"Oh--him? _He's_ all right. He ain't the sort to take to bein' doctored.
He's getting about again."
"I thought a bit of wall came down on him."
"Came down bodily, he says. But it don't foller that it did, because he says so. Anyhow, he got a hard corner of his nut against it. _He_ ain't delicate. He says he'll have it out of the landlord--action for damages--wilful neglect--'sorlt and battery--that kind o' thing!"
"Won't Mrs. Burr?"
"Couldn't say--don't know if a woman counts. But it don't matter. Sister Nora, she'll see to _her_. Goes to see her every day. She or the other one. I say, Jerry!..."
"What say, old Mo?"
"You haven't seen the other one."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" Mr. Jerry spoke perceptively, appreciatively.
For Uncle Mo, by partly closing one eye, and slightly varying the expression of his lips, had contrived somehow to convey the idea that he was speaking of dazzling beauty, not by any means unadorned.
"I tell you this, Jerry, and you can believe me or not, as you like. If I was a young feller, I'd hang about Hy' Park all day long only to get a squint at her. My word!--there's nothing to come anigh her--ever I saw!
And there she was, a-kissing our little Dolly, like e'er a one of us!"
"What do you make out her name to be?" said Mr. Jerry.
"Sister Nora called her _Gwen_," replied Mo, speaking the name mechanically but firmly. "But what the long for that may be, I couldn't say. 'Tain't Gwenjamin, anyhow." He stopped to light his pipe.
"It was this young ladyship that carried off old Prichard in a two-horse carriage, I take it."
Uncle Mo nodded. "Round to Sister Nora's--in Cavendish Square--with a black Statute stood upright--behind palin's. M'riar she's been round to see the old lady there, being told to. And seemin'ly this here young Countess"--Uncle Mo seemed to object to using this word--"she's a-going to carry the old lady off to the Towels, where she lives when she's at home...."
"The Towels? Are you sure it isn't _Towers_? Much more likely!"
Uncle Mo made a mental note about Jerry, that he was tainted with John Bull's love of a lord. How could anything but a reverent study of Debrett have given such an insight into the names of Nobs' houses? "It don't make any odds, that I can see!" was his comment. The correction, however, resulted in an incumbrance to his speech, as he was only half prepared to concede the point. He continued:--"She's a-going, as I understand from M'riar, to pack off Mrs. Prichard to this here Towels, or Towers, accordin' as we call it. And, as I make it out, she'll keep her there till so be as Mr. Bartlett gets through the repairs. Or she'll send her back to a lodgin'; or not, as may be. Either, or eye-ther."
Having thus, as it were, saturated his speech with freedom of alternative, Uncle Mo dismissed the subject, in favour of Gwen's beauty.
"But--to look at her!" said he. The old man was quite in love.
Mr. Jerry disturbed his contemplation of the image Gwen had left him.
"How long does Bartlett mean to be over the job?" he asked.
"He means to complete in a month. If you trust his word. I can't say I do."
"When _will_ he complete, Mo? That's the question. What's the answer?"
"The Lord alone knows." Uncle Mo shook his head solemnly. But he recalled his words. "No--He don't! Even the Devil don't know. I tell you this, Jerry--there never was a buildin' job finished at any time spoke of aforehand. It's always _after_ any such a time. And if you jump on for to catch it up, it's _afterer_."
"Best to hold one's tongue about it, eh? Anyway, the old lady's got a berth for a time. Rum story! She'd have been put to it if it hadn't been for the turn things took. When's she to go?"
"To these here Towels, or Towers, whichever you call 'em? M'riar didn't spot that. When she's took back, I suppose. When the young lady goes."
"What'll your young customer say to Mrs. Prichard being gone, when his aunt brings him back?"
Uncle Mo seemed to cogitate over this. He had not perhaps been fully alive to the disappointment in store for Dave when he came back and found no Mrs. Picture at Sapps Court. Poor little man! The old prizefighter's tender heart was touched on his boy's behalf. But after all there would be worse trials than this on the rough road of life for Dave. "He'll have to lump it, I expect, Jerry," said he. "Besides, Mrs.
P., she'll come back as soon as the new plaster's dry. She's not going to stop at the Towels--Towers--whatever they are!--for a thousand years."
CHAPTER XXXI
HOW GWEN GOT AT MRS. PRICHARD's HISTORY, OR SOME OF IT. ONE CRIME MORE OF HER SON'S. THE WALLS OF TROY, AND THOSE OF SAPPS COURT.
AUNT M'RIAR'S VISIT OF INSPECTION. HOW SHE CALLED ON MRS.
RAGSTROAR, WHO SENT HER SECRETIVE SON ROUND. HIS MESSAGE FROM MR.
WIX. WHO WAS COMING TO SEE HIS MOTHER, UNLESS SHE WAS SOMEBODY ELSE. A MESSAGE TO MR. WIX, UNDERTAKEN BY MICHAEL. UNCLE MO's JOY AT THE PROSPECT OF DAVE AND DOLLY
How very improbable the Actual would sometimes feel, were it not for our knowledge of the events which led up to it!
Nothing could have been more improbable _per se_ than that old Mrs.
Prichard, upstairs at No. 7, down Sapps Court, should become the guest of the Earl and Countess of Ancester, at The Towers in Rocestershire.
But a number of improbable antecedent events combined to make it possible, and once its possibility was established, it only needed one more good substantial improbability to make it actual. Gwen's individuality was more than enough to supply this. But just think what a succession of coincidences and strange events had preceded the demand for it!
To our thinking the New Mud wanted for Dave's _barrage_ was responsible for the whole of it. But for that New Mud, Dave would not have gone to the Hospital. But for the Hospital, he would never have excited a tender passion in the breast of Sister Nora; would never have visited Granny Marrowbone; would never have been sought for by The Aristocracy at his residence in Sapps Court. Some may say that at this point nothing else would have occurred but for the collapse of Mr. Bartlett's brickwork, and that therefore the rarity of sound bricks in that conglomerate was the _vera causa_ of the events that followed. But why not equally the imperfection of old Stephen's aim at Achilles? If he had killed Achilles, it is ten to one Gwen would have gone abroad with her mother, instead of being spirited away to Cavendish Square by her cousin in order that she should thereby become entangled in slums. Or for that matter, why not the death of the Macganister More? Had he been living still, Cousin Clo would never have visited Ancester Towers at all.
No--no! Depend upon it, it was the New Mud. But then, Predestination would have been dreadfully put out of temper if, instead of imperious impulsive Gwen, ruling the roast and the boiled, and the turbot with _mayonnaise_, and everything else for that matter, some young woman who could be pulverised by a reproof for Quixotism had been her understudy for the part, and she herself had had mumps or bubonic plague at the time of the accident. In that case Predestination would hardly have known which way to turn, to get at some sort of compromise or accommodation that would square matters. For there can be no reasonable doubt that what did take place was quite in order, and that--broadly speaking--everyone had signed his name over the pencil marks, and filled in his witness's name and residence, in the Book of Fate. If Gwen's understudy had been called on, there would have been--to borrow a favourite expression of Uncle Mo's--a pretty how-do-you-do, on the part of Predestination.
Fortunately no such thing occurred, and Predestination's powers of evasion were not put to the test. The Decrees of Fate were fulfilled as usual, and History travelled on the line of least resistance, to the great gratification of The Thoughtful Observer. In the case of lines of compliance with the will of Gwen, there was no resistance at all. Is there ever any, when a spoiled young beauty is ready to kiss the Arbiters of Destiny as a bribe, rather than give way about a whim, reasonable or unreasonable?
And, after all, so many improbabilities having converged towards creating the situation, there was nothing so very unreasonable in Gwen's whim that old Mrs. Picture should go back with her to the Towers. It was only the natural solution of a difficulty in a conjunction of circumstances which could not have varied materially, unless Gwen and her cousin had devolved the charge of the old lady on some Institution--say the Workhouse Infirmary--or a neighbour, or had forsaken her altogether. They preferred carrying her off, as the story has seen, in a semi-insensible state from the shock, to their haven in Cavendish Square. Next day an arrangement was made which restored to Gwen--who had slept on a sofa, when she was not writing the letter quoted in the foregoing text--the couch she had insisted on dedicating to "Old Mrs. Picture," as she continued to call her.
It was very singular that Gwen, who had seen the old twin sister--as _we_ know her to have been--should have fallen so in love with the one whose acquaintance she last made. The story can only accept the fact that it was so, without speculating on its possible connection with the growth of a something that is not the body. It may appear--or may not--to many, that, in old Maisie's life, a warp of supreme love, shuttle-struck by a weft of supreme pain, had clothed her soul, as it were, in a garment unlike her sister's; a garment some eyes might have the gift of seeing, to which others might be blind. Old Granny Marrable had had her share of trouble, no doubt; but Fate had shown her fair play. Just simple everyday Death!--maternity troubles lived through in shelter; nursing galore, certainly--who escapes it? Of purse troubles, debts and sordid plagues, a certain measure no doubt, for who escapes _them_? But to that life of hers the scorching fires that had worked so hard to slay her sister's heart, and failed so signally, had never penetrated. Indeed, the only really acute grief of her placid life had been the supposed death of this very sister, now so near her, unknown.
Still, Gwen might, of course, have taken just as strongly to Granny Marrable if some slight chance of their introduction had happened otherwise.
The old lady remained at Cavendish Square three weeks, living chiefly in an extra little room, which had been roughly equipped for service, to cover the contingency. As Miss Lutwyche seemed to fight shy of the task, Maggie, the Scotch servant, took her in hand, grooming her carefully and exhibiting her as a sort of sweet old curiosity picked up out of a dustheap, and now become the possession of a Museum. Aunt Constance, who kept an eye of culture on Maggie's dialect, reported that she had said of the old lady, that she was a "douce auld luckie": and that she stood in need of no "bonny-wawlies and whigmaleeries," which, Miss Grahame said, meant that she had no need of artificial decoration. She was very happy by herself, reading any easy book with big enough print. And though she was probably not so long without the society of grown people as she had often been at Sapps Court, she certainly missed Dave and Dolly. But she seemed pleased and gratified on being told that Dave was not gone, and was at present not going, anywhere near old Mrs. Marrable in the country.
The young lady broached her little scheme to her venerable friend, or _protegee_, as soon as it became clear that a return to the desolation to which Mr. Bartlett had converted Sapps Court might be a serious detriment to her health. Mr. Bartlett himself admitted the facts, but disputed the inferences to be drawn from them. Yes--there was, and there would be, a trifle of myesture hanging round; nothing in itself, but what you might call traces of ewaporation. You saw similar phenomena in sinks, and at the back of cesterns. But you never come across anyone the worse for 'em. He himself benefited by a hatmosphere, as parties called it nowadays, such as warn't uncommon in basements of unoccupied premises, and in morasses. But you were unable to account for other people's constitutions not being identical in all respects with your own. Providence was inscrutable, and you had to look at the symptoms.
These were the only guides vouchsafed to us. He would, however, wager that as soon as the paperhanger was out of the house and the plaster giv' a chance to 'arden, all the advantages of a bone-dry residence would be enjoyed by an incoming tenant.
Portions of this opinion leaked out during a visit of Aunt M'riar to Mrs. Prichard, at Cavendish Square, she having come from Ealing by the 'bus to overhaul the position with Uncle Mo, and settle whether she and Dave and Dolly could return next week with safety. They had decided in the negative, and Mr. Bartlett had said it was open to them to soote themselves. Uncle Mo's sleeping-room had, of course, been spared by the accident, so he only suffered from a clammy and depressing flavour that wouldn't hang about above a day or two. At least, Mr. Bartlett said so.
Gwen treated the idea that Mrs. Prichard should so much as talk about returning to her quarters, with absolute derision.
"I'm going to keep you here and see you properly looked after, Mrs.
Picture, till I go to the Towers. And then I shall just take you with me." For she had installed the name Picture as the old lady's working designation with such decision that everyone else accepted it, though one or two used it in inverted commas. "I always have my own way," she added with a full, rich laugh that Lord William Bentinck might have heard on his black pedestal in the Square below.
Aunt M'riar departed, not to be too late for her 'bus, and Gwen stayed for a chat. She often spent half an hour with the old lady, trying sometimes to get at more of her past history, always feeling that she was met by reticence, never liking to press roughly for information.
The two thin old palms that had once been a beautiful young girl's closed on the hand that was even now scarcely in its fullest glory of life, as its owner's eyes looked down into the old eyes that had never lost their sweetness. The old voice spoke first. "Why--oh why," it said, "are you so kind to me? My dear!"