"I know your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take to write at such length, seeing the cause of it, and also if I may suggest that your ladyship might send for Mrs. Bird, who lives with Mrs.
Prichard, or for the parents of the little Dave Wardle, to inquire of them has she been subject to attacks or is this new. I should tell you that she has now been free from any aberration of mind, so Dr. Nash says, for nearly two days, mostly knitting quietly to herself, without talk, and sometimes laying down the needles like to think. Dr. Nash says to talk to her when she talks, but to keep her off of bygones, and the like. She has asked for things to write you a letter herself, and I have promised as soon as this is done.
But I will not wait for hers to post this, as Dr. Nash says the sooner you know the better. I will now stop, again asking pardon for so long a letter, and remain, my lady, your obedient and faithful servant.
"R. THRALE"
"How very like what everyone else does!" said the Earl. "This good woman writes so close to economize paper that she leaves no room for her signature and goes in for her initial. I was wanting to know her Christian name. Do you know it? And see--she has to take more paper after all! Here's a postscript."
"P.S.--There is another reason why it is better not to have my mother back till Mrs. Prichard goes, she herself having been much upset by a man who said he was Mrs. Prichard's son, and was looking for his mother. My son-in-law, John Costrell, came over to tell me.
This man had startled and alarmed my mother _very much_. I should be sorry he should come here to make Mrs. Prichard worse, but my mother is no doubt best away. I am not afraid of him myself, because of our dog."
"That dog is a treasure," said the Earl, re-enveloping the letter. "What are those other letters? Irene's?... And what?"
"I was trying to think of Mrs. Thrale's Christian name. I don't think I know it.... Yes--Irene's, and some papers I want you to lock up, for me." Gwen went on to tell of the inroad on Mrs. Prichard's _secretaire_, and explained that she was absolutely certain of forgiveness. "Only you will keep them safer than I shall, in your big ebony cabinet. I think I can trust you to give them back." She laid them on the table, gave her father an affectionate double-barrelled kiss, and went away to bed. It was very late indeed.
Mr. Norbury, in London, always outlived everyone else at night. The Earl rather found a satisfaction, at the Towers, in being the last to leave port, on a voyage over the Ocean of Sleep. In London it was otherwise, but not explicably. The genesis of usage in households is a very interesting subject, but the mere chronicler can only accept facts, not inquire into causes. Mr. Norbury always _did_ give the Earl a send-off towards Dreamland, and saw the house deserted, before he vanished to a secret den in the basement.
"Norbury," said the Earl, sending the pilot off, metaphorically. "You know the two widows, mother and daughter, at Chorlton-under-Bradbury?
Strides Cottage."
"Yes, indeed, my lord! All my life. I knew the old lady when she came from Darenth, in Essex, to marry her second husband, Marrable." Norbury gave other particulars which the story knows.
"Then Widow Thrale is not Granny Marrable's daughter, though she calls her mother?"
"That is the case, my lord. She was a pretty little girl--maybe eleven years old--and was her mother's bridesmaid.... I should say her aunt's."
"Who was her mother?"
"I have understood it was a twin sister."
"Who was her father?"
Mr. Norbury hesitated. "If your lordship would excuse, I would prefer not to say. The story came to me through two persons. My own informant had it from Thrale. But it's near twenty years ago, and I could not charge my memory, to a certainty."
"Something you don't like to tell?"
"Not except I could speak to a certainty." Mr. Norbury, evidently embarrassed, wavered respectfully.
"Was there a convict in it, certain or uncertain?"
"There was, my lord. Certain, I fear. But I am uncertain about his name.
Peverell, or Deverell."
"What was he convicted of? What offence?"
"I rather think it was forgery, my lord, but I may be wrong about that.
The story said his wife followed him to Van Diemen's Land, and died there?"
"That was Thrale's story?"
"Thrale's story."
"He must have known."
"Oh, he knew!"
"What is old Mrs. Marrable's Christian name?"
"I believe she was always called Phoebe. Her first married name was a very unusual one, Cropredy."
"And Widow Thrale's?"
"Ruth--Keziah Solmes calls her, I think."
His lordship made no reply; and, indeed, said never a word until he released Mr. Norbury in his dressing-room ten minutes later, being then as it were wound up for a good night's rest, and safe to go till morning. Even then the current of serious thought into which he seemed to have plunged seemed too engrossing to allow of his making a start. He remained sitting in the easy-chair before the fire, with intently knitted brows and a gaze divided between the vigorous flare to which Mr.
Norbury's final benediction had incited it, and the packet of letters Gwen had given him, which he had placed on the table beside him. Behind him was what Gwen had spoken of as his big ebony cabinet. If a ghost that could not speak was then and there haunting that chamber, its tongue must have itched to remind his lordship what a satisfaction it would be to a disembodied bystander to get a peep into the cinquecento recesses of that complicated storehouse of ancient documents, which was never opened in the presence of anyone but its owner.
Gradually Gwen's packet absorbed more than its fair share of the Earl's attention; finally, seemed to engross it completely. He ended by cutting the outer string, taking the contents out, and placing them before him on the table, assorting them in groups, like with like.
There were the printed formal warrants, variously signed and attested, of some assignments or transfers--things of no interest or moment. Put them by! There were one or two new sheets covered with a child's printed efforts towards a handwriting manifestly the same as the one recently under discussion, even without the signature, "dAve wARdLe." There was a substantial accumulation of folded missives in an educated man's hand, and another in a woman's; of which last the outermost--being a folded sheet that made its own envelope--showed a receipt postmark "Macquarie.
June 24, 1807," and a less visible despatch-stamp "Darenth. Nov. 30, 1806," telling its tale of over six months on the road. Then one, directed in another hand, a man's, but with the same postmarks, both of 1808, with the months undecipherable. This last seemed the most important, being tied with tape. It was the elder Daverill's successful forgery, treasured by old Maisie as the last letter from her family in England, telling of her sister Phoebe's death. All the letters were addressed to "Mrs. Thornton Daverill," the directions being only partly visible, owing to the folding.
Lest the reader should be inclined to blame the accidental possessor of these letters for doing what this story must perforce put on record, and to say that his action disgraced the Earldom of Ancester, let it remind him what the facts were that were already in his lordship's possession, and ask him whether he himself, so circumstanced, might not have felt as the Earl did--that the case was one for a sacrifice of punctilios in the face of the issues that turned upon their maintenance. Had he any right to connive at the procrastination of some wicked secret--for he had the clue--when a trivial sacrifice of self-respect might bring it to light? He could see that Mrs. Prichard _must_ be the twin sister, somehow. But he did not see how, as yet; and he wanted confirmation and elucidation. These letters would contain both, or correction and guidance. Was he to bewilder Gwen with his own partial insights, or take on himself to sift the grist clean before he milled it for her consumption? He was not long in deciding.
Two or three slippered turns up and down the room, very cautious lest they should wake her ladyship in the adjoining one, were all the case required. Then he resumed his seat, and, deliberately taking up the taped letter, opened it and read:
"MY DEAR DAUGHTER MAISIE,
"It is with great pain that I take up my pen to acquaint you of the fatal calamity which has befallen your sister Phoebe and her husband, as well as I grieve to say of your own child Ruth, my granddaughter, all three of whom there is every reason to fear have lost their lives at sea on the sailing-packet _Scheldt_, from Antwerp to London, which is believed to have gone down with every soul on board in the great gale of September 30, now nearly two months since.
"You will be surprised that your sister and little girl should be on the seas, but that this should be so was doubtless the Will of God, and in compliance with His ordinances, though directly contrary to my own advice. Had due attention been paid to my wishes this might have been avoided. Here is the account of how it happened, from which you may judge for yourself:
"Your brother-in-law Cropredy's imprudence is no doubt to answer for it, he having run the risk of travelling abroad to put himself in personal communication with a house of business at Malines, a most unwholesome place for an Englishman, though no doubt healthy for foreigners. As I had forewarned him, he contracted fever in the heat of August, when ill-fed on a foreign diet, which, however suitable to them, is fatal to an English stomach, and little better than in France. The news of this illness coming to your sister, she would not be resigned to the Will of Providence, to which we should all bow rather than rashly endanger our lives, but took upon herself to decide, contrary to my remonstrance, to cross the Channel with the little girl, of whom I could have taken charge here at my own home. Merciful to say, the fever left him, having a good constitution from English living, and all was promise of a safe return, seeing the weather was favourable when the ship left the quay, and a fair wind. But of that ship no further is known, only she has not been heard of since, and doubtless is gone to the bottom in the great gale which sprung up in mid-channel, for so many have done the like. Even as the ships of Jehosaphat were broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish (Chron. II. xx.
37).
"There is, I fear, no room for hope that, short of a miracle, for the sea will not give up its dead (Rev. xx. 13), any remains should be recovered, but you may rest assured that if any come to the surface and are identified they shall be interred in the family grave where your sainted mother was laid, and reposes in the Lord, in a sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection (Acts xxiii.
6).
"Believe me, my dear daughter, to remain your affectionate father
"ISAAC RUNCIMAN.
"I have no message for my son-in-law, nor do I retain any resentment towards him, forgiving him as I wish to be forgiven (Luke vi. 37).
"DARENTH MILL, _Oct. 16, 1807_."
The Earl read this letter through twice--three times--and apparently his bewilderment only increased as he re-read it. At last he refolded it, as though no more light could come from more reading, and sat a moment still, thinking intently. Then he suddenly exclaimed aloud:--"Amazing,"
adding under his voice:--"But perfectly inexplicable!" Then, going on even less audibly:--"I must see what Hawtrey can make of this...." At which point he was taken aback by a voice through the door from the next room:--"What _are_ you talking to yourself so for? Can't you get to bed?" Palpably the voice of an awakened Countess! He replied in a conciliatory spirit, and accepted the suggestion, first putting the letters safely away in the ebony cabinet.