"Hay--what's that?--his knife? You never told me o' that."
"Why, Mo, don't ye see, I only took it for bounce."
"What was it about his knife?"
"Just this, Mo dear! Now, don't you be excited. He says to me again:--'What are you good for, Polly Daverill?' And then I see he was handling a big knife with a buckhorn handle." M'riar was tremulous and tearful. "Oh, Mo!" she said. "Do consider! He wasn't that earnest, to be took at a chance word. He ain't so bad as you think of him. He was only showin' off like, to get the most he could."
"That's a queer way of showin' off--with a knife! P'r'aps it warn't open, though?" But it _was_, by M'riar's silence. "Anyways," Mo continued, "he won't come back so long as he thinks I'm here. To-morrow morning first thing I shall just drop round to the Station, and tip 'em a wink. Can't have this sort o' thing goin' on!"
M'riar's lighting of a candle seemed to hang fire. Said she:--"You'd think it a queer thing to say, if I was to say it, Mo!" And then, in reply to the natural question:--"Think what?" she continued:--"A woman's husband ain't like any other man. She's never quite done with him, as if he was nobody. It don't make any odds how bad he's been, nor yet how long ago it was.... It makes one creep to think...." She stopped abruptly, and shuddered.
"What he'll catch if he gets his deserts." Mo supplied an end for the sentence, gravely.
"Ah!--he might be.... What _would_ it be, Mo, if he was tried and found guilty?"
"Without a recommendation to mercy? It was a capital offence. I never told it ye. Shall I tell it?"
"No--for God's sake!" Aunt M'riar stopped her ears tight as she had done before. "Don't you tell me nothing, Mo, more than I know already. That's plenty." Uncle Mo nodded, pointed to tightly closed lips to express assent, and she resumed speech with hearing. "Capital offence means ...
means?..."
"Means he would go to the scragging-post, arter breakfast one morning.
There's no steering out o' _that_ fix, M'riar. He's just got to, one day, and there's an end of it!"
"And how ever could I be off knowing it at the time? Oh, but it makes me sick to think of! The night before--the night before, Mo! Supposin' I wake in the night, and think of him, and hear the clocks strike! He'll hear them too, Mo."
"Can't be off it, M'riar! But what of that? _He_ won't be a penny the worse, and he'll know what o'clock it is." Remember that Uncle Mo had some particulars of Daverill's career that Aunt M'riar had not. For all she knew, the criminal's capital offence might have been an innocent murder--a miscarriage in the redistribution of some property--a too zealous garrotting of some fat old stockjobber. "I'm thinkin' a bit of the other party, M'riar," said Mo. He might have said more, but he was brought up short by his pledge to say nothing of the convict's last atrocity. How could he speak the thought in his mind, of the mother of the victim in a madhouse? For that had made part of the tale, as it had reached him through the police-sergeant. So he ended his speech by saying:--"What I do lies at my own door, M'riar. You're out of it. So I shan't say another word of what I will do or won't do. Only I tell you this, that if I could get a quiet half an hour with the gentleman, I'd ... _What_ would I do?... Well!--I'd save him from the gallows--I _would_! Ah!--and old as I am, I'd let him keep a hold on his knife....
There--there, old lass! I do wrong to frighten ye, givin' way to bad temper. Easy does it!"
For a double terror of the woman's position was bred of that mysterious, inextinguishable love that never turns to hate, however hateful its object may become; and her dread that if this good, unwieldy giant--that was what Mo seemed--crossed his path, that jack-knife might add another to her husband's many crimes. This dread and counter-dread had sent all Aunt M'riar's blood to her heart, and she might have fallen, but that Mo's strong hand caught her in time, and landed her in a chair. "I was wrong--I was wrong!" said he gently. All the fires had died down before the pallor of her face, and his only thought was how could _she_ be spared if the destroyer of her life was brought to justice.
They said no more; what more was there to be said? Aunt M'riar came round, refusing restoratives. Oh no, she would be all right! It was only a turn she got--that common event! They adjourned, respectively, to where Dolly and Dave were sleeping balmily, profoundly.
But Uncle Mo was discontented with the handiwork of Creation. Why should a cruel, two-edged torture be invented for, and inflicted on, an inoffensive person like M'riar? There didn't seem any sense in it. "If only," said he to his inner soul, "they'd a-let _me_ be God A'mighty for five minutes at the first go-off, I'd a-seen to it no such a thing shouldn't happen." Less than five minutes would have been necessary, if a full and unreserved concession of omnipotence had been made.
Dave was a man of his word, though a very young one. He seized the earliest opportunity to indite two letters of congratulation to his honorary grandmothers, including Dolly in his rejoicing at the discovery of their relationship. He wrote as though such discoveries were an everyday occurrence.
His mistakes in spelling were few, the principal one arising from an old habit of thought connecting the words sister and cistern, which had survived Aunt M'riar's frequent attempts at correction. When he exhibited his Identical Notes to the Powers for their sanction and approval, this was pointed out to him, and an allegation that he was acting up to previous instructions disallowed _nem. con._ He endeavoured to lay to heart that for the future _cistern_ was to be spelt _sister_, except out on the leads. A holographic adjustment of the _c_, and erasure of the _n_, was scarcely a great success, but the Powers supposed it would do. Uncle Mo opposed Aunt M'riar's suggestion that the two letters should go in one cover to Strides Cottage, for economy, as mean-spirited and parsimonious, although he had quite understood that the two Grannies were under one roof; otherwise Dave would have directed to Mrs. Picture at the Towers. So to Strides Cottage they went, some three days later.
CHAPTER XIV
HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WENT BACK TO THE TOWERS, AND GWEN READ HER LETTERS IN THE TRAIN. THE TORPEYS, THE RECTOR, AND THE BISHOP. HOW THE COUNTESS SHUT HER EYES, AND GWEN HARANGUED. WHO WAS LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS? THE UP-EXPRESS, AND ITS VIRUS. HOW GWEN RESOLVED TO RUSH THE POSITION. AT STRIDES COTTAGE. HOW GWEN BECAME MORE AND MORE ALIVE TO HER DIFFICULTIES. HOW SHE WENT TO SEE DR.
NASH. HIS INCREDULITY. AND HIS CONVERSION. HOW HE WOULD SEE GRANNY MARRABLE, BY ALL MEANS. BUT! HOWEVER, BY GOOD LUCK, MUGGERIDGE HAD FORGOTTEN HIS MARRIAGE VOWS, HALF A CENTURY AGO AND MORE
It was written in the Book of Fate, and printed in the _Morning Post_, that the Countess of Ancester was leaving for Rocestershire, and would remain over Christmas. After which she would probably pay a visit to her daughter, Lady Philippa Brandon, at Vienna. The Earl would join her at the Towers after a short stay at Bath, according to his lordship's annual custom. The _Post_ did not commit itself as to his lordship's future movements, because Fate had not allowed the Editor to look in her Book.
And the Countess herself seemed to know no more than the _Post_. For when her daughter, in the railway-carriage on the way to the Towers, looked up from a letter she was reading over and over again, to say:--"I suppose it's no use trying to persuade papa to come to Vienna, after all?" her mother's answer was:--"You can try, my dear. _You_ may have some influence with him. _I_ have none. I suppose when we're gone, he'll just get wrapped up in his fiddles and books and old gim-cracks, as he always does the minute my eyes are off him." Gwen made no comment upon inconsistencies, becoming reabsorbed in her letter. But surely a Countess whose eyes prevent an Earl getting wrapped up in fiddles is not absolutely without influence over him.
Gwen's absorbing letter was from Irene, incorporating dictation from Adrian. The writer had found the accepted Official form:--"I am to say,"
convenient in practice. Thus, for instance, "I am to say that he is not counting the hours till your return, as it seems to him that the total, when reached, will be of no use to him or anyone else. He prefers to accept our estimate of the interval as authentic, and to deduct each hour as it passes. He is at eighty-six now, and expects to be at sixty-two at this time to-morrow, assuming that he can trust the clock while he's asleep." Gwen inferred that the amanuensis had protested, to go on to a more interesting point, as the letter continued:--"Adrian and I have been talking over what do you think, Gwen dear? Try and guess before you turn over this page I'm just at the end of...." Dots ended the page, and the next began:--"Give it up? Well--only, if I tell you, you must throw this letter in the fire when you have read it--I'm more than half convinced that there was once a _tendresse_, to put it mildly, between our respective papa and mamma--that is, our respective papa and your respective mamma--not the other way, that's ridiculous! And Adrian is coming to my way of thinking, after what happened yesterday. It was at dessert, and papa was quite loquacious, for him--in his best form, saying:--'Niggers, niggers, niggers! What does that blessed Duchess of Sutherland want to liberate niggers for? Much better wollop 'em!' The Duchess was, he said, an hysterical female. Mamma was unmoved and superior. Perhaps papa would call Lady Ancester hysterical, too. _She_ was at Stafford House, and was _most enthusiastic_. She had promised to drive over as soon as she came back, to talk about Negro slavery, and see if something could not be done in the neighbourhood. Mamma hoped she would interest the Torpeys and the Rector and the Bishop. Only the point was that the moment _our_ mamma mentioned _yours_, papa shut up with a snap, and never said another word. It struck me exactly as it struck Adrian. And when we came to talk it over we agreed that, if it were, it would account for our having been such strangers till last year."
Gwen was roused from weighing the possibilities of the truth of this surmise by the voice of one of its subjects. "How very engrossing our letters seem to be this morning!" said the Countess, with a certain air of courteous toleration, as of seniority on Olympus. "But perhaps I have no right to inquire." This with _empressement_.
"Don't be so civil, mamma dear, please!" said Gwen. "I do hate civility.... No, there's nothing of interest. Yes--there is. Lady Torrens says she hopes you won't forget your promise to come and talk about abolishing negroes. I didn't know you were going to."
The Countess skipped details. "Let me see the letter," said she, forsaking her detached superiority. She began to polish a double eyeglass prematurely.
"Can't show the letter," said Gwen equably, as one secure in her rights.
"That's all--what I've told you! Says you promised to drive over and talk, and she hoped to interest you--oh no!--it's not you, it's the Torpeys are to be interested."
"Oh--the Torpeys," said the Countess freezingly. Because it was humiliating to have to put away those double eyeglasses. "Perhaps if there is anything else of interest you will tell me. Do not trouble to read the whole."
"But _did_ you promise to drive over to Pensham? Because, if you did, we may just as well go together. With all those men at the Towers, I shall have to bespeak Tom Kettering and the mare."
"I think something _was_ said about my going over. But I certainly made no promise." Her ladyship reflected a moment, and then said:--"I think we had better be free lances. I am most uncertain. It's a long drive. If I do go, I shall lunch at the Parysforts, which is more than half-way, and go on in the afternoon to your aunt at Poynders. Then I need not come back till the day after. I could call at Pensham by the way."
"I won't go to old Goody Parysforts--so that settles the matter! When shall I tell Adrian's mamma you are coming?"
"Are you going there at once?"
"Yes--to-morrow. I must see Adrian to talk to him about my old ladies, before I talk to either of them." Thereupon the Countess became prodigiously interested in the story of the twins, a subject about which she had been languid hitherto, and her daughter was not sorry, because she did not want to be asked again what Irene had said, which might have involved her in reading that young lady's text aloud, with extemporised emendations, possibly complex. She put that letter away, to re-read another time, and took out another one. "I've had _this_," she said, "from old Mrs. Prichard. But there's nothing in it!"
"Nothing in it?"
"Nothing about what Widow Thrale told us in hers. Nothing about Mrs.
Thrale thinking she had gone dotty."
The Countess, with a passing rebuke of her daughter's phraseology, asked to be reminded of the story. Gwen, embarking on a _resume_, was interrupted by a tunnel, and then had hardly begun again when the train rushed into a second section of it, which had slipped or been blown further along the line. However, Peace ensued, in a land where, to all appearance, notice-boards were dictating slow speeds from interested motives, as there was no reason in life against quick ones. Gwen took advantage of it to read Mrs. Prichard's letter aloud, with comments.
This was the letter:--
"'MY DEAR LADY,
"'I am looking forward to your return, and longing for it, for I have much to tell you. I cannot tell of it all now, but I can tell you what is such a happiness to tell, of the sweet kindness of this dear young woman who takes such care of me. A many have been very very kind to me, and what return have I to make, since my dear husband died?'...
"Her dear husband, don't you see, mamma, was the infamous monster that wrote the forged letter that did it all.... Papa read it to you, didn't he?"
"My dear, it's no use asking me what your father read or did not read to me, for really the last few days have been such a whirl. It always is, in London. However, go on! I know the letter you mean--what you were telling me about. Only I can't say I made head or tail of it at the time. Go on!" Her ladyship composed herself to listen with her eyes shut, and Gwen read on:--
"'But never, no never, was such patient kindness to a tiresome old woman, because that is what I am, and I know, my dear. I know, my dear, that I owe this to you, and it is for your sake, but it ought to be, and that is right. I do not say things always like I want to. She says her own mother is no use to her, because she is so strong and never ill, and I am good to nurse. But she is coming back very soon, and I shall see her. She is my Davy's other Granny, you know, and I am sure she must be good. I cannot write more, but oh, how good you have been to me!
"'Your loving and dutiful "'MAISIE PRICHARD.
"'I must say this to you, that she lets me call her her name Ruth.
That was my child's I left at our Dolly's age, who was drowned.'