"Maisie dearest, I will fetch you the model to the bedside, and light candles, so you shall see it. Only you will eat something first--to please me--to please my lady--will you not? Then you may be able to sit up, you know, and look at it." Granny Marrable jumped at the opportunity to get some food--ever so little--down her sister's throat. _She_ had not given up hope of her reviving, if only for a while. Bear in mind that she was still in the dark about the doctor's real opinion.
The attempt at refection had a poor show of success, its only triumph worth mentioning being the exhibition of a driblet of champagne in milk.
Almost before the patient had swallowed it, she had fallen back on her pillow in a drowsy half-sleep, with what seemed an increased colour, to eyes that were on the watch for it. She remained so until after the doctor's visit at six o'clock.
The doctor admitted that she _had_ picked up a very little, and when she awoke would probably have another spell of brightness. But.... Speaking with Gwen alone on his way out, he ended on this monosyllable.
"What does that 'but' mean, doctor?"
"Means that you mustn't expect too much. I suppose you know that the mildest stimulant means reaction."
"I don't know that I ever thought about it, but I'll take your word for it."
"Well--you may. And you may take my word for this. When the vital powers are near their end--without disease, you know, without disease...."
"I know. She has nothing the matter with her."
"You can intensify vitality for a moment. But the reaction will come, and must hasten the end. You might halve the outstanding time of Life by doubling the vitality. If you employ any artificial stimulant, you only use up the heart-beats that are left. The upshot of it is--don't go beyond a tablespoonful twice a day with that liquor."
"I don't suppose she has had so much."
"Well--don't go beyond it. There is always the possibility--the bare possibility, even at eighty--of a definite revival. But...."
"_But_, again, doctor!"
"But again! Let it stop at that. I shall do no better by saying more. If I foresaw ... anything--within the next twelve hours, I would stay on to see your ladyship through. But there is nothing to go by. Quite impossible to predict!"
"Why do you say 'to see me through'? Why not her sister and daughter?"
"Because they _are_ her sister and daughter. It's all in their day's work. Good-night, Lady Gwendolen." Gwen watched the doctor's gig down the road into the darkness, and saw that a man riding stopped him, as though to give a message. After which she thought he whipped up his pony, which also felt the influence of the rider's cob alongside, and threw off its usual apathy.
Old Maisie must have waked up just as the doctor departed, for there were voices in the bedroom, and Granny Marrable was coming out. The old lady had an end in view. She was bent on getting down the mill-model from over the fireplace. "My dear sister has a great fancy to see it once more," she said. "And I would be loth to say nay to her." Gwen said:--"Anything to keep her mind off that brute of a son!" And then between them they got the model down, and unwrapped the cloth from it.
Elizabeth-next-door, coming in at this moment, left Gwen free to go back to old Maisie in the bedroom, who seemed roused to expectation. The doctor was clearly wrong, and all was going to be well. Mrs. Picture was not quite herself again, perhaps; but was mending.
"My dear, I am giving a world of trouble," she said. "But Phoebe is so kind, to take every little word I say."
"She likes doing it, Mrs. Picture dear. We've got down the mill to show you, and she will get it in here by the bed, so that you shall see without getting up. Elizabeth from next door is there to help her." So the mill-model, that had so much to answer for, was got out from behind its glass, and placed on the little table beside the bed.
Old Maisie's voice had rallied so much that surely her power of movement should have done so too. But no!--she could not raise herself in bed. It was an easy task to place her to the best advantage, but the sense of her helplessness was painful to Gwen, who raised her like a child with scarcely an effort, while Granny Marrable multiplied pillows to support her. The slightest attempt on her part towards movement would have been reassuring, but none came.
"I wonder now," she said vaguely. "Was it only Dave?"
"What about Dave, dear? What did Dave say?"
"Was it Dave who said it went round? I had the thought it went round.
Which was it?"
"I showed it to Dave," said Granny Marrable, "and then it went, the same as new. I could try it again, only then I must take out the glass water, and put in real. And wind it up."
Old Mrs. Picture almost laughed, and the pleasure in her voice was good to hear. "Why, now I have it all back!" she said. "And there is father!
Oh, Phoebe, do you remember how angry father was with me for breaking a piece off the glass water?"
Granny Marrable was looking for something, in the penetralia of the model. "Oh, I know," said she. "It's in behind the glass water.... I was looking for the piece.... I'll take the glass water out." She did so, and its missing fraction was found, stowed away behind the main cataract, a portion of which appeared to have stopped dead in mid-air.
"Oh, Phoebe darling," said old Maisie, "we can have it mended."
"Of course we can," said Gwen. "Do let us make it go round. I want to make it go round, too." Her heart was rejoicing at what seemed so like revival.
Granny Marrable poured water into what stood for "the sleepy pool above the dam," and found the key to wind up the clockwork. "I remember," said old Maisie, "the water first, and then the key!" Her face was as happy as Dave's had been, watching it.
But alas for the uncertainty of all things human!--machinery particularly. The key ran back as fast as it was wound up, and the water slept on above the dam. What a disappointment! "Oh dear," said Gwen, "it's gone wrong. Couldn't we find a man in the village who could set it right, though it _is_ Sunday?" No--certainly not at eight o'clock in the evening.
"I fear, my lady," said Granny Marrable, "that it was injured when the little boy Toby aimed a chestnut at it. And had I known of the damage done, I should have allowed him no sugar in his tea. But it may have been Toft, when he repaired the glass, for indeed he is little better than a heathen." She examined it and tried the key again. It was hopeless.
"Never mind, Phoebe dearest! I would have loved to see the millwheel turn again, as it did in the old days. Now we must wait for it to be put to rights. I shall see it one day." If she felt that she was sinking, she did not show it. She went on speaking at intervals. "Let me lie here and look at it.... Yes, put the candle near.... That was the deep hole, below the wheel, where the fish leapt.... Father would not allow us near it, for the danger.... There were steps up, and so many nettles....
Then above we got to the big pool where the alders were ... where the herons came...." A pause; then:--"Phoebe dearest!..."
"What, darling?"
"I was not mad.... You were not here, or you would have known me....
Would you not?"
"I would have known you, Maisie dearest--I would have known you, in time. Not at the first. But when I came to think of it, would I have dared to say the word?"
Gwen remembered this answer of old Phoebe's later, and saw its reasonableness. She only saw the practical side at the moment. "Why, Granny," she said--"if it hadn't been the mill, it would have been something else."
"But I was not mad," Maisie continued. "Only I must have frightened my Ruth.... I went up _there_ once, Phoebe. Barnaby took me up one day...."
"Up where, Mrs. Picture dear?" Gwen left the old right hand free to show her meaning, but it fell back after a languid effort. The strength was near zero, though no one would have guessed it from the voice.
"Up _there_--in the roof--where the trap comes out.... Phoebe would not come, because of the dust.... It was so hot too.... Barnaby pulled up a flour-sack, to show me, and would have let me out on the trap, only I was frightened, it was so high! I could see all the way over to Braintree.... And Barnaby said on a clear day you could see St.
Paul's.... I liked Barnaby--I disliked old Muggeridge.... Do you know, Phoebe dear, I used to think Barnaby's wife was old Muggeridge's sister, because her name had been Muggeridge?"
Old Phoebe threw light on the affair. Barnaby's wife was young Mrs.
Muggeridge, who had exchanged into another regiment--was not really Barnaby's wife! that is to say, not his legal wife.
"But there now!" said old Phoebe, when she had ended this, "if that was not the very first of it all with me, when Dr. Nash he set me a-thinking, by telling of Muggeridge! For how would I ever have said a word of that old sinner to our little Dave?"
Old Maisie's attention was still on the mill-model. "You would not come up into the corn-loft, Phoebe," said she, "because of all the white dust. It was on everything, up there. When I went up with Barnaby the mill was not going, because the stones were out for old Chipstone to dress their faces. His real name was not Chipstone, but Chepstow. He could do two stones in one day, he worked so quick. So both were got out when he came, and the mill was stopped. Oh, Phoebe, do you remember when a chip flew in your eye, you were so bad?"
"Now, to think of that!" said Granny Marrable. "And me clean forgot it all these years! Old Chipstone, with glasses to shelter his eyesight; like blinkers on a horse. 'Tis all come back to me now, like last week.
And I might have been a one-eyed girl all my days, the doctor said, only the chip just came a little out of true. To think that all these years I have forgotten it, and never thanked God once!"
"'Tis the sight of the mill brings it all back," said old Maisie. "I mind it so well, and the guy you looked, dear Phoebe, with a bandage to keep out the light. It was wolfsbane did it good, beat up in water quite fine."
"Be sure. Only 'twas none of Dr. Adlam's remedies, I lay.... Wasn't it Martha's--our old Martha?... There, now!--I've let go her name.... 'Twas on the tip of my tongue to say it...."