protestations that he was the wrong man of course received no attention, and whose attempt to prove an alibi failed miserably. Daverill had supplied the defence with a perfectly fictitious account of himself and his whereabouts at the time of the commission of the crime, which of course fell to pieces on the testimony of witnesses implicated, who knew nothing whatever of the events described.

There is no reason whatever to suppose that a desire to see his mother again had anything to do with his return. The probability is that he never gave her a thought until the money he had brought with him ran out--or, more accurately, the money he got by selling, at a great sacrifice, the jewels he brought from Australia sewed into the belt he wore in lieu of braces. The most valuable diamond ring should have brought him thousands, but he had to be content with hundreds. He had drawn it off an amputated finger, whose owner he left to bleed to death in the bush. It had already been stolen twice, and in each case had brought ill-luck to its new possessor.

All this of Daverill is irrelevant to the story, except in so far as it absolves Aunt M'riar of the slightest selfish motive in her conduct throughout. The man, as he stood, could only be an object of horror and aversion to her. The memory of what he had once been remained; and crystallized, as it were, into a fixed idea of a sacramental obligation towards a man whose sole claim upon her was his gratification at her expense. She had been instructed that marriage was God's ordinance, and so forth; and was per se reciprocal. She had sacrificed herself to him; therefore he had sacrificed himself to her. A halo of mysterious sanctity hung about her obligations to him, and seemed to forbid too close an analysis of their nature. An old conjugation of the indicative mood, present tense, backed by the third person singular's capital, floated justifications from Holy Writ of the worst stereotyped iniquity of civilisation.

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Chapter XXII

HOW GWEN STAYED AWAY FROM CHURCH, BUT SENT HER LOVE TO LADY MILLICENT ANSTIE-DUNCOMBE. HOW TOM MIGHT COME AGAIN AT FIVE, AND GAVE MRS. LAMPREY A LIFT. NOT EXACTLY DELIRIUM. THE BLACK WITCH-DOCTOR. WERE DAVE AND DOLLY ALL TRUE? WHAT GWEN HAD TO PRETEND. DAVE'S OTHER LETTER. STARING FACTS IN THE FACE. GWEN'S COMPARISON OF THE TWINS. MIGHT GWEN SEE THE AUSTRALIAN LETTER? OLD KETURAH'S HUSBAND THE SEXTON. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE AND RUTH WENT TO CHURCH, BY REQUEST, AND HOW RUTH SAW THE LIKENESS. HOW OLD MAISIE COULD NOT BE EVEN WITH UNCLE NICHOLAS. CHAOS. HOW OLD MRS. PICTURE RECEIVED DAVE'S INVITATION TO TEA. JONES'S BULL

"You'll have to attend divine service without your daughter, mamma," said Gwen, speaking through the door of her mother's apartment, en passant. It was a compliance with a rule of domestic courtesy which was always observed by this singular couple. A sort of affection seemed to maintain itself between them as a legitimate basis for dissension, a luxury which they could not otherwise have enjoyed. "I'm called away to my old lady."

"Is she ill?"

"Well--Dr. Nash has written to say that I need not be frightened."

"But then--why go? If he says you need not be frightened?"

"That's exactly why I'm going. As if I didn't understand doctors!"

"I knew you wouldn't come to Church. Am I to give your love to Lady Millicent Anstie-Duncombe if I see her, or not? She's sure to ask after you."

"Some of it. Not too much. Give the rest to Dr. Tuxford Somers." The Countess's suggestion of entire despair at this daughter was almost imperceptible, but entirely conclusive.

"Well--he's married! Why shouldn't I?"

"As you please, my dear!"

The Countess appeared to decline further discussion. She said:--"Don't be very late--you are coming back to lunch, of course?"

"If I can. It depends."

"My dear! With Sir Spencer Derrick here, and the Openshaws!"

"I'll be back if I can. Can't say more than that! Good-bye!" And the Countess had to be content. The story is rather sorry for her, for it is a bore to have a lot of guests on one's hands, without due family support.

* * * * *

The grey mare's long stride left John Costrell's fat cob a mile behind, in less than two. Her hoofs made music on the hard road for another two, and then were assourdi by a swansdown coverlid of large snowflakes that disappointed the day's hopes of being fine, and made her sulky with the sun, extinguishing his light. The gig drew up at Strides Cottage in a whitening world, and Tom Kettering had to button up the seats under their oilskin passenger-cases, in anticipation of a long wait.

But Tom had not a long wait, for in a quarter of an hour after her young ladyship had vanished into Strides Cottage, she returned, telling him she was going to be late, and should not want him. He might drive back to the Towers, and--stop a minute!--might give this card to her mother. She scribbled on one of her own cards that she would not be back to lunch, and told Tom he might come again about five. Tom touched his hat as a warrior might have touched his sword-hilt.

Widow Thrale, who had accompanied Gwen, and returned with her into the house, was the very ghost of her past self of yesterday morning. Twenty-four hours ago she looked less than her real age by ten years; now she had overpassed it by half that time at least. So said to Tom Kettering a young woman with a sharp manner, whom he picked up and gave a lift to on his way back. Tom's taciturnity abated in conversation with Mrs. Lamprey, and he really seemed to come out of his Trappist seclusion to hear what she had to tell about this mystery at the Cottage. She had plenty, founded on conversations between the doctor and his sister, whose housekeeper you will remember she was.

"Why--I'd only just left Widow Thrale when you drove past. Your aunt she stayed till ever so late last night,"--Tom was Mrs. Solmes's nephew--"and went home with Carrier Brantock. Didn't you see her?"

"Just for a word, this morning. She hadn't so much to tell as you'd think. But it come to this--that this old Goody Prichard's own sister to Granny Marrable. Got lost in Australia somehow. Anyhow, she's there now, at the Cottage. No getting out o' that! Only what bothers me is--how ever she came to turn up in her sister's house, and ne'er a one of 'em to know the other from Queen Anne!"

"We've got to take that in the lump, Thomas. I expect your Aunt Keziah she'll say it was Providence. I say it was just a chance, and Dr. Nash he says the same. You ask him!"

Tom considered thoughtfully, and decided. "I expect it was just a chance," said he. "Things happen of theirselves, if you let 'em alone. Anyhow, it hasn't happened above this once." That was a great relief, and Tom seemed to breathe the freer for it.

"I haven't a word to say against Providence," said Mrs. Lamprey. "On the contrary I go to Church every Sunday, and no one can find fault. So does Dr. Nash, to please Miss Euphemia. But one has to consider what's reasonable. What I say is:--if it was Providence, what was to prevent its happening twenty years ago? Nothing stood in the way, that I see."

Tom shook his head, to show that neither did he see what stood in the way of a more sensible and practical Divine ordination of events. "Might have took place any time ago, in reason," said he. "Anyhow, it hasn't. It's happened now." Tom seemed always to be seeking relief from oppressive problems, and looking facts in the face. "I'm not so sure," he continued, abating the mare slightly to favour conversation, "that I've got all the scoring right. This old lady she went out to Australia?"

"Yes--fifty years ago." Mrs. Lamprey told what she knew, but not nearly all the facts as the story knows them. She had not got the convict incidents correctly from the conversation of Dr. Nash with his sister. Remember that he had only known it since yesterday morning. Mrs. Lamprey's version did not take long to tell.

"What I look at is this," said Tom, seeming to stroke with his whiplash the thing he looked at, on the mare's back. "Won't it turn old Granny Marrable wrong-side-up, seeing her time of life. Not the other old Goody--she's been all the way to Australia and back!" This only meant that nothing could surprise one who had such an experience. As to the effect on Granny Marrable, Mrs. Lamprey said no--quite the reverse. Once it was Providence, there you stuck, and there was no moving you! There was some obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine interposition, you stood committed to a controversial attitude which would render you an obstructive to liberal thought.

This little conversation was presently cut short by Mrs. Lamprey's arrival at her destination, a roadside inn where she had an aunt by marriage.

* * * * *

Ruth Thrale had a bad report to give as she and her young ladyship recrossed the kitchen. It was summed up in the word Fever, restrained by "Not exactly delirium." Granny Marrable came out to meet them, and threw in a word or two of additional restraint. What they had at first thought delirium had turned out quite temperate and sane on closer examination.

"A deal about Australia, and the black witch-doctor," said Granny Marrable. "Now, if one could turn her mind off that, it might be best for her, and she would drop off, quiet." Perhaps her ladyship coming would do her good. The old lady ended with concession about the fever--was not quite sure Maisie had known her just now when she spoke to her.

"Poor old darling!" said Gwen. "You know, Granny, we must expect a little of this sort of thing. We couldn't hope to get off scot-free. Have you had some sleep, yourself? Has she slept, Ruth?"

"Oh yes. Mother got some sleep in the chair beside--beside her, till four o'clock. Then she lay down, and had a good sleep, lying down. Didn't you, mother?"

"You may be easy about me, child. I've done very well."

"And yourself, Ruth?" By now, Gwen always called Widow Thrale "Ruth."

"Who--I? I had quite a long sleep, while mother sat by--by her." This dreadful difficulty of what to call old Maisie! Her daughter was always at odds with it.

Gwen passed on into the bedroom. Just at the door she paused. "You wait outside, and hear," said she. They held back, in the passage, silent.

Old Maisie's voice, on the pillow; audible, not articulate. Two frail hands stretched out in welcome. Two grave eyes, made wild by the surrounding tangle of loose white hair. Those were Gwen's impressions as she approached the bed.

The voice grew articulate. "Oh, my darling, I knew you would come. I want you close, to tell me...."

"Yes, dear!--to tell you what?"

"I want you to tell me whether one of the things is a dream."

"One of which things, dear?" One has to be a hard old stager not to feel his flesh creep at delirium. Gwen had to fight against a shudder.

"There are so many, you know, now that they all come back at once. Tell me, darling, were my little boy and girl real, who came up into my room and played and gave me tea out of small cups? I called them Dave and Dolly. Dolly was very small. Oh, Dolly!" Dolly's size, and her tenderness on one's knee, were, so to speak, audible in the voice that became tender to apostrophise her.

"Dave and Dolly Wardle? Of course they are real! As real as you or me! There they are in Sapps Court, with Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar. And Susan Burr," Then such a nice scheme crossed Gwen's mind.

But old Maisie seemed adrift, not able to be sure of any memory; past and present at war in her mind, either intolerant of the other. "Then tell me, dear," said she. "Is the other real too? Is it not a thing I have dreamed, a thing I have dreamed in the night, here in Widow Thrale's cottage ... where I came in the cart ... where I came from the great house where the sweet old gentleman was, that was your father ... where I could see out over the tree lands ... where my Ruth came to me?..." The affection for her daughter, that had struck root firmly in her heart, remained a solid fact, whether she was thinking of her as before or after the revelation of her identity.

Gwen sat beside her on the bed-edge, her arm round her head on its pillow, her free hand soothing the restless fingers that would not be still. "What is it you think you have dreamed, Mrs. Picture dear?" said she.

"It was all a dream, I think. Just a mad dream--but then--but then--did not my Ruth think I was mad?..."

"But what was it? Tell it to me, now, quietly."

"It was that my Phoebe--my sister--oh, my dear sister!--dead so many years ago--sat by me here, as you sit now--and we talked and talked of the old time--and our young Squire, so beautiful, upon his horse.... Oh, but then--but then!..." She checked herself suddenly, and a look of horror came in her face; then went on:--"No, listen! There was an awful thing in the dream--a bad thing--about a letter.... Oh, how can I tell it?..."

Gwen caught at the pause to speak, saying gently but firmly:--"Dear Mrs. Picture, it was no dream, but all true. Believe me, I know. When you are quite well and strong, I will tell you all over again about the letter, and how my dear old father found it all out for you. And I tell you what! You shall come and live here with your sister and daughter, instead of Sapps Court.... Oh no--you shall have Dave and Dolly. They shall come too." This was Gwen's scheme, but it was no older than the mention just made of it. "I can do these things," she added. "Papa lets me do what I choose."

Old Maisie lay back, looking at the beautiful face in a kind of wonderment. The feeling it gave her that she was in the hands of some superior power was the most favourable one possible in a case where fever was the result of mental disquiet. Presently the strain on the face abated, and the wild look in the eyes. The lids drooped, then closed over them. Something like sleep followed, leaving Gwen free to rejoin old Phoebe and Ruth, outside. They were still close at hand.

"Did you hear all that?" said Gwen. It appeared that they had, or the greater part. The account of how the night had passed was postponed, owing to the arrival of Dr. Nash.

"I would sooner give her no drugs of any sort," said he, when he had taken a good look at the patient. "I will leave something for her to take if she doesn't get sleep naturally. Otherwise the choice is between giving her something harmless to make her believe she is taking medicine, and telling her she has nothing whatever the matter with her. I incline to the last. Get her to take food whenever you can. Always have something ready for her whenever's there a chance. I expect you to see to that, Widow Thrale. And, Lady Gwendolen, you are good for her--remember that! You've got to pretend you're God Almighty--do you understand?" It goes without saying that by this time no one else was within hearing.

"I understand perfectly," said Gwen. "That little doze she had just now was because I pledged myself and my father to the reality of the whole thing. She had got to think it was all a dream."

She suppressed, as the sort of thing for London, a thought that came into her head at this moment, that it was the first time the family coronet had been of the slightest use to any living creature! Not here, with the hush of the Feudal System still on the land, and the old church at Chorlton's monotonous belfry calling its flock to celebrate the Third Sunday in Advent. For next Sunday was Christmas Eve, and old Maisie's eighty-first birthday. Next Monday was old Phoebe's, with just the stroke of midnight between them.

Gwen seized the opportunity to get from Dr. Nash a fuller account of his disclosure to old Phoebe. He told her what we know already.

"Only I'm due at the other end of the village," said he, ending up. He looked at his watch. "I've got five minutes.... Yes--it was the small boy's letter that did the job. I had been hammering away at the old lady to get the thin of the wedge in, and I assure you it was useless. Worse than useless! So I gave it up. But I suspect that some shot of mine hit the mark, without my seeing it. Something had made her susceptible. And when the kid's letter came, that did it. I wasn't there."

"Oh--then you only heard...."

"I was called back. I found the old body gone off in a faint, and the letter on the floor--at least, on the baby. I've got it in my pocket, I do believe.... No, I haven't!"

"What's this on the window-ledge? This is Dave's hand." But Gwen saw that it was directed to "Old Mrs. Picture Strides Cotage Chorlton under bradBury." She opened it without remorse, and the doctor said:--"Of course! He wrote two. That one's to t'other old lady. Just the same, I expect."

It was, word for word. But it had a short postscript:--"When you come back me and Dolly shall give you tea it is stood ready and grany maroBone too."

"Poor little people!" said Gwen. "How they will feel it! But I mustn't keep you, doctor."

And then, after a word or two to Widow Thrale, Dr. Nash drove off through the snow, now thickening.

Gwen, you see, was quite alive to the situation; perhaps indeed she was ready to put a worse construction on it than the doctor. He had seen so many a spark of life, far nearer extinction than old Maisie's, flicker up and grow and grow, and end by steady burning through its appointed time, that no amount of mere attenuation frightened him. Gwen, on the other hand, could not bring herself to believe that any creature so frail would stand the strain of such an earthquake of sensibilities. Unless indeed some change for the better showed itself in a few hours, she must succumb. Probably she was only relieving the tension of her own feelings by looking facts fiercely in the face. It is a common attitude of inexperience, under like circumstances. Dr. Nash certainly had said to her that "the strength was well maintained." But do we not all of us accept that phrase as an ill-omen--a vulture in the desert? No--no! Look the facts in the face! Glare at them!

Returning to the bedside, where Granny Marrable was sitting in her arm-chair beside her sister, who was quiet--possibly sleeping--she took the opportunity to note the changes that Time had wrought in each twin. The moment she came to look for them, she began to marvel that she had never seen the similarities; for instance, scarcely a month since, when the two were face to face outside this house, and each looked at the other, and neither said or thought:--"How like myself!" Was it possible that they were really more unlike then?--that the storm which had passed over both had told more, relatively, on the healthy village dame, kept blooming by a life whose cares were little more than healthy excitements, than on the mere derelict of so many storms, any one enough to send it to the bottom? There was little work left for Time or Calamity to do on that old face on the pillow; while even this four-and-twenty-hours of overwrought excitement had left its mark upon old Phoebe. Gwen saw that the faces were the same, past dispute, as soon as she compared them point by point.

Once seen, the thing grew, and became strange and unearthly, almost a discomfort. Gwen went back into the kitchen, where she found Ruth, affecting some housework but without much heart in it. She too was showing the effects of the night and day just passed, her heavy eyelids fighting with their weight, not successfully; her restless hands protesting against yawns; trying to curb rebellious lips, in vain.

"I can see the likeness now," said Gwen, thinking it best to talk.

"Between mother and--my mother?" was Ruth's reply. How else could she have said it, without beginning to call old Phoebe her aunt?

Gwen saw the embarrassment, and skipped explanation. "Why not call her Mrs. Picture--little Dave's name?" Then she felt this was a mistake, and added:--"No, I suppose that wouldn't do!"

"Something will come, to say, in time. One's head goes, now." Ruth went on to speak of her childish recollection of the news of her mother's death--quite a vivid memory--when she was nearly nine years old. "I was quite a big little maid when the letter came. We got it out, you know, just now. And, oh, how sick it made me!"

"I should like so much to see it," said Gwen. Her young ladyship's lightest wish was law, and Ruth nearly went to seek the letter. Gwen had to be very emphatic that another time would do, to stop her.

"Then I will get it out presently, and give it to your ladyship to take away and read," said Ruth, and went back to what she was saying. "That is how I came to be able to call her my mother, at once. I mean the moment I knew she was not Mrs. Prichard. Now that I know it, I keep looking at her dear old face to make it out the same face that I kept on thinking my mother in Australia had, all the time I thought she was living there away from us. And if I had never known she died--I mean had we never thought her dead--I would have gone on thinking the same face. Oh, such a beautiful young face! Exactly like what mother's was then!--the same face for her that it was when I last saw it...."

"I see. And when you look at your--your aunt's face, you naturally do not look for what she was forty years ago."

"That is it, your ladyship. Because I have had mother to go by, all the time. She has always been the same she was last week--last month--last year--any time. What must it be to her, to see me what I am!"

"I don't believe it is harder for her to think about than it is for you. She is feverish now, and that makes her wander. People are always worse in the morning. Dr. Nash says so. I thought yesterday she seemed so clear--almost understood it all." Thus Gwen, not over-sure of her facts.

"She was worse," said Ruth, thinking back into the recent events, "that evening I showed her the mill. That was her bad time. Who knows but that has made it easier for her now? I shouldn't wonder.... And to think that I thought her mad, and never guessed who I was, myself, all that time."

"Was that the model?" said Gwen, thinking that anything the mind could rest on might make the thing more real for Ruth. "Do you know I have only half seen it? I should so like to see it again. Why have you covered it up?" A few words explained this, and the mill was again put on the table. If the little dolly figures had only possessed faculties, they would have wondered why, after all these years, they were awakening such an interest among the big movable creatures outside the glass. How they would have wondered at Gwen's next words:--"And those two have lived to be eighty years old and are in the next room!"

Then she was not sure she had not made matters worse. "Oh dear!" said Widow Thrale, "it is all impossible--impossible! This was old when I was a child."

Gwen was not prepared to submit to Time's tyranny. "What does it matter?" said she intrepidly. "There is no need for possibility, that I can see. She is here, and the thing to think of now is--how can we keep her? It will all seem natural in three weeks. See now, how they know one another, and talk of old times already. She may live another five--ten--fifteen years. Who can say?"

"She is talking to mother now, I think," said Widow Thrale, listening. For the voices of the twins came from the bedroom. "Suppose we go back!"

"Yes--and you look at the two faces together, this time."

"I will look," was the reply, with a shade of doubt in it that added:--"I may not see the resemblance."

Gwen went first. The two old faces were close together as they entered, and she could see, more plainly than she had ever seen it yet, their amazing similarity. She could see how much thinner old Maisie was of the two. It was very visible in the hand that touched her sister's, which was strong and substantial by comparison.

The monotonous bells at Chorlton Church had said all they could to convince its congregation that the time had come for praise and prayer; and had broken into impatient thrills and jerks that seemed to say:--"If you don't come for this, nothing will fetch you!" The wicked man who had been waiting to go for a brisk walk as soon as the others had turned away from their wickedness, and were safe in their pews making the responses, was getting on his thickest overcoat and choosing which stick he would have, or had already decided that the coast was clear, and had started. Old Maisie's face on the pillow was attentive to the bells. She looked less feverish, and they were giving her pleasure.

What was that she was saying, about some bells? "Old Keturah's husband the sexton used to ring them. You remember him, Phoebe darling?--him and his wart. We thought it would slice off with a knife, like the topnoddy on a new loaf if one was greedy.... And you remember how we went up his ladder into the belfry, and I was frightened because it jumped?"

Old Phoebe remembered. "Yes, indeed! And old Jacob saying if he could clamber up at ninety-four, we could at fourteen. Then we pulled the bells. After that he would let us ring the curfew."

Just at that moment the last jerk cut off the last thrill of the chimes at Chorlton, and the big bell started thoughtfully to say it was eleven o'clock. Old Maisie seemed suddenly disquieted. "Phoebe darling!" she said. And then, touching her sister's hand, with a frightened voice:--"This is Phoebe, is it not?... No, it is not my eyes--it is my head goes!" For Gwen had said:--"Yes, this is your sister. Do you not see her?" She then went on:--"My dear--my dear!--I am keeping you from church. I want not to. I want not to."

"Never mind church for one day, dear," said Granny Marrable. "Parson he won't blame me, stopping away this once. More by token, if he does miss seeing me, he'll just think I'm at Denby's."

"But, Phoebe--Phoebe!--think of long ago, how I would try to persuade you to stop away just once, to please me--just only once! And now ..." She seemed to have set her heart on her sister's going; a sort of not very explicable tribute to "auld lang syne."

Gwen caught what seemed a clue to her meaning. "I see," said she. "You want to make up for it now. Isn't that it?"

"Yes--yes--yes! And Ruth must go with her to take care of her.... Oh, Phoebe, why should you be so much stronger than me?" She meant perhaps, why should her sister's strength be taken for granted?

Gwen looked at Granny Marrable, who was hesitating. Her look meant:--"Yes--go! Why not?" A nod thrown in meant:--"Better go!" She looked round for Ruth, to get her sanction or support, but Ruth was no longer in the room. "What has become of Mrs. Thrale?" said Gwen.

Ruth had vanished into the front-room, and there Gwen found her, looking white. "I saw it," said she. "And it frightened me. I am a fool--why have I not seen it before?"

Gwen said:--"Oh, I see! You mean the likeness? Yes--it's--it's startling!" Then she told of old Maisie's sudden whim about the service at Chorlton Church. "As your ladyship thinks best!" said Ruth. Her ladyship did think it best, on the whole. It would be best to comply with every whim--could only have a sedative effect. She herself would remain beside "your mother" while the two were away. Would they not be very late? Oh, that didn't matter! Besides, everyone was late. Granny Marrable and Ruth were soon in trim for a hasty departure. But as they went away Ruth slipped into Lady Gwen's hand the accursed letter, as promised. She had brought it out into the daylight again, unwillingly enough.

That was how it came about that Gwen found herself alone with old Maisie that morning.

"My dear--my dear!" said the old lady, as soon as Gwen was settled down beside her, "if it had not been for you, I should have died and never seen them--my sister and my Ruth.... I think I am sure that it is they, come back.... It is--oh, it is--my Phoebe and my little girl.... Oh, say it is. I like you to say it." She caught Gwen by the arm, speaking low and quickly, almost whispering.

"Of course it is. And they have gone to church. They will be back to dinner at one. Perhaps you will be strong enough to sit up at table.... Oh no!--that certainly is not them back again. I think it is Elizabeth--from next door; I don't know her name--putting the meat down to roast.... Yes--she has her own Sunday dinner to attend to, but she says she can be in both houses at once. I heard her say so to your sister." Gwen felt it desirable to dwell on the relationship, when chances occurred.

"Elizabeth-next-door. I remember her when Ruth was Widow Thrale--it seems so long ago now!... Yes--I wished Phoebe to go to church, because she always wished to go. Besides, it made it like then."

"'Made it like then?'" Gwen was not sure she followed this.

"Yes--like then, when the mill was, and our father. Only before I married and went away he made us go with him, always. He was very strict. It was after that I would persuade Phoebe to leave me behind when she went on Sunday. It was when she was married to Uncle Nicholas who was drowned. We always called him Uncle Nicholas, because of my little Ruth."

Gwen thought a moment whether anything would be gained by clearing up this confusion. Old Maisie's belief in "Uncle Nicholas's" death by drowning, fifty years ago, clung to her mind, as a portion of a chaotic past no visible surrounding challenged. It was quite negligible--that was Gwen's decision. She held her tongue.

But nothing of the Chaos was negligible. Every memory was entangled with another. A sort of affright seemed to seize upon old Maisie, making her hand tighten suddenly on Gwen's arm. "Oh, how was that--how was that?" she cried. "They were together--all together!"

"It was only what the letter said," answered Gwen. "It was all a made-up story. Uncle Nicholas was not drowned, any more than your sister, or your child."

"Oh dear!" Old Maisie's hand went to her forehead, as though it stunned her to think.

"They will tell you when he died, soon, when you have got more settled. I don't know."

"He must be dead, because Phoebe is a widow."

"She is the widow of the husband she married after his death. That is why her name is Marrable, not ... Cropworthy--was it?"

"Not Cropworthy--Cropredy. Such a funny name we thought it.... But then--Phoebe must think...."

"Think what?"

"Must think I married again. Because I am Mrs. Prichard."

"Perhaps she does think so. Why are you Mrs. Prichard? Don't tell me now if it tires you to talk."

"It does not tire me. It is easier to talk than to think. I took the name of Prichard because I wanted it all forgotten."

"About your husband having been--in prison?"

"Oh no, no! I was not ashamed about that. He was wrong, but it was only money. It was my son.... Oh yes--he was transported too--but that was after.... It was only a theft. I cannot talk about my son." Gwen felt that she shuddered, and that danger lay that way. The fever might return. She cast about for anything that would divert the conversation from that terrible son. Dave and Dolly, naturally.

"Stop a minute," said she. "You have never seen Dave's letter that he wrote to say he knew all about it." And she went away to the front room to get it.

A peaceful joint was turning both ways at the right speed by itself. The cat, uninterested, was consulting her own comfort, and the cricket was persevering for ever in his original statement. Saucepans were simmering in conformity, with perfect faith in the reappearance of the human disposer of their events, in due course. Dave's letter lay where Gwen had left it, between the flower-pots on the window-shelf. She picked it up and went back with it to the bedside.

"You must have your spectacles and read it yourself. Can you? Where shall I find them?"

"I think my Ruth has put them in the watch-pocket with my watch, over my head here." She could make no effort to reach them, but Gwen drew out both watch and glasses. "What a pretty old watch!" said she.

It pleased the old lady to hear her watch admired. "I had it when I went out to my husband." She added inexplicably:--"The man brought it back to me for the reward. He had not sold it." Then she told, clearly enough, the tale you may remember her telling to Aunt M'riar; about the convict at Chatham, who brought her a letter from her husband on the river hulk. "Over fifty years ago now, and it still goes. Only it loses--and gains.... But show me my boy's letter." She got her glasses on, with Gwen's help, and read. The word "cistern" was obscure. She quite understood what followed, saying:--"Oh, yes--so much longer ago than Dolly's birthday! And we did--we did--think we were dead and buried. The darling boy!"

"He means each thought the other was. I told him." Gwen saw that the old face looked happy, and was pleased. She began to think she would be easy in her mind at Pensham, to-morrow, about old Mrs. Picture, and able to tell the story to her blind lover with a light heart.

Old Maisie had come to the postscript. "What is this at the end?" said she. "'The tea is stood ready' for me. And for Granny Marrowbone too." Gwen saw the old face looking happier than she had seen it yet, and was glad to answer:--"Yes--I saw the tea 'stood ready' by your chair. All but the real sugar and milk. Dolly sits beside it on the floor--all her leisure time I believe--and dreams of bliss to come. Dave sympathizes at heart, but affects superiority. It's his manhood." Old Maisie said again:--"The darling children!" and kept on looking at the letter.

Gwen's satisfaction at this was to be dashed slightly. For she found herself asked, to her surprise, "Who is Granny Marrowbone?" She replied:--"Of course Dave wants his other Granny, from the country." She waited for an assent, but none came.

Instead, old Maisie said reflectively, as though recalling an incident of some interest:--"Oh yes!--Granny Marrowbone was his other Granny in the country, where he went to stay, and saw Jones's Bull. I think she must be a nice old lady." Gwen said nothing. Better pass this by; it would be forgotten.

But the strong individuality of that Bull came in the way. Had not they visited him together only the other day? He struck confusion into memory and oblivion alike. The face Gwen saw, when the letter that hid it fell on the coverlid, was almost terrified. "Oh, see the things I say!" cried old Maisie, in great distress of mind. "How am I ever to know it right?" She clung to Gwen's hand in a sort of panic. In a few moments she said, in an awed sort of voice:--"Was that Phoebe, then, that I saw when we stopped at the Cottage, in the carriage, after the Bull?"

"Yes, dear! And you are in the Cottage now. And Phoebe is coming back soon. And Ruth."

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Chapter XXIII

CATHERINE WHEELS. CENTIPEDES. CENTENARIANS. BACKGAMMON. IT. HEREAFTER CORNER. LADY KATHERINE STUARTLAVEROCK. BISHOP BERKELEY. THE COUNTESS'S VISIT REVIEWED. A CODEX OF HUMAN WEAKNESS. AN EXPOSITION OF SELFISHNESS. HOW ADRIAN WOULD HOLD ON LIKE GRIM DEATH. A BELDAM, CRONE, HAG, OR DOWDY. SUICIDE. THE LITTLE BOTTLE OF INDIAN POISON. MORE SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. GWEN'S DAILY BULLETINS. ONESIMUS. TURTLE SOUP AND CHAMPAGNE. FOXBOURNE. HOW THEY WENT TO CHORLTON, AND ANOTHER DOG SMELT ACHILLES

As he who has godfathered a Catherine Wheel stands at a respectful distance while it spits and fizzes, so may the story that reunites lovers who have been more than a week apart. The parallel, however, does not hold good throughout, for the Catherine Wheel usually gets stuck after ignition, and has to be stimulated judiciously, while lovers--if worth the name--go off at sight. In many cases--oh, so many!--the behaviour of the Catherine Wheel is painfully true to life. Its fire-spin flags and dies and perishes, and nothing is left of it but a pitiful black core that gives a last spasmodic jump and is for ever still!

Fireworks are only referred to here in connection with the former property. When Gwen reappeared at Pensham, Miss Torrens--this is her own expression--"cleared out" until her brother and her visitor "came to their senses." The Catherine Wheel, in their case, had by that time settled down from a tempest of flame-spray to a steady lamplight, endurable by bystanders. The story need not wait quite so long, but may avail itself of the first return of sanity.

"Dearest--are you really going to stop till Saturday?"

"If you think we shan't quarrel. Four whole days and a bit at each end! I think it's tempting Providence."

"Why not stop over Sunday, and make an honourable week of it and no stinting?"

"Because I have a papa coming back to his ancestral home, on Saturday evening, and he will come back boiled and low from Bath waters, inside and out, and he'll want a daughter to give him tone. He gets rid of the gout, but ..."

"But. Exactly! It's the insoluble residuum that comes back. However, you will be here till Friday night."

"Can't even promise that! I may be sent for."

"Why?... Oh, I know--the old lady. How is she? Tell me more about her. Tell me lots about her."

Whereupon Gwen, who had been looking forward to doing so, started on an exhaustive narrative of her visit to Strides Cottage. She had not got far when Irene thought it safe to return--hearing probably the narrative tone of voice--and then she had to tell it all over again.

"When I left the Cottage yesterday at about three o'clock," said Gwen, in conclusion, "she was so much better that I felt quite hopeful about her."

"Quite hopeful about her?" Irene repeated. "But if she has nothing the matter with her, except old age, why be anything but hopeful?"

"You would see if you saw her. She looks as if a puff of wind would blow her away like thistledown."

"That," Adrian said, "is a good sign. There is no guarantee of a long life like attenuation. Bloated people die shortly after you make their acquaintance. No, no--for true vitality, give me your skeleton! A healthy old age really sets in as soon as one is spoken of as still living."

"Oh dear, yes!" said Irene. "I'm sure Gwen's description sounds exactly like this old lady becoming a ... There!--I've forgotten the word! Something between a centipede and a Unitarian...."

"Centenarian?"

"Exactly. See what a good thing it is to have a brother that knows things. A person a hundred years old. I tell you, Gwen dear, my own belief is these two old ladies mean to be centenarians, and if we live long enough we shall read about them in the newspapers. And they will have a letter from Royalty!"

In the evening Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions were not serious, on a more sane and responsible line of thought. His lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to become acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance of symptoms on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, had given her its blessing and dropped a tear by implication over her early departure from it. Sir Hamilton had involved his daughter in a vortex of backgammon, a game draught-players detest, and vice versa, because the two games are even as Box and Cox, in homes possessing only one board. So Gwen and Adrian had themselves to themselves, and wanted nothing more. Her eyes rested now and then with a new curiosity on the Baronet, deep in his game at the far end of the room. She was looking at him by the light of his handsome daughter's saucy speculation about that romantic passage in the lives of himself and her mamma. Suppose--she was saying to herself, with monstrous logic--he had been my papa, and I had had to play backgammon with him!

She was recalled from one such excursion of fancy by Adrian saying:--"Are you sure it would not have been better for the old twins--or one of them--to die and the other never be any the wiser?"

Said Gwen:--"I am not sure. How can I be? But it was absolutely impossible to leave them there, knowing it, unconscious of each other's existence."

Adrian replied:--"It was impossible. I see that. But suppose they had remained in ignorance--in the natural order of events I mean--and the London one had died unknown to her sister, would it not have been better than this reunion, with all its tempest of pain and raking up of old memories, and quite possibly an early separation by death?"

"I think not, on the whole. Because, suppose one had died, and the other had come to know of her death afterwards!"

"I am supposing the contrary. Suppose both had continued in ignorance! How then?"

It was not a question to answer off-hand. Gwen pondered; then said abruptly:--"It depends on whether we go on or stop. Now doesn't it?"

"As bogys? That question always crops up. If we stop I don't see how there can be any doubt on the matter. Much better they should have died in ignorance. The old Australian goody was quite contented, as I understand, at Scraps Court, with her little boy and girl to make tea for her. And the old body at Chorlton and her daughter would have gone on quite happily. They didn't want to be excoriated by a discovery."

"Yes--that is what it has been. Excoriation by a discovery. I'm not at all sure you're right--but I'll make you a present of it. Let's consider it settled that death in ignorance would have been the best thing for them."

"Very well!--what next?"

"What next? Why, of course, suppose we don't stop, but go on! You often say it is ten to one against it."

"So it is. I can't say I'm sorry, on the whole."

"That's neither here nor there. Ten to one against is one to ten for. Any man on the turf will tell you that."

"And any Senior Wrangler will confirm it."

"Very well, then! There we are. Suppose my dear old Mrs. Picture and Granny Marrable had turned up as ghosts, on the other side...."

"I see. You've got me in Hereafter Corner, and you don't intend to let me out."

"Not till you tell me whether they would have been happy or miserable about it, those two ghosts. In your opinion, of course! Don't run away with the idea that I think you infallible."

"There are occasions on which I do not think myself infallible. For instance, when I have to decide an apparently insoluble problem without data of any sort. Your expression 'turned up as ghosts, on the other side,' immediately suggests one."

"You can say whether you think they would have been happy or miserable about having been in England together over twenty years, and never known it. That's simple enough!"

"Don't be in a hurry! There are complications. If they knew they were ghosts, they might become interested in the novelty of their position, and be inclined to accept accomplished facts. Recrimination would be waste of time. If they didn't know ..."

"Goose!--they would be sure to know."

"The only information I have goes to prove the contrary. When Voltaire's ghost came and spirit-rapped, or whatever you call it ..."

"I know. One turns tables, and it's very silly."

"... they said triumphantly that they supposed, now he was dead, he was convinced of another existence. And he--or it--rapped out:--'There is only one existence. I am not dead.' So he didn't know he was a ghost."

Gwen seemed tolerant of Voltaire, as a pourparler. "Perhaps," she said thoughtfully, "he found he jammed up against the other ghosts instead of coinciding with them.... You know Lady Katherine Stuartlaverock tried to kiss her lover's ghost, and he gave, and she went through."

"A very interesting incident," said Adrian. "If she had been a ghost, too, she would, as you say, have jammed. If Dr. Johnson had known that story, he would have been more reasonable about Bishop Berkeley.... What did he say about him? Why, he kicked a cask, and said if the Bishop could do that, and not be convinced of the reality of matter, he would be a fool, Sir. I wonder if one said 'Sir,' as often as Dr. Johnson, one would be allowed to talk as much nonsense."

"Boswell must have made that story."

"Very likely. But Boswell made Sam Johnson. Just as we only know of the existence of Matter through our senses, so we only know of Sam's existence through Bozzy. I am conscious that I am becoming prosy. Let's get back to the old ladies."

"Well--it was you that doddered away from them, to talk about Voltaire's bogy. If they didn't know they were ghosts, what then?"

"If they didn't know they were ghosts, the discovery would have been just as excoriating as it has been here. Possibly worse, because--what does one know? Now your full-blown disembodied spirit ... Mind you, this is only my idea, and may be quite groundless!..."

"Now you've apologized, go on! 'Your full-blown disembodied spirit' ..."

"... may be so absorbed in the sudden and strange surprise of the change--Browning--as to be quite unable to partake of excruciation, even with a twin sister.... It is very disagreeable to think of, I admit. But so is nearly every concrete form in which one clothes an imaginary other-worldliness."

"Why is it disagreeable to think of being able to shake off one's troubles, and forget all about them. I like it."

"Well, I admit that I was beginning to say that I thought these two venerable ladies, meeting as ghosts--not spectres you know, in which case each would frighten t'other and both would run away--would probably be as superior to painful memories on this side as the emancipated butterfly is to its forgotten wiggles as a chrysalis. But it has dawned upon me that Perfect Beings won't wash, and that the Blessed have drawbacks, and that their Choir would pall. I am inclined to back out, and decide that the two of them would have been more miserable if the discovery had come upon them post mortem than they will be now--in a little time at least. At first of course it must be maddening to think of the twenty odd years they have been cheated out of. Really the Divine Disposer of Events might have had a little consideration for the Dramatis Personae." He jumped to another topic. "You know your mamma paid our papa a visit last--last Thursday, wasn't it?--yes, Thursday!"

"Oh yes--I heard all about it. She had a short chat with him, and he gave her a very good cup of tea. He told her about some very old acquaintances whom she hadn't heard of for years who live in Tavistock Square."

"Was that all?"

"No. The lady very-old acquaintance had been a Miss Tyrawley, and had married her riding-master."

"Was that all?"

"No. She called you and 'Re 'the son and daughter.' Then she talked of our 'engagement as your father persists in calling it.' My blood boiled for quite five minutes."

"All that sounds--very usual! Was there nothing else? That was very little for such a long visit."

"How long was the visit?"

"Much too long for what you've told me. Think of something else!"

Now Gwen had been keeping something back. Under pressure she let it out. "Well--mamma thought fit to say that your father entirely shared her views! Was that true?"

"Which of her views?... I suppose I know, though! I should say it was half-true--truish, suppose we call it!" Then Adrian began to feel he had been rash. How was he to explain to Gwen that his father thought she was perhaps--to borrow his own phrase--"sacrificing herself on his shrine"? It would be like calling on her to attest her passion for him. Now a young lady is at liberty to make any quantity of ardent protestations off her own bat, as the cricketers say; but a lover cannot solicit testimonials, to be produced if called for by parents or guardians. However, Gwen had no intention of leaving explanation to him. She continued:--

"When my mother said that your father entirely shared her views, I know which she meant, perfectly well. She has got a foolish idea into her head--and so has my dear old papa, so she's not alone--that I am marrying you to make up to you for ... for the accident." She found it harder and harder to speak of the nature of the accident. This once, she must do it, coute que coute. She went on, speaking low that nothing should reach the backgammon-players. "They say it was our fault that old Stephen shot you.... Well!--it was...."

"My darling, I have frequently pointed out the large share the Primum Mobile had in the matter, to say nothing of the undoubted influence of Destiny...."

"Silly man--I am talking seriously. I don't know that it really matters whether it was or wasn't--wasn't our fault, I mean--so long as they think I think it was. That's the point. Now, the question is, did or did not my superior mamma descend on your comme-il-faut parent to drum this idea into him, and get him on her side?"

"Am I supposed to know?"

"Yes."

"Then I will be frank with you. Always be frank with mad bulls who butt you into corners and won't let you out. Your mamma's communications with my papa had the effect you indicate, and he took me into his confidence the same evening. He too questions the purity of your motives in marrying me, alleging that they are vitiated by a spirit of self-sacrifice, tainted by the baneful influence of unselfishness. He is alive to the possibility that you hate me cordially, but are pretending."

"Oh, my dearest, I wish I did hate you.... Why?--why of course then it would really be a sacrifice, and something to boast of. As it is.... Well--I'm consulting my own convenience, and I ... I am the best judge of my own affairs. It suits me to ... to lead you to the altar, and I shall do it. As for what other people think, all I can say is, I will thank Europe to mind its own business."

Then Adrian said:--"I am conscious of the purity of my own motives. I believe it would be impossible to discover a case of a Selfishness more unalloyed than mine, if all the records of Human Weakness were carefully re-read by experts at the British Museum. I am assuming the existence of some Digest or Codex of the rather extensive material...."

"Don't go off to that. I always have such difficulty in keeping you to the point. How selfish are you, and why?"

"I doubt if I can succeed in telling you how selfish I am, but there's no harm in trying." Speech hung fire for a moment, to seek for words; then found them. "I am a thing in the dark, with an object, and I call it Gwen. I am an atom adrift in a huge black silence, and it crushes my soul, and I am misery itself. Then I hear the voice that I call Gwen's, and forthwith I am happy beyond the wildest dreams of the Poets--though really that isn't saying much, because their wildest dreams are usually unintelligible, and frequently ungrammatical...."

"Never mind them! Go on with how selfish you are."

"Can't you let a poor beggar get to the end of his parenthesis? I was endeavouring to sketch the situation, as a preliminary to going on with how selfish I am. I was remarking that however dissatisfied I feel with the Most High, however sulky I am with the want of foresight in the Primum Mobile--or his indifference to my interests; it comes to the same thing--however inclined to cry out against the darkness, the darkness that once was light, I no sooner hear that voice that I call Gwen's than I am at least in the seven-hundredth heaven of happiness. When I hear that voice, I am all Christian forgiveness towards my Maker. When it goes, my heart is dumb and the darkness gains upon me. That I beg to state, is a simple prosaic statement of an everyday fact. When I have added that the powers that I ascribe to the voice that I know to be Gwen's are also inherent in the hand that I believe to be Gwen's.... Don't pull it away!"

"I only wanted to look at it. Just to see why you shouldn't know it was mine, as well as the voice."

"I know I couldn't be mistaken about the voice. I don't think I could be wrong about the hand, but I don't know that I couldn't."

"Well--now you've got it again! Now go on. Go on to how selfish you are--that's what I want!"

"I will endeavour to do so. I hope my imperfect indication of my view of my own position...."

"Don't be prosy. It is not fair to expect any girl to keep a popular lecturer's head in her lap...."

"I agree--I agree. It was my desire to be strictly practical. I will come to the point. I want to make it perfectly clear that you are my life...."

"Don't get too loud!"

"All right!... that you are my life--my life--my glorious life! I want you to see and know that but for you I am nothing--a wisp of straw blown about by all the winds of Heaven--a mere unit of consciousness in a blank, black void. See what comes of it! Here was I, before this unfortunate result of what is from my point of view a lamentable miscarriage of Destiny, a tolerably well-informed ... English male!... Well--what else am I?... Sonneteer, suppose we say...."

"Goose--suppose we say--or gander!"

"All right! Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and now look at me!"

"Well--I'm looking at you!"

"Am I showing the slightest consideration for you? Am I not showing the most cynical disregard of your welfare in life?"

"How?"

"By allowing you to throw yourself away upon me."

"It is no concern of yours what I do with myself. I do not intend you to have any voice in the matter. Besides--just be good enough to tell me, please!--suppose you made up your mind not to allow me, how would you set about it?"

This was a poser, and the gentleman was practically obliged to acknowledge it. "I couldn't say off-hand," said he. "I should have to consult materfamiliases in Good Society, and look up precedents. Several will occur at once to the student of Lempriere, some of which might be more to the point than anything Holy Writ offers in illustration. But all the cases I can recall at a moment's notice are vitiated by the motives of their male actors. These motives were pure--they were pure self-indulgence. In fact, their attitude towards their would-be charmers had the character of a sauve-qui-peut. It was founded on strong personal dislike, and has lent itself to Composition in the hands of the Old Masters...."

"Now I don't know what you are talking about. Answer my question and don't prevaricate. How would you set about it?"

"How indeed?" There was a note of seriousness in Adrian's voice, and Gwen welcomed it, saying:--"That's right!--stop talking nonsense and tell me." It became more audible as he continued:--"You are only asking me because you know I cannot answer. Was ever a case known of a man who cried off because the lady's relatives thought she didn't care about him? What did he do? Did he write her a letter, asking her to consider everything at an end between them until she could produce satisfactory evidence of an unequivocal sehnsucht of the exactly right quality--premier cru--when her restatement of the case would receive careful consideration? Rubbish!"

"Not rubbish at all! He wrote her that letter and she wrote back requesting him to look out for another young woman at his earliest convenience, because she wasn't his sort. She did, indeed! But she certainly was rather an unfortunate young woman, to be trothplight to such a very good and conscientious young man."

"Rem tetigisti acu," said Adrian. "Never mind what that means. It's Latin.... Well then!--it means you've hit it. The whole gist of the matter lies in my being neither good nor conscientious. I am a mass of double-dyed selfishness. I would not give you up--it's very sad, but it's true!--even for your own sake. I would not lose a word from your lips, a touch of your hand, an hour of your presence, to have back my eyesight and with it all else the world has to give, all else than this dear self that I may never see...."

"I'm glad you said may."

"Yes, of course it's may. We mustn't forget that. But, dearest, I tell you this, that if I were to get my sight again, and your august mammy's impression were to turn out true after all, and you come to be aware that, pity apart, your humble servant was not such a very...."

"What should you do if I did?"

"Shall I tell you? I should show the cloven foot. I should betray the unreasoning greed of my soul. I should never let you go, even if I had to resort to the brutality of keeping you to your word. I should simply hold on like grim death. Would you hate me for it?"

"N-no! I'm not sure that I should. We should see." Certainly the beautiful face that looked down at the eyes that could not see it showed no visible displeasure--quite the reverse. "But suppose I did! Suppose is a game that two can play at."

"Very proper, and shows you understand the nature of an hypothesis. What should I do?... What should I do?"

Gwen offered help to his perplexity. "And suppose that when you came to see your bargain you had found out your mistake! Suppose that Arthur's Bridge turned out all an Arabian Night! Suppose that the ... well--satisfactory personnel your imagination has concocted turned out to be that of a beldam, crone, hag, or dowdy! How then?"

Instead of replying, Adrian drew his hands gently over the face above him, caressingly over the glorious mass of golden hair and round the columnar throat Bronzino would have left reluctantly alone. Said Irene, from the other end of the room:--"Are you trying Mesmeric experiments, you two?"

"He's only doing it to make sure I'm not a beldam," said Gwen innocently. But to Adrian she added under her breath:--"It's only Irene, so it doesn't matter. Only it shows how cautious one has to be." The Baronet, attracted for one moment from his fascinating dice, contributed a fragment to the conversation, and died away into backgammon. "Hey--eh!--what's that?" said he. "Mesmerism--Mesmerism--why, you don't mean to say you believe in that nonsense!" After which Gwen and Adrian were free to go on wherever they left off, if they could find the place.

She found it first. "Yes--I know. 'Beldam, crone, hag, or dowdy!' Of course. What I mean is--if it dawned on you that you were mistaken about my identity ... I want you to be serious, because the thing is possible ... what would you do?"

"There are so many supposes. Suppose you hated me and I thought you a beldam! Practice would seem to suggest fresh fields and pastures new.... But oh, the muddy, damp fields and the desolate, barren pastures.... I know one thing I should do. I should wish myself back here in the dark, with my feet spoiling the sofa cushion, and my head in the lap of my dear delusion--my heavenly delusion. God avert my disillusionment! I would not have my eyesight back at the price."

"Don't get excited! Remember we are only pretending."

"Not at all! I am being serious, because the thing is possible. Do you know I can imagine nothing worse than waking from a dream such as I have dreamt. It would be really the worst--worse than if you were to die, or change...."

"I can't see that."

"Clearly. I should not have the one great resource."

"What resource?... Oh, I see!--you are working round to suicide. I thought we should come to that."

"Naturally, one who is not alive to the purely imaginary evil of non-existence turns to his felo de se as his sheet-anchor. Persons who conceive that the large number of non-existent persons have a legitimate grievance, on the score of never having been created at all, will think otherwise. We must agree to differ."

"But how very unreasonable of you not to kill yourself!--I mean in the case of my not--not visualising well...."

"Quite the reverse. Most reasonable. We are supposing three courses open to Destiny. One, to kill you, lawlessly--Destiny being notoriously lawless. Another to make you change your mind. A third to make me change mine. The reasonableness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if Death is not annihilation. I should catch you up. In the second, all the Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the dark, without you, here and now. In the third case I should have no one but myself to thank for a weak concession to Destiny, and it would be most unfair to kill myself without your consent, freely given. And I am by no means sure that by giving that consent you would not be legally an accomplice in my felo de se. Themis is a colossal Meddlesome Matty with her fingers in every pie."

"Bother Themis! What a lot of nonsense! However, there was one gleam of reason. You are alive to the fact that I should not consent to your suicide. Or anyone else's. I think it's wrong to kill oneself."

"So do I. But it might be a luxury I should not deny myself under some circumstances. I don't know that Hamlet would influence me. A certain amount of nervousness about Eternity is inseparable from our want of authentic information. I should hope for a healthy and effectual extinction. Failing that, I should disclaim all responsibility. I should point out that it lay, not with me, but my Maker. I should dwell on the fact that Creators that make Hereafters are alone answerable for the consequences; that I had never been consulted as to my own wishes about birth and parentage; and that I should be equally contented to be annulled, and, as Mrs. Bailey would have said, ill-convenience nobody...."

"Do you know why I am letting you go on?"

"Because of my Religious Tone? Because of my Good Taste? Or why?"

"Because I sometimes suspect you of being in earnest about suicide."

"I am quite in earnest."

"Very well, then. Now attend to me. I'm going to insist on your making me a promise."

"Then I shall have to make it. But I don't know till I hear it whether I shall promise to keep it."

"That's included."

"But no promise to keep my promise to keep it's included."

"Yes it is. If you keep on, I shall keep on. So you had better stop. What you've got to promise is not to commit suicide under any circumstances whatever."

"Not under any circumstances whatever? That seems to me rather harsh and arbitrary."

"Not at all. Give me your promise."

"H'm--well!--I'm an amiable, tractable sort of cove.... But I think I am entitled to one little reservation."

"It must be a very little one."

"Anything one gives one's fiancee is returned when she breaks one off. When you break me off I shall consider the promise given back--cancelled."

"Ye-es! Perhaps that is fair, on the whole. Only I think I deserve a small consideration for allowing it."

"I can't refuse to hear what it is."

"Give me that little bottle of Indian poison. To take care of for you, you know. I'll give it back if I break you off. Honour bright!"

"I shouldn't want it till then, probably. And if I did, I could afford sixpence for Prussic acid. Fancy being able to kill oneself, or one's friends, for sixpence! It must have come to a lot more than that in the Middle Ages. We have every reason to be thankful we are Modern...."

"Don't go from the point. Will you give up the little bottle of Indian poison, or not?"

"Not. At least, not now! If I hand it to you at the altar, when you have led me there won't that do?"

Gwen considered, judicially, and appeared to be in favour of accepting the compromise. "Only remember!" said she, "if you don't produce that bottle at the altar--with the poison in it still; no cheating!--I shall cry off, in the very jaws of matrimony." She paused a moment, lest she should have left a flaw in the contract, then added:--"Whether I have led you there or not, you know! Very likely you will walk up the aisle by yourself."

If Adrian had really determined to conceal the Miss Scatcherd incident from Gwen, so as not to foster false hopes, he should have worded his reply differently. For no sooner had he said:--"Well--we are all hoping so," than Gwen exclaimed:--"Then there has been more Septimius Severus." Adrian accepted this without protest, as ordinary human speech; and the story feels confident that if its reader will be on the watch, he will very soon chance across something quite as unlike book-talk in Nature. Adrian merely said:--"How on earth did you guess that?" Gwen replied:--"Because you said, 'We are all hoping so'--not 'We hope so.' Can't you see the difference?"

Anyway, Gwen's guess was an accomplished fact, and it was no use pretending it was wrong. Said Adrian therefore:--"Yes--there was a little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd incident, checked and corrected by Irene from afar. The narrator minimised the points in favour of his flash of vision, while his commentator's corrections showed an opposite bias.

Gwen was, strange to say, really uneasy about that little bottle of Indian poison. Whether there was anything prophetic in this uneasiness, it is difficult to determine. The decision of common sense will probably be that she knew that Poets were not to be trusted, and she wished to be on the safe side. By "common sense" we mean the faculty which instinctively selects the common prejudices of its age as oriflammes to follow on Life's battlefield. Hopkins the witch-finder's common sense suggested pricking all over to find an insensible flesh-patch, in which case the prickee was a witch. We prefer to keep an open mind about Lady Gwendolen Rivers' foreboding anent that little bottle of Indian poison, until vivisection has shown us, more plainly than at present, how brain secretes Man's soul. We are aware that this language is Browning's.

* * * * *

Gwen remained at Pensham until the end of the week. Events occurred, no doubt, but, with one exception, they are outside the story. That exception was a visit to Chorlton, in order that Adrian should not remain a stranger to the interesting old twins. His interest would have been stronger no doubt could he have really seen them. Even as it was he was keenly alive to the way in which old Mrs. Prichard seemed to have fascinated Gwen, and was eager to make as much acquaintance with her as his limitations left possible to him.

Gwen contrived to arrange that she should receive every day from Chorlton not only a line from Ruth Thrale, but an official bulletin from Dr. Nash.

The first of these despatches arrived on the Tuesday afternoon, she having told her correspondents that that would be soon enough. It disappointed her. She had left the old lady so much revived by the small quantity of provisions that did duty for a Sunday dinner, that she had jumped to the conclusion that another day would see her sitting up before the fire as she had seen her in the celebrated chair with cushions at Sapps Court. It was therefore rather a damper to be told by Dr. Nash that he had felt that absolute rest continued necessary, and that he had not been able to sanction any attempt to get Mrs. Prichard up for any length of time.

Gwen turned for consolation to Widow Thrale's letter. It was a model of reserve--would not say too much. "My mother" had talked a good deal with herself and "mother" till late, but had slept fairly well, and if she was tired this morning it was no more than Dr. Nash said we were to expect. She had had a "peaceful day" yesterday, talking constantly with "mother" of their childhood, but never referring to "my father" nor Australia. Dr. Nash had said the improvement would be slow. No reference was made to any possibility of getting her into her clothes and a return to normal life.

Gwen recognised the bearer of the letters, a young native of Chorlton, when she gave him the reply she had written, with a special letter she had ready for "dear old Mrs. Picture." "I know you," said she. "How's your Bull? I hope he won't kill Farmer Jones or anyone while you're not there to whistle to him." To which the youth answered:--"Who-ap not! Sarve they roi-ut, if they dwoan't let un bid in a's stall. A penned un in afower a coomed away." Gwen thought to herself that life at Jones's farm must be painfully volcanic, and despatched the Bull's guardian genius on his cob with the largest sum of money in his pocket that he had ever possessed in his life, after learning his name, which was Onesimus.

When Onesimus reappeared with a second despatch on the afternoon of the next day, Wednesday, Gwen opened it with a beating heart in a hurry for its contents. She did as one does with letters containing news, reading persistently through to the end and taking no notice at all of Irene's interrogatory "Well?" which of course was uttered long before the quickest reader could master the shortest letter's contents. When the end came, she said with evident relief:--"Oh yes, that's all right! Now if we drive over to-morrow, she will probably be up."

"Is that what the letter says?" Adrian spoke, and Gwen, saying "He won't believe my report, you see! You read it!"--threw the letter over to Irene, who read it aloud to her brother, while Gwen looked at the other letter, from Widow Thrale.

What Irene read did not seem so very conclusive. Mrs. Prichard had had a better night, having slept six hours without a break. But the great weakness continued. If she could take a very little stimulant it would be an assistance, as it might enable her to eat more. But she had an unconquerable aversion to wine and spirits in any form, and Dr. Nash was very reluctant to force her against her will.

So said Adrian:--"What she wants is real turtle soup and champagne. I know." Whereupon his father, who was behind the Times--meaning, not the Age, but the "Jupiter" of our boyhood, looked over its title, and said:--"Champagne--champagne? There's plenty in the bin--end of the cellar--Tweedie knows. You'll find my keys on the desk there"--and went back to an absorbing leader, denouncing the defective Commissariat in the Crimea. A moment later, he remembered a thing he had forgotten--his son's blindness. "Stop a minute," he said. "I have to go, myself, later, and I may as well go now." And presently was heard discussing cellar-economics, afar, with Tweedie the butler.

The lady of the house wanted the carriage and pair next day to drive over to Foxbourne in the afternoon and wait to bring her back after the meeting. The story merely gives the bold wording used to notify the fact: it does not know what Foxbourne was, nor why there was a meeting. Its only reason for referring to them is that the party for Chorlton had to change its plans and go by the up-train from St. Everall's to Grantley Thorpe, and make it stop there specially. St. Everall's, you may remember, is the horrible new place about two miles from Pensham. The carriage could take them there and be back in plenty of time, and there was always a groggy old concern to be had at the Crown at Grantley that would run them over to Strides Cottage in half an hour. If it had been favourable weather, no doubt the long drive would have been much pleasanter; but with the chance of a heavy downfall of snow making the roads difficult, the short drives and short railway journey had advantages.

Therefore when the groggy old concern, which had seen better days--early Georgian days, probably--pulled up at Strides Cottage in the afternoon, with a black pall of cloud, whose white heralds were already coming thick and fast ahead of it, hanging over Chorlton Down, two at least of the travellers who alighted from it had misgivings that if their visit was a prolonged one, its grogginess and antiquity might stand in its way on a thick-snowed track in the dark, and might end in their being late for the down-train at six. The third of their number saw nothing, and only said:--"Hullo--snowing!" when on getting free of the concern one of the heralds aforesaid perished to convince him of its veracity; gave up the ghost between his shirt-collar and his epidermis. "Yes," he continued, addressing the first inhabitant of the cottage who greeted him. "You are quite right. I am the owner of a dog, and you do perfectly right to inquire about him. His nose is singularly unlike yours. He will detect your flavour when I return, and I shall have to allay his jealousy. It is his fault. We are none of us perfect." The dog gave a short bark which might have meant that Adrian had better hold his tongue, as anything he said might be used against him.

"Now you are in the kitchen and sitting-room I've told you of, because it's both," said Gwen. "And here is Granny Marrable herself."

"Give me hold of your hand, Granny. Because I can't see you, more's the pity! I shall hope to see you some day--like people when they want you not to call. At present my looks don't flatter me. People think I'm humbugging when I say I can't see them. I can't!"

"'Tis a small wonder, sir," said Granny Marrable, "people should be hard of belief. I would not have thought you could not, myself. But being your eyes are spared, by God's mercy, they be ready for the sight to return, when His will is."

"That's all, Granny. It's only the sight that's wanting. The eyes are as good as any in the kingdom, in themselves." This made Gwen feel dreadfully afraid Granny Marrable would think the gentleman was laughing at her. But Adrian had taken a better measure of the Granny's childlike simplicity and directness than hers. He ran on, as though it was all quite right. "Anyhow, don't run away from us to Kingdom Come just yet a while, Granny, and see if I don't come to see you and your sister--real eyesight, you know; not this make-believe! I hope she's picking up."

"She's better--because Dr. Nash says she's better. Only I wish it would come out so we might see it. But it may be I'm a bit impatient. 'Tis the time of life does it, no doubt."

Ruth Thrale returned from the inner room. "She would like her ladyship to go to her," said she. Gwen could not help noticing that somehow--Heaven knows how, but quite perceptibly--the next room seemed to claim for itself the status of an invalid chamber. She accompanied Widow Thrale, who closed the room-door behind her, apparently to secure unheard speech in the passage. "She isn't any worse, you know," said Ruth, in a reassuring manner, which made her hearer look scared, and start. "Only when she gets away to thinking of beyond the seas--that place where she was--that is bad for her, say how we may! Not that she minds talking of my father, nor my brother that died, nor any tale of the land and the people; but 'tis the coming back to make it all fit."

Gwen quite understood this, and re-worded it, for elucidation. "Of course everything clashes, and the poor old dear can't make head or tail of it! Has there been any particular thing, lately?" The reply was:--"Yes--early this morning. She woke up talking about Mrs. Skillick, the name sounded like, and how kind she was to bring her the fresh lettuces. And then she found me by her and knew I was Ruth, but was all in a maze why! Then it all seemed to come on her again, and she was in a bad upset for a while. But I did not tell mother of that. I am glad you have come, my lady. It will make her better."

"Skillick wasn't Australia," said Gwen. "It was some person she lived with here in England--not so long ago. Somewhere near London. What did you do to quiet her?"

"I talked to her about Dave and Dolly. That is always good for her--it seems to steady her. Shall we go in, my lady? I think she heard you." Again Gwen had an impression that concession had been made to the inexorable, and that whereas four days ago it was taken for granted that old Mrs. Picture's collapse was only to be temporary, a permanency of invalidism was now accepted as a working hypothesis. Only a temporary permanency, of course, to last till further notice!

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Chapter XXIV

HOW GWEN INTRODUCED MR. TORRENS, AND MRS. PICTURE TOOK HOLD OF HIS HAND. OF MR. TORREN'S FIRM FAITH IN DEVILS, AND OLD MAISIE'S HAPPINESS THEREAT. THE DOCTOR'S MEMORY OF ADRIAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE AS A CORPSE. THE LAXITY OF GENERAL PRACTIOTIONERS. HIS WISH TO INTOXICATE MRS. PRICHARD. HOW GWEN SANG GLUCK TO ADRIAN, AND ONESIMUS BROUGHT HER A LETTER. QUITE A GOOD REPORT. HOW GWEN WASN'T ANXIOUS. OF ADRIAN'S INVISIBLE MOTHER. HER SELECTNESS, AND HIGH BREEDING. ADRIAN'S VIEWS ABOUT SUICIDES. SURVIVORS' SELFISHNESS TOWARDS THEM, HOW HE TALKED ABOUT THAT DEVIL, AND LET OUT THAT THE OLD LADY HAD FLASHED ACROSS HIS RETINA. HOW HE HAD CLOTHED EACH TWIN'S HEAD WITH THE OTHER'S HAIR

Has it not been the experience of all of us, many a time, that a few days' clear absence from an invalid has been needed, to distinguish a slow change, invisible to the watchers by the bedside? And all the while, have not the daily bulletins made out a case for indefinable slight improvements, negligible gains scarcely worth naming, whose total some mysterious flaw of calculation persistently calls loss?

There may have been very little actual change; there was room for so little. But Gwen had been building up hopes of an improvement. And now she had to see her house of cards tremble and portend collapse. She saved the structure--as one has done in real card-life--by gingerly removing a top storey, in terror of a cataclysm. She would not hope so much--indeed, indeed!--if Fate would only leave some of her structure standing. But she was at fault for a greeting, all but a disjointed word or two, when Ruth, falling back, left her to enter the bedroom alone.

It was a consolation to hear the old lady's voice. "My dear--my dear--I knew you would come. I woke in the night, and thought to myself--she will come, my lady. Then I rang, and my Ruth came. She comes so quick."

"And then that was just as good as me," said Gwen. "Wasn't it?"

"She is my child--my Ruth. And Phoebe is my Phoebe--years ago! But I have to think so much, to make it all fit. You are not like that.'

"What am I like?"

"You are the same all through. You came upstairs to me in my room--did you not?--where my little Dave and Dolly were...."

"Yes--I fetched Dolly."

"And then you put Dolly down? And I said for shame!--what a big girl to be carried!"

"Yes--and Dolly was carrying little dolly, with her eyes wide open. And when I put her down on the floor, she repeated what you said all over again, to little dolly:--'For same, what a bid dirl to be tallied!'"

A gleam came on old Maisie's face as she lay there letting the idea of Dolly soak into her heart. Presently she said, without opening her eyes:--"I wonder, if Dolly lives to be eighty, will she remember old Mrs. Picture. I should like her to. Only she is small."

"Dear Mrs. Picture, you are talking as if you were not to have Dolly again. Don't you remember what I told you on Sunday? I'm going to get both the children down here, and Aunt M'riar. Unless, when you are better, you like to go back to Sapps Court. You shall, you know!"

Another memory attacked old Maisie. "Oh dear," said she, "I thought our Court was all tumbled down. Was it not?"

"Yes--the day I came. And then I carried you off to Cavendish Square. Don't you remember?--where Miss Grahame was--Sister Nora." She went on to tell of the promptitude and efficiency with which the repairs had been carried out. For, strange to say, the power Mr. Bartlett possessed of impressing Europe with his integrity and professional ability had extended itself to Gwen, a perfect stranger, during that short visit to the Court, and she was mysteriously ready to vouch for his sobriety and good faith. Presently old Maisie grew curious about the voices in the next room.

"Is that a gentleman's voice, through the door, talking? It isn't Dr. Nash. Dr. Nash doesn't laugh like that."

"No--that is my blind man I have brought to see you. I told you about him, you know. But he must not tire you too much."

"But can he see me?"

"I didn't mean see, that way. I meant see to talk to. Some day he will really see you--with his eyes. We are sure of it, now. He shall come and sit by you, and talk."

"Yes--and I may hold his hand. And may I speak to him about ... about ..."

"About his blindness and the accident? Oh dear yes! You won't see that he's blind, you know."

"His eyes look like eyes?"

"Like beautiful eyes. I shall go and fetch him." She knew she was straining facts in her prediction of their recovery of sight, but she liked the sound of her own voice as she said it, though she knew she would not have gone so far except to give her hearer pleasure.

* * * * *

Said old Maisie to Adrian, whom Gwen brought back to sit by her, giving him the chair she had occupied beside the bed:--"You, sir, are very happy! But oh, how I grieve for your eyes!"

"Is Lady Gwendolen here in the room still?" said Adrian.

"She has just gone away, to the other room," said old Maisie. For Gwen had withdrawn. One at a time was the rule.

"Very well, dear Mrs. Picture. Then I'll tell you. There never was a better bargain driven than mine. I would not have my eyesight back, to lose what I have got. No--not for fifty pairs of eyes." And he evidently meant it.

"May I hold your hand?"

"Do. Here it is. I am sure you are a dear old lady, and can see what she is. When I had eyes, I never saw anything worth looking at, till I saw Gwen."

"But is it a rule?"

Adrian was perplexed for a moment. "Oh, I see what you mean," said he. "No--of course not! I may have my eyesight back." Then he seemed to speak more to himself than to her. "Men have been as fortunate, even as that, before now."

"But tell me--is that what the doctor says? Or only guessing?"

"It's what the doctor says, and guessing too. Doctors only guess. He's guessing."

"But don't they guess right, oftener than people?"

"A little oftener. If they didn't, what use would they be?"

"But you have seen her?"

"Yes--once! Only once. And now I know she is there, as I saw her.... But I want to know about you, Mrs. Picture dear. Because I'm so sorry for you."

"There is no need for sorrow for me, I am so happy to know my sister was not drowned. And my little girl I left behind when I went away over the great sea, and the wind blew, and I saw the stars change each night, till they were all new. And then I found my dear husband, and lived with him many, many happy years. God has been good to me, for I have had much happiness." There was nothing but contentment and rest in her voice; but then some of the tranquillity may have been due to exhaustion.

Adrian made the mistake of saying:--"And all the while you thought your sister dead."

He felt a thrill in her hand as it tightened on his, and heard it in her voice. "Oh, could it have been?" she said. "But I was told so--in a letter."

It was useless for Adrian to affect ignorance of the story; and, indeed, that would have made matters worse, for it would have put it on her to attempt the retelling of it.

Perhaps he did his best to say:--"Lady Gwendolen has told me the whole story. So I know. Don't think about it!... Well--that's nonsense! One can't help thinking. I mean--think as little as possible!" It did not mend matters much.

Her mind had got back to the letter, and could not leave it. "I have to think of it," she said, "because it was my husband that wrote that letter. I know why he wrote it. It was not himself. It was a devil. It came out of Roomoro the black witch-doctor and got a place inside my husband. He did not write that letter to Phoebe. It wrote it. For see how it had learned all the story when Roomoro sucked the little scorpion's poison out of Mary Ann Stennis's arm!"

To Adrian all this was half-feverish wandering; the limited delirium of extreme weakness. No doubt these were real persons--Roomoro and Mary Ann Stennis. It was their drama that was fictitious. He saw one thing plainly. It was to be humoured, not reasoned with. So whatever was the cause of a slight start and disconcertment of his manner when she stopped to ask suddenly:--"But you do not believe in devils, perhaps?"--it was not the one she had ascribed it to. In fact he was quite ready with a semi-conscientious affirmative. "Indeed I do. Tell me exactly how you suppose it happened, again. Roomoro was a native conjurer or medicine-man, I suppose?"

Then old Maisie recapitulated the tale her imagination had constructed to whitewash the husband who had ruined her whole life, adding some details, not without an interest for students of folklore, about the devil that had come from Roomoro. She connected it with the fact that Roomoro had eaten the flesh of the little black Dasyurus, christened the "Native Devil" by the first Tasmanian colonists, from the excessive shortness of its temper. The soul of this devil had been driven from the witch-doctor by the poison of the scorpion, and had made for the nearest human organisation. Adrian listened with as courteous a gravity as either of us would show to a Reincarnationist's extremest doctrines.

It was an immense consolation to old Maisie, evidently, to be taken in such good faith. Having made up his mind that his conscience should not stand between him and any fiction that would benefit this dear old lady, Adrian was not going to do the thing by halves. He launched out into reminiscences of his own experiences on the Essequibo and elsewhere, and was able without straining points to dwell on the remarkable similarities of the Magians of all primitive races. As he afterwards told Gwen, he was surprised at the way in which the actual facts smoothed the way for misrepresentation. He stuck at nothing in professions of belief in unseen agencies, good and bad; apologizing afterwards to Gwen for doing so by representing the ease of believing in them just for a short time, to square matters. Optional belief was no invention of his own, he said, but an ancient and honourable resource of priesthoods all the world over.

It was the only little contribution he was able to make towards the peace of mind without which it seemed almost impossible so old a constitution could rally against such a shock. And it was of real value, for old Maisie sorely needed help against her most awful discovery of all, the hideous guilt of the man whom she had loved ungrudgingly throughout. Nor was it only this. It palliated her son's crimes. But then there was a difference between the son and the father. The latter had apparently done nothing to arouse his wife's detestation. Forgery is a delinquency--not a diabolism!

They talked more--talked a good deal in fact--but only of what we know. Then Gwen came back, bringing Irene to make acquaintance. This young lady behaved very nicely, but admitted afterwards that she had once or twice been a little at a loss what to say.

As when for instance the old lady, with her tender, sad, grey eyes fixed on Miss Torrens, said:--"Come near, my dear, that I may see you close." And drew her old hand, tremulously, over the mass of rich black hair which the almost nominal bonnet of that day left uncovered, with the reticular arrangement that confined it, and went on speaking, dreamily:--"It is very beautiful, but my lady's hair is golden, and shines like the sun." Thereon Gwen to lubricate matters:--"Yes--look here! But I know which I like best." She managed to collate a handful of her own glory of gold and her friend's rich black, in one hand. "I know which I like best," said Irene. And Gwen laughed her musical laugh that filled the place. "No head of hair is a prophet in its own country," said she.

Old Maisie was trying to speak, but her voice had gone low with fatigue. "Phoebe and I," she was saying, "long ago, when we were girls.... It was a trick, you know, a game ... we would mix our hair like that, and make little Jacky Wetherall guess whose hair he had hold of. When he guessed right he had sugar. He was three. His mother used to lend him to us when she went out to scrub, and he never cried...." She went on like this, dwelling on scraps of her girlhood, for some time; then her voice went very faint to say:--"Phoebe was there then. Phoebe is back now--somehow--how is it?" Gwen saw she had talked enough, and took Irene away; and then Ruth Thrale went to sit with her mother.

* * * * *

Dr. Nash, who arrived during their absence, had been greeted by Adrian after his "first appearance as a corpse," last summer. He would have known the doctor's voice anywhere. "You never were a corpse," said that gentleman. To which Mr. Torrens replied:--"You thought I was a corpse, doctor, you know you did!"

Dr. Nash, being unable to deny it, shifted the responsibility. "Well," said he, "Sir Coupland thought so too. The fact is, we had quite given you up. When he came out and said to me:--'Come back. I want you to see something,' I said to him:--'Is that why the dog barked?' Because your dog had given a sudden queer sort of a bark. And he said to me:--'It isn't only the dog. It's Lady Gwen Rivers.'"

"What did he mean by that?" said Gwen.

"He meant that your ladyship's strong impression that the body.... Excuse my referring to you, Mr. Torrens, as...."

"As 'the body'? Not at all! I mean, don't apologize."

"The--a--subject, say, still retained vitality. No doubt we might have found out--probably should...."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Gwen remorselessly. "You would have buried him alive if it hadn't been for me. You doctors are the most careless, casual creatures. It was me and the dog--so now Mr. Torrens knows what he has to be thankful for!"

"Well--as a matter of fact, it was the strong impression of your ladyship that did the job. We doctors are, as your ladyship says, an incautious, irresponsible lot. I hope you found Mrs. Prichard going on well."

Gwen hesitated. "I wish she looked a little--thicker," said she.

Dr. Nash looked serious. "We mustn't be in too great a hurry. Remember her age, and the fact that she is eating almost nothing. She won't take regular meals again--or what she calls regular meals--till the tension of this excitement subsides...."

Said Adrian:--"It's perfectly extraordinary to me, not seeing her, to hear her talk as she does. Because it doesn't give the impression of such weakness as that. Her hands feel very thin, of course."

Said the doctor:--"I wish I could get her to take some stimulant; then she would begin eating again. If she could only be slightly intoxicated! But she's very obdurate on that point--I told you?--and refuses even Sir Cropton Fuller's old tawny port. I talked about her to him, and he sent me half a dozen the same evening. A good-natured old chap!--wants to make everyone else as dyspeptic as himself...."

"That reminds me!" said Gwen. "We forgot the champagne."

"No, we didn't," said Irene. "It was put in the carriage, I know. In a basket. Two bottles lying down. And it was taken out, because I saw it."

"But was it put in the railway carriage?"

"I meant the railway carriage."

"I believe it's in the old Noah's Ark we came here in, all the while."

Granny Marrable said:--"I am sure there has nothing been brought into the Cottage. Because we should have seen. There is only the door through, to go in and out."

"You see, Dr. Nash," said Gwen, "when you said that in your letter, about her wanting stimulant, champagne immediately occurred to Sir Hamilton. So we brought a couple of bottles of the King of Prussia's favourite Clicquot, and a little screwy thing to milk the bottles with, like a cow, a glass at a time. Miss Torrens and I are quite agreed that very often one can get quite pleasantly and healthily drunk on champagne when other intoxicants only give one a headache and make one ill. Isn't it so, 'Re?" Miss Torrens and her brother both testified that this was their experience, and Dr. Nash assented, saying that there would at least be no harm in trying the experiment.

As for dear old Granny Marrable, her opinion was simply that whatever her ladyship from the Towers, and the young lady from Pensham and her brother, were agreed upon, was beyond question right; and even if medical sanction had not been forthcoming she would have supported them. "I am sure," said she, "my dear sister will drink some when she knows your ladyship brought it for her."

The reappearance of the Noah's Ark, when due, confirmed Gwen's view as to the whereabouts of the basket, and was followed by a hasty departure of the gentlefolks to catch the downtrain from London. As Granny Marrable watched it lurching away into the fast-increasing snow, it looked, she thought, as if it could not catch anything. But if old Pirbright, who had been on the road since last century, did not know, nobody did.

* * * * *

The day after this visit, when Gwen was singing to Adrian airs from Gluck's "Alceste," Irene and her father being both absent on Christmas business, social or charitable, the butler brought in a letter from Ruth Thrale in the very middle of a sostenuto note,--for when did any servant, however intelligent, allow music to stop before proceeding to extremities?--and said, respectfully but firmly, that it was the same boy, and he would wait. He seemed to imply that the boy's quality of identity was a sort of guarantee of his waiting--a good previous character for permanency. Gwen left "Alceste" in C minor, and opened her letter, thanking Mr. Tweedie cordially, but not able to say he might go, because he was another family's butler. Adrian said:--"Is that from the old lady?" And when Gwen said:--"Yes--it's Onesimus. I wonder he was able to get there, over the snow,"--he dismissed Mr. Tweedie with the instruction that he should see that Onesimus got plenty to eat. The butler ignored this instruction as superfluous, and died away.

Then Gwen spun round on the music-stool to read aloud. "'Honoured lady';--Oh dear, I wish she could say 'dear Gwen'; but I suppose it wouldn't do.--'I am thankful to be able to write a really good report of my mother'.... You'll see in a minute she'll have to speak of Granny Marrable and she'll call her 'mother' without the 'my.' See if she doesn't!... 'Dr. Nash said she might have some champagne, and we said she really must when you so kindly brought it. So she said indeed yes, and we gave it her up to the cuts.' That means," said Gwen, "the cuts of the wineglass." She glanced on in the letter, and when Adrian said:--"Well--that's not all!"--apologized with:--"I was looking on ahead, to see that she got some more later. It's all right. '... up to the cuts, and presently', as Dr. Nash said, was minded to eat something. So I got her the sweetbread she would not have for dinner, which warmed up well. Then we persuaded her to take a little more champagne, but Dr. Nash said be careful for fear of reaction. Then she was very chatty and cheerful, and would go back a great deal on old times with mother....' I told you she would," said Gwen, breaking off abruptly.

"Of course she will always go back on old times," said Adrian.

"I didn't mean that. I meant call her aunt 'mother' without the 'my.' Let me go on. Don't interrupt! '... old times with mother, and one thing in particular, their hair. Mother pleased her, because she could remember a little child Jacky they would puzzle to tell which hair was which, saying if she held them like that Jacky could tell, and have sugar. For their hair now is quite strong white and grey instead of both the same....' She was telling us about Jacky--me and Irene--yesterday, and I suppose that was what set her off.... 'She slept very sound and talked, and then slept well at night. So we are in good spirits about her, and thank God she may be better and get stronger. That is all I have to tell now and remain dutifully yours....' Isn't that delightful? Quite a good report!" Instructions followed to Onesimus not to bring any further news to Pensham, but to take his next instalment to the Towers.

These things occurred on the Friday, the day after the visit to Chorlton. Certainly that letter of Widow Thrale's justified Lady Gwendolen in feeling at ease about Mrs. Picture during the remainder of her visit to Pensham, and the blame she apportioned to herself for an imagined neglect afterwards was quite undeserved.

Adrian Torrens ought to have been in the seventh heaven during the remainder of an almost uninterrupted afternoon. Not that it was absolutely uninterrupted, because evidences of a chaperon in abeyance were not wanting. A mysterious voice, of unparalleled selectness, or bon-ton, or gentility, emanated from a neighbouring retreat with an accidentally open door, where the lady of the house was corresponding with philanthropists in spite of interruptions. It said:--"What is that? I know it so well," or, "That air is very familiar to me," or, "I cannot help thinking Catalani would have taken that slower." To all of which Gwen returned suitable replies, tending to encourage a belief in her questioner's mind that its early youth had been passed in a German principality with Kapellmeisters and Conservatoriums and a Court Opera Company. This excellent lady was in the habit of implying that she had been fostered in various anciens regimes, and that the parentage of anything so outlandish and radical as her son and daughter was quite out of her line, and a freak of Fate at the suggestion of her husband.

Intermittent emanations from Superiority-in-the-Bush were small drawbacks to what might perhaps prove the last unalloyed interview of these two lovers before their six months' separation--that terrible Self-Denying Ordinance--to which they had assented with a true prevision of how very unwelcome it would be when the time came. It was impossible to go back on their consent now. Gwen might have hoisted a standard of revolt against her mother. But she could not look her father in the face and cry off from the fulfilment of a condition-precedent of his consent to the perfect freedom of association of which she and Adrian had availed themselves to the uttermost, always under the plea that the terms of the contract were going to be honourably observed. As for Adrian, he was even more strongly bound. That appeal from the Countess that his father had repeated and confirmed was made direct to his honour; and while he could say unanswerably:--"What would you have me do?" nothing in the world could justify his rebelling against so reasonable a condition as that their sentiments should continue reciprocal after six months of separation.

His own mind was made up. For his views about suicide, however much he spoke of them with levity, were perfectly serious. If he lost Gwen, he would be virtually non-existent already. The end would have come, and the thing left to put an end to would no longer be a Life. It would only be a sensibility to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin would do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right proportion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant. But he had a lingering favourable impression of the Warroo medicine-man, whose faith in the efficacy and painlessness of his nostrum was evident, however much was uncertain in his version of its provenance.

As to any misgivings about awakening in another world, if any occurred to Adrian he had but one answer--he had been dead, and had found death unattended with any sort of inconvenience. Resuscitation had certainly been painful, but he did not propose to leave any possibility of it, this time. His death, that time, had been a sudden shock, followed instantly by the voice of Gwen herself, which he had recognised as the last his ears had heard. If Death could be so easily negotiated, why fuss? The only serious objection to suicide was its unpopularity with survivors. But were they not sometimes a little selfish? Was this selfishness not shown to demonstration by the gratitude--felt, beyond a doubt--to the suicide who weights his pockets when he jumps into mid-ocean, contrasted with the dissatisfaction, to say the least of it, which the proprietor of a respectable first-class hotel feels when a visitor poisons himself with the door locked, and engages the attention of the Coroner. There was Irene certainly--and others--but after all it would be a great gain to them, when the first grief was over, to have got rid of a terrible encumbrance.

Therefore Adrian was quite at his ease about the Self-Denying Ordinance; at least, if a clear resolve and a mind made up can give ease. He said not a word of his views and intentions beyond what the story has already recorded. What right had he to say anything to Gwen that would put pressure on her inclinations? Had he not really said too much already? At any rate, no more!

Nevertheless, the foregoing made up the background of his reflections as he listened to more "Alceste," resumed after a short note had been written for Onesimus to carry back over the frost-bound roads to Chorlton. And he was able to trace the revival in his mind of suicide by poison to Mrs. Picture's narration of the Dasyurus and the witch-doctor who had cooked and eaten its body. This fiction of her fever-ridden thoughts had set him a-thinking again of the Warroo conjurer. He had not repeated any of it to Gwen, lest she should be alarmed on old Maisie's behalf. For it had a very insane sound.

But after such a prosperous report of her condition, above all, of the magical effect of that champagne, it seemed overnice to be making a to-do about what was probably a mere effect of overheated fancy, such as the circumstances might have produced in many a younger and stronger person. So when Alceste had provided her last soprano song, and the singer was looking for "Ifigenia in Aulide," Adrian felt at liberty to say that old Mrs. Picture's ideas about possession were very funny and interesting.

"Isn't it curious?" said Gwen. "She really believes it all, you know, like Gospel. All that about the devil that had possession of her husband! And how when he died, he passed his devil on to his son, who was worse than himself."

"That's good, though," said Adrian. "Only she never told me about the son. I had it all about the witch-doctor whose devil came out because he couldn't fancy the little scorpion's flavour. And all about the original devil--a sort of opossum they call a devil...."

"She didn't tell me about him."

"They've got one at the Zoological Gardens. He's an ugly customer. The keeper said he was a limb, if ever there was one. The old lady evidently thought her idea that the doctor's devil was this little beggar's soul, eaten up with his flesh, was indisputable. I told her I thought it had every intrinsic possibility, and I'm sure she was pleased. But the horror of her face when she spoke of him was really...."

"Adrian!"

"What, dearest? Anything the matter?"

"Only the way you put it. It was so odd. 'The horror of her face'! Just as if you had seen it!" Indeed, Gwen was looking quite disconcerted and taken aback.

"There now!" said Adrian. "See what a fool I am! I never meant to tell of that. Because I thought it threw a doubt on Scatcherd. I've been wanting to make the most of Scatcherd. I never thought much of Septimius Severus. Anyone might have said in my hearing that the bust was moved, and it was just as I was waking. But I'll swear no one said anything about Scatcherd. Why--there was only Irene!"

Gwen went and sat by him on the sofa. "Listen, darling!" said she. "I want to know what you are talking about. What was it happened, and why did it throw a doubt on Miss Scatcherd?"

"It wasn't anything, either way, you know."

"I know. But what was it, that wasn't anything, either way?"

"It was only an impression. You mustn't attach any weight to it."

"Are you going to tell what it was, or not?"

"Going to. Plenty of time! It was when the old lady began telling me about the devil. Her tone of conviction gave me a strong impression what she was looking like, and made an image of her flash across my retina. By which I mean, flash across the hole I used to see through when I had a retina. It was almost as strong and life-like as real seeing. But I knew it wasn't."

"But how--how--how?" cried Gwen, excited. "How did you know that it wasn't?"

"Because of the very white hair. It was snow-white--the image's. I suppose I had forgotten which was which, of the two old ladies--had put the saddle on the wrong horse."

Gwen looked for a moment completely bewildered. "What on, earth, can, he, mean?" said she, addressing Space very slowly. Then, speaking as one who has to show patience with a stiff problem:--"Dearest man--dearest incoherency!--do try and explain. Which of the old ladies do you suppose has white hair, and which grey?"

"Old Granny Marrable, I thought."

"Yes--but which hair? Which? Which? Which?"

"White, I thought, not grey." Whereupon Gwen, seeing how much hung upon the impression her lover had been under hitherto about these two tints of hair, kept down a growing excitement to ask him quietly for an exact, undisjointed statement, and got this for answer:--"I have always thought of Granny Marrable's as snow-white, and the old Australian's as grey. Was that wrong?"

"Quite wrong! It's the other way round. The Granny's is grey and old Mrs. Picture's is silvery white."

Adrian gave a long whistle, for astonishment, and was silent. So was Gwen. For this was the third incident of the sort, and what might not happen? Presently he broke the silence, to say:--"At any rate, that leaves Scatcherd a chance. I thought if this was a make-up of my own, it smashed her."

"Foolish man! There is more in it than that. You saw old Mrs. Picture. It was no make-up.... Well?" She paused for his reply.

It came after a studied silence, a dumbness of set purpose. "Oh why--why--is it always Mrs. Picture, or Scatcherd, or Septimius Severus? Why can it never be Gwen--Gwen--Gwen?"

The attenuated chaperonage of the lady of the house may have been moved by a certain demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say from afar:--"I hope we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.' Because I should have enjoyed that." Which carried an implication that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by the higher aspects of Opera.

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Chapter XXV

HOW THE EARL ASKED AFTER THE OLD TWINS. MERENESS. RECUPERATIVE POWER. HOW THE HOUSEHOLD HAD ITS ANNUAL DANCE. HOW THE COUNTESS HAD A CRACKED LIP. HOW WAS DR. TUXFORD SOMERS? SIR SPENCER DERRICK. GENERAL RAWNSLEY. HE AND GWEN'S INTENDED GREAT GRANDMOTHER-IN-LAW. GWEN HAD NEVER HAD TWINS BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE GENERAL'S BROTHER PHILIP. SUPERANNUATED COCKS AND HENS. HOW GWEN HAD DREAMED SHE WAS TO MARRY A KETTLE-HOLDER. HOW MRS. LAMPREY HAD A LETTER FOR GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON AT MIDNIGHT

When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day he certainly did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and collected. "I am quite prepared to endure another Christmas," said he resignedly to Gwen. "But a little seclusion and meditation is good to prepare one for the ordeal, and Bath certainly deserves the character everybody gives it, that you never meet anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho have something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from the favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies?"

This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a quiet ten minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the other's absence. It was late in the afternoon, two hours after his arrival from London. He had been there a day or two to make a show of fulfilling his obligations towards politics; had sat through a debate or two, and had taken part in a division or two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. "But," said he to Gwen, "if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly say the old ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them came early in this recapitulation.

Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apologetic tone about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that she was really better intrinsically, although evidently some person or persons unnamed must have said she was worse. She started on her report with every good-will to make it a prosperous one, and got entangled in some trivialities that told against her purpose. Perhaps her last letter to her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest--quite the merest--weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a general rule, weakness might be mere enough to be negligible; but then it should be the weakness of young and strong people, possessed of that delightful property "recuperative power," which does such wonders when it comes to the scratch. Never be without it, if you can help.

The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope a helping hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got another letter from Ruth Thrale, brought by Onesimus the bull-cajoler, which gave a very good account on the whole, though one phrase had a damping effect. We were not "to rely on the champagne," as it was "not nourishment, but stimulus." She must be got to take food regularly, said Dr. Nash, however small the quantity. This seemed to suggest that she had fallen back on that vicious practice of starvation. But "my mother" was constantly talking with "mother" about old times, and it was giving "mother" pleasure.

"I wish," said Gwen, as her father went back to "Honoured Lady" for second reading, and possibly second impressions, "I wish that Dr. Nash had written separately. I want to know what he thinks, and I want to know what Ruth thinks. I can mix them up for myself."

The Earl read to the end, and suspended judgment, visibly. "Eighty-one!" said he. "And how did Granny Marrable take it? You never said in your letters."

"Because I did not see her. Dr. Nash told--at least, he tried to. But I told you about the little boy's letter. She knew it from that."

"I remember.... Well!--we must hope." And then they spoke of matters nearer home; the impending journey to Vienna; a perplexity created by a promise rashly given to Aunt Constance that she should be married from the Ancester town-residence--two things which clashed, for how could this wedding wait till the Countess's return?--and ultimately of Gwen's own prospects. Then she told her father the incident of Adrian's apparent vision of old Mrs. Picture, and both pretended that it was too slight to build upon; but both used it for a superstructure of private imaginings. Neither encouraged the other.

Adrian and his sister were to have returned with Gwen to the Towers to stay till Monday, which was Christmas Day, when their own plum-pudding and mistletoe would claim them at Pensham. This arrangement was not carried out, possibly in deference to the Countess, who was anxious to reduce to a minimum everything that tended to focus the public gaze on the lovers. Gwen was under a social obligation, inherited perhaps from Feudalism, to be present at the Servants' Ball, which would have been on Christmas Eve had that day not fallen on a Sunday. Hence the necessity for her return on the Saturday, and the interview with her father just recorded. The quiet ten minutes filled the half-hour between tea and dressing for a dinner which might prove a scratch meal in itself, but was distinguished by its sequel. A general adjournment was to follow to the great ball-room, which was given over without reserve on this occasion to the revellers and their friends from the environs; for at the Towers nothing was done by halves in those days. There the august heads of the household were expected to walk solemnly through a quadrille with the housekeeper and head butler. Mrs. Masham's and Mr. Norbury's sense of responsibility on these occasions can neither be imagined nor described. This great event made conscientious dressing for dinner more than usually necessary, however defective the excitement of the household might make the preparation and service thereof.

These exigencies were what limited Gwen's quiet ten minutes with her father within the narrow bounds of half an hour, leaving no margin at all for more than three words with her mother on her way to her own interview with Miss Lutwyche. She exceeded her estimate almost before her ladyship's dressing-room door had swung to behind her.

"Well, mamma dear, I hope you're satisfied."

"I am, my dear. At least, I am not dissatisfied.... Don't kiss me in front, please, because I have a little crack on the corner of my lip." The Countess accepted her daughter's accolade on an unsympathetic cheek-bone. "What are you referring to?"

"Why--Adrian not coming till to-morrow, of course. What did you suppose I meant?"

"I did not suppose. Some day you will live to acknowledge--I am convinced of it--that what your father and I thought best was dictated by simple common sense and prudence. I am sure Sir Hamilton will not misinterpret our motives. Nor Lady Torrens."

"He's a nice old Bart, the Bart. We are great friends. He likes it. He gets all the kissing for nothing.... What?"

The Countess may have contemplated some protest against the pronounced ratification implied of fatherdom-in-law. She gave it up, and said:--"I was not going to say anything. Go on!"

The way in which these two guessed each other's thoughts was phenomenal. Gwen knew all about it. "Come, mamma!" said she. "You know the Bart would not have liked it half so much if I had been a dowdy."

"I cannot pretend to have thought upon the subject." If her ladyship threw a greater severity into her manner than the occasion seemed to call for, it was not merely because she disapproved of her beautiful daughter's want of retenue, or questionable style, or doubtful taste, or defective breeding. You must bear all the circumstances in mind as they presented themselves to her. Conceive what the "nice old Bart" had been to her over five-and-twenty years ago, when she herself was a dazzling young beauty of another generation! Think how strange it must have been, to hear the audacities of this new creature, undreamed of then, spoken so placidly through an amused smile, as she watched the firelight serenely from the arm-chair she had subsided on--an anchorage "three words" would never have warranted, even the most unbridled polysyllables. "Do you not think"--her dignified mamma continued--"you had better be getting ready for dinner? You are always longer than me."

"I'm going directly. Lutwyche is never ready. I suppose I ought to go, though.... You are not asking after my old lady, and I think you might."

"Oh yes," said her ladyship negligently. "I haven't seen you since you didn't go to church with me. How is your old lady?"

"You don't care, so it doesn't matter. How was Dr. Tuxford Somers?"

"My dear--don't be nonsensical! How can you expect me to gush over about an old person I have not so much as seen?" She added as an afterthought:--"However worthy she may be!"

"You could have seen her quite well, when she was here. Papa did. Besides, one can show a human interest, without gushing over."

"My dear, I hope I am never wanting in human interest. How is Mrs.... Mrs....?"

"Mrs. Prichard?"

"Yes--how is she? Is she coming back here?"

"Is it likely? Besides, she can't be moved."

"Oh--it's as bad as that!"

"My dear mamma, haven't I told you fifty times?" This was not exactly the case; but it passed, in conversation. "The darling old thing was all but killed by being told...."

"By being told?... Oh yes, I remember! They were sisters, in Van Diemen's Land.... But she's better again now?"

"Yes--better. Oh, here's Starfield, and there's papa in his room. I can hear him. I must go."

At dinner that evening nobody was in any way new or remarkable, unless indeed Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick, who had been in Canada, counted. There was one guest, not new, but of interest to Gwen. Do you happen to remember General Rawnsley, who was at the Towers in July, when Adrian had his gunshot accident? It was he who was nearly killed by a Mahratta, at Assaye, when he was a young lieutenant. Gwen had issued orders that he should take her in to dinner, when she heard on her arrival that he had accepted her mother's invitation for Christmas.

Consider dinner despatched--the word is suitable, for an approach to haste was countenanced or tolerated, in consideration of the household's festivity elsewhere--and so much talking going on that the old General could say to Gwen without fear of being overheard:--"Now tell me some more about your fellow.... Adrian, isn't he?... He is your fellow, isn't he?--no compliments necessary?"

"He's my fellow, General, to you and all my dear friends. You saw him in July, I think?"

"Just saw him--just saw him! Hardly spoke to him--only a word or two. Your father took me in to see him, because I was in love with his great-grandmother, once upon a time."

"His great-grandmother, General? You must mean his grandmother."

"Not a bit of it, my dear! It's all quite right. I was a boy of eighteen. I'm eighty-four. Sixty-six years ago. If Mary Tracy was alive now, she'd make up to eighty-six. Nothing out of the way in that. She was a girl of twenty then."

"Was it serious, General?"

"God bless me, my dear, serious? I should rather think it was! Why--we ran away together, and went capering over the country looking for a parson to marry us! Serious? Rather! At least, it might have been."

"Oh, General, do tell me what came of it. Did you find the parson?"

"That was just it. We found the Rector of Threckingham--it was in Lincolnshire--and he promised to marry us in a week if he could find someone to give the bride away. He took possession of the young lady. Then a day or two after down comes Sir Marmaduke and Lady Tracy, black in the face with rage, and we were torn asunder, threatening suicide as soon as there was a chance. I was such a jolly innocent boy that I never suspected the Rector of treachery. Never guessed it at all! He told me thirty years after--a little more. Saw him when the Allied Sovereigns were in London--before Waterloo."

"And that young thing was Adrian's great-grandmother!" said Gwen. Then she felt bound in honour to add:--"She was old enough to know better."

"She didn't," said the General. "What's so mighty funny to me now is to think that all that happened about the time of the Revolution in Paris. Rather before."

Gwen's imagination felt the vertigo of such a rough grapple with the Past. These things make brains reel. "When my old twins were two little girls in lilac frocks," said she.

"Your what?" Perhaps it was no wonder--so Gwen said afterwards--that the General was a little taken aback. She would have been so very old to have had twins before the French Revolution. She was able to assign a reasonable meaning to her words, and the old boy became deeply interested in the story of the sisters. So much so that when the ladies rose to go, she said calmly to her mother:--"I'm not coming this time. You can all go, and I'll come when we have to start the dancing. I want to talk to General Rawnsley." And the Countess had to surrender, with an implication that it was the only course open in dealing with a lunatic. She could, however, palliate the position by a reference to the abnormal circumstances. "We are quite in a state of chaos to-day," said she to her chief lady-guest. And then to the Earl:--"Don't be more than five minutes.... Well!--no longer than you can help."

The moment the last lady had been carefully shut out by the young gentleman nearest the door, Gwen drove a nail in up to the head, more suo. Suppose General Rawnsley had lost a twin brother fifty years ago, and she, Gwen, had come to him and told him it had all been a mistake, and the brother was still living! What would that feel like? What would he have done?

"Asked for it all over again," said the General, after consideration. "Should have liked being told, you see! Shouldn't have cared so very much about the brother."

"No--do be serious! Try to think what it would have felt like. To oblige me!"

The General tried. But without much success. For he only shook his head over an undisclosed result. He could, however, be serious. "I suppose," said he, "the twinnery--twinship--whatever you call it...."

"Isn't de rigueur?" Gwen struck in. "Of course it isn't! Any real fraternity would do as well. Now try!"

"That makes a difference. But I'm still in a fix. Your old ladies were grown up when one went off--and then she wrote letters?..."

"Can't you manage a grown-up brother?"

"Nothing over fourteen. Poor Phil was fourteen when he was drowned. Under the ice on the Serpentine. He had just been licking me for boning a strap of his skate. I was doing the best way I could without it ... to get mine on, you see ... when I heard a stop in the grinding noise--what goes on all day, you know--and a sort of clicky slooshing, and I looked up, and there were a hundred people under the ice, all at once. There was a f'ler who couldn't stop or turn, and I saw him follow the rest of 'em under. Bad sort of job altogether!" The General seemed to be enjoying his port, all the same.

Said Gwen:--"But he used to lick you, so you couldn't love him."

"Couldn't I? I was awfully fond of Phil. So was he of me. I expect Cain was very fond of Abel. They loved each other like brothers. Not like other people!"

"But Phil isn't a fair instance. Can't you do any better than Phil? Never mind Cain and Abel."

"H'm--no, I can't! Phil's not a bad instance. It's longer ago--but the same thing in principle. If I were to hear that Phil was really resuscitated, and some other boy was buried by mistake for him, I should ... I should...." The General hung fire.

"What should you do? That's what I want to know.... Come now, confess--it's not so easy to say, after all!"

"No--it's not easy. But it would depend on the way how. If it was like the Day of Judgement, and he rose from the grave, as we are taught in the Bible, just the same as he was buried.... Well--you know--it wouldn't be fair play! I should know him, though I expect I should think him jolly small."

"But he wouldn't know you?"

"No. He would be saying to himself, who the dooce is this superannuated old cock? And it would be no use my saying I was his little brother, or he was my big one."

"But suppose it wasn't like the Day of Judgement at all, but real, like my old ladies. Suppose he was another superannuated old cock! My old ladies are superannuated old hens, I suppose."

"I suppose so. But I understand from what you tell me that they have come to know one another again. They talk together and recall old times? Isn't that so?"

"Oh dear yes, and each knows the other quite well by now. Only I believe they are still quite bewildered about what has happened."

"Then I suppose it would be the same with me and my redivivus brother--on the superannuated-old-cock theory, not the Day of Judgement one."

"Yes--but I want you not to draw inferences from them, but to say what you would feel ... of yourself ... out of your own head."

The General wanted time to think. The question required thought, and he was taking it seriously. The Earl, seeing him thinking, and Gwen waiting for the outcome, came round from his end of the table, and took the seat the Countess had vacated. He ought to have been there before, but it seemed as though Gwen's escapade had thrown all formalities out of gear. He was just in time for the General's conclusion:--"Give it up! Heaven only knows what I should do! Or anyone else!"

Gwen restated the problem, for her father's benefit. "I am with you, General," said he. "I cannot speculate on what I should do. I am inclined to think that the twinship has had something to do with the comparative rapidity of the ... recohesion...."

"Very good word, papa! Quite suits the case."

"... recohesion of these two old ladies. When we consider how very early in life they took their meals together...." The General murmured sotto voce:--"Before they were born." "... we must admit that their case is absolutely exceptional--absolutely!"

"You mean," said Gwen, "that if they had not been twins they would not have swallowed each other down, as they have done."

"Exactly," said the Earl.

"And yet," Gwen continued, "they never remember things as they happened. In fact, they are still in a sort of fog about what has happened. But they are quite sure they are Maisie and Phoebe. I do think, though, there is only one thing about Maisie's Australian life that Granny Marrable believes, and that is the devil that got possession of the convict husband.... Why does she? Because devils are in the Bible, of course." Here the devil story was retold for the benefit of the General, who did not know it.

The Earl did, so he did not listen. He employed himself thinking over practicable answers to the question before the house, and was just in time to avert a polemic about the authenticity of the Bible, a subject on which the General held strong views. "What helps me to an idea of a possible attitude of mind before a resurrection of this sort," he said, "is what sometimes happens when you wake up from a dream years long, a dream as long as a lifetime. Just the first moment of all, you can hardly believe yourself free of the horrid entanglement you had got involved in...."

"I know," said Gwen. "The other night I dreamed I was going to be married to a young gentleman I had known from childhood. Only he was a kettle-holder with a parrot on it."

"Didn't I object?" said the Earl.

"You were upstairs. Don't ask explanations. That was all there was in the dream. You were upstairs. And the dream had been all my life. Don't fidget about particulars."

"I won't. That's the sort of dream I mean. It seems all perfectly right and sound until your waking life comes back, and then vanishes. You only regret your friends in the dream for a few seconds, and then--they are nobody!"

"Don't quite see the parallel, yet. These old ladies haven't waked from a dream, that I see." Thus the General, and Gwen told him he was a military martinet, and lacking in insight.

Her father continued:--"Each of them has dreamed the other was dead, for half a century. Now they are awake. But I suspect, from what Gwen says, that the discovery of the dream has thrown a doubt on all the rest of the fifty years."

"That's it," said Gwen. "If the whole story of the two deaths is false, why should Van Diemen's Land be true? Why should the convict and the forgery be true?"

"Husbands and families are hard nuts to crack," said the General. "Can't be forgotten or disbelieved in, try 'em any side up!"

At this point a remonstrance from the drawing-room at the delay of the appearance of the males caused a stampede and ended the discussion. Gwen rejoined her own sex unabashed, and the company adjourned to the scene of the household festivity. It is not certain that the presence of his lordship and his Countess, and the remainder of the party in esse at the Towers really added to the hilarity of the occasion. But it was an ancient usage, and the sky might have fallen if it had been rashly discontinued. The compromise in use at this date under which the magnates, after walking through a quadrille, melted away imperceptibly to their normal quarters, was no doubt the result of a belief on their part that the household would begin to enjoy itself as soon as formalities had been complied with, and it was left to do so at its own free-will and pleasure. Nevertheless, a hint at abolition would have been blasphemy, and however eager the rank and file of the establishment may have been for the disappearance of the bigwigs, not one of them--and still more not one of their many invited neighbours--ever breathed a hint of it to another.

Shortly after ten Gwen and some of the younger members of the party wound up a fairly successful attempt to make the materials at their disposal dance the Lancers, and got away without advertising their departure. It was a great satisfaction to overhear the outbreak of unchecked roystering that followed. Said Gwen to Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew, who had entered into the spirit of the thing and co-operated with her efforts to the last:--"They will be at bear-garden point in half an hour. Poor respectable Masham!" To which Aunt Constance replied:--"I suppose they won't go on into Sunday?" The answer was:--"Oh no--not till Sunday! But Sunday is a day, after all, not a night." Mr. Pellew said:--"Sunrise at eight," and Gwen said:--"I think Masham will make it Sunday about two o'clock. We shan't have breakfast till eleven. You'll see!"

They were in the great gallery with the Van Dycks when Gwen stopped, as one stops who thinks suddenly of an omission, and said, as to herself, more than to her hearers:--"I wonder whether she meant me."

"Whether who meant you?" said both, sharing the question.

"Nothing.... Very likely I was mistaken.... No--it was this. You saw that rather piquante, dry young woman? You know which I mean?"

"Danced with that good-looking young groom?..."

"Yes--my Tom--Tom Kettering. It was what I heard her say to Lutwyche ... some time ago.... 'Remember she's not to have it till to-morrow morning.' It just crossed my mind, did she mean me? I dare say it was nothing."

"I heard that. It was a letter." Mr. Pellew said this.

"Had you any impression about it?"

"I thought it was some joke among the servants."

Gwen was disquieted, evidently. "I wish I hadn't heard it," said she, "if it isn't to be delivered till to-morrow. That young woman is Dr. Nash's housekeeper--Dr. Nash at Chorlton." She was speaking to ears that had heard all about the twin sisters. She interrupted any answer that meant to follow "Oh!" and "H'm!" by saying abruptly:--"I must see Lutwyche and find out."

They turned with her, and retraced their steps, remarking that no doubt it was nothing, but these things made one uncomfortable. Much better to find out, and know!

A casual just entering to rejoin the revels stood aside to allow them to pass, but was captured and utilised. "Go in and tell Miss Lutwyche I want to speak to her out here." Gwen knew all about local class distinctions, and was aware her maid would not be "Lutwyche" to a village baker's daughter. The girl, awed into some qualification of mere assent, which might have been presumptuous, said:--"Yes, my lady, if you please."

Lutwyche was captured and came out. "What was it I was not to have till to-morrow morning, Lutwyche? You know quite well what I mean. What was the letter?"

The waiting-woman had a blank stare in preparation, to prevaricate with, but had to give up using it. "Oh yes--there was a note," she said. "It was only a note. Mrs. Lamprey brought it from Dr. Nash. He wished your ladyship to have it to-morrow."

"I will have it at once, thank you! Have you got it there? Just get it, and bring it to me at once."

"I hope your ladyship does not blame me. I was only obeying orders."

"Get it, please, and don't talk." Her ladyship was rather incensed with the young woman, but not for obeying orders. It was because of the attempt to minimise the letter. It was just like Lutwyche. Nothing would make that woman really truthful!

Lutwyche caught up the party, which had not stopped for the finding of the letter, at the drawing-room door. Gwen opened it as she entered the room, saying, to anyone within hearing:--"Excuse my reading this." She dropped on a sofa at hand, close to a chandelier rich with wax lights in the lampless drawing-room. Percy Pellew and his fiancee stood waiting to share the letter's contents, if permitted.

The world, engaged with its own affairs, took no notice. The Earl and the General were listening to tales of Canada from Sir Spencer Derrick. The Countess was pretending to listen to other versions of the same tales from that gentleman's wife. The others were talking about the war, or Louis Napoleon, or Florence Nightingale, or hoping the frost would continue, because nothing was more odious than a thaw in the country. One guest became very unpopular by maintaining that a thaw had already set in, alleging infallible instincts needing no confirmation from thermometers.

The Countess had said, speaking at her daughter across the room:--"I hope we are going to have some music;" and the Colonel had said:--"Ah, give us a song, Gwen;" without eliciting any notice from their beautiful hearer, before anyone but Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew noticed the effect this letter was producing. Then the Earl, glancing at the reader's face, saw, even from where he sat, how white it had become, and how tense was its expression. He caught Mr. Pellew's attention. "Do you know what it is, Percy?" said he. Mr. Pellew crossed the room quickly, to reply under his breath:--"I am afraid it is some bad news of her old lady at Chorlton.... Oh no--not that"--for the Earl had made the syllable dead with his lips, inaudibly--"but an alarm of some sort. The doctor's housekeeper there brought the letter."

The Earl left Mr. Pellew, reiterating what he had said to the General, and went over to his daughter. "Let me have it to see," said he, and took the letter from her. He read little scraps, half-aloud, "'Was much better all yesterday, but improvement has not continued.' ... 'Am taking advantage of my housekeeper's visit to the Towers to send this.' ... 'Not to have it till to-morrow.' ... How was that?" Gwen explained briefly, and he said:--"Looks as if the doctor took it for granted you would come at once."

"Yes," said Gwen, "on receipt of the letter."

The Countess said, as one whose patience is sorely and undeservedly tried:--"What is it all about? I suppose we are to know." The war and Louis Napoleon and Florence Nightingale lulled, and each asked his neighbour what it was, and was answered:--"Don't know." The Colonel, a man of the fewest possible words, said to the General:--"Rum! Not young Torrens, I suppose?" And the General replied:--"No, no! Old lady of eighty." Which the Colonel seemed to think was all right, and didn't matter.

"I think, if I were you, I should see the woman who brought it," said the Earl, after reading the letter twice; once quickly and once slowly. Gwen answered:--"Yes, I think so,"--and left the room abruptly. Her father took the letter, which he had retained, to show to her mother, who read it once and handed it back to him. "I cannot advise," said she, speaking a little from Olympus. She came down the mountain, however, to say:--"See that she doesn't do anything mad. You have some influence with her," and left the case--one of dementia--to her husband.

"I think," said he, "if you will excuse me, my dear, I will speak to this woman myself."

Her ladyship demurred. "Isn't it almost making the matter of too much importance?" said she, looking at her finger-diamonds as though to protest against any idea that she was giving her mind to the case of dementia.

"I think not, my dear," said the Earl, meekly but firmly, and followed his daughter out of the room.

* * * * *

Very late that night, or rather very early next day, in the smoking-room to which such males as it pleased to do so retired for a last cigar, sundry of the younger members of the vanishing shooting-party, and one or two unexplained nondescripts, came to the knowledge of a fact that made one of them say--"Hookey!"; another--"Crikey!"; and a third and fourth that they were blowed. All considered, more or less, that Mr. Norbury, their informant, who had come to see the lights out, didn't mean to say what he had said. He, however, adhered to his statement, which was that Lady Gwendolen had had alarming news about an old lady whom she was much interested in, and had been driven away in the closed brougham by Tom Kettering to Chorlton, more than two hours ago. "I thought it looked queer, when she didn't come back," said one of the gentlemen who was blowed.

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