Five minutes after saying which the doctor's gig was doing its best to arrive in time to prevent that valetudinarian swallowing five grains of calomel, or something of the sort, on his own responsibility.
Gwen had felt a misgiving that her expedition to Dr. Nash had really been a cowardly undertaking, because she had flinched from her task at the critical moment. Well--suppose she had! It might turn out a fortunate piece of poltroonery, if Dr. Nash contrived to break the ice for her with the other old sister. But the cowardice was beginning again, now that every stride of the mare was taking her nearer to her formidable task. Desperation was taking the place of mere Resolve, thrusting her aside as too weak for service in the field, useless outside the ramparts. Oh, but if only some happy accident would pave the way for speech, would enable her to say to herself:--"I have said the first word! I cannot go back now, if I would!"
On the way to Strides Cottage again! Nearer and nearer now, that moment that must come, and put an end to all this puling hesitation. She could not help the thought that rose in her mind:--"This that I do--this reuniting of two souls long parted by a living death--may it not be what Death does every day for many a world-worn survivor of a half-forgotten parting in a remote past?" For, indeed, it seemed to her that these two had risen from the dead, and that for all she knew each might say of the other:--"It is not she." For what is Death but the withdrawal from sight and touch and hearing of the evidence of Some One Else? What less had come to pass for old Maisie and Phoebe, fifty years ago? How is it with us all in that mysterious Beyond, that for the want of a better name we call a Hereafter, when ghost meets ghost, and either lacks the means of recognition?
She knew the trick of that latch now, and went in.
The room was empty of all but the cat, who seemed self-absorbed; silent but for a singing kettle and a chirping cricket. Probably Widow Thrale was in the bedroom. Gwen crossed the passage, and gently opening the door, looked in. Only the old lady herself was there, upon the bed, so still that Gwen half feared at first she had died in her sleep. No--all was well! She wondered a moment at the silver hair, the motionless hands, alabaster but for the blue veins, the frailty of the whole, and its long past of eighty years, those years of strange vicissitude. And through them all no one thing so strange as what she was to know on waking!
CHAPTER XV
HOW GWEN HEARD WIDOW THRALE'S REPORT AND HOW SHE ROSE TO THE OCCASION. HOW WIDOW THRALE WAS IN FAVOUR OF SILENCE. HOW GWEN HAD TO SHOW THE FORGED LETTER. THE LINSTOCK AT THE BREECH. BUT MY NAME WAS RUTH DAVERILL! THE GUN GOES OFF. GWEN'S COOLNESS IN ACTION. BUT WHY IN MRS. PRICHARD'S LETTER? A CRISIS AND AN AWAKENING. WHO WILL TELL MOTHER? HOW GWEN GOT FIRST SPEECH OF MRS. PRICHARD. THE DELUSION CASE'S REPORT OF ITSELF. ANOTHER IMPENETRABLE FORTRESS.
THE STAGE METHOD, AS A LAST RESOURCE. AN _IMPASSE_. "BAS AN AIR EACHIN." HOW MRS. PRICHARD WANTED TO TELL MRS. MARRABLE ABOUT HER DEAD SISTER, STILL ALIVE. GWEN'S FORCES SCATTERED, AND A RALLY.
ANOTHER CRISIS, AND SUCCESS. WHO FORGED THAT LETTER?
That had been a quick interview with Dr. Nash in spite of its importance. For the church clock had been striking eleven when the mare, four minutes after leaving Dr. Nash, reached Strides Cottage. A great deal of talk may be got through in a very little time, as the playwright knows to his cost.
Widow Thrale had been talking with Elizabeth-next-door when the mare stopped, disappointed at the short run. She heard the arrival, and came out to find that her ladyship had preceded her into the house. Tom Kettering, having communicated this, stooped down from his elevation to add in confidence:--"Her ladyship's not looking her best, this short while past. You have an eye to her, mistress. Asking pardon!" It was a concession to speech, on Tom's part, and he seemed determined it should go no farther, for he made a whip-flick tell the mare to walk up and down, and forget the grass rim she had noticed on the footpath. Mrs.
Thrale hurried into the house. She, too, had seen how white Gwen was looking, before she started to go to Dr. Nash.
She met her coming from the bedroom, whiter still this time. Her exclamation:--"Dearie me, my lady, how!..." was stopped by:--"It is not illness, Mrs. Thrale. I am perfectly well," said with self-command, though with a visible effort to achieve it. But it was clear that the thing that was not illness was a serious thing.
"I was afraid for your ladyship," said Mrs. Thrale. And she remained uneasy visibly.
"I see she is very sound asleep. Will she remain so for awhile?... Has not been sleeping at night, did you say? That explains it.... No, I won't take anything, thank you!... Yes, I will. I'll have some water. I see it on the dresser. That's plenty--thanks!" Thus Gwen's part of what followed. She moistened her lips, and speech was easier to her. They had been so dry and hot. She continued, feeling that the moment had come:--"I want your help, Mrs. Thrale. I have something I must tell you about Mrs. Prichard."
The convict, nearly forgotten since last year, and of course never revived for Widow Thrale, suddenly leaped into her mind out of the past, and menaced evil to her ideal of Mrs. Prichard. She was on her defence directly. "Nay, then--if it is bad, 'tis no fault of the dear old soul's. That I be mortal sure of!"
"Fault of _hers_. No, indeed! It is something I have to tell her. And to tell you." This was the first real attempt to hint at her hearer's personal concern in the something. Would it reach her mind?
Scarcely. To judge by her puzzled eyes fixed on Gwen, and the grave concern of her face, her heart was rich with ready sympathy for whoever should suffer by this unknown thing, but without a clue to its near connection with herself. "Will it be a great sorrow to her to be told it?" said she uneasily. But all on her old guest's account--none on her own.
Gwen felt that her first attempt to breach the fortress of unconsciousness, had failed. She must lay a new sap, at another angle; a slower approach, but a surer.
"Not a great sorrow so much as a great shock. You can help me to tell it her so as to spare her." Gwen felt at this point the advantages of the Feudal System. This good woman would never presume to hurry disclosure.
"You can help me, Mrs. Thrale, and I will tell you the whole. But I want to know one or two things about what she said." Gwen produced Mrs.
Thrale's own letter from a dainty gilded wallet, and opened it. "I understand that the very first appearance of these delusions--or whatever they were--was when she saw the mill-model. Quite the very first?"
"That was, like, the beginning of it," said Mrs. Thrale, recollecting.
"She asks me, was little Dave in the right about the wheel-sacks and the water-cart, and I say to her the child is right, but should have said wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then I get it down.... Yes, I get it down and show it to her"--this slowly and reminiscently. "And then, my lady, I look round, and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter!"
This was accelerated, for dramatic force.
"You did not put it down to her seeing the mill?"
"No, my lady; I took it she was upset and tired, at her age. I've seen the like before. Not my mother, but old Mrs. Dunage at the Rectory.
'Twas when the news came her mother was killed on the railway. She went quite unconscious, and I helped to nurse her round. She was gone of seventy-seven at the time."
"_That_ was a shock, then?" Gwen felt, although Widow Thrale did not seem to have connected the two things together, that the mill had been the agency that upset Mrs. Prichard.
But she had underestimated the strength of the fortress again. Mrs.
Thrale took it as a discrimination between the two cases. "Yes, my lady," said she quietly. "That was a _shock_. But so you might say, this was a shock, too. By reason of an idea, got on the mind. Dr. Nash said, next day, certainly!"
"Very likely," said Gwen. "But what came next?"
"Well, now--how was it? I was seeing her to bed, unconscious like, and she says to me, on the sudden:--'_Whose_ mill was it?' And then, of course, I say grandfather's. For indeed, my lady, that is so! Mother has had this model all her life, from when grandfather died, and it could be no one else's mill." The irresistible amusement at the absurdity that spread over Ruth's face, and the undercurrent of laughter in her voice, were secret miseries to Gwen, so explicit were they in their tale of the unconsciousness that allowed them. She was relieved when the speaker's voice went back to its tone of serious concern. "And there, now--if the dear old soul didn't say to me, 'How came this mill to be your grandfather's mill?'!"
"And after that?"
"Oh--then I saw plain! But I thought--best say nothing! So I got her off to bed, and she went nicely to sleep, and no more trouble. But next morning early there she was out of bed, hunting for the mill, and feeling round it on the mantelshelf."
"And you still thought it was a delusion?" Gwen said this believing that it _must_ excite suspicion of her object. But again unconsciousness, perfectly placid and immovable, had the best of it, where scepticism would have been alert in its defence.
"Well, I did hope next day, talking it over with Dr. Nash, that it was just some confusion of hers with another's mill, a bit like ours; and at her age, no wonder! Because of what she said herself."
"Said herself?"
"Yes--touching the size of her mill being double. That is, the model.
But ah--dear me! It was all gone next day, and she talking quite wild like!" A note of fresh distress in her voice ended in a sigh. Then came a resurrection of hopefulness. "But she has not gone back to it now for some while, and Dr. Nash is hopeful it may pass off."
Gwen began to fear for her own sanity if this was to go on long. To sit there, facing this calm, sweet assurance of that dear old woman's flesh and blood, her own daughter, thick-panoplied in impenetrable ignorance; to hear her unfaltering condemnation of what she must soon inevitably know to be true; to note above all the tender solicitude and affection her every word was showing for this unknown mother--all this made Gwen's brain reel. Unless some natural resolution of the discord came, Heaven help her, and keep her from some sudden cruel open operation on the heart of Truth, some unconvincing vivisection of a soul! For belief in the incredible, however true, flies from forced nurture in the hothouse of impatience.
Gwen felt for a new opportunity. "When you say that next day she began to talk wildly.... What sort of wildly? Are you sure it was so wild?"
Mrs. Thrale lowered her voice to an intense assurance, a heartfelt certainty. "Oh yes, my lady--yes, _indeed_! There was no doubt _possible_. When she was looking at the mill model she had got sight of two little figures--just dollies--that were meant for mother, and her sister who died in Australia--my real mother, you know, only I was but four years old--and the dear old soul went quite mazed about it, saying that was herself and _her_ sister that died in England, and they were twins the same as mother and _her_ sister. And it was not till she said names Dr. Nash found out how it was all made up of what we told little Davy last year...."
"And you made sure," said Gwen, interrupting, "that you remembered telling little Davy all these things last year?" It took all Gwen's self-command to say this. She was glad to reach the last word.
Widow Thrale looked hurt, almost indignant. "Why, my lady," said she, "we _must_ have! Else how could she have known them?" Do not censure her line of argument. Probably at this very hour it is being uttered by a hundred mouths, even as--so says a claimant to knowledge--thirteen earthquakes are always busy, somewhere in the world, at every moment of the day.
Gwen could never give up the attempt, having got thus far. But she could see that hints were useless. "I think I can tell you," said she. And then she pitied the dawn of bewilderment on the unconscious face before her, even while she tried to fortify herself with the thought that what she had to tell was not bad in itself--only a revelation of a lost past.... Well--why not let it go? Dust and ashes, dead and done with!...
But this vacillation was short-lived.
Mrs. Thrale's bewilderment found words. "You can ... _tell_ me!" she said, not much above a whisper. How could she hint at calling her ladyship's words in question, above her breath?
Gwen, very pale but collected, rose to the occasion. "I can tell you what has come to my knowledge about Mrs. Prichard's history. I cannot doubt its correctness." It crossed her mind then that the telling of it would come easier if she ignored what knowledge she had of the other twin sister. So far as Widow Thrale knew, there was nothing outside what had come to light through this incident. She went steadily on, not daring to look at her hearer. "Mrs. Prichard was one of two sisters, whose father owned a flour-mill near London. She married, and her husband committed forgery and was transported. He was sent to Van Diemen's Land--the penal settlement." Gwen looked up furtively. No sign on the unconscious face yet of anything beyond mere perplexity! She resumed after the slightest pause:--"His young wife followed him out there"--she wanted to say that a child of four was left behind, but her courage failed her--"and lived with him. He was out of prison on what is called ticket-of-leave."
She looked up again. Still no sign! But then--consider! Ruth Thrale had always been kept in the dark about the convict. Gwen could not know this, and was puzzled. Was there, after all, some other solution to the problem? Anyhow, there was nothing for it now but to get on. "She lived with him many years, and then, for some reason or other, we can't tell what, he forged a letter from her father in England, saying that her sister and her husband and her own child that she had left behind were all drowned at sea."
At this point Gwen was quite taken aback by Mrs. Thrale saying:--"But they were _not_ drowned?" It stirred up a wasps' nest of perplexities. A moment later, she saw that it was a question, not a statement. She herself had only said the letter was forged, not that it contained a lie. How could she vouch for the falsehood of the letter without claiming knowledge prematurely, and rushing into her disclosure too quickly? An additional embarrassment was that, when again she looked up at her hearer, she saw no sign of a clue caught--not even additional bewilderment; rather the reverse.
She could, however, reply to a question:--"Mrs. Prichard believed that they were, and continued to believe it. My father, whom I have told all about it--all that I know--is of opinion that her husband managed to prevent her receiving letters from her sister, and destroyed those that came, which would have shown that she was still alive."