"Young folks," said his lordship, "never believe in old bones, until they feel them inside, and then they are not young folks any longer.
Why--where did we drive to, to knock ourselves up so? What's her name--Picture?" He was incredulous, evidently, about such a name being possible. But there was a sort of graciousness, or goodwill, about his oblique speech in the first person plural, that more than outweighed abruptness in his question about her.
She rallied under her visitor's geniality--or his emphasis, as might be.
"Maisie Prichard, my lord," said she, quite clearly. Her designation for him showed she was broad awake now, and took in the position. She could answer his question, repeated:--"And where _did_ we drive?" by saying:--"A beautiful drive, but I've a poor head now for names." She tried recollection, failed, and gave it up.
"Chorlton-under-Bradbury?" said the Earl.
"We went there too. I know Chorlton quite well, of course. The other one!--where the clock was." Gwen supplied the name, a singular one, Chernoweth; and the Earl said:--"Oh yes--Chernoweth. A pretty place. But why 'Chorlton quite well, of course'?"
Gwen explained. "Because of the small boy, Dave. Don't you know, papa?--I told you Mrs. Picture has directed no end of letters to Chorlton, for Dave." The Earl was not very clear. "Don't you remember?--to old Mrs. Marrable, at Strides Cottage?" Still not very clear, he pretended he was, to save trouble. Then he weakened his pretence, by saying:--"But I remember Mrs. Marrable, and Strides Cottage, near forty years ago, when your Uncle George and I were two young fellows. Fine, handsome woman she was--didn't look her age--she had just married Farmer Marrable--was a widow from Sussex, I think.
Can't think what her name had been ... knew it once, too!"
"She's a fine-looking old lady now," said Gwen. "Isn't she, Mrs.
Picture?"
"I am sure she is that too, my dear, or you would not say so. Only my eyesight won't always serve me nowadays as it did, not for seeing near up." The reserves about Dave's other Granny were always there, however little insisted on. Old Maisie was exaggerating about her eyesight. She had seen her rival quite clearly enough to have an opinion about her looks.
"Did you see the inside of the cottage, and the old chimney-corners? And the well out at the back?" Thus the Earl.
"We didn't go in. I wanted to get home. But what a lot you recollect of it, papa dear!"
"I ought to recollect something about it. It was Strides Cottage where your Uncle George was taken when he broke his leg, riding."
"Oh, was it there? Yes, I've heard of that. His horse threw him on a heap of stones, and bolted, and pitched into Dunsters Gap, and had to be shot."
"Yes, he shouldn't have ridden that horse. But he was always at that sort of thing, George." A sound came in here that had the same relation to a sigh that a sip has to a draught. "Well!--Mrs. Marrable nursed him up at Strides Cottage till he was fit to move--they were afraid about his back at first--and I used to ride over every morning. We used to chaff poor Georgy about his beautiful nurse.... Oh yes!--she was young enough for that. Woman well under forty, I should say."
Gwen made calculations and attested possibilities. Oh dear, yes!--Granny Marrable must have been under forty then. She surprised his lordship, first by gently smoothing aside the silver hair on the old woman's forehead, then by stooping down and kissing it. "Why, how old are you now, dear?" she said, as though she were speaking to a child. He for his part was only surprised, not dumfounded. He just felt a little glad his Countess was elsewhere; and was not sorry, on looking round, to see that no domestic was present. What a wild, ungovernable daughter it was, this one of his, and how he loved it!
So did old Mrs. Picture, to judge by the illumination of the eyes she turned up to the girl's young face above her. "How old am I now, my dear?" said she. "Eighty-one this Christmas." Thereupon said Gwen:--"You see, papa! Old Mrs. Marrable must have been quite a young woman in Uncle George's time. She's heaps younger than Mrs. Picture." She again smoothed the beautiful silver hair, adding:--"It's not unfeelingness, because Uncle George died years before I was born."
"Killed at Rangoon in twenty-four," said the Earl, with another semi-sigh. "Poor Georgy!" And then his visit was cut as short as--even shorter than--his forecast of its duration, for his next words were:--"I hear someone coming to fetch me. Your mamma is sure to start an hour before the time. Good-bye, Mrs.... Picture. I hope you are being well fed and properly attended to." To which the old lady replied:--"I thank your lordship, indeed I am," in an old-fashioned way that went well with the silver hair. And Gwen said:--"Dear old parent! Do you think _I_ shan't see to that?" and followed him out of the room.
"She's a nice old soul," said he, in the passage. "I wanted to see what she was like. But I thought it best to say nothing about the convict."
"Of course not. I'll follow you round before you go, to say good-bye.
You won't start for half an hour." And Gwen returned to the old soul, who presently said to her--to account to her for knowing how to say "my lord" and "your lordship"--"When I first married, my husband's great friend was Lord Pouralot. But I very soon called him Jack." This was a reminiscence of her interim between her victimisation and loneliness, which of course her innocence thought of as marriage. But was this early lordship's really a ladyship, if such a one appeared, we wonder? Very likely she was only another dupe, like Maisie. Possibly less fortunate, in one way. For, owing to the high price of women, in the land of Maisie's destiny, she--poor girl--never knew she was not a good one, until she found she was not a widow, although her worthless love of a lifetime was dead.
Oh, the difference Law's sanctions make! For a woman shall be the same in thought and word and deed through all her sojourn on Earth, yet vary as saint and sinner with the hall-mark of Lincoln's Inn.
Gwen followed the Earl very shortly, and left old Maisie to dream away the time until, somewhile after the final departure of her parents, she was free to return. When she did so she found the old woman sitting where she had left her, to all seeming quite contented. The day had died a sudden death intestate, and the flickering firelight meant to have its say unmolested, till candletime. The intrusion of artificial light was intercepted by Gwen, who liked to sit and talk to Mrs. Picture in the twilight, thank you, Mrs. Masham! Take it away!
Where had the old mind wandered in that two hours' interval? Had the actual meeting with her sister--utterly incredible even had she known its claims to belief--taken any hold on it that bore comparison with that of Farmer Jones's Bull, for instance, or the visit of a real live Earl? Certainly not the former, while as for the latter it was at best a half-way grip between the two; perhaps farther, if anything, from the supreme Bull, the great enthralling interest that was to be vested in her letter to Dave, to be written at the next favourable climax of strength, nourished by repose. Some time in the morning--to-day she was far too tired to think of it.
How she dwelt upon that appalling quadruped, and his savage breast--have bulls breasts?--soothed by the charms of music! How she phrased the various best ways of describing the mountain he was pleased to call his neck, with its half-hundredweight of dewlap; the merciless strength of his horns; the blast of steam from his nostrils into the chill of the October day; the deep-seated objection to everybody in his lurid eyes, attesting the unclubableness of his disposition! How she hesitated between this way and that of expressing to the full his murderousness and the beautiful pliancy of his soul, if got at the right way; showing, as the pseudo-Browning has it, that "we never should think good impossible"!
One thing she made up her mind to. She would not tell that dear boy, that this bull--which was in a sense _his_ bull, or Sapps Court's, according as you look at it--had ever had to succumb on a fair field of battle. For Gwen had told her, as they rode home, and she had roused herself to hear it, how one summer morning, so early that even rangers were still abed and asleep, they were waked by terrific bellowings from a distant glade in the parklands, and, sallying out to find the cause, were only just in time to save the valued life of this same bull--even Jones's. For he had broken down a gate and vanished overnight, and wandered into the sacred precincts of the _villosi terga bisontes_, the still-wild denizens of the last league of the British woodlands Caesar found; and _Bos Taurus_ had risen in his wrath, and showed that an ancient race was not to be trifled with, with impunity. Even Jones's Bull went down in the end--though, mind you, evidence went to show that he made an hour's stand!--before the overwhelming rush and the terrible horns of the forest monarch. And the victor only gave back before a wall of brandished torch and blazing ferns, that the unsportsmanlike spirit of the keepers did not scruple to resort to. No--she would not admit that Dave's bull had ever met his match. She would say how he had killed a man, which Gwen had told her also; but to save the boy from too much commiseration for this man, she would lay stress upon the brutality of the latter to his wife, and even point out that Farmer Jones's Bull might be honestly unconscious of the consequences that too often result when one gores or tramples on an object of one's righteous indignation.
Strides Cottage played a very small part in the memories of the day.
Some interest certainly attached to the older woman who had emerged from it to interview the carriage, but it was an interest apt to die down when once its object had been ascertained to resemble any other handsome old village octogenarian. Any peculiarity or deformity might have intensified it, or at least kept it alive; mere good looks and upright carriage, and strict conformity with the part of an ancient dependent of a great local potentate, neither fed nor quenched the mild fires of her rival granny's jealousy. Old Mrs. Picture had looked upon Granny Marrable, and was none the wiser. That Granny had at least seen her way to moralising on the way appearances might dupe us, and how sad it would be if, after all, such a respectable-looking old person should be an associate o thieves, a misleader of youth, and a fraud. But Mrs.
Picture found little to say to herself, and nothing to say to anybody else, about Strides Cottage.
Rather, she fell back, as soon as Jones's Bull flagged, on her long record of an unforgotten past. That wind that was growing with the nightfall no longer moaned for her in the chimney, five centuries old, of the strange great house strange Fate had brought her to, but through the shrouds of a ship on the watch for what the light of sunrise might show at any moment. She could hear the rush and ripple of the cloven waters under the prow, just as a girl who leaned upon the gunwale, intent for the first sight of land, heard it in the dawn over fifty years ago. She could seem to look back at the girl--who was, if you please, herself--and a man who leaned on the same timber, some few feet away, intent on the horizon or his neighbour, as might be; for he stood aft, and her face was turned away from him. And she could seem to hear his words too, for all the time that came between:--"Say the word, mistress, and I'll be yours for life. I would give all I have to give, and all I may live to get, but to call you mine for an hour." And how his petition seemed empty sound, that she could answer with a curt denial, so bent was her heart on another man in the land she hoped to see so soon. Yet he was a nice fellow, too, thought old Mrs. Prichard as she sat before Mrs. Masham's fire at the Towers; and she forgave him the lawlessness of his impulse for its warmth, bred in the narrow limits of a ship on the seas for three long months!--how could he help it? Such a common story on shipboard, and ... such an uncommon ending! Ask the captains of passenger ships what _they_ think, even now that ships steam twenty knots an hour. One's fellow-creatures are so human, you see.
Then a terrible dream of a second voyage, from Sydney to Port Macquarie, that almost made her wish she had accepted this man's offer to see her safe into the arms of her lawful owner, out on leave and growing prosperous in Van Diemen's Land. Need she have said him nay so firmly?
Could she not have trusted to his chivalry? Or was the question she asked herself not rather, could she have trusted her own heart, if that chivalry had stood as gold in the furnace.
Back again to the throbbing wheel, and the ceaseless flow of the little river at the Essex mill, and childhood! Why should her waking dream hark back to the dear old time? The natural thing would have been to dream on into the years she spent out there with the man she loved, who at least, to all outward seeming, gave her back love for love, while he played the sly devil against her for his own ends. But she knew nothing of this: and, till his death revealed the non-legal character of their union, she could leave him on his pinnacle. So it was not because her mind shrank from these memories of her married life that it conjured back again the scent of the honeysuckles on the house-porch that looked on the garden with the sundial on the wall above it, its welcome to that of the June roses; its dissension with the flavour of the damp weeds that clung to the time-worn timbers of the water-wheel, or that of the grinding flour when the wind blew from the mill, and carried with it from the ventilators some of the cloud that could not help forward the whitening of the roof. She might almost have been breathing again the air that carried all these scents; and then, with them, the old mill itself was suddenly upon her; and she and Phoebe were there, in the shortest waists ever frockmaker dreamed of, and the deepest sunbonnets possible, with the largest possible ribbons, very pale yellow to harmonize--as canons then ruled--with the lilac of their dresses. They were there, they two, watching the inexhaustible resource of interest to their childish lives; the consignment of grain to storage in the loft above the whirling stones, and the dapple-grey horse that was called Mr. Pitt, and the dark one with the white mane that was Mr. Fox. She could remember _their_ names well; but by some chance all those years of utter change had effaced that of the carman who slung the sacks on the fall-rope, which by some mysterious agency bore them up to a landing they vanished from into a doorway half-way to Heaven. What on earth was that man's name?
Her mind became obsessed with the name Tattenhall, which was entirely wrong, and, moreover, stood terribly in the way of Muggeridge, which--you may remember?--was the name Dave had carried away so clearly from his inspection of the mill on Granny Marrable's chimney-piece.
Her memories of her old home had died away, and she was back in Sapps Court again, sympathizing with Dolly over an accident to Shockheaded Peter, the articulation of whose knee-joint had given way, causing his leg to come off promptly, from lack of integuments and tendons. She had pointed out to Dolly that it was still open to her, as The Authority, to hush Peter to sleep as before, his leg being carefully replaced in position, although without ligatures. Dolly had carried out this instruction in perfect good faith; but it had not led to a satisfactory result. It failed owing to the patient's restlessness. "He _will_ tit in his s'eep, and he tums undone," said the little lady, hard to console.
Oh dear--how soon Dolly would be four, and begin to lose her early versions of consonants!
Poor Susan Burr had then flashed across her recollection, provoked by the bread-and-butter Dolly baptized with the bitter tears she shed over Peter's leg. That naturally led to the household loaf, which was buttered before the slice was cut; sometimes the whole round, according to how many at tea. This led to a controversy of long standing between Dave and Dolly, as to which half should be took first; Dave having a preference for the underside, with the black left on. Students of the half-quartern household loaf will appreciate the niceties involved. In this connection, Susan Burr had come in naturally, like the officiating priest at Mass. Poor Susan! Suppose, after all, that Europe had been mistaken in what seemed to be its estimate of married nieces at Clapham!
Suppose Susan was being neglected--how then? But marriage and Clapham, between them, soothed and reassured misgivings a mere unqualified niece might easily generate. By this time the waking dreamer was on the borderland of sleep, and Mrs. Burr's image crossed it with her and became a real dream, and whistled the tune the boy had whistled to Farmer Jones's Bull. And into that dream came, suddenly and unprovoked, her sister Phoebe of old, beautiful and fresh as violets in April, and ended a tale of how she would have none of Ralph Daverill, come what might, by saying, "Why, you are all in the dark, and the fire's going out!"
This resurrection of Phoebe, at this moment, may have been mere coincidence--a reflex action of Gwen's sudden reappearance; her first words creating, in her hearer's sleep-waking mind, the readiest image of a youth and beauty to match her own. As soon as the dream died, the dreamer was aware of the speaker's identity. "Oh, my dear!" she said, "I've been asleep almost ever since you went away."
"Mrs. Masham was quite right, for once, not to let them disturb you. Now they'll bring tea--it's never too late for tea--and then we can read your little friend's letter." Thus Gwen, and the old woman brightened up under a living interest.
"There now!" said she. "The many times I've told my boy that one day he would write my letters for me, instead of me for him! To think of his managing all by himself, spelling and all!"
"Well, we shall see what sort of a job the young man's made of it. Put the candles behind Mrs. Picture, Lupin, so as not to glare her eyes."
Lupin obeyed, with a studied absence of protest on her face against having to wait upon an anomaly. Who could be sure this venerable person--from Sapps Court, think of it!--had never waited on anyone herself? It was the ambiguity that was so disgusting.
"Please may I see it, to look at?" said Mrs. Picture. "I may not be able to read it, quite, but you shall have it back, to read." She was eager to see the young scribe's progress, but was baffled by obscurities, as she anticipated. She was equal to:--"Dear Granny Marrable." No more!
"Hand it over!" said Gwen. "'Dear Granny Marrable.' That's all plain sailing; now what's this? 'This crorce is for Dolly's love.' There's a great big black cross to show it, and everything is spelt just as I say it. 'I give you my love itself!' Really, he's full of the most excellent differences, as Shakespeare says. I'll go on. 'Arnt M'riar she's took....' Oh dear! this _is_ a word to make out! Whatever can it be?
Let's see what comes after.... Oh, it goes on:--'because she is not here.' Really it looks as if Aunt Maria had gone to Kingdom Come. Is there anything she _would_ have taken because she was 'not there,' that you know of? Is your tea all right?"
"It's very nice indeed, my dear. I think perhaps it might be the omnibus, because Aunt M'riar _did_ take the omnibus that day she came to see me. She was to come again, without the children, to see all straight."
"H'm!--it may be the omnibus, spelt with an H. Suppose we accept _homliburst_, and see how it works out! '... because she is not here.
She is going'--he's put a W in the middle of going--'to see Mrs.'--I know this word is Mrs., but he's put the S in the middle and the R at the end--'to see Mrs. Spicture tookted away by Dolly's lady to Towel.'
That wants a little thinking out." Gwen stopped to think it over, and wondrous lovely she looked, thinking.
"Perhaps," said the old lady diffidently, "I can guess what it means, because I know Dave. Suppose Aunt M'riar came the day we came away, and found us gone! If she came up to say goodbye?..."
"No, that won't do! Because we came on Wednesday. This was written on Thursday. It's dated 'On Firsday.' Did he mean that Aunt Maria had come up to Sapps Court, but would not come to Cavendish Square because she knew you had come here? It's quite possible. I don't wonder Mrs.
Marrable couldn't make it out." The old lady seemed to think the interpretation plausible, and Gwen read on:--"'I say we had an axdnt'--that really is beautifully spelt--'because the house forled over, and Mrs. Ber underneath and Me and Dolly are sory.'" Gwen stopped a moment to consider the first two words of this sentence, and decided that "I say" was an apostrophe. "I see," said she, "that the next sentence has your name in it again, only he's left out the U, and made you look something between Spider and Spectre."
"The dear boy! What does he say next about me?" The old lady was looking intensely happy; a reflex action of Dave.
"There's a dreadful hard word comes next ... Oh--I see what it is!
'Supposing.' Only he's made it 'sorsppposing'--such a lot of P's! I think it is only to show how diffidently he makes the suggestion. It doesn't matter. Let's get on. 'Supposing you was to show'--something I really cannot make head or tail of--'to Mrs. Spictre who is my other graney?' I wonder what on earth it can be!"