Gwen's satisfaction at this was to be dashed slightly. For she found herself asked, to her surprise, "Who is Granny Marrowbone?" She replied:--"Of course Dave wants his other Granny, from the country." She waited for an assent, but none came.
Instead, old Maisie said reflectively, as though recalling an incident of some interest:--"Oh yes!--Granny Marrowbone was his other Granny in the country, where he went to stay, and saw Jones's Bull. I think she must be a nice old lady." Gwen said nothing. Better pass this by; it would be forgotten.
But the strong individuality of that Bull came in the way. Had not they visited him together only the other day? He struck confusion into memory and oblivion alike. The face Gwen saw, when the letter that hid it fell on the coverlid, was almost terrified. "Oh, see the things I say!" cried old Maisie, in great distress of mind. "How am I ever to know it right?"
She clung to Gwen's hand in a sort of panic. In a few moments she said, in an awed sort of voice:--"Was that Phoebe, then, that I saw when we stopped at the Cottage, in the carriage, after the Bull?"
"Yes, dear! And you are in the Cottage now. And Phoebe is coming back soon. And Ruth."
CHAPTER XXIII
CATHERINE WHEELS. CENTIPEDES. CENTENARIANS. BACKGAMMON. IT.
HEREAFTER CORNER. LADY KATHERINE STUARTLAVEROCK. BISHOP BERKELEY.
THE COUNTESS'S VISIT REVIEWED. A CODEX OF HUMAN WEAKNESS. AN EXPOSITION OF SELFISHNESS. HOW ADRIAN WOULD HOLD ON LIKE GRIM DEATH. A BELDAM, CRONE, HAG, OR DOWDY. SUICIDE. THE LITTLE BOTTLE OF INDIAN POISON. MORE SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. GWEN'S DAILY BULLETINS.
ONESIMUS. TURTLE SOUP AND CHAMPAGNE. FOXBOURNE. HOW THEY WENT TO CHORLTON, AND ANOTHER DOG SMELT ACHILLES
As he who has godfathered a Catherine Wheel stands at a respectful distance while it spits and fizzes, so may the story that reunites lovers who have been more than a week apart. The parallel, however, does not hold good throughout, for the Catherine Wheel usually gets stuck after ignition, and has to be stimulated judiciously, while lovers--if worth the name--go off at sight. In many cases--oh, so many!--the behaviour of the Catherine Wheel is painfully true to life. Its fire-spin flags and dies and perishes, and nothing is left of it but a pitiful black core that gives a last spasmodic jump and is for ever still!
Fireworks are only referred to here in connection with the former property. When Gwen reappeared at Pensham, Miss Torrens--this is her own expression--"cleared out" until her brother and her visitor "came to their senses." The Catherine Wheel, in their case, had by that time settled down from a tempest of flame-spray to a steady lamplight, endurable by bystanders. The story need not wait quite so long, but may avail itself of the first return of sanity.
"Dearest--are you really going to stop till Saturday?"
"If you think we shan't quarrel. Four whole days and a bit at each end!
_I_ think it's tempting Providence."
"Why not stop over Sunday, and make an honourable week of it and no stinting?"
"Because I have a papa coming back to his ancestral home, on Saturday evening, and he will come back boiled and low from Bath waters, inside and out, and he'll want a daughter to give him tone. He gets rid of the gout, but ..."
"But. Exactly! It's the insoluble residuum that comes back. However, you _will_ be here till Friday night."
"Can't even promise that! I may be sent for."
"Why?... Oh, I know--the old lady. How is she? Tell me more about her.
Tell me lots about her."
Whereupon Gwen, who had been looking forward to doing so, started on an exhaustive narrative of her visit to Strides Cottage. She had not got far when Irene thought it safe to return--hearing probably the narrative tone of voice--and then she had to tell it all over again.
"When I left the Cottage yesterday at about three o'clock," said Gwen, in conclusion, "she was so much better that I felt quite hopeful about her."
"Quite hopeful about her?" Irene repeated. "But if she has nothing the matter with her, except old age, why be anything but hopeful?"
"You would see if you saw her. She looks as if a puff of wind would blow her away like thistledown."
"That," Adrian said, "is a good sign. There is no guarantee of a long life like attenuation. Bloated people die shortly after you make their acquaintance. No, no--for true vitality, give me your skeleton! A healthy old age really sets in as soon as one is spoken of as still living."
"Oh dear, yes!" said Irene. "I'm sure Gwen's description sounds exactly like this old lady becoming a ... There!--I've forgotten the word!
Something between a centipede and a Unitarian...."
"Centenarian?"
"Exactly. See what a good thing it is to have a brother that knows things. A person a hundred years old. I tell you, Gwen dear, my own belief is these two old ladies mean to be centenarians, and if we live long enough we shall read about them in the newspapers. And they will have a letter from Royalty!"
In the evening Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions were not serious, on a more sane and responsible line of thought. His lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to become acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance of symptoms on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, had given her its blessing and dropped a tear by implication over her early departure from it. Sir Hamilton had involved his daughter in a vortex of backgammon, a game draught-players detest, and _vice versa_, because the two games are even as Box and Cox, in homes possessing only one board. So Gwen and Adrian had themselves to themselves, and wanted nothing more. Her eyes rested now and then with a new curiosity on the Baronet, deep in his game at the far end of the room. She was looking at him by the light of his handsome daughter's saucy speculation about that romantic passage in the lives of himself and her mamma. Suppose--she was saying to herself, with monstrous logic--he had been _my_ papa, and _I_ had had to play backgammon with him!
She was recalled from one such excursion of fancy by Adrian saying:--"Are you sure it would not have been better for the old twins--or one of them--to die and the other never be any the wiser?"
Said Gwen:--"I am not sure. How can I be? But it was absolutely impossible to leave them there, knowing it, unconscious of each other's existence."
Adrian replied:--"It _was_ impossible. I see that. But suppose they _had_ remained in ignorance--in the natural order of events I mean--and the London one had died unknown to her sister, would it not have been better than this reunion, with all its tempest of pain and raking up of old memories, and quite possibly an early separation by death?"
"I think not, on the whole. Because, suppose one had died, and the other had come to know of her death afterwards!"
"I am supposing the contrary. Suppose both had continued in ignorance!
How then?"
It was not a question to answer off-hand. Gwen pondered; then said abruptly:--"It depends on whether we go on or stop. Now doesn't it?"
"As bogys? That question always crops up. If we stop I don't see how there can be any doubt on the matter. Much better they should have died in ignorance. The old Australian goody was quite contented, as I understand, at Scraps Court, with her little boy and girl to make tea for her. And the old body at Chorlton and her daughter would have gone on quite happily. They didn't want to be excoriated by a discovery."
"Yes--that is what it has been. Excoriation by a discovery. I'm not at all sure you're right--but I'll make you a present of it. Let's consider it settled that death in ignorance would have been the best thing for them."
"Very well!--what next?"
"What next? Why, of course, suppose we don't stop, but go on! You often say it is ten to one against it."
"So it is. I can't say I'm sorry, on the whole."
"That's neither here nor there. Ten to one against is one to ten for.
Any man on the turf will tell you that."
"And any Senior Wrangler will confirm it."
"Very well, then! There we are. Suppose my dear old Mrs. Picture and Granny Marrable had turned up as ghosts, on the other side...."
"I see. You've got me in Hereafter Corner, and you don't intend to let me out."
"Not till you tell me whether they would have been happy or miserable about it, those two ghosts. In your opinion, of course! Don't run away with the idea that I think you infallible."
"There are occasions on which I do not think myself infallible. For instance, when I have to decide an apparently insoluble problem without data of any sort. Your expression 'turned up as ghosts, on the other side,' immediately suggests one."
"You can say whether you think they would have been happy or miserable about having been in England together over twenty years, and never known it. _That's_ simple enough!"
"Don't be in a hurry! There are complications. If they knew they were ghosts, they might become interested in the novelty of their position, and be inclined to accept accomplished facts. Recrimination would be waste of time. If they didn't know ..."