"And the letter said that--the letter he made up?"
"The letter said that, and I read it. It had black seals, and I broke them and read it. And it was from father, and said you were drowned ...
drowned ... Yes!--Phoebe drowned ... and my little Ruth, and ... Oh, Phoebe, how can this be you?" The panic came again in her voice, and again she clutched spasmodically at the hand she held. But it passed, leaving her only able to speak faintly. "I kept it in my table-drawer.... It must be there still." She had only half got the truth.
Granny Marrable tried to make it clear, so far as she could. "You forget, dear. Her ladyship has the letter, and Dr. Nash knows. Lady Gwendolen who brought you here...."
It was a happy reference. A light broke over the old face on the pillow, and there was ease in the voice that said:--"She is one of God's Angels.
I knew it by her golden hair. When will she come?"
"Very soon. To-morrow, perhaps. 'Twas her ladyship told you--was it not?
Oh, you remember?"
"My dear, she told it me like a story, and her face was white. But it was all clear to me then, for I could not know who the bad man was--the bad man who made two sisters each think the other dead. And I was for helping her to tell them. Oh, may God bless her for her beautiful face--so pale it was! And then she told me 'twas written by my husband."
Some new puzzle confronted her, and she repeated, haltingly:--"By ... my ... husband!" Then quite suddenly, struck by a new idea:--"But was it?
How could she know?"
"My dear, she showed it to her father, the Earl, and they were of one mind. His lordship read the letter. Dr. Nash told me. But it was Thornton's own letter to me that said _you_ were dead. I have got it still." She was stopped by the return of Ruth Thrale, who had been half waked by her mother's raised voice five minutes since, and had struggled to complete consciousness under the sense of some burden of duty awaiting her outside the happy oblivion of her stinted sleep. "How has she been?" was her question on entering.
Granny Marrable could not give any clear account of the past hour of talk; it was growing hazy to her, as reaction after excitement told, more and more. Ruth asked no further questions, and urged her to go and lie down--was ready to force her to do it, but she conceded the point, and was just going, when her sister stopped her, speaking clearly, without moving on the pillow.
"What was the letter?"
"What letter is she speaking of?" said Ruth.
Granny Marrable said with an effort:--"The letter that said she was dead."
"Show it to me--show it me now, with the light! You have got it."
"Yes. I said to her that I had got it. But it is put away." This was under Granny Marrable's breath, that old Maisie should not hear.
But she heard, and turned her head. "Oh, Phoebe, let me see it! Can it not be got? Cannot Ruth get it?" She seemed feverishly alive, for the moment, to all that was passing.
Ruth, thinking it would be better to satisfy her if possible, said:--"Is it hard to find? Could I not get it?" To which old Phoebe replied:--"I know where it is to lay hands on at once. But I grudge setting eyes on it now, and that's the truth." Ruth wondered at this--it made her mother's eagerness to see it seem the stranger. The story is always on the edge of calling old Maisie Ruth's "new mother." Her mind was reeling under the consciousness of two mothers with a like claim--a bewildering thought! She wavered between them, and was relieved when the speaker continued:--"You may unlock my old workbox over yonder. The letter be inside the lid, behind the scissors. I'll begone to lie down a bit on your bed, child!" Was old Phoebe running away from that letter?
Ruth knew the trick of that workbox of old. It brought back her early childhood to find the key concealed in a little slot beneath it; hidden behind a corner of green cloth beyond suspicion; that opened, for all that, when the edge was coaxed with a finger-nail. It had been her first experience of a secret, and a fascination hung about it still. That confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later years. It crossed Ruth's mind as she found the key, how, a year ago, when the interior of this box was shown to Dave Wardle by his country Granny, his delight in it, and its smell of otto of roses that never failed, had stirred forgotten memories; and this recollection, with the mystery of that vanished mother still on earth--close at hand, there in the room!--made her almost dread to raise the box-lid. But she dared it, and found the letter, though her brain whirled at the entanglements of life and time, and she winced at the past as though scorched by a spiritual flame. It took her breath away to think what she had sought and found; the hideous instrument of a wickedness almost inconceivable--her own father's!
"Oh, how I hope it is that! Bring it--bring it, my dear, my Ruth--my Ruth for me, now! Yes--show it me with the light, like that." Thus old Maisie, struggling to raise herself on the bed, but with a dangerous spot of colour on her cheek, lately so pale, that said fever. Ruth trembled to admit the word to her mind; for, think of her mother's age, and the strain upon her, worse than her own!
Nevertheless, it was best to indulge this strong wish; might, indeed, be dangerous to oppose it. Ruth bolstered up the weak old frame with pillows, and lit two candles to give the letter its best chance to be read. She found her mother's spectacles, though in doubt whether they could enable her to read the dim writing, written with a vanishing ink, even paler than the forged letter Gwen and her father had unearthed.
Possibly the ink had run short, and was diluted.
Old Maisie strove to read the writing, gasping with an eagerness her daughter found it hard to understand; but failed to decipher anything beyond, "My dear Sister-in-law." She dropped the letter, saying feebly:--"Read--you read!"
Then Ruth read:--
"'I take up my pen to write you fuller particulars of the great calamity that has befallen me. For I am, as my previous letter will have told you, if it has reached you ere this, a widower. I am endeavouring to bear with resignation the lot it has pleased God to visit upon me, but in the first agonies of my grief at the loss of my beloved helpmeet I was so overwhelmed as to be scarce able to put pen to paper. I am now more calm and resigned to His will, and will endeavour to supply the omission.
"'My dear Maisie was in perfect health and spirits when she went to visit a friend, Mary Ann Stennis, the wife of a sheep-farmer, less than thirty miles from where I now write, on the Upper Derwent, one of the few women in this wild country that was a fit associate for her. She was to have started home in a few days' time, but the horse that should have carried her, the only one she could ride, being a timid horsewoman, went lame and made a delay, but for which delay it may be God would have spared her to me. But His will be done! It seems she was playing with the baby of a native black, there being a camp or tribe of them near at hand, she being greatly diverted with the little monster, when its sister, but little older than itself, found a scorpion beneath a stone, and set it to bite its little brother. Thereupon Maisie, always courageous and kindhearted, must needs snatch at this most dangerous vermin, to throw it at a distance from the children....'"
Old Maisie interrupted the reader. Her face was intent, and her eyes gleamed with an unhealthy, feverish light. "Stop, my dear," said she.
"This is all true."
"All true!" Surely her mind was giving way. So thought Ruth, and shuddered at the gruesome thought. "Mother--mother--how _can_ it be true?"
"All quite true, my dear, but for one thing! All true but for who it was! It was not I--it was Mary Ann was at play with little Saku. And the scorpion bit _her_ hand, and she died of the bite.... Yes--go on! Read it all!" For Ruth had begun:--"Shall I--_must I_?" as though the reading it was unendurable.
She resumed, with an effort:--
"'But got bitten in the arm. At first she made light of the wound, for the reptile was so small. But it became badly inflamed, and no doctor was at hand. The black mother of Saku, the baby, prayed to be allowed to summon the conjurer doctor of the tribe, who would suck the wound. But Maisie would not have this, so only external applications were made ...'"
Old Maisie interrupted:--"That is not so," she said. "Roomoro, the doctor, sucked hard at the bite, and spat out the poison in a hole in the ground, to bury the evil spirit. But it was no good. Poor Mary Ann Stennis died a week after. I mind it well."
Ruth thought to herself:--"Is this a feverish dream?" and wavered on the answer. The tale her mother told of the black medicine-man was nightmare-like. All this, fifty years ago! Her head swam too much for speech, reading apart. She could continue, mechanically:--
"' ... Only external applications were made, which proved useless, as is almost invariably the case with poisonous bites. Next day it became evident that the poison was spreading up the arm, and a black runner was despatched to summon me, but he could not cover the ground in less than three hours, and when he arrived I was on my way to Bothwell, some twenty miles in another direction, so he did not overtake me until the evening. I was then detained a day, so that it was over forty-eight hours before I arrived at Stennis's. It was then too late for effectual remedy, and my dear wife died in my arms within a week of the scorpion bite....'"
"That is not true--it was over a week." Was Maisie really alive to the facts, to be caught by so small a point? She had seen a simple thing that could be said. That is all the story can think.
Ruth said:--"Here is more--only a little!" and continued:--
"'I am thankful to say that, considering the nature of the case, her sufferings were slight, and she passed away peacefully, desiring with her last breath that I should convey to you the assurance of her unchanged affection.'
"It is untrue--it is untrue!" moaned Maisie. "Mary Ann died in great pain, from the poison of the bite working in the blood." She seemed to grasp very little of the facts, for she added:--"But was he not good, to hide the pain for Phoebe's sake?" Her mind was catching at fragments, to understand, and failed.
There was another letter, which Ruth opened, of an earlier date. It was a merely formal announcement of the death. She put back the letters in the workbox-lid, behind the scissors; replaced the workbox on its table as before, and returned to her mother. She was glad to find her still, with her eyes closed; but with that red spot on her cheek, unchanged. It was best to favour every approach of sleep, and this might be one. Ruth sat silent, all her faculties crippled, and every feeling stunned, by what she had gone through since Gwen's first arrival yesterday.
This terrible night had worn itself out, and she knew that that clock-warning meant six, when the stroke should come. But there was no daylight yet. Those movements in the kitchen must be Elizabeth-next-door, come according to promise. That was what the guardian-dog from without meant, pushing his way through the bedroom-door, reporting an incomer whom he knew, and had sanctioned. He communicated the fact to his satisfaction, and returned to his post, leaving his mistress the better for his human sympathy, which seemed to claim knowledge of passing event. It comforted her to feel that the day was in hand, and that its light would come. Who could say but its ending might find her convinced that this was all true? Blank, sickening doubts of the meaning of everything flitted across her mind, and she longed to settle down to realities, to be able to love this new mother without flinching. For that was what she felt, that the mystery of this resurrection seared or burnt her. One thing only soothed her--that this was dear old Mrs. Prichard whom she had learned to love before its bewilderments were sprung upon her. That made it easier to bear.
Presently she roused herself, for, was not this morning? A grey twilight, not over-misty for the time of year, was what a raised window-curtain showed her, and she let it fall to deal with it in earnest, and relieve the blind from duty. Then she made sure, by the new light, that all was well with old Maisie--mere silence, no insensibility--and went out to speak with Elizabeth-next-door, and get more wood for the fire. But first she blew out the candles and the rushlight, already dying spasmodically.
Elizabeth-next-door was a strengthening influence, able to look facts in the face. She almost elided forewords and inquiries, to come to her strong point, the way she had used the strange story to produce surprise in her husband; a worthy man, but imperturbable by anything short of earthquakes or thunderbolts. "Ye may sa-ay your vairy worst to Sam,"
said Elizabeth, "and he'll just sa-ay back, 'Think a doan't knaw that,'
he'll say, 'afower ever yow were born?' and just gwarn with his sooper.
And I give ye my word, Widow Thrale, I no swooner told it him than there he sat! An' if he come down on our ta-able wi' th' fla-at of his ha-and once, that he did thrice and mower, afower he could sa-ay one word. He _did_, and went nigh to break it, but it be o-ak two-inch thick a'mo-ast. Then a said, 'twas enough to wa-aken oop a ma-an all through the night, he did!" He seemed, however, not to have suffered in this way, for his wife added:--"Wa-aken him oop? Not Sam, I lay! Ta-akes a souse o' cold pig to wa-aken up Sam afower t' marnin!" Ruth felt braced by this bringing of the event within human possibilities. Improbable possibilities surprise. Impossible events stun.
She co-operated in domesticities with her useful neighbour, glancing once or twice at the figure on the bed, and reinforced in the belief that all was safe there, for the time. For she saw what seemed slight natural movement, for ease. Presently she went to hear how it fared with her other mother, her normal one. The cross purposes of her relations to the two old sisters were an entanglement of perplexities.
Granny Marrable, asleep when Ruth looked stealthily in at her, was waked by a creak with which the door just contrived to disappoint hopes of a noiseless escape. She called after her:--"Yes, who's that?" Whereupon Ruth returned. It was their first real word alone since the disclosure.
"Oh, mother, have you slept?" She kissed the old worn-out face tenderly; feeling somehow the reserve of strength behind the response she met.
"Oh, can you--_can_ you--make it out?... Yes, she is lying still. She has seen that letter." She dropped her voice, and shuddered to name it.
"My dear," said Granny Marrable, answering her question, "I cannot say truly yet that I can make it out. But I thank God for letting me be able to know that this must be Maisie. For I know her for Maisie, when she talks of the bygone time. And that letter--God is good, for that! For it was that told of how she died--that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away in such pain--never in all these years! And now I know it for an untruth. I thank God for that, at least!"
"_She_ says," said Ruth, checkmated in an attempt to use any name she could call her real mother by, without some self-blame for the utterance, "_she_ says the story is one-half true, but 'twas her best friend died of the bite--not she! But she died in great suffering."
"Ah--the poor thing! Mary Ann Stennis."