Noa, noa, doctor--'tis the old Granny, not the yoong wench. She's gone off in a sowart of fayunt."
Dr. Nash turned his pony's head without a word, nodded and started. Mr.
Barlow called out, as Parthian information, as many particulars as he thought would be audible, and sped on his course, to stand and deliver at every cottage on the route susceptible to correspondence.
"She was looking queer," said the doctor to himself, stimulating his pony's concept of a maximum velocity. "But I never thought of this. The Devil fly away with the Australian twin! Why couldn't she wait six weeks?"
He was immensely relieved to find the old lady sitting up, with her granddaughter applying vinegar to her forehead. She was discountenancing this remedy, or any remedy, as needless, in an unconvincingly weak voice. She would come round if left to herself. She rallied her forces at sight of the doctor, rather resenting him as superfluous. However, his knowledge of the cause of her upset made him an ally, a fact she probably became aware of. He suggested, after exhibiting two or three drops of hartshorn in a wineglass of water, that she should be taken at her word.
While she came round, left to herself in the big armchair, with her eyes shut and a pillow to lean back on, Maisie the granddaughter told her tale--the occurrence as she had seen it. Hearing the doctor's sounds of departure, she had discontinued a fiction of repose--not admitted as fiction, however--to come down and see what on earth Granny and he had been talking their tongues off for. Granny was reading her letter from Dave Wardle, and just the moment she saw her, gave a cry and fell back in her chair; whereon Maisie, running out, told Mr. Barlow to catch the doctor and send him back, then returned to her grandmother. She herself did not seem seriously upset, though much puzzled and surprised.
The doctor saw something. "Where's the letter?" said he.
"Here on the baby," said Mrs. Maisie. And there on the baby, enjoying, in a holy sleep, deep draughts of imaginary milk, was Dave's large round-hand epistle.
The doctor glanced at it, and had the presence of mind to say:--"Ho!--letter from a kid!" and suppress it. "Your Granny wants something," said he, diverting Mrs. Costrell's attention from it. The old lady was rallying visibly. She was, in fact, making an heroic struggle against a sudden overwhelming shock.
Recent theories of a double consciousness--an inner self--that have been worked hard of late years to account for everything Psychology is at a loss about, might be appealed to to throw light on the changes in Granny Marrable's state of mind in this past hour. Although to all appearance the whole of Dr. Nash's efforts to put it on the track had been thrown away, some of the forces his suggestions had set in motion had told upon it; and, just as a swift, mysterious impatience in the few clouds of a blue sky, and a muttered omen from Heaven-knows-what horizon, precedes the thunder-clap that makes us run for shelter, so this underself of hers may have vibrated in response to the strange hints he had thrown out, and become susceptible to an impression from Mr.
Barlow's reference to her likeness to Mrs. Prichard, which otherwise would have slipped off it like water off a duck's back. We have to consider how in those happy years of her youth this almost indistinguishable twinship of the sisters had been a daily topic with all their near surroundings. To hear herself spoken of as a duplicate again, after fifty years, carried with it an inexplicable thrill. Oh, how the hours came trooping back from those long-forgotten days of old, each with its appeal to that underself alone; which she, the old Phoebe of this living world, suspected only to disallow! How she might have let the memories of the old mill and the ever-running wheels; of the still backwater where she failed to see the heron she could even now hear her sister's sweet voice calling to her to come--come quickly to!--or she would miss it; of that dear vanished sister's sweet beauty she could dwell upon, forgetful that it also was her own,--how she might have let these memories run riot in her heart, and break it, but that the very thing that provoked them was also their profanation--Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage! Who or what was Mrs. Prichard? A poor old crazypate, a victim of delusions....
Yes, but _what_ delusions? That was the question her inner self could not ignore, however much her living mind might cancel it. She could run for shelter from it, but the storm would come. She flinched from hearing another word of Mr. Barlow's woundy chatter, and fled into the house, actually bearing in her hand the lightning-flash whose thunder-clap was in a moment to shake the foundations of her soul.
It came with a terrible suddenness when she read Dave's large, roundhand script. "MY DEAR GRANEY MAROBONE--Me and Dolly are so Glad because Gweng has been here To say Mrs. Picture is reely Your Cistern." This is as written first. Old Phoebe deciphered the corrections without illumination; sheltered, perhaps, by some bias of her inner soul to an idea that Mrs. Prichard was a second wife of her convict brother-in-law--a sort of washed-out sister-in-law. The child might have cooked it up out of that. It would explain many things.
Then came the thunderclap. "Gweng says Bad people told you bofe Lies heaps longer ago than dolly's birfday, so you bofe thort you was dead and buried." Straight to the heart of the subject, as perhaps none but a child could have phrased it. Granny Marrable's sight grew dim as she read:--"Gweng says you will be glad, not sory." Then she felt quite sick, and heard her granddaughter coming downstairs. How to tell her nothing of all this, how to pretend nothing was happening--that was what had to be done! But the world vanished as she fell back in her chair beside the cradle.
"Yes, Granny dear, what is it?... The letter?--oh, the doctor's got the letter. Does it matter?... Never mind the letter! You sit still! I must get you something. What shall I get for her, doctor?"
"Get me nothing, Maisie. I shall be all right directly...." And it really seemed as if she would. Indeed, her revival was amazingly sudden.
"I tell you what I should _like_," said she, quite firmly. "I should like a little air. Is not John come in?" John was Mr. Costrell, her grandson-in-law--the farmer.
"I think I just heard him, outside." Maisie had heard him drive up to the door, a familiar sound.
"Then let him drive me over to the Cottage."
"_Yes_," said the doctor, with emphasis. "Good idea!" And Maisie left the room to speak to her husband.
Then old Phoebe, on her feet now, and speaking clearly, with a strange ring of determination in her voice, said to him:--"Have you the young child's letter?" He drew it from his pocket. "If what that letter says is true, this is my sister Maisie, risen from the grave."
He marvelled at her strength. There was no need for reserve; he could speak plainly now. "The letter is all true, Mrs. Marrable," said he.
"Mrs. Prichard is your sister Maisie, but she is not risen from the grave. She is ill, and probably knows by now what you know, but for all the shock she has had, she may have years of life before her. You cannot do better than go to her at once. And remember that she will need all your strength to help her. For she is not strong, like you."
The old face relaxed from its tension, and a gleam of happiness was in the life of it. But she only said:--"Maisie": said it twice, as for the pleasure in the name. Then she held out her hand, to take the letter from the doctor.
He handed it to her. "I have been telling fibs, Mrs. Marrable," said he, "or using them, which is the same thing, in trying to tell you this.
You will forgive that, I know?" She nodded assent. "Shall I tell you the facts, as far as they are known to me?"
"Please!" She seemed well able to understand.
"Her husband was a damnable scoundrel...."
"He was."
"... And for some motive we can throw no light on, wrote two letters, one a forgery with your father's signature--a letter to his wife--saying that you, with your own husband and her child were drowned at sea. The other to yourself, telling you that she was dead in Australia."
The blank horror on old Phoebe's face remained in the doctor's memory, long after that. She just found voice to say:--"God help us all!" But there was no sign of another collapse, though he was watching for it.
He continued:--"He must have had some means of suppressing your letters to one another, to be safe in this deception...."
"He was the postmaster."
"Oh--was that it? Mrs. Costrell is coming back, and I shall have to stop.... But I must just tell you this. The whole story has come out through Lady Gwendolen Rivers, who is keenly interested in your sister."
Old Phoebe gave a visible start at this first mention of Mrs. Prichard's relationship as a certainty. It was like the bather's gasp when the cold water comes level with his heart. "Lady Gwendolen seems to have taken charge of the old lady's writing-desk in London, and his lordship, her father, it appears, opened and read them, having his suspicions...."
"Oh, but his lordship had the right...."
"Surely! No one would question his lordship's actions.... Here comes your granddaughter back. I must stop. But that is really the whole."
Mrs. Costrell came back to say that John was mending a buckle in the harness, but would be ready to drive Granny in a few minutes. How much better Granny was looking! What was it, doctor? It wasn't like Granny.
"Stomach, probably," said the doctor, resorting to a time-honoured subterfuge. "I'll send her something to take directly after meals."
"No, Maisie," said the old lady, somewhat to the doctor's surprise. "You shall not be told any stories, with my consent. I've had a piece of news--a blessed piece of news as ever came to an old woman!--and it gave me a jump. But I shan't tell ye a word of it yet a while. Ye may just be busy over guessing what it is till I come back." The doctor was obliged to confess to himself that this was a wonderful stroke of policy on the old lady's part, and resolved to back it up through thick and thin.
But although the young wife's good-humoured face showed every sign of rebellion against her arbitrary exclusion from the enjoyment of this mystery, her protest had to stand over. For baby waked up suddenly in a storm of rage, and called Heaven and Earth to witness the grievous injury and neglect of his family in not being ready with a prompt bottle. The doctor hurried away to that patient, and what sort of reception he got the story can only imagine. It hopes the case was not urgent.
The last he saw that day of Granny Marrable was her back, almost as upright at eighty as the young farmer's beside her at thirty, just starting on the short journey that was to end in such an amazing interview. His thought for a moment was how he would like to be there to see it! Reconsideration made him say to himself:--"Well, now, should I?"
CHAPTER XVII
HOW LADY ANCESTER CALLED ON LADY TORRENS, WHO WAS KEEPING HER ROOM.
BUT SHE SAW THE BART. A QUEER AND TICKLISH INTERVIEW. MAURICE AND KATHLEEN TYRAWLEY. NO NEED FOR HUMBUG BETWEEN _US_! THE COUNTESS'S GROUNDS FOR OPPOSING THE MARRIAGE. HOW ADRIAN, WITH EYES IN HIS HEAD, WOULD HAVE BEEN MOST ACCEPTABLE. BUT HOW ABOUT JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER? OUGHT WE, THOUGH, TO MEDDLE BETWEEN YOUNG LOVERS? AN AWKWARD TOPIC. HOW ROMEO _DIDN'T_ FEEL, ABOUT _HIS_ EX-JULIET! HOW COUNTY PARIS MIGHT HAVE WASHED, AND ROSALINE MIGHT HAVE MARRIED A POPULAR PREACHER. THE SAME LIPS. THE COUNTESS'S COURAGE. A GOOD SHAKE AND NO FLINCHING. CHRISTIAN-NAMING UNDER TUTELAGE. HOW SIR HAMILTON INDULGED IN A FIRESIDE REVERIE OVER HIS PAST, AND HIS SON AND DAUGHTER CAME BACK. HOW MISS SCATCHERD HAD BEEN SEEN BY BOTH. A FLASH OF EYESIGHT, AND HOPE. HOW THE SQUIRE TOOK THE NEXT OPPORTUNITY THAT EVENING. CUPID's NAME NOT DANIEL. WHAT AN IMAGE OF THE COUNTESS SAID TO ADRIAN
Sir Hamilton Torrens is at home, because when a messenger rode from the Towers in the morning with a note from the Countess to say that her ladyship was driving over to Poynders in the afternoon, and could manage a previous visit at Pensham by coming an hour earlier, his wife instructed him that it would never do for him to be absent, seeing that there was no knowing how indisposed she herself might be. There never is, with nerve cases, and she was a nerve case. So Sir Hamilton really must arrange to stay at home just this one afternoon, that Lady Ancester's visit should not be absolutely sterile. If the nerve case's plight and Sir Hamilton's isolation were communicated to her on her arrival, she could choose for herself whether to come in or go on to Poynders. She chose to come in and interview Sir Hamilton. So consider that the lady of the house is indisposed, and is keeping her room, and that the blind man and his sister, and Achilles, have gone to visit a neighbour.
The Countess was acting on her resolution made in the train to be a free lance. She had been scheming an interview with Adrian's father before the next meeting of the lovers, if possible; and now she had caught at the opportunity afforded by her daughter's absence at Chorlton. Hers was a resolution that deserved the name, in view of its special object--the organizing and conduct of what might be a most embarrassing negotiation, or effort of diplomacy.
These two, three decades back, had behaved when they met like lovers on the stage who are carried away by their parts and forget the audience.
Unless indeed _they_ had an audience, in which case they had to wait, and did it with a parade of indifference which deceived no one.
And now! Here was the gentleman making believe that the lady was bitterly disappointed at not seeing his amiable wife, who was, after all, only the Miss Abercrombie he married at about the same time that she herself became a Countess. And here was she adding to an insincere acceptance of the position of chief mourner a groundless pretext that the two or three decades were four or five--or anything you please outside King Memory's Statutes of Limitations!--and those endearments too long ago to count. And that the nerve case upstairs, if you please, had no existence for her ladyship as the Miss Abercrombie she heard Hamilton was engaged to marry, and felt rather curious about at the time, but was a most interesting individuality, saturated with public spirit, whose enthusiasm about the Abolition of Slavery had stirred her sympathetic soul to the quick.
Endless speculation is possible over the feelings of a man and woman so related, coming together under such changed circumstances, without the lubricant to easy intercourse of the presence of others. The Countess would not have faced the possible embarrassments, but would have driven on to her cousin's house, Poynders, if she had not had a specific purpose. As it was, it was the very thing she wanted, and she welcomed it. She had the stronger position, and was prepared for all contingencies.