"What's the other reason?"
"He told me his mother's name. But I am not free to tell it, by reason I promised not to."
This struck the doctor as odd. "How came you to be talking to a stray tramp about his mother, Granny Marrable?" he asked shrewdly.
"Because he took me for his mother, and would have it I should know him." This was no doubt included in what she had promised not to tell, but the question had taken her by surprise.
A light broke on Dr. Nash. All through the interview he had been wondering at himself for never having before observed the likeness between the two old women, which he now saw plainly by the light of the information Gwen had given him. He might have seen it before, had he heard of the gipsy's mistake, but Ruth Thrale had never mentioned this.
He remembered, too, in Gwen's story, some slight reference to a son of Mrs. Prichard who was a _mauvais sujet_. He determined on a daring _coup_. "Are you sure Mrs. Prichard is not the mother he was looking for?" said he.
Granny Marrable was struck with his cleverness. "Now, how _ever_ did you come to find _that_ out, doctor?" said she.
"We're a clever lot, us doctors! We've got to be clever.... Let's see, now--where are we? Mrs. Prichard has a son who is called by your brother-in-law's name, but who is _not_ your sister's son. Because if he were, Mrs. Prichard would be your sister. Which is impossible. But Mrs.
Prichard has got muddled about her own identity, and thinks she is. What can we do to cure such a delusion? I've seen a great deal of this sort of thing--I've had charge of lunatics--and the only thing I know of for the case is to stimulate memory of the patient's actual past life. But we know nothing about Mrs. Prichard. Who the dickens _is_ Mrs.
Prichard?"
Granny Marrable had looked really pleased at the _reductio ad absurdum_--always exhilarating when one knows what's impossible--but looked perplexed over Mrs. Prichard's real identity. "No, indeed, poor dear soul!" she said. "'Tisn't as if there was any would tell us about her."
"I have found, and so has your daughter, that she goes back and back in these dreams of her own childhood, which no doubt are made up of ...
which no doubt may have been told her by ..." He stopped intentionally.
He wanted to stagger her immobility by making her recite the nonsense about Mrs. Prichard's informants.
She was quite amenable. "By little Davy," said she contentedly.
"And what she had from your sister in Australia, years ago," said the doctor, and saw her content waver. He had his clue, and resolved to act on it. "For instance, Mr. Muggeridge's gallivantings. You're sure you never told the child?"
"Sure?... Merciful gracious me! _That_ baby?"
"And how you and she measured the mill-model? That _must_ have come from your sister."
She started. "What was that?" she said. "You never told me."
He did not look at her--only at his watch. He really had to be off, he said, but would tell her about the measurements. Thought she knew it before. He went on to narrate the incident referred to, which is already familiar to the story. Then he got up from his chair as though to take leave. If this did not land the suspicion of the truth in her unreceptive mind, it could only be done by a sort of point-blank directness that he shrank from employing, and that he had made it difficult to adopt by his implied pretence of unconcern. He would sooner, if that was to be the way of it, come to her at the outset as the herald of something serious, and ask her to prepare herself for a great shock. His manner had not pointed to an open operation, and such a variation of it would be the sudden production of the knife. Perhaps the dentist is sometimes right who brings his pliers from behind his back when the patient fancies he is only scouting; but he runs a risk, always. Dr. Nash was not at all confident in this case.
But he could venture a little farther with mere suggestion. "Certainly,"
said he, "it is a very curious phase of delusion, that this old lady should go back on a statement of your sister's, made a lifetime ago, to no apparent end. But the whole subject of the action of the brain is a mystery." He looked up at his hearer's face.
She was sitting motionless, with a sort of fixed look. Had he injured her--struck at the heart of her understanding? Well, it had got to come, for better, for worse. Moreover, the look implied self-command. No, he need not be frightened.
"What strikes me about this arm-measurement," said he, "is the strength of her conviction. If she had only _spoken_ of it, well! But to get up, at six in the morning, the day after she saw it!"
The old lady's eyes met his. "Why arm-measurement?" she asked, speaking quite steadily and clearly.
"Because that was the way it was done. I don't know if I described it right. Look here--it was like this...." He took her right wrist, as he stood facing her, with his left hand. "You stretch out your fingers straight," said he, and brought the tip of the middle finger of his own right hand to meet hers. "Now, what Mrs. Prichard fancies she remembers--what your sister told her in Australia, you know--is that you and she, being girls, tried the length of your two arms together on the top of the mill-case, from the elbow down. Just like ours now." He determined to make the most of this incident, for his impression was that her mind was already in revolt against the gross improbability of her sister having dwelt on it to a new acquaintance in the Colony. He had made Mrs. Prichard linger over the telling of it; it was such a strange phase of delusion. In fact, he had said to himself that it must be a genuine memory, ascribed to the wrong persons. He went on to a cold-blooded use of her minutest details, still keeping the hand he held in his. "You see, Mrs. Prichard's point was this--don't take your hand away; I haven't quite done with it--her point was that your arm and your sister's were exactly of a size...."
"We were twins."
"Precisely. And your two little paws, being young kids, or youngish...."
"We were just children. I mind it well. 'Twas a sort of game, to see how our hands grew. But...."
"Let me finish. This old woman, when she went touring about to have a look at the model that had given her such a turn overnight, found that her own arm was well two-thirds the length of it, and something over.
She was cocksure the two small arms only just covered it, because unless one cheated and pushed her elbow over the edge, your middle fingers wouldn't jam and go cleck--like this.... That's why I wanted your hand for--that'll do!... There was such a funny name she called it by--the finger-tips jamming, I mean...."
Granny Marrable was pressing the released hand on her eyes and forehead.
"You fairly make my head spin, doctor, digging up of old-time memories.
But whatever was the funny name? Can't ye recollect?"
"It was sheer gibberish, you know...."
"Can't ye call the gibberish to mind?" This was asked earnestly, and made Dr. Nash feel he was on the right tack.
"One can't speak positively to gibberish. The nearest I can go to the word Mrs. Prichard used is"--the doctor paused under the weight of his responsibility for accuracy--"the, nearest, I, can, go is ...
_spud-clicket_." He waited, really anxiously. If, rather than admit a suspicion of the truth, she could believe that such a piece of infant jargon could dwell correctly for decades in the mind of a chance hearer, she could believe anything.
He was utterly taken aback when equable and easy speech, with a sound of relief in every word, came from lips which he thought must at least be tremulous. "Well--there now! Doesn't that show? Only Maisie _could_ have told her that word. It's all right. But I'm none so sure, mind you, that I could have remembered it right, myself."
It seemed perfectly hopeless. So said the doctor to himself. Surely, in this long interview, he had tried all that suggestion could do to get a fulcrum to raise the dead weight of conviction that years of an accepted error had built up undisturbed. How easy it would have been had the tale of Daverill's audacious fraud been a few months old; or a few years, for that matter! It was that appalling lapse of time.
What could the doctor do to carry out his rash promise to Lady Gwendolen, more than what he had done? He was already overdue at the house of another patient, three miles off. The alternatives before him were:--To rush the position, saying, "Look here, Granny Marrable, neither you nor your sister are dead, but you were each told of the other's death by the worst scoundrel God ever made." To do this or to throw up the sponge and hurry off to his waiting patient! He chose the latter. After all, he had striven hard to fulfil his promise to her young ladyship, and only been repulsed from an impregnable fortress. But he would have a parting shot.
"You must be very curious to see this queer old Mrs. Prichard, Mrs.
Marrable?" said he.
The old lady did not warm up to this at all. "Indeed, doctor, if I tell the truth, I could not say I am. For to hear the poor old soul fancy herself my sister, dead now five-and-forty years and more! Not for the pain to myself, but for the great pity for a poor demented soul, and no blessed Saviour near to bid the evil spirit begone. No, indeed--I will hope she may be well on her way home before ever I return to Strides.
But my daughter says she'll be loath to part with her, so I'm not bound to hurry back."
"Well--I rather hope she'll stop on long enough for you to get a sight of her. You would be interested.... There's the postman." For they were standing at the farm-gate by this time, leading into the lane.
"Yes, it be John Barlow on his new mail-cart. He's brought something for the farm, or he wouldn't come this way.... Good-evening to you, John Barlow!... What--three letters! And one of them for the old 'oman.... So 'tis!--'tis a letter from my little man Davy, bless his heart!"
"One fower th' ma'aster," said Mr. Barlow's strong rustic accent. "One fower th' mistress. And one fower the granny. It be directed Strides, but Widow Thrale she says, 'Ta'ak it along, to moother at Costrell's.'
And now ye've gotten it, Granny Marrable."
"There's no denying that, Master John. I'll say good-bye, doctor." But what the letter-carrier was saying caught her ear, and she paused before re-entering the house, holding the letters in her hand.
"There was anoother letter for th' Cottage, the vairy fetch of yowern, Granny, all but th' neam. Th' neam on't was Mrs. Picture, and on yowern Mrs. Marrowbone, and if th' neam had been sa'am on both, 'twould have ta'aken Loondon Town to tell 'em apart."
"And you left one at the Cottage, and brought the other on here? Was that it? Sharp man!" The doctor was pulling on his thick driving-gloves, to depart. Granny Marrable was opening her letter already. "Bless the boy," said she, "he's writing to both his Grannies with the same pen, so they may not be jealous!"
"You may call me a sha'arp ma'an for soomat else, doctor," said Mr.
Barlow, locking his undelivered letters into the inner core of the new mail-cart. "This time I be no cleverer than my letters. 'Twas Joe Kerridge's wife, next dower the cottage, said, 'Ta'ak it on to the Granny at Dessington.' And says I to her, 'They'm gotten the sa'am yoong ma'an to write 'em love-letters,' I says. 'You couldn't tell they two letters apart, but for the neams on 'em.' And then Mrs. Lisbeth she says to me, 'Some do say they have to keep their eyes open to tell the old la'adies apart,' she says. 'But I'm anoother way o' thinking mysen,' she says, 'by reason of this Mrs. Prichard's white head o' hair.' And then I handed all the letters to Lisbeth for Strides, as well as her own, seeing ne'er one came out at door for knocking, and brought yowern on with Farmer Costrell's." Mr. Barlow had been spoken of in the village more than once as a woundy chatterbox.
The doctor glanced at Granny Marrable to see how she had taken the reference to her resemblance to Mrs. Prichard, but was just too late to see her face. She had turned to go into the house, and the only evidence he had that it had perturbed her at all was that she said good-night to no one. He felt that he had more than fulfilled his promise to Lady Gwendolen, having done everything short of forcing the pace. His other patient was no doubt already execrating him for not coming to time, so he drove off briskly; at least, so his pony flattered himself. Ideas of speed differ.
The horse whose quick step the doctor heard overhauling him, about a mile on his road, had another ideal, evidently. It did not concern him; so he ignored it until, as its nearer approach caused him to edge close to the margin of the narrow road, the voice of its driver shouted to him, and he pulled up to see why. Perhaps Mr. Barlow, the shouter, had lighted on an overlooked letter for him, and had preferred this method of delivery.
"They're asking for ye ba'ack at t' hoose--ba'ack to Costrell's Varm....