When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 67

"I don't think it's any use my looking, my dear. What letters does it look most like?"

"Why!--here's an M, and a U, and a C, and an E, and an R, and an I, and a J. That's a word by itself. 'Mucerij.' But what word can he mean? _It_ can't be _mucilage_; that's impossible! I thought it might be _museum_ at first, as it was to be shown. But it's written too plain, in a big round hand--all in capitals. What _can_ it be?" And Gwen sat there puzzling, turning the word this way and that, looking all the lovelier for the ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt on her face at the absurd penmanship of the neophyte.

Poor dear Dave! With the clearest possible perception of the name Muggeridge, when spoken, he could go no nearer to correct writing of it than this! He could hardly have known of the two G's, from the sound; but the omission of the cross-bar from the one that was _de rigueur_ was certainly a _lapsus calami_, and a serious one. The last syllable was merely phonetic, and unrecognisable; but the G that looked like a C was fatal.

It was an odd chance indeed that brought this name, or its distortion, to challenge recognition at this moment, when the thought of its owner had just pa.s.sed off the mind that might have recognised it, helped by a slight emendation. The story dwells on it from a kind of fascination, due to the almost incredible strangeness of these two sisters' utter unconsciousness of one another, and yet so near together! It was almost as though a mine were laid beneath their feet, and this memory of a name floated over it as a spark, and drifted away on a wind of chance to be lost in a s.p.a.ce of oblivion. However, sparks drift back, now and again.

This conversation over Dave's letter had no peculiar interest for either speaker, over and above its mere face-value, which was of course far greater for the elder of the two. Gwen deciphered it to the end, laughing at the writer's conscientious efforts towards orthography. But when the end came, with an attestation of affectionate grandsonship that roused suspicions of help from seniors, so orthodox was the spelling, she consigned the missive to its envelope after very slight revision of points of interest. But she would talk a little about Dave too, in deference to his other granny's solicitude about him. That was the source of her own interest in what was otherwise a mere recollection of an attractive _gamin_ with an even more attractive sister.

It was part of the embarra.s.sment consequent on her own headstrong creation of an anomalous social position, that Gwen could not decide, nominally omnipotent as she was in her parents' absence, on telling the servants to serve her dinner in the room Mrs. Picture occupied. Had it not been for her suspicion of a hornet's nest at hand, she might have dared to ordain that Mrs. Picture should be her sole guest in her own section of the Towers, or at least that she herself should become the table-guest of the old lady in Francis Quarles; "might have," not "would have," because Mrs. Picture's own feelings had to be reckoned with.

Might she not be embarra.s.sed, and overweighted by too emphatic a change of circ.u.mstances? Indeed, had Gwen known it, she was only tranquil and contented with things as they were in the sense in which one who pa.s.ses through a dream is tranquil and contented. It was the quietude of bewilderment, alive to grat.i.tude.

Uncertainty on this point co-operated with the possible hornet's nest, and sent Gwen away to a lonely evening meal in her own rooms; for nothing short of a suite of apartments was allotted to any inmate of importance at the Towers. She had to submit to a banquet of a kind, if only as a measure of conciliation to the household. But, the banquet ended, she was free to return and take coffee with her _protegee_. She had no objection to talking about her lover to Mrs. Picture, rather welcoming the luxury of speaking of her marriage with him as a thing already guaranteed by Fate.

"When we are married," said she, "I mean to have that delicious old house we saw on the hill. That's why I wanted to show it to you. It's all nonsense about the ghost. I dare say the Roundheads murdered the ghost there--I mean the woman the ghost's the ghost of--but she wouldn't appear to me. Ghosts never do. Did you ever see one?... But you wouldn't be in the house. You would be at a sweet little cottage just close, which is simply one ma.s.s of roses. You and Dolly. And Mrs. Burr." Mrs.

Burr was thrown into attend to the _menage_.

Old Mrs. Picture did not quite know what to say. She had found out instinctively that perpetual grat.i.tude had its drawbacks for the receiver as well as the giver. So she said, diffidently:--"Wouldn't it cost a great deal of money?"

"Cost nothing," said Gwen. "The place belongs to my father. It's all very well for people, that mind ghosts, not to live in it. But I don't see why that should apply to Mr. Torrens and me."

"Doesn't he mind ghosts?"

"Not the least." She was going to say more, but was stopped, by danger ahead. The chances of his seeing, or not seeing, a ghost, could hardly be discussed. The old lady probably felt this too, for she seemed to keep something back.

Her next words showed what it had been, in an odd way. "Is he not to see?" she said, speaking almost as if afraid of the sound of her own words.

Gwen's answer came in a hurried undertone:--"Oh, I dare not think so. He _will_ see! He _must_ see!" Her distress was in her fingers, that she could not keep still, as well as in her voice. She rose suddenly, crossed the room to the window, and stood looking out on the darkness.

Presently she turned round, esteeming herself mistress of her strength again, and hoping for the serenity of her companion's old face, and its still white hair, to help her. Old Maisie could not shed a tear now on her own behalf. But ... to think of the appalling sorrow of this glorious girl! Gwen did not return to her seat; but preferred a footstool, at the feet of the dear old lady, whose voice was heart-broken.

"Oh, my dear--my dear! That he should never see _you_!... never!...

never!" The golden head with all its wealth was in her lap, and the silver of her own was white against it as she spoke. No such tears had yet fallen from Gwen's eyes as these that mixed with this old woman's, the convict's relict--the convict's mother--from Sapps Court.

An effort against herself, to choke them back, and an ignominious failure! A short breakdown, another effort, and a success! Gwen rose above herself, morally triumphant. The beautiful young face, when it looked up, a.s.sorted well with the words:--"This is all cowardice, dear Mrs. Picture. He _has_ seen, though it was only a few seconds. The sight is there. And look what Dr. Merridew said. His eyes might be as strong as they had ever been in his life."

Then followed reflections on the pusillanimity of despair, the duty of hoping, and an attempt on Gwen's part to forestall a possible shock to the old lady should she ever come to the knowledge of Adrian's free opinions. She wanted her to think well of her lover. But she could not conscientiously give him a character for orthodoxy. She took refuge in a position which is often a great resource in like cases, ascribing to him an intrinsic devoutness, a hidden substantial sanct.i.ty compatible with the utmost lat.i.tudes of heterodoxy; a bedrock of devout gneiss or porphyry hidden under a mere alluvium of modern freethinking; a reality--if the truth were known--of St. Francis of a.s.sisi behind a mask of Voltaire. Her hearer only half followed her reasoning, but that mattered little, as she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a.s.sent to anything Gwen advanced, with such beautiful and earnest eyes to back it.

"It's a great deal too far to drive you over to see him," said Gwen. "It would knock you to pieces--eighteen miles each way! It's over two hours and a half in the carriage, even when the roads are not muddy. The mare got me there in an hour and three-quarters the other day, but you couldn't stand that sort of thing. I'm going again in the gig to-morrow.... Oh no!--not till eleven o'clock. I shall come and sit with you and see all comfortable before I go. I shall get there at lunch. How do you get on with Masham?" This was asked with a pretence of absence of misgiving, and the response to it was a testimonial to Mrs. Masham, rather overdone. Gwen extenuated Mrs. Masham. She had known Masham all her life, and she really was a very good woman, in spite of her caps. As for her expanse, it was not her fault, but the hand of Nature; and her black jet ringlets were, Gwen believed, congenital.

But the next clock was going to say ten, however inaccurately. In fact, a little one, in a hurry, got its word in first, and was condemned by a reference to Gwen's repeater, which refused to go farther than nine.

She, however, rang up Masham, of whose voice, _inter alias_, she had been half-conscious in the distance for some time past; and who gave the impression of having recently shown a proper spirit.

"She'll be better in bed, I think, Masham. She's had such a tiring day.

It was my fault. I was rather afraid at the time. I suppose she'll be all right. She gets everything she wants, I suppose?"

"I beg your ladyship's pardon!"

"She gets everything she wants?"

"So far as comes to my knowledge, my lady. Touching wishes not expressed, I could not undertake to say." Mrs. Masham bridled somewhat, and showed signs of having a right to feel injured. "If your ladyship would make inquiry, and satisfy yourself...." Then something would be revealed in the service of Truth. Only she did not finish the sentence.

It was Gwen's way to accept every challenge. "Is her bed nice and warm?"

said she, going straight to a point--the nearest in sight, for this took place within view of the bed in question, seen through a half-open door.

Prudence would have waived investigation, but Gwen's prudence was never at home when wanted. She ought not to have accepted the housekeeper's suggestion that she could satisfy herself by an autopsy. The comfort of this couch, warm or cold, was already leagues above its occupant's wildest conception of luxury. What must her ladyship do but say:--"Yes, thank you, Masham, I'll feel for myself." And there, if that young hussy, Lupin, hadn't sent the hot bottle right down to the end!

This version of the incident, gathered from a subsequent communication of the housekeeper, will be at once intelligible to all but the very few to whom the hot bottle is a stranger. _They_ have not had the experience so many of us are familiar with, of being too short to reach down all that way, and having either to wallow under the coverlids like a Kobold, or untuck the bed, and get at the remote bottle like a paper-knife.

Probably this bottle's prominence in the unpleasantness that germinated among the servants who remained at the Towers after the departure of the Earl and Countess was due to the extreme impalpability of other grievances. It was something you could lay hold of; and was laid hold of, for instance, by Miss Lutwyche, to flagellate Mrs. Masham. "At any rate," said that severe critic, "what I took charge of, that I would act up to. When I undertook the old party in Cavendish Square, she was kept warm, and no playing fast and loose with bottles. And she didn't give offence, that I see, but seemed"--here her love of new expressions came in, tending to wards superiority--"but seemed of an accommodating habit." This expression was far from unfortunate, and it was owing to the disposition so described that old Maisie, as soon as she was fully aware that she had been the unintentional cause of strained relations in the household, became very uncomfortable; and, much as she loved the beautiful but headstrong creature that had taken such a fancy to her, felt more than ever that the sooner she returned to her own proper surroundings the better.

Gwen returned to her own quarters after a certain amount of good-humoured fault-finding, having listened to and made light of many expressions of contrition from the old lady that she should have occasioned what Miss Lutwyche afterwards spoke of as just so much uncalled-for hot water. Gwen's youth and high spirits, and her supreme contempt for the petty animosities of the domestics, made it less easy for her to understand the feelings of her old guest, and the rather anomalous position in which she had placed her. She thought she had said all she need about it when she warned Mrs. Picture not to be put out by Mrs. Masham and Lutwyche's nonsense. Servants were always like that.

Bother Mrs. Masham and Lutwyche!

The latter, however, when a.s.sisting her young mistress to retire for the night--an operation which takes two when a young lady of position is cast for the leading part--was eloquent about the hot water, which she said no doubt prevailed, but appeared to her entirely unwarranted. Her account of the position redounded to her own credit. Hers had been the part of a peace-maker. She had made the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. The substratum of everybody else's character was also excellent, but human weakness, to which all but the speaker were liable, stepped in and distorted the best intentions. If only Mrs. Masham did not give away to the sharpness of her tongue, a better heart did not exist. Mr. Norbury might frequently avoid misunderstandings if an acute sense of duty and an almost startling integrity of motive were the only things wanted to procure peace with honour in a disturbed household. But that was where it was. You must have Authority, and a vacillating disposition did not contribute to its exercise. In Mr. Norbury a fatal indecision in action and a too great sensitiveness of moral fibre paralysed latent energies of a high order which might otherwise have made him a leader among men. As for the girls, the dove-like innocence of inexperience, so far as it could exist among a lot of young monkeys, was responsible for _their_ contribution to the hot water. A negligible quant.i.ty of a trivial ingredient! Young persons were young persons, and would always remain so--an enigmatical saying. As for the French Cook, Napoleon de Souchy, he was in bed and knew nothing about it. Besides, he went next day. He had, in fact, gone by the same train as the Earl, travelling first-cla.s.s, and had been taken for his lordship at Euston, which hurt his vanity.

To this revelation Gwen listened with interest, hoping to hear more precisely what the row was about. Why hot water at all, if uncalled for?

As she had not expected to hear much, she was very little surprised to hear nothing. She pictured the att.i.tude in action of Miss Lutwyche, whom she knew well enough to know that she would coax history in her own favour. The best of lady's-maids cannot be at once a Tartar and an Angel. Gwen surmised that in the region of the servants' common-room and the kitchen Miss Lutwyche would show so much of the former as had been truly ascribed to her, whereas she herself would only see the latter.

The worst of it was that her old lady, being within hearing, would know or suspect the dissensions she was the innocent cause of, and would be uncomfortable. She must say or do something, consolatory or rea.s.suring, to-morrow. She fretted a little, till she fell asleep, over this matter, which was really a trifle. Think of the thing she had seen that day, that she was so profoundly unconscious of--the two sisters whose lips met last a lifetime ago; whose grief, each for each, had nearly died of time!--think of the two of them, then and there, face to face in the daylight! But they too slept, that night, old Maisie and old Phoebe, as calm as Gwen; and as safe, to all seeming, in their ignorance.

Would it not be better--thought thinks, involuntarily--that they should remain in this ignorance, through the little span of Time still left them, in a state which is a best decay? Would it not be best that the few hours left should run their course, and that the two should either pa.s.s away to nothingness and peace, as may be, or--as may be too, just as like as not--wake to a wonder none can comprehend, an inconceivable surprise, a sudden knowledge what the whole thing meant that must seem, if they come to comprehend it now, a needless cruelty? If they--and you and I, in our turn--are to be nothing, mere items of the past lost in Oblivion, why not spare them the hideous revelation of the many, many years of might-have-been, when the same sun shone unmoved on each, even marked the hours for them alike, each unseen by the other, each beyond the sound of the other's speech, the touch of the other's hand? Why should either now, at the eleventh hour, come to know of the audacious fraud that made them strangers?

But why--why anything, for that matter? Why the smallest pain, the greatest joy? What end does either serve, but to pa.s.s and be forgotten.

What is left for us but the bald consolation of imaging a form for the Supreme Power--one like ourselves by preference--and a concession to it.... _Fiat voluntas tua!_ It doesn't really matter _what_ form, you see! The phantasmata vary, but the invisible what?--or who?--remains the same. Gloria in excelsis Deo, nomine quocunque!

CHAPTER V

HOW MRS. PICTURE SPOILED OLD PHOEBE'S DREAM, BUT WAS A NICE OLD SOUL, TO LOOK AT. PARSON DUNAGE's MOTHER. A CLOCK THAT STRUCK, BETWEEN TWO TWINS. HOW TOBY DID NOT WAKE, AND KEZIAH SOLMES CAME NEXT DAY FOR HIM. THE WICKED MAN WHO DID IT AGAIN, AND HIS RESEMBLANCE TO TOBY. THE COATINGS OF THE LATTER'S STOMACH. MRS.

LAMPREY. COLONEL WARRENDER AND THE PHEASANTS. HOW WIDOW THRALE AND KEZIAH WENT TO SEE AN OLD SOUL NEXT DAY. A RETROSPECULATION.

SUPPOSE WIDOW THRALE HAD BEEN TOLD! ON IMPROBABILITY, IMPOSSIBILITY, INCREDIBILITY, AND MAISIE's PILGRIMAGE TO A GRAVE SHE NEVER FOUND. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, JOHN, AND THEIR IRRELEVANCE

"'Tis pity she could not stop!" said Granny Marrable in the course of evening chat with the niece, who was scarcely thought of as anything but a daughter, by even the oldest village gossips. Indeed, when we reflect that little Ruth Daverill, now Widow Thrale, was under four when her mother tore herself from her to rejoin her husband, it is little wonder that she should take the same view of her own parentage. For one thing, there was the twinship between the mother and aunt. The child under four can have seen little difference between them.

The pen almost shrinks from writing Widow Ruth's reply to old Phoebe, so plainly did it word her ignorance of who this was that she had seen two hours since. "Who, mother? Oh, the old person! Ay, but she has a kind heart, has Gwen." This was not disrespectful familiarity. All the villagers in those parts, talking among themselves, gave their christened names to the Earl's family. The moment an outsider came in, "The Family" consisted entirely of lordships and ladyships.

But how strange, that such a speech--actually the naming of a mother by a daughter--should be so slightly spoken, in an ignorance so complete!

Granny Marrable's thought, of the two, dwelt more on "the old person"; whose ident.i.ty, as Dave's other Granny, had made its impression on her.

Otherwise, for all she had seen of her, it might have pa.s.sed from her mind. Also, she was grieved about that mutton-broth. The poor old soul had just looked worn to death, and all that way to drive! If she had only just swallowed half a cup, it would have made such a difference. It added to Granny Marrable's regret, that the mutton-broth had proved so good. The old soul had pa.s.sed on unrefreshed even while Strides Cottage was endorsing that mutton-broth.

The Granny quite fretted over it, not even the beautiful fur tippet Sister Nora had sent her having power to expel it from her mind. And, quite late, nigh on to midnight, she woke with a start from a dream she had had; it set her off talking again about old Mrs. Picture. For it was one of this old lady's vices that she would sit up late and waste a deal of good sleep out of bed in that venerable arm-chair of hers.

"There now, Ruth," said she, "I was asleep again and dreaming." For she never would admit that this practice was an invariable one.

"What about, mother?" said Widow Thrale.