"Is it strange that I should be kind to you?" said Gwen, speaking somewhat to herself. Then louder, as though she had been betrayed into a claim to benevolence, and was ashamed:--"The kindness comes to very little, when all's said and done. Besides, you can ..." She paused a moment, taking in the pause a seat beside the arm-chair, without loosing the hand she held; then made her speech complete:--"Besides, you can pay it all back, you know!"
"I pay! How can I pay it back?"
"You can. I'm quite in earnest. You can pay me back everything I can do for you--everything and more--by telling me.... Now, you mustn't be put out, you know, if I tell you what it is." Gwen was rather frightened at her own temerity.
"My dear--just fancy! Why should I want you not to know--anything I can tell, if I can remember it to tell you? What is it?"
"How you come to be living in Sapps Court. And why you are so poor.
Because you _are_ poor."
"No, I have a pound a week still. I have been better off--yes! I have been well off."
"But how came you to live in Sapps Court?"
"How came I?... Let me see!... I came there from Skillicks, at Sevenoaks, where I was last. Six shillings was too much for me alone. It is only seven-and-sixpence at Sapps for both of us. It was through poor Susan Burr that I came there. To think of her in the Hospital!"
"She's going on very nicely to-day. I went to see her with my cousin. Go on. It was through her?..."
"Through her I came to Sapps. She wanted to be in town for her work, and found Sapps. She had no furniture, or just a bed. And I had been able to keep mine. Then, you see, I wanted a helping hand now and again, and she had her sight, and could make shift to keep order in the place. I had every comfort, be sure!" This was spoken with roused emphasis, as though to dissipate uneasiness about herself.
"I saw you had some nice furniture," said Gwen. "I was on the look out for your desk, where Dave's letters were written."
"Yes, it's mahogany. I was frightened about it, for fear it should be scratched. But Davy's Aunt Maria was saying Mr. Bartlett's men had been very civil and careful, and all the furniture was safe in the bedroom at the back, and the door locked."
"But where did the furniture come from?"
"From the house."
"The house where you lived with your husband?"
The old woman started. "Oh no! Oh no--no! All that was long--long ago."
She shrank from disinterring all but the most recent past.
But it was the deeper stratum of oblivion that had to be reached, without dynamite if possible. "I see," Gwen said. "Your own house after his death?"
Memory was restive, evidently--rather resented the inquiry. Still, a false inference could not be left uncorrected. "Neither my husband's nor mine," was the answer. "It was my son's house, after my husband's death." Its tone meant plainly:--"I tell you this, for truth's sake.
But, please, no more questions!"
Gwen's idea honestly was to drop the curtain, and her half-dozen words were meant for the merest epilogue. When she said:--"And he is dead, too?" she only wanted to round off the conversation. She was shocked when the two delicate old hands hers lay between closed upon it almost convulsively, and could hardly believe she heard rightly the articulate sob, rather than speech, that came from the old lady's lips.
"Oh, I hope so--I hope so!"
"Dear Mrs. Picture, you _hope_ so?" For Gwen could not reconcile this with the ideal she had formed of the speaker. At least, she could not be happy now without an explanation.
Then she saw that it would come, given time and a sympathetic listener.
"Yes, my dear, I hope so. For what is his life to him--my son--if he is alive? The best I can think of for him, is that he is long dead."
"Was he mad or bad?"
"Both, I hope. Perhaps only mad. Then he would be neither bad nor good.
But he was lost for me, and we were well apart: before he was"--she hesitated--"sent away...."
"Sent away! Yes--where?"
"I ought not to tell you this ... but will you promise me?..."
"To tell no one? Yes--I promise."
"I know you will keep your promise." The old lady kept on looking into the beautiful eyes fixed on hers, still caressing the hand she held, and said, after a few moments' silence:--"He was sent to penal servitude, not under his own name. They said his name was ... some short name ...
at the trial. That was at Bristol." Then, after another pause, as though she had read Gwen's thoughts in her scared, speechless face:--"It was all right. He deserved his sentence."
"Oh, I am so glad!" Gwen was quite relieved. "I was afraid he was innocent. I thought he could not be guilty, because of you. But was he really wicked--_bad_, I mean--as well as legally guilty?"
"I like to hope that he was mad. The offence that sent him to Norfolk Island was scarcely a wicked one. It was only burglary, and it was a Bank." The old face looked forgiving over this, but set itself in lines of fixed anger as she added:--"It was not like the thing that parted us."
"You wish not to tell me that?"
"My dear, it is not a thing for you to hear." The gentleness of the speaker averted the storm of indignation and contempt which similar expressions of the correctitudes had more than once excited in this rebellious young lady.
But Gwen felt at liberty to laugh a little at them, or could not resist the temptation to do so. "Oh dear!" she cried. "Am I a new-born baby, to be kept packed in cotton-wool, and not allowed to hear this and hear that? Do, dear Mrs. Picture--you don't mind my calling you by Dave's name?--do tell me what it was that parted you and your son. _I_ shall understand you. I'm not Mary that had a little lamb."
"Well, my dear, when I was about your age, before I was married, I'm not at all sure that _I_ should have understood. Perhaps that is really the reason why I took the girl's part...."
"Why you took the girl's part?" said Gwen, who had _not_ understood, so far, and was puzzled at the expression.
"Yes. I believed her story. They tried to throw the blame on her; he did, himself. My dear, it was his cowardice and treachery that made me hate him. You are shocked at that?"
"No--at least, I mean, I don't believe you meant it."
"I meant it at the time, my dear. And I counted him as dead, and tried to forget him. But it is hard for a mother to forget her son."
"I should have thought so." Gwen was not quite happy about old Mrs.
Picture's inner soul. How about a possible cruel corner in it?
The old lady seemed to suspect this question's existence, unexpressed.
Apology in her voice hinted at need of forgiveness--pleaded against condemnation. "But," she said, after a faltered word or two, short of speech, "you do not know, my dear, how bad a man can be. How should you?"
Perhaps the tone of her voice threw a light on some obscurity accepted ambiguities had left. For Gwen said, rather suddenly: "You need not tell me any more. You have told me plenty and I understand it." And so she did, for working purposes, though perhaps some latitudes in the sea of this Ralph Daverill's iniquities were by her unexplored and unexplorable.
This particular atrocity of his has no interest for the story, beyond the fact that it was the one that led to his separation from his mother, and that it accounts for the very slight knowledge that she seems to have had of the details of his conviction and deportation. It must have happened between his desertion of his lawful wife, Dave's Aunt M'riar, and his ill-advised attempt at burglary. Whether his offence against "the girl" whose part his mother took was made the subject of a criminal indictment is not certain, but if it was he must have escaped with a slight punishment, to be able to give his attention to the strong room of that Bank so soon after. Those who are inclined to think that his mother was unforgiving towards her own son, to the extent of vindictiveness, may find an excuse for her in a surmise which some facts connected with the case made plausible, that he adduced some childish levities on this girl's part as a warrant for his atrocious behaviour towards her, and so escaped legal penalty. Those who know with what alacrity male jurymen will accept evasions of this sort, will admit that this is at least possible.
This is conjecture, by the way, as Gwen asked to know no more of the incident, seeming to shrink from further knowledge of it in fact. She allowed it to pass out of the conversation, retaining the pleasant and wholesome attempt to redistribute the Bank's property as at least fit for discussion, and even pardonable--an act due to a mistaken economic theory--redistribution of property by a free lance, not wearing the uniform of a School of Political Thought.
"But how long was his term of service?" she asked, coming back into the fresher air of mere housebreaking.
"I am afraid it was for fourteen years. But I have never known. I can hardly believe it now, but I know it is true for all that, that he was convicted and transported without the trial coming to my ears at the time. I only knew that he had disappeared, and thought it was by his own choice. And what means had I of finding him, if I had wanted to? _That_ I never did."
"Because of ... because of the girl?"