When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 6

If the daylight were not so short in October at Chorlton-under-Bradbury, in Rocestershire, that month would quite do for summer in as many autumns as not. As it is, from ten till five, the sun that comes to say goodbye to the apples, that will all be plucked by the end of the month, is so strong that forest trees are duped, and are ready to do their part towards a green Yule if only the midday warmth will linger on to those deadly small hours of the morning, when h.o.a.rfrost gets the thin end of its wedge into the almanack, and sleepers go the length of coming out of bed for something to put over their feet, and end by putting it over most of their total. From ten till five, at least, the last swallows seem to be reconsidering their departure, and the skylarks to be taking heart, and thinking they can go on ever so much longer. Then, not unfrequently, day falls in love with night for the sake of the moonrise, and dies of its pa.s.sion in a blaze of golden splendour. But the memory of her does not live long into the heart of the night, as it did in the long summer twilights. Love cools and the dews fall, and the winds sing dirges in the elms through the leaves they will so soon scatter about the world without remorse; and then one morning the gra.s.s is crisp with frost beneath the early riser's feet, and he finds the leaves of the ash all fallen since the dawn, a green, still heap below their old boughs stript and cold. And he goes home and has all sorts of things for breakfast, being in England.

But no early riser had had this experience at Chorlton-under-Bradbury on that October afternoon when Dave Wardle, personally conducted by Sister Nora, and very tired with travelling from a distant railway-station--the local line was not there in the fifties--descended from the coach or omnibus at the garden gate of Widow Thrale, the good woman who was going to feed him, sleep him, and enjoy his society during convalescence.

The coach or omnibus touched its hat and accepted something from Sister Nora, and went on to the Six Bells in High Street, where the something took the form of something else to drink, which got into its head. The High Street was very wide, and had more water-troughs for horses than recommended themselves to the understanding. But they might have succeeded in doing so before the railway came in these parts, turning everything to the rightabout, as Trufitt phrased it at the Bells. There were six such troughs within a hundred yards; and, as their contents never got into the horses' heads, what odds if there were? When the world was reasonable and four or five horns were heard blowing at once, often enough, in the high road, no one ever complained, that old Trufitt ever heard tell of. So presumably there were no odds.

Widow Thrale lived with an old lady of eighty, who was also a widow; or, one might have said, even more so, seeing that her widowhood was a double one, her surname, Marrable, being the third she had borne. She was, however, never called Widow Marrable, but always Granny Marrable; and Dave's hostess, who was to take charge of him, was not her daughter, as might have seemed most probable, but a niece who had filled the place of a daughter to her and was always so spoken of. What an active and vigorous octogenarian she was may be judged from the fact that, at the moment of the story, she was taking on herself the task of ushering into the world her first great-grandchild, the son or daughter--as might turn out--of her granddaughter, Maisie Costrell, the only daughter of Widow Thrale. For this young woman had ordained that "Granny" should officiate as high-priestess on this occasion, and we know it is just as well to give way to ladies under such circ.u.mstances.

So when Dave and Sister Nora were deposited by the coach at Strides Cottage, it was Widow Thrale who received them. She did not produce on the lady the effect of a _bona-fide_ widow of fifty-five--this description had been given of her--not so much because of the non-viduity of her costume, for that was temperate and negative, as because Time seemed to have let his ravages stand over for the present.

Very few casual observers would have guessed that she was over forty-five. Ruth Thrale--that was her name in full--had two sons surviving of her own family, both at sea, and one daughter, Maisie Costrell aforesaid. So she was practically now without inc.u.mbrances, and terribly wanting some to kiss, had hit upon the expedient of taking charge of invalid children and fostering them up to kissing-point. They were often poor, wasted little articles enough at the first go off, but Mrs. Ruth usually succeeded in making them succulent in a month or so.

It was exasperating, though, to have them go away just as they were beginning to pay for fattening. The case was a.n.a.logous to that of an ogress balked of her meal, after going to no end of expense in humanised cream and such-like.

All the ogress rose in her heart when she saw our little friend Dave Wardle. But she was very careful about his stiff leg. Her eyes gleamed at the opportunities he would present for injudicious overfeeding--or suppose we say stuffing at once and have done with it. A banquet was ready prepared for him, to which he was adapted in a chair of suitable height, and which he began absorbing into his system without apparently registering any date of completion. You must not imagine he had been stinted of food on the journey: indeed, he may be said to have been taking refreshment more or less all the way from London. But he was one of the sort that can go steadily on, converting helpings into small boy, apparently without intermediate scientific events--gastric juice and blood-corpuscles, and so forth. He was able to converse affably the while, accepting suggestions as to method in the spirit in which they were given. In reporting his remarks the spelling cannot be too phonetical; if unintelligible at first, read them literally aloud to a hearer who does not see the letterpress. The conversation had turned on Dave's accident.

"Oy sawed the firing gin coming, and oy said to stoarp, and the firing gin didn't stoarpt, and it said whoy--whoy--whoy!" This was an attempt to render the expressive cry of the brigade; now replaced, we believe, by a tame bell. "Oy sawed free men shoyning like scandles, and Dolly sawed nuffink--no, nuffink!" The little man's voice got quite sad here.

Think what he had seen and Dolly had missed!

Mrs. Ruth was harrowed by what the child must have suffered. She expressed her feelings to Sister Nora. Not, however, without Dave catching their meaning. He was very sharp.

"It hurted at the Hospital," said he. That is, the accident itself had been too sudden and overwhelming to admit of any estimate of the pain it caused; the suffering came with the return of consciousness. Then he added, rather inexplicably:--"It didn't hurted Dolly."

Sister Nora, looking with an amused, puzzled face at the small absurdity, a.s.similating suitable nourishment and wrestling with his mother-tongue at its outset, said:--"Why didn't it hurted Dolly, I wonder?" and them illuminated:--"Oh--I see! It balances Dolly's account.

Dolly was the loser by not seeing the fire-engine, but she escaped the accident. Of course!" Whereupon the ogress said with gravity, after due reflection: "I think you are right, ma'am." She then pointed out to Dave that well-regulated circles sit still at their suppers, whereas he had allowed his feelings, on hearing his intelligibility confirmed, to break out in his legs and kick those of the table. He appeared to believe his informant, and to determine to frame his behaviour for the future on the practices of those circles. But he should have taken his spoon out of his mouth while forming this resolution.

He then, as one wishing to entertain in Society, went on to detail his experiences in the Hospital, giving first--as it is always well to begin at the beginning--the names of the staff as he had mastered them. There was Dr. Dabtinkle, or it might have been d.a.m.ned Tinker, a doubtful name; and Drs. Inkstraw, Jarbottle, and Toby. His hearers were able to identify the names of Dalrymple, Inglethorpe, and Harborough. They were at work on Toby, who defied detection, when it became evident that sleep was overwhelming their informant. He was half roused to be put in a clean nightgown that smelt of lavender, and then curled round his hands and forgot the whole Universe.

"What a nice little man he is!" said Sister Nora. "He's quite a baby still, though he's more than six. Some of the London children are so old. But this child's people seem nice and old-fashioned, although his uncle was a prizefighter."

"Laws-a-me!" said Mrs. Ruth. "To think of that now! A prizefighter!" And she had to turn back to Dave's crib, which they were just leaving, to see whether this degraded profession had set its stamp on her prey....

No, it was all right! She could gloat over that sleeping creature without misgiving.

"I've just thought who Toby is," said Sister Nora. "Of course, it's Dr.

Trowbridge, the head surgeon. I fancy, now I come to think of it, the juniors are apt to speak of him without any Dr. I don't know why. I shall tell Dr. d.a.m.ned Tinker his name.... Oh no--he won't be offended."

Sister Nora was driven away to the mansion of her n.o.ble relative, three miles off, in a magnificent carriage that was sent for her, in which she must have felt insignificant. Perhaps she got there in time to dress for dinner, perhaps not. Wearers of uniforms wash and brush up: they don't dress.

She reappeared at Mrs. Marrable's cottage two days later, in the same vehicle, accompanied by the Countess her aunt, who remained therein.

Dave was brought out to make her acquaintance, but not to be taken for a long drive--only a very short one, just up and down and round, because Sister Nora wouldn't be more than five minutes. He was relieved when he found himself safe inside the carriage with her, out of the way of her haughty and overdressed serving-men, whom he mistrusted. The coachman, Blencorn, was too high up in the air for human intercourse. Dave found the lady in the carriage more his sort, and told her, in Sister Nora's absence--she having vanished into the house--many interesting experiences of country life. The ogress had taken off his clean shirt, which he had felt proud of, and looked forward to a long acquaintance with; subst.i.tuting another, equally good, perhaps, but premature. She had fed him well; he gave close particulars of the diet, laying especial stress on the fact that he had requisitioned the outside piece, presumably of the loaf, but possibly of some cake. Her ladyship seemed to think its provenance less important than its destination. She was able to ident.i.ty from her own experience a liquid called scream, of which Dave had bespoken a large jug full, to be taken to Dolly on his return home. He went on to relate how he had been shown bees, a calf, and a fool with long legs; about which last the lady was for a moment at fault, having pictured to herself a Shakespearean one with a bauble. It proved to be a young horse, a very young one, whose greedy habits Dave described with a simple but effective directness. But he was destined to puzzle his audience by his keen interest in something that was on the mantleshelf, his description of which seemed to relate to nothing this lady's recollection of Strides interior supplied.

"What on earth does the little man mean by a water-cart on the mantelshelf, Mrs. Thrale?" said the Countess on leavetaking. The widow had come out to reclaim her young charge, who seemed not exactly indignant but perceptibly disappointed, at her ladyship's slowness of apprehension. He plunged afresh into his elucidation of the subject.

There _was_ a water-cart with four horses, to grind the flour to make the bread, behind a glast on the chimley-shelf. He knew he was right, and appealed to Europe for confirmation, more to reinstate his character for veracity than to bring the details of the topic into prominence.

"That is entirely right, my lady," said Widow Thrale, apologetic for contradiction from her duty to conscience on the one hand, and her reluctance to correct her superiors on the other, but under compulsion from the former. "Quite correct. He's chattering about my grandfather's model of his mill. He doesn't mean water-cart. He means water-mill. Only there's a cart with horses in the yard. It's a hundred years old. It's quite got between the child's mind and his reason, and he wants to see it work like I've told him."

"Yes," said Dave emphatically, "with water in the cistern." He stopped suddenly--you may believe it or not--because of a misgiving crossing his mind that he was using some of Sister Nora's name too freely. Find out where for yourself.

However, nothing of the sort seemed to cross anyone else's mind, so Dave hoped he was mistaken. His hostess proceeded to explain why she could not gratify his anxiety to see this contrivance at work. "I could show it to him perfectly well," she said, "only to humour a fancy of Granny's. She never would have anyone touch it but herself, so we shall have to have patience, some of us." Dave wondered who the other spectators would be when the time came--would the Countess be one of them? And would she get down and come into the house, or have it brought out for her to see in the carriage?

Mrs. Thrale continued:--"I should say it hadn't been set a-going now for twenty years.... No, more! It was for the pleasuring and amus.e.m.e.nt of my little half-brother Robert she made it work, and we buried him more years ago than that." And then they talked about something else, which Dave did not closely follow, because he was so sorry for Mrs. Thrale. He could not resist the conviction that her little half-brother Robert was dead. Because, if not, they surely never would have buried him. He was unable to work this out to a satisfactory conclusion, because Sister Nora was waiting to resume her place in the carriage, and he had no sooner surrendered it to her than the lateness of the hour was recognised, and the distinguished visitors drove away in a hurry.

Although Mrs. Marrable had gone away from home ostensibly to welcome into the world a great-grandchild, the announcement that one had arrived preceded her return nearly a week. Other instances might be adduced of very old matriarchs who have imagined themselves Juno, as she certainly did. Juno, one may reasonably suppose, did not feel free to depart until matters had been put on a comfortable footing. Of course, the G.o.ddess had advantages; omnipresence, for instance, or at least presence at choice. One official visit did not monopolize her. Old Mrs.

Marrable--Granny Marrable _par excellence_--had but one available personality, and had to be either here or there, never everywhere! So Dave and another convalescent had Strides Cottage all to themselves and their ogress, for awhile.

The country air did wonders for the London child. This is always the case, and contains the truth that only strong children outlive their babyhood in London, and these become normal when they are removed to normal human conditions. Dave began becoming the robust little character Nature had intended him to be, and evidently would soon throw off the ill-effects of his accident, with perhaps a doubt about how long the leg would be stiff.

So by the time Granny Marrable returned into residence she was not confronted with an invalid still plausibly convalescent, but an eatable little boy, from the ogress point of view, who used a crutch when reminded of his undertaking to do so. Otherwise he preferred to neglect it; leaving it on chairs or on the settle by the fireplace, like Ariadne on Naxos; evidently feeling, when he was recalled to his duty towards it, as Theseus might have felt if remonstrated with by Minos for his desertion of his daughter. In reinstating it he would be acting for the crutch's sake. And why should he trouble to do this, when the other little boy, Marmaduke, who had nothing whatever the matter with _his_ leg, was always ambitious to use this crutch, or scrutch. He was the Dionysos of the metaphor.

However, the crutch was not in question when Dave first set eyes on Granny Marrable. It was at half-past seven o'clock on a cold morning, when the last swallow had departed, and the skylarks were flagging, and the tragedy of the ash-leaves was close at hand, that Dave awoke reluctantly from a remote dream-world with Dolly in it, and Uncle Mo, and Aunt M'riar, and Mrs. Picture upstairs, to hear a voice, that at first seemed Mrs. Picture's in the dream, saying: "Well, my little gentleman, you _do_ sleep sound!"

But it wasn't Mrs. Prichard's, or Picture's, voice; it was Granny Marrable's. For all her eighty years, she had walked from Costrell's farm, her great-grandson's birthplace, three miles off, or thereabouts; and had arrived at her own door, ten minutes since, quite fresh after an hour's walk. She was that sort of old woman.

Dave was almost as disconcerted as when he woke at the Hospital and saw no signs of his home, and no old familiar faces. He sat up in bed and wrestled with his difficulties, his eyelids being among the chief. If he rubbed them hard enough, no doubt the figure before him would cease to be Mrs. Picture, even as the other figure the dream had left had ceased to be Aunt M'riar, and had become Widow Thrale. Not but that he would have accepted her as Mrs. Picture, being prepared for almost anything since his accident, if it had not been for the expression, "My little gentleman," which quarrelled with her seeming ident.i.ty. Oh no!--if he rubbed away hard enough at those eyes with his nightgown-sleeve, this little matter would right itself. Of course, Mrs. Picture would have called him Doyvy, or the name he gave that inflection to.

"Child!--you'll rub your pretty eyes out that fashion," said Granny Marrable. And she uncrumpled Dave's small nightgown-sleeve the eyes were in collision with, and disentangled their owner from the recesses of his bedclothes. Then Dave was quite convinced it was not Mrs. Picture, who was not so nearly strong as this dream-image, or waking reality.

"He'll come awake directly," said the younger widow. "He do sleep, Granny!" For Widow Thrale often called her aunt "Granny" as a tribute to her own offspring. Otherwise she thought of her as "Mother." Her own mother was only a half-forgotten fact, a sort of duplicate mother, who vanished when she was almost a baby. She continued:--"He goes nigh to eating up his pillow he does. There never was a little boy sounder; all night long not a move! Such a little slugabed I never!" And then this ogress--for she really was no better--was heartless enough to tickle Dave and kiss him, with an affectation of devouring him. And he, being tickled, had to laugh; and then was quite awake, for all the world as if he could never go to sleep again.

"I fought," said he, feeling some apology was due for his misapprehension, "I fought it was old Mrs. Picture on the top-landing in the hackicks."

"He's asleep still," said the ogress. "Come along, and I'll wash your sleep out, young man!" And she paid no attention at all to Dave's attempted explanations of his reference to old Mrs. Picture or Prichard.

He may be said to have lectured on the subject throughout his ablutions, and really Widow Thrale was not to blame, properly speaking, when he got the soap in his mouth.

Dave lost no time in mooting the subject of the water-mill, and it was decided that as soon as he had finished dictating a letter he had begun to Dolly, Granny Marrable--whom he addressed as "Granny Marrowbone"--would exhibit this ingenious contrivance.

He stuck to his letter conscientiously; and it was creditable to him, because it took a long time. Yet the ground gone over was not extensive.

He expressed his affection for Dolly herself, for Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar, and subordinately for Mrs. Picture, and even Mrs. Burr. He added that there was ducks in the pond. That was all; but it was not till late in the morning that the letter was completed. Then Dave claimed his promise. He was to see the wheel go round, and the sacks go up into the granary above the millstones. It was a pledge even an old lady of eighty could not go back on.

Nor had she any such treacherous intention. So soon as ever the dinner-things were cleared away, Granny Marrable with her own hands lifted down the model off of the mantelshelf, and removing the gla.s.s from the front of the case, brought the contents out on the oak table the cloth no longer covered, so that you might see all round. Then the cistern--which after all had nothing to do with Sister Nora--was carefully filled with water so that none should spill and make marks, neither on the table nor yet on the mill itself, and then it was wound up like a clock till you couldn't wind no further and it went click. And then the water in the cistern was let run, and the wheels went round; and Dave knew exactly what a water-mill was like, and was a.s.sured--only this was a pious fiction--that the water made the wheels go round. The truth was that the clockwork worked the wheels and made them pump back the water as fast as ever it came down. And this is much better than in real mills, because the same water does over and over again, and the power never fails. But you have to wind it up. You can't expect everything!

Granny Marrable gave a brief description of the model. Her brother, who died young, made it because he was lame of one leg; which meant that enforced inactivity had found a sedentary employment in mechanisms, not that all lame folk make mills. Those two horses were Mr. Pitt and Mr.

Fox. That was her father standing at the window, with his pipe in his mouth, a miracle of delicate workmanship. And that was the carman, Mr.

Muggeridge, who used to see to loading up the cart.

Children are very perverse in their perception of the relative importance of things they are told, and Dave was enormously impressed with Mr. Muggeridge. Silent a.n.a.lysis of the model was visible on his face for awhile, and then he broke out into catechism:--"Whoy doesn't the wheel-sacks come down emptied out?" said he. He had not got the expression "wheat-sacks" right.

"Well, my dear," said Granny Marrable, who felt perhaps that this question attacked a weak point, "if it was the mill itself, they would.

But now it's only done in small, we have to pretend." Dave lent himself willingly to the admission of a transparent fiction, and it was creditable to his liberality that he did so. For though the sacks were ingeniously taken into the mill-roof under a projecting hood, they reappeared instantly to go up again through a hole under the cart. Any other arrangement would have been too complex; and, indeed, a pretence that they took grain up and brought flour down might have seemed affectation. A conventional treatment was necessary. It had one great advantage, too: it liberated the carman for active service elsewhere. It was entirely his own fault, or his employer's, that he stood bolt upright, raising one hand up and down in time with the movement of the wheels. The miller did not seem to mind; for he only kept on looking out of window, smoking.

But the miller and the carman were not the only portraitures this model showed. Two very little girls were watching the rising grain-sacks, each with her arm round the other. The miller may have been looking at them affectionately from the window; but really he was so very unimpressive--quite inscrutable! Dave inquired about these little girls, after professing a satisfaction he only partly felt about the arrangements for receiving the raw material and delivering it ground.

"Whoy was they bofe of a size?" said he, for indeed they were exactly alike.

"Because, my dear, that is the size G.o.d made them. Both at the same time!"

"Who worze they?" asked Dave, clinching the matter abruptly--much too interested for circ.u.mlocution.

"Myself, my dear, and my little sister, born the same time. With our lilac frocks on and white bonnets to shade the sun off our eyes. And each a nosegay of garden flowers." There was no more sorrow in the old woman's voice than belongs to any old voice speaking thoughtfully and gently. Her old hand caressed the crisp locks of the little, interested boy, and felt his chin appreciatively, as she added:--"Three or four years older than yourself, my dear! Seventy years ago!" with just the ring of sadness--no more--that always sounds when great age speaks of its days long past.