"Now Lard a mercy, doctor, whatever do ye take me for? And all these years you've known me! Only the _idea_ of it!--to tell a young child that story! Why--what would the baby have thought I meant? Fie for shame of yourself, that's what _I_ say!" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke immensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a tale of nuptial infidelity! She took her great-grandson into her confidence about it, asking him:--"Did they say his great-grandmother told shocking stories to innocent little boys?"--and so forth.
The doctor had to interpose upon this utter unconsciousness, and the task was not altogether an easy one; indeed, its difficulties seemed to him to grow. He let her have her laugh out, and then said quietly:--"But where did Mrs. Prichard get the story?"
Granny Marrable had lost sight of this, and was disconcerted.
"What--why--yes--where _did_ she get it? Mrs. Prichard, of course! Now, wherever could Mrs. Prichard have got it?..." It called for thought.
Dr. Nash's idea was to give facts gradually, and let them work their own way. "Perhaps she knew Mr. Muggeridge herself," said he. "When did he die?"
"Mercy me, doctor, where's the use of asking _me_? Before _you_ were born, anyhow! That's him, a man of forty, with the horses and me a child under ten! Seventy years ago, and a little to spare!"
"_That_ cock won't fight, then. As I make out, old Mrs. Prichard didn't come from Van Diemen's Land above five-and-twenty years ago."
"_Where_ did Mrs. Prichard come from?"
"From Van Diemen's Land. In Australia. Where the convicts go."
"There now! Only to think of that! Why--I see it all!" Granny Marrable seemed pleased.
"What do you see, Mrs. Marrable?" The doctor was puzzled. He had quite expected that at this point suspicion of the facts _must_ dawn, however dimly.
"Because that is where my dear sister was, that died. Oh, so many long years ago!" Whenever old Phoebe mentioned Maisie, the same note of pathos came in her voice. The doctor felt he was operating for the patient's sake; but it would be the knife, without an anaesthetic. He had not indefinite time to spare for this operation.
"I am going to ask what will seem a very absurd question," said he, in the dry, professional manner in which he was wont to intrude upon his patients' private internal affairs. "But you must remember I am an outsider--quite in the dark."
A slight puzzled look on the strong old face before him, with--yes--a faint suspicion of alarm! But oh, how faint! Perhaps he was mistaken, though. For Granny Marrable let no sign of alarm come in her voice, if she felt any. "What were ye wishing to be told, doctor?" she cheerfully said. "If it's a secret, I won't tell it ye. You may take my word for that."
He fixed his eyes attentively on her face. "You are absolutely certain,"
said he, "that the news of your sister's death was ..." He was going to say "authentic," but was arrested by an ebullition of unparalleled fury in the baby, who became fairly crumpled up with indignation, presumably at being unable to hold more than a definite amount of milk. It was a case that called for the promptest and humblest apologies from the human race, represented by his great-grandmother. She had assuaged the natural exasperation of two previous generations, and had the trick of it. He subsided, accepting as his birthright a heavenly sleep, with dreams of further milk.
Then Granny Marrable, released, looked the doctor in the face, saying:--"'That the news of my sister's death was?...'" and stopped for him to finish the sentence.
"Authentic," said he. He did not know whether her look meant that she did not understand the word, and added:--"Trustworthy."
"I know what you mean," she said. "Go on and say why?"
The doctor was fairly frightened at his own temerity. Probably the difficulties of his task had never fully dawned upon him. Would it not be safer to back out of it now, leaving what he had suggested to fructify? He would have fulfilled his promise to Lady Gwendolen, and made it easier for her to word the actual disclosure of the facts. "I was merely trying to think what anyone would say who wanted to make out that this old Mrs. Prichard was not under a delusion."
"The poor old soul! What would they say, indeed?" This was no help.
Commiseration of Mrs. Prichard was not the doctor's object. But the position was improved when she added:--"But there's ne'er a one _wants_ to make it out."
He thought of saying:--"But suppose there were!" and gave it up, knowing that his hearer, though fairly educated, would regard hypotheses as intense intellectual luxuries, prized academically, but without a place in the sane world without. He decided on saying:--"Of course, you would have documentary evidence." Then he felt that his tone had been ill-chosen--a curfew of the day's discussions, a last will and testament of the one in hand.
So it was, for the moment. Granny Marrable wanted the subject to drop.
On whatever pretext it was revived, the story of her sister's life and death was still painful to her. But "documentary evidence" was too sesquipedalian to submit to without a protest. "I should have her husband's letter," said she, "telling of her death."
"Yes, you would have his letters."
"There was but two." Her intense truthfulness could not let that plural pass. "He was a strange man--and a bad one, doctor, if ye want to know--and he never wrote to me again, not after answering my letter I wrote to tell him of my father's death. But I've a long letter from him, saying how Maisie died, and her message to me, giving me--like you might say--her girl for my own. That is my Ruth, you know, at Strides Cottage, this little man's own granny. But I've never heard his name since ...
not till ... not till ..."
"What's the matter? Anything wrong?" For Granny Marrable had stopped with a jerk, and her look was one of the greatest bewilderment. The memory of the name the madman who said he was Mrs. Prichard's son had given her as his own had come upon her with a sudden shock, having--strangely enough--been dormant throughout this interview. She was confronted with a host of perplexities, which--mark you!--had no possible solution except the one her mind could not receive, and which therefore never presented itself at all.
"Indeed, doctor, I think I be bewitched outright," said she. "I never was so put to it, all the days of my life.... No, don't ye ask me no questions! I haven't the liberty to tell above half of it, and maybe better say nothing at all."
"I see--matter of confidence! Well--I mustn't ask questions." This was really because he was certain the answer would come without asking.
Granny Marrable would never let the matter drop, with that look on her face.
So it turned out. In a moment she looked up from the baby, whom she had been redistributing, to his advantage. "I'll tell ye this much, doctor,"
she said. "There was a crazy man in yonder field near by, when I was coming back from Jane Naunton's--just a few days since...."
"I've heard of him."
"What do they say of him?"
"I only heard the police were after him. Go on."
"Well--the name he called himself by was my sister's husband's, and he said he came from Australia."
"That might be, and no witchcraft. When did your sister die?"
"Five-and-forty--six-and-forty--years ago!"
"Any children left? Boys?"
"Boys?--Lord, no! At least, yes--two boys! What I mean is, not by this name."
"What were the boys' names?"
"One, I call to mind, was Isaac. For Maisie wrote me what work she had to persuade her husband to the name...." She had meant to say more, giving reasons why, but changed her speech abruptly. "The youngest boy's name I let slip. But I know it was never this name that man gave me."
"You remember it near enough for that?"
Granny Marrable's intense truthfulness would not allow margins.
"No--it's clean slipped my memory, and I could not make oath I never knew it. It was all out of reach, beyond the seas."
"That seems reasonable. Five-and-forty years! Now, can I remember anything as long back as that?... However, I was two, so that doesn't count."
"Maisie's son never bore this name. That's out of doubt!"
"Why?"
"Because her first was christened by it, and died at Darenth Mill, after ... after his father went away."
"Roger Trufitt's son is Roger. But both his brothers who died before he was born were named Roger. There's no law against it. You know old Trufitt, the landlord at the Five Bells? He says that if this son died, he would marry again to have another and call him Roger. He's a very obstinate man, old Trufitt."
Granny Marrable sat silent while the doctor chatted, watching her changes of countenance. Her conscience was vacillating. Could she interpret her oath of silence as leaving her free to speak of the convict's claim to Mrs. Prichard as a parent? The extenuation of bad faith would lie in the purely exceptional nature of the depository of her secret. Could a disclosure to a professional ear, which secrets entered every day, be accounted "splitting"? She thought she saw her way to a limited revelation, which would meet the case without breach of confidence.
"Maybe!" said she, putting old Trufitt out of court. "But I can tell ye another reason why he's no son of my sister's. Though he might be, mind you, a son of her husband. My brother-in-law, most like, married again.
How should I know?"