"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 on _his_ identity 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--were surely 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. _She_ knew. 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 tenderly with 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 it might 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 you will 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 hear details 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 Keziah _was_ available, 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 she _had_ been 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 talk so 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 is _not intended to hold good_ if this old lady is _actually dying_, but _for anything short of that_ it does appear to me that your behaviour is _at least inconsiderate_. Do let me entreat you to fix _a reasonable hour_ for your return to-morrow, if you _adhere to your resolution_ not to come to-night. Pray tell Kettering when he is to call for you _before 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 a _hiatus_ owing to her absence, the letter wound up:--"We have had some _very 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 two _ingenues_, 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!"