Said Adrian:--"It's perfectly extraordinary to me, not seeing her, to hear her talk as she does. Because it doesn't give the impression of such weakness as that. Her hands feel very thin, of course."
Said the doctor:--"I wish I could get her to take some stimulant; then she would begin eating again. If she could only be slightly intoxicated!
But she's very obdurate on that point--I told you?--and refuses even Sir Cropton Fuller's old tawny port. I talked about her to him, and he sent me half a dozen the same evening. A good-natured old chap!--wants to make everyone else as dyspeptic as himself...."
"That reminds me!" said Gwen. "We forgot the champagne."
"No, we didn't," said Irene. "It was put in the carriage, I know. In a basket. Two bottles lying down. And it was taken out, because I saw it."
"But _was_ it put in the railway carriage?"
"I meant the railway carriage."
"I believe it's in the old Noah's Ark we came here in, all the while."
Granny Marrable said:--"I am sure there has nothing been brought into the Cottage. Because we should have seen. There is only the door through, to go in and out."
"You see, Dr. Nash," said Gwen, "when you said that in your letter, about her wanting stimulant, champagne immediately occurred to Sir Hamilton. So we brought a couple of bottles of the King of Prussia's favourite Clicquot, and a little screwy thing to milk the bottles with, like a cow, a glass at a time. Miss Torrens and I are quite agreed that very often one can get quite pleasantly and healthily drunk on champagne when other intoxicants only give one a headache and make one ill. Isn't it so, 'Re?" Miss Torrens and her brother both testified that this was their experience, and Dr. Nash assented, saying that there would at least be no harm in trying the experiment.
As for dear old Granny Marrable, her opinion was simply that whatever her ladyship from the Towers, and the young lady from Pensham and her brother, were agreed upon, was beyond question right; and even if medical sanction had not been forthcoming she would have supported them.
"I am sure," said she, "my dear sister will drink some when she knows your ladyship brought it for her."
The reappearance of the Noah's Ark, when due, confirmed Gwen's view as to the whereabouts of the basket, and was followed by a hasty departure of the gentlefolks to catch the downtrain from London. As Granny Marrable watched it lurching away into the fast-increasing snow, it looked, she thought, as if it could not catch anything. But if old Pirbright, who had been on the road since last century, did not know, nobody did.
The day after this visit, when Gwen was singing to Adrian airs from Gluck's "Alceste," Irene and her father being both absent on Christmas business, social or charitable, the butler brought in a letter from Ruth Thrale in the very middle of a _sostenuto_ note,--for when did any servant, however intelligent, allow music to stop before proceeding to extremities?--and said, respectfully but firmly, that it was the same boy, and he would wait. He seemed to imply that the boy's quality of identity was a sort of guarantee of his waiting--a good previous character for permanency. Gwen left "Alceste" in C minor, and opened her letter, thanking Mr. Tweedie cordially, but not able to say he might go, because he was another family's butler. Adrian said:--"Is that from the old lady?" And when Gwen said:--"Yes--it's Onesimus. I wonder he was able to get there, over the snow,"--he dismissed Mr. Tweedie with the instruction that he should see that Onesimus got plenty to eat. The butler ignored this instruction as superfluous, and died away.
Then Gwen spun round on the music-stool to read aloud. "'Honoured lady';--Oh dear, I wish she could say 'dear Gwen'; but I suppose it wouldn't do.--'I am thankful to be able to write a really good report of my mother'.... You'll see in a minute she'll have to speak of Granny Marrable and she'll call her 'mother' without the 'my.' See if she doesn't!... 'Dr. Nash said she might have some champagne, and we said she really must when you so kindly brought it. So she said indeed yes, and we gave it her up to the cuts.' That means," said Gwen, "the cuts of the wineglass." She glanced on in the letter, and when Adrian said:--"Well--that's not all!"--apologized with:--"I was looking on ahead, to see that she got some more later. It's all right. '... up to the cuts, and presently', as Dr. Nash said, was minded to eat something.
So I got her the sweetbread she would not have for dinner, which warmed up well. Then we persuaded her to take a little more champagne, but Dr.
Nash said be careful for fear of reaction. Then she was very chatty and cheerful, and would go back a great deal on old times with mother....' I told you she would," said Gwen, breaking off abruptly.
"Of course she will always go back on old times," said Adrian.
"I didn't mean that. I meant call her aunt 'mother' without the 'my.'
Let me go on. Don't interrupt! '... old times with mother, and one thing in particular, their hair. Mother pleased her, because she could remember a little child Jacky they would puzzle to tell which hair was which, saying if she held them like that Jacky could tell, and have sugar. For their hair now is quite strong white and grey instead of both the same....' She was telling us about Jacky--me and Irene--yesterday, and I suppose that was what set her off.... 'She slept very sound and talked, and then slept well at night. So we are in good spirits about her, and thank God she may be better and get stronger. That is all I have to tell now and remain dutifully yours....' Isn't that delightful?
Quite a good report!" Instructions followed to Onesimus not to bring any further news to Pensham, but to take his next instalment to the Towers.
These things occurred on the Friday, the day after the visit to Chorlton. Certainly that letter of Widow Thrale's justified Lady Gwendolen in feeling at ease about Mrs. Picture during the remainder of her visit to Pensham, and the blame she apportioned to herself for an imagined neglect afterwards was quite undeserved.
Adrian Torrens ought to have been in the seventh heaven during the remainder of an almost uninterrupted afternoon. Not that it was absolutely uninterrupted, because evidences of a chaperon in abeyance were not wanting. A mysterious voice, of unparalleled selectness, or _bon-ton_, or gentility, emanated from a neighbouring retreat with an accidentally open door, where the lady of the house was corresponding with philanthropists in spite of interruptions. It said:--"What _is_ that? I know it _so_ well," or, "That air is very familiar to me," or, "I cannot help thinking Catalani would have taken that slower." To all of which Gwen returned suitable replies, tending to encourage a belief in her questioner's mind that its early youth had been passed in a German principality with Kapellmeisters and Conservatoriums and a Court Opera Company. This excellent lady was in the habit of implying that she had been fostered in various _anciens regimes_, and that the parentage of anything so outlandish and radical as her son and daughter was quite out of her line, and a freak of Fate at the suggestion of her husband.
Intermittent emanations from Superiority-in-the-Bush were small drawbacks to what might perhaps prove the last unalloyed interview of these two lovers before their six months' separation--that terrible Self-Denying Ordinance--to which they had assented with a true prevision of how very unwelcome it would be when the time came. It was impossible to go back on their consent now. Gwen might have hoisted a standard of revolt against her mother. But she could not look her father in the face and cry off from the fulfilment of a condition-precedent of his consent to the perfect freedom of association of which she and Adrian had availed themselves to the uttermost, always under the plea that the terms of the contract were going to be honourably observed. As for Adrian, he was even more strongly bound. That appeal from the Countess that his father had repeated and confirmed was made direct to his honour; and while he could say unanswerably:--"What would you have me do?" nothing in the world could justify his rebelling against so reasonable a condition as that their sentiments should continue reciprocal after six months of separation.
His own mind was made up. For his views about suicide, however much he spoke of them with levity, were perfectly serious. If he lost Gwen, he would be virtually non-existent already. The end would have come, and the thing left to put an end to would no longer be a Life. It would only be a sensibility to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin would do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right proportion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from unpleasant.
But he had a lingering favourable impression of the Warroo medicine-man, whose faith in the efficacy and painlessness of his nostrum was evident, however much was uncertain in his version of its _provenance_.
As to any misgivings about awakening in another world, if any occurred to Adrian he had but one answer--he had _been dead_, and had found death unattended with any sort of inconvenience. Resuscitation had certainly been painful, but he did not propose to leave any possibility of it, this time. His death, _that_ time, had been a sudden shock, followed instantly by the voice of Gwen herself, which he had recognised as the last his ears had heard. If Death could be so easily negotiated, why fuss? The only serious objection to suicide was its unpopularity with survivors. But were they not sometimes a little selfish? Was this selfishness not shown to demonstration by the gratitude--felt, beyond a doubt--to the suicide who weights his pockets when he jumps into mid-ocean, contrasted with the dissatisfaction, to say the least of it, which the proprietor of a respectable first-class hotel feels when a visitor poisons himself with the door locked, and engages the attention of the Coroner. There was Irene certainly--and others--but after all it would be a great gain to them, when the first grief was over, to have got rid of a terrible encumbrance.
Therefore Adrian was quite at his ease about the Self-Denying Ordinance; at least, if a clear resolve and a mind made up can give ease. He said not a word of his views and intentions beyond what the story has already recorded. What right had he to say anything to Gwen that would put pressure on her inclinations? Had he not really said too much already?
At any rate, no more!
Nevertheless, the foregoing made up the background of his reflections as he listened to more "Alceste," resumed after a short note had been written for Onesimus to carry back over the frost-bound roads to Chorlton. And he was able to trace the revival in his mind of suicide by poison to Mrs. Picture's narration of the Dasyurus and the witch-doctor who had cooked and eaten its body. This fiction of her fever-ridden thoughts had set him a-thinking again of the Warroo conjurer. He had not repeated any of it to Gwen, lest she should be alarmed on old Maisie's behalf. For it had a very insane sound.
But after such a prosperous report of her condition, above all, of the magical effect of that champagne, it seemed overnice to be making a to-do about what was probably a mere effect of overheated fancy, such as the circumstances might have produced in many a younger and stronger person. So when Alceste had provided her last soprano song, and the singer was looking for "Ifigenia in Aulide," Adrian felt at liberty to say that old Mrs. Picture's ideas about possession were very funny and interesting.
"Isn't it curious?" said Gwen. "She really believes it all, you know, like Gospel. All that about the devil that had possession of her husband! And how when he died, he passed his devil on to his son, who was worse than himself."
"That's good, though," said Adrian. "Only she never told me about the son. I had it all about the witch-doctor whose devil came out because he couldn't fancy the little scorpion's flavour. And all about the original devil--a sort of opossum they call a devil...."
"She didn't tell me about him."
"They've got one at the Zoological Gardens. He's an ugly customer. The keeper said he was a limb, if ever there was one. The old lady evidently thought her idea that the doctor's devil was this little beggar's soul, eaten up with his flesh, was indisputable. I told her I thought it had every intrinsic possibility, and I'm sure she was pleased. But the horror of her face when she spoke of him was really...."
"Adrian!"
"What, dearest? Anything the matter?"
"Only the way you put it. It was so odd. 'The horror of her face'! Just as if you had _seen_ it!" Indeed, Gwen was looking quite disconcerted and taken aback.
"There now!" said Adrian. "See what a fool I am! I never meant to tell of that. Because I thought it threw a doubt on Scatcherd. I've been wanting to make the most of Scatcherd. I never thought much of Septimius Severus. Anyone might have said in my hearing that the bust was moved, and it was just as I was waking. But I'll swear no one said anything about Scatcherd. Why--there _was_ only Irene!"
Gwen went and sat by him on the sofa. "Listen, darling!" said she. "I want to know what you are talking about. What was it happened, and why did it throw a doubt on Miss Scatcherd?"
"It wasn't anything, either way, you know."
"I know. But what was it, that wasn't anything, either way?"
"It was only an impression. You mustn't attach any weight to it."
"Are you going to tell what it was, or _not_?"
"Going to. Plenty of time! It was when the old lady began telling me about the devil. Her tone of conviction gave me a strong impression what she was looking like, and made an image of her flash across my retina.
By which I mean, flash across the hole I used to see through when I had a retina. It was almost as strong and life-like as real seeing. But I knew it _wasn't_."
"But how--how--how?" cried Gwen, excited. "_How_ did you know that it wasn't?"
"Because of the very white hair. It was snow-white--the image's. I suppose I had forgotten which was which, of the two old ladies--had put the saddle on the wrong horse."
Gwen looked for a moment completely bewildered. "What on, earth, can, he, mean?" said she, addressing Space very slowly. Then, speaking as one who has to show patience with a stiff problem:--"Dearest man--dearest incoherency!--do try and explain. Which of the old ladies do you suppose has white hair, and which grey?"
"Old Granny Marrable, I thought."
"Yes--but _which hair_? Which? Which? Which?"
"White, I thought, not grey." Whereupon Gwen, seeing how much hung upon the impression her lover had been under hitherto about these two tints of hair, kept down a growing excitement to ask him quietly for an exact, undisjointed statement, and got this for answer:--"I have always thought of Granny Marrable's as snow-white, and the old Australian's as grey.
Was that wrong?"
"Quite wrong! It's the other way round. The Granny's is grey and old Mrs. Picture's is silvery white."