"No--no! Out at sea. She was drowned at sea. Fifty years ago ...
Yes!--well on to fifty years ago." She fell back a little into her dreamy mood; then roused herself to say:--"I often wonder, Mrs. Wardle, suppose my sister had lived to be my age, should we have kept on alike?"
Aunt M'riar was not a stimulus to conversation as far as perspicuity went. A general tone of sympathy had to make up for it. "We should have seen, ma'am," said she.
"Supposing it had all gone on like as it was then, and we had just grown old together! Supposing we had neither married, and no man had come into it, should we all our lives have been mistaken for one another, so you could not tell us apart?"
Aunt M'riar said "Ah!" and shook her head. She was not imaginative enough to contribute to a conversation so hypothetical.
There was nothing of pathos, to a bystander, in the old woman's musical voice, beyond its mere age--its reedy tone--which would have shown in it just as clearly had she been speaking of any topic of the day. Conceive yourself speaking about long forgotten events of your childhood to a friend born thirty--forty--fifty years later, and say if such speech would not be to you what old Mrs. Prichard's was to herself and her hearer, much like revival of the past history of someone else. It was far too long ago now--if it had ever been real; for sometimes indeed it seemed all a dream--to lacerate her heart in recollecting it. The memories that could do that belonged to a later time; some very much later--the worst of them. Not but that the early memories could sting, too, when dragged from their graves by some remorseless resurrectionist--some sound, like that piano; some smell, like those lilies of the valley. Measure her case against your own experience, if its span of time is long enough to supply a parallel.
Her speech became soliloquy--was it because of a certain want of pliancy in Aunt M'riar?--and seemed to dwell in a disjointed way on the possibility that her sister might have changed with time otherwise than herself, and might even have been hard to recognise had they met again later. It would be different with two girls of different ages, each of whom would after a long parting have no guide to the appearance of her sister; while twins might keep alike; the image of either, seen in the glass, forecasting the image of the other.
Aunt M'riar made a poor listener to this, losing clues and forging false constructions. But her obliging disposition made her seem to understand when she did not, and did duty for intelligence. Probably Dave--on the watch for everything within human ken--understood nearly as much as Aunt M'riar. Something was on the way, though, to rouse her, and when it came she started as from a blow. What was that the old lady had just said?
How came that name in her mouth?...
"What I said just now, Mrs. Wardle?... Let me see!... About what my husband used to say--that Phoebe's memory would go to sleep, not like mine, and I was a fool to fret so about her. I would not know her again, maybe, if I saw her, nor she me.... Yes--he said all that.... What?"
"What was the _name_ you said just now? Ralph ... something! Ralph what?"
"Oh--yes--I know! What Phoebe would have been if she had married my husband's brother--Mrs. Ralph Daverill...."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Aunt M'riar.
"Ah, there now!" said the old lady. "To think I should never have told you his name!" She missed the full strength of Aunt M'riar's exclamation; accounted it mere surprise at what was either a reference to a former husband or an admission of a pseudonym. Aunt M'riar was glad to accept matters as they stood, merely disclaiming excessive astonishment and suggesting that she might easy have guessed that Mrs.
Prichard had been married more than once. She was not--she said--one of the prying sort. But she was silent about the cause of her amazement; putting the name in a safe corner of her memory, to grapple with it later.
The old woman, however, seemed to have no wish for concealments, saying at once:--"I never had but one husband, Mrs. Wardle; but I'll tell you.
I've always gone by the name of Prichard ever since my son.... But I never told you of him neither! It is he I would forget...." This disturbed her--made her take the caressing hand restlessly from Dave's head, to hold and be held by the other. She had to be silent a moment; then said hurriedly:--"He was Ralph Thornton, after his father and uncle. His father was Thornton--Thornton Daverill.... I'll tell you another time." Thereupon Aunt M'riar held her tongue, and Mrs. Burr came in with the fourpennyworth of crumpets.
An unskilful chronicler throws unfair burdens on his reader. The latter need not read the chronicle certainly; there is always that resource!
If, however, he reads this one, let him keep in mind that Aunt M'riar did _not_ know that the escaped prisoner of her newspaper-cutting had been asking for a widow of the name of Daverill, whom he had somehow traced to Sapps Court, any more than she knew--at that date--that old Mrs. Prichard should really have been called old Mrs. Daverill. She only knew that _his_ name was Daverill. So it was not in order to prevent Mrs. Prichard seeing it that she cut that paragraph out of the _Morning Star_. She must have had some other reason.
CHAPTER XVII
A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, WHO HUNG FIRE. NATURAL HISTORY, AND ARTIFICIAL CHRONOLOGY. NEITHER WAS TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER.
CONFIDENCES ABOUT ANOTHER LADY AND GENTLEMAN, SOME YEARS SINCE. HOW THE FIRST GENTLEMAN FINISHED HIS SECOND CIGAR. DR. LIVINGSTONE AND SEKELETU. MR. NORBURY'S QUORUM. WHY ADRIAN TORRENS WOKE UP, AND WHOSE VOICE PROMISED NOT TO MENTION HIS EYES. FEUDAL BEEF-TEA, AND MRS. BAILEY. AN EARLY VISIT, FROM AN EARL. AN EXPERIMENT THAT DISCLOSED A PAINFUL FACT
It is three weeks later at the Castle; three weeks later, that is, than the story's last sight of it. It is the hottest night we have had this year, says general opinion. Most of the many guests are scattered in the gardens after dinner, enjoying the night-air and the golden moon, which means to climb high in the cirrus-dappled blue in an hour or so. And then it will be a fine moonlight night.
On such a night there is always music somewhere, and this evening someone must be staying indoors to make it, as it comes from the windows of the great drawing-room that opens on the garden. Someone is playing a Beethoven sonata one knows well enough to pretend about with one's fingers, theoretically. Only one can't think which it is. So says Miss Smith-Dickenson, in the Shrubbery, to her companion, who is smoking a Havana large enough to play a tune on if properly perforated. But she wishes Miss Torrens would stop, and let Gwen and the Signore sing some Don Juan. That is Miss Dickenson's way. She always takes exception to this and to that, and wants t'other. It does not strike the Hon.
Percival Pellew, the smoker of the big cigar, as a defect in her character, but rather as an indication of its illumination--a set-off to her appearance, which is, of course, at its best in the half-dark of a Shrubbery by moonlight, but is _passee_ for all that. Can't help that, now, can we? But Mr. Pellew can make retrospective concession; she must have told well enough, properly dressed, fifteen years ago. She don't exactly bear the light now, and one can't expect it.
The Hon. Percival complimented himself internally on a greater spirituality, which can overlook such points--mere clay?--and discern a peculiar essence of soul in this lady which, had they met in her more palatable days, might have been not uncongenial to his own. Rather a pity!
Miss Dickenson could identify a glow-worm and correct the ascription of its light to any fellow's cigar-end thrown away. She made the best figure that was compatible with being indubitably _passee_ when she went down on one knee in connection with this identification. Mr. Pellew felt rather relieved. Her outlines seemed somehow to warrant or confirm the intelligence he had pledged himself to. He remarked, without knowing anything about it, that he thought glow-worms didn't show up till September.
"Try again, Mr. Pellew. It's partridge-shooting that doesn't begin till September. That's what you're thinking of."
"Well--August, then!"
"No--that's grouse, not glow-worms. You see, you are reduced to July, and it's July still. Do take my advice, Mr. Pellew, and leave Natural History alone. Nobody will ever know you know nothing about it, if you hold your tongue."
The Hon. Percival was silent. He was not thinking about his shortcomings as a Natural Historian. The reflection in his mind was:--"What a pity this woman isn't twenty years younger!" He could discriminate--so he imagined--between mere flippancy and spontaneous humour. The latter would have sat so well on the girl in her teens, and he would then have accepted the former as juvenile impertinence with so much less misgiving that he was being successfully made game of. He could not quite shake free of that suspicion. Anyhow, it was a pity Miss Smith-Dickenson was thirty-seven. That was the age her friend Lady Ancester had assessed her at, in private conversation with Mr. Pellew. "Though what the deuce my cousin Philippa"--thus ran a very rapid thought through his mind--"could think I wanted to know the young woman's age for, I can't imagine."
"There it is!" said the lady, stooping over the glow-worm. "Little hairy thing! I won't disturb it." She got on her feet again, saying:--"Thank you--I'm all right!" in requital of a slight excursion towards unnecessary help, which took the form of a jerk cut short and an apologetic tone. "But don't talk Zoology or Botany, please," she continued. "Because there's something I want you to tell me about."
"Anything consistent with previous engagements. Can't break any promises."
"Have you made any promises about the man upstairs?"
"Not the ghost of a one! But he isn't 'the man upstairs' to me. He's the man in the room at the end of my passage. That's how I came to see him."
"You did see him?"
"Oh yes--talked to him till the nurse stopped it. I found we knew each other. Met him in the Tyrol--at Meran--ten years ago. He was quite a boy then. But he remembered me quite well. It was this morning."
"Did he recognise you, or you him?"
"Why--neither exactly. We found out about Meran by talking. No--poor chap!--he can't recognise anybody, by sight at least. He won't do that yet awhile."
The lady said "Oh?" in a puzzled voice, as though she heard something for the first time; then continued: "Do you know, I have never quite realised that ... that the eyes were so serious. I knew all along that there was _something_, but ... but I understood it was only weakness."
"They have been keeping it dark--quite reasonably and properly, you know--but there is it! He can't see--simply can't see. His eyes _look_ all right, but they won't work. His sister knows, of course, but he has bound her over to secrecy. He made me promise to say nothing, and I've broken my promise, I suppose. But--somehow--I thought you knew."
"Only that there was _something_--no idea that he was blind. But I won't betray your confidence."
"Thank you. It's only a matter of time, as I gather. But a bad job for him till he gets his sight again."
"He will, I suppose, in the end?"
"Oh yes--in the end. Sir Coupland is cautious, of course. But I don't fancy he's really uneasy. His sight might come back suddenly, he said, at any moment. Of course, _he_ believes his eyesight will come back.
Only meanwhile he wants--it was a phrase of his own--to keep all the excruciation for his own private enjoyment. That's what he said!"
"I see. Of course, that makes a difference. And you think Sir Coupland thinks he will get all right again?"
Mr. Pellew says he does think so, reassuringly. "It has always struck me as peculiar," says he, "that Tim's family ... I beg pardon--I should have said the Earl's. But you see I remember him as a kid--we are cousins, you know--and his sisters always called him Tim.... Well, I mean the family here, you know, seem to know so little of the Torrenses.
Lady Gwen doesn't seem to have recognised this chap in the Park."
"I believe she has never seen him. He has been a great deal abroad, you know."
"Yes, he's been at German Universities, and games of that sort."
"Is that your third cigar, Mr. Pellew?"