Granny Marrable spoke at once. Her voice was firm, but her face was pale and hard set. "I have been told strange news, my lady, but itmustbe true. It cannot be else."
"Itistrue. Dr. Nash told you."
"That is so. Our Dr. Nash."
"But how much? Has he told you all?"
"I will tell your ladyship." The old woman's firmness and strength were marvellous to Gwen. "He has told me that my sister that was dead is risen from the grave...."
"God's my life, Granny, what will ye be for saying next to her ladyship?" John Costrell had heard none of the story.
"It's all quite right, Mr. Costrell," said Gwen. "Granny Marrable doesn't mean really dead. Shethoughther dead—her sister.... Go on, Granny! That is quite right. And has Dr. Nash told you where your sister is now?"
"At my own home at Chorlton, my lady. And I am on my way there now, and will see her once more, God willing, before we die."
"Go to her—go to her! The sooner the better!... I must tell you one thing, though. She is not strong—not like you and your daughter Ruth. But you will see." The old lady began with something about her gratitude to Gwen and to her father, but Gwen cut her short. What did that matter, now? Then she assured her that old Maisie had been told everything, and was only uneasy lesther sister should not know her again, and would even doubt her identity. "But that is impossible," said Gwen. "Because sheisyour sister, and remembers all your childhood together."
After they had parted company, and Gwen was on her way again, relieved beyond measure to find that Dr. Nash had contrived to carry out his mission so well—though how he had done it was a mystery to her as yet—she had a misgiving that she ought to have produced the forged letter to show to Granny Marrable. Perhaps, however, she had done no harm by keeping it; as if the conviction of the two sisters of each other's identity was to turn on what is called "evidence," what would be its value to either? They would either know each other, or not; and if they didnot, enough "evidence" to hang a dozen men would not stand against the deep-rooted belief in each other's death through those long years.
Besides, like Dr. Nash, she had just been quite taken aback to see—now that she came to look for it, mind you!—the amazing likeness between the old twin sisters. How came it that she had not seen it before?—for instance, when they were face to face in her presence at the door of Strides Cottage, but two or three weeks since. She dismissed the forged letter, to dwell on the enormous relief of not having another disclosure problem before her; and also on the satisfaction she would have in telling her father what a successful outcome had followed his venial transgression of opening and reading it. Altogether, her feelings were those of triumph, trampling underfoot the recollection that she had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and making a good stand against brain-whirl caused by the almost unbearable strangeness of the story.
On arriving at the Towers, she was disconcerted to find that all her solicitude about her mother's loneliness in her absence had been thrown away. She whispered to herself that it served her right for fidgeting about other people. Adrian had been perfectly justified when he said that interest in one's relations was the worst investment possible for opulent Altruism.
Well—she was better off now than she had been in the early morning, when there was all that terrible disclosure ahead. It wasdone—ended; for better, for worse! She might indulge now in a cowardice that shrank from seeing the two old sisters again until they were familiarised with the position. If only she might find them, on her next visit, habituated to a newmodus vivendi, with the possibility of peaceful years together, to live down the long separation into nothingness! If only that might be! But was it possible? Was it conceivable even?
Anyhow, she deserved a well-earned rest from tension. Andpresently she would tell the whole strange story to Adrian, and show him that clever forgery.... No!—thought stopped with a cruel jerk, and her heart said:—"Shall I evershowhim anything! Never! Never!"
"You went to Pensham, mamma?" said Gwen to her mother, the next day, as soon as an opportunity came for quiet talk.
"On my way to Poynders," said the Countess yawnfully. "But it was unlucky. Lady Torrens was keeping her room. Some sort of nervous attack. I didn't get any particulars."
Gwen suspected reticence. "You didn't see her, then?"
"Oh dear no! How should I? She was in bed, I believe."
"You sawsomebody?"
"Only Sir Hamilton, for a few minutes. He doesn't seem uneasy. I don't suppose it's anything serious."
"Did you see 'Re?"
"Miss Torrens and her brother were out. Didn't come back." Her ladyship here perceived that reticence, overdone, would excite suspicion, and provoke exhaustive inquiry. "I had a short chat with Sir Hamilton. Who gave me a very good cup of tea." The excellence of the tea was, so to speak, a red herring.
Gwen refused to be thrown off the scent. "He's an old friend of yours, isn't he?" said she suggestively.
"Oh dear yes! Ages ago. He told me about some people I haven't heard of for years. I must try and call on that Mrs. What's-her-name. Do you know where Tavistock Square is?"
"Of course I do. Everybody does. Who is it lives there?"
The Countess had consulted the undersized tablets, and was repocketing them. "Mrs. Enniscorthy Hopkins," said she, in the most collateral way possible to humanity. "Youwouldn't know anything about her."
"This tea has been standing," said Gwen. She refused to rise to Mrs. Enniscorthy Hopkins, whom she suspected of red-herringhood.
The Countess was compelled to be less collateral. "She was Kathleen Tyrawley," said she. "But I quite lost sight of her. One does."
"Was she interesting?"
"Ye-es.... N-no ... not very. Pretty—of that sort!"
"What sort?"
"Well—very fond of horses."
"So am I—the darlings!"
"Yes—but a girl may be very fond of horses, and yet not marry a ... Don't put milk in—only cream...."
"Marry a what?"
"Marry her riding-master." Her ladyship softened down Miss Tyrawley's groom to presentability. "But it was before you were born, child. However, no doubt it is the same, in principle."
"Hope so! Is that tea right?"
"The tea? Oh yes, the tea ... will do. No, I only saw Sir Hamilton. The son and daughter were away."
"Now, mamma, that is being unkind, and you know it. 'The son and daughter!' As if they were people!"
"Well—and what are they?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean."
As the Countess did, she averted discussion. "We won't rake the subject up, my dear Gwendolen," she said, in a manner which embodied moderation, while asserting dignity. "You know my feelings on the matter, which would, I am sure, be those of any parent—of anymother, certainly. And I may mention to you—only,pleaseno discussion!—that Sir Hamiltonentirely sharesmy views. He expressed himself quite clearly on the subject yesterday."
"You must have seen him for more than a few minutes to get as far asthat." This was a shell in the enemy's powder-magazine.
The Countess had to adopt retrocessive strategy. "I think, my dear," she said, with dignity at a maximum, "that I have made it sufficiently clear that I do not wish to rediscuss your engagement, as your father persists in calling it. We must retain our opinions. If at the end of six months—if—it turns out that I am entirely mistaken, why, then you and your father must just settle it your own way. Now let us talk no more about it."
This conversation took place in the late afternoon of the day following Gwen's visit to Strides Cottage, and the Countess's to Pensham. All through the morning of that day her young ladyship had been feeling the effects of the strain of the previous one, followed by a night of despairing sleeplessness due to excitement. An afternoon nap, a most unusual thing with her, had rallied her to the point of sending a special invitation to her mother to join her at tea in her own private apartment; which was reasonable, as all the guests were away killing innocent birds, or hares. The Countess was aware of her daughter's fatigue and upset, but persisted in regarding its cause as over-estimated—a great deal too much made of a very simple matter. "Then that is satisfactorily settled, and there need be no further fuss." These were her words of comment on her daughter's detailed account of her day's adventures, which made themselves of use to keep hostilities in abeyance.
"I think you are unfeeling, mamma; that's flat!" was Gwen's unceremonious rejoinder.
The Countess repeated the last word impassively. It was rather as though she said to Space:—"Here is an expression. If you are by way of containing any Intelligences capable of supplying an explanation, I will hear them impartially." Receiving no reply from any Point of the Compass, she continued:—"I really cannot see what these two old ... persons have to complain of. They have every reason to be thankful that they have been spared so long. The death of either would have made all your exertions on their behalf useless. Why they cannot settle down on each side of that big fireplace at Strides Cottage, and talk it all over, I cannot imagine. It has been engraved in theIllustrated London News." This was marginal, not in the text. "They will have plenty to tell each other after such a long time."
"Mamma dear, you are hopeless!"
"Well, my dear, ask any sensible person. They have had the narrowest escape of finding it all out after each other's death, and then I suppose we should never have heard the end of it.... Yes, perhaps the way I put itwasa little confused. But really the subject is so complex." Gwen complicated it still more by introducing its relations to Immortality; to which her mother took exception:—"If they were both ghosts, we should probably know nothing of them. No ghost appears to a perfect stranger—no authenticated ghost! Besides, one hopes they would be at peace in their graves."
"Oh, ah, yes, by-the-by!" said Gwen, "there wasn't to be anything till the Day of Judgment."
"I wish you wouldn't drag in Religion," said her mother. "You pick up these dreadful Freethinking ways of speech from....
"From Adrian? Of course I do. Butyoubegan it, by talking about Death and Ghosts."
"My dear, neither Death nor Ghosts are Religion, but the Day of Judgment is. Ask anybody!"
"Very well, then! Cut the Day of Judgment out, and go on with Death and Ghosts."
"We will talk," said the Countess coldly, "of something else. I do not like the tone of the conversation. What are your plans for to-morrow?"
"I don't think I shall go to Chorlton to-morrow. I shall leave the old ladies alone for a while. I think it's the best way. Don't you?"
"I don't think it can matter much, either way." The Countesswas not going to come down from Olympus, for trifles. "But whatareyou going to do to-morrow? Go to church, Isuppose?"
"Is it necessary to settle?"
"By no means. Perhaps I was wrong in taking it for granted. No doubt I should have done well—in your case—to ask for information.Areyou going to church?"
"Possibly. I can settle when the time comes." Her mother made no reply, but she made it so ostentatiously that to skip off to another subject would have been to accept a wager of battle. Gwen was prepared to be conciliatory. "Is anything coming off?" she asked irreverently. "Any Bishop or anything?"
Her mother replied, with a Pacific Ocean of endurance in her voice:—"Dr. Tuxford Somers is preaching at the Abbey. If you come, pray do not be late. The carriage will be ready at a quarter to ten."
"Well—I shall have to go once or twice, so I suppose now will do for once. There's Christmas Day, of course—I don't mind that. I shall go to Chorlton, and look at the two old ladies in church. I hope Mrs. Picture will be well enough by then."
"I am sure I hope so. A whole week!" The Countess'sparti pris, that the experience of the old twins was nothing to make such a fuss over, showed itself plainly in this. She passed on to a more important subject. "I understand," said she, "that you intend to go to Pensham on Monday—and stay!"
"I do," said Gwen uncompromisingly. But her mother's expression became so stony that Gwen anticipated her spoken protest, saying:—"Now, mamma dear, you know I've agreed, and we are to go abroad for six whole months. So don't look like a martyr!"
"When will you be back?" said the martyr. The fact is, she was well aware that this was a case ofquid pro quo; and that Gwen was entitled, by treaty, to a perfect Saturnalia of sweet-hearting till after Christmas, in exchange for the six months of penal servitude to follow. But she preferred to indicate that the terms of the treaty had disappointed her.
"Quite uncertain," said Gwen. "I shall stop till Thursday, anyhow. And Adrian and Irene are to come here on Christmas Eve. I suppose they'll have to share the paternal plum-pudding on Christmas Day. That can't be helped. And I shall have to be here.Thatcan't be helped either.Ithink it a pity the whole clan-jamfray shouldn't come here for Christmas."
"That is out of the question. Sir Hamilton has his own socialobligations. Besides, it would look as if you and Mr. Torrens were definitely engaged. Which you are not."
"Suppose we talk of something else."
"Suppose we do." Her ladyship could only assent; for had she not, Shylockwise, taught her daughter that word?
The agreement that another topic should be resorted to was sufficiently complied with by a short pause before resuming the antecedent one. Gwen did this by saying:—"You will be all right without me for a few days, because Sir Spencer Derrick and his wife are due to-night, and the Openshaws, and the Pellews will be here on Monday."
"Gwendolen!" In a shocked tone of voice.
"Well—Aunt C. and Cousin Percy, then. If they are not the Pellews, they very soon will be. They are coming on Monday, anyhow."
"But not by the same train!"
"Ishould come by the same train, if I were they. And in the same carriage. And tip the guard to keep everybody else out. Much better do it candidly than pretend they've met by accident.Ishould."
The Countess thought she reallyhadbetter change to another subject. She dropped this one as far off as possible. "When do you expect to see your two old interesting twins again?" said she conciliatorily. For she felt that reasoning with her beautiful but irregular daughter was hopeless. The young lady explained that her next visit to Chorlton would be by way of an expedition from Pensham. Adrian and Irene would drive her over. It was not morally much farther from Pensham than from the Towers, although some arithmetical appearances were against it. And she particularly wanted Adrian to see old Mrs. Picture. And then, like a sudden sad cadence in music, came the thought:—"But he cannot see old Mrs. Picture."
Keziah Solmes did not come back till quite late in the evening. Her report of the state of things at Strides Cottage was manifestly vitiated by an unrestrained optimism. If she was to be believed, the sudden revelation to each other of the old twin sisters had had no specially perturbing effect on either. Gwen spent much of the evening writing a long letter to her father at Bath, giving a full account of her day's work, and ending:—"I do hope the dear old soul will bear it. Mrs. Solmes has just given me a most promising report of her. I cannot suppose her constant references to the Benevolence of Providence to be altogether euphemisms in the interestof the Almighty. I am borrowing Adrian's language—you will see that. I think Keziah is convinced that Mrs. Prichard will rally, and that the twins may live to be nonagenarians together. I must confess to being very anxious about her myself. She looked to me as if a breath of air might blow her away. I shall not see her again for a day or two, but I know they will send for me if I am wanted. Dr. Nash is to see to that. What a serviceable man he is!" She went on to say, after a few more particulars of Keziah's report, that she was going to Pensham on Monday, and should not come back before the Earl's own return to the Towers. Mamma would do perfectly well without her, and it was only fair, considering her own concessions.
But Gwen did not go to church next day.
Dr. Nash had been sent for to Strides Cottage at a very early hour, having been prevented from fulfilling a promise to go overnight. He must have seen some new cause for uneasiness, although he disclaimed any grounds of alarm. For he wrote off at once to her young ladyship, after a careful examination of his patient:—"Mrs. Prichard certainly is very feeble. I think it only right that you should know this at once. But you need not be frightened. Probably it is no more than was to be expected." That was the wording of his letter, received by Gwen as she sat at breakfast with some new arrivals and the Colonel, and the dregs of the shooting-party. She was not at all sorry to get a complete change of ideas and associations, although the subjects of conversation were painful enough, turning on the reports of mixed disaster and success in the Crimea that were making the close of '54 lurid and memorable for future history. Gwen glanced at Dr. Nash's letter, gave hurried directions to the servant to tell Tom Kettering to be in readiness to drive her at once to Chorlton, and made short work of breakfast and heradieuxto the assembled company.
If events would only pay attention to the convenience of storytellers, they would never happen at the same time. It would make consecutive narrative much more practicable. It would have been better—some may say—for this story to follow Granny Marrable to Strides Cottage, and to leave Gwen to come to Dr. Nash's summons next day. It might then have harked back to the foregoing chat between her and her mother, or omitted it altogether. Its author prefers the course it has taken.
WHAT DID GRANNY MARRABLE THINK ON THE ROAD? HER ARRIVAL, AND HOW KEZIAH TOLD JOHN COSTRELL, WHO WHISTLED. THE MEETING, WHICH NONE SAW. HOW COULD THIS BE MAISIE? GRANNY MARRABLE'S SHAKEN FAITH, RUTH'S MIXED FILIALITIES. HOW OLD MAISIE AWOKE AND FELT CHILLY. HOW SHE SLEPT TEN SECONDS MORE AND DREAMED FOR HOURS. HOW OLD PHOEBE HAD DRAWN A VERY SMALL TOOTH OF MAISIE'S, OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO
WHAT DID GRANNY MARRABLE THINK ON THE ROAD? HER ARRIVAL, AND HOW KEZIAH TOLD JOHN COSTRELL, WHO WHISTLED. THE MEETING, WHICH NONE SAW. HOW COULD THIS BE MAISIE? GRANNY MARRABLE'S SHAKEN FAITH, RUTH'S MIXED FILIALITIES. HOW OLD MAISIE AWOKE AND FELT CHILLY. HOW SHE SLEPT TEN SECONDS MORE AND DREAMED FOR HOURS. HOW OLD PHOEBE HAD DRAWN A VERY SMALL TOOTH OF MAISIE'S, OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO
Keziah Solmes was literal, not imaginative. She was able to describe any outward seeming of old Phoebe, or of Ruth. But what could she know, or guess, of the stunned bewilderment of their minds? When asked by Gwen what each of the old twins had said at sight of the other—for she had been present, if not at their meeting, a few moments later—she seemed at a loss for a report of definite speech. But, oh yes!—in reply to a suggestion from Gwen—they had called each other by name, that for sure they did! "But 'twas a wonderment to me, my lady, that neither one should cry out loud, for the sorrow of all that long time ago." So said old Keziah, sounding a true note in this reference to the sadness inherent in mere lapse of years. Gwen could and did endorse Keziah, on that score; but there was no wonderment inhermind at their silence. Rather, she was at a loss to conceive or invent a single phrase that either could or would have spoken.
Least of all could independent thought imagine the anticipations of old Phoebe during that strange ride through the falling twilight of the short winter's day. Did she articulate to herself that each minute on the road was bringing her nearer to a strange mystery that was in truth—thatmustbe—the very selfsame sister that her eyes last saw now fifty years ago, even the very same that had called her, a mere baby, to see the heron that flew away? Yes—the same Maisie as much as she herself was the same Phoebe! Did her brain reel to think of the days when she took her own image in an unexpected mirror for her sister—kissed the cold glass with a shudder of horror before she found her mistake? Did she wonder now if this Mrs. Prichard could seem to her another self, as Maisie had wondered wouldsheseem toher? Would all be changed and chill, and the old music of their past be silence, or at best the jangle of a broken chord? Would this latter end of Life, for both, benothing but a joint anticipation of the grave? Gwen tried to sound the plummet of thought in an inconceivable surrounding, to guess at something she herself might think were she impossibly conditioned thus, and failed.
The story, too, must be content to fail. All it can guarantee is facts; and speculation recoils from the attempt to see into old Phoebe's soul as she dismounts from the farmer's cart, at the door beyond which was the thing to baffle all belief; to stultify all those bygone years, and stamp them as delusions.
Whatever she thought, her words were clear and free from trepidation, and John Costrell repeated them after her, making them the equivalent of printed instructions. "If yow are ba-adly wanted, Granny, I'm to coom for ye with ne'er a minute's loss o' time. That wull I. And for what I be to tell the missus, I bean't to say owt."
No—that would not do! The early return of the cart, without the Granny, had to be somehow accounted for. Nothing had been said to Maisie junior, by her, of not returning to supper. "Bide there a minute till I tell ye, John," said she, and went towards the door.
Keziah Solmes was coming out, having heard the cart. She started, with the exclamation:—"Why, God-a-mercy, 'tis the Granny herself!" and made as though to beat a retreat into the house, no doubt thinking to warn Widow Thrale within. Old Phoebe stopped her, saying, quite firmly:—"Iknow, Cousin Keziah. Tell me, how is Mrs. Prichard?"
Keziah, taken aback, lost presence of mind. "What can ye know o' Mrs. Prichard, Granny?" said she sillily. She said this because she could not see how the information had travelled.
"How is she?" old Phoebe repeated. And something in her voice said:—"Answer straight!" At least, so Keziah thought, and replied:—"The worser by the bad shake she's had, I lay." Neither made any reference to Mrs. Prichard's newly discovered identity. For though, as we have seen, Keziah knew all about it, she felt that the time had not yet come for free speech. Granny Marrable turned to John Costrell, saying in the same clear, unhesitating way:—"You may say to Maisie that her mother wants a helping hand with old Mrs. Prichard, but I'll come in the morning. You'll say no further than that, John;"—and passed on into the house.
John replied:—"I'll see to it, Granny," and grasped the situation, evidently. Keziah remained, and as soon as the old lady was out of hearing, said to him:—"This be a stra-ange stary coom tolight, Master Costrell. Only to think of it! The Gra-anny's twin, thought dead now, fowerty years agone!"
"Thou'lt be knowing mower o' the stary than I, belike, Mrs. Solmes," said John. "I'm only the better by a bare word or so, so far, from speech o' the Gra-anny with her yoong la-adyship o' the Towers, but now, on the roo-ad. The Gra-anny she was main silent, coom'n' along."
"There's nowt to wonder at in that, Master Costrell. For there's th' stary, as I tell it ye. Fowerty years agone and more, she was dead by all accounts, out in the Colonies, and counted her sister dead as well. And twenty years past she's been living in London town, and ne'er a one known it. And now she's come by a chance to this very house!"
"She'd never coom anigh to this place?"
"Sakes alive, no! 'Twas all afower Gra-anny Marrable come here to marry Farmer Marrable—he was her second, ye know. I was a bit of a chit then. And Ruth Thrale was fower or five years yoonger. She was all one as if she was the Gra-anny's own child. But she was noa such a thing."
Then it became clear that the word or so had been very bare indeed. "She was an orphan, I ta-ak it," said John indifferently.
"There, now!" said Keziah. "I was ma-akin' a'most sure you didn't see the right of it, Master Costrell. And I wasn't far wrong, that once!"
"Maybe I'm out, but I do-an't see rightly where. A girl's an orphan, with ne'er a fa-ather nor a moother. Maybe one o' them was living? Will that square it?"
"One o' them's living still. And none so vairy far from where we stand. Can ye ma-ak nowt o' that, Master Costrell?"
Johnwasa little slow; it was his bucolic mind. "None so vairy far from where we stand?" he repeated, in the dark.
"Hearken to me tell ye, man alive! She's in yander cottage, in the bedroom out across th' pa-assage. And the two o' them they've met by now. Are ye any nearer, Master Costrell?"
For a moment no idea fructified. Then astonishment caught and held him. "Not unless," he exclaimed, "not unless you are meaning that this old la-ady is Widow Thrale's mother!"
"You've gotten hold of it now, Master Costrell."
"But 'tis impossible—'tisimpossible! If she were she would be my wife's grandmother!—her grandmother that died in Australia.... Well, Keziah Solmes, ye may nod and look wise—but....
"But that is th' vairy thing she is, safe and sure, John Costrell. I told ye—Australia. Australia be the Colonies."
John gave the longest whistle a single breath would support. Why he was ready to accept the relation of old Phoebe and Maisie, and revolt against his wife's inevitable granddaughtership, Heaven only knows! "But I'm not to say a word of it to the mistress," said he, meaning his wife.
"The Gra-anny said so, and she'll be right.... Was that her voice?..." A sound had come from the cottage. Keziah might be wanted. She wished the farmer good-night; and he drove off, no longer mystified, but dumfoundered with what had removed his mystification.
Old Phoebe had passed on into the house. She was satisfied that her message would account quite reasonably for the vacant seat in the returning cart. Besides, medical sanction—Dr. Nash's—had been given for her absence.
Now that the moment was close, a great terror came upon her, and she trembled. She knew that Ruth, her daughter for so long, was beyond that closed door across the passage, with ... With whom? With what?
Who can say except he be a twin that has lost a twin, what more of soul-stress had to be borne by these two than would have been his lot, or ours, in their place? And the severance of Death itself could not have been more complete than theirs for forty-odd years past; nor the reunion beyond the grave, that Gwen had likened theirs to, be stranger. Indeed, one is tempted to imagine that inconceivable palliations may attend conditions of which our ignorance can form no image. On this side one only knows that such a meeting is all the sadder for the shadow of Decay.
She could hardly believe herself the same as when, so few days since, she quitted this old room, that still remained unchanged; so intensely the same as when she, and her memories in it were left alone with a Past that seemed unchangeable, but for the ever-growing cloud of Time. There was the old clock, ticking by the dresser, not missing its record of the short life of every second that would never come again. There on the hearth was the log that might seem cold, but always treasured a spark to be rekindled; and the indomitable bellows, time-defying, that never failed to find it out and make it grow to flame. There was the old iron kettle, all blackness without and crystal purity within, singing the same song that it began a long lifetime since, and showing the same impatience under neglect. There on the dresser was the same dinner-servicethat had survived till breakage and neglect of its brethren had made it a rarity; and on the wall that persevering naval battle her husband's great-grandmother's needle had immortalised a century and a half ago. The only change she saw was the beadwork tablecloth wrapped over the mill-model, in its place above the hearth. Otherwise there was no change.
And here was she, face to face with resurrection—that was how she thought of it—all her brain in a whirl, unfit to allot its proper place to the most insignificant fact; all her heart stunned by a cataclysm she had no wits to give a name to. She had come with a rare courage and endurance to be at close quarters with this mystery, whatever it was, at once. On the very verge of full knowledge of it, this terror had come upon her, and she stood trembling, sick with dread undefined, glad she need not speak or call out. It would pass, and then she would call to Ruth, whose voice she could hear in the room beyond. There was another voice, too, a musical one, and low. Whose could it be? Not her lost sister's—not Maisie's! Her voice was never like that.
The cat came purring round her to welcome her back. The great bulldog trotted in from the yard behind, considered her a moment, and passed out to the front, attracted by the voices of Keziah and John Costrell. Having weighed them, duly and carefully, he trotted back past Granny Marrable, to give one short bark at the bedroom door, and return to the yard behind, his usual headquarters. Then Ruth came from the bedroom, hearing the movement and speech without.
She was terribly taken aback. "Oh, mother dearest," she said, betrayed into speaking her inner thought, "you have come too soon. You cannot know."
"Iknow," said Granny Marrable. "I will tell you presently. Now take me to her."
Ruth saw she meant that she could not trust her feet. What wonder at that? If she really knew the truth, what wonder at anything? She gave the support of her arm to the door, across the passage. Then the need for it seemed to cease, and the Granny, becoming her strong old self again, said with her own voice:—"That will do, dear child! Leave me to go on." She seemed to mean:—"Go on alone." That was what Ruth took her speech for. She herself held back; so none saw the first meeting between the twins.
Presently, as she stood there in suspense, she heard the words:—"Who is it outside, Ruth?" in Mrs. Prichard's voice, weak but controlled. Then the reply, through a breath that caught:—"Ruthis outside." Then the weaker voice, questioning:—"Then who?... then who?..." But no answer was given.
For, to Ruth's great wonderment, Granny Marrable came back in extreme trepidation, crying out through sobs:—"Oh, how can this be Maisie? Oh, how can this be Maisie?" To which Ruth's reply was:—"Oh, mother dear, who can she be if she is not my mother?" And though the wording was at fault, it is hard to see how she could have framed her question otherwise.
But old Phoebe had cried out loud enough to be heard by Keziah, speaking with John Costrell out in front, and it was quite audible in the room she had just left. That was easy to understand. But it was less so that old Maisie should have risen unassisted from the bed where she had lain since morning, and followed her.
"Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe darling, do not say that! Do not look at me to deny me, dearest. I know that this is you, and that we are here, together. Wait—wait andit will come!" This was what Keziah remembered hearing as she came back into the house. She crossed the kitchen, and saw, beyond Widow Thrale in the passage, that the two old sisters were in each other's arms.
Old Phoebe, strong in self-command and moral fortitude, and at the same time unable to stand against the overwhelming evidence of an almost incredible fact, had nevertheless been unprepared, by any distinct image of what the beautiful young creature of fifty years ago had become, to accept the reality that encountered her when at last she met it face to face.
Old Maisie's position was different. She had already fought and won her battle against the changes Time had brought about, and her mind no longer recoiled from the ruinous discolorations of decay. She had been helped in this battle by a strong ally, the love engendered for her own daughter while she was still ignorant of her identity. She had found her outward seeming a stepping-stone to a true conception of the octogenarian, last seen in the early summer of a glorious womanhood. Ruth Thrale's autumn, however much she still retained of a comely maturity, had been in those days the budding springtime of a child of four. Come what come might of the ravages of Time and Change, old Maisie was prepared for it, after accepting such a change as that. Did she know, and acknowledge to herself the advantage this had been to her, that time when she had said to Gwen:—"How I wish you could stay, to tell her that this is me!"
But the momentary unexpected strength that had enabled old Maisie to rise from the bed could not last. She had only just power left to say:—"IamMaisie! IamMaisie!" before speechfailed; and her daughter had to be prompt, close at hand though she was, to prevent her falling. They got her back to the bed, frightened by what seemed unconsciousness, but relieved a moment after by her saying:—"I was only dizzy. Is this Phoebe's hand?" They were not seriously alarmed about her then.
She remained very still, a hand of her sister and daughter in each of hers, and the twilight grew, but none spoke a word. Keziah, at a hint from Ruth, attended to the preparation of supper in the front-room. This living unfed through hours of tension had to come to an end sometime. They knew thathersilence was by choice, from a pressure of the hand of either from time to time. It seemed to repeat her last words:—"IamMaisie. IamMaisie."
That silence was welcome to them, for neither would have said a word by choice. They could but sit speechless, stunned by the Past. Would they ever be able to talk of it at all? A short parting gives those who travel together on the road through Life a good spell of cheerful chat, and each is overbrimming with the tale of adventure, grave or gay, of the folk they have chanced upon, the inns they have slept at, a many trifles with a leaven of seriousness not too weighty for speech. How is it when the ways divided half a century ago, and no tidings came to hand of either for the most part of a lifetime? How when either has believed the other dead, through all those years? Neither old Phoebe nor Ruth could possibly have felt the thing otherwise. But, that apart, silence was easiest.
Presently, it was evident that she was sleeping, peacefully enough, still holding her sister and daughter by the hand. As soon as Ruth felt the fingers slacken, she spoke, under her breath:
"How came you to know of it?"
"Dr. Nash. I spoke with her ladyship on the way, and she said it was true."
"What did she say was true?"
Granny Marrable had to think. What was it Gwen had said? She continued, feeling for her memories:—"I said to Gwen o' the Towers 'twas my dead sister come from the grave, and Dr. Nash had spoken to it. And John Costrell would have me unsay my word, but her ladyship bore me out, though 'twas but a way of speech." She paused a moment; then, before Ruth could frame an inquiry as to how much she knew of the story from either Dr. Nash or Gwen, went on, her eyes fixed, with a look that had terror in it, on the figure on the bed:—"If this be Maisie, was she not dead to me—my sister? Oh, how can this be Maisie?" Her mind was still in a turmoil of bewilderment and doubt.
Then Ruth's speech was again at fault, and yet she saw nothing strange in it. "Oh, mother dearest, thismustbe my mother. How else could she know? Had you but heard her talk as I did, of the old mill!—and there she was a-knowing of it all, and I could think her mad! Oh, mother dear, the fool that I was not to see shemustbe my mother!"
"It comes and goes, child," said Granny Marrable tremulously, "that she is your mother, not dead as I have known her. But it is all your life. I mind how the letter came that told it. After your grandfather's death. And all a lie!"
"Her ladyship will tell you that, mother, as she told it to me. I have not the heart to think it, but it was my father's work. God have mercy on him!"
"God have mercy on him, for his sin! But how had he the cruelty? What wrong had I done him?"
"Mother, I pray that I may one day see the light upon it. God spare us a while, just for to know the meaning of it all." It was a confession of the hopelessness of any attempt to grapple with it then.
Keziah Solmes, while preparing some supper, looked in once, twice, at the watchers beside the still sleeping figure on the bed. They were not speaking, and never took their eyes from the placid, colourless face and snow-white hair loose on the pillow; but they gave her the idea of dazed bewilderment, waiting for the mists to clear and let them dare to move again. The fog-bound steamer on the ocean stands still, or barely cuts the water. It is known, on board, that the path will reopen—but when?
The third time Keziah looked in at them, the room being all dark but for a wood-flicker from an unreplenished grate, she gathered courage to say that supper was ready. Ruth Thrale started up from where she half sat, half lay, beside the sleeper, exclaiming:—"She's eaten nothing since the morning. Mother, she'll sink for want of food."
"Now, the Lord forgive me!" said Granny Marrable. "To think I've had my dinner to-day, and she's been starving!" For, of course, the midday meal was all over at Costrell's, in normal peace, when Dr. Nash came in laden with the strange news, and at a loss to tell it.
The withdrawal of her daughter's hand waked the sleeper with a start. "I was dreaming so nicely," said she. "But I'm cold. Oh dear—what is it?... I thought I was in Sapps Court, with my little Dave and Dolly...." She seemed slow to catch again the thread of the life she had fallen asleep on. Vitality was verylow, evidently, and she met an admonition that she must eat something with:—"Nothing but milk, please!" It refreshed her, for though she fell back on the pillow with her eyes closed, she spoke again a moment after.
The thing happened thus. Keziah, authoritatively, insistent, would have Ruth eat, or try to eat, some supper. Old Phoebe was in no need of it, and sat on beside old Maisie, who must have dreamed again—one of those sudden long experiences a few seconds will give to a momentary sleep. For she opened her eyes to say, with a much greater strength in her voice:—"I was dreaming of Dolly again, but Dolly wasn't Dolly this time ... only, shewasDolly, somehow!..." Then it was clear that she was quite in the dark, for the time being, about the events of the past few hours. For she continued:—"She was Dolly and my sister Phoebe—both at once—when Phoebe was a little girl—my Phoebe that was drowned. But Phoebe was older than that when she drew my tooth, as Dolly did in my dream."
Old Phoebe, it must be borne in mind, although intellectually convinced that this could be none other than her sister, had never experienced the conviction that only the revival of joint memories could bring. This reference to an incident only known to themselves, long forgotten by her and now flashed suddenly on her out of the past, made her faith that this was Maisie, in very truth, a reality. But she could not speak.
The dream-gods kept their hold on the half-awakened mind, too old for any alacrity in shaking them off. The old voice wandered on, every word telling on its hearer and rousing a memory. "We must have been eight then. Phoebe tied a thread of silk round the tooth, and the other end to the drawer-knob ... it was such a little tooth ... long and long before you were born, my dear...." Her knowledge of the present was on its way back, and she thought the hand that held hers was her new-found daughter's. "It was the drawer where the knitting-wool was kept."
If you who read this are old, can you not remember among the surroundings of your childhood things too trivial for the maturities of that date to give a passing thought to, that nevertheless bulked large to you then, and have never quite lost their impressiveness since? Such a one, to old Phoebe, was "the drawer where the knitting-wool was kept." Some trifle of the sort was sure to strike home its proof of her sister's identity. Chance lighted on this one, and it served its turn.
Ruth heard her cry out—a cry cut short by her mother's:—"Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, I know it all now, and you'll know me." She startedup from a hurried compliance with her Cousin Keziah's wish that she should eat, and went back quickly to the bedroom, to see the two old sisters again locked in each other's arms.
They may have been but dimly alive to how it all had come about, but they knew themselves and each other—twins wrenched asunder half a century since, each of whom had thought the other dead for over forty years.
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
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 wasnotalone. It all came back then. The figure on the bed!—notdead, 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.... Butyouare 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 daytheycame—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!—butweknew 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.... Butnot 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?... Whatisit 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 toknow, 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 notleave 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, andold 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 saidyouwere 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 excitementtold, 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. ButHis 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....'"
"'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. ButHis 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—howcanit 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 bitherhand, 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 ...'"
"'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 arrivedat 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....'"
"' ... 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 arrivedat 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.'
"'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 lovebefore 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.