What saved the situation was that Micky _did_ want to. He blurted out the news that was oppressing him, to his own great relief. "Old Mother Prichard, Wardleses Widder upstairs, she's dead."
"Sakes alive! They was expecting her back."
"Well--she's dead, like I tell you!"
"For sure?"
"That's what her son says. If _he_ don't know, nobody don't."
"Was it him told you? I never heard tell she had a son--not Mrs.
Prichard."
Micky's family pugnacity preferred to accept this as a censure, or at least a challenge. He raised his voice, and fired off his speech in platoons, to say:--"Never see her son! Shouldn't know him if I _was_ to see him. Wot--I'm telling--you--that's--wot--her--son said to the party what commoonicated it to me. Miss Wardle she'll reco'nise the party, by particklars giv'." This embodied the impression received from the convict's words, which had made no claim to old Maisie as his mother.
"Whatever shall you say to Mrs. Wardle?"
Micky picked up his cap from the ground, and used it as a nose-polisher--after slapping it on his knee to sterilise it, a use which seemed to act in relief of perplexity. "If I know, I'm blest,"
said he. "Couldn't tell you if you was to arsk me!"
It was impossible to resist the implied appeal for help. Mrs. Ragstroar put a large fresh potato on the table to enjoy its skin yet a little longer, and wiped the memory of its predecessors off on her apron. "Come along, Micky," she said. "I got to see Aunt M'riar; you come along after me. I'll just say a word aforehand." Micky welcomed this, and saying merely:--"Ah!--like a tip!" followed his mother down the Court to No. 7.
Someone, somewhere, must have known, clocks apart, that a day was drawing to a close; a short winter's day, and a dark and cold one at the best. But the someone was not in the Thames Valley, and the somewhere surely was not Sapps Court. There Day and Night alike had been robbed of their birthright by sheer Opacity, and humankind had to choose between submission to Egyptian darkness and an irksome leisure, or a crippled activity by candlelight, on the one hand, and ruin, on the other. Not that tallow candles were really much good--they got that yellow and streaky. Why--the very gaslamps out of doors you couldn't hardly see them, not unless you went quite up close! If it had not been that, as Micky followed his mother down the Court, a ladder-bearer had dawned suddenly, and died away after laying claim to lighting you up a bit down here, no one would never have so much as guessed illumination was afoot.
But then the one gaslamp was on a bracket a great heicth up, on the wall at the end of Druitt's garden, so called. And Mrs. Ragstroar and her son had followed along the wood-palings in front of the houses, on the left.
Micky's flinching from his mission had grown on him so by the time they reached the end house, that he hung back and allowed his mother to enter first. He wanted the tip to exhaust the subject of Death, and to leave him only the task of authentication. He did not hear what his mother said in a quick undertone to Aunt M'riar, within, manifestly ironing.
But he heard its effect on her hearer--a cry of pain, kept under, and an appeal to Uncle Mo, in some dark recess beyond. "Oh, Mo!--only hark at that! Our old lady--gone!" Then Uncle Mo, emerging probably from pitch darkness in the little parlour, and joining in the undertones on inquiry and information mixed--mixed soon enough with sobs. Then the struggle against them in Mo's own voice of would-be reassurance:--"Poor old M'riar! Don't ye take on so! We'll all die one day." Then more undertones. Then Aunt M'riar's broken voice:--"Yes--I _know_ she was eighty"--and her complete collapse over:--"It's the children I'm thinking of! Our children, Mo, our children!"
Old Mo saw that point. You could hear it in his voice. "Ah--the children!" But he tried for a forlorn hope. Was it possibly a false report? Make sure about that, anyhow, before giving way to grief! "Was it only that young shaver of yours brought the news, Mrs. Ragstroar?
Maybe he's put the saddle on the wrong horse!"
"He's handy to tell his own tale, Mr. Wardle. Here, young Micky! Come along in and speak for yourself." Whereupon the boy came in. He had been secretly hoping he might escape being called into council altogether.
"You're sure you got the right of it, Michael," said Uncle Mo. "Tell it us all over again from the beginning."
Whereupon Micky, braced by having a member of his own noble sex as catechist, but sadly handicapped by inability to employ contentious formulas, gave a detailed account of his visit to The Pigeons. He identified the convict by short lengths of speech, addressed to Mr.
Wardle's ear alone, suggestive of higher understandings of the affairs of men than aunts and mothers could expect to share. "Party that's givin' trouble to the Police ... Party I mentioned seeing in Hy' Park ... Party that come down the Court inquirin' for widder lady ..." came at intervals. Micky's respectful and subdued reference to Mrs. Prichard was a tribute to Death.
"And did he say her son told him, to his own hearing?... All right, M'riar, I know what I'm talking about." This was to stop Aunt M'riar's interposing with a revelation of old Maisie's relation to the party. It would have encumbered cross-examination; which, even if it served no particular end, would seem profound and weighty.
"That's how I took it from him," said Micky.
"Didn't he say who her son was?" Aunt M'riar persisted, with unflinching simplicity.
Micky, instantly illuminated, replied:--"Not he! He never so much as said he wasn't her son, hisself." This did not mean that affirmation was usually approached by denial of every possible negation. It was only the involuntary echo of a notion Aunt M'riar's manner had clothed her words with.
"That was tellings, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. "But it don't make any odds, that I can see. Look ye here, young Micky! What was it this charackter said about coming here this afternoon?"
"Werry first words I heard him say! 'No safety like a thick fog,' he says. 'And I'll pay her a visit this very arternoon,' he says. Only he won't! You may take that off me, like Gospel."
"How do you make sure of that, young master?"
"'Cos he's got nothing to come for, now I've took his message for him.
If he hadn't had reliance, he'd not have arxed me to carry it. He knows me for safe, by now, Mr. Wardle."
"Don't you see, Mo," said Aunt M'riar. "He'd no call to come here, exceptin'. It was only to oblige-like, and let know. Once Micky gave his word, what call had he to come four mile through such a fog?"
"That's the whole tale, then?" said Uncle Mo, after reflection. "Onlest you can call to mind something you've forgot, Master Micky."
"Not a half a word, Mr. Moses. If there had a been, I'd have made you acquainted, and no lies. And all I said's ackerate, and to rely on."
Which was perfectly true, so far as reporter's good faith went. Had Micky overheard the conversation two minutes sooner, he would have gathered that Mr. Wix had other reasons for coming to Sapps Court than to give the news of Mrs. Prichard's death. Indeed, it is not clear why, intending to go there for another purpose, Wix thought it necessary to employ Michael at all as an ambassador. But a story has to be content with facts.
Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were alone with the shadow of their trouble, and the knowledge that the children must be told.
The boy and his mother, their painful message delivered, had vanished through the fog to their own home. The voices of Dave and Dolly came from the room above through the silence that followed. Mo and M'riar were at no loss to guess what was the burden of that earnest debate that rose and fell, and paused and was renewed, but never died outright. It was the endless arrangement and rearrangement of the preparations for the great event to come, the feast that was to welcome old Mrs. Picture back to her fireside, and its chair with cushions.
"Oh, Mo--Mo! I haven't the heart--I haven't the heart to do it."
"Poor old M'riar--poor old M'riar!" The old prizefighter's voice was tender with its sorrow for his old comrade, who shrank from the task that faced them, one or both; even sorrow--though less oppressive--for the loss of the old lady who had become the children's idol.
"No, Mo, I haven't the heart. Only this very day ... if it hadn't been for the fog ... Dave would have got the last halfpenny out of his rabbit to buy a sugar-basin on the stall in the road ... and he's saving it for a surprise for Dolly ... when the fog goes...."
"Is Susan Burr upstairs with them?"
"No--she's gone out to Yardley's for some thread. She's all right. She's walking a lot better."
They sat silent for a while, the unconscious voices overhead reaching their hearts, and rousing the question they would have been so glad to ignore. How should they bring it to the children's knowledge that the chair with cushions was waiting for its occupant in vain? Which of their unwilling hands should be the first to draw aside the veil that still sheltered those two babies' lives from the sight of the face of Death.
The man was the first to speak. "Young Mick, he saw his way pretty sharp, M'riar--about who was ... her son." His voice dropped on the reference to old Maisie herself, and he avoided her name.
"Did he understand?"
"Oh yes--he twigged, fast enough.... There's a p'int to consider, M'riar. This man's her son--but it don't follow he knows whether she's dead or living, any better than you or me. Who's to say he's not lying?
Besides, we should have had a letter to tell.... Who from?...
H'm--well--from ..." But Mo found the completion of this sentence difficult.
No wonder! How could he reply:--"Her ladyship?" He may have been convinced that Gwen would write, but how could he say so? The sister and daughter, neither of whom were more than names to him, seemed out of the question. Sister Nora would be sure to come with the news, some time.
But was she back from Scotland, where they knew she had gone to convalesce?
Aunt M'riar looked the fact in the face. "No--we shouldn't have had no letter, Mo. Not yet a while, at least. Daverill's a bad man, and lies.
But not when there's no advantage in it. He'd not go about to send me word she was dead, except he knew."
"How should he know, more than we?"
"Don't you ask me about when I see him, not yet where, nor yet how, and I'll tell you, Mo." She waited, as for a safe-conduct.
"Poor old M'riar!" said Mo pitifully. "I'll not witness-box you. Catch me! No--no!--you shan't tell me nothing you don't like."
"He told me he should try to see his mother again. And I said to him if he went there he would be taken, safe and certain. And he said not he, because the Police were too sharp by half, and would take for granted he would be afraid to go anigh the place again. He said he could always see round them."