When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 109

Her own letter to him was:--"The enclosed has come for you. I write this in pencil because I cannot find any ink." It was a little stroke of genius worthy of her correspondent's father. Nothing but clairvoyance could have bred suspicion in him. Micky reappeared that evening in Sapps Court, and found an opportunity to convey to Aunt M'riar that he had obeyed his instructions. He did so with an air of mystery and an undertone of intelligence, saying briefly:--"That party, missis! She's got the letter."

"Did you give it her?" said Aunt M'riar.

"I see to it that she got it," said Micky with reserve. "You'll find it all correct, just as I say." This att.i.tude was more important than the bald, unqualified statement that he had left the letter when he fetched the beer, and Micky enjoyed himself over it proportionately.

Aunt M'riar was easier in her mind, as she felt pretty confident that the letter would reach its destination. She had killed two birds with one stone--so she believed. She had saved Daverill from the police, so far at least as their watchfulness of Sapps Court was concerned, and had also saved Uncle Mo from possible collision with him, an event she dreaded even more than a repet.i.tion of those hideous interviews with a creature that neither was nor was not her husband; a thing with a spurious ident.i.ty; a horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own life had once been grafted. Could woman think a worse thought of man than hers of him, when she thanked G.o.d that at least the only fruit of that graft had been nipped in the bud? And yet no such thought had crossed her mind in all these years in which he had been to her no more than a memory. A memory of a dissolute, imperfect creature--yes! but lovable enough for all that. Not indeed without a sort of charm for any pa.s.sing friend, quite short of any spell akin to love. How could this monstrous personality have grown upon him, yet left him indisputably the same man? The dreadful change in the ident.i.ty of the maniac--the maniac proper, the victim of brain-disease--is at least complete; so complete often as to force the idea of possession on minds reluctant to receive it. This man remained himself, but it was as though this ident.i.ty had been saturated with evil--had soaked it up as the sponge soaks water.

There was nothing in the old self M'riar remembered to make her glad his child was not born alive. There was everything in his seeming of to-day to make her shudder at the thought that it might have lived.

The cause of the change is not far to seek. He had lived for twenty years in Norfolk Island as a convict; for fourteen years certainly as an inmate of the prisons, even if a period of qualified liberty preceded his discharge and return to Sydney. He was by that time practically d.a.m.ned beyond redemption, and his brilliant career as a bushranger followed as a matter of course.

Those who have read anything of the story of the penal settlements in the early part of last century may--even _must_--remember the tale told by the Catholic priest who went to give absolution to a whole gang of convicts who were to be hanged for mutiny. He carried with him a boon--a message of mercy--for half the number; for they had been _pardoned_; that is to say, had permission now to live on as denizens of a h.e.l.l on earth. As it turned out, the only message of mercy he had to give was the one contained or implied in an official absolution from sin, and it is possible that belief in its validity occasioned the outburst of rejoicing that greeted its announcement. For there was no rejoicing among the recipients of His Majesty's clemency--heart-broken silence alone, and chill despair! For they were to remain on the rack, while their more fortunate fellows could look forward to a joyous gallows, with possibilities beyond, from which h.e.l.l had been officially excluded.

It is but right to add that the Reverend Father did _not_ ascribe the exultant satisfaction of his clients--if that is the word--to anything but the antic.i.p.ation of escape from torture. He was too truthful.

If the nearest dates the story has obtained are trustworthy, Daverill's actual term in Norfolk Island may have been fourteen years; it certainly came to an end in the early forties. But he must have been there at the time of the above incident, as it happened _circa_ 1836-37. The powers of the sea-girt tropical Paradise to sterilise every Divine impulse must have been at their best in his time, and he seems to have been a favourable subject for the _virus_ of diabolism, which was got by Good Intentions out of Expediency. The latter must have been carrying on with Cowardice, though, to account for Respectability's choice, for her convicts, of an excruciating life rather than a painless death. Possibly the Cowardice of the whole Christian world, which accounts Death the greatest of possible evils.

The life of a bushranger in New South Wales, which fills in the end of his Australian career, did not tend to the development of any stray germ of a soul that the prison-fires had not scorched out of old Maisie's son. Small wonder it was so! Conceive the glorious freedom of wickedness unrestrained, after the stived-up atmosphere of the gaol, with its maddening Sunday chapel and its hideous possibilities of public torture for any revolt against the unendurable routine. We, nowadays, read with a shudder of the enormities that were common in the prisons of past times--we, who only know of their modern subst.i.tutes. For the last traces of torture, such as was common long after the _moyen age_, as generally understood, have vanished from the administration of our gaols before a vivified spirit of Christianity, and the enlightenment consequent on the Advance of Science.[A] After fourteen years of such a life, how glorious must have been the opportunities the freedom of the Bush afforded to an instinctive miscreant, still in the prime of life, and artificially debarred for so long from the indulgence of a natural bent for wickedness; not yet _ennuye_ by the monotony of crime in practice, which often leads to a reaction, occasionally accompanied by worldly success. There was, however, about Daverill a redeeming point.

He was incorrigibly bad. He never played false to his father the Devil, and the l.u.s.ts of his father he did do, to the very last, never disgracing himself by the slightest wavering towards repentance.

[Footnote A: This appears to have been written about 1910.]

Probably his return from Sydney to England was as much an escape from his own a.s.sociates in crime, with whom some dishonourable transactions had made him unpopular, as a flight from the officers of Justice. A story is told, too intricate to follow out, of a close resemblance between himself and a friend in his line of business. This was utilised ingeniously for the establishment of alibi's, the name of Wix being adopted by both. Daverill had, however, really behaved in a very shady way, having achieved this man's execution for a capital crime of his own. Ibbetson, the Thames police-sergeant whose death he occasioned later, was no doubt in Sydney at this time, and may have identified him from having been present at the hanging of his counterpart, whose protestations that he was the wrong man of course received no attention, and whose attempt to prove an alibi failed miserably. Daverill had supplied the defence with a perfectly fict.i.tious account of himself and his whereabouts at the time of the commission of the crime, which of course fell to pieces on the testimony of witnesses implicated, who knew nothing whatever of the events described.

There is no reason whatever to suppose that a desire to see his mother again had anything to do with his return. The probability is that he never gave her a thought until the money he had brought with him ran out--or, more accurately, the money he got by selling, at a great sacrifice, the jewels he brought from Australia sewed into the belt he wore in lieu of braces. The most valuable diamond ring should have brought him thousands, but he had to be content with hundreds. He had drawn it off an amputated finger, whose owner he left to bleed to death in the bush. It had already been stolen twice, and in each case had brought ill-luck to its new possessor.

All this of Daverill is irrelevant to the story, except in so far as it absolves Aunt M'riar of the slightest selfish motive in her conduct throughout. The man, as he stood, could only be an object of horror and aversion to her. The memory of what he had once been remained; and crystallized, as it were, into a fixed idea of a sacramental obligation towards a man whose sole claim upon her was his gratification at her expense. She had been instructed that marriage was G.o.d's ordinance, and so forth; and was _per se_ reciprocal. She had sacrificed herself to him; _therefore_ he had sacrificed himself to her. A halo of mysterious sanct.i.ty hung about her obligations to him, and seemed to forbid too close an a.n.a.lysis of their nature. An old conjugation of the indicative mood, present tense, backed by the third person singular's capital, floated justifications from Holy Writ of the worst stereotyped iniquity of civilisation.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW GWEN STAYED AWAY FROM CHURCH, BUT SENT HER LOVE TO LADY MILLICENT ANSTIE-DUNCOMBE. HOW TOM MIGHT COME AGAIN AT FIVE, AND GAVE MRS. LAMPREY A LIFT. NOT EXACTLY DELIRIUM. THE BLACK WITCH-DOCTOR. WERE DAVE AND DOLLY ALL TRUE? WHAT GWEN HAD TO PRETEND. DAVE'S OTHER LETTER. STARING FACTS IN THE FACE. GWEN'S COMPARISON OF THE TWINS. MIGHT GWEN SEE THE AUSTRALIAN LETTER? OLD KETURAH'S HUSBAND THE s.e.xTON. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE AND RUTH WENT TO CHURCH, BY REQUEST, AND HOW RUTH SAW THE LIKENESS. HOW OLD MAISIE COULD NOT BE EVEN WITH UNCLE NICHOLAS. CHAOS. HOW OLD MRS. PICTURE RECEIVED DAVE'S INVITATION TO TEA. JONES'S BULL

"You'll have to attend divine service without your daughter, mamma,"

said Gwen, speaking through the door of her mother's apartment, _en pa.s.sant_. It was a compliance with a rule of domestic courtesy which was always observed by this singular couple. A sort of affection seemed to maintain itself between them as a legitimate basis for dissension, a luxury which they could not otherwise have enjoyed. "I'm called away to my old lady."

"Is she ill?"

"Well--Dr. Nash has written to say that I need not be frightened."

"But then--why go? If he says you need not be frightened?"

"That's exactly why I'm going. As if I didn't understand doctors!"

"I knew you wouldn't come to Church. Am I to give your love to Lady Millicent Anstie-Duncombe if I see her, or not? She's sure to ask after you."

"Some of it. Not too much. Give the rest to Dr. Tuxford Somers." The Countess's suggestion of entire despair at this daughter was almost imperceptible, but entirely conclusive.

"Well--he's married! Why shouldn't I?"

"As you please, my dear!"

The Countess appeared to decline further discussion. She said:--"Don't be very late--you are coming back to lunch, of course?"

"If I can. It depends."

"My dear! With Sir Spencer Derrick here, and the Openshaws!"

"I'll be back if I can. Can't say more than that! Good-bye!" And the Countess had to be content. The story is rather sorry for her, for it _is_ a bore to have a lot of guests on one's hands, without due family support.

The grey mare's long stride left John Costrell's fat cob a mile behind, in less than two. Her hoofs made music on the hard road for another two, and then were _a.s.sourdi_ by a swansdown coverlid of large snowflakes that disappointed the day's hopes of being fine, and made her sulky with the sun, extinguishing his light. The gig drew up at Strides Cottage in a whitening world, and Tom Kettering had to b.u.t.ton up the seats under their oilskin pa.s.senger-cases, in antic.i.p.ation of a long wait.

But Tom had not a long wait, for in a quarter of an hour after her young ladyship had vanished into Strides Cottage, she returned, telling him she was going to be late, and should not want him. He might drive back to the Towers, and--stop a minute!--might give this card to her mother.

She scribbled on one of her own cards that she would not be back to lunch, and told Tom he might come again about five. Tom touched his hat as a warrior might have touched his sword-hilt.

Widow Thrale, who had accompanied Gwen, and returned with her into the house, was the very ghost of her past self of yesterday morning.

Twenty-four hours ago she looked less than her real age by ten years; now she had overpa.s.sed it by half that time at least. So said to Tom Kettering a young woman with a sharp manner, whom he picked up and gave a lift to on his way back. Tom's taciturnity abated in conversation with Mrs. Lamprey, and he really seemed to come out of his Trappist seclusion to hear what she had to tell about this mystery at the Cottage. She had plenty, founded on conversations between the doctor and his sister, whose housekeeper you will remember she was.

"Why--I'd only just left Widow Thrale when you drove past. Your aunt she stayed till ever so late last night,"--Tom was Mrs. Solmes's nephew--"and went home with Carrier Brantock. Didn't you see her?"

"Just for a word, this morning. She hadn't so much to tell as you'd think. But it come to this--that this old Goody Prichard's own sister to Granny Marrable. Got lost in Australia somehow. Anyhow, she's there now, at the Cottage. No getting out o' that! Only what bothers me is--how ever she came to turn up in her sister's house, and ne'er a one of 'em to know the other from Queen Anne!"

"We've got to take that in the lump, Thomas. I expect your Aunt Keziah she'll say it was Providence. I say it was just a chance, and Dr. Nash he says the same. You ask him!"

Tom considered thoughtfully, and decided. "I expect it was just a chance," said he. "Things happen of theirselves, if you let 'em alone.

Anyhow, it hasn't happened above this once." That was a great relief, and Tom seemed to breathe the freer for it.

"I haven't a word to say against Providence," said Mrs. Lamprey. "On the contrary I go to Church every Sunday, and no one can find fault. So does Dr. Nash, to please Miss Euphemia. But one has to consider what's reasonable. What I say is:--if it was Providence, what was to prevent its happening twenty years ago? Nothing stood in the way, that I see."

Tom shook his head, to show that neither did he see what stood in the way of a more sensible and practical Divine ordination of events. "Might have took place any time ago, in reason," said he. "Anyhow, it hasn't.

It's happened now." Tom seemed always to be seeking relief from oppressive problems, and looking facts in the face. "I'm not so sure,"

he continued, abating the mare slightly to favour conversation, "that I've got all the scoring right. This old lady she went out to Australia?"

"Yes--fifty years ago." Mrs. Lamprey told what she knew, but not nearly all the facts as the story knows them. She had not got the convict incidents correctly from the conversation of Dr. Nash with his sister.

Remember that he had only known it since yesterday morning. Mrs.

Lamprey's version did not take long to tell.

"What I look at is this," said Tom, seeming to stroke with his whiplash the thing he looked at, on the mare's back. "Won't it turn old Granny Marrable wrong-side-up, seeing her time of life. Not the other old Goody--she's been all the way to Australia and back!" This only meant that nothing could surprise one who had such an experience. As to the effect on Granny Marrable, Mrs. Lamprey said no--quite the reverse. Once it was Providence, there you stuck, and there was no moving you! There was some obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine interposition, you stood committed to a controversial att.i.tude which would render you an obstructive to liberal thought.

This little conversation was presently cut short by Mrs. Lamprey's arrival at her destination, a roadside inn where she had an aunt by marriage.