"Hasshe nothing to gain by it? I do so want you to think over this quietly.... I wish you would sit down...." Mrs. Thrale did so. "Thank you!—thatiscomfortabler. Now, just consider this! There is no evidence at all that the young daughter whom she left behind with her sister is not still living, though of course the chances are that the sister herself is dead. This daughter may be.... What's that?"
"I thought I heard her waking up. Will your ladyship excuse me one moment?..." She rose and went to the bedroom. But the old lady was, it seemed, still sleeping soundly, and she came back and resumed her seat.
Of all the clues Gwen had thrown out to arouse suspicion of the truth, and make full announcement possible, not one had entered the unreceptive mind. Was this to go on until the sleeper really waked? Gwen felt, during that one moment alone, how painfully this would add to the embarrassment, and resolved on an act of desperation.
"I think," said she, speaking very slowly, and fighting hard to hide the effort speech cost her. "I think I should like you to see this horrible forged letter. I brought it on purpose.... Oh—here it is!... By-the-by, I ought to have told you. Prichard is not her real name." A look like disappointment came on Widow Thrale's face. Analiasis always an uncomfortable thing. Gwen interpreted this look rightly. "It's no blame to her, you know," she said hastily. "Remember that her proper name—that on the direction there—belonged to a convict! You or I might have done the same."
And then, as the eyes of the daughter turned unsuspicious to her mother's name—forged by her father, to imitate the handwriting of her grandfather—Gwen sat and waited as he who has fired a train that leads to a mine awaits the crash of the rifted rock and its pillar of dust and smoke against the heavens.
"Butmyname was Daverill—Ruth Daverill!" Was the train ill-laid then, that this woman should be able to sit quite still, content to fix a puzzled look upon the wicked penmanship of fifty years ago?
"And your mother's, Ruth Daverill? What was hers?"
"Maisie Daverill." She answered mechanically, with an implication of "And why not?" unspoken. She was still dwelling on the direction, the first name in which was not over-legible, no doubt owing to the accommodation due to the non-erasure of the first syllable by the falsifier. Gwen saw this, and said, quietly but distinctly:—"Thornton."
The end was gained, for better, for worse. Ruth Thrale gave a sudden start and cry, uttering almost her mother's words at first sight of the mill:—"What can this be? What can this be? Tell me, oh, tell me!"
Gwen, hard put to it during suspense, now cool and self-possessed at the first gunshot, rose and stood by the panic-stricken woman. Nothing could soften the shock of her amazement now. Pull her through!—that was the only chance. And the sooner she knew the whole now, the better!
It might have been cruelty to a bad end that made such beauty so pale and resolute as Gwen's, as she said without faltering:—"The name is your mother's name—Mrs. Thornton Daverill. Your father's name was Thornton. Now open the letter and read!"
"Oh—my lady—it makes me afraid!... What can it be?"
"Open the letter and read!" But Ruth Thralecouldnot; her hand was too tremulous; her heart was beating too fast. Gwen took the letter from her, quietly, firmly; opened it before her eyes; stood by her, pointing to the words. "Now read!"—she said.
And then Ruth Thrale read as a child reads a lesson:—"My ... dear ... daughter ... Maisie.... and a few words more, her voice shaking badly, then suddenly stopped. "But my mother's name was Maisie," she said. She had wavered on some false scent caused by the married name.
"Read on!" said Gwen remorselessly. Social relation said that her ladyshipmustbe obeyed first; madness fought against after. Ruth Thrale read on, for the moment quite mechanically. The story of the shipwreck did not seem to assume its meaning. She read on, trembling, clinging to the hand that Gwen had given her to hold.
Suddenly came an exclamation—a cry. "But what is this about Mrs. Prichard? This isnotMrs. Prichard. Why is mother's old name in this letter?" She was pointing to the word Cropredy, Phoebe's first married name; a name staggering in the force of its identity. She had not yet seen the signature.
Gwen turned the page and pointed to it:—"Isaac Runciman," clear and unmistakable. Incisiveness was a duty now. Said she, deliberately:—"Why is this forged letter signed with your grandfather's name?" A pause, with only a sort of puzzled moan in answer. "I will tell you, and you will have to hear it. Because it was forged by your father, fifty years ago." Again a pause;not so much as a moan to break the silence! Gwen made her voice even clearer, even more deliberate, to say:—"Because he forged it to deceive your mother, and it deceived her, and she believed you dead. For years she believed you and her sister dead. And when she returned toEngland...."
She was interrupted by a poor dumfoundered effort at speech, more seen in the face she was intently watching than heard. She waited for it, and it came at last, in gasps:—"But it is to Mrs. Prichard—the letter—Mrs. Prichard's letter—oh, why?—oh, why?..." And Ruth Thrale caught at her head with her hands, as though she felt it near to bursting.
The surgeon's knife is most merciful when most resolutely used.
"Because old Mrs. Prichardisyour mother," said Gwen, all her heart so given to the task before her that she quite forgot, in a sense, her own existence. "Because sheisyour mother, whom you have always thought dead, and who has always thought you dead. Because sheisyour mother, who has been living here in England—oh, for so many years past!—and never found you out!"
Ruth Thrale's hands fell helpless in her lap, and she sat on, dumb, looking straight in front of her. Gwen would have been frightened at her look, but she caught sight of a tear running down her face, and felt that this was, for the moment, the best that might be. That tear reassured her. She might safely leave the convulsion that had caused it to subside. If only the sleeper in the next room would remain asleep a little longer!
She did right to be silent and wait. Presently the two motionless hands began moving uneasily; and, surely, those were sighs, long drawn out? That had the sound of tension relieved. Then Ruth Thrale turned her eyes full on the beautiful face that was watching hers so anxiously, and spoke suddenly.
"I must go to her at once."
"But think!—is it well to do so? She knows nothing."
"My lady—is there need she should? Nor I cannot tell her now, for I barely know, myself. But Iwanther—oh, I want her! Oh, all these cruel years! Poor Mrs. Prichard! But who will tell mother?" She was stopped by a new bewilderment, perhaps a worse one.
"Iwill tell mother." Gwen took the task upon herself, recklessly. Well!—it had to be gone through with, by someone. And she would do anything to spare this poor mother and daughter.Shewould tell Granny Marrable! She did, however, hope that Dr. Nash had broken the ice for her.
A sound came from the other room. The old lady had awaked and was moving. Mrs. Thrale said in a frightened whisper:—"She will come in here. She always does. She likes to move about a little by herself. But she is soon tired."
Said Gwen:—"Will she come in here? Let me see her alone! Do! It will only be for a few minutes. Run in next door, and leave me to talk to her. I have a reason for asking you." She heard the bedroom door open, beyond the passage.
"When shall I come back, my lady?" This reluctance to go seemed passing strange to Gwen. But it yielded to persuasion, or to feudal inheritance. Gwen watched her vanish slowly into Elizabeth-next-door's; and then, perceiving that the mare had sighted the transaction, and was bearing down towards her, she delayed a moment to say:—"Not yet, Tom! Wait!"—and returned into the house.
"My dear, God has been good to let you come. Oh, how I have prayed to see your face again, and hear your dear voice!" Thus old Mrs. Picture, crying with joy. She could not cling close enough to that beautiful hand, nor kiss it quite to her heart's content.
Gwen left her in possession of it. "But, dear Mrs. Picture," she said, "I thought your letter said you were so comfortable, and that Mrs. Thrale was so kind?"
"What, my Ruth!—that is how I've got to call her—my Ruth is more than kind. No daughter could be kinder to a mother. You know—I told you—my child was Ruth. Long ago—long, long ago! She was asleep when I kissed her. I can feel it still." Gwen fancied her speech sounded wandering, as she sat down in Granny Marrable's vacant chair.
This story often feels that the pen that writes it must resent the improbabilities it is called on to chronicle. That old Maisie should call her own child by the name she gave her, and think her someone else!
"Tell me, dear, what it was—all about it!" Thus Gwen, getting the old lady comfortably settled, and finding a footstool for herself, as in Francis Quarles at the Towers. She had made up her mind to tell all if she possibly could. But it had to be all or nothing. It would be better not to speak till she saw her way. Let Mrs. Picture tell her own tale first!
"I want to tell you." She possessed herself again of the precious hand, surrendered to assist in resettling a strayed head-cushion. "Only, tell me first—did you know...?"—She pausedand dropped her voice—" ... Did you know that they thought me...?"
"Thought you what?"
"Did you know that they thought memad?"
"They were wrong if they did. But Mrs. Thrale does not think you mad now. I know she does not."
"Oh, I am glad." Gwen's white and strained look then caught her attention, and she paused for reassurance. It was nothing, Gwen was tired. It was the jolting of a quick drive, and so on. Mrs. Prichard got back to her topic. "Theydidthink me mad, though. Do you know, my dear"—she dropped her voice almost to a whisper—"I went near to thinking myself mad. It was so strange! It was the mill-model. I wish she had let me see it again. That might have set it all to rights. But thinking like she did, maybe she was in the right. For see what it is when the head goes wrong! I was calling to mind, all next day, when I found out what they thought...."
"But they did not tell you they thought you mad. How did you know?"
"It came out by little things—odd talk at times.... It got in the air, and then I saw the word on their lips.... I neverheardit, you know.... What was I saying?"
"You were calling something to mind, all next day, you said. What was that?"
"A man my husband would talk about, in Macquarie Gaol, whose head would be all right so long as no cat came anigh him. So the others would find a cat to start him off. Only my Ruth thought to take away what upsetme. 'Tis the same thing, turned about like."
Gwen allowed the illustration. "But whydidMrs. Thrale think you mad, over the mill-model?"
"My dear, because to her I must haveseemedmad, to say that was my father's mill, and not her grandfather's."
Gwen kept a lock on her tongue. How easy to have said:—"Your fatherwasher grandfather!" She said nothing.
"And yet, you know, how could I be off the thought it was so, with it there before me, seeming like it did? I do assure you, there it seemed to be—the very mill! There was my father, only small, and not much to know him by, smoking. And there was our man, Muggeridge, that saw to the waggon. And there was Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, our horses. And there was the great wheel the water shot below, to turn it, and the still water above where Phoebe saw the heron, and called me—but it was gone!" Tearswere filling the old eyes, as the old lips recalled that long-forgotten past. Then, as she went on, her voice broke to a sob, and failed of utterance. But it came. "And there—and there—were I and my darling, my Phoebe, that died in the cruel sea! Oh, my dear—that I might have seen her once again! But once again!..." She stopped to recover calm speech; and did it, bravely. "It was all in the seeming of it, my dear, but all the same hard for me to understand. Very like, my dear Ruth here was right and wise to keep it away from me. It might have set me off again. I'm not what I was, and things get on my mind.... There now—my dear. See how I've made you cry!"
Gwen felt that this could not go on much longer without producing some premature outbreak of her overtaxed patience; but she could sit still and say nothing; for a little time yet, certainly. "I'm not crying, dear Mrs. Picture," said she. "It was riding against the cold wind. Go on and tell me more." Then a thought occurred to her—a means to an end. "Tell me about your father. You have never told me about him. When did he die?"
"My father? That I could not tell you, my dear, for certain. For no letter reached me when he died, nor yet any letter since his own, that told me of Phoebe's death. Oh, but it is a place for letters to go astray! Why, before they gave my husband charge over the posts, and made him responsible, the carrier would leave letters for the farm on a tree-stump two miles away, and we were bound to send for them there—no other way! And there was none I knew to write to, for news, when Phoebe was gone, and our little Ruth, and Uncle Nick. Such an odd name he had. I never told it you. Nicholas Cropredy."
"I knew it," said Gwen heedlessly. Then, to recover her foothold:—"Somehow or other! Youmusthave told it me. Else how could I have known?"
"Imusthave.... No, I never knew when my father died. But I should have known. For I stood by his grave when I came back. Such a many years ago now—even that! But I read it wrong. 'May, 1808....' How did I know it was wrong, what I read? Because I looked at his own letter, telling me of the wreck, and it was that very year—but June, not May. And my son was with me then, and he looked at the letter, too, and said it must have been 1818—eighteen, not eight."
Gwen saw the way of this. Phoebe's letter, effaced to make way for the forgery, was to announce Isaac Runciman's death, and was probably written during the first week of June, and posted even later. The English postmark showed two figures for thedate; indistinct, as a postmark usually is. Could she utilise this date in any way to sow the seeds of doubt of the authenticity of the letter? She saw no way open. The letter was a thing familiar to Mrs. Prichard, but a sudden thunderbolt to Ruth Thrale. Had Gwen been in possession of Daverill's letter announcing Maisie's own death, she might have shown it to her. Butcouldsuch old eyes have read it, or would she have understood it?
No—it was impossible to do anything but speak. The next opportunitymustbe seized, for talk seemed only to erect new obstacles to action. The perplexities close at hand, there in Strides Cottage, were the things to dwell on. Better go back to them! "But Mrs. Thrale did not think you mad only because you thought that about the mill," Gwen said this to coax the conversation back.
"No, my dear! I think, for all I found to say that night, she might have thought it no more than a touch of fever. And little wonder, too, for her to hear me doubt her grandfather's mill being his own. But what put me past was to see how the bare truth I told of my father's name, and my sister's, and the name of the mill my father would say was older than the church-tower itself—just that and no more—to make her"—here the old lady lowered her voice, and glanced round as though to be sure they were alone—"to make her turn and run from me, quite in a maze, as though I was a ghost to frighten her, that was what unsettled me!" She fixed her eyes on Gwen, and her hands were restless with her distressing eagerness to get some clue to a solution of her perplexity.
Gwen could say nothing, short of everything. She simply dared not try to tell the whole truth, with a rush, to a hearer so frail and delicate. It seemed that any shock must kill. The musical voice went on, its appealing tone becoming harder and harder for her hearer to bear. "Why—oh why—when I was telling just the truth, that my father's name was Isaac Runciman, and my sister was Phoebe, and our mill was Darenth Mill, why should she not have heard me through to the end, to make it all clear? Indeed, my dear, she put me on thinking I was not saying the words I thought, and I was all awake and clear the whole time. Was I not?"
Gwen's response:—"I will ask her what it was," contained, as a temporary palliative, as much falsehood as she dared to use; just to soothe back the tears that were beginning to get the better of speech. She felt vaguely about for a straw to catch at—something that might soften the revelation that had to come. "Did you tell her your sister was Phoebe?"
"I told her Phoebe—only Phoebe. I never said her married name."
"Did you tell her you and your sister were twins?"
"Oh yes—I told her that. And I think she understood. But she did not say."
"I think, dear Mrs. Picture, I can tell you why she was astonished. It was becausehermother had a twin sister."
The old lady's pathetic look of perplexity remained unchanged. "Was that enough?" she said. The mere coincidence of the twinship did not seem to her to have warranted the effect it produced.
"I am not sure that it was not. There are other things. Did she ever tell you her mother's story? I suppose she told you she is only her mother by adoption? You know what I mean?"
"Oh yes, perfectly! No—Ruth has not told me that. We have not talked much of old Mrs. Marrable, but I shall see her before I go back to Sapps Court. Shall I not? My Davy's other Granny in the country!" It did her good to think and speak of Dave.
"You shall go back to Davy," said Gwen. "Or Davy shall come to you. You may like to stay on longer with Mrs. Thrale."
"Oh, indeed I should ... if only ... if only....
"If only she hadn't thought you had delusions!—isn't that it?... Well, let me go on and tell you some more about her mother—or aunt, really. It is quite true that she was one of twin sisters, and the sister married and went abroad."
Mrs. Prichard was immensely relieved—almost laughed. "There now!—if she had told methat, instead of running away with ideas! We would have found it all out, by now."
Gwen felt quite despairing. She had actually lost ground. Was it conceivable that the whole tale should become known to Mrs. Prichard—or to both sisters, for that matter—and be discredited on its merits, with applause for its achievements in coincidence? It looked like it! Despair bred an idea in her mind; a mad one, perhaps, a stagey one certainly. How would it be to tell Maisie Phoebe's story, seen from Phoebe's point of view?
Whenever an exciting time comes back to us in after-life, the incident most vividly revived is usually one of its lesser ones. Years after, when Gwen's thoughts went back to this trying hour at Strides Cottage, this moment would outstep its importance by reminding her how, in spite of the pressure and complexity of her embarrassment, an absurd memorywouldintrude itself of an operatic tenor singing to the soprano the story of how she waschanged at birth, and so forth, thedivalistening operatically the while. It went so far with her now, for all this tension, as to make a comment waver about her innermost thought, concerning the strange susceptibility of that soprano to conviction on insufficient evidence. Then she felt a fear that her own power of serious effort might be waning, and she concentrated again on her problem. But no solution presented itself better than the stagey one. Is the stage right, after all?
"The sister married and went abroad. Her husband was a bad man, whom she had married against the consent of her family." Gwen looked to see if these words had had any effect. But nothing came of them. She continued:—"Poor girl! her head was turned, I suppose."
"My dear—'twas the like case with me! 'Tis not for me, at least, to sit in judgment."
"No, dear Mrs. Picture, nor any of us. But if she had been as bad as the worst, she could hardly have deserved what came about. I told you she had married a bad man, and I am going to tell you how bad he was." It was as well that Gwen should rouse her hearer's attention by a sure and effective expedient, for it was flagging slightly. Dave's other Granny's sister's misadventures seemed to have so little to do with the recent mystery of the mill-model. But a genuine bad man enthrals us all.
"What did he do?" said his unconscious widow.
"He forged a letter to his own wife, saying that her sister was dead, and she believed it."
"But did her sister never write, to say she was alive?"
"Old Mrs. Marrable? No—because she received a letter at the same time saying thathersister.... You see which I mean?..."
"Oh yes—the bad man's wife, who was abroad."
"... Was also dead. Do you think you see how it was? He told each sister the other was dead."
"Oh, I seethat! But did they both believe it?"
"Both believed it."
"Then did Mrs. Marrable's sister die without knowing?"
Gwen had it on her lips to say:—"She is not dead," before she had had time to foresee the consequences. She had almost said it when an apprehension struck across her speech and cut it short. How could she account to Mrs. Prichard for this knowledge of Mrs. Marrable's sister without narrowing the issue to the simple question:—"Who and where is she?" And if those grave old eyes, at rest now that the topic had become so impersonal to them,were fixed upon her waiting for the answer, how could she find it in her heart to make the only answer possible, futile fiction apart:—"It isyouI am speaking of—youare Mrs. Marrable's sister, and each has falsely thought the other dead for a lifetime"? All her elaborate preparation had ended in animpasse, blocked by a dead wall whose removal was only possible to the bluntest declaration of the truth, almost more cruel now than it would have been before this factitious abatement of the agitation in which Gwen had found her.
And then the long tension that had kept Gwen on the rack, more or less, since the revelation of the letter, keenly in this last hour or so, began to tell upon her, and her soul came through into her words. "Oh no—oh no! Mrs. Marrable's sister did not die without knowing—at least, I mean ... I mean she has not died.... She may.... She was stopped by the danger of inexplicable tears, in time as she thought.
But old Mrs. Prichard, always on the alert for her Guardian Angel, caught the slight modulation of her voice, and was alive with ready sympathy. "Why—oh why—why this?..." she began, wanting to say:—"Why such concern on Mrs. Marrable's account?" and finding herself at fault for words, came to a dead stop.
"You mean, why shouldIfret because of Mrs. Marrable's sister? Is it not that?"
"Ye-es. I think ... I think that is what I meant to say."
Gwen nerved herself for a great effort. She took both the old hands in hers, and all her beauty was in the eyes that looked up at the old face, as she said:—"I will tell you. It is because—I—have to tellherto-day ... that she is ... that she is ... Mrs. Marrable's sister!" The last words might have been a cry for pity.
Could old Maisie fail to catch a gleam of the truth? She did. She only saw that her sweet Guardian Angel was in trouble, and thought to herself:—"Can I not help her?" She immediately said, quite quietly and clearly:—"My dear—my dear! But it will give you such pain. Why not letmetell her? I am old, and my time is at hand. It would be nothing to me. For see what trouble I have had myself. And I could say to her....
"What could you say to her?" Desperation was in Gwen's voice. How could this awful barrier be passed? Could it be past at all—ever?
"I could tell her of all the trouble of my own life, long ago. I do think, if I told her and said, 'See—it might have been me,'that might make it easy." The suggestion was based on a perfectly reasonable idea. Gwen felt that her own task would have been more achievable had her own record been one of sorrow and defeat. Old Maisie took her silence—which was helplessness against new difficulties—for an encouragement to her proposal, and continued:—"Why, my dear, look at it this way! If my dear sister Phoebe had lived, anyone bad enough out there in the Colony, might have written a lie that I was dead, and who would have known?... But, my dear, you are ill? You are shaking."
It was a climax. The perfect serenity, the absolute unconsciousness, of the speaker had told the tale of Gwen's failure more plainly than any previous rebuff. And here was the old lady trying to get up from her chair to summon Widow Thrale! Gwen detained her gently; as, having risen from the stool at her feet, she kneeled beside her.
"No, no—I am not ill.... I will tell you directly."
Moments passed that, to Gwen's impatience for speech she could neither frame nor utter, might have been hours. Old Maisie's growing wonderment was bringing back the look she had had over that mill-model. But she said nothing.
Gwen's voice came at last, audibly to herself, scarcely more. "I want you—I want you to tell me something...."
"What, my dear?... Oh—to tell you something! Yes—what is it?"
Was the moment at hand, at last? Gwen managed to raise her voice. "I want you to tell me this:—Has Mrs. Thrale ever told you her mother's name—I mean her aunt's—Granny Marrable's?"
"Her christened name?—her own name?"
"Yes!"
"No!"
"Shall I tell it you?"
"Why not?... Oh, I am frightened to see you so white. My dear!"
"Listen, dear Mrs. Picture, and try to understand. Mrs. Thrale's aunt's name is Phoebe."
"Is Phoebe!"
"Is Phoebe." Gwen repeated it again, looking fixedly at the old face, now rapidly resuming its former utter bewilderment.
"Is ... Phoebe!" Old Maisie sat on, after echoing back the word, and Gwen left her to the mercy of its suggestion. She had done her best, and could do no more.
She saw that some new thought was at work. But it had to plough its way through stony ground. Give it time!
Watching her intently, she could see the critical moment when the new light broke. A moment later the hand she held clutched at hers beyond its strength, and its owner's voice was forcing its way through gasps. "But ... but ... but ... Widow Thrale's name isRuth!"
"Is Ruth." Yes—leave the fact there, and wait! That was Gwen's decision.
A moment later what she waited for had come. Old Maisie started, crying out aloud:—"Oh, what is this—whatisit?" as she had done when she first saw the mill-model. Then on a sudden a paroxysm seized on the frail body, so terrifying to Gwen that her heart fairly stood still to see it.
It did not kill. It seemed to pass, and leave a chance for speech. But not just yet. Only a long-drawn breath or two, ending always in a moan!
Then, with a sudden vehemence:—"Who was it—who was it—that forged the letter that came—that came to my husband and me?" Her voice rose to a shriek under the sting of that terrible new knowledge. But she had missed a main point in Gwen's tale. Her mind had received the forgery, but not its authorship.
Gwen saw nothing to wonder at in this. The thing was done, and that was enough. "It was your husband himself," said she, and would have gone on to ask forgiveness for her own half-distortion of the facts, and told how she came to the knowledge. But the look on her hearer's face showed her that this must be told later, if indeed it were ever told at all. She was but just in time to prevent old Maisie falling forward from her chair in a dead swoon. She could not leave her, and called aloud for help.
She did not need to call twice. For Widow Thrale, unable to keep out of hearing through an interview so much longer than her anticipation of it, had come into the house from the back, and was already in the passage; had, indeed, been waiting in feverish anxiety for leave to enter.
"Take her—take her!" cried Gwen. "No—never mind me!" And then she saw, almost as in a dream, how the daughter's strong arms clasped her mother, and raising the slight unconscious figure, that lay as if dead, bore it away towards the door. "Yes," said she, "that is right! Lay her on the bed!"
What followed she scarcely knew, except that she caught at a chair to save herself from falling. For a reaction came upon her with the knowledge that her task was done, and she felt dizzy andsick. Probably she was, for a minute or more, practically unconscious; then recovered herself; and, though feeling very insecure on her feet, followed those two strange victims of a sin half a century old. Not quite without a sense of self-reproach for weakness; for see how bravely the daughter was bearing herself, and how immeasurably worse it was for her!
She could not but falter between the doors, still standing open. How could she dare to enter the room where she might find the mother dead? That was her fear. And a more skilful, a gentler revelation, might have left her a few years with the other little twin of the mill-model, still perhaps with a decade of life to come.
She heard the undertones of the daughter's voice, using the name of mother. What was she saying?
"My mother—my mother—my mother!" And then, with a strange acceptance of the name in another sense:—"But when will mother know?"
Gwen entered noiselessly, and stood by the bedside. She began to speak, but shrank from her last word:—"She is not...?"
Widow Thrale looked up from the inanimate form she was clasping so closely in her arms, to say, quite firmly:—"No, she is not dead." Then back again, repeating the words:—"My mother!" as though they were to be the first the unconscious ears should hear on their revival. Then once more to Gwen, as in discharge of a duty omitted:—"God bless you, my lady, for your goodness to us!"
Gwen's irresistible vice of anticlimax nearly made her say:—"Oh bother!" It was stopped by a sound she thought she heard. "Is she not speaking?" she said.
Both listened, and Widow Thrale heard, being the nearer, "Who called you her mother?" she repeated. "Idid." And then Gwen said, clearly and fearlessly:—"Your daughter Ruth!"
SIR CROPTON FULLER'S LUNCH. LAZARUS'S FAMILY. HOW HIS GREAT-GRANNY CATECHIZED A TOOTHLESS HUMAN PUPPY THIRTEEN MONTHS OLD. HOW DR. NASH DRAGGED MRS. PRICHARD IN. A VERY TAKING OLD PERSON, BUT QUITE CRACKED. GOD'S MERCY IN LEAVING US OUR NATURAL FACULTIES. THAT WAS A SEVERE CASE AMONG THE TOMBS. HOW DR. NASH HAD ALL THE MODEL STORY OUT AGAIN, AND ABOUT MUGGERIDGE'S DON GIOVANITIES. MRS. PRICHARD HAD KNOWN MAISIE, CLEARLY. EVERYTHING EXPLAINED. THE FUTILITY OF HYPOTHESES. HOW A MEMORY OF HER MADMAN-CONVICT MADE OLD PHOEBE FEEL BEWITCHED. OBSTINATE PATERNITY. THE MEASUREMENT OF THAT MODEL. WHY ARM-MEASUREMENT? KID'S JARGON. MR. BARLOW. DAVE'S LETTER DELIVERED. A SORT OF FAINT. VINEGAR. DR. NASH PURSUED AND BROUGHT BACK. HOW OLD PHOEBE CAME TO KNOW THE TRUTH THROUGH A CHILD'S DIRECT SPEECH. HER PRESENCE OF MIND. AND HOW SHE WENT STRAIGHT HOME, TO LOOK BACK ON FIFTY LOST YEARS
SIR CROPTON FULLER'S LUNCH. LAZARUS'S FAMILY. HOW HIS GREAT-GRANNY CATECHIZED A TOOTHLESS HUMAN PUPPY THIRTEEN MONTHS OLD. HOW DR. NASH DRAGGED MRS. PRICHARD IN. A VERY TAKING OLD PERSON, BUT QUITE CRACKED. GOD'S MERCY IN LEAVING US OUR NATURAL FACULTIES. THAT WAS A SEVERE CASE AMONG THE TOMBS. HOW DR. NASH HAD ALL THE MODEL STORY OUT AGAIN, AND ABOUT MUGGERIDGE'S DON GIOVANITIES. MRS. PRICHARD HAD KNOWN MAISIE, CLEARLY. EVERYTHING EXPLAINED. THE FUTILITY OF HYPOTHESES. HOW A MEMORY OF HER MADMAN-CONVICT MADE OLD PHOEBE FEEL BEWITCHED. OBSTINATE PATERNITY. THE MEASUREMENT OF THAT MODEL. WHY ARM-MEASUREMENT? KID'S JARGON. MR. BARLOW. DAVE'S LETTER DELIVERED. A SORT OF FAINT. VINEGAR. DR. NASH PURSUED AND BROUGHT BACK. HOW OLD PHOEBE CAME TO KNOW THE TRUTH THROUGH A CHILD'S DIRECT SPEECH. HER PRESENCE OF MIND. AND HOW SHE WENT STRAIGHT HOME, TO LOOK BACK ON FIFTY LOST YEARS
The madman who had claimed as his mother the old woman at Strides Cottage, whom Granny Marrable had not yet seen, had certainly no statutory powers to impose an oath. But this did not stand in the way of her keeping hers, religiously. That is to say, she kept her tongue silent on every point that she could reasonably suppose to call for secrecy, whether from his point of view or this old Mrs. Prichard's.
She felt at liberty to repeat what she remembered of his shocking ravings about his prison life, and to dwell on the fact that he appeared to have mistaken her for his mother. But this could be told without connecting him with any person in or near the village. He was a returned convict who had not seen his mother for twenty years, and meeting an old woman who closely resembled her, or his idea of what she must have become, had made a decisive mistake in identity.
As to the name he had written down for her, she simply shrank from it; and destroyed it promptly, as soon as she collected her faculties after the shock it gave her. She framed a satisfactory theory to account for it, out of materials collected by foraging among her memories of fifty years ago. It turned on these facts:—That the name Ralph Thornton Daverill was the baptismal nameof her sister's little boy that died in England, and that Maisie had repeated to her what her husband had said after the child's death, that the name would do over again if ever she had another son; but had added that she herself would never consent to its adoption. Granny Marrable was sure on both these points, but so uncertain about what she had heard of the christenings of her nephews born in Van Diemen's Land, that she had no scruple in deciding that her sister had dissuaded her brother-in-law from his intention. For this madman was clearly not Maisie's son, if Mrs. Prichard was his mother. But what would be more natural and probable than that if Daverill married again, he should make use of the name a second time? He might have married again more than once, for anything Granny Marrable knew. So might his widow—might have married a man named Prichard. Why not? Those were considerations she need not weigh or speculate about.
Nevertheless, though she had destroyed the signed name, it was a cobweb in her memory she would have gladly brushed away altogether. How she would have liked to tell the whole to Ruth, when—as once or twice happened—she walked over from Chorlton to get a report of progress, leaving old Mrs. Prichard in charge of that loyal dog, supported by Elizabeth-next-door, if need were. But she was sworn to silence on matters she dared not provoke inquiry about. So her tale of her meeting with the convict was minimised.
On the other hand, Ruth was scrupulously uncommunicative of everything connected with Mrs. Prichard's supposed delusions. So was Dr. Nash, on the one or two occasions when he looked in at Costrell's Farm, prophylactically. Where was the use of upsetting Juno Lucina by telling her that her daughter had taken a lunatic inmate? All the circumstances considered, he would have much preferred that Mrs. Maisie's mother should take charge of her. But this young woman liked to have her own way.
The doctor was almost sorry, after Gwen drove away, that he had not pointed out what an unpropitious moment it was for an upsetting revelation, and suggested postponement. It was too late to do anything, by the time he thought of it. He shrugged his shoulders about it, and perceived that what was done couldn't be undone. Then he drove as fast as he could to Sir Cropton Fuller, who asked him to stay to lunch. This meant a long unemployed delay, but he compromised. He would see another patient, and return to lunch, after which he would go to Costrell's Farm. It was only a short drive from the Manor House, but ifhe had gone there direct, he knew the mid-day meal at the Farm would cut across what might prove a long conversation with Granny Marrable. Suppose circumstances should favour a full communication of the extraordinary disclosure he had it in his power to make to her, he would not feel any hesitation about making it. In fact, he hoped that might prove the natural order of events, although he was quite prepared to act on Lady Gwendolen's suggestion that he should merely lay the train, not fire it, if that should prove possible. But, said he to himself, that will be neither fish nor flesh. Mysterious hints—so ran his reflections—will only terrify the old body out of her seven senses and gain no end. Get the job over!—that was the sacramental word. It took him all the period of his drive to Sir Cropton's, and all the blank bars betwixt prescription and prescription, to get—as it were—to this phrase in the music.
But by the time Sir Cropton had given him lunch, it had become the dominant theme of his reflections. Get the job done—if possible! More especially because he did not want Juno Lucina's nerves to be upset at a critical moment, and that was exactly what might happen if the revelation were delayed too long. If she were told now, and disabled by the shock, there would at least be time to make sure of a capable substitute.
However, he must be guided by his prognosis on arriving at Costrell's. It is just possible, too, that the doctor was alive to the interest of the case on its own account, and not being himself personally involved, felt a sort of scientific curiosity in the issue—What would the old lady say or do, in face of such an extraordinary revelation? What were the feelings of the family of Lazarus when he was raised from the tomb? Or rather, what would they have been, had he been dead half a century?
The males at the farm would be away at this time of day; that was satisfactory. He wanted to talk to Granny Marrable alone, if possible. He could easily get his patient out of the way—that was a trifle. But it would be a bore to have that young brother hanging round. In that case he would have to negotiate a private conversation with Juno Lucina, as such, and to use the opportunity professional mystery would give.
However, events smiled upon his purpose. Only Mrs. Maisie, a perfect image of roseate health, was there alone with Granny; the two of them appreciating last year's output, unconscious in his cradle, enjoying the fourteenth month of his career in this world, having postponed teething almost beyond precedent. His young mother derided her doctor's advice to go and lie down andrest, but ultimately gave way to it, backed as it was by public opinion.
"We seem to be going on very well, Mrs. Marrable," said the doctor, when this end was achieved. The doctor shared a first person plural with each of his patients. "Andyourself? You're notlookingamiss."
"No, thank God! And for all that I be eighty-one this Christmas, if I live to see the New Year in, I might be twenty-eight." She then very absurdly referred to the baby, who had waked up and made his presence felt, as to whether this was, or was not, an exaggeration, suggesting that he had roused himself to confirm it. Did he, she asked, want to say his great-Granny was as young as the best, and was he a blessed little cherub? She accommodated her pronunciation to the powers of understanding she imputed to him, calling him,e.g., a bessed ickle chezub. He seemed impatient of personalities; but accepted, as a pipe of peace, an elastic tube that yielded milk. Whereupon Granny Marrable made no more attempts to father opinions on him. "Indeed, doctor," said she, speaking English again, "I wish every soul over fifty felt as young as I do. We shouldn't hear such a many complaints."
"Very bad for the profession, Mrs. Marrable! This isn't a good part of the world for my trade, as it is, and if everyone was like you, I should have to put the shutters up. Well!—you see how it is? Look at Miss Grahame—Sister Nora! Goes up to London the picture of health, and gets fever! Old lady from some nasty unwholesome corner by Tottenham Court Road comes down to Chorlton, and gets younger every day!"
"I was going to ask about Sister Nora, doctor—what the latest news was saying."
"She'll make a good recovery, as things go. But that means she won't be herself again for a twelvemonth, if then!" Granny Marrable looked so unhappy over this, that the doctor took in a reef. "Less if we're lucky—less if we're lucky!" said he. "She's being very well looked after. Dalrymple's a good man."
"I'm glad you should know him to speak well of, for the lady's sake. She's a good lady, and kind. It was through her the little boy Davy came to the Cottage. My little Davy, I always call him."
"So does t'other old lady—she your daughter's got there now. You'll scratch each other's eyes out over that young monkey when you come to meet, Mrs. Marrable."
"There now, doctor, you will always have your joke. Ruth—mydaughter—is quite beside her judgment about the old soul. What like is she, doctor, to your thinking?"
"Well—your daughter's right about her." He paused a moment, and then added, meaningly:—"So far as being a very—verytakingsort of old person goes."
Granny Marrable, rather absorbed in her descendant's relations with his bottle, found in due course an opportunity to answer, looking up at the doctor:—"A very taking old person? But what, then, is to seek in her? Unless she be bad of heart or dishonest." Her old misgivings about Dave's home influences, revived, had more share in the earnestness of her tone than any misgivings about her daughter. And was not there the awful background of the convict?
"Not a bit of it—not a bit of it! Right as a trivet, I should say, as far as that goes! But.... He stopped and touched his forehead, portentously.
"Ah—the poor soul! Now is that true?"
"I think you may take it of me that is so." The doctor threw his professional manner into this. After a moment he added, as a mere human creature:—"Off her chump! Loose in the top story!" A moment after, for professional reassurance:—"But quite harmless—quite harmless!"
Granny Marrable was grave and oppressed by this news. "The poor old soul!—think of it!" said she. "Oh, but how many's the time I've thanked God in His mercy for sparing me my senses! To think we might any of us be no better off, but for Him, than the man our Lord found naked in the tombs, in the country of the Gadarenes! But she is not bad like that, this Mrs. Prichard?"
"Oh no!—that was a severe case, with complications. Not a legion of devils, this time! One or two little ones. Just simple delusions. Might have yielded to Treatment, taken younger. Too late, now, altogether. Wastage of the brain, no doubt! She's quite happy, you know."
Although Dr. Nash had not shone as a reasoner forming square to resist evidence, he had shrewd compartments in his mind, and in one of them a clear idea that he would do ill to thrust forward the details of the supposed simple delusions. This old lady must not be led to infer that he was interested inthem—mere scientific curiosities! She was sure to ask for them in time; he knew that. And it was much better that he should seem to attach no weight whatever to them.
Granny Marrable seemed to entertain doubts of the patient'shappiness. "I could never be happy," she said, "if I had been in a delusion."
"Not if you came to know it was a delusion. Very likely not!"
"But does not—does not—poor old Mrs. Prichard ever come to know she has been in a delusion?"
"Not she! What she fancies she just goes on fancying. Sticks to it like grim death."
"What sort of things now, doctor?"
This was a bite. But the doctor would play his fish. No hurry. "Perfectlycrazy things! Oh—crack-brained! Has not your daughter told you?... Oh, by-the-by!—yes!—I did tell her she had better not.... I don't think it matters, though."
"But not if you would rather not, doctor!" This clearly meant the reverse.
"Well now—there was the first thing that happened, about that little model thing that stands on your mantelshelf at the cottage."
"What—my father's mill? Davy's mill, we call it now, because the child took to it so, and would have me tell him again and again about Muggeridge and the horses...."
"Ah—you told him about Muggeridge and the horses!"
"Yes, sure! And I lay, now, he'd told Mrs. Prichard all aboutthat!"
"Trust him! Anyhow, hedid. And she knew all about it before ever she came to Chorlton. But her mind got a queer twist over it, and she forgot it was all Master Dave's telling, and thought it had happened to herself."
"Thought what had?"
"I mean, thoughtshehad been one of those two little kiddies in violet frocks...."
"Ah, dear me—my dear sister that died out in Australia—my darling Maisie!"
"Hay—what's that? Your darling what? What name did you say?"
"Maisie."
"There we have it—Maisie!" The doctor threw his forefinger to Granny Marrable, in theory; it remained attached to his hand in practice. "That'shername. That's what it was all cooked up out of. Maisie!" He was so satisfied with this little piece of shrewd detective insight that he forgot for the moment how thoroughly he knew the contrary.
Granny Marrable seemed to demur a little, but was brought to order by the drastic argument that itmusthave been that,becauseit could not have been anything else. By this time the doctorhad recollected that he was not in a position to indulge in the luxury of incredulity.
"At least," said he, "I should have said so, only it doesn't do to be rash. One has to look at a thing of this sort all round." He paused a moment with his eyes on the ceiling, while his fingers played on the arm of his chair the tune, possibly, of a Hymn to Circumspection. Then he looked suddenly at the old lady. "You must have told the small boy a great deal about the mill-model.Youtold him about Muggeridge, didn't you say, and the horses? Not your daughter, I mean?"
"Sure! Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox."
"Tell him anything else about Muggeridge?"
"Well, now—did I?... No—I should say not.... I was trying to think what I would have remembered to tell. For you must bear in mind, doctor, we were but young children when Muggeridge went away, and Axtell came, after that.... No. I couldnotspeak to having said a word about Muggeridge, beyond his bare name. That I could not."
The doctor did not interrupt his witness's browsings in the pastures of memory; but when she deserted them, saying she had found nothing to crop, said suddenly:—"Didn't tell him about Muggeridge and the other lady, who wasn't Mrs. Muggeridge?"
"Now Lard a mercy, doctor, whatever do ye take me for? And all these years you've known me! Only theideaof it!—to tell a young child that story! Why—what would the baby have thought I meant? Fie for shame of yourself, that's whatIsay!" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke immensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a tale of nuptial infidelity! She took her great-grandson into her confidence about it, asking him:—"Did they say his great-grandmother told shocking stories to innocent little boys?"—and so forth.
The doctor had to interpose upon this utter unconsciousness, and the task was not altogether an easy one; indeed, its difficulties seemed to him to grow. He let her have her laugh out, and then said quietly:—"But where did Mrs. Prichard get the story?"
Granny Marrable had lost sight of this, and was disconcerted. "What—why—yes—wheredidshe get it? Mrs. Prichard, of course! Now, wherever could Mrs. Prichard have got it?..." It called for thought.
Dr. Nash's idea was to give facts gradually, and let them work their own way. "Perhaps she knew Mr. Muggeridge herself," said he. "When did he die?"
"Mercy me, doctor, where's the use of askingme? Beforeyouwere born, anyhow! That's him, a man of forty, with the horses and me a child under ten! Seventy years ago, and a little to spare!"
"Thatcock won't fight, then. As I make out, old Mrs. Prichard didn't come from Van Diemen's Land above five-and-twenty years ago."
"Wheredid Mrs. Prichard come from?"
"From Van Diemen's Land. In Australia. Where the convicts go."
"There now! Only to think of that! Why—I see it all!" Granny Marrable seemed pleased.
"What do you see, Mrs. Marrable?" The doctor was puzzled. He had quite expected that at this point suspicion of the factsmustdawn, however dimly.
"Because that is where my dear sister was, that died. Oh, so many long years ago!" Whenever old Phoebe mentioned Maisie, the same note of pathos came in her voice. The doctor felt he was operating for the patient's sake; but it would be the knife, without an anæsthetic. He had not indefinite time to spare for this operation.
"I am going to ask what will seem a very absurd question," said he, in the dry, professional manner in which he was wont to intrude upon his patients' private internal affairs. "But you must remember I am an outsider—quite in the dark."
A slight puzzled look on the strong old face before him, with—yes—a faint suspicion of alarm! But oh, how faint! Perhaps he was mistaken, though. For Granny Marrable let no sign of alarm come in her voice, if she felt any. "What were ye wishing to be told, doctor?" she cheerfully said. "If it's a secret, I won't tell it ye. You may take my word for that."
He fixed his eyes attentively on her face. "You are absolutely certain," said he, "that the news of your sister's death was.... He was going to say "authentic," but was arrested by an ebullition of unparalleled fury in the baby, who became fairly crumpled up with indignation, presumably at being unable to hold more than a definite amount of milk. It was a case that called for the promptest and humblest apologies from the human race, represented by his great-grandmother. She had assuaged the natural exasperation of two previous generations, and had the trick of it. He subsided, accepting as his birthright a heavenly sleep, with dreams of further milk.
Then Granny Marrable, released, looked the doctor in the face,saying:—"'That the news of my sister's death was?...'" and stopped for him to finish the sentence.
"Authentic," said he. He did not know whether her look meant that she did not understand the word, and added:—"Trustworthy."
"I know what you mean," she said. "Go on and say why?"
The doctor was fairly frightened at his own temerity. Probably the difficulties of his task had never fully dawned upon him. Would it not be safer to back out of it now, leaving what he had suggested to fructify? He would have fulfilled his promise to Lady Gwendolen, and made it easier for her to word the actual disclosure of the facts. "I was merely trying to think what anyone would say who wanted to make out that this old Mrs. Prichard was not under a delusion."
"The poor old soul! What would they say, indeed?" This was no help. Commiseration of Mrs. Prichard was not the doctor's object. But the position was improved when she added:—"But there's ne'er a onewantsto make it out."
He thought of saying:—"But suppose there were!" and gave it up, knowing that his hearer, though fairly educated, would regard hypotheses as intense intellectual luxuries, prized academically, but without a place in the sane world without. He decided on saying:—"Of course, you would have documentary evidence." Then he felt that his tone had been ill-chosen—a curfew of the day's discussions, a last will and testament of the one in hand.
So it was, for the moment. Granny Marrable wanted the subject to drop. On whatever pretext it was revived, the story of her sister's life and death was still painful to her. But "documentary evidence" was too sesquipedalian to submit to without a protest. "I should have her husband's letter," said she, "telling of her death."
"Yes, you would have his letters."
"There was but two." Her intense truthfulness could not let that plural pass. "He was a strange man—and a bad one, doctor, if ye want to know—and he never wrote to me again, not after answering my letter I wrote to tell him of my father's death. But I've a long letter from him, saying how Maisie died, and her message to me, giving me—like you might say—her girl for my own. That is my Ruth, you know, at Strides Cottage, this little man's own granny. But I've never heard his name since ... not till ... not till....
"What's the matter? Anything wrong?" For Granny Marrablehad stopped with a jerk, and her look was one of the greatest bewilderment. The memory of the name the madman who said he was Mrs. Prichard's son had given her as his own had come upon her with a sudden shock, having—strangely enough—been dormant throughout this interview. She was confronted with a host of perplexities, which—mark you!—had no possible solution except the one her mind could not receive, and which therefore never presented itself at all.
"Indeed, doctor, I think I be bewitched outright," said she. "I never was so put to it, all the days of my life.... No, don't ye ask me no questions! I haven't the liberty to tell above half of it, and maybe better say nothing at all."
"I see—matter of confidence! Well—I mustn't ask questions." This was really because he was certain the answer would come without asking. Granny Marrable would never let the matter drop, with that look on her face.
So it turned out. In a moment she looked up from the baby, whom she had been redistributing, to his advantage. "I'll tell ye this much, doctor," she said. "There was a crazy man in yonder field near by, when I was coming back from Jane Naunton's—just a few days since...."
"I've heard of him."
"What do they say of him?"
"I only heard the police were after him. Go on."
"Well—the name he called himself by was my sister's husband's, and he said he came from Australia."
"That might be, and no witchcraft. When did your sister die?"
"Five-and-forty—six-and-forty—years ago!"
"Any children left? Boys?"
"Boys?—Lord, no! At least, yes—two boys! What I mean is, not by this name."
"What were the boys' names?"
"One, I call to mind, was Isaac. For Maisie wrote me what work she had to persuade her husband to the name...." She had meant to say more, giving reasons why, but changed her speech abruptly. "The youngest boy's name I let slip. But I know it was never this name that man gave me."
"You remember it near enough for that?"
Granny Marrable's intense truthfulness would not allow margins. "No—it's clean slipped my memory, and I could not make oath I never knew it. It was all out of reach, beyond the seas."
"That seems reasonable. Five-and-forty years! Now, can Iremember anything as long back as that?... However, I was two, so that doesn't count."
"Maisie's son never bore this name. That's out of doubt!"
"Why?"
"Because her first was christened by it, and died at Darenth Mill, after ... after his father went away."
"Roger Trufitt's son is Roger. But both his brothers who died before he was born were named Roger. There's no law against it. You know old Trufitt, the landlord at the Five Bells? He says that if this son died, he would marry again to have another and call him Roger. He's a very obstinate man, old Trufitt."
Granny Marrable sat silent while the doctor chatted, watching her changes of countenance. Her conscience was vacillating. Could she interpret her oath of silence as leaving her free to speak of the convict's claim to Mrs. Prichard as a parent? The extenuation of bad faith would lie in the purely exceptional nature of the depository of her secret. Could a disclosure to a professional ear, which secrets entered every day, be accounted "splitting"? She thought she saw her way to a limited revelation, which would meet the case without breach of confidence.
"Maybe!" said she, putting old Trufitt out of court. "But I can tell ye another reason why he's no son of my sister's. Though he might be, mind you, a son of her husband. My brother-in-law, most like, married again. How should I know?"
"What's the other reason?"
"He told me his mother's name. But I am not free to tell it, by reason I promised not to."
This struck the doctor as odd. "How came you to be talking to a stray tramp about his mother, Granny Marrable?" he asked shrewdly.
"Because he took me for his mother, and would have it I should know him." This was no doubt included in what she had promised not to tell, but the question had taken her by surprise.
A light broke on Dr. Nash. All through the interview he had been wondering at himself for never having before observed the likeness between the two old women, which he now saw plainly by the light of the information Gwen had given him. He might have seen it before, had he heard of the gipsy's mistake, but Ruth Thrale had never mentioned this. He remembered, too, in Gwen's story, some slight reference to a son of Mrs. Prichard who was amauvais sujet. He determined on a daringcoup. "Are you sure Mrs. Prichard is not the mother he was looking for?" said he.
Granny Marrable was struck with his cleverness. "Now, howeverdid you come to findthatout, doctor?" said she.
"We're a clever lot, us doctors! We've got to be clever.... Let's see, now—where are we? Mrs. Prichard has a son who is called by your brother-in-law's name, but who isnotyour sister's son. Because if he were, Mrs. Prichard would be your sister. Which is impossible. But Mrs. Prichard has got muddled about her own identity, and thinks she is. What can we do to cure such a delusion? I've seen a great deal of this sort of thing—I've had charge of lunatics—and the only thing I know of for the case is to stimulate memory of the patient's actual past life. But we know nothing about Mrs. Prichard. Who the dickensisMrs. Prichard?"
Granny Marrable had looked really pleased at thereductio ad absurdum—always exhilarating when one knows what's impossible—but looked perplexed over Mrs. Prichard's real identity. "No, indeed, poor dear soul!" she said. "'Tisn't as if there was any would tell us about her."
"I have found, and so has your daughter, that she goes back and back in these dreams of her own childhood, which no doubt are made up of ... which no doubt may have been told her by.... He stopped intentionally. He wanted to stagger her immobility by making her recite the nonsense about Mrs. Prichard's informants.
She was quite amenable. "By little Davy," said she contentedly.
"And what she had from your sister in Australia, years ago," said the doctor, and saw her content waver. He had his clue, and resolved to act on it. "For instance, Mr. Muggeridge's gallivantings. You're sure you never told the child?"
"Sure?... Merciful gracious me!Thatbaby?"
"And how you and she measured the mill-model? Thatmusthave come from your sister."
She started. "What was that?" she said. "You never told me."
He did not look at her—only at his watch. He really had to be off, he said, but would tell her about the measurements. Thought she knew it before. He went on to narrate the incident referred to, which is already familiar to the story. Then he got up from his chair as though to take leave. If this did not land the suspicion of the truth in her unreceptive mind, it could only be done by a sort of point-blank directness that he shrank from employing, and that he had made it difficult to adopt by his implied pretence of unconcern. He would sooner, if that was to be theway of it, come to her at the outset as the herald of something serious, and ask her to prepare herself for a great shock. His manner had not pointed to an open operation, and such a variation of it would be the sudden production of the knife. Perhaps the dentist is sometimes right who brings his pliers from behind his back when the patient fancies he is only scouting; but he runs a risk, always. Dr. Nash was not at all confident in this case.
But he could venture a little farther with mere suggestion. "Certainly," said he, "it is a very curious phase of delusion, that this old lady should go back on a statement of your sister's, made a lifetime ago, to no apparent end. But the whole subject of the action of the brain is a mystery." He looked up at his hearer's face.
She was sitting motionless, with a sort of fixed look. Had he injured her—struck at the heart of her understanding? Well, it had got to come, for better, for worse. Moreover, the look implied self-command. No, he need not be frightened.
"What strikes me about this arm-measurement," said he, "is the strength of her conviction. If she had onlyspokenof it, well! But to get up, at six in the morning, the day after she saw it!"
The old lady's eyes met his. "Why arm-measurement?" she asked, speaking quite steadily and clearly.
"Because that was the way it was done. I don't know if I described it right. Look here—it was like this...." He took her right wrist, as he stood facing her, with his left hand. "You stretch out your fingers straight," said he, and brought the tip of the middle finger of his own right hand to meet hers. "Now, what Mrs. Prichard fancies she remembers—what your sister told her in Australia, you know—is that you and she, being girls, tried the length of your two arms together on the top of the mill-case, from the elbow down. Just like ours now." He determined to make the most of this incident, for his impression was that her mind was already in revolt against the gross improbability of her sister having dwelt on it to a new acquaintance in the Colony. He had made Mrs. Prichard linger over the telling of it; it was such a strange phase of delusion. In fact, he had said to himself that it must be a genuine memory, ascribed to the wrong persons. He went on to a cold-blooded use of her minutest details, still keeping the hand he held in his. "You see, Mrs. Prichard's point was this—don't take your hand away; I haven't quite done with it—her point was that your arm and your sister's were exactly of a size...."
"We were twins."
"Precisely. And your two little paws, being young kids, or youngish...."
"We were just children. I mind it well. 'Twas a sort of game, to see how our hands grew. But...."
"Let me finish. This old woman, when she went touring about to have a look at the model that had given her such a turn overnight, found that her own arm was well two-thirds the length of it, and something over. She was cocksure the two small arms only just covered it, because unless one cheated and pushed her elbow over the edge, your middle fingers wouldn't jam and go cleck—like this.... That's why I wanted your hand for—that'll do!... There was such a funny name she called it by—the finger-tips jamming, I mean...."
Granny Marrable was pressing the released hand on her eyes and forehead. "You fairly make my head spin, doctor, digging up of old-time memories. But whatever was the funny name? Can't ye recollect?"
"It was sheer gibberish, you know...."
"Can't ye call the gibberish to mind?" This was asked earnestly, and made Dr. Nash feel he was on the right tack.
"One can't speak positively to gibberish. The nearest I can go to the word Mrs. Prichard used is"—the doctor paused under the weight of his responsibility for accuracy—"the, nearest, I, can, go is ...spud-clicket." He waited, really anxiously. If, rather than admit a suspicion of the truth, she could believe that such a piece of infant jargon could dwell correctly for decades in the mind of a chance hearer, she could believe anything.
He was utterly taken aback when equable and easy speech, with a sound of relief in every word, came from lips which he thought must at least be tremulous. "Well—there now! Doesn't that show? Only Maisiecouldhave told her that word. It's all right. But I'm none so sure, mind you, that I could have remembered it right, myself."
It seemed perfectly hopeless. So said the doctor to himself. Surely, in this long interview, he had tried all that suggestion could do to get a fulcrum to raise the dead weight of conviction that years of an accepted error had built up undisturbed. How easy it would have been had the tale of Daverill's audacious fraud been a few months old; or a few years, for that matter! It was that appalling lapse of time.
What could the doctor do to carry out his rash promise to Lady Gwendolen, more than what he had done? He was already overdueat the house of another patient, three miles off. The alternatives before him were:—To rush the position, saying, "Look here, Granny Marrable, neither you nor your sister are dead, but you were each told of the other's death by the worst scoundrel God ever made." To do this or to throw up the sponge and hurry off to his waiting patient! He chose the latter. After all, he had striven hard to fulfil his promise to her young ladyship, and only been repulsed from an impregnable fortress. But he would have a parting shot.
"You must be very curious to see this queer old Mrs. Prichard, Mrs. Marrable?" said he.
The old lady did not warm up to this at all. "Indeed, doctor, if I tell the truth, I could not say I am. For to hear the poor old soul fancy herself my sister, dead now five-and-forty years and more! Not for the pain to myself, but for the great pity for a poor demented soul, and no blessed Saviour near to bid the evil spirit begone. No, indeed—I will hope she may be well on her way home before ever I return to Strides. But my daughter says she'll be loath to part with her, so I'm not bound to hurry back."
"Well—I rather hope she'll stop on long enough for you to get a sight of her. You would be interested.... There's the postman." For they were standing at the farm-gate by this time, leading into the lane.
"Yes, it be John Barlow on his new mail-cart. He's brought something for the farm, or he wouldn't come this way.... Good-evening to you, John Barlow!... What—three letters! And one of them for the old 'oman.... So 'tis!—'tis a letter from my little man Davy, bless his heart!"
"One fower th' ma'aster," said Mr. Barlow's strong rustic accent. "One fower th' mistress. And one fower the granny. It be directed Strides, but Widow Thrale she says, 'Ta'ak it along, to moother at Costrell's.' And now ye've gotten it, Granny Marrable."
"There's no denying that, Master John. I'll say good-bye, doctor." But what the letter-carrier was saying caught her ear, and she paused before re-entering the house, holding the letters in her hand.
"There was anoother letter for th' Cottage, the vairy fetch of yowern, Granny, all but th' neam. Th' neam on't was Mrs. Picture, and on yowern Mrs. Marrowbone, and if th' neam had been sa'am on both, 'twould have ta'aken Loondon Town to tell 'em apart."
"And you left one at the Cottage, and brought the other on here? Was that it? Sharp man!" The doctor was pulling on his thick driving-gloves, to depart. Granny Marrable was opening her letter already. "Bless the boy," said she, "he's writing to both his Grannies with the same pen, so they may not be jealous!"
"You may call me a sha'arp ma'an for soomat else, doctor," said Mr. Barlow, locking his undelivered letters into the inner core of the new mail-cart. "This time I be no cleverer than my letters. 'Twas Joe Kerridge's wife, next dower the cottage, said, 'Ta'ak it on to the Granny at Dessington.' And says I to her, 'They'm gotten the sa'am yoong ma'an to write 'em love-letters,' I says. 'You couldn't tell they two letters apart, but for the neams on 'em.' And then Mrs. Lisbeth she says to me, 'Some do say they have to keep their eyes open to tell the old la'adies apart,' she says. 'But I'm anoother way o' thinking mysen,' she says, 'by reason of this Mrs. Prichard's white head o' hair.' And then I handed all the letters to Lisbeth for Strides, as well as her own, seeing ne'er one came out at door for knocking, and brought yowern on with Farmer Costrell's." Mr. Barlow had been spoken of in the village more than once as a woundy chatterbox.