Ten o'clock. The time was again at hand for those last arrangements we all know so well, when one watcher is chosen to remain by the sick man's couch, that others may sleep; each one to be roused from forgetfulness and peace to the sickening foreknowledge of the hour of release for all, when the life he has it at heart to prolong, if only for a day, shall have become a memory to perish in its turn, as one by one its survivors grow few and fewer and follow in its track.
A night comes always when Oblivion becomes a terror, and we dare not sleep, from fear of what our ears may hear on waking. It had come at Strides Cottage for Granny Marrable and Gwen, and even Ruth was conscious of a creeping dread of Death at hand, waiting on the threshold. But she imagined herself alone in her anticipations--fancied that "mother" and her ladyship were cherishing false hopes. She would not allow her own to die lest she should betray fears that might after all be just as false. Why should her mother--her new-found real mother--be sinking, because her limbs were cold, when her speech was still articulate, and her soft grey eyes so full of tenderness and light?
Gwen held a little aloof, not to take more than her fair share of what she feared was an ebbing life, although it kept so strangely its powers of communion with the world it was leaving behind. She could hear all the old voice said, as she had heard it before. What was that she was saying now?
"When the baby comes you will bring it here to show to me? I may not be up by then, to go and see it."
"The minute my daughter is strong enough to bring it, mother dear."
"She must take her time.... Is there not a little boy already?"
"Yes. He's Peter. He's a year old. He's very strong and wilful, and gets very angry when things are not given to him."
"Ruth darling--fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to bring him?" There was hunger for the baby in her beseeching voice. She might enjoy him a little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so--a month or so even.
"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John will drive us."
Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson.
"They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name Peter?--she asked, and was told that he was so called after his grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:--"I buried his grandfather thirteen years ago." To which her mother said:--"Tell me all his name, that I may know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd comment:--"Oh yes--I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."
She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of ignorance.
But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?
The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the loss of these two. But the third--how about the one who survived his childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.
"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed distress. Then Granny Marrable:--"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:--"Shall I ask her ladyship to come?"
Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. "Is she asking for me?" said she. And Granny Marrable replied:--"I think she has it on her mind to speak to you, my lady."
Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of something to be done in another room, but the Granny kept near at hand.
"My dear--my Lady--I am so afraid...."
"Afraid of what, Mrs. Picture dear? Don't be frightened! We are all here."
"Afraid about my son--afraid Ruth may know...."
"No one has told Ruth of him, dear. No one shall tell Ruth. I promise you."
"It is not that. It is what I may say myself." Gwen had not heard her speak so clearly for a long time. "It was on my lips to speak of him--but just now. Because--is he not the same?"
"The same as what, dear? Try and tell me!"
"The same as the son that came with me in the ship. The same as the baby I suckled the last of four, out there on the farm. It was he that I was telling of before, and I was glad to tell my child--my Ruth--of the brother she never set eyes on. And then it came upon me, the thought of what he was, and what he had come to be.... Oh, my dear--my dear!..."
Gwen could not think of any stereotyped salve for a wounded heart. She could only say:--"Don't think of it, dear. Don't think of it! Lie still and get better now, and then I will make Aunt M'riar fetch Dave and Dolly, and Dave shall see Jones's Bull, and Dolly shall see the new baby."
"Suppose, my dear, I don't get better, will Dave and Dolly come all the same; for Phoebe and my Ruth, the same as if I was here?"
It was a sore tax on the steadiness of Gwen's voice, but she managed her assent. Yes--even in the improbable event of old Maisie's non-recovery, Dave and Dolly should visit Granny Marrable. And so consolatory had the assurance proved more than once before, that she repeated her undertaking about the visit to Farmer Jones's; for Dave, not for Dolly.
"But there will be plenty for Dolly to see," Gwen said. "She won't be frightened of lambs--at least, I think not. Because she has never been in the country."
"No--but she has been in the Regent's Park, and is to go to Hampstead Heath some day with Uncle Mo. She is not frightened of the sheep in the Park, only in...."
"Only in where?" said Gwen. "Where is Dolly frightened of sheep?"
"In the street, because they run on the pavement, and the dog runs over their backs.... There are very few sheep here, compared to what we had in the colony.... Our shepherds were very good men, but all had their numbers from the Governor ... they had all been convicted ... but not of doing anything wrong...."
Oh dear!--what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep! But how could she have known? She knew so little about the colony--had even asked General Rawnsley, when they were talking of Van Diemen's Land, if he knew where "Tasmania" was! She tried to head off the pastoral convicts--the cancelled men, who had become numbers. "When Dolly comes, she will see the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested their power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that hung about.
But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybidis. "Phoebe dearest!" said old Maisie suddenly, "when did father die?"
"When did our father die?" said Granny Marrable. "Nigh upon forty-six years ago. Yes--forty-six."
"How can that be?--forty-six--forty-six!" The words were shadowily spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, yet dissatisfied.
"How can my father have died then? That was when my sister died, and my little girl I left behind."
"Oh, _how_ I wish she could sleep!" Gwen exclaimed under her breath.
Granny Marrable said:--"She will sleep, my lady, before very long." She said it with such a quiet self-command, that Gwen accepted the obvious meaning that the sleeper would sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing else was meant.
There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange truth of her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the sequence of events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by turns, either looming large and excluding the view of the other alternately. But, that Phoebe and Ruth were there, beside her, was the fact that kept the strongest hold of her mind.
Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie had slept again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless attempts to head off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The clock-hand, intent upon its second, oblivious of its predecessors, incredulous of those to come, was near halfway to midnight when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her mother, came to her fellow-watchers in the front-room and said:--"I think she moved."
Both came to the bedside. Yes--she had moved a little, and was trying to speak. Gwen, half seated, half leaning on the pillow as before, took a hand that barely closed on hers, and spoke. "What is it, Mrs. Picture dear? Say it again."
"Is it all true?"
What could Gwen have said but what she did say? "Yes, dear Mrs. Picture, quite true. It is your own sister Phoebe beside you here, and your child Ruth, grown up."
"Maisie darling, I am Phoebe--Phoebe herself." It was all Granny Marrable could find voice for, and Ruth was hard put to it to say:--"You are my mother." And as each of these women spoke she bent over the white face of the dying woman, and kissed it through the speechlessness their words had left upon their lips.
It was not quite old Mrs. Picture's last word of all. A few minutes later she seemed to make weak efforts towards speech. If Gwen, listening close, heard rightly, she was saying, or trying to say:--"You are my Lady, that came with the accident, are you not?"
"Is there anything you want me to do for you?" For Gwen thought she was trying to say more. "It is about someone. Who?"
"Susan Burr...."
"Yes--you want me to give her some message?"
"Susan ... to have my furniture ... for her own."
"Yes--I will see to that.... And--and what?"
"Kiss Dave and Dolly for me."