Gwen was not sorry to be left for a while to her own reflections before the smouldering red log on the kitchen fire.
The great bulldog from the lobby without, as though his courtesy could not tolerate such a distinguished guest being left alone, paid her a visit in her hostess's absence. He showed his consciousness of her identity by licking her hand at once. He would have smelt a stranger carefully all round before bestowing such an honour. Gwen addressed a few words to him of appreciation, and expressed her confidence in his integrity. He seemed pleased, and discovered a suitable attitude at her feet, after consideration of several. He looked up from his forepaws, on which his chin rested, with an expression that might have meant anything respectful, from civility to adoration. The cat, with her usual hypocrisy, came outside her fender to profess that she had been on Gwen's side all along, whatever the issue. Her method of explaining this was the sort that trips you up—that curls round your ankles and purrs. The cricket was too preoccupied to enter into the affairs of fussy, uncontinuous mortals, and the kettle was cool and detached, but ready to act when called on. The steady purpose of the clock, from which nothing but its own key could turn it, was to strike nine next, and the cloth was laid for supper. Supper was ready for incarnation, somewhere, and smelt of something that would have appealed to Dave, but had no charm for Gwen.
For she was sick at heart, and the moment that a pause left her free to admit it, heavy-eyed from an outcrop of head-oppression on the lids. It might have come away in tears, but her tissues grudged an outlet. She saw no balm in Gilead, but she could sit on a little in the silence, for rest. She could hear the voices of the two old sisters through the doors, and knew that Mrs. Picture was again awake, and talking. That was well!—leave them to each other, for all the time that might still be theirs, this side the grave.
What a whirl of strange unprecedented excitements had been hers since ... since when? Thought stopped to ask the question. Could she name the beginning of it all? Yes, plainly enough. It all began, for her, at the end of that long rainy day in July, when the sunset flamed upon the Towers, and she saw a trespasser in the Park, with a dog. She could feel again the unscrupulous paws of Achilles on her bosom, could hear his master's indignant voice calling him off, and then could see those beautiful dark eyes fixed on what their owner could not dream was his for ever, but which those eyes might never see again. She could watch the retiring figure, striding away through the bracken, and wonder that she should have stood there without a thought ofthe future. Why could she not have seized him and held him in her arms, and baffled all the cruelty of Fate? For was he not, even then, hers—hers—hers beyond a doubt? Could she not see now that her heart had said "I love you" even as he looked up from that peccant dog-collar, the source of all the mischief?
That was what began it. It was that which led her to stay with her cousin in Cavendish Square, and to a certain impatience with conventional "social duties," making her welcome as a change in excitements an excursion or two into unexplored regions, of which Sapps Court was to be the introductory sample. It was that which had brought into her life this sweet old woman with the glorious hair. No wonder she loved her! She never thought of her engrossing affection as strange or to be wondered at. That it should have been bestowed on the twin sister of an old villager in her father's little kingdom in Rocestershire was where the miracle came in.
And such a strange story as the one she had disinterred and brought to a climax! And then, when all might have gone so well—when a very few years of peace might have done so much to heal the lifelong wounds of the two souls so cruelly wrenched apart half a century ago, that the frail earthly tenement of the one should be too dilapidated to give its tenant shelter! So small an extension of the lease of life would have made such a difference.
But if it was hard for her to bear, what would it be to the survivor, the old sister who had borne so bravely and well what seemed to Gwen almost harder to endure than a loss; a resurrection from the tomb, or its equivalent? She had often shuddered to think what the family of Lazarus must have felt; and found no ease from the reflection that they were in the Bible and it was quite a different thing.Theydid not know they were in the Bible.
She helped the parallel a little farther, while the cricket chirped unmoved. Suppose that Lazarus had died again in earnest from the shock—and suppose, too, please, that he was deeply beloved, which may not have been the case! How would the wife, mother, sisters, who had said one farewell to him, have borne to see him die a second time? Of course, Gwen was alive to the fact that it would be bad religious form to suggest that this contingency was not covered by some special arrangement. But put it as an hypothesis, like the lady she had ascribed Adrian's ring to!
She could hear Granny Marrable's voice and Elizabeth's afar, in conference. That was satisfactory. It made her certain that the slightest sound from old Maisie, so much nearer, would reach her. Her door stood wide, and the other door was just ajar.
But she did not hear the slightest sound. The dog did, for he flashed into sudden vitality and attention, and was out of the room in an instant. He was unable to say to Granny Marrable:—"I heard your invalid move in the bedroom, and I think you had better go and see if she wants you," but he must have gone very near it. For Gwen heard the old lady's step come quicker than her wont along the passage, and she reached the kitchen-door just in time to see her pass into the room opposite. "Is she all right?" she said.
"I hope she is still asleep, my lady," said old Phoebe.
But she was not asleep, and said so. Her voice was clear, and the hand Gwen took—so she thought—closed on hers with a greater strength than before. If only she had stirred in bed, it would have seemed a return of living power. But this slight vitality in the hands alone seemed to count for so little. She wanted something, evidently, and both her nurses tried to get a clue to it. It was not food; though, to please them, she promised to take some. Gwen's thought that possibly she had something for her ear alone—which she had hesitated to communicate to old Phoebe—was confirmed when the latter left the room to get the beef-tea, and so forth, which was always within reach if needed. For old Maisie said plainly:—"NowI can tell you—my dear!"
"What about, dear Mrs. Picture?" said Gwen, caressing the hand she held, and smoothing back the silver locks from the grave grey eyes so earnestly fixed on hers. "Tell me what."
"My son," said old Maisie. "I have a son, have I not?"—this in a frightened way, as though again in doubt of her own sanity—"and he is bad, is he not, and has written me a letter?"
"That's all right. I've got the letter, to show to my father."
"Oh yes—do show it—to the old gentleman I saw. He is your father...."
"You would like to say something about your son, dear Mrs. Picture—something we can do for you. Now try and tell me just what you would like."
"I want you, my dear, to find me my purse out of the other watch-pocket. I asked my Ruth to put it there.... She is Widow Thrale ... is she not?" Every effort at thought of her surroundings was a strain to her mind, plainly enough.
"There it is!" said Gwen. "Soon found!... Now, am I to see how much money you've got in it?"
"Yes, please!" It was an old knitted silk purse with a slip-ring. In the early fifties the leather purses with snaps, that leakat the seam and let half-sovereigns through before you find it out, were rare in the pockets of old people.
"Six new pounds, and one, two, three, four shillings in silver, and two sixpences, and one fourpence, and a halfpenny! Shall I keep it for you, to be safe?"
"No, dear! I want—I want....
"I hope," thought Gwen to herself, "she's not going to have it sent to her execrable son. Yes, dear, what is it you want done with it?"
"I want three of the pounds to go to Susan Burr, for her to pay eight weeks of the rent. It's seven-and-sixpence a week."
"And the rest—shall I keep it?"
"Tell me—my son Ralph's letter ... Did it not say that he wanted money?"
"Yes, it did. But I'm going to see about that—I and my father."
Old Maisie's voice became beseeching, gaining strength from earnestness. "Oh my dear—do let me! And, after all, is it not his money? For I had nothing of my own when I came back. I might have gone to the workhouse, but for him." What followed, disjointedly, was an attempt to tell the portion of her story that related to the miscarriage of her husband's will.
"Very well, dear! It shall all be done as you wish it. I'll see to that. The money shall be sent to Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court, to give to him."
"Why is it Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court? I know Aunt M'riar." Do what she would, she could not grapple with these relativities. And, indeed, this one was a mystery she could not have solved in any case.
HOW A BOOMER GOT AWAY. GRANNY MARRABLE'S THEISM. COLD FEET. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE LOST HER HEAD. ADRIAN ON RESIGNATION. THE SHOP OPPOSITE. HOW MAISIE HEARD HER SON'S LETTER, AND WISHED HIM TO KNOW HE WAS POSSESSED. LADY ANCESTER'S REMONSTRANCE. HOW EMILY AND FANNY WOULDED THAT THEIR LOVE. HOW MAISIE WANTED PETER, AND DOLLY MIGHT NOT BE FRIGHTENED OF LAMBS. HOW SUSAN BURR WAS TO HAVE THE FURNITURE. LAST MESSAGE TO DAVE AND DOLLY. MAISIE'S DEATH. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WENT AWAY TO SEE TO A NEWCOMER. HOW GWEN SLEPT, AND WAKED, AND HOW THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE EMPTY ROOM WHERE MRS. PICTURE HAD BEEN, ON THE BED. HOW THE CONVICT CALLED TO INTRODUCE HIMSELF. A DOG WHO HAD KILLED A MAN, WORTH FORTY POUNDS. HOW THE CONVICT SAW WHAT WAS ON THE BED. THE CUT FINGER. INSPECTOR THOMPSON. HOW RUTH HAD PASSED A TRAMP, ON THE ROAD
HOW A BOOMER GOT AWAY. GRANNY MARRABLE'S THEISM. COLD FEET. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE LOST HER HEAD. ADRIAN ON RESIGNATION. THE SHOP OPPOSITE. HOW MAISIE HEARD HER SON'S LETTER, AND WISHED HIM TO KNOW HE WAS POSSESSED. LADY ANCESTER'S REMONSTRANCE. HOW EMILY AND FANNY WOULDED THAT THEIR LOVE. HOW MAISIE WANTED PETER, AND DOLLY MIGHT NOT BE FRIGHTENED OF LAMBS. HOW SUSAN BURR WAS TO HAVE THE FURNITURE. LAST MESSAGE TO DAVE AND DOLLY. MAISIE'S DEATH. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WENT AWAY TO SEE TO A NEWCOMER. HOW GWEN SLEPT, AND WAKED, AND HOW THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE EMPTY ROOM WHERE MRS. PICTURE HAD BEEN, ON THE BED. HOW THE CONVICT CALLED TO INTRODUCE HIMSELF. A DOG WHO HAD KILLED A MAN, WORTH FORTY POUNDS. HOW THE CONVICT SAW WHAT WAS ON THE BED. THE CUT FINGER. INSPECTOR THOMPSON. HOW RUTH HAD PASSED A TRAMP, ON THE ROAD
"Has she not talked at all about Australia, Granny?... No, thanks! I'm sure it's a beautiful ham—but I shall do very nicely with this. One very big lump of sugar, please, and plenty of milk, or I shall lie awake." Thus Gwen, and the influence of Strides Cottage is visible in her speech.
Old Maisie was again asleep, and they had left her and gone into the front-room; as much to speak together without disturbing her as to get their own suppers. They were doing this last, however, in a grudging sort of fashion; for the pleasures of the table are no match for a heartache. Gwen found it a solace to make her own toast with a long toasting-fork, an experience which her career as an Earl's daughter had denied to her.
"Maisie has talked many times of Australia, my lady. She talks on, so I could not repeat much."
"You mean she jumps from one thing to another?"
"Yes, so I cannot always follow her. But she has told me a many things of her life there. How at first she would never see a soul at the farm from week's end to week's end, and her husband got to own all the land about."
"Do you think she is really alive to her husband's villainy?Isometimes think she forgets all about it."
"Please God she does so! 'Tis better for her she should. Iwould have felt happier if she could have known me, and Ruth, and never had the tale of his wickedness."
"But that was impossible, Granny. Shemusthave known, in the end."
"That is so, I know, my lady. But when I hear her forget it all, it makes my heart glad. When she gets to telling of the old time, on the farm, her mind is off it, and I thank God that it should be so, for her sake! Friday last she was talking so happy, you could not have known her for the same."
"About the farm and the convicts? Do recollect some of the things she told you!"
"There was a creature they hunt with dogs, that leaps on its hind-legs to any height."
"Oh yes—the Kangaroo."
"She called it something else—something like 'Boomer.'" This did not matter. Granny Marrable went on to repeat how a "boomer," chased by the dogs, had made straight for her sister's husband, whose gun, missing fire, had killed his best dog; while the quarry, unterrified by the report, sprang at a bound over his head and got away scathless. This, and other incidents of the convict's after-life in Van Diemen's Land, told without leading to the crime of the forged letter, had shown how completely separate in Maisie's mind were the memories of her not unhappy life with her husband in the past, and that of the recent revelation of his iniquity. She somehow dissociated the two images of him, and her mind could dwell easily onhisidentity as it had appeared to her during her thirty years of widowhood, without losing the new-found consciousness of Phoebe's.
But Granny Marrable had taken special note of the fact that her sister never referred to the son who had come with her from Australia, and had herself been scrupulously careful not to do so. She did not really know whether Maisie was alive to the possibility of his reappearance at any moment; and, indeed, could not have said positively whether allusion had or had not been made to her own alarming experience of him. Her own shock and confusion had been too great for accurate recollection. Silence about him was to her thought the wisest course, and she had remained silent.
She seemed to Gwen a wonderful old woman, this Granny Marrable. Her untiring patience and strength, at her great age; her simple theism, constantly in evidence; her resolute calmness in facing a second time the harrowing grief of a twin sister's death—for that she saw it at hand, Gwen was convinced—weresurely the material of which heroism is made, when heroism is in the making. To Gwen's thought, the miraculous news that had been broken to her so suddenly might easily have prostrated many a younger person, even without that mysterious unknown factor, the twinship, the force of which could only be estimated by the two concerned. As the old lady sat there at the supper-table, breaking her resumptions of her sister's Australian tales by gaps of listening to catch any sound from the bedroom, she seemed to Gwen a duplicate of the old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps Court, spared by time or with some reserve of constitutional energy, grey rather than white, resolute rather than resigned. The different inflexion of voice helped Gwen against that perplexing sense of her likeness to her twin, which would assert itself whenever she became silent.
It was to fend this off, in such a pause, that she said:—"You are both just eighty this year, Granny, are you not?"
"Eighty-one, my lady. When our clock strikes midnight Maisie will have been eighty-one years in the world, and myself with but a few minutes to make up the tale. My mother told me so when I was still too young to understand, but I bore her words in mind. She was dead a year when my brother dressed those little dolly figures in the mill. I mind that he put it off, so we should not be in black for our mother. He died himself, none so long after that."
The foolish lines of keeping up hope mechanically to the last did not recommend themselves to Gwen. But she could trust herself to say, seeing the strength on the old face before her:—"Oh, Granny, do not let us despair too soon!" The phrase acknowledged Death, and did not choke her like the sham.
"My lady, have you felt her feet?"
"No—are they so cold?"
Instead of replying. Granny Marrable rose and, passed into the bedroom. Gwen, whose own speech had stopped her from hearing old Maisie's half-utterance on waking, followed, and stood beside the bed. Granny Marrable said:—"She is not awake yet, but I heard her." As she said this, Gwen slipped her warm hand between the sheets, and touched the motionless extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone bottle of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and laying stress upon its iciness. "Oh, Granny," said Gwen, trying in vain to make the living warmth of her own hand of service, "can nothing be done? Surely—her feet in hot water?"
But old Phoebe only shook her head.Sheknew. It would only be to no purpose! Better let her rest! Moreover, Gwen could not fail to notice that the feet remained passive to her touch, never shrinking. That is not the way of feet. Was ever foot that did not shrink from mysterious unexpected fingers, coming from the beyond in the purlieus of a private couch?
And yet old Maisie was alive there still, and her speech was clear, however low. If anything, its sound savoured of revival. But she was not clear about her whereabouts and whom she was speaking to. She seemed to think it was Susan Burr, who "would find her thimble if she looked underneath." Thus much and no more had come articulate from the land of dreams. The moment after she was quite collected. Was that Phoebe, and her Lady? This was not the conventional phrase "My lady." She was evidently in possession of a Lady she had been guided to find by some Guardian Angel, if, indeed, the Lady were not a Guardian Angel herself. She went on to ask:—Where was her Ruth? When would she come?
She was coming, Ruth was, very soon. Both vouched for it. Gwen added:—"She's gone to see her daughter, who has a little boy."
Then Granny Marrable lost her head for the first time. "She's gone to my granddaughter," said she. "And I'm looking to have another great-grandchild there soon, before a many days are over."
For a moment Gwen was afraid the confusion of Ruth's daughtership might make old Maisie's head whirl, and set her fretting. She began to explain, but explanation was not necessary. The old hand she held was withdrawn from hers, that it might make common cause with its fellow that old Phoebe already held. "My darling," said she, "did I not give her to you when I ran away to the great ship? Fifty years ago, Phoebe—fifty years ago!" There was no trace of any tear in the eye that Gwen could still see, though it looked no longer into her own. The voice was not failing, and the words still came, clear as ever. "I kissed her in her crib, and I would have kissed her yet once more, but I dared not. So I said to myself:—'She will wake and never see me! But Phoebe will be there, to kiss her when she wakes. She will kiss her for me, just on the place we used to say was good to kiss.' Tell me, Phoebe, did my child cry much?..."
Granny Marrable's words:—"I cannot—I cannot—my darling!" caught in her voice, as she bent over the face that, but for its frail attenuation, was her own face over again, touching it tenderlywith her own old lips—the same, thought Gwen, that had inherited that place it was so good to kiss, on that baby face of half a century ago, now a grandmother's. She rose noiselessly from where she half sat, half leaned, beside the figure on the bed, and stole a little way apart; not so far as to be unable to hear what that musical voice kept on saying, though she could not catch the replies.
"I said to myself:—'Phoebe will be her mother when I am miles away across the sea, and she will be as good a mother as I....' Was it not best, dearest, I should go alone, rather than carry my child away and leave all the loneliness for you?... Yes—but my heart ached for my little one on the great ship.... I would watch the stars—the very stars you saw too, Phoebe—and they were like friends for many a long week, till they sank down in the sea behind us, and it was thirty years before I saw them again.... Yes—then I knew it would be England soon and I would know if Phoebe had any other grave than the cold sea.... Yes, my darling, that was my first thought—to go to the little church by Darenth Mill, and look in the south corner.... I did, and there was mother's grave, and father's name cut on the stone, but none other. So I thought:—They are all gone—all gone!... Oh, if I had known that you were here!..."
The sound of lamentation barely grew in her voice, but it was there. To turn her mind from the recollection that provoked it, Granny Marrable thought it well to say that Nicholas Cropredy, her first husband, whom the forged letter had drowned at sea, had not been buried at Darenth Mill, but at Ingatestone, with his kindred and ancestors. "Did they find his body?" said old Maisie. She knew that he was dead long years back, but had not received any new impression of the cause of his death.
She did not even now seem to find its proper place in her mind for this correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal with all the facts, but held fast to the identities of her sister and child. Probably the established memory of the false news of her brother-in-law's death continued in possession. She only looked puzzled; then drifted on the current of her thought. "If I had known that you were here!... Oh, Phoebe!—such a many times my boy made me think of his sister he would never see now.... That was before the coming of the news.... Oh yes, I always had a thought till then the time might come before they would be grown up, so they should be children together.... That was my elder boy Isaac, after father—in those days little Ralph was in his cradle.... But the time never came—only the time to think itmight have been.... And all those years I thought you dead, you were here!... Oh, Phoebe—you were here!... Oh, why—why—why could I not be told that you were here?"
"It was the Lord's will, darling. His ways are not for us to understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling some irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. But though she almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety—"No connection with the shop opposite"—she could and did pay a mental tribute to the Granny's quiet earnestness. She would have done the same by "Kismet" to an old Sheikh in the shadow of the Pyramids.
"Why—oh, why?—when my dear husband was gone could I not have found you then, even if I had died of joy in the finding? Had I not known enough pain? Oh, Phoebe—when I came back—when I came back ... it would have been so much then!... I had some great new trouble after that.... Oh, tell me—what was it?"
What could old Phoebe do but answer, seeing that she knew? "It was the wickedness of your son, Maisie darling. We have talked of him, have we not?" She feared to say much, as she shrank from reference to her own knowledge of the convict. She tried to get away from him. "And it was then you took old Martha's name, not to be known by your own, and went to Sapps Court?" This succeeded.
"Not Sapps Court, not yet for a long time. But I did go, and I was happy there.... I had my little Dave and Dolly, and when the window stood open in the summer, I heard the piano outside, across the way ... and Aunt M'riar came, and sometimes Mr. Wardle—he was so big he filled the room.... But tell me—was it a horrible dream, or was it true, that a letter came to me?..." Her powers of speech flagged.
Gwen took upon herself to answer, to spare Granny Marrable. "Yes, Mrs. Picture dear, it came from your son, and I've got it here. You're not to fret about him. I'm to show his letter to my father, don't you know?—you've seen him—and you know what he does will be all right."
"What he does will be all right." Old Maisie repeated it mechanically, and lay quiet, holding a hand on either side, as before; then after a short time rallied, and turned to Gwen, saying—"My Lady—my dear—I want you to promise me one thing.... I want you to promise me...."
"To promise you? Is it something I can do?"
The answer came with an extraordinary clearness. "That youwill not let them get him. Read his letter, that I may hear.... Yes—like that!" She fixed her eyes eagerly on it, as Gwen drew it from her pocket. Granny Marrable snuffed the candles, and moved them to give a better light.
Gwen read aloud as best she might, for the handwriting was none too visible. When she came to the writer's picturesque suggestion of his life of constant dodging and evasion of his pursuers, she softened nothing of his brutal phraseology. Maisie only said:—"That is it. That is what I want." Phoebe was restless under its utterance, and murmured some protest. That such words should pass her ladyship's lips—such lips! Gwen merely commented:—"Like a fox before the pack! That's what he means. He's got to say it somehow, you know! Yes, tell me, what is it about that?"
"I want you ... to save him from them. I want you to tell him ... to tell him...."
"Something from you?—yes!"
"To tell him his mother forgave him. For I know now—I know it, my dear—that his wicked work was none of his own doing, but the evil spirit that had possession of him. Was it not?"
Why should Gwen stand between Mrs. Picture, dying, and something that gave her happiness, just for the sake of a little pitiful veracity? She was all the readier to endorse a draft on her credulity, from the knowledge that Granny Marrable would, if applied to, be ready with a covering security. She said quietly:—"I think it very far from impossible."
"Then you will tell him for me, and save him—save him from the officers?"
It seemed a large promise to make, but would its fulfilment ever be called for? "I promise," said Gwen, "and I will tell him you forgave him, if ever I see him.... There's Ruth back—I hear her. Now, dear, you must lie quiet, and not talk any more. You know you don't want her to know anything at all about her brother." Whereon Maisie lay silent with closed eyes, her hand in Gwen's just acknowledging its chance pressures, while Granny Marrable rose and went to the door; and then Gwen heard her in an earnest undertone of conversation with Ruth, just alighted from a vehicle whose horse, considered as a sound, she would have sworn to. It was the grey mare.
Ruth's visit to her daughter was the first since the extraordinary discovery of Mrs. Prichard's identity, and she had been very anxious about her. Nevertheless, its object appeared equable, blooming, and prosperous on her arrival; very curious to heardetails of her new-found grandmother, and indignant with Dr. Nash for telling her husband that he was not, on peril of becoming a widower, to allow his wife to travel over to Strides Cottage to see her. She mixed with this a sort of resentment against the defection from her post of her real grandmother—to wit, the one she had grown up under. For the young woman's wish for her presence had been one of those strong predispositions very common under her circumstances, and far less unreasonable than many such. "Granny" had been all-wise and all-powerful with her from her cradle!
But, in spite of young Maisie's confidence on the subject, her mother could not resist the misgiving that her expected grandchild was girding up its insignificant loins to make a dash for existence. Consider its feelings if it had inherited its great-grandmother's scrupulous punctuality! Widow Thrale was between two fires—duty to a mother and duty to a daughter. An instinct led her to choose the former. Her son-in-law affected to think her nervous; but, after whistling the halves of several tunes to himself, put his horse in the gig and went off to fetch the doctor. The story has seen how he caught him just coming away from Strides.
Ruth had not yet done quite all she could. She could summon someone to take her place beside her daughter in her absence. Preferably her cousin Keziah from the Towers. But she must see her and know that she was available. Tom Kettering, just departing for the Towers, was caught in time for Ruth to accompany him. On her arrival, finding that Keziahwasavailable, she arranged to walk with her to Denby's Farm, and then on to the Cottage. Under six miles, all told!—that was nothing.
But there was no need for this. Tom Kettering, going up to the house to report her young ladyship's decision to remain on another day, was told he must wait for a letter her ladyship the Countess would write, to take to Strides Cottage, and bring back an answer. He could easily go a few inches out of his way to leave his Aunt Keziah at Denby's, and take Ruth Thrale home to Strides. But he put up the closed brougham, and harnessed the grey mare in the dogcart, as she wanted a run. He knew that Gwen meant what she said, and would not come back.
It was about nine o'clock when they reached the Cottage, and Tom waited for the answer to the Countess's letter. Ruth came in, to be told that her mother had talked too much, and must lie quiet. But shehadbeen talking—that was something! The comment was Ruth's, and the reply to it was hopeful and consolatory. Oh yes—a great deal! And she must be better, to be able to talkso much. However, Ruth saw no change in the appearance of the still, white figure on the bed.
Gwen sat in the front-room and read her mother's remonstrance with her for absenting herself in this way and leaving her ladyship alone to contend with the arduous duty of entertaining her guests. "I think," it ran, "that you might at least remember that you are your father's daughter, even if you forget that Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick have come all the way from Nettisham in Shropshire." What followed was a good deal emphasized. "Understand, my dear, that what I say isnot intended to hold goodif this old lady isactually dying, butfor anything short of thatit does appear to me that your behaviour isat least inconsiderate. Do let me entreat you to fixa reasonable hourfor your return to-morrow, if youadhere to your resolutionnot to come to-night. Pray tell Kettering when he is to call for youbefore twelve to-morrow, so that you may be in time for lunch." This last was a three-lined whip.
In order that Gwen should not suppose that there had been too flattering ahiatusowing to her absence, the letter wound up:—"We have had somevery nice music. It turns out that Emily and Fanny sing 'I would that my love' quite charmingly." Gwen's remark to herself:—"Of course!" may be intelligible to old stagers who remember the fifties, and the popularity of this Mendelssohn duet at that time—notably the intrepidity of the singers over the soft word the merry breezes wafted away in sport. Emily and Fanny were twoingénues, come of a remote poor relation, who were destined never to forget the week they were spending at the Towers in Rocestershire. The letter was scribbled across to the effect that General Rawnsley had said he should ride over to Chorlton to-morrow to see if he could be of any use. "The dear old man," said Gwen to herself. "And eighty-four years old! Oh, why—why—could not my old darling Mrs. Picture live only three years more?... Only three years!"
Ten o'clock. The time was again at hand for those last arrangements we all know so well, when one watcher is chosen to remain by the sick man's couch, that others may sleep; each one to be roused from forgetfulness and peace to the sickening foreknowledge of the hour of release for all, when the life he has it at heart to prolong, if only for a day, shall have become a memory to perish in its turn, as one by one its survivors grow few and fewer and follow in its track.
A night comes always when Oblivion becomes a terror, and we dare not sleep, from fear of what our ears may hear on waking. It had come at Strides Cottage for Granny Marrable and Gwen, and even Ruth was conscious of a creeping dread of Death at hand, waiting on the threshold. But she imagined herself alone in her anticipations—fancied that "mother" and her ladyship were cherishing false hopes. She would not allow her own to die lest she should betray fears that might after all be just as false. Why should her mother—her new-found real mother—be sinking, because her limbs were cold, when her speech was still articulate, and her soft grey eyes so full of tenderness and light?
Gwen held a little aloof, not to take more than her fair share of what she feared was an ebbing life, although it kept so strangely its powers of communion with the world it was leaving behind. She could hear all the old voice said, as she had heard it before. What was that she was saying now?
"When the baby comes you will bring it here to show to me? I may not be up by then, to go and see it."
"The minute my daughter is strong enough to bring it, mother dear."
"She must take her time.... Is there not a little boy already?"
"Yes. He's Peter. He's a year old. He's very strong and wilful, and gets very angry when things are not given to him."
"Ruth darling—fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to bring him?" There was hunger for the baby in her beseeching voice. She might enjoy him a little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so—a month or so even.
"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John will drive us."
Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson. "They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name Peter?—she asked, and was told that he was so called after his grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:—"I buried his grandfather thirteen years ago." To which her mother said:—"Tell me all his name, that I may know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd comment:—"Oh yes—I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."
She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of ignorance.
But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?
The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the loss of these two. But the third—how about the one who survived his childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.
"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed distress. Then Granny Marrable:—"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:—"Shall I ask her ladyship to come?"
Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. "Is she asking for me?" said she. And Granny Marrable replied:—"I think she has it on her mind to speak to you, my lady."
Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of something to be done in another room, but the Granny kept near at hand.
"My dear—my Lady—I am so afraid...."
"Afraid of what, Mrs. Picture dear? Don't be frightened! We are all here."
"Afraid about my son—afraid Ruth may know...."
"No one has told Ruth of him, dear. No one shall tell Ruth. I promise you."
"It is not that. It is what I may say myself." Gwen had not heard her speak so clearly for a long time. "It was on my lips to speak of him—but just now. Because—is he not the same?"
"The same as what, dear? Try and tell me!"
"The same as the son that came with me in the ship. Thesame as the baby I suckled the last of four, out there on the farm. It was he that I was telling of before, and I was glad to tell my child—my Ruth—of the brother she never set eyes on. And then it came upon me, the thought of what he was, and what he had come to be.... Oh, my dear—my dear!..."
Gwen could not think of any stereotyped salve for a wounded heart. She could only say:—"Don't think of it, dear. Don't think of it! Lie still and get better now, and then I will make Aunt M'riar fetch Dave and Dolly, and Dave shall see Jones's Bull, and Dolly shall see the new baby."
"Suppose, my dear, I don't get better, will Dave and Dolly come all the same; for Phoebe and my Ruth, the same as if I was here?"
It was a sore tax on the steadiness of Gwen's voice, but she managed her assent. Yes—even in the improbable event of old Maisie's non-recovery, Dave and Dolly should visit Granny Marrable. And so consolatory had the assurance proved more than once before, that she repeated her undertaking about the visit to Farmer Jones's; for Dave, not for Dolly. "But there will be plenty for Dolly to see," Gwen said. "She won't be frightened of lambs—at least, I think not. Because she has never been in the country."
"No—but she has been in the Regent's Park, and is to go to Hampstead Heath some day with Uncle Mo. She is not frightened of the sheep in the Park, only in...."
"Only in where?" said Gwen. "Where is Dolly frightened of sheep?"
"In the street, because they run on the pavement, and the dog runs over their backs.... There are very few sheep here, compared to what we had in the colony.... Our shepherds were very good men, but all had their numbers from the Governor ... they had all been convicted ... but not of doing anything wrong...."
Oh dear!—what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep! But how could she have known? She knew so little about the colony—had even asked General Rawnsley, when they were talking of Van Diemen's Land, if he knew where "Tasmania" was! She tried to head off the pastoral convicts—the cancelled men, who had become numbers. "When Dolly comes, she will see the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested their power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that hung about.
But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybidis. "Phoebe dearest!" said old Maisie suddenly, "when did father die?"
"When did our father die?" said Granny Marrable. "Nigh upon forty-six years ago. Yes—forty-six."
"How can that be?—forty-six—forty-six!" The words were shadowily spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, yet dissatisfied. "How can my father have died then? That was when my sister died, and my little girl I left behind."
"Oh,howI wish she could sleep!" Gwen exclaimed under her breath. Granny Marrable said:—"She will sleep, my lady, before very long." She said it with such a quiet self-command, that Gwen accepted the obvious meaning that the sleeper would sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing else was meant.
There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange truth of her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest hold of her mind.
Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie had slept again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless attempts to head off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The clock-hand, intent upon its second, oblivious of its predecessors, incredulous of those to come, was near halfway to midnight when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her mother, came to her fellow-watchers in the front-room and said:—"I think she moved."
Both came to the bedside. Yes—she had moved a little, and was trying to speak. Gwen, half seated, half leaning on the pillow as before, took a hand that barely closed on hers, and spoke. "What is it, Mrs. Picture dear? Say it again."
"Is it all true?"
What could Gwen have said but what she did say? "Yes, dear Mrs. Picture, quite true. It is your own sister Phoebe beside you here, and your child Ruth, grown up."
"Maisie darling, I am Phoebe—Phoebe herself." It was all Granny Marrable could find voice for, and Ruth was hard put to it to say:—"You are my mother." And as each of these women spoke she bent over the white face of the dying woman, and kissed it through the speechlessness their words had left upon their lips.
It was not quite old Mrs. Picture's last word of all. A few minutes later she seemed to make weak efforts towards speech. If Gwen, listening close, heard rightly, she was saying, or trying to say:—"You are my Lady, that came with the accident, are you not?"
"Is there anything you want me to do for you?" For Gwen thought she was trying to say more. "It is about someone. Who?"
"Susan Burr...."
"Yes—you want me to give her some message?"
"Susan ... to have my furniture ... for her own."
"Yes—I will see to that.... And—and what?"
"Kiss Dave and Dolly for me."
They watched the scarcely breathing, motionless figure on the bed for the best part of an hour, and could mark no change that told of death, nor any sign that told of life. Then Granny Marrable said:—"What was that?" And Gwen answered, as she really thought:—"It was the clock." For she took it for the warning on the stroke of midnight. But old Phoebe said, with a strangely unfaltering voice:—"No—it is the change!" and the sob that broke the silence was not hers, but Ruth's. Old Mrs. Picture had just lived to complete her eighty-first year.
There came a sound of wheels in the road without. Not the doctor, surely, at this time of night! No—for the wheels were not those of his gig. Ruth, going out to the front-door, was met by a broad provincial accent—her son-in-law's. Gwen heard it fall to a whisper before the news of Death; then earnest conversation in an undertone. Gwen was aware that old Phoebe rose from her knees at the bedside, and went to listen through the door. Then she heard her say with a quiet self-restraint that seemed marvellous:—"Tell him—tell John that I will come.... Come back here and speak to me." She thought she caught the words as Ruth returned:—"I must not leave her alone." And she knew they referred to herself.
Then it came home to her that possibly her own youth and her difference of antecedents might somehow encumber arrangements that she knew would have to be carried out. They would be easiest in her absence. At her own suggestion she went away to lie down in the bedroom she had occupied.
Granny Marrable followed her. She had something to say.
"Dear Lady, I have to go. God bless you for all your goodness to my darling sister and to me! You gave her back to me...." That stopped her.
"Oh, Granny, Granny, we have lost her—we have lost her!" She could feel that old Phoebe's tears were running down the hand she had taken to kiss, and she drew it away to fold the old woman fairly in her arms, and kiss the face whose likeness to oldMrs. Picture's she could almost identify by touch. "We have lost her," she repeated, "and you might have had her for so long!"
Said Granny Marrable:—"I shall follow Maisie soon, if the Lord's will is. She might have died, my lady, but for you, unknown to me in London. And who would have told me where they had laid her?"
"Where are you going?"
"I am going to my granddaughter—Ruth's daughter. It is her fancy to have me rather than another. There might be harm to her did I stop away. Why should I delay here, when all is over?"
Why indeed? Still, Gwen could not but reverence and love the old lady for her unflinching fortitude and resolute sense of duty. She saw her driven away through the cold night, and went back to her room, leaving Ruth and Elizabeth the neighbour to make an end in the chamber of Death.
Sleep came, and waking came too soon, in a cold, dark Christmas morning. Oppression and pain for something not known at once came first, like a black cloud; then consciousness of what was in the heart of the cloud.
She wrapped herself in a warm dressing-gown, and went out through the silent house. It was still early, and it might be Ruth was still sleeping. Once asleep, why not remain so, when waking could only bring cold and darkness, and the memory of yesterday? Besides, it was not unlikely Ruth had watched half through the night. Gwen opened the door of the death-chamber with noiseless caution, and felt as soon as she saw that the daylight was still excluded, that it was empty of any living occupant. Dread was in her curiosity to see the thing beneath the white sheet on the bed—but see it she must!
The great bulldog, the only creature moving, came shambling along the passage to greet her, and—so she rendered his subdued dog-sounds that came short of speech—concerned that something was amiss he was excluded from knowing. She said a word to comfort him, but kept him outside the room, to wait for her return.
What had been till so lately old Mrs. Picture, whom she had chanced upon in Sapps Court, and found so strange a truth about, lay under that face-cloth on the bed. She moved the window-curtain for a stronger light, and uncovered the marble stillness of the face. The kerchief tied beneath the chin ran counter toher preconceptions, but no doubt it was all right. Ruth would know.
She did not look long. An odd sense of something that was not sacrilege, but akin to it, associated itself with this gazing on the empty tenement. Even so one shrinks from the emptiness of what was his home once, and will never know another dweller, but be carted off to the nearest dry-rubbish shoot. She laid the sheet back in its place, and went into the front-room.
Suddenly the dog growled and barked, then went smelling along the door into the front-garden. There was someone outside. She was conscious of a man on the gravel, through the window. A stranger, or he would enter without leave, or at least find the bell to ring. She glanced at the clock. It was half-past eight already, though it had seemed so early.
How about the dog, if she opened the door? His repute was great for ferocity towards doubtful characters, but he was credited with discrimination. Was this invariable? She preferred to take down his chain from its hook by the window, and to use it to hold him by.
"What is it? Who are you?" She had opened the door without reserve, feeling sure that the dog would be excited by a gap. As it was he growled intolerantly, and had to be reproved.
"You'll excuse me—I was inquiring.... Is your dog safe? I ain't fond of dogs, and they ain't fond of me." He was a man with a side-lurch, and an ungracious manner.
"The dog is safe—unless I let him go." Gwen was not sorry to have a strong ally in a leash, at will. "You were inquiring—you said?"
"Concerning of an old lady by the name of Prichard. The address given was Strides Cottage, and I see this little domicile here goes by that name. Next we come to the old lady of the name of Prichard. Can you do her, or anything near about?"
"Yes—Mrs. Prichard is here, but you can't see her now. What do you want with Mrs. Prichard? Who are you?"
The man kept looking uneasily up and down the road. "I'm a bad hand at talking, mostly. Standing about don't suit me—not for conversation. If you was to happen to have such a thing as a chair inside, and you was to make the offer, I might see about telling you what I want of old Goody Prichard."
Gwen looked at him and recognised him. She would have done so at once had his clothes been the same as when she saw him before, in the doorway at Sapps Court. He was that man, of course! Only with this difference, that while on that occasionhis get-up was nearest that of a horse-keeper, his present one was a carter's. He might have been taken for one, if you had not seen his face. Gwen said to him:—"You can pass the dog. Don't do anything to irritate him." He entered and sat down.
"Where have you got the old woman?" said he.
"First tell me what you want with her."
"To introduce myself to her. I wrote her a letter nigh a fortnight since. What did I say to her in that letter? Told her I was looking forward tore-newing her acquaintance. You tell the old lady that, from me. You might go so far as to say it's Ralph, back again." An idea seemed to intensify his gaze of admiration, or rather avidity, narrowing it to her face. "This ain't my first sight ofyou, allowance made for toggery."
Gwen merely lifted her eyebrows. But seeing his offensive eyes waiting, she conceded:—"Possibly not," and remained silent.
He chose to interpret this as invitation to continue, although it was barely permission. "I set eyes on you first, as I was coming out of a door. You were coming in at that door. You looked at me to recollect me, for I saw you take notice. Ah!—you've no call to blaze at me on that account. You may just as well come down off of the high ropes."
For Gwen's face had shown what she thought of him, as he sat there, half wincing before her, half defiant. She was not in the habit of concealing her thoughts. "I see you are a reptile," said she explicitly. And then, not noticing his snigger of satisfaction at having, as it were,drawnher:—"What were you doing at Mr. Wardle's?"
"Ah—what was I a-doing at Moses Wardle's? I suppose you know whathewas? Or maybe you don't?"
"What was he?"
The convict's ugly grin, going to the twisted side of his face, made it monstrous. "Mayhap you don't know what they call ascrapper?" said he.
"I don't. What did he scrap?" She felt that Uncle Mo did it honourably, whatever it was.
"He was one of the crack heavyweights, in my time."
"I know what that means. I should recommend you not to show yourself at his house, unless...."
The man sniggered again. "Don't you lie awake about me," said he. "Old Mo had seen his fighting-days when I had the honour of meeting him five-and-twenty years ago at The Tun, which is out of your line, I take it. Besides, my best friend's in my pocket, ready at a pinch. Shall I show him to you?" Heshowed a knife with a black horn handle. "I don't open him, not to alarm a lady. So you've no call for hysterics."
"I am not afraid of you or your knife, if that is what you mean." Indeed, absolute fearlessness was one of Gwen's characteristics. "What did you go to Mr. Wardle's for?"
"On a visit to my wife."
Gwen started. "Who is your wife?" said she. Susan Burr flashed into her mind first. But then, how about "Aunt Maria" on the envelope, and her readiness to act as this man's agent?
"Polly Daverill's my wife—my lawful wife! That's more than my father could say of my mother."
"I know that you are lying, but I do not care why. Do you want to see your mother?"
"If sootable and convenient. No great hurry!"
"She is in bed. I will get her ready for you to see her. Do not go near the dog. They say he has killed a man."
"A man'll killhimif he gives occasion. Make him fast, for his own sake. There's money there—he's a tike o' some value. Maybe forty pound. You tie him up!" Gwen hooked his chain round the table-leg, starting him on a series of growls—low thunder in short lengths. He had been very quiet.
She passed into the bedroom, and opening the shutters, threw light full on the bed. Then she drew back the sheet she had replaced. Oh, the beauty of that white marble face, and the stillness!
"You can come in, quietly."
"Is she having a snooze?"
"You will not wake her."
"This is one of your games." The sort was defined by an adjective, omitted. "What's your game? What the Hell are you at?" He said this as to himself.
"Go in. You will find your mother." Gwen took back the dog's chain from the table-leg, and the low thunder died down.
She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been to touch the heart of the brute, if he had one; another to convince him, without a long parley, of his mother's death. He might have disputed it, and in any case she could not have refused him the sight of his own mother's body.
She could not have restrained that dog had he acted on his obvious impulse to strangle, rapidly and thoroughly, this vermin intruder. But he was an orderly and law-abiding dog, who would not have strangled a rat without permission.
Gwen did not catch the convict's exclamation at sight of hismother, beyond the "What the...!" that began it. Then he was silent. She saw him go nearer without fear of ill-demeanour on his part, and touch the cold white hand, not roughly or without a sort of respect. As well, perhaps, for him; for Gwen was quite capable of loosing that dog on him, under sufficient provocation. She thought he seemed to examine the fingers of the left hand. Then he came back, and they returned to the front-room. She was the first to speak.
"Are you satisfied?"
"I couldn't have sworn to her myself, not from her face, but I made sure." Probably he had looked for the cut finger, his own handiwork of thirty-odd years ago. He said abruptly, after a moment's pause:—"I don't see nothing to gain by hanging about here."
"Nothing whatever."
He said not a word more, his only sign of emotion or excitement having been his exclamation at first sight of the corpse. He walked away towards the village, and had just reached the point where the road turns out of sight, when Gwen, watching his slow one-sided footsteps, saw him turn and come quickly back. She went back into the Cottage and closed the door, resolved not to admit him a second time.
But he passed by, going away by the road towards Denby's and the Towers, never even glancing at the Cottage. He was scarcely out of sight when a tax-cart with two men in it came quickly from the village and stopped.
"You will excuse me, madam. I am Police-Inspector Thompson, from Grantley Thorpe. A man whom I am looking for has been traced here...." The speaker had alighted.
"A man with a limp? He came here and went away. He has only just gone."
"Which way?"
"He went away in that direction...."
"What I said!" struck in the second man on the driver's seat. "He's for getting back to the Railway. He'll cut across by Moreton Spinney. Jump up, Joe!"
Gwen could easily have added that he had come back, and was going the other way. But her promise to old Mrs. Picture, lying there dead, kept her silent. If the officers chose to jump to a false conclusion, let them! She had misled them by a literal truth. She would much rather have told a lie, honourably. But she could not remedy that now, without risk.
Another trot sounded from the opposite direction. It wasFarmer Costrell's cart, and Ruth was in it, driven by her son-in-law. She was bringing some evergreens to place upon the body. Too anxious to remain in ignorance about her daughter, she had walked over to Denby's while it was still almost dark, and had found a new granddaughter and its mother, both doing well.
"And ne'er a soul would I have seen either way," said she, "if it had not been for a tramp a few steps down the road, who set me thinking it was as well I was not alone, by the looks of him. Yes—thank your ladyship—I got some sleep, till after five o'clock. Then I could not be easy till I knew about my child. But all has gone well, God be thanked!"
It was the only time she ever saw that brother, and she never knew it was he.
HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY—GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE END
HOW MICKY BECAME A LINKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MR. NIXON. HIS SELF-RESTRAINT, WIX'S MESSAGE. JULIA'S DILEMMA. HER VIEWS ON MARRIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL POLLY! HOW MICKY'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. OUR OLD LADY—GONE! WHO WILL TELL DAVE AND DOLLY? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE END
The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid something, that may be light, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of blackness is followed by another blacker still. Then, while timid persons think thelast day has come, the linkboys don't care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely.
A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, Michael himself. On the afternoon of that Wednesday in Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name of a blooming street! So ran his communication to his great-aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy.
"Now you do like I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to Micky's harphacrownd, just earned. That was his exact pronunciation, deliveredore rotundissimo, to do full justice to so large an amount.
Micky's reply was:—"Ketch me at it! I don't put no faith in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners.TheBank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's.... No—I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You carn't never say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and wound up:—"The money won't run away of itself, so long as you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its security.
"Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued:—"Bein' here, I do declare you might be a useful boy, and writeDog Foundlarge on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in her window for to find the owner."
"Wot's the dog?"
"Well now, he was here a minute back! Or he run out when you come in." Fog-retarded search discovered a woebegone refugee under the stairs; who had been fetched in, said Mrs. Treadwell, by her puppy in the early morning, and whom she had not had the heart to drive away.
Michael was proud to show his skill as a penman, and with his aunt's assistance composed an intelligible announcement thatthe owner of a black-and-tan terrier with one eye might recover the same on production of some proof of ownership. Michael devised one, suggesting that any applicant might be told to say what name was wrote on the collar.
"But there now, Micky," said the old charwoman. "He hasn'tgotno collar!"
"Werry good, then," said her nephew. "When he tells you what's wrote on the collar, you'll know he's a liar, and don't you give him up the dog."
"But shan't I be a story," said Mrs. Treadwell, "for to tell him the collar's wrote upon, when it's no such a thing?"
"Not you, Arnty! Don't you say anything's wrote. Just you ask him what, and cotch him out!"
The puppy wanted to help, and nearly blotted the composition. But this was avoided, and Micky went out into the fog bearing the placard, of which he was rather proud.
A typical sot was the only occupant of the bar, who was so far from sober that he imagined he was addressing a public meeting. Micky distinguished that he was referring to his second wife, and had some fault to find with the chairman. Voices in the little parlour behind the bar caught the boy's ear, and took his attention off. He was not bound to stop his ears. If parties hollered, it was their own lookout. Parties hollered, in this case, and Micky could hear, without listening. He was not sure, though, when he heard one of the voices, that he would not have listened, if he had any call to do so. For it was the voice of his old acquaintance the convict.
"No safety like a thick fog, Juliar! I'll pay her a visit this very afternoon, so soon as ever you've given me some belly-timber. Sapps Court'll be as black as an inch-thick of ink for twelve hours yet. Don't you let that steak burn!"
Michael heard the steak rescued—the hiss of its cookery intercepted. Then he heard Miss Julia say with alarm in her voice:—"You're never going there, Wix! Not to Sapps Court?"
"And why the Hell shouldn't I go to Sapps Court? One place is as safe as another, a day like this." Insert if you will an adjective before "place," here.
Michael, sharp as he was, could not tell why the woman's answer sounded embarrassed, even through a half-closed door. The story knows. She had betrayed the knowledge she had acquired from the letter she had tampered with, that Sapps was being specially watched by the Police. How could she account for this knowledge, without full confession? And would not absolution be impossible?She could only fence with the cause of her confusion. "I got the idea on my mind, I expect," said she uneasily. "Didn't you say she had a man hanging round?"
"Old Mo, sure enough. Yes, there's old Mo. Buthewon't be there. He'll be swiping, round at The Sun. I can reckonhimup! He don't train for fighting, like he did thirty years ago. One sight of him would easy your mind—an old dot-and-go-one image!"
"I got the idea the officers would look to catch you there. Idid, Wix."
"And I got the idea no such a thing!" Omission again before this last word. "Why in thunder do you suppose?... Shut to that door!"
"There's no one there—only old Nixon."
"Who's he talking to?"
"Nobody. Empty space!"
"Tell you he is! Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the impression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, he said—substantially—the reward of self-restraint! He was no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exaggerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Human Naysh. But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the safe side. He charged Micky to be on his guard against Temptation, who lay in wait for inexperience without his first syllable, which had been absorbed in a hiccup. Micky was not grateful to Mr. Nixon for this, as it interfered with his hearing of the conversation within.
"Who are you, in behind that handle?" asked Miss Hawkins. "Come out and show us your face.... What's this? 'Dog Found'? Yes—very happy to oblige your aunt.... Stick it up against the front-glass yourself.... 'Won't stick of itself,' won't it? Wait till I see for a wafer." She returned into the small parlour, and foraged in the drawer of her inkstand, which had probably done no service since her experiment infaussure, till it supplied Mr. Wix with a simile for the fog, ten minutes since.
"That's young Ikey," said the convict. "I can tell him by his lip. Fetch him inside. I've a message for him to carry." Miss Julia had found red wafers; and, after instructing Michael how to use them—to suck them in earnest, as they had got dry awaitingtheir mission in life—induced him into Mr. Wix's presence. Micky's instinctive hatred of this man was subdued by the recollection of thedouceurshe had received from him. But do what he would, he was only equal to a nod, as greeting. He hardly received so much himself.
The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual anchorage at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. Then he roused himself to say:—"Well, young shaver, what the office for you?—that's the point! Look you now—are you going home?"
"Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way. Spit it out, guv'nor!"
Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he answered:—"You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got that? You know Aunt M'riar."
"Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did."
Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. "About right you are, that time!" said he. Not that this was untrue enough to be worth telling as a falsehood. Polly the barmaid had no niece or nephew that he knew of, in the early days. "But you could carry a message to her, if you didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her hooks."
"The widder two pair up at Number Seven? What hooks?"
"She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips."
"Mean she's dead? Carn't you say so, mister?"
"Sharp boy! That's whatsheis. Dead."
"That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known old Maisie by repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A wish for some confirmation of the convict's statement arose in his mind. "How's she to know it's not a lie?" said he.
"She'llknow, fast enough! Say I told you. Say who I am.She'lltwig, when you tell her.... Stop a bit!" He was thinking how to authenticate the death without telling the boy overmuch about himself. "Look here—I'll tell you what you've got to say. Say her son—old mother Prichard's son—was just up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her dead, with his own eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message."
If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself and his own mother! Perhaps it was some instinctive inwardness that made him glad he had got his message and could be gone. He made short work of his exit, saying:—"All right, mister, I'm your man"—and departed after a word in the bar to Miss Julia:—"Right you are, missis! Don't you let himhave another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at integers—halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are not hard enough.
Miss Hawkins had placed herself in a difficulty by that indiscreet tampering with Aunt M'riar's letter. She had done it in a fit of furious exasperation with Daverill, immediately the result of an interview with him on his reappearance at The Pigeons some weeks ago. Some whim had inclined him towards the exhibition of a better selfhood than the one in daily use; perhaps merely to assert the power he still possessed over the woman; more probably to enable him to follow it up with renewed suggestions that she should turn the freehold Pigeons into solid cash, and begin with him a new life in America. She had kept her head in spite of kisses and cajolery, which appealed with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was to precede the auctioneer.