ilUfata, Nem ^ork 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013606292 
 
When Ghost meets Ghost 
 
BY THE SAMS AUTHOR 
 ALICE FOR SHORT 
 AN AFFAIR OF DISHONOUR 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 JOSEPH VANCE 
 A LIKELY STORY 
 SOMEHOW GOOD 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH 
 
 London : William Heinemann Ltd. 
 
When Ghost meets Ghost 
 
 By 
 
 William De Moro^an 
 
 Author of 
 
 " Joseph Vance," "Alice-for -Short," " Somehow Good," " It Never Can 
 
 Happen Again," " An Affair of Dishonour," " A Likely Story," etc. 
 
 London 
 William Heinemann Ltd. 
 
First iiuhlished, February, 1914 
 
 New Impressions, March, 1914 ; May, 1923 
 
 PRINTED m GREAT BRITAIN BV 
 BILLINO AND SONS, LTD., GOILDroRD AND ESHER. 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF FICTION 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAKT I. 
 
 CHAPTBR 
 
 O. 8APPS COITBT - 
 
 I. DAVE AND HIS FAMILY 
 
 II. A SHORTAGE OF MUD 
 
 III. DAVE'S ACCIDENT 
 
 IV. BACK FKOM THE HOSPITAL 
 V. MBS. PEICHAED 
 
 VI. THE STORY OF THE TWINS 
 VII. DAVB'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 
 
 vm. dave's return to sapps coxtrt 
 
 IX. A VERDICT OF DEATH BY DROWNING 
 
 X. AT THE TOWERS 
 XI. MR. PBLLBW AND MISS DICKENSON - 
 XII. THE MAN WHO WAS SHOT 
 Xm. AN INQUrEY FOB A WIDOW - 
 XIV. A SUCCESSI'UL CAPTUBE 
 XV. WHAT AUNT M'EIAR OVERHEABD 
 XVI. THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 
 XVII. HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 
 XVm. HOW GWBN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 
 
 xi3(. gwbn's veey bad night 
 
 XX. SLOW AND FAST APPROXIMATION 
 XXI. A EAPID ARRIVAL 
 XXII. A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 
 XXIII. gwbn's VISIT TO MRS. MAEEABLE - 
 XXrV. THE SLOW APPROXIMATION GOES SLOWLY ON 
 XXV. A GAME OF WHIST 
 XXVI.. HOW AUNT M'EIAE'S STOEY CAME OUT 
 
 XXVII. HOW SAPPS HEABD A VISITOR WAS COMING 
 
 XXVIII. GWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 
 XXIX. HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED - 
 
 XXX. gwbn's ACCOUNT OF THE CBASH 
 XXXI. MES. PIOTUBH AT CAVENDISH SQUAEE 
 XXXU. AT THE ZOOLOaiCAL 0ABDEN8 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART II. 
 
 OHAPTKB 
 
 I. AUNT M'KIAR'S HTTSBAND 
 11. OWEN'S VISIT TO PBNSHAM 
 
 III. HOW THE TWINS SAW BACH OTHER 
 
 IV. 14AISIE AT THE TOWBKS 
 V. MOTHBEWARDS IN THE DARK 
 
 VI. HOW MAISIB LOVED POMONA 
 VII. OWEN'S NIGHT FLIGHT TO LONDON 
 VIIL MAISIB AT STRIDES COTTAGE 
 IX. THE DtrTIEUL SON 
 
 X. Q wen's second VISIT TO SAPP8 COURT 
 XI. IN PARK LANE 
 XII. AN ENLIGHTENMENT - 
 XIII. HOW QWEN TOLD 3APPS COURT 
 
 xrv. Owen's return, and the task before her 
 
 XV. OWEN FACES THE MUSIC 
 XVI. DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 
 XVII. THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PBNSHAM 
 XVIII. WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 
 XIX. THE MEETING 
 XX. THE NIGHT AFTER THEY KNEW IT 
 XXI. SAPPS COURT AGAIN 
 XXIL STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 
 
 XXIII. G wen's VISIT TO PENSHAM 
 
 XXIV. PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 
 XXV. A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 
 
 XXVI. ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 
 XXVII. HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 
 XXVIII. HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 
 XXIX. A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 
 
 PAQB 
 
 401 
 425 
 442 
 457 
 475 
 488 
 506 
 513 
 526 
 544 
 659 
 580 
 593 
 609 
 62« 
 645 
 666 
 685 
 697 
 707 
 725 
 743 
 758 
 775 
 789 
 802 
 819 
 834 
 855 
 
 viii 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 A CONNECrmG-UNK BETWEEN THE WRITER AND THE STORY, 
 AMOUNTING TO VERY LITTLE. THERE WAS A COURT SOME 
 KFTY YEARS SINCE IN LONDON, SOMEWHERE, THAT IS NOW 
 NOWHERE. that's ALL ! 
 
 Some fifty years ago there still remained, in a street reachable 
 after inquiry by turning to the left out of Tottenham Court 
 Boad, a rather picturesque Court with an archway; which I, the 
 writer of this story, could not find when I tried to locate it the 
 other day. I hunted for it a good deal, and ended by coming 
 away in despair and going for rest and refreshment to a new-bom 
 teashop, where a number of young ladies had lost their indi- 
 viduality, and the one who brought my tea was callous to me and 
 mine because you pay at the desk. But she had an orderly soul, 
 for she turned over the lump of sugar that had a little butter 
 on it, so as to lie on the buttery side and look more tidy -like. 
 
 If the tea had been China tea, fresh-made, it might have 
 helped me to recollecting the name of that Court, which I am 
 sorry to say I have forgotten. But it was Ceylon and had stood. 
 However, it was hot. Only you will never convince me that it 
 was fresh-made, not even if you have me dragged asunder by 
 wild horses. Its upshot was, for the purpose of this story, that 
 it did not help me to recollect the name of that Court. 
 
 I have to confess with shame that I have written the whole 
 of what follows imder a false pretence ; having called it out of its 
 name, to the best of my belief, throughout. I know it had a 
 name. It does not matter; the story can do without accuracy — 
 commonplace matter of fact ! 
 
 But do what I wiU, I keep on recollecting new names for it, 
 and each seems more plausible than the other. Coltsfoot Court, 
 Barretts Court, Chesterfield Court, Sapps Court ! Any one of 
 these, if I add seventeen-hundred-and-much, or eighteen-hundred- 
 and-nothing-to-speak-of, seems to fit this Court to a nicety. 
 Suppose we make it Sapps Court, and let it go at that ! 
 
 Oh, the little old comers of the world that were homes and 
 are gone ! Years hence the Court we will call Sapps will still 
 dwell in some old mind that knew its every brick, and be por- 
 
 3 
 
4 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 trayed to credulous hearers yet unborn as an unpretentious 
 Eden, by some lavdator of its tempua actum — some forgotten 
 soul waiting for emancipation in an infirmary or almshouse. 
 
 Anyhow, / can remember this Court, and can tell a tale it plays 
 a part in, only not very quick. 
 
 Anybody might have passed down the main street and never 
 noticed it, because its arched entry didn't give on the street, 
 but on a bay or cul-de-sac just long enough for a hansom to 
 drive into but not to turn round in. There was nothing to 
 arrest the attention of the passer-by, self-absorbed or profes- 
 sionally engaged; simultaneous possibilities, in his case. 
 
 But if the passer-by forgot himself and neglected his proper 
 function in lite at the moment that he came abreast of this 
 cul-de-sac, he may have thereby come to the knowledge of Sapps 
 Court; and, if a Londoner, may have wondered why he never 
 knew of it before. For there was nothing in the external ap- 
 pearance of its arched entry to induce him to face the difficulties 
 incidental to entering it. He may even have nursed intentions 
 of saying to a friend who prided himself on his knowledge of 
 town : — " I say. Old Cock, you think yourself mighty clever 
 and all that, but I bet you can't tell me where Sapps Court is." 
 If, however, he never went down Sapps Court at all — merely 
 looked at his inscription and, recollecting his own place in nature, 
 passed on — I shouldn't be surprised. 
 
 It went downhill under the archway when you did go in, and 
 you came to a step. If you did not tumble owing to the sudden- 
 ness and depth of this step, you came to another; and were stupe- 
 fied by reaching the ground four inches sooner than you expected, 
 and made conscious that your skeleton had been driven an equal 
 distance upwards through your system. Then you could see 
 Sapps Court, but under provocation, from its entry. When you 
 recovered your temper you admitted that it was a better Couit 
 than you had anticipated. 
 
 All the residences were in a row on the left, and there was a 
 dead wall on the right with an inscription on a stone in it that 
 said the ground twelve inches beyond belonged to somebody 
 else. This wall was in the confidence of the main street, lending 
 itself to a fiction that the houses therein had gardens or yards 
 behind them. They hadn't; but the tenants beheved they 
 had, and hung out chemises and nightgowns and shirts to dry 
 in the areas they built up their faith on; and reaUy,if they were 
 properly wnmg out afore hung up there was nothing to com- 
 plain of, because the blacks didn't hold on, not to crock, but got 
 
SAPPS COURT 5 
 
 shook off or blew away of theirselves. We put this in the lan- 
 guage of our informant. 
 
 However, the story has no business on the other side of this 
 wall. What concerns it is the row of houses on the left. 
 
 If ever a row of houses bore upon them the stamp of having 
 
 been overtaken and surrounded by an unexpected city, these 
 
 did. The wooden palings that still skirted the breathing-room 
 
 in front of them almost said aloud to every newcomer: — " Where 
 
 is the strip of land gone that we could see beyond, day by day ; 
 
 that belonged to God-knows-who ; whose further boundary was 
 
 the road the haycarts brought their loads on, drawn by deUberate 
 
 horses that had beUs ?" The persistent sunflowers that still 
 
 struggled into being behind them told tales of how big they 
 
 were in youth, years ago, when they could turn to the sun and 
 
 hope to catch his eye. The stray wallflowers murmured to all 
 
 who had ears to.hear: — " This is how we smelt in days gone by — 
 
 but oh ! — so much stronger !" The wooden shutters, outside the 
 
 ground-floors that really stood upon the ground, told, if you chose 
 
 to hsten, of how they kept the houses safe from thieves in moonlit 
 
 nights a century ago; and the doors between them — ^for each 
 
 house was three windows wide — opened straight into the kitchen. 
 
 So they were, or had been, cottages. But the miscreant in 
 
 possession twenty years ago, instigated by a jerry-builder, had 
 
 added a storey and removed the tiled roofs whose garrets were 
 
 every bit as good as the jerry-built rooms that took their place. 
 
 Sapp himself may have done it — one knows nothing of his 
 
 principles — and at the same time in a burst of overweening 
 
 vanity called his cottages his Court. But one rather likes to 
 
 think that Sapp was with his forbears when this came about, 
 
 when the wall was built up opposite, and the cottages could no 
 
 longer throw their dust everywhere, but had to resort to a common 
 
 dustbin at the end of the Court, which smelt so you could smell 
 
 it quite plain across the wall when the Udwas off. That dustbin 
 
 was the outward and visible sign of the decadence of Sapp. 
 
WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OF DAVE AND DOLLY WARDLE AND THBIB TTNCLB MOSES, 'WHO 
 HAD BEEN A PBIZBUGHTBB, AND THEIE ATJNT m'BIAE, WHO 
 KEPT AN EYE ON THEM. OF DAVE's SBBVICES TO THE PUBLIC, 
 AND OF ANOTHER PUBLIC THAT NEARLY MADE UNCLE MO 
 BANKRUPT. OF HIS PAST BATTLES, NOTABLY ONE WITH A 
 SWEEP. OF MRS. PRICHARD AND MRS. BUEE, WHO LIVED 
 UPSTAIRS. OF A BAD ACCIDENT THAT BEFELL DAVE, AND OF 
 SIMEON STYLITES. HOW UNCLE MO STRAPPED UP DAVB's 
 HEAD WITH DIACHYLUM BOUGHT BY A VERY BAD BOY, MICHAEL 
 RAGSTEOAE, THE LIKE OF WHOM YOU NBVEB ! OF THE JUDGE- 
 MENT OF SOLOMON, AND DAVE's CAT 
 
 In the last house down the Court, the one that was so handy 
 to the dustbin, Uved a very small boy and a stiU smaller sister. 
 There were other members of the household — to wit, their Uncle 
 Moses and their Aunt M'riar, who were not husband and wife, 
 but respectively brother and sister of Dave's father and mother. 
 Uncle Moses' name was Wardle, Aunt M'riar's that of a deceased 
 or vanished husband. But Sapps Court was never prepared 
 to say offhand what this name was, and " Aunt M'riar " was 
 universal. So indeed was " Uncle Mo "; but, as No. 7 had been 
 spoken of as " Wardle's " since his brother took the lower half 
 of the house for himself and his first wife, with whom he had 
 lived there fifteen years, the name Wardle had come to be the 
 name of the house. This brother had been some ten years 
 younger than Moses, and had had apparently more than his fair 
 share of the family weddings; as " old Mo," if he ever was 
 married, had kept the lady secret; from his brother's family 
 certainly, and presumably from the rest of the world. 
 
 Our Uttle boy was the sort of boy you were sorry was ever going 
 to be eleven, because at five years and ten months he was that 
 square and compact, that chunky and yet that tender, that no 
 right-minded person could desire him to be changed to an im- 
 pident young scaramouch like young Michael Ragstroar four doors 
 higher up, who was eleven and a regular handful. 
 
 His name was Dave Wardle, after his father; and his sister's 
 Dorothea, after her mother. Both names appeared on a tomb' 
 
DAVE AND HIS FAMILY 7 
 
 stone in the parish churchyard, and you might have thought 
 they was anybody, said Public Opinion ; which showed that Dave 
 and his sister were orphans. Both had recollections of their 
 father, but the funeral he indulged in three years since had 
 elbowed other memories out of court. Of their mother they only 
 knew by hearsay, as Dave was only three years old when his 
 sister committed matricide, quite imconsciously, and you could 
 hear her all the way up the Court. Pardon the story's way of 
 introducing attestations to some fact of interest or importance 
 in the language in which its compiler has received it. 
 
 They were good children to do with, said their Aunt M'riar, 
 so long as you kep' an eye. And a good job they were, because 
 who was to do her work if she was every minute prancing round 
 after a couple of young monkeys 1 This was a strained way of 
 indicating the case ; but there can be no doubt of its substantial 
 truth. So Aunt M'riar felt at rest so long as Dave was content 
 to set up atop of the dustbin -lid and shout till he was hoarse; all 
 the while using a shovel, that was public property, as a gong. 
 
 Perhaps Dave took his sister Dolly into his confidence about 
 the nature of the trust he conceived himself to hold in connection 
 with this dustbin. To others of the inhabitants he was reticent, 
 merely referring to an emolument he was entitled to. " The 
 man on the lid/' he said, " has a farden." He said this with 
 such conviction that few had the heart to deny the justice of the 
 claim outright, resorting to subterfuges to evade a cash settle- 
 ment. One had left his change on the piano ; another was looking 
 forward to an early liquidation of small liabilities on the return 
 of his ship to port; another would see about it next time Sunday 
 come of a Friday, and so on. But only his Uncle Moses ever 
 gave him an actual farthing, and Dave deposited it in a cat on 
 the mantelsheK, who was hollow by nature, and provided by art 
 with a slot in the dorsal vertebrae. It could be shook out if you 
 wanted it, and Dave occasionally took it out of deposit in con- 
 nection with a course of experiments he was interested in. He 
 wished to determine how far he could spit it out. 
 
 This inquiry was a resource against ennui on rainy days and 
 foggy days and days that were going to clear up later. All these 
 sorts were devised by the maUgnity of Providence for the con- 
 fusion of small boys yearning to be on active service, redis- 
 tributing property, obstructing traffic, or calling attention to 
 personal peculiarities of harmless passers-by. But it was not 
 so inexhaustible but that cases occurred when those children got 
 that unsettled aijd masterful there was no abiding their racket; 
 
,8 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 and as for Dolly, her brother was making her every bit as bad 
 as himself. At such times a great resource was to induce Uncle 
 Moses to teU some experiences of a glorious past, his own. For 
 he had been a member of the Prize Ring, and had been slapped on 
 the back by Dukes, and had even been privileged to grasp a Royal 
 hand. He was now an unwieldy giant, able to get about with a 
 stick when the day was fine, but every six months less incHned 
 for the efEort. 
 
 Uncle Moses, when he retired from pubHc Ufe, had put all his 
 winnings, which were considerable, into a long lease of a pot- 
 house near Golden Square, where he was well-known and very 
 popular. If, however, there had been a rock on the premises 
 and he had had all the powers of his namesake, four-half would 
 have had to run as fast from it as ever did water from the rock 
 in Horeb, to keep down the thirst of Golden Square. For Uncle 
 Moses not only refused to take money from old friends who 
 dwelt in his memory, but weakly gave way to constructive 
 allegations of long years of comradeship in a happy past, which 
 his powers of recollection did not enable him to contradict. 
 " Wot, old Moses ! — ^you'U never come for to go for to say you've 
 forgot old Swipey Sam, jist along in the Old Kent Road — Easy 
 Shavin' one 'apenny or an arrangement come to by the week I" 
 Or merely, " Seein' you's as good as old times come aUve again, 
 mate." Suchlike appeals were almost invariable from any 
 customer who got fair speech of Uncle Moses in his own bar. 
 In his absence these claims were snufEed out roughly by a prosaic 
 barman — even the most pathetic ones, such as that of an extinct 
 thimblerigger for whom three small thimbles and one Uttle pea 
 had ceased for ever, years ago, when he got his fingers in a sausage- 
 machine. But Uncle Moses was so much his own barman that 
 this generosity told heavily against his credit; and he would 
 certainly have been left a pauper but for the earnest counsels 
 of an old friend known in his circle of Society as AfEabihty Bob, 
 although his real name was Jeremiah Alibone. By him he was 
 persuaded to dispose of the lease of the " Marquess of Montrose " 
 while it still had some value, and to retire on a pound a week. 
 This might have been more had he invested all the proceeds in 
 an annuity. " But, put it I do \" said he. " I don't see my way 
 to no advantage for David and Dorothy and this here young 
 newcome, if I was to hop the twig." For this was at the time 
 of the birth of little Dave, nearly six years before the date of 
 this story. 
 , AflEability Bob applauded his friend's course of action in view 
 
DAVE AND HIS FAMILY 9 
 
 of its motive. " But," said he, " I tell you this, Moses. If you'd 
 'a gone on standin' Sam to every narrycove round about Soho 
 much longer, ' No effects ' would have been your vardict, sir." 
 To which Uncle Moses replied, " Right you are, old friend," and 
 changed the subject. 
 
 However, there you have plenty to show what a rich mine of 
 past experience Uncle Moses had to dig in. The wonder was 
 that Dave and Dolly refused to avail themselves of its wealth, 
 always preferring a monotonous repetition of an encounter their 
 uncle had had with a Sweep. He could butt, this Sweep could, 
 hke a battering-ram, ketching hold upon you symultaneous 
 round the gaiters. He was irresistible by ordinary means, his 
 head being unimpressionable by direct impact. But Uncle Moses 
 had been one too many for him, having put a lot of thinking into 
 the right way of dealing with his system. 
 
 He had perceived that the hardest head, struck evenly on both 
 sides at the same moment, must suffer approximately as much 
 as if jammed against the door-post and catched full with a fair 
 round swing. Whereas had these blows followed one another 
 on a yielding head, the injury it inflicted as a battering-ram 
 might have outweighed the damage it received in inflicting it. 
 As it was, Peter — so Uncle Moses called the Sweep — ^was for one 
 moment defenceless, being preoccupied in seizing his opponent 
 by the ankles; and although his cranium had no sinuses, and 
 was so thick it could crush a quart-pot like an opera-hat, it did 
 not court a fourth double concussion, and this time he was 
 destined to disappoint his backers. 
 
 His opponent, who in those days was known as the Hanley 
 Linnet, suffered very little in the encounter. No doubt you 
 know that a man in fine training can take an amazing number 
 of back-falls on fair ground, clear of snags and brickbats; and, 
 of course, the Linnet's seconds made a special point of this, 
 examining careful and keeping an eye to prevent the introduc- 
 tion of broke-up rubbish inside the ropes by parties having an 
 interest, or viciously disposed. 
 
 " There you are again. Uncle Mo, a-teUin' and a-teUin' and 
 a-tellin' !" So Aunt M'riar would say when she heard this 
 narrative going over well-known ground for the thousandth 
 time. " And them children not lettin' you turn roimd in bed, 
 / call it !" This was in reference to Dave and Dolly's severity 
 about the text. The smallest departure from the earher version 
 led to both them children pouncing at once. Dave would 
 exclaim reproachfully: — "You did say a Sweep with one blind 
 
10 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 eye. Uncle Mo I" and Dolly would confirm his words with as 
 much emphasis as her powers of speech allowed. " Essoodid, 
 a 'Weep with one b'ind eye I" — ^also reproachfully. Then Uncle 
 Moses would supply a corrected version of whatever was defec- 
 tive, in this case an eye not quite blind, but nearly, owing to a 
 young nipper, no older than Dave, aiming a broken bottle at 
 him as the oi^cers was conducting of him to the Station, after 
 a fight Wandsworth way, the other party being took off to the 
 Horspital for dead. 
 
 The Jews, I am told, won't stand any nonsense when they 
 have their sacred writings copied, always destroying every in- 
 accurate MS. the moment an error is spotted in it. Dave and 
 DoUy were not the Jews, but they were as intolerant of varia- 
 tion in the text of this almost sacred legend of the Sweep. 
 " S'ow me how you punched him, wiv Dave's head," Dolly would 
 say; and she would be most exacting over the dramatic rendering 
 of this ancient fight. " Percisely this way Hke I'm showing you — 
 only harder," was Uncle Moses' voucher for his own accuracy. 
 " Muss harder ?" inquired Dolly. " Well— a tidy bit harder !" 
 said the veteran with truth. The head of the Sweep's under- 
 study, Dave, was not equal to a full-dress rehearsal. So Dolly 
 had to be content with the promise of a closer reading of the 
 part when her brother was growed up. 
 
 But it was rather hke Aunt M'riar said, for Uncle Moses. 
 Those two young Turks didn't allow their uncle no latitude, in 
 the manner of speaking. He couldn't turn round in bed. 
 
 These rainy days, when the children could not possibly be 
 allowed out, taxed their guardians' patience just to the point 
 of making them — suppose we say — ^not ungrateful to Providence 
 when old Mrs. Prichard upstairs giv' leave for the children to 
 come and play up in her room. She was the only other in- 
 dweUer in the house, hving in the front and back attics with Mrs. 
 Biu^r, who took jobs out in the dressmaking, and very moderate 
 charges. When Mrs. Burr worked at home, Mrs. Prichard 
 enjoyed her society and knitted, while Mrs. Burr cut out and 
 basted. Very few remarks were passed; for though Mrs. Burr 
 was snappish now and again, company was company, and Mrs. 
 Prichard she put up with a Uttle temper at times, because we 
 all had our trials; and Mrs. Burr was considered good at heart, 
 though short with you now and again. Hence when loneliness 
 became irksome, Mrs. Prichard found Dave and Dolly a satis- 
 faction, so long as nothing was broke. It was a pleasant exten- 
 sion of the experience of their early youth to play at monarchs, 
 
DAVE AND HIS FAMILY 11 
 
 military celebrities, professional assassins, and so on, in old Mrs. 
 Prichard's room upstairs. And sometimes nothing was broke. 
 Otherwise one day at No. 7, Sapps Court, was much the same 
 as another. 
 
 Uncle Mo's residence in Sapps Court dated many years before 
 the coming of Aunt M'riar; in fact, as far back as the time 
 he was deprived of his anchorage in Soho. He was then taken 
 in by his brother, recently a widower; and no question had ever 
 arisen of his quitting the haven he had been, as it were, towed 
 into as a derelict ; until, some years later, David announced 
 that he was thinking of Dolly Tarver at EaUng. Moses smoked 
 through a pipe in silence, so as to give full consideration; then 
 said, like an easy-going old boy as he was : — " You might do 
 worse, Dave. I can clear out, any minute. You've only got to 
 sing out." To which his brother had replied: — " Don't you talk 
 of clearing out, not till Miss Tarver she tells you." Moses' 
 answer was: — " I'm agreeable, Dave "; and the matter dropped 
 until some time after, when he had made Dolly Tarver's acquaint- 
 ance. She, on hearing that her union with David would send 
 Mo again adrift, had threatened to declare off if such a thing 
 was so much as spoke of. So Moses had remained on, in the 
 character of a permanency saturated with temporariness ; and, 
 when the little boy Dave began to take his place in Society, 
 proceeded to ajppropriate — so said the child's parents — more than 
 an uncle's fair share of him. 
 
 Then came the tragedy of his mother's death, causing the 
 Court to go into mourning, and leaving Dave with a sister, too 
 yoimg to be conscious of responsibility for it. Not too young, 
 however, to make her case heard — the case all living things 
 have against the Power that creates them without so much as 
 asking leave. The riot she made being interpreted by both 
 father and uncle as protest against Mrs. Twiggins, a midwife 
 who made herself disagreeable — or, strictly speaking, more dis- 
 agreeable; being normally unpleasant, and apt to snap when 
 spoke to, however civil — it was thought desirable to call in the 
 help of her Aunt M'riar, who was living with her family at 
 EaUng as a widow without incumbrance. Dolly junior appeared 
 to calm down under Aunt M'riar's auspices, though every now 
 and then her natural indignation got the better of her self- 
 restraint. Dave junior was disgusted with his sister at first, 
 but softened gradually towards her as she matured. 
 
 His father did not long survive the death of his young wife. 
 Even an omnibus-drjver is not exempt from inflammation of the 
 
12 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 lungs, although the complaint is not so fatal among persons 
 exposed to all weathers as among leaders of indoor lives. A 
 violent double pneumonia carried off Uncle Mo's brother, six 
 months after he became a widower, and about three years 
 before the date of this story. 
 
 Whether in some other class of life a marriageable uncle and 
 aunt — sixty and forty respectively — ^would have accepted their 
 condominium of the household that was left, it is not for the 
 story to discuss. Uncle Moses refused to give up the two babies, 
 and Aunt M'riar refused to leave them, and — as was remarked 
 by both — ^there you were ! It was an itwpasse.. The only effect 
 it had on the position was that Uncle Mo's temporariness got a 
 httle boastful, and sUghted his permanency. The latter, how- 
 ever, paid absolutely no attention to the insult, and the only 
 change that took place in the three following years at No. 7, 
 Sapps Court, had nothing to do with the downstairs tenants. 
 Some months before the first date of the story, a variation came 
 about in the occupancy upstairs, Mrs. Prichard and Mrs. Burr 
 taking the place of some parties who, if the truth was told, were 
 rather a riddance. The fact is merely recorded as received; 
 nothing further has transpired regarding these persons. 
 
 Mrs. Prichard was a very old lady who seldom showed herself 
 outside of her own room — so the Court testified — ^but who, when 
 she did so, impressed the downstairs tenants as of unfathomable 
 antiquity and a certain pictorial appearance, causing Uncle Mo 
 to speak of her as an old picter, and Dave to misapprehend her 
 name. For he always spoke of her as old Mrs. Picture. Mrs. 
 Burr dawned upon the Court as a civil-spoken person who was 
 away most part of the day, and who did not develope her identity 
 vigorously during the first year of her tenancy. One is terribly 
 handicapped by one's own absence, as a member of any Society. 
 
 As time went on, Dave and Dolly, who began life with an idea 
 that Sapps Court was the Universe, became curious about what 
 was going on outside. They grew less contented with the dustbin, 
 and ambition dictated to Dave an enthronement on an iron post 
 at the entrance, under the archway. The deUght of sitting on 
 this post was so great that Dave willingly faced the fact that he 
 could not get down, and whenever he could persuade anyone to 
 put him up ran a risk of remaining there sine, die,. When he 
 could not induce a native of the Court to do this, he endeavoured 
 to influence the outer pubUc, not without success. For when it 
 came to understand — that pubUc — that the grubby httle tenant 
 
DAVE AND HIS FAMILY 13 
 
 of Dave's grubby little shirt and trousers was not asking the 
 time nor for a hoyp'ny, but was murmuring shyly: — "I soy, 
 mawster, put me up atop/' at the same time slapping the post 
 on either side with two grubby little fat hands, it would unbend 
 and comply, telUng Dave to hold on tight, and never asking 
 no questions how ever the child was to be got off of it when 
 the time came. Because people are that selfish and incon- 
 siderate. 
 
 The difficulty of getting down off of it all by himself, without a 
 friendly supporting hand in the waistband of his trousers, was 
 connected with the form of this post's head. It was not a dis- 
 used twenty-four pounder with a shot in its muzzle, as so many 
 posts are, but a real architectural post, cast from a pattern at 
 the foimdry. Its capital expanded at the top, and its projecting 
 rim made its negotiation ^fficultfco climbers, if small; hard to 
 get round from below, and perilous to leave hold of all of a 
 sudden-like, in order to grasp the shaft in descent. But then, 
 it was this very expansion that provided a seat for Dave, which 
 the other sort of post would hardly have afforded. 
 
 How did Simeon Stylites manage to scrat on ? One prefers 
 to think that an angel put him on his column, carrying him some- 
 what as one carries a cat; and called for him to be taken down 
 at convenient intervals by appointment. The mind revolts at 
 the idea that he really never came down, quite never ! But 
 then, when the starving man is on at the Aquarium, we — that is 
 to say, the humane public — are apt to give way to mere maudlin 
 sentimentalism, and hope he is cheating. And when a person at 
 a Music Hall folds backwards and looks through his legs at us 
 forwards, we always hope he feels no strain — nothing but a great 
 and justifiable professional pride. It is not a pleasant feeHnig 
 that any of these good people are suffering on our behalf. How- 
 ever, in the case of Simeon StyHtes there was a mixture of motives, 
 no doubt. 
 
 Dave Wardle was too young to have motives, and had none, 
 unless the desire to surprise and impress Dolly had weight with 
 him. But he had the longing on him which that young gentle- 
 man in the poem expressed by writing the Latin for taller on a 
 flag; and to gratify it had scaled the dustbin as the merest 
 infant. It was an Alpine record. But the iron post was no 
 mere Matterhom. It was like Peter Bot's Mountain; and once 
 you was up, there you were, and no getting down ! 
 
 The occasional phrases for which I am indebted to Aunt 
 M'riar which have crept into the text recently — ^not, as I think 
 
14 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to its detriment — ^were used by her after a mishap which befell 
 her nephew owing to the child's impatience. If he'd only a had 
 the sense to set still a halt a minute longer, she would have done 
 them frills and could have run up the Court a'most as soon as 
 look at you. But she hoped what had happened would prove 
 a warning, not only to Dave, but to all little boys in a driving 
 hurry to get off posts. And not only to them either, but to Youth 
 generally, to pay attention to what was said to it by Age and 
 Experience, neither of which ever cUmb up posts without some 
 safe guarantee of being able to chmb down again. 
 
 What had happened was that Dave had cut his head on the 
 ornate pHnth of that cast-iron post, his hands missing their 
 grip as his legs caught the shaft, so that he turned over back- 
 wards and his occiput suffered. He showed a splendid spirit — 
 quite Spartan, in fact — bearing in mind his uncle's frequent 
 homilies on the subject of crying; a thing no little boy, however 
 young, should dream of. Dolly was under no such obligation, 
 according to Uncle Moses, being a female or the rudiment of one, 
 and on this occasion she roared for herself and her brother, too. 
 Aunt M'riar was in favour of taking the child to Mr. Ekins, the 
 apothecary, for skilled surgery to deal with the case, but Uncle 
 Moses scouted the idea.' 
 
 " Twopenn'orth o' stroppin' and a basin o' warm water," 
 said he, " and I'll patch him up equal to Guy's Hospital. . . . 
 Got no diacklum ? Then send one of those young varmints 
 outside for it. . . . You've no call to go yourself." For a 
 various crowd of various ages under twelve had come from 
 nowhere to enjoy the tragic incident. 
 
 " Twopenn'orth of diaculum plaster olf of Mr. Ekings the 
 'poarthecary ?" said that yoimg Michael Ragstroar, thrusting 
 himself forward and others backward; because, you see, he was 
 such a cheeky, precocious young vagabond. " Mean to say I 
 can't buy twopenn'orth of diaculum plaster off of Mr. Ekings 
 the 'poarthecary ? Mean to say my aunt that orkupies a 'ouse 
 in Chiswick clost to high-water mark don't send me to the 
 'poarthecaries just as often as not ? For the mixture to be 
 taken regular ... Ah ! — ^where's the twopence ? 'And over !" 
 
 Whereupon, such is the power of self-confidence over everyone 
 else, that Aunt M'riar entrusted twopence to this youth, quite 
 forgetting that he was only eleven. Yet her faith in him was 
 not iU-founded, for he returned Uke an echo as to promptitude. 
 Only, unlike the echo, he came back louder than he went, and 
 more positive. 
 
DAVE AND HIS FAMILY 15 
 
 " There's the quomtity and no cheatin'/' said he. " You 
 can medger it up with a rule if you Uke. It'll medger, you find 
 if it don't ! Like I told you 1 And a 'apenny returned on the 
 transaction." The tension of the situation did not admit of 
 the measuring test — ^nor indeed had Aunt M'riar data to go 
 upon — and as for the haKpenny, it stood over. 
 
 Uncle Moses had not laid false claim to surgical skill, and was 
 able to strap the wound a'most as if he'd been brought up to it. 
 By the time it was done Dave's courage was on the wane, and 
 he wasn't sorry to He his head down and shut to his eyes. Be- 
 cause the lids thereof were Uke the Uds of plate-chests. 
 
 However, before he went off very sound asleep — so sound you 
 might have took him for a image — ^he heard what passed between 
 Uncle Moses and Michael, whose name has been spelt herein so 
 that you should think of it as Sapps Court did; but its correct 
 form is Rackstraw. 
 
 " Now, yoimg potato-peelin's, how much money did the 
 doctor hand you back for that diacklum ?" 
 
 " Penny. Said he'd charge it up to the next Dook that come 
 to his shop.'' 
 
 Thereupon Aunt M'riar taxed the speaker with perfidy. 
 " Why, you little untrue, lyin', deceitful story," she said. " To 
 think you should say it was only a ha'penny !" 
 
 " I never said no such a thing. S'elp me !" 
 
 " ' 'Apenny returned on the transaction ' was the very identical 
 selfsame words." Thus Aunt M'riar testified. " And what is 
 more," she added inconsecutively, " I do not beheve you've any 
 such an aunt, nor yet ever been to Chiswick." 
 
 But young potato -peelings, so called from his father's voca- 
 tion of costermonger, defended himself with indignation. " Wam't 
 that square ?" said he. " He never said I wam't to keep it all, 
 didn't that doctor !" Then he took a high position as of injured 
 virtue. " There's your 'apenny ! There's both your 'apennies ! 
 Mean to say I 'aven't kep' 'em safe for yer ?" Uncle Moses 
 allowed the position of bailee, but disposed of the penny as 
 Solomon suggested in the case of the baby, giving one halfpenny 
 to Michael, and putting the other in Dave's cat on the mantel- 
 shelf. 
 
 He justified this course afterwards on the ground that the 
 doctor's refund was made to the actual negotiator, and that 
 Aimt M'riar had in any case received full value for her money. 
 Who could say that the doctor, if referred to, would not have 
 repudiated Aunt M'riar's claim in toto ? 
 
16 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Warnings, cautions, and moral lessons derived from this 
 incident had due weight with Dave for several days; in fact, 
 until his cut healed over. Then he forgot them and became as 
 bad as ever. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW DAVE FAILED TO PROFIT BY HIS EXPEEIENCE. OF PAOLO 
 TOSCAIifELLI AND CHEISTOPHBK COLUMBUS. OF A NEW SHORE 
 DAVE AlfD DOLLY REACHED BY EXPLORATION, BOUND THE 
 corner; and of other navigators WHO HAD, IN THIS CASE, 
 MADE IT FOR THEMSELVES. OF THE PUBLIC SPIRIT OF DAVE 
 AND DOLLY, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A BARRAGE. HOW 
 MBS. TAPPING AND MRS. BILEY HEARD THE ENGINES. OF A 
 SHORTAGE OF MUD, AND A GREAT RESOLVE OF DAVE's. WHY 
 NOT SOME NEW MUD FROM THE NEW SHORE ? 
 
 The interest of Dave's accident told in the last chapter is merely 
 collateral. It shows how narrow an escape the story that follows 
 had not only of never being finished, but even of never being 
 written. For if its events had never happened, it goes near to 
 certainty that they would never have been narrated. Near, 
 but not quite. For even if Dave had profited by these warnings, 
 cautions, and moral lessons to the extent of averting what now 
 appears to have been Destiny, some imaginative author might 
 have woven a history showing exactly what might have hap- 
 pened to him if he had not been a good boy. And that history, 
 in the hands of a master — one who had the organ of the condi- 
 tional praeterpluperfect tense very large — might have worked out 
 the same as this. 
 
 The story may be thankful that no such task has fallen to its 
 author's lot. It is so much easier to tell something that actually 
 did happen than to make up as you go. 
 
 Dave was soon as bad as ever — ^no doubt of it. Only he kept 
 clear of that post. The burnt child dreads the fire, and the 
 chances are that admonitions not to chmb up on posts had less 
 to do with his abstention from this one than the lesson the post 
 itself had hammered into the back of his head. Exploration of 
 the outer world — of the regions imperfectly known beyond that 
 
A SHORTAGE OF MUD 17 
 
 post — had so far produced no fatal consequences; so that Aunt 
 M'riar's and Uncle Mo's warnings to the children to keep within 
 bounds had not the same convincing character. 
 
 But a time was at hand for the passion of exploration to seize 
 upon these two very young people, and to become an excitement 
 as absorbing to them as the discovery of America to Paolo 
 Toscanelli and Christopher Columbus. At first it was satisfied 
 by the cul-de-sac recess on which Sapps Court opened. But this 
 palled, and no wonder ! How could it compete with the pubho 
 highway out of which it branched, especially when there was a 
 new shore — that is to say, sewer — in course of construction ? 
 
 To stand on the edge of a chasm which certainly reached to 
 the bowels of the earth, and to see them shovelled up from plat- 
 form to platform by agencies that spat upon their hands for 
 some professional reason whenever there came a luU in the 
 supply from below, was to find Ufe worth living indeed. These 
 agencies conversed continually about an injury that had been 
 inflicted on them by the Will of God, the selfish caprice of their 
 employers, or the cupidity of the rich. They appeared to be 
 capable of shovelling in any space, however narrow, almost to 
 the extent of surrendering one dimension and occupjdng only a 
 plane surface. But it hadn't come to that yet. The battens 
 that kept the trench-sides vertical were wider apart than what 
 you'd have thought, when you come to try 'em with a two-fut 
 rule. And the short lengths of quartering that kep' 'em apart 
 were not reaUy intersecting the diggers' anatomies as the weaver's 
 shuttle passes through the warp. That was only the impression 
 of the unconcerned spectator as he walked above them over the 
 plank bridge that acknowledged his right of way across the road. 
 His sympathies remained unentangled. If people navigated, it 
 was their own look out. You see, these people were navvies, or 
 navigators, although it strains one's sense of language to describe 
 them so. 
 
 The best of it was to come. For in time the lowest navvy 
 was threatened with death by misadventure, imless he come 
 up time enough to avoid the water. The small pump the job 
 had been making shift with was obliged to acknowledge itself 
 beaten, and to make way for one with two handles, each with 
 room for two pumpers ; and this in turn was discarded in favour 
 of a noisy affair with a donkey-engine, which brought up the 
 yellow stream as fast as ever a gutter of nine-inch plank, nailed 
 up to a V, would carry it away. And it really was a most 
 extraordinary thing that of all those navigators there was not one 
 
 2 
 
18 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 that had not predicted in detail exactly the course of events that 
 had come about. Mr. Bloxam, the foreman, had told the governor 
 that there would be no harm in having the pump handy, seeing 
 they would go below the clay. And each of the others had — so 
 fchey themselves said — spoken in the same sense, in some cases 
 using a most inappropriate adjective to qualify the expected 
 flood. Why, even Sleepy Joe had seen that ! Sleepy Joe was 
 this same foreman, and he hved in a wooden hutch on the job, 
 called The Office. 
 
 But the watershed of any engine — ^whatever may be its donkey- 
 power, and whatever that name implies — slops back where a 
 closed spout changes suddenly to an open gutter, and sets up 
 independent lakes and rivers. This one sent its overflow towards 
 Sapps Court, the incline favouring its distribution along the 
 gutter of the cul-de-sac, which lay a Uttle lower than the main 
 street it opened out of. Its rich, ochrous rivulets — containing 
 no visible trace of haemorrhage, in spite of that abuse of an 
 adjective — ^were creeping slowly along the interstices of cobble- 
 stone paving that still outlived the incoming of Macadam, when 
 Dave and Dolly Wardle ventured out of their archway to renew 
 a survey, begun the previous day, of the fascinating excavation 
 in the main street. 
 
 Here was an opportunity for active and useful service not to 
 be lost. Dave immediately cast about to scrape up and collect 
 such mud as came ready to hand, and with it began to build up 
 an intercepting embankment to stop the foremost current, that 
 was winding slowly, like Vesuvian lava, on the Une of least 
 resistance. Dolly followed his example, filling a garment she 
 called her pinafore with whatever mould or debris was attain- 
 able, and bringing it with much gravity and some pride to help 
 on the structure of the dyke. A fiction, rather felt than 
 spoken, got in the air that Sapps Court and its inhabitants would 
 be overwhelmed as by Noah's flood, except for the exertions of 
 Dave and his sister. It appealed to some friends of the same 
 age, also inhabitants of the Court, and with their assistance and 
 sympathy it really seemed — ^in this fiction — that a catastrophe 
 might be averted. You may imagine what a drove of Uttle 
 grubs those children looked in the course of halt an hour. Not 
 that any of them were particularly spruce to begin with. 
 
 However, there was the embankment holding back the dirty 
 yellow water; and now the pump was running on steady -Hke, 
 there didn't so much come slopping over to add to the deluge 
 that threatened Sapps Court. The poUceman — the only one 
 
A SHORTAGE OF MUD 19 
 
 supposed to exist, although in form he varied slightly — ^made 
 an inquiry as to what was going on, to be beforehand with 
 Anarchy. He said : — " What are you young customers about, 
 taking the Company's water ?" That seemed to embody an 
 indictment without committing the accuser to particulars. But 
 he took no active steps, and a very old man with a fur cap, and 
 no teeth, and big bones in his cheeks, said : — " It don't make no 
 odds to we, I take it." He was a prehistoric navvy, who had 
 become a watchman, and was responsible for red lanterns hooked 
 to posts on the edge of chasms to warn carts off. He was going 
 to sleep in half a tent, soothed or otherwise by the unflagging 
 piston of that donkey-engine, which had made up its mind to 
 go till further notice. 
 
 The men were knocking o£E work, and it was getting on for 
 time for those children to have their suppers and be put to bed. 
 But as Aunt M'riar had some trimming to finish, and it was a 
 very fine evening, there was no harm in leaving them alone a 
 few minutes longer. As for any attractive influences of supper, 
 those children never come in of theirselves, and always had to be 
 fetched. 
 
 An early lamplighter — ^for this was in September, 1853 — 
 passed along the street with a ladder, dropping stars as he went. 
 There are no lamplighters now, no real ones that run up ladders. 
 Their ladders vanished first, leaving them with a magic wand 
 that lighted the gas as soon as you got the tap turned; only that 
 was ever so long, as often as not. Perhaps things are better 
 now that lamps light themselves instinctively at the oflScial 
 hour of sunset. At any rate, one has the satisfaction of occa- 
 sionally seeing one that won't go out, but bums on into the day- 
 light to spite the Authorities. 
 
 They were cold stars, almost green, that this lamplighter 
 dropped; but this was because the sun had left a flood of orange- 
 gold behind it, enough to make the tune from " Rigoletto " an 
 organ was playing think it was being composed in Italy again. 
 The world was a peaceftd world, because Opulence, inflated and 
 moderate, had gone out of town : the former to its country-house, 
 or a foreign hotel; the latter to lodgings at the seaside to bathe 
 out of machines and prey on shrimps. The lull that reigned in 
 and about Sapps Court was no doubt a sort of recoil or back- 
 water from other neighbourhoods, with high salaries or real and 
 personal estate, whose dwellings were closed and not being 
 properly ventilated by their caretakers. It reacted on business 
 there, every bit as much as in Oxford Street ; and that was how 
 
20 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Tapping's the tallow-chandler's — ^where you got tallow candles 
 and dips, as well as composites; for in those days they still 
 chandled taUow — didn't have a single customer in for ten whole 
 minutes by the clock. In that interval Mrs. Tapping seized the 
 opportunity to come out in the street and breathe the air. So 
 did Mrs. Riley next door, and they stood conversing on the topics 
 of the day, looking at the sunset over the roofs of the cul-de-sac 
 this story has reference to. For Mrs. Tapping's shop was in the 
 main road, opposite to where the embankment operations were 
 in hand. 
 
 " Ye never will be teUin' me now, Mrs. Tapping, that ye've 
 not hur-r-rd thim calling ' Fire !' in the sthrate behind ? Fy-urr, 
 fy-urr, fy-urr !" This is hard to write as Mrs. Riley spoke it, 
 so great was her command of the letter r. 
 
 " Now you name it, Mrs. Riley, deny it I can't. But to the 
 point of taking notice to bear in mind — ^why no ! It was on my 
 ears, but only to be let sUp that minute. Small amounts and 
 accommodations frequent, owing to reductions on quantity 
 took, distrack attention. I was a-sayin' to my stepdaughter 
 only the other day that hearin' is one thing and listenin' is 
 another. And she says to me, she says, I was talking hke a 
 book, she says. Her very expression and far from respectful ! 
 So I says to her, not to be put upon, ' Lethear,' I says, ' books 
 ain't similar all through but to seleck from, and I go accord- 
 in'. . . .' " Mrs. Tapping, whose system was always to turn the 
 conversation to some incident in which she had been prominent, 
 might have developed this one further, but Mrs. Riley inter- 
 rupted her with Celtic na'iveU. 
 
 " D'ye mane to say, me dyurr, that ye can't hearr 'em now ? 
 Kape your tongue silent and listen !" A good, full brogue 
 permits speech that would offend in colourless Saxon ; and Mrs. 
 Tapping made no protest, but listened. Sure enough the rousing, 
 maddening " Fire, fire, fire, fire, fixe !" was on its way at speed 
 somewhere close at hand. It grew and lessened and died. And 
 Mrs. Riley was triumphant. " That's a larrudge fire, shure !" 
 said she, transposing her impression of the enthusiasm of the 
 engine to the area of the conflagration. Cold logic perceives 
 that an engine may be just as keen to pump on a cottage as on a 
 palace, before it knows which. Mrs. Riley had come from 
 Tipperary, and had brought a sympathetic imagination with 
 her, leaving any logic she possessed behind. 
 
 A few minutes before the lampUghter passed — saying to the 
 old watchman: — " Goin' to bed, Sam ?" and on receiving the reply. 
 
A SHORTAGE OF MUD 21 
 
 " Time enough yet \" rejoining sarcastically: — " Time enough for 
 a quart I" — the labourers at the dyke had recognised the fact 
 that unless new material could be obtained, the pent-up waters 
 would burst the curb and bound, rejoicing to be free, and rush 
 headlong to the nearest drain. All the work would be lost unless 
 a fresh supply could be obtained; the ruling fiction of a new 
 Noachian deluge might prove a deadly reaUty instead of, as now, 
 a theoretical contingency under conditions which engineering 
 skill might avert. The Sappers and Miners who were roused 
 from their beds to make good a dynamited embankment and 
 block the relentless Thames did not work with a more untiring 
 zeal to bafile a real enemy than did Dave and Dolly to keep out 
 a fictitious one, and hypothetically save Uncle Moses and Aunt 
 M'riar from drowning. But all efforts would be useless if there 
 was to be a shortage of mud. 
 
 The faces of our httle friends, and their httle friends, were 
 earnestness itself as they concentrated on the great work in 
 the glow of the sunset. They had no eyes for its glories. The 
 lamplighter even, dropping jewels as he went, passed them by 
 unheeded. The organ interpreted Donizetti in vain. Despair 
 seemed imminent when Dolly, who, though small, was as keen 
 as the keenest of the diggers, came back after a special effort 
 with no more than the merest handful of gutter-scrapings, saying 
 with a most pathetic wail: — " I tan't det no more I" 
 
 Then it was that a great resolve took shape in the heart of 
 Dave. It found utterance in the words : — " Oy wants some of the 
 New Mud the Men spoyded up with their spoyds," and pointed 
 to an ambitious scheme for securing some of the fine, rich clay 
 that lay in a tempting heap beyond the wooden bridge across 
 the sewer-trench. The bridge that Dave had never even stood 
 upon, much less crossed ! 
 
 The daring, reckless courage of the enterprise ! Dolly gasped 
 with awe and terror. She was too small to find at a moment's 
 notice any terms in which she could dissuade Dave from so 
 venturesome a project. Besides, her faith in her brother 
 amounted to superstition. Dave must know what was practicable 
 and righteous. Was he not nearly six years old ? She stood 
 speechless and motionless, her heart in her mouth as she watched 
 him go furtively across that awful bridge of planks and get 
 nearer and nearer to his prize. 
 
 There were hons in his path, as there used to be in the path 
 of knights-errant when they came near the castles of necro- 
 
22 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 mancers who held beautiful princesses captive — to say nothing 
 of full-blown dragons and alluring syrens. These lions took in 
 one case, the form of a butcher-boy, who said untruthfully: — 
 " Now, young hobstacle, clear out o' this ! Boys ain't allowed 
 on bridges ;" and in another that of Michael Ragstroar, who said, 
 " Don't you let the Company see you carryin' off their property. 
 They'll rip you open as soon as look at you. You'll be took 
 afore the Beak." Dave was not yet old enough to see what a 
 very perverted view of legal process these words contained, but 
 his blue eyes looked mistrustfully at the speaker as he watched 
 him pass up the street towards the Wheatsheaf, swinging a 
 yellow jug with ridges round its neck and a full corporation. 
 Michael had been sent to fetch the beer. 
 
 If the blue eyes had not remained fixed on that yellow jug 
 and its bearer till both vanished through the swing-door of the 
 Wheatsheaf — ^if their owner's mistrust of his informant had been 
 strong enough to cancel the misgivings that crossed his baby 
 mind, only a few seconds sooner, would things have gone other- 
 wise with Dave ? Would he have used that beautiful lump of 
 clay, as big as a man of his age could carry, on the works that 
 were to avert Noah's flood from Sapps Court ? Would he and 
 Dolly not probably have been caught at their escapade by an 
 indignant Aunt M'riar, corrected, duly washed and fed, and 
 sent to bed sadder and wiser babies ? So few seconds might 
 have made the whole difference. 
 
 Or, if that heap of clay had been thrown on the other side of 
 the trench, on the pavement instead of towards the traffic — 
 why then the children might have taken all they could carry, 
 and Old Sam would have countenanced them, in reason, as like 
 as not. But how Httle one gains by thinking what might have 
 been ! The tale is to tell, and tells that these things were not 
 otherwise, but thus. 
 
 Uncle Moses was in the room on the right of the door, called 
 the parlour, smoking a pipe with the old friend whose advice 
 had probably kept him from coming on the parish. 
 
 " Aunt M'riar !" said he, tapping his pipe out on the hob, and 
 taking care the ashes didn't get in the inflammable stove- 
 ornament, " I don't hear them young customers outside. What's 
 got 'em ?" 
 
 " Don't you begin to fret and werrit till I tell you to it, 
 Moses. The children's safe and not in any mischief — no more 
 than usual. Mr. AUbone seen 'em." For although the world 
 
A SHORTAGE OF MUD 23 
 
 called this friend Affability Bob and Uncle Moses gave Mm his 
 christened name. Aunt M'riar always spoke of him, quite civil- 
 like, thus. 
 
 " You see the young nippers, Jerry ?" said the old prize- 
 fighter; who always got narvous, as you might say, though 
 scarcely alarmed, when they got out of sight and hearing; even 
 if it was for no more time than what an egg takes. 
 
 " Jist a step beyond the archway. Mosey," said Mr. AHbone. 
 " PaddHn' and sloppin' about with the water off o' the shore- 
 pump. It's aU clean water, Mrs. Catchpole, only for a little 
 clay." Aunt M'riar, whose surname was an intrinsic improb- 
 abihty in the eyes of Public Opinion, and who was scarcely ever 
 called by it, except by Mr. Jerry, expressed doubts. So he con- 
 tinued: — " You see, they're siniing for a new shore clear of the 
 old one. So nothing's been opened into." 
 
 " Well," said Aunt M'riar, " I certainly did think the Saviour 
 was being kep' under wonderful. But now you put it so, I 
 understand. What I say is — ^if dirt, then clean dirt; and above 
 all no chemicals ! . . . What's that you're saying. Uncle Mo ?" 
 
 " Why, I was a-thinking," said Uncle Moses, who seemed rest- 
 less, " I was a-thinking. Bob, that you and me might have otir 
 pipes outside, being dry underfoot." For Uncle Moses, being 
 gouty, was iU-shod for wet weather. He was slippered, though 
 not lean. And though Mrs. Burr, coming in just then, added 
 her testimony that the children were quite safe and happy, 
 only making a great mess. Uncle Moses would not be content to 
 remain indoors, but must needs be going out. " These here 
 young juveniles," said he, outside in the Court, " where was it 
 you took stock of 'em, did you say ?" 
 
 " Close to hand," said Affability Bob. " One step out of the 
 archway. There you'U find 'em, old man. Don't you fret 
 your kidneys. They're all right. Hear the engines ?" 
 
 " Whereabouts is the fire ?" 
 
 " Somewhere down by Walworth. I saw the smoke, crossing 
 Hungerford Bridge. This engine's coming down our road out- 
 side." 
 
 " I reckon she may be, by the sound. She'h be half-way to 
 Blackfriars before we're out of this here Court. If she gets by 
 where the road's up ! Maybe she'll have to go back." 
 
 " There she stops ! What's the popilation shoutin' at ?" 
 For the tramp of the engine's horses, heard plain enough on 
 the main road, came to an end abruptly, and sounds ensued — 
 men's shouts, women's cries — ^not reconcilable with the mere 
 
24 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 stoppage of a fire-engine by unexpected narrows or an irregular 
 coal-cart. 
 
 " Couldn't say, I'm sure. They're a nizy lot in these parts." 
 So said Uncle Moses, and walked slowly up the Court, stopping 
 for breath half-way. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WHY THAT ENGINB STOPPED. BUT THE WHEELS HAD NOT GONE 
 OVEB DAVE. HOW PETEE JACKSON CARRIED HIM AWAY TO 
 THE HOSPITAL. OF DOLLY's DESPAIR AT THE COLLAPSE OF 
 THE BASBAGE, AND OF AN OLD COCK, NAMED SAM. MRS. 
 tapping's EXPERIENCES, AND HER DAtJGHTEE, ALETHEA. 
 OF THE VICISSITUDES OF THE PUBUC, AND ITS AMAZING 
 RECUPERATIVE POWERS. HOW UNCLE MOSES AND ME. ALI- 
 BONE WENT TO THE HOSPITAL 
 
 So few seconds would have made the whole difference. But so 
 engrossing had Dave found the contemplation of Michael Rag- 
 stroar and his yellow jug, so exciting particularly was its dis- 
 appearance into the swing-door of the Wheatsheaf, that he 
 forgot even the new mud that the men had spaded up with their 
 spades. And these seconds slipped by never to return. Then 
 when Michael had vanished, the little man stooped to secure his 
 cargo. It was slippery and yet tenacious; had been detachable 
 with difficulty from the spade that wrenched it from the virgin 
 soil of its immemorial home, and was now difficult to carry. 
 But Dave grappled bravely with it and turned to go back across 
 the bridge. 
 
 A coming whirlwind, surely, in the distance of the street — 
 somewhere now where all the gas-lamps' cold green stars are 
 merged in one — ^now nearer, nearer still; and with it, bringing 
 folk to doors and windows to see them pass, the war-cry of the 
 men that fight the flames. Charioteers behind blood-horses 
 bathed in foam; heads helmeted in flashing splendour; eyes all 
 intent upon the track ahead, keen to anticipate the risks of 
 headlong speed and warn the dilatory straggler from its path. 
 Nearer and nearer — ^in a moment it will pass and take some road 
 unknown to us, to say to fires that even now are climbing up 
 through roof and floor, clasping each timber in a sly embrace 
 
DAVE'S ACCIDENT 25 
 
 fatal as the caress of Death itself: — " Thus far shalt thou go and 
 no farther !" Close upon us now, to be stayed with a sudden cry 
 — something in the path ! Too late ! 
 
 Too late, though the strong hand that held the reins brought 
 back the foaming steeds upon their haunches, with startled eyes 
 and quivering nostrils all agape. Too late, though the hehneted 
 men on the engine's flank were down, almost before its swerve 
 had ceased, to drag at every risk from beneath the plunging 
 hoofs the insensible body of the child that had sHpped from a 
 clay heap by the roadside, on which it stood to gaze upon the 
 coming wonder, and gone headlong down quite suddenly upon 
 the open road. 
 
 You who read this, has it ever fallen to your lot to guide two 
 swift horses at a daring speed through the narrow ways, the ill- 
 driven vehicles, the careless crowds and frequent drunkards of the 
 slum of a great city ? If so, you have earned some right to sit in 
 judgment on the fire-engine that ran our Mttle friend down. But 
 you will be the last of all men to condemn that fire-engine. 
 
 " Dead, mate ?" One of the hehneted men asks this of the 
 other as they escape from the plunging hoofs. They are used 
 to this sort of thing — to every sort of thing. 
 
 " Insensible," says the other, who holds in his arms the 
 rescued child, a mere scrap of dust and clay and pallor and a 
 little blood. 
 
 A fire-engine calculates its rights to pause in fractions of a 
 minute. The unused portion of twenty seconds the above con- 
 versation leaves, serves for a glance round in search of some 
 claimant of the child, or a responsible police-officer to take over 
 the case. Nothing presents itself but Mrs. Tapping, too much 
 upset to be coherent, and not able to identify the child; Mrs. 
 Riley, little better, but asking: — " Did the whales go overr it, 
 thin ?" The old man Sam, the watchman, is working round 
 from his half-tent, where he sleeps in the traffic, but cannot 
 possibly negotiate the full extent of trench and bridge for fifty 
 seconds more. Time cannot be lavished waiting for him. 
 The man at the reins, with seeming authority, clinches the 
 matter. 
 
 " You stop, Peter Jackson ! Hospital I Don't you let the 
 child out of your hands before you get there. Understand ? — 
 All clear in front ?" Two men, who have taken the horses' 
 heads, to soothe their shaken nerves with slaps and suitable 
 exclamations, now give them back to their owners, leaving them 
 free to rear high QAQ? QX twice to relieve feeling; while they them- 
 
26 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 selves go back, each to his own place on the engine. A word of re- 
 monstrance from the driver about that rearing, and they are 
 off again, the renewed fire-cry scarcely audible in the distance 
 by the time Old Sam gets across the wooden bridge. 
 
 To him, as to a responsible person, says Peter Jackson : — ' ' Know 
 where he belongs 1" — and to Mrs. Riley, as to one not responsible, 
 but deserving of sympathy: — "No — ^the wheels haven't been 
 over him." 
 
 "Down yonder Court, I take it. Couldn't say for sartin." 
 So says Sam ; and Mrs. Tapping discerns with pious fervour the 
 Mercy of God in this occurrence. He not having flattened the 
 child out on the road outright. 
 
 But Peter Jackson's question implied no intention to com- 
 municate with the little victim's family. To do so would be a 
 clear dereliction of duty; an offence against discipline. He has 
 his instructions, and in pursuance of them strides away to the 
 Hospital without anotiier word, bearing in his arms a light 
 burden so motionless that it is hard to credit it with Ufe. So 
 quickly has the whole thing passed, that the drift of idlers 
 hard on his heels is a fraction of what a couple more minutes 
 would have made it. It wiU have grown before they reach the 
 Middlesex, short as the distance is. Then a police-sergeant, 
 who joins them haH-way, wiU take notes and probably go to 
 find the child's parents; while Peter Jackson, chagrined at this 
 hitch in his day's fire-eating, will go ofE Walworth way at the best 
 speed he may, after handing over his charge to an indisputable 
 House-Surgeon. 
 
 One can picture to oneself how the whole thing might pass 
 as it did, between the abrupt check of the engine's career, heard 
 by Uncle Moses and his friend, and the two or three minutes later 
 when they emerged through the archway to find Dolly in despair; 
 not from any knowledge of the accident to Dave, for intense pre- 
 occupation and a rampart of clay had kept her in happy ignor- 
 ance of it, but because the water had broken bounds and Noah's 
 flood had come with a vengeance. Questioned as to Dave's 
 whereabouts, she embarked on a lengthy stuttered explanation 
 of how Dave had dode round there — ^pointing to the clay heap — 
 to det some of the new mud the men had spoyded up with their 
 spoyds. She reproduced his words, of course. Uncle Moses was 
 trying to detect her meaning without much success, when he 
 became aware that the old man in the fur cap who had shouted 
 more than once, " I say, master !" was addressing him. 
 
 " Is that old cock siuging out to one of we, Jerry ?" said 
 
DAVE'S ACCIDENT 27 
 
 Uncle Moses. And then replied to the old cock : — " Say what 
 you've got to say, mate ! Come a bit nigher." 
 
 Thereupon Old Sam crossed the bridge, slowly, as Uncle Moses 
 moved to meet him. " Might you happen to know anything of 
 this little boy ?" said old Sam. 
 
 Uncle Moses caught the sound of disaster in his accent, before 
 his words came to an end. " What's the Mttle boy ?" said he. 
 " Where have you got him ?" And Dolly, startled by the 
 strange sound in her uncle's voice, forgot Noah's flood, and stood 
 dumb and terrified with outstretched muddy hands. 
 
 " I may be in the wrong of it, master " — thus Old Sam in his 
 slow way, a trial to impatience — " but maybe this httle maid's 
 brother. They've took him across to the Hospital." Old Sam 
 did not Hke to have to say this. He softened it as much as he 
 could. Do you not see how ? Omit the word " across," and 
 see how relentless it makes the message. Do you ask why ? 
 Impossible to say — but it does ! 
 
 Then Uncle Moses shouted out hoarsely, not hke himself: 
 " The Hospital — the Hospital — hear that. Bob ! Our boy Dave 
 in the Hospital !" and, catching his friend's arm, " Ask him — 
 ask more !" His voice dropped and his breath caught. He was 
 a bad subject for sudden emotions. 
 
 " Tell it out, friend — any word that comes first !" says Mr. 
 Alibone. And then Old Sam, tongue-freed, gives the facts as 
 known to him. He ends with : — " Th' young child could never' 
 have been there above a minute, all told, before the engine come 
 along, and might have took no warning at twice his age for the 
 vairy sudden coming of it." He dwells upon the shortness of 
 the time Dave had been on the spot as though this minimised 
 the evil. " I shouldn't care to fix the blame, for my own part," 
 says he, shaking his head in venerable refusal of judicial functions 
 not assigned to him so far. 
 
 " Is the child killed, man ? Say what you know !" Thus 
 Mr. Ahbone brusquely. For he has caught a question Uncle 
 Moses just found voice for: — " KiUed or not ?" 
 
 The old watchman is beginning slowly: — " That I would not 
 undertake to say, sir . . ." when he is cut off short by Mrs. 
 Riley, anxious to attest any pleasant thing, truly if possible; 
 but if otherwise, anyhow ! — " Kilt is it ? No, shure thin ! 
 Insinsible." And then adds an absolutely gratuitous statement 
 from sheer optimism : — " Shure, I hur-r-d thim say so mesiK, and 
 I wouldn't mislade ye, me dyurr. Will I go and till his mother 
 to for ye down the Court ? To tiU her not to alarrum hersilf !" 
 
28 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 But by this time Uncle Moses had rallied. The momentary 
 qualm had been purely physical, connected with something that 
 a year since had caused a medical examination of his heart with 
 a stethoscope. He had been too great an adept in the art of 
 rallying after knock-down blows in his youth to go off in a 
 faint over this. He had felt queer, for all that. Still, he 
 declined Mrs. Riley's kindly meant offer. " Maybe I'll make the 
 best job of it myself," said he. " Thanking you very kindly all 
 the same, ma'am !" After which he and his friend vanished 
 back into Sapps Court, deciding as they went that it would be 
 best to persuade Aimt M'riar to remain at home, while they 
 themselves went to the Hospital, to learn the worst. It would 
 never do to leave DoUy alone, or even in charge of neighbours. 
 
 Mrs. Riley's optimism lasted till Uncle Moses and Mr. Alibone 
 disappeared, taking with them Dolly, aware of something terrible 
 afoot; too small to understand the truth, whatever it was; panic- 
 stricken and waihng provisionally to be even with the worst. 
 Then, all reason for well-meaning falsehood being at an end, the 
 Irishwoman looked facts in the face with the resolution that 
 never flinches before the mishaps of one's fellow -man, especially 
 when he is a total stranger. 
 
 " The power man !" said she. " He'll have sane the last of his 
 little boy aUve, only shure one hasn't the harrut to say the 
 worrd. Throubles make thimsilves fast enough without the 
 tiUing of thim, and there'll be manes and to spare for the power 
 payple to come to the knowledge without a worrd from you or 
 me, Mrs. Tapping." 
 
 Then said Mrs. Tapping, on the watch for an opening through 
 which she could thrust herself into the conversation; as a topic, 
 you understand: — " Now there, Mrs. Riley, you name the very 
 reason why I always stand by Uke, not to introduce my word. 
 Not but that I wiU confess to the temptation undergone this 
 very time to say that by God's wiU the child was took away from 
 us, undeniable. Against that temptation I kep' my Ups shut. 
 Only I will say this much, and no concealment, that if my 
 husband had been spared, being now a widow fourteen years, 
 and heard me keep silence many a time, he might have said it 
 again and again, Uke he said it a hundred times if he said it 
 once when ahve and able to it : — ' Mary Ann Tapping, you do 
 yourself no justice settin' still and Ust'nin', with your tongue in 
 your mouth God gave you, and you there to use it !' And I says 
 to Tapping, fifty times if I said it once, ' Tapping,' says, I ' you 
 better know things twiced before you say 'em for every onced 
 
DAVE'S ACCIDENT 29 
 
 you say 'em before you know 'em.' Then Tapping, he says, 
 was that to point at 'Lethear ? And I says yes, though the 
 girl was then young and so excusable. But she may learn 
 better, I says, and made allowance though mistaken. . . ." 
 This is just as good a point for Mrs. Tapping to cease at as any 
 other in the story. In reality Heaven only knows when she 
 ceased. 
 
 A very miscellaneous pubUc gathered round and formed false 
 ideas of what had happened from misinformants. The most 
 popular erroneous report ran towards connecting it somehow 
 with the sewer-trench, influencing people to look down into its 
 depths and watch for the reappearance of something supposed to 
 be expected back. So much so that more than one inoffensive 
 person asked the man in charge of the pumping engine — ^which 
 went honourably on without a pause — ^whether " it " was down 
 there. He was a morose and embittered man — had been crossed 
 in love, perhaps — for he met all inquiries by another: — " Who 
 are you a-speaking to ?" and, on being told, added: — " Then why 
 couldn't you say so ?" Humble apology had then to be content 
 with, " No, it ain't down there and never has been, if you ask 
 me," — in answer to the previous question. 
 
 Old Sam endeavoured more than once to point out that 
 the accident need not necessarily end fatally. He invented 
 tales of goods-trains that had passed over him early in life, and 
 the surgical skill that had left him whole and sound. Trains 
 were really unknown in his boyhood, but there was no one to 
 contradict him. The pubhc, stimulated to hopefulness, pro- 
 duced analogous experiences. It had had a hay-cart over it, 
 with a harvest-home on the top, such as we see in pictures. 
 It had had the Bangor coach over it, going down hill, and got 
 caught in the skid. It had been under an artiUery corps and 
 field-guns at a gallop, when the Queen revoo'd the troops in Hyde 
 Park. And look at it now ! Horse-kicks and wheel-crushing 
 really had a bracing tendency; gave the constitution tone, and 
 seldom left any ill effects. 
 
 Only their consequences must be took in time. Well ! — 
 hadn't the child gone to the Hospital ? Dissentients who 
 endeavoured to suggest that broken bones and dislocations were 
 unknown before the invention of surgeons, were rebuked by the 
 citation of instances of neglected compound fractures whose 
 crippled owners became athletes after their bones had been 
 scientifically reset, having previously been rebroken in the 
 largest number of places the narrator thought he could get 
 
30 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 credence for. Hope told her flattering tale very quickly, for 
 when Dave's uncle and Jerry Alibone reappeared on their way 
 to find the truth at the Hospital, her hearers were ready with 
 encouragement, whether they knew anything about the matter 
 or not. " I don't beheve they do," said Uncle Moses, and Mr. 
 Alibone repUed— " Not they, bless your heart !" But it was 
 refreshing for all that. 
 
 They met the poUce-sergeant on the way, coming from the 
 Hospital to bring the report and make inquiry about the child's 
 belongings. They credited him with superhuman insight when 
 he addressed them with: — " Either of you the father of a child 
 knocked down by Fire-engine 67a in this street — taken into 
 accident ward ?" He spoke just as though Engine 68b had 
 knocked another child down in the next street, and so on all 
 over London. 
 
 But his sharpness was merely human. For scarcely a soul 
 had passed but paused to look round after them, wondering at 
 the set jaw and palhd face of the huge man who hmped on a 
 stick, seeming put to it to keep the speed. Uncle Moses, you 
 see, was a fine man in his own way of the prizefighter type; 
 and now, in his old age, worked out a Uttle like Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson. 
 
 The report, as originally received by the police-officer, was 
 that the child was not killed but stiU unconscious. A good 
 string of injuries were credited to the poor Httle man, including 
 a dislocated femur and concussion of the brain. Quite enough 
 alone ! — ^for the patient, his friends and relations. The House- 
 Surgeon, speaking professionally, spoke also hopefully of un- 
 detected compUcations in the background. We might pull him 
 through for all that. This report was materially softened for 
 the child's family. Better not say too much to the parents at 
 present, either way ! 
 
BACK FROM THE HOSPITAL 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW UNCLE MO AND HIS FRIEND COTJLD NOT GET MUCH EN- 
 COURAGEMENT, dolly's attitude. ACHILLES AND THE TOR- 
 TOISE, AND dolly's pudding. HOW UNCLE MO's SPIRITS 
 WENT DOWN INTO HIS BOOTS. HOW PETER JACKSON THE 
 FIREMAN INTERVIEWED MICHAEL RAGSTROAR, UPSIDE DOWN, 
 AND BROUGHT AUNT m'eIAB's HEART INTO HER MOUTH. HOW 
 DAVE CAME HOME IN A CAB, AND MICHAEL RAGSTROAR GOT A 
 BIDE FOE NOTHING. OF SISTER NORA, WHO GOT ON THE 
 court's visiting UST before it CAME OUT THAT SHE WAS 
 MIXED UP WITH ARISTOCRATS 
 
 The present writer, haK a century since— he was then neither 
 we nor a writer — trod upon a tiny sapKng in the garden of the 
 house then occupied by his kith and kin. It was broken off 
 an inch from the ground, and he distinctly remembers living a 
 disgraced life thereafter because of the beautiful tree that sapling 
 might have become but for his inconsiderate awkwardness. If 
 the censorious spirit that he aroused could have foreseen the 
 tree that was to grow from the forgotten residuum of the acci- 
 dent, the root that it left in the ground, it would not perhaps 
 have passed such a sweeping judgment. Any chance waj^arer in 
 St. John's Wood may see that tree now — ^from the end of the 
 street, for that matter. 
 
 So perhaps the old prizefighter might have mustered more hope 
 in response to Aunt M'riar's plucky rally against despair. The 
 tiny, white, motionless figure on the bed in the accident ward, 
 that had uttered no sound since he saw it on first arriving at 
 the Hospital, might have been destined to become that of a 
 young engineer on a Dreadnought, or an unfledged dragoon, for 
 any authenticated standard of Impossibility. 
 
 The House-Surgeon and his Senior, one of the heads of the 
 Institution, — interviewed by Uncle Moses and Aunt M'riar when 
 they came late by special permission and appointment, hoping to 
 hear the child's voice once more, and found him still insensible 
 and white — testified that the action of the heart was good. The 
 little man had no intention of dying if he could Hve. But both 
 his medical attendants knew that the tremulous inquiry whether 
 there was any hope of a recovery — ^within a reasonable time 
 understood, of course — ^was really a petition for a favourable 
 
32 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 verdict at any cost. And they could not give one, for all they 
 would have been glad to do so. They have to damn so many 
 hopes in a day's work, these Accident Warders 1 
 
 " It's no use asking us," said they, somehow conjointly. 
 " There's not a surgeon in all England that could tell you whether 
 it wiii be life or death. We can only say the patient is making 
 a good fight for it." They seemed very much interested in the 
 case, though, and in the queer old broken-hearted giant that 
 sobbed over the half -killed baby that could not hear nor answer, 
 speak to it as he might. 
 
 " What did you say your name was ?" said the Senior Surgeon 
 to Uncle Moses. 
 
 " Moses Wardle of Hanley, called the Linnet. Ye see, I was 
 a Member of the Prize Ring, many years. Fighting Man, you 
 might say." 
 
 " I had an idea I knew the name, too. When I was a youngster 
 thirty odd years ago I took an interest in that sort of thing. 
 You fought Bob Brettle, and the umpires couldn't agree." 
 
 " That was it, master. Well, I had many a turn up — turn 
 up and turn down, either way as might be. But I had a good 
 name. I never sold a backer. I did my best by them that put 
 their money on me." For the moneychanger, the wagermonger, 
 creeps in and degrades the noble science of damaging one's 
 fellow -man effectively; even as in old years he brought dis- 
 credit on cock-fighting, in which at least — you cannot deny 
 it — the bird cuts a better figure than he does in his native farm- 
 yard. 
 
 " Come round after twelve to-morrow, and we may know 
 more," said the House-Surgeon. " It's not regular — but ask 
 for me." And then the older Surgeon shook Uncle Moses by 
 the hand, quite respectful-hke — so Mr. Jerry said to Aunt M'riar 
 later — and the two went back, sad and discouraged, to Sapps 
 Court. 
 
 What made it all harder to bear was the difficulty of dealing 
 with Dolly. Dolly knew, of course, that Dave had been took 
 to the Horsetickle — that was the nearest she could get to the 
 word, after frequent repetitions — and that he was to be made 
 well, humanly speaking, past a doubt. The Uttle maid had to 
 be content with assurances to this effect, inserting into the 
 treaty a stipulation as to time. 
 
 " Dave's doin' 'to tum home after dinner," said she, when 
 that meal seemed near at hand. And Uncle Moses never had 
 the heart to say no. 
 
BACK FEOM THE HOSPITAL 33 
 
 Then when no Dave had come, and Dolly had wept for him 
 in vain, and a cloth laid announced supper, Dolly said — ^moved 
 only by that landmark of passing time — " Dave is a-doin' to 
 turn home after supper; he is a-doin'. Uncle Mo, he is a-doin' !" 
 And what could her aunt and uncle do but renew the bill, as it 
 were; the promise to pay that could only be fulfilled by the 
 production of Dave, whole and sound. 
 
 She refused food except on condition that an exactly similar 
 helping should be conveyed to Dave in the Horsetickle. She 
 withdrew the condition that Uncle Moses and herself should 
 forthwith convey Dave's share of the repast to him, in considera- 
 tion of a verbal guarantee that little girls were not allowed in 
 such Institutions. Why she accepted this so readily is a 
 mystery. Possibly the common form of instruction to httle 
 girls, dwelling on their exclusion by statute or usage from advan- 
 tages enjoyed by httle boys, may have had its weight. Little 
 girls, exempli gratia, may not he on their backs and kick their 
 legs up. Little boys are at hberty to do so, subject to unim- 
 portant reservations, limiting the area at their disposal for the 
 practice. It is needless — and might be thought indeHcate — to 
 instance the numerous expressions that no Uttle girl should use 
 under any circumstances, which are regarded as venial sin in 
 Uttle boys, except of course on Sunday. Society does not 
 absolutely coimtenance the practices of spitting and sniffing in 
 Uttle boys, but it closes its eyes and passes hypocritically by on 
 the other side of the road; while, on the other hand, Uttle girls 
 indulging in these vices would either be cast out into the wilder- 
 ness, or have to accept the role of penitent Magdalens. There- 
 fore when Dolly was told that Uttle girls were not aUowed in 
 Hospitals, it may only have presented itself to her as another item 
 in a code of Umitations already famiUar. 
 
 The adhibition in visible form of a pendant to her own aUow- 
 ance of pudding or bread-and-milk, to be carried to the Horse- 
 tickle by Uncle Moses on his next visit, had a sedative effect, and 
 she was contented with it, without insisting on seeing the pledge 
 carried out. Her imagination was satisfied, as a child's usuaUy 
 is, with any objective transaction. Moreover, a dexterous 
 manipulation of the position improved matters. The portion 
 allotted to Dave was removed, ostensibly to keep it warm for 
 him, but reproduced to do duty as a second helping for DoUy. 
 Of course, it had to be halved again for Dave's sake, and an 
 ancient puzzle solved itself in practice. The third halving was 
 not wortii sending to the Hospital. Even so a step too smaU to 
 
 3 
 
34 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 take was left for Achilles when the tortoise had only just started. 
 " Solvitur ambulando," said Philosophy, and a -priori reason- 
 ing took a back place. 
 
 Her constant inquiries about the date of Dave's cure and 
 return were an added and grievous pain to her aunt and uncle. 
 It was easy for the moment to procrastinate, but how if the time 
 should come for telling her that Dave would never come back — 
 no, never ? 
 
 But the time was not to come yet. for a few days Life 
 showed indecision, and Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar had a thump- 
 ing heart apiece each time they stood by the little, still, white 
 figure on the bed and thought the breath was surely gone. 
 They were allowed in the ward every day, contrary to visitor- 
 rule, apparently because of Uncle Mo's professional eminence in 
 years gone by — an odd reason when one thinks of it ! It was 
 along of that good gentleman, God bless him ! — said Aunt M'riar — 
 that knew Uncle Mo's name in the Ring. In fact, the good 
 gentleman had said to the House-Surgeon in private converse: 
 " You see, there's no doubt the old chap ended sixteen rounds 
 with Brettle in a draw, and Jem Mace had a near touch with 
 Brettle. No, no — ^we must let him see the case day by day." 
 So Uncle Mo saw the case each day, and each day went away to 
 transact such business with Hope as might be practicable. And 
 each day, on his return, there was a voice heard in Sapps Court, 
 DoUy weeping for her elder brother, and would not be com- 
 forted. " Oo did said oo would fess Dave back from the Horse- 
 tickle, 00 know 00 did. Uncle Mo "; and similar reproaches, 
 mixed themselves with her sobs. But for many days she got 
 no consolation beyond assurance that Dave would come to- 
 morrow, discharged cured. 
 
 Then, one windy morning, a punctual equinoctial gale, gather- 
 ing up its energies to keep inoffensive persons awake all night 
 and, if possible, knock some chimney-stacks down, blew Uncle 
 Mo's pipehght out, and caused him to make use of an expression. 
 And Aunt M'riar reproved that expression, saying : — " Not with 
 that blessed boy lying there in the Hospital should you say such 
 language, Moses, more like profane swearing, I call it, than a 
 Christian household." 
 
 " He's an old Heathen, ma'am, is Moses," said Mr. Alibone, 
 who was succeeding in lighting his own pipe, in spite of the wind 
 in at the street door. Because, as we have seen, in this Court-^ 
 unUke the Courts of Law or Her Majesty's Court of St. James's 
 — the kitchens opened right on the street. Not but what, for 
 
BACK FEOM THE HOSPITAL 35 
 
 alj that, there was the number where you would expect, on a 
 shiny boss you could rub clean and give an appearance. Aunt 
 M'riar said so, and must have known. 
 
 Uncle Moses shook his head gravely over his own delinquency, 
 as if he truly felt it just as much as anybody. But when he got 
 his pipe Ughted, instead of being cheerful and making the most of 
 what the doctor had said that very day, his spirits went down 
 into his boots, which was a way they had. 
 
 " 'Tain't any good to make believe," said he. " Supposin' our 
 boy never comes back, M'riar I" 
 
 " There, now !" said Aunt M'riar. " To hear you talk. Mo, 
 wouldn't anybody think ! And after what Dr. Prime said only 
 this afternoon ! I should be ashamed." 
 
 " What was it Dr. Prime said. Mo ?" asked Mr. AHbone, quite 
 cheerful-like. " Tell us again, old man." For you see. Uncle 
 Moses he'd brought back quite an encouraging report, whatever 
 anyone see fit to say, when he come back from the Hospital. 
 Dr. Prime was the House-Surgeon. 
 
 " I don't take much account of him," said Uncle Mo. " A well- 
 meanin' man, but too easy by half. One o' your good-natured 
 beggars. Says a thing to stuff you up hke ! For all I could see, 
 my boy was as white as that bit of trimmin' in your hand, M'riar." 
 
 " But won't you tell us what the doctor said. Mo ?" said Mr. 
 Alibone. " I haven't above half heard the evening's noose." 
 He'd just come in to put a little heart into Moses. 
 
 " Said the little child had a better colour. But I don't set 
 any store by that." And then what does Uncle Moses do but 
 reg'lar give away and go off sobbing hke a baby. " Oh, M'riar, 
 M'riar, we shall never have our boy back — no, never !" 
 
 And then Aunt M'riar, who was a good woman if ever Mr. 
 Alibone come across one — ^this is what that gentleman could and 
 did tell a friend after, incorporated verbatim in the text — she up 
 and she says: — " For shame of yourself. Mo, for to go and forget 
 yourself like that before Mr. Alibone ! I tell you I believe we 
 shall have the boy back in a week, all along o' what Dr. Prime 
 said." On which, and a further representation that he would 
 wake Dolly if he went on like that. Uncle Mo he pulled himself 
 together and smoked quiet. Whereupon Aunt M'riar dwelt upon 
 the depressing effect a high wind in autumn has on the spirits, 
 with the singular result referred to above, of their retractation into 
 their owner's boots, like quicksilver in a thermometer discouraged 
 by the cold. After which professional experience was allowed 
 some weight, and calmer counsels prevailed. 
 
36 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 About this time an individual in a sort of undress uniform, be- 
 ginning at the top in an equivocal Tam-o'-Shanter hat, sauntered 
 into the cul-de-sac to which Sapps i ourt was an appendix. He 
 appeared to be unconcerned in human affairs, and indeed in- 
 dependent of Time, Space, and Circumstance. He addressed 
 a creature that was hanging upside down on some railings, 
 apparently by choice. 
 
 " What sort of a name does this here archway go by ?" said 
 he, without acute curiosity. 
 
 " That's Sappses Court," said the creature, remaining in- 
 verted. " Say it ain't ?" He appeared to identify the uniform 
 he was addressing, and added: — " There ain't a fire down that 
 Court, 'cos I knows and I'm a telling of yer. You'd best hook 
 it." The uniform hooked nothing. Then, in spite of the creature 
 — ^who proved, right-side-up, to be Michael Ragstroar — shouting 
 after him — " You ain't wanted down that Court !" he entered it 
 deliberately, whistling a song then popular, whose singer wished 
 he was with Nanoy, he did, he did, in a second floor, with a small 
 back-door, to Uve and die with Nancy. 
 
 Having identified Sapps, he seemed to know quite well which 
 house he wanted, for he went straight to the end and knocked at 
 No. 7. 
 
 " Sakes aUve !" said Aunt M'riar, responsive to the knock, 
 " There's no fire here." 
 
 " I'm off duty," said the fireman briefly. " I've come to tell 
 you about your young customer at the Hospital." 
 
 Aunt M'riar behaved heroically. There was only, to her 
 thinking, one chance in ten that this strange, inexplicable 
 messenger should have brought any other news to their house 
 than that of its darUng's death; but that one chance was enough 
 to make her choke back a scream, lest Uncle Mo should have 
 one moment of needless despair. And else — ^it shot across her 
 mind in a second — might not a sudden escape from despair even 
 be fatal to that weak heart of his ? So Aunt M'riar pulled to the 
 door behind her to say, with an effort: — " Is he dead ?" The 
 universe swam about outside while she stood stiU, and some- 
 thing hummed in her head. But through it she heard the flre- 
 man say: — " Not he !" as of one endowed with a great vitaUty, 
 one who would take a deal of killing. When he added: — " He's 
 spoke," though she believed her ears certainly, for she ran back 
 into the kitchen cryiag out: — " He's spoke. Mo, he's spoke !" she 
 did it with a misgiving that the only interpretation she could 
 see her way to must be wrong — was altogether too good to be true 
 
BACK FROM THE HOSPITAL 37 
 
 Uncle Mo fairly shouted with joy, and this time woke Dolly, 
 who thought it was a calamity, and wept. Fully five minutes 
 of incoherent rejoicing followed, and then details might be 
 rounded off. The fireman had to stand by his engine on the 
 night-shift in an hour's time, but he saw his way to a pipe, 
 and lit it. 
 
 " They're always interested to hear the ending-up of things 
 at the Station," said he, to account for himself and his presence, 
 " and I made it convenient to call round at the Ward. The 
 party that took the child from me happened to be there, and 
 knew me again." He, of course — ^but you would guess this — 
 was Peter Jackson of Engine 67a. He continued: — " The party 
 was so obliging as to take me into the Ward to the bedside. 
 And it was while I was there the httle chap began talking. The 
 party asked me to step in and mention it to you, ma'am, or his 
 uncle, seeing it was in my road to the Station." Then Peter 
 Jackson seemed to feel his words needed extenuation or revision. 
 " Not but I would have gone a bit out of the way, for that 
 matter !" said he. 
 
 " 'Twouldn't be any use my looking round now, I suppose ?" 
 said Uncle Mo. Because he always was that restless and fidgety. 
 
 " Wait till to-morrow, they said, the party and the nurse. 
 By reason the child might talk a bit and then get some healthy 
 sleep. What he's had these few days latterly don't seem to 
 count." Thus Peter Jackson, and Uncle Moses said he had 
 seen the like. And then all three of them made the place 
 smokier and smokier you could hardly make out across the 
 room. 
 
 " Mo's an impatient old cock, you see !" said Mr. Ahbone, 
 who seemed to understand Peter Jackson, and vice versa. And 
 Uncle Mo said: — " I suppose I shall have to mark time." To 
 which the others replied that was about it. 
 
 " Only whatever did the young child say, mister ?" said Aunt 
 M'riar; like a woman's curiosity, to know. But those other 
 two, they was curious undemeath-like ; only denied it. 
 
 " I couldn't charge my memory for certain, ma'am," said 
 Peter Jackson, " and might very easy be wrong." He appeared 
 to shrink from the responsibihty of making a report, but 
 all his hearers were agreed that there was no call to cut things 
 so very fine as all that. A rough outline would meet the 
 case. 
 
 " If it ran to nonsense in a child," said Uncle Mo — " after all, 
 what odds ?" And Aunt M'riar said: — " Meanin' slips through 
 
38 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the words sometimes, and no fault to find." She had not read 
 " Rabbi Ben Ezra," so this was original. 
 
 Peter Jackson endeavoured to charge his memory, or, perhaps 
 more properly, to discharge it. Dave had said first thing when 
 he opened his eyes : — " The worty will be all over the hedge. Let 
 me go to stop the worty." Of course, this had been quite un- 
 inteUigible to his hearers. However, Mr. Alibone and Uncle 
 Mo were au fait enough of the engineering scheme that had led 
 to the accident, to supply the explanation. Dave's responsi- 
 bility as head engineer had been on his conscience all through 
 his spell of insensibility, and had been the earliest roused 
 matter of thought when the light began to break. 
 
 Besides, it so chanced that testimony was forthcoming to sup- 
 port this view and confirm Dave's sanity. Dolly, who had been 
 awakened by the noise, had heard enough to convey to her small 
 mind that something pleasant had transpired in relation to Dave. 
 Though young, she had a certain decision of character. Her 
 behaviour was lawless, but not unnatural. She cUmbed out of 
 her wooden crib in Aunt M'riar's bedroom, and slipping furtively 
 down the stair which led direct to the kitchen, succeeded in 
 bounding on to the lap of her uncle; from which, once estab- 
 lished, she knew it would be difficult for her aunt to dislodge 
 her. She crowed with dehght at the success of this escapade, 
 and had the satisfaction of being, as it were, confirmed in her 
 dehnquency by her aunt wrapping a shawl round her. This was 
 partly on the score of the cold draughts in such a high wind, 
 partly as a measure of pubUc decency. She was in time to 
 endorse her uncle's explanation of Dave's speech inteUigibly 
 enough, with a due allowance of interpretation. 
 
 Closely reported, the substance of her commentary ran as 
 follows : — " Dave tooktited the mud when I fessed him the mud 
 in my flock " — this was illustrated in a way that threatened to 
 outrage a sensitive propriety, the speaker's aunt's — " and 
 spooshed up the worty and spooshed up the worty " — ^this 
 repetition had great value — " and spooshtited the worty back, 
 and then there wasn't no more mud ... it was all fessed away 
 in my flock . . . AU dom ! — ass, it was — all dorn !" — this was 
 in a minor key, and thrilled with pathos — " and Dave dode to 
 fess more where the new mud was, and was took to the Horse- 
 tickle and never come back no more . . ." At this point it 
 seemed best to lay stress upon the probable return of Dave, 
 much to Dolly's satisfaction; though she would have been better 
 pleased if a date had been fixed. 
 
BACK FROM THE HOSPITAL 39 
 
 Our own belief is that Dolly thought the Horsetickle was an 
 institution for the relief of sufferers from accidents occasioned by 
 horses, and that no subsequent experience ever entirely dissipated 
 this impression. The chances are that nine or ten of the small 
 people one sees daily and thinks of as " the children/' are laying 
 up, even at this moment, some similar fancy that will last a 
 lifetime. But this is neither here nor there. 
 
 What is more to the purpose is that a fortnight later Dave 
 was brought home in a cab — ^the only cab that is recorded in 
 History as having ever deliberately stood at the entrance to 
 Sapps Court, with intent. Cabs may have stood there in connec- 
 tion with other doorways in the cul-de-aac, but ignoring proudly 
 the archway with the iron post. Dave was carried down the 
 Court by his uncle with great joy, and Michael Ragstroar seized 
 the opportunity to tie himself somehow round the axle of the 
 cab's back-wheels, and get driven some distance free of charge. 
 Dave, as seen by DoUy on his return, was still painfully white, 
 and could not walk. And Dolly might not come banging and 
 smashing down on him like a little elephant, because it would 
 hurt him; so she had to be good. The elephant simile was due 
 to a lady — no doubt well-meaning — ^who accompanied Dave 
 from the Hospital, and came more than once to see him after- 
 wards. But it was taking a good deal on herself to decide what 
 Dolly ought or ought not to do to Dave. 
 
 In those days slumming proper had not set in, and the East 
 End was only known geographically, except, no doubt, to a few 
 enthusiasts — the sort that antedates first discovery after the fact, 
 and takes a vicious pleasure in precursing its successors. But 
 unassuming benefactresses occurred at intervals whom outsiders 
 knew broadly as Sisters of Charity. Such a one was this lady, 
 between whom and Aunt M'riar a sympathetic friendship grew 
 up before the latter discovered that Dav;e's hospital friend was an 
 Earl's niece, which not unnaturally made her rather stand- 
 offish for a time. However, a remark of Mr. Alibone's — ^who 
 seemed to know — ^that the lady's uncle was a belted Earl, and 
 no mistake, palliated the Earldom and abated class prejudice. 
 The Earl naturally went up in the esteem of the old prize- 
 fighter when it transpired that he was belted. What more could 
 the most exacting ask ? 
 
 But it was in the days when this lady was only " that party 
 from the Hospital," that she took root at No. 7, Sapps Court. 
 No. 7 was content that she should remain nameless; but 
 when she said, in some affair of a message to be given at the 
 
40 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Hospital, that its bearer was to ask for Sister Nora, it became 
 impossible to ignore the name, although certainly it was a name 
 that compUcated matters. She remained, however, plain Sister 
 Nora, without suspicion of any doubtful connections, until a 
 scheme of a daring character took form — nothing less than that 
 Dave should be taken into the coimtry for change of air. 
 
 Uncle Mo was uneasy at the idea of Dave going away. Be- 
 sides, he had always cherished the idea that the air of Sapps 
 Court was equal to that of San Moritz, for instance. Look at 
 what it was only a few years before Dave's father and mother 
 first moved in, when it was all fields along the New Road — 
 which has since been absurdly named Euston and Marylebone 
 Road ! Nothing over come to change the air in Sapps Court 
 that Uncle Mo knew of. And look at the wallflowers growing 
 out in front the same as ever ! 
 
 Uncle Mo,i^ owever, was not the man to allow his old-fashioned 
 prejudices to stand in the way of the patient's convalescence, 
 and an arrangement was made by Sister Nora that Dave should 
 be taken charge of, for a while, by an old and trustworthy 
 inhabitant of the Rocestershire village of which her uncle, the 
 belted Earl, was the feudal lord and master, or slave and servant, 
 according as you look at it. It was during the arrangement of 
 this plan that his Earldom leaked out, creating serious misgivings 
 in the minds of Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar that they would be 
 ill-advised if they allowed themselves to get mixed up with 
 that sort of people. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 OF dolly's CRACKNELL BISCtUT, THAT SHE MISTOOK FOB DAVE. 
 OF HEB UNSEAWOBTHY BOX, AND HEB VISITS TO MBS. PBICHABD 
 UPSTAIBS. HOW SHE HAD NEVEB TOLD MRS. BUBB A WOBD 
 ABOUT VAN DIEMEN's LAND. CONCEENING IDOLATBY, ASV 
 THE LIABmTY OF TEYING ON TO TEMPEB. UNCLE MO'S 
 IDEAS OF PENAL SETTLEMENTS 
 
 They were sad days in Sapps Court after Sister Nora bore Dave 
 away to Chorlton-under-Bradbury ; particularly for Dolly, whose 
 tears bathed her pillow at night, and diluted her bread-and-milk 
 
MRS. PRICHARD 41 
 
 in the morning. There was something very touching about this 
 little maid's weeping in her sleep, causing Aunt M'riar to give 
 her a cracknell biscuit — to consume if possible; to hold in her 
 sleeping hand as a rapture of possession, anyhow. Dolly accepted 
 it, and contrived to enjoy it slowly without waking. What is 
 more, she stopped crying; and my belief is, if you ask me, that 
 sleep having deprived her of the power of drawing fine distinc- 
 tions, she mistook this biscuit for Dave. Its caput mortuum 
 was still clasped to her bosom when, deep unconsciousness 
 merging all distinctions in unquahfied existence, she was having 
 her sleep out next day. 
 
 Dolly may have felt indignant and hurt at the audacious 
 false promises of her uncle and aunt as to Dave's return. He 
 had come home, certainly, but badly damaged. It was a sad 
 disappointment; the little woman's first experience of perfidy. 
 Her betrayers made a very poor show of their attempts at com- 
 pensation — ^toys and suchHke. There was a great dignity in 
 Dolly's attitude towards these contemptible offerings of a 
 penitent conscience. She accepted them, certainly, but put 
 them away in her bots to keep for Dave. Her box — ^if one has 
 to spell it right — ^was an overgrown cardboard box with " Silk 
 Twill " written on one end, and blue paper doors to fold over 
 inside. It had been used as a boat, but condemned as unsea- 
 worthy as soon as Dolly could not sit in it to be pushed about, 
 the gunwale having split open amidships. Let us hope this is 
 right, nautically. 
 
 Considered as a safe for the storage of valuables, Dolly's 
 box would have acquitted itself better if fair play had been 
 shown to it. Its lid should have been left on long enough to 
 produce an impression, and not pulled off at frequent intervals 
 to exhibit its contents. No sooner was an addition made to 
 these than Dolly would say, for instance, that she must s'ow 
 Mrs. Picture upstairs the most recent acquisitions. Then she 
 would insist on trying to carry it upstairs, but was not long 
 enough in the arms, and Aunt M'riar had to do it for her in the 
 end. Not, however, unwillingly, because it enabled her to 
 give her mind to pinking or gauffering, or whatever other craft 
 was then engaging her attention. We do not ourself know 
 what pinking is, or gauffering; we have only heard them referred 
 to. A vague impression haunts us that they fray out if not done 
 careful. But this is probably valueless. 
 
 No doubt Dolljr's visits upstairs in connection with this box 
 were answerable for Aunt M'riar's having come to know a good 
 
42 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 deal about old Mrs. Prichard's — or, according to Dave and Dolly, 
 Picture's — antecedents. A good deal, that is, when it came 
 to be put together and liberally helped by inferences; but made 
 up of very small deals — disjointed deals — in the form in which 
 they were received by Aunt M'riar. As, for instance, on the 
 occasion just referred to, shortly after Dave had gone on a visit 
 to the tenant of the belted Earl, Uncle Mo having gone away 
 for an hour, to spend it in the parlour of The Rising Sun, a truly 
 respectable house where there were Skittles, and Knurr and 
 Spell. He might, you see, be more than an hour: there was no 
 saying for certain. 
 
 " I do take it most kind of you, ma'am," said Aunt M'riar 
 for the fiftieth time, with departure in sight, " to keep an eye 
 on the child. Some children nourishes a kind of ap'thy, not 
 due to themselves, but constitutional in their systems, and one 
 can leave alone without fear by reason of it. But Dolly is that 
 busy and attentive, and wiU be up and doing, so one may easy 
 spoil a tuck or stand down an iron too hot if called away sudden 
 to see after the child." 
 
 The old woman seemed to Aunt M'riar to respond vaguely. 
 She loved to have the little thing anigh her, and hear her clacket. 
 " All my own family are dead and gone, barring one son," said 
 she. And then added, without any consciousness of jarring 
 ideas : — " He would be forty-five." Aunt M'riar tried in vain to 
 think of some way of sympathizing, but was relieved from her 
 self-imposed duty by the speaker continuing — " He was my 
 youngest. Bom at Macquarie Harbour in the old days. The 
 boy was born up-country — ^yes, forty-five years agone." 
 
 " Not in England now, ma'am, I suppose," said Aunt M'riar, 
 who could not see her way to anything eke. The thought crossed 
 her mind that, so far as she knew, no male visitor for the old 
 tenant of the attics had so far entered the house. 
 
 The old woman shook her head slowly. " I could not say,"" 
 she said. " I cannot tell you now if he be alive or dead." Then 
 she became drowsy, as old age does when it has talked enough; 
 so, as Aunt M'riar had plenty to see to, she took her leave, 
 Dolly remaining in charge as per contract. 
 
 Aunt M'riar passed on these stray fragmentHof old Mrs. 
 Prichard's autobiography to Uncle Mo when he came in from 
 the Rising Sun. The old boy seemed roused to interest by 
 the mention of Van Diemen's Land. " I call to mind," said 
 he, " when I was a youngster, hearing tell of the convicts out 
 in those parts, and how no decent man could live in the place. 
 
MRS. PRICHARD 43 
 
 Hell on Earth, they did say, those that knew." Thereupon old 
 Mrs. Prichard straightway became a problem to Aunt M'riar. 
 If there were none but convicts in Van Diemen's Land, and all 
 Mrs. Prichard's boys were bom there, the only chance of the 
 old woman not having been the mother of a convict's children 
 lay in her having been possibly the wife of a gaoler, at the best. 
 And yet — she was such a nice, pretty old thing ! Was it con- 
 ceivable ? 
 
 Then in subsequent similar interviews Aunt M'riar, inquisitive- 
 Uke, tried to get further information. But very Uttle was forth- 
 coming beyond the fact that Mrs. Prichard's husband was dead. 
 What supported the convict theory was that his widow never 
 referred to any relatives of his or her own. Mrs. Burr, her com- 
 panion or concomitant — or at least fellow-lodger — was not un- 
 communicative, but knew " less than you might expect " about 
 her. Aunt M'riar cultivated this good woman with an eye to 
 information, holding her up — as the phrase is now — at the stair- 
 foot and inveigling her to tea and gossip. She was a garrulous 
 party when you come to know her, was Mrs. Burr; and indeed, 
 short of intimacy, she might have produced the same impression 
 on any person well within hearing. 
 
 " Times and again," said she in the course of one such con- 
 versation, which had turned on the mystery of Mrs. Prichard's 
 antecedents, " have I thought she was going to let on about her 
 belongings, and never so much as a word ! Times and again 
 have I felt my tongue in the roof of my mouth, for curiosity to 
 think what she would say next. And there, will you beUeve 
 me, missis 1 — it was no better than so much silence aU said and 
 done ! Nor it wasn't for want of words, hke one sits meanin' 
 a great deal and when it comes to the describin' of it just 
 nowhere ! She was by way of keeping something back, and 
 there was I sat waiting for it, and guess-working round hke, 
 speculating, you might say, to think what it might be when it 
 come. Thank you, ma'am — not another cup !" 
 
 " Thpre's more in the pot, ma'am," said Aunt M'riar, looking 
 into it to see, near the paraffin lamp which smelt: they all did 
 in those days. But Mrs. Burr had had three; and three does, 
 mostly. If tlji^e excellent women's Uttle inflections of speech, 
 introduced thus casually, are puzzling, please supply inverted 
 commas. Aunt M'riar organized the tea-tray to take away and 
 wash up at the sink, after emptying saucer-superfluities into 
 the slop-basin. Mrs. Burr referred to the advantages we enjoy 
 as compared with our forbears, instancing especially our exemp-. 
 
44 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 tion from the worship of wooden images, Egyptian Idles — a 
 spelling accommodated to meet an impression Mrs. Burr had 
 derived from a Japanese Buddha — and suchlike, and Tea. 
 
 "However they did without it I cannot think," said she. 
 " On'y, of course, not having to stitch, stitch, stitch from half- 
 past six in the morning till bedtime made a difference." Her 
 ideas of our ancestors were strongly affected by a copper-plate 
 engraving in a print-shop window in Soho, even as idolatry had 
 been presented to her by a Tea-Man and Grocer in Tottenham 
 Court Road. It was Stothard's " Canterbury Pilgrims "—you 
 know ! — and consequently her moyen age had a falcon on its 
 wrist, and a jester in attendance, invariably. " They was a good 
 deal in the open air, and it tells," was her tribute to the memory 
 of this plate. She developed the subject further, incidentally. 
 " Tryin' on is a change, of course, but liable to temper, and 
 vexatious when the party insists on letting out and no allowance 
 of turn-over. The same if too short in front. What was I 
 a-sayin' ? . . . Oh, Mrs. Prichard — yes ! You was inquiring, 
 ma'am, about the length of time I had known her. Just four 
 years this Christmas, now I think of it. Time enough and to 
 spare to tell anything she liked — if she'd have Uked. But you 
 may take it from me, ma'am, on'y to go no further on any 
 account, that Mrs. Prichard is not, as they say, free-spoke about 
 her family, but on the contrary the contrairy." Mrs. Burr was 
 unconsciously extending the powers of the Enghsh tongue, in 
 varying one word's force by different accents. 
 
 Uncle Moses he cut in, being at home that time : — " Was you 
 saying, ma'am, that the old widder -lady's husband had been a 
 convict in AustraUa 1" 
 
 Oh no ! — ^Mrs. Burr had never got that far. So she testified. 
 Aunt M'riar, speaking from the sink, where she was extracting 
 out the tea-leaves from the pot, was for calling Uncle Moses over 
 the coals. Anybody might soon be afraid to say anything, to 
 have him running away with an idea Uke that. No one had 
 ever said any such a thing. Indeed, the convict was entirely infer- 
 ential, and had no foundation except in the fact that the old 
 woman's son had been bom at Macquarie Harbour. Uncle Mo's 
 impression that Van Diemen's Land was a sort^f plague-spot 
 on the planet — ^the bacilli of the plague being convicted criminals 
 — ^was no doubt too well grounded. But it was only a hearsay 
 of youth, and even elderly men may now fail to grasp the way 
 folk spoke and thought of those remote horrors, the Penal 
 Settlements, in the early days of last century — a century with 
 
MRS. PRICHARD 45 
 
 whose years those of Uncle Moses, after babyhood, ran nearly 
 neck and neck. That fellow-creatures, turned t'other way up, 
 were in Hell at the Antipodes, and that it was so far off it didn't 
 matter — that was the way the thing presented itself, and supplied 
 the excuse for forgetting all about it. Uncle Mo had " heard 
 tell " of their existence; but then they belonged to the criminal 
 classes, and he didn't. If people belonged to the criminal classes 
 it was their own look out, and they must take the consequences. 
 
 So that when the old boy referred to this inferential convict 
 as a presumptive fact, the meaning of his own words had httle 
 force for himself. Even if the old lady's husband had been a 
 convicted felon, it was now long enough ago to enable him to 
 think of him as he thought of the chain-gangs eight thousand 
 miles off as the crow flies — or would fly if he could go straight; 
 the nearest way round mounts up to twelve. Anyhow, there 
 was no more in the story than would clothe the vddowhood of 
 the upstairs tenant with a dramatic interest. 
 
 So, as it appeared that Mrs. Prichard's few words to Aunt 
 M'riar were more illuminating than anything Mrs. Burr had to 
 tell, and they really amounted to very little when all was said 
 and done, there was at least nothing in the convict story to cause 
 misgivings of the fitness of the upstairs attic to supply a haven of 
 security for Dolly, while her aunt went out foraging for pro- 
 visions; or when, as we have seen sometimes happened, Dolly 
 became troublesome from want of change, and kep' up a con- 
 tinual fidget for this or that, distrackin' your — that is. Aunt 
 M'riar's — attention. 
 
46 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PHCEBE AND THE SQUIKE's SON. HEE RUNAWAY MARRIAGE WITH 
 HIM. HOW HE DABBLED IN FORGERY AND BURNED HIS 
 SINGERS. OF A JUDGE WHO TOOK AFTER THE PSALMIST. 
 VAN DIEMEN's land, AND HOW PHCEBE GOT OUT THERE. 
 HOW BOTH TWINS WERE PROVED DEAD BY IRRESISTIBLE 
 EVIDENCE, EACH TO EACH. HOW THORNTON FORGOT THAT 
 PHCEBE COULD NEVER BE LEGALLY HIS WIDOW. HOW HIS 
 SON ACTED WELL UP TO HIS FATHER'S STANDARD OF IM- 
 MORALITY. MARRIAGE A MEANS TO AN END, BUT ONLY 
 ONCE. AN ILL-STARRED BURGLARY. NORFOLK ISLAND. WHY 
 BOTH MRO. DAVERILLS CHANGED THEIR NAMES 
 
 If this story sbould ever be retold by a skilful teller, his power 
 of consecutive narrative and redisposition of crude facts in a 
 better order will be. sure to add an interest it can scarcely 
 command in its present form. But it is best to make no pretence 
 to niceties of construction, when a mere presentation of events 
 is the object in view. The following circumstances in the life 
 of old Mrs. Prichard constitute a case in point. The story 
 might, so to speak, ask its reader's forgiveness for so sudden 
 a break into the narrative. Consider that it has done so, and 
 amend the tale should you ever retell it. 
 
 Maisie Runciman, born in the seventies of the previous 
 century, and close upon eighty years of age at the time of this 
 story, was the daughter of an Essex miller, who became a 
 widower when she and her twin sister Phoebe were still quite 
 children. His only other child,a son manyyears their senior, 
 died not long after his mother, leaving them to the sole com- 
 panionship of their father. He seems to have been a quarrel- 
 some man, who had estranged himself from both his wife's rela- 
 tives and his own. He also had that most unfortunate quality 
 of holding his head high, as it is called; so high, in fact, that his 
 twin girls found it difficult to associate with their village neigh- 
 boiirs, and were driven back very much on their own resources 
 for society. Their father's morose isolation was of his own 
 choosing. He was, however, affectionate in a rough way to 
 them, and their small household was peaceful and contented 
 enough. The sisters, wrapped up in one another, as twins so 
 
THE STORY OP THE TWINS 47 
 
 often are, had no experience of any other condition of life, and 
 thought it all right and the thing that should be. 
 
 All went well enough — ^without discord anyhow, however 
 monotonously — until Maisie and Phoebe began to look a little 
 like women; which happened, to say the truth, at least a year 
 before their father consented to recognise the fact, and permit 
 them to appear in the robes of maturity. About that time the 
 young males of the neighbourhood became aware, each in hia 
 private heart, of an adoration cherished for one or other of the 
 beautiful twins from early boyhood. Would-be lovers began 
 to buzz about hke flies when fruit ripens. If any one of these 
 yoviths had any doubt about the intensity and immutabiUty 
 of his passion, it vanished when the girls announced official 
 womanhood by appearing at church in the costume of their 
 seniors. Some students of the mysterious phenomena of Love 
 have held that man is the slave of millinery, and that women 
 are to all intents and purposes their skirts. It is too deUcate 
 a question for hurried discussion in a narrative which is neither 
 speculative nor philosophical, but historical. All that concerns 
 its writer is that no sooner did the costume of the miller's 
 daughters suggest that they would be eUgible for the altar, than 
 they grew so dear, so dear, that everything mascuhne and 
 unattached was ambitious to be the jewel that trembled at their 
 ear, or the girdle about their dainty, dainty waist. 
 
 The worst of it for these girls was that their Ukeness to one 
 another outwent that of ordinary twinship. It resembled that 
 of the stage where the same actor personates both Dromios; 
 and their hfe was one perpetual Comedy of Errors. Current 
 jest said that they themselves did not know which was which. 
 But they did know, perfectly well, and had no misgivings what- 
 ever about becoming permanently confused; even when, having 
 been dressed in different colours to facihtate distinction, they 
 changed dresses and produced a cUmax of complication. Even 
 this was not so bad as when Phoebe had a tifE with Maisie — a 
 rare thing between twins — ^and Maisie avenged herself by pre- 
 tending to be Phoebe, afifecting that all the latter's protests of 
 identity were mahcious misrepresentation. Who could decide 
 when they themselves were not of a tale ? What settled the 
 matter in the end was that Phoebe cried bitterly at being mis- 
 represented, while Maisie was so ill-advised as not to do the 
 same, and even made some parade of triumph. " Yow are 
 Maisie. I heerd yow a-crowun'," said an old stone-dresser, 
 who, with other mill-hands, was referred to for an opinion. 
 
48 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 This was when they were quite young, before slight varia- 
 tions of experience had altered appearance and character to 
 the point of making them distinguishable when seen side by side. 
 Not, however, to the point of rendering impossible a trick each 
 had played more than once on too importunate male acquain- 
 tances. What could be more disconcerting to the protestations 
 of a rustic admirer than " Happen you fancy you are speaking 
 to my sister Phoebe, sir ?" from Maisie, or vice versa ? It was 
 absolutely impossible to nail either of these girls to her own 
 identity, in the face of her denial of it in her sister's absence. 
 Perhaps the only real confidence on the point that ever existed 
 was their mother's, who knew the two babies apart — so she 
 said — because one smelt of roses, the other of marjoram. 
 
 It may easily have been that the power of duping youth and 
 shrewdness, as to which sister she really was, weighed too 
 heavily with each of these girls in their assessment of the value 
 of lovers' vows. And still more easily that — some three years 
 later than the girlish jest related a page since — ^when Maisie, 
 playing off this trick on a wild young son of the Squire's, was 
 met by an indignant reproach for her attempted deception, 
 she should have been touched by his earnestness and seeming 
 insight into her inner soul, and that the incident should have 
 become the cornerstone of a fatal passion for a damned scoundrel. 
 " Oh, Maisie — ^Maisie !" — thus ran his protestation — " Dearest, 
 best, sweetest of girls, how can you think to dupe me when your 
 voice goes to my heart as no other voice ever can — ever will ? 
 How, when I know you for mine — mine alone — by touch, by 
 sight, by hearing ?" The poor child's innocent little fraud 
 had been tried on a past-master in deception, and her own arrow 
 glanced back to wound her, beyond cure perhaps. His duplicity 
 . was proved afterwards by the confession of his elder brother 
 Ralph, a young man little better than himself, that the two 
 girls had been the subject of a wager between them, which he 
 had lost. This wager turned on which of the two should be 
 first " successful " with one of the beautiful twins; and whether 
 it showed only doubtful taste or infamous bad feeling depended 
 on what interpretation was put on the word " success " by its 
 perpetrators. A lenient one was possible so long as no worse 
 came of it than that Thornton Daverill, the younger brother, 
 became the accepted suitor of Maisie, and Ralph, the elder, the 
 rejected one of Phoebe. Thornton's success was no doubt due 
 in a great measure to Maisie's failure to mislead him about her 
 identity, and Ralph's rejection possibly to the poor figure he 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 49 
 
 cut when Phoebe played fast and loose with hers. That there 
 was no truth or honour in Thornton's protestations to Maisie, 
 or even honest loss of self-control under strong feeling, is evident 
 from the fact that he told his brother as a good joke that his 
 power of distinguishing between the girls was due to nothing 
 more profound than that Maisie always gave him her hand to 
 shake and Phoebe only her fingers. Possibly this test would 
 only have held good in the case of men outside the family. It 
 was connected with some minute sensitiveness of feeling towards 
 that class, not perceptible by any other. 
 
 But in whatever sense Thornton and Maisie were trothplight, 
 her father opposed their marriage, although it would no doubt 
 have been a social elevation for the miller's daughter. It must 
 be admitted that for once the inexorable parent may have been 
 in the right. Tales had reached him, unhappily too late to 
 prevent the formation of an acquaintance between the young 
 squires and his daughters, of the profligacies — dissoluteness 
 with women and at the gaming-table — of both these young men. 
 And it is httle wonder that he resolutely opposed the union of 
 Thornton and Maisie — she a girl of nineteen ! — at least until there . 
 was some sign of reform in the youth, some turning from his 
 evil ways. 
 
 It was a sad thing for Maisie that her father's exclusivenesS 
 had created so many obstacles to the associations of his daughters 
 with older women. No one had ever taken the place of a 
 mother to them. It is rare enough for even a mother to speak 
 explicitly to her daughter of what folk mean when they tell 
 of the risks a girl runs who weds with a man Uke Thornton 
 Daverill. But she may do so in such a way as to excite suspicion 
 of the reality, and it is hard on motherless girls that they should 
 not have this slender chance. A father can do nothing, and 
 old fulminations of well-worn Scriptural jargon — hers was an 
 adept in texts — had not even the force of their brutal plain 
 speech. For to these girls the speech was not plain — ^it was 
 only what Parson read in Church. That described and ex- 
 hausted it. 
 
 The rest of the story follows naturally — ^too naturally — from 
 the position shown in the above hasty sketch. Old Isaac 
 Runciman's ill-temper, combined with an almost ludicrous want 
 of tact, took the form of forbidding Thornton DaveriU the house. 
 The student of the art of dragging lovers asimder cannot be 
 too mindful of the fact that the more they see of each other, the 
 sooner they will be ripe for separation. If Maisie had been 
 
 4 
 
50 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 difiQcult to influence when her father contented himself with , 
 saying that he forbade the marriage ex cathedra paternce auctori- , 
 tatia, she became absolutely intractable when, some tinie after, 
 this authority went the length of interdicting communications. 
 Secret interviews, about double the length of the public ones 
 they supplanted, gave the indignant parent an excuse for 
 locking the girl into her own room. All worked well for the 
 purpose of a thoroughly unprincipled scoundrel. Thornton, who 
 would probably have married Maisie if nothing but legal posses- 
 sion had been open to him, saw his way to the same advantages 
 without the responsibilities of marriage, and jumped at them. 
 Do not blame Maisie overmuch for her share of what came about. 
 The step she consented to was one of which the full meaning 
 could only be half known to a girl of her age and experience. 
 And the man into whose hands it threw her past recovery was 
 in her eyes the soul of honour and chivalry — ^ill-judging, if at 
 all, from the influence of a too passionate adoration for herseLE. 
 Conception of the degree and nature of his wickedness was 
 probably impossible to her; and, indeed, may have been so still 
 ^ — however strange it may seem — to the very old lady whom, 
 under the name of Mrs. Prichard, Dolly Wardle used to visit 
 in Sapps Court, " Mrs. Picture in the topackest " being the 
 nearest shot she was able to make at her description. 
 
 Whether it was so or not. this old, old woman was the very 
 selfsame Maisie that sixty odd years before lent a too willing 
 ear to the importunities of a traitor, masquerading with a 
 purpose; and ultimately consented to a runaway marriage with 
 him, he being alone responsible for the arrangement of it and 
 the legahty of the wedding. The most flimsy mise en scene of 
 a mock ceremony was sufficient to dupe a simplicity like hers; 
 and therein was enacted the wicked old tragedy possible only 
 in a world hke ours, which ignores the pledge of the strong to 
 the weak, however clearly that pledge may be attested, unless 
 the wording of it jumps with the formularies of a sanctioned 
 legalism. A grievous wrong was perpetrated, which only the 
 dishonesty of Themis permits ; for an honest lawgiver's aim 
 should be to find means of enforcing a sham marriage, all the 
 more relentlessly in proportion to the victim's innocence and 
 the audacity of the imposture. 
 
 The story of Maisie's after -Ufe need hardly have been so 
 terrible, on the supposition that the prayer " God, have mercy 
 upon us !" is ever granted. Surely some of the stabs in store 
 for her need not have gone to the knife hilt. Much information 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 61 
 
 is lacking to make the tale complete, but what follows is enough. 
 Listen to it and fiU in the blanks if you can — with surmise of 
 alleviation, with interstices of hypothetical happiness — however 
 little warrant the known facts of the case may carry with 
 them. 
 
 Thornton Daverill was destined to bring down Nemesis on his 
 head by touching Themis on a sensitive point — monetary 
 integrity. Within five years, a curious skill which he possessed 
 of simulating the handwriting of others, combined with a pressing 
 want of ready money, led him to the commission of an act which 
 turned out a great error in tactics, whatever place we assign it 
 in morahty. Morally, the forgery of a signature, especially if 
 it be to bring about a diminution of cash in a well -filled pocket, 
 is a mere peccadillo compared with the malversation of a young 
 girl's life. Legally it is felony, and he who commits it may get 
 as long a term of penal servitude as the murderer of whose guilt 
 the jury is not confident up to hanging point. 
 
 The severity of the penal laws in the reign of George III. 
 was due no doubt to a vindictiveness against the culprit which 
 — in theory at any rate — is nowadays obsolete, legislation having 
 for its object rather the discouragement of crime on the tapis 
 than the meting out of their deserts to malefactors. In those 
 days the indignation of a jury would rise to boiling-point in 
 dealing with an offence against sacred Property, while its blood- 
 heat would remain normal over the deception and ruin of a mere 
 woman. Therefore the jury that tried Thornton Daverill for 
 forging the signature of Isaac Runciman on the back of a pro- 
 missory note found the accused guilty, and the judge inflicted 
 the severest penalty but one that Law allows. For Thornton 
 might have been hanged. 
 
 But neither judge nor jury seemed much interested in the 
 convict's behaviour to the daughter of the man he had tried 
 to swindle out of money. On the contrary, they jumped to 
 the conclusion that his wife was morally his accomplice; and, 
 indeed, if it had not been for her great beauty she would very 
 likely have gone to the galleys too. There was, however, this 
 difference between their positions, that the prosecution was 
 dependent on her father's affidavit to prove that the signature 
 was a forgery, and so long as only the man he hated was legally 
 involved, he was to be relied on to adhere to his first disclaimer 
 of it. Had Maisie been placed beside her husband in the dock, 
 how easily her father might have procured the Hberation of both 
 by accepting his Uability — changing his mind about the signa- 
 
52 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 ture and discharging the amount claimed ! If the continuance 
 of the prosecution had depended on either payer or payee, this 
 would have been the end of it. What the creditor — ^a usurer — 
 wanted was his money, not revenge. Indeed, Thornton would 
 never have been made the subject of a criminal indictment at 
 his instance, except to put pressure on Isaac Runciman for 
 payment for his daughter's sake. 
 
 The bringing of the case into Court created a new position. 
 An accommodation that would have been easy enough at first 
 — an excusable compounding of a felony — became impossible 
 under the eyes of the Bench. And this more especially because 
 one of the Judges of Assize who tried the case acquired an interest 
 in Maisie analogous to the one King David took in the wife of 
 Uriah the Hittite, and perceived the advantages he would derive 
 if this forger and gambler was packed off to a life far worse 
 than the death the astute monarch schemed for the great- 
 hearted soldier who was serving him. Whether the two were 
 lawfully man and wife made no difference to this Judge. Maisie's 
 devotion to her scoundrel was the point his lordship's legal 
 acumen was ahve to, and he himself was scarcely King of Israel. 
 One wonders sometimes — at least, the present writer has done so 
 — ^what Bathsheba's feelings were on the occasion referred to. 
 We can only surmise, and can do little more in the case of Maisie. 
 The materials for the retelhng of this story are very shght. 
 Their source may be referred to later. For the moment it must 
 be content with the bare facts. 
 
 This Bathsheba was able to say " Hands off !" to he.r King 
 David, and also able — ^but Heaven knows how ! — ^to keep up 
 a correspondence with the worthless parallel of the Hittite 
 throughout the period of his detention in an English gaol, or, 
 it may be, on the river hulks, until his deportation in a convict 
 ship to Sydney, from which place occasional letters reached her, 
 which were probably as frequent as his opportunities of sending 
 them, until, a considerable time later — ^perhaps as much as five 
 years ; dates are not easy to fix — one came saying that he expected 
 shortly to be transferred to the new penal settlement in Van 
 Diemen's Land. 
 
 At the beginning of last century the black hulks on the Thames 
 and elsewhere were known and spoken of truly as " fioating 
 Hells." Any penal colony was in one point worse; he who 
 went there left Hope behind, so far as his hopes were centred in 
 his native land. For to return was Death. 
 
 After his transfer to Van Diemen's Land, no letter reached her 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 53 
 
 for some months. Then came news that Thornton had benefited 
 by the extraordinary fuhiess of the powers granted to the 
 Governors of these penal settlements, who practically received 
 the convicts on lease for the term of their service. They were, 
 in fact, slaves. But this told well for Maisie's husband, whose 
 father had been at school with the then supreme authority at 
 Macquario Harbour. This got him almost on his arrival a 
 ticket-of -leave, by virtue of which he was free within the island 
 during good behaviour. He soon contrived, by his superior 
 education and manners, to get a foothold in a rough community, 
 and saw his way to rising in the world, even to prosperity. In 
 a very short time, said a later letter, he would save enough to 
 pay Maisie's passage out, and then she could join him. The 
 only redeeming trait the story shows of this man is his strange 
 confidence that this girl, whom he had cruelly betrayed, would 
 face aU the terrors of a three-months' sea-voyage and travel, 
 alone in a strange land, to become the slave and helpless dependent 
 of a convict on ticket-of -leave. 
 
 She had returned to her father's house a year after the trial, 
 her sister having threatened to leave it unless her father per- 
 mitted her to do so, taking with her her two children; a very 
 deUcate httle boy, bom in the first year of her marriage, and 
 a girl baby only four months old, which had come into the world 
 eight months after its wretched parent's conviction. During 
 this life at her father's the httle boy died. He had been chris- 
 tened, after his father and uncle, Phoebe's rejected suitor — ^Ralph 
 Thornton DaveriU. The httle girl she had baptized by the 
 name of Ruth. This little Ruth she took with her, when, on 
 Phoebe's marriage two years later, she went to hve at the house 
 of the new-married couple; and one would have said that the 
 twins lived in even closer union than before, and that nothing 
 could part them again. 
 
 It would have been a mistake. Within three years Maisie 
 received a letter enclosing a draft on a London bank for more 
 than her passage-money, naming an agent who would arrange 
 for her in everything, and ending with a postscript: — "Come 
 out at once." Shortly after, no change having been noticeable 
 in her deportment, except, perhaps, an increased tenderness to 
 her child and her sister, she vanished suddenly; leaving only a 
 letter to Phoebe, full of contrition for her behaviour, but saying 
 that her first duty was towards her husband. She had not dared 
 to take vidth her hex child, and it had been a bitter grief to her to 
 forsake it, but she knew well that it would have been as great 
 
54 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 a bitterness to Phoebe to lose it, as she was herself childless at 
 the time; and, indeed, her only consolation was that Phoebe 
 would still continue to be, as it were, a second mother to " their 
 child," which was the Ught in which each had always looked 
 upon it. 
 
 Both of them seemed to have been under an impression that 
 only one of two twins can ever become a mother. Whether 
 there is any foundation for this, or whether it is a version of a 
 not uncommon belief that twins are always childless, the story 
 need not stop to inquire. It was falsified in this case by the 
 birth of a son to Phoebe, en secondes noces, many years later. 
 But this hardly touches the story, as this son died in his child- 
 hood. All that is needed to be known at present is that, as the 
 result of Maisie's sudden disappearance, Phoebe was left in sole 
 possession of her four -year-old daughter, to whoso yoimg mind 
 it was a matter of indifference which of two almost indistinguish- 
 able identities she called by the name of mother. With a httle 
 encouragement she accepted the plenary title for the then 
 childless woman to whom the name gave pleasure, and gradually 
 forgot the mother who had deserted her; who, in the course of 
 very Uttle time, became the shadow of a name. All she knew 
 then was that this mother had gone away in a ship ; and, indeed, 
 for months after little more was known to her aunt. 
 
 However, a brief letter did come from the ship, just starting 
 for Sydney, and the next long -delayed one announced her 
 arrival there, and how she had been met at the port by an agent 
 who would make all arrangements for her further voyage. How 
 this agency managed to get her through to Hobart Town in 
 those days is a mystery, for there was no free immigration to 
 the island till many years after, only transports from New South 
 Wales being permitted to enter the port. She got there certainly, 
 and was met by her husband at the ship. And well for her that 
 it was so, for in those days no woman was safe by herself for 
 an hom" in that country. 
 
 It may seem wonderful that so vile a man should have set 
 himself to consult the happiness of a woman towards whom he 
 was under no obligation. But her letters to her sister showed 
 that he did so ; and those who have any experience of womanless 
 lands men have to dwell in, whether or no, know that in such 
 lands the market-value of a good sample is so far above rubies, 
 that he who has one, and could not afford another if he lost the 
 first, will be quite kind and nice and considerate to his treasure, 
 in case King Solomon should come round, with all the crown- 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 55 
 
 jewels to back him and his mother's valuation to encourage a 
 high bid. Phoebe had for four or five years the satisfaction of 
 receiving letters assuring her of her sister's happiness and of the 
 extraordinary good fortune that had come to the reformed 
 gambler and forger, whose prison-hfe had given him a distaste 
 for crimes actively condemned by Society. 
 
 Among the items of news that these letters contained were 
 the births of two boys. The elder was called Isaac after his 
 grandfather at the urgent request of Maisie; but on condition 
 that if another boy came he should be called Ralph Thornton, 
 a repetition of the name of her first baby, which died in England. 
 This is done commonly enough with a single name, but the duph- 
 cation is exceptional. Whether the name was actually used for 
 the younger child Phoebe never knew. Probably a letter was 
 lost containing the information. 
 
 When Isaac Runciman died Phoebe wrote the news of his 
 death to Maisie and received no reply from her. In its stead — 
 that is to say, at about the time it would have been due — came 
 a letter from Thornton Daverill announcing her sister's death 
 in AustraUa. It was a brief, unsatisfying letter. Still, she 
 hoped to receive more details, especially as she had followed 
 her first letter, telling of her father's death, with another a 
 fortnight later, giving fuller particulars of the occurrence. In 
 due course came a second letter from her brother-in-law, pro- 
 fessing contrition for the abruptness of his first, but excusing 
 it on the ground that he was prostrated with grief at the time, 
 and quite unable to write. He added very full and even dramatic 
 particulars of her sister's death, giving her last message to her 
 English relatives, and so forth. 
 
 But that sister was not dead. And herein follow the facts 
 that have come to light of the means her husband employed to 
 make her seem so, and of his motives for employing them. 
 
 To see these clearly you must keep in mind that Thornton 
 was tied for Ufe within the limits of the penal settlements. 
 Maisie was free to go ; with her it was merely a question of money. 
 As time went on, her yearning to see her child and her twin- 
 sister again grew and grew, and her appeals to her husband to 
 allow her sometime to revisit England in accordance with his 
 promise became every year more and more urgent. He would 
 be quite a rich man soon — ^why should she not ? Well— simply 
 that she might not come back ! That was his view, and we have 
 to bear in mind that it would have been impossible for him to 
 replace her, except from among female convicts assigned to 
 
56 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 settlers; nominally as servants, but actually as mates on hire — 
 suppose we call them. One need not say much of this unhappy 
 class; it is only mentioned to show that Thornton could have 
 found no woman to take the place of the beautiful and devoted 
 helpmeet whose constancy to him had survived every trial. 
 No wonder he was ill at ease with the idea of her adventuring 
 back to England alone. But it took a mind as wicked as his 
 to conceive and execute the means by which he prevented it. 
 It seems to have been suggested by the fact that the distribution 
 of letters in his district had been assigned to him by the Governor. 
 This made it easy to deliver them or keep them back, when it 
 was in his interest to do so, without fear of detection. The 
 letters coming from England were few indeed, so he was able 
 to examine them at leisure. 
 
 At first he was content to withhold Phoebe's letters, hoping 
 that Maisie would be satisfied with negative evidence of her 
 death, which he himself suggested as the probable cause of their 
 suspension. But when this only increased her anxiety to return 
 to her native land, he cast about for something he could present 
 as direct proof. The death of her father suppUed the oppor- 
 tunity. A black-edged sheet came, thickly written with Phoebe's 
 account of his last illness, in ink which, as the event showed, 
 did not defy obliteration. Probably Thornton had learned, 
 among malefactors convicted of his own ofEence, secrets of forgery 
 that would seem incredible to you or me. He contrived to 
 obliterate this sheet all but the date-stamps outside, and then 
 — the more readily that he had been informed that only fraud 
 for gain made forgery felony — elaborated as a palimpsest a most 
 careful letter in the handwriting of the father announcing 
 Phoebe's own death, and also that of the daughter whom Maisie 
 had bequeathed to her care. He must have been inspired and 
 upborne in this difficult task by the spirit of a true artist. No 
 doubt all fauseure, to any person with an accommodating moral 
 sense, is an unmixed dehght. This letter remains, and has been 
 seen by the present writer and others. The dexterity of the 
 thing almost passes belief, only a few scarcely perceptible traces 
 of the old writing being visible, the length of the new words 
 being so chosen as to hide most of the old ones. What is even 
 more incredible is that the original letter from Phoebe was 
 deciphered at the British Museum by the courtesy of the gentle- 
 men engaged in the deciphering and explanation of obscure 
 inscriptions. 
 
 The elaborate fiction the forger devised may have been in 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 57 
 
 part due to a true artist's pleasure in the use of a splendid 
 opportunity, such as might never occur again. But on close 
 examination one sees that it was Uttle more than a skilful recog- 
 nition of the exigencies of the case. The object of the letter 
 was to remove once and for ever all temptation to Maisie to 
 return to her native land. Now, so long as either her sister 
 or her little girl were living in England the old inducement 
 would be always at work. Why not kill them both, while he 
 had the choice ? It would be more troublesome to produce 
 proof of the death of either, later. But be mistrusted his skill 
 in dealing with fatal illness. A blunder might destroy everything. 
 Stop ! — he knew something better than that. Had not the 
 transport that brought him out passed a drowned body afloat, 
 and wreckage, even in the English Channel ? Shipwreck was 
 the thing ! He decided on sending Nicholas Cropredy, his wife's 
 brother-in-law, across the Channel on business — ^to Antwerp, 
 say — and making Phoebe and little Ruth go out to nurse him 
 through a fever. Their ship could go to the bottom, with a 
 stroke of his pen. Only, while he was about it, why not clear 
 away the brother-in-law — send them aU out in the same ship ? 
 No — that would not do ! Where would the motive be, for all 
 those three to leave England ? A commercial mission for the 
 man alone would be quite another thing. Very perplexing ! . . . 
 Yes — no — yes ! . . . There — he had got it ! Let them go out 
 and nurse him through a fever, and aU be drowned together, 
 returning to England. 
 
 That was a triumph. And the finishing touch to the narra- 
 tive he based on it was really genius. Little hope was enter- 
 tained of the recovery of the remains, but it was not impossible. 
 The writer's daughter might rest assured that if any came to the 
 surface, and were identified, they should be interred in the 
 family grave where her mother reposed in the Lord, in the sure 
 and certain hope of a joyful resurrection. 
 
 Was it to be wondered at that so skilful a contrivance duped 
 an unsuspicious mind Hke Maisie's ? The only thing that could 
 have excited suspicion was that the letter had been delayed a 
 post — ^time, you see, was needed for the delicate work of forgery 
 — ^and the date of despatch from London was in consequence 
 some two months too old. But then the letter was of the same 
 date; indeed, the forgery was a repeat of the letter it effaced, 
 wherever this was possible. Besides, the delay of a letter from 
 England could never occasion surprise. 
 
 She took the sealed paper from her husband, breaking the 
 
58 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 seals with feverish haste, and destroying the only proof that it 
 had been opened on the way. For the wax, of course, broke, 
 as her husband had foreseen, on its old fractures, where he had 
 parted them carefully and reattached them with some similar 
 wax dissolved in spirit. He watched her reading the letter, 
 not without an artist's pride at her absolute unsuspicion, and 
 then had to undergo a pang of fear lest the news should kill her. 
 For she fell insensible, only to remain for a long time prostrate 
 with grief, after a slow and painful revival. 
 
 There was Uttle need for Thornton to reply to Phoebe's letter 
 that he had effaced. Nevertheless, he did so; partly, perhaps, 
 from the pleasure he naturally took in playing out the false 
 role he had assigned himself. Yes — he was a widower. But the 
 poignancy of his grief had prevented him writing aU the par- 
 ticulars of his wife's death. He now gave the story of the death 
 of a woman on a farm near, with changed names and some clever 
 addenda, the composition of which amused his leisure and 
 gratified a spirit of falsehood which might, more fortunately 
 employed, have found an outlet in Uterary fiction. The effect 
 of this letter on Phoebe was to satisfy her so completely of her 
 sister's death that, had it ever been called in question, she would 
 have been the hardest to convert to a behef in the contrary. 
 On the other hand, Maisie's belief in her death was equally 
 assured, and her quasi -husband rested secure in his confidence 
 that nothing would now induce her to leave him. Should he 
 ever wish to be rid of her, he had only to confess his deception, 
 and pack her off to seek her sister. That no news ever came of 
 her father's death was not a matter of great surprise to Maisie. 
 She had no surviving correspondent in England who would have 
 written about it. Her husband may have practised some finesse 
 later to convince her of it, but its details are not known to the 
 writer of the story. 
 
 They, however, were never parted until, twenty years later, 
 his death left Maisie a widow, as she beUeved. It would have 
 been well for her had it been so, for he died after making that 
 very common testamentary mistake — a too ingenious wiU. 
 It left to " my third son Ralph Thornton Daverill," on coming 
 of age, all his property after " my wife Maisie, nee Runciman," 
 had received the share she was " legally entitled to." But she 
 was unable to produce proof of her marriage when called on to 
 do so, and was, of course, legally entitled to nothing. Thornton 
 had been so well off that " widow's thirds " would have placed 
 her in comfortable circumstances. As it was, the whole of his 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 59 
 
 property went to her only surviving son, a youth who had in- 
 herited, with some of his father's good looks, all his bad principles ; 
 and in addition a taint — we may suppose — of the penal atmo- 
 sphere in which he was born. But there was not a shadow of 
 doubt about his being the person named in the will. Perhaps, 
 if it had been worded " my lawful son," Themis would have 
 jibbed. 
 
 The young man, on coming of age, acquired control of the 
 whole of his father's property, and soon started on a career of 
 extravagance and debauchery. His mother, however, retained 
 some influence over him, and persuaded him, a year later, before 
 he had had time to dissipate the whole of his inheritance, to 
 return with her to England, hoping that the moral effect of 
 a change from the gaol-bird atmosphere of felony that hung 
 over the whole land of his birth would develop whatever germ 
 of honour or right feeling he possessed. 
 
 She was not very sanguine, for his boyhood had been a cruel 
 affliction to her. And the results showed that whatever hopes 
 she had entertained were ill-founded. Arrived in London, with 
 money still at command, he plunged at once into all the dissipa- 
 tions of the town, and it became evident that in the course of 
 a year or so he would run through the remainder of his patri- 
 mony. 
 
 About this time he met with an experience which now and 
 then happens to men of his class. He fell violently in love — 
 or in what he called love — ^with a girl who had very distinct 
 ideas on the subject of marriage. One was that the first arrange- 
 ment of their relations which suggested themselves to her lover 
 were not to be entertained, and therefore she refused to entertain 
 them. He tried ridicule, indignation, and protestation — aU in 
 vain ! She appeared not to object to persecution — ^rather Uked 
 it. But she held out no hopes except legitimate ones. At last, 
 when the young man was in a sense desperate — ^not in a very 
 noble sense, but desperate for aU that — she intimated to him 
 that, unless he was prepared to accept her scheme of Hfe, she 
 knew a very respectable young man who was; a young man in 
 Smithfield Market with whom she had walked out, and you 
 could never have told. Which means that this young man 
 disguised himself so subtly on Sunday to go into Society, that 
 none would have guessed that he passed the week in contact with 
 grease and blood, and dared to twist the tails of bullocks in 
 revolt against their fate, shrinking naturally from the axe. His 
 inteK.tions were, nevertheless, honourable, and Polly the barmaid 
 
60 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 at the One Tun Inn honoured them, while her affections were 
 disposed towards her Australian suitor whose intentions were 
 not. The young reprobate, however, had to climb down; but 
 he made his surrender conditional on one thing — that his 
 marriage with Polly should remain a secret. No doubt parallel 
 enterprises would have been interrupted by its pubhcation. 
 Anyhow, his mother never knew of his marriage, nor set eyes 
 on her daughter-in-law. 
 
 His marriage was, in fact, merely a means to an end, and was 
 a most reluctant concession to circumstances on his part. It 
 was true he deprived himself of all chance of offering the same 
 terms again for the same goods, unless, indeed, he ran the risks 
 of a bigamist. But what can a man do under such circum- 
 stances ? He is what he is, and it does seem a pity sometimes 
 that he was made in the image of God, whether for God's sake 
 or his own. Young Daverill's end attained, he flung away his 
 prize almost without a term of intermediate neglect to save his 
 face. She, poor soul, who had lived under the impression that 
 all men were " like that " but that honourable marriage " re- 
 formed " them, was desperate at first when she found her 
 mistake. Her " lawful husband," having attained his end, 
 announced his weariness of lawful marriage with a candour even 
 coarser than that of Browning's less lawful possessor of Love 
 — he who " halt sighed a smile in a yawn, as 'twere." He 
 replied to all Polly's passionate claims to him as a legal right, 
 and hints that she could and would enforce her position: — " Try 
 it on. Poll — you and your lawyers !" And, indeed, we have 
 never been able to learn how the strong arm of the Law enforces 
 marital obhgations; barring mere cash payments, of which 
 Polly's attitude was quite obUvious. Moreover, he was at that 
 time prepared with money, and did actually maintain his wife 
 up to the point of every possible legal compulsion until the end 
 of his solvency, not a very long period. 
 
 For his life-drama, or the first act of it, was soon played out. 
 It was substantially his father's over again. He ran through 
 what was left of his money in a little over a year — so splendid 
 were the gambler's opportunities in these days ; for the Georgian 
 era had stiU a short lease of years to run, and foUy dies hard. 
 His attempts to reinstate himself at the expense of a Bank, by 
 a simple process of burglary, in partnership with a professional 
 hand whose acquaintance he had made at " The Tun," led to 
 disastrous failure and the summary conviction of both partners. 
 
 None of this came to the knowledge of his wife, as how should 
 
THE STORY OF THE TWINS 61 
 
 • 
 
 it ? He wrote no news of it to her, and their relation was 
 known to very few. Moreover, the burglary was in Bristol 
 and Polly was at a farmhouse in Lincolnshire, awaiting a birth 
 which only added another grief to her life, for her child was born 
 dead. She recovered from a long illness which swallowed up 
 the remains of the money her husband had given her, to find 
 herself destitute and minus most of the good looks which had 
 obtained for her her previous situation. She succeeded there- 
 after in maintaining herself by needlework — she was an adept 
 in that — and so avoided becoming an incumbrance on her family, 
 which she could no longer help now as she had done in her 
 prosperity. But of her worthless husband's fate she never knew 
 anything, the trial having taken place during an illness which 
 nearly ended all her miseries for her. By the time she was on 
 the way to recovery it would have been difficult to trace her 
 husband, even had she had any motive for doing so. 
 
 As for him — a convict and the son of a convict — his period 
 of detention in the hulks on the Thames was followed by the 
 usual voyage to the Antipodes; but this time the vessel into 
 which he was transhipped at Sydney sailed for Norfolk Island, 
 not Hobart Town nor Macquarie Harbour. Maisie's son was 
 not destined to revisit the land of his birth. The early deliver- 
 ance from actual bondage to a condition free in all but the name, 
 which had led to his father's successful later career, was impossible 
 in an island half the size of the Isle of Wight, and the man grew 
 to his surroundings. A soul ready to accept the impress of 
 every stamp of depravity in the mint of vice was soon well 
 beyond the reach of any possible redemption in contact with 
 the moral vileness of the prisons on what was, but for their con- 
 tamination, one of the loveUest islands in the Pacific. 
 
 After his departure his mother may have been influenced 
 by a wish to obHterate her whole past, and this wish may have 
 been the cause of her adoption of a name not her own. Some 
 lingering reluctance to make her severance from her own belong- 
 ings absolute may have dictated the choice of the name of 
 Prichard, which was that of an old nurse of her childhood, who 
 had stood by her mother's dying bed. It would serve every 
 reasonable purpose of disguise without grating on memories 
 of bygone times. A shred of identity was left to cUng to. It 
 is less clear why the quasi-daughter whom she had never seen 
 should have repudiated her married name. Polly was under 
 no obligation not to call herself Mrs. Daverill, unless it were 
 compliance with her promise to keep the marriage secret. She, 
 
62 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 however, acquiesced in the Mrs., and supplied a name as a pass- 
 port to a respectable widowhood. But she did not dress the 
 part very vigorously, and report soon accepted the husband as 
 a bad lot and a riddance. Nothing very uncommon in that ! 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 or DAVE warble's convalescence. of MRS. RUTH THRALE, 
 WIDOW AND OGRESS, WHO APPRECIATED HIM. HIS ACCOUNT 
 OF HIS HOSPITAL EXPERIENCE. HOW HE MADE THE ACQUAINT- 
 ANCE OF A COUNTESS, AND TOLD HER ABOUT WIDOW THRALE's 
 grandfather's water-mill. CONCERNING JUNO LUCINA. 
 THESEUS AND ARIADNE. HOW DAVE DETECTED A FAMILY 
 LIKENESS, AND NEARLY RUBBED HIS EYES OUT. HOW 
 GRANNY MARRABLE SHOWED HIM THE MILL AT WORK AND 
 MR. MUGGEEIDGE 
 
 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 tiU 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 Hnger on to those deadly small 
 hours of the morning, when hoarfrost 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 sky- 
 larks 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 passion 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 wiU so soon scatter 
 about the world without remorse; and then one morning the 
 grass is crisp with frost beneath the early riser's feet, and he 
 
DAVE'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 63 
 
 finds the leaves of the ash all fallen since the dawn, a green, stiU 
 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, per- 
 sonally 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 them- 
 selves 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 circumstances. 
 
 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 eflFect of a bona-fide widow 
 
64 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 of fiftyTfive — 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 incumbrances, 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 Uttle 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 analogous to that of an ogress balked of her meal, 
 after going to no end of expense in humanised cream and such- 
 Uke. 
 
 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 event 
 — 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 letter- 
 press. 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 beUeve, by a tame bell. " Oy sawed free men 
 shoyning Uke 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. 
 
DAVE'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 65 
 
 She expressed her feelings to Sister Nora. Not, however, with- 
 out 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 DoUy." 
 
 Sister Nora, looking with an amused, puzzled face at the 
 Bmall absurdity, assimilating suitable nourishment and wrestUng 
 with his mother-tongue at its outset, said: — "Why didn't it hurted 
 DoUy, I wonder ?" and then, 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 !" Where- 
 upon 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 inteUigibihty 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 resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 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 stafi as 
 he had mastered them. There was Dr. Dabtinkle, or it might 
 have been Damned 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 haK 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 Mis. 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. 
 
 5 
 
66 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " 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. Damned Tinker 
 his name. ... Oh no — ^he won't be ofiended." 
 
 Sister Nora was driven away to the mansion of her noble 
 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 acquaint- 
 ance, 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 coach- 
 man, Blencorn, was too high up in the air for human inter- 
 course. 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 acquaint- 
 ance with; substituting 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 requisi- 
 tioned 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 identify 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 mankleshelf, 
 his description of which seemed to relate to nothing this lady's 
 recollection of Stride's interior supplied. 
 
 " What on earth does the little man mean by a water-cart on 
 the m»,ntelshelf, Mrs. Thrale ?" said the Countess, on leave- 
 
DAVE'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 67 
 
 taking. The widow had come out to reclaim her yoimg charge, 
 who seemed not exactly indignanjb, 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 confiLrmation, more to reinstate his character for 
 veracity than to bring the details of the topic into pro- 
 minence. 
 
 " 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-miU. 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 suddeidy — ^you may beUeve 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 con- 
 trivance 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 amusement of my little halt-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 con- 
 clusion, because Sister Nora was waiting to resume her place in 
 the carriage, and he had no sooner siirrendered it to her than the 
 
68 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 goddess 
 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 avail- 
 able personality, and had to be either here or there, never every- 
 where ! 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 
 outUve 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 iU-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 invaUd still plausibly convalescent, 
 but an eatable httle 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, 
 
DAVE'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 69 
 
 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, qxiite 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 identity. 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 reahty. 
 
 " 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, feeUng some apology was due for his mis- 
 
70 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 apprehension, " 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 Thralo 
 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 afEection 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 glass 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 Uke a clock 
 tiU you couldn't wind no further and it went cHck. And then 
 the water in the cistern was let run, and the wheels weiit round; 
 and Dave knew exactly what a water-mill was like, and was 
 assured — 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 
 
DAVE'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 71, 
 
 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 miUs. 
 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 deUcate 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 analysis 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. 
 
 " WeU, 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 arrange- 
 ment 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 em- 
 ployer'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 
 smolring. 
 
 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 in- 
 scrutable ! Dave inquired about these little girls, after pro- 
 fessing 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 God made them. Both at 
 the same time I" 
 
72 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Who worze they ?" asked Dave, clinching the matter 
 abruptly — much too interested for circumlocution. 
 
 " Myself, my dear, and my little sister, born the same time. 
 With our lilac frocks on and white boimets to shade the sun off 
 our eyes. And each a nosegay of garden flowers." There was 
 ao 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 Uttle, interested boy, and felt his 
 chin appreciatively, as she added: — " Three or four years older 
 than yourself, my dear ! Seventy years ago I" with just the 
 ring of sadness — no more — that always sounds when great age 
 Speaks of its days long past. 
 
 The other convalescent boy here struck in, raising a vital 
 question. " Which is you, and which is her 1" said he. He had 
 come in as a new spectator; surrendering Dave's crutch, borrowed 
 as needless to its owner, in compliance with a strange fascination, 
 now waning in charm as the working model asserted its powers. 
 Dionysos had deserted Ariadne again. 
 
 " This is me," said Granny Marrable. " And this is Maisie." 
 And now you who read probably know, as clearly as he who 
 writes, who she was, this octogenarian with such a good prospect 
 of making up the hundred. She was Phoebe, the sister of old 
 Mrs. Prichard, whose story was told in the last chapter. But 
 most hkely you guessed that pages ago. 
 
 I, who write, have no aim in telling this story beyond that of 
 repeating as clearly and briefly as may be the bare facts that 
 make it up — of communicating them to whoever has a few hours 
 to spare for the purpose, with the smallest trouble to himself in 
 its perusal. I feel often that my lack of skill is spoiling what 
 might be a good story. That I cannot help; and I write with the 
 firm conviction that any effort on my part to arrange these facts 
 in such order that the tale should show dramatic force, or 
 startle him with unexpected issues of event, would only procure 
 derision for its writer, and might even obscure the only end he 
 has at heart, that of giving a complete grasp of the facts, as 
 nearly as may be in the order of their occurrence. 
 
 There is one feature in the story which the most skilful 
 narrator might easily fail to present as probable — the separation 
 of these twin sisters throughout a long lifetime, a separation 
 contrary to nature; so much so, indeed, that tales are told of 
 twins living apart, the death or illness of one of whom has brought 
 about the death or similar illness of the other. One would at 
 
DAVE'S CONVALESCENT HAVEN 73 
 
 least say that neither could die without knowledge of the other; 
 might even infer that either would go on thinking the other 
 living, without some direct evidence of death, some seeming 
 communication from the departed. But the separation of 
 Phoebe from Maisie did not come under these conditions; each 
 was the victim of a wicked fraud, carried out with a subtlety 
 that might have deceived Scotland Yard. There can be no 
 doubt that it would have had the force to obscure any pheno- 
 menon of a so-caUed telepathic nature, however vivid, as proof 
 that either twin was stiU alive; as the percipient, in the belief 
 that her sister's death was established beyond a doubt, would 
 imhesitatingly conclude that the departed had revisited earth, 
 or had made her presence felt by some process hard to under- 
 stand from our side. 
 
 To see the story in its right light we must always keep in 
 view the extraordinary isolation of the penal settlement. All 
 convict life is cut off froin the world, but in Van Diemen's Land 
 even the freest of men out on ticket-of -leave — ^free sometimes 
 so long that the renewal of their licence at its expiration became 
 the merest form — ^was separated from the land of his birth, even 
 from the mainland of AustraKa, by a barrier for him almost as 
 impassable as the atmosphere that lies between us and the 
 visible land of the moon. Keep in mind the hundred-and-odd 
 miles of sea — are you sure you thought of it as so much ? — that 
 parts Tasmania from the nearest point of New South Wales, and 
 picture to yourself the few slow saiUng-ships upon their voyages 
 from Sydney, five times as distant. To go and come on such a 
 journey was little else to the stay-at-home in those days, than 
 that he should venture beyond the grave and return. 
 
 No ! — the wonder to my mind is not that the two sisters 
 should have been parted so utterly, and each been so completely 
 duped about the other's death, but that Maisie should have 
 returned less than five-and-twenty years later, and that, so 
 returning, she should not have come to the knowledge that her 
 sister waa still living. 
 
74 WHEN Ghost meets ghost 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MICHABI, EAOSTEOAE's SLIDB, AND THE MILK. CONCBBNINQ 
 
 Dave's eetttkn to sapps court, which had shkunk in 
 his absence. of the physical impossibduity of a 'widow's 
 
 GEANDMOTHEE. DAVE's TALE OF THE WATEEMILL. SISTER 
 NOEA's EXACTING FATHEE. HOW DAVE WENT TO SCHOOL, 
 AND UNCLE MO SOUGHT CONSOLATION IN SOCIETY, WHILE 
 DOLLY TOOK STBUVVEL PETEE TO VISIT MES. PBIOHAED. 
 HOW THAT OLD LADY KNITTED A COMFOETEE, AND TOLD AUNT 
 m'EIAE of her CONVICT LOVEift's DEPAETUEB 
 
 The heart of the ancient prizefighter in Sapps Court swelled 
 with joy when the day of Dave's return was officially announced. 
 He was, said Aunt M'riar, in and out all the afternoon, fidgeting- 
 like, when it actually came. And the frost was that hard that 
 ashes out of the dustbin had to be strewed over the paving to 
 prevent your slipping. It might not have been any so bad 
 though, only for that young Michael Ragstroar's having risen 
 from his couch at an early hour, and with diabolical foresight 
 made a slide right down the middle of the Court. He had chosen 
 this hour so early, that he was actually before the Milt, which 
 was always agreeable to serve the Court when the tenantry could 
 do — ^taken collectively — with eightpennyworth. It often mounted 
 up to thrice that amount, as a matter of fact. On this occasion 
 it sat down abruptly, the Milk did, and gave a piece of its mind 
 to Michael's family later, pointing out that it was no mere ques- 
 tion of physical pain or ill-convenience to itself, but that its 
 principal constituent might easily have been spilled, and would 
 have had to be charged for all the same. The incident led to a 
 coUision between Michael and his father, the coster; who, how- 
 ever, remitted one-half of his son's deserts and let him off easy 
 on condition of his reinstating the footway. Michael would have 
 left all intact, he said, had he only been told that his thoughtful- 
 ness would provoke the Court's ingratitude. "Why couldn't 
 they say aforehand they didn't want no slide ?" said he. " I 
 could just as easy have left it alone." It was rather difficult to 
 be quite even with Michael Ragstroar. 
 
 However, the ground was all steady underfoot when Dave, 
 in charge of Sister Nora, reappeared, looking quite rosy again. 
 
DAVE'S RETURN TO SAPPS COURT 75 
 
 and only limping very slightly. He had deserted Ariadne alto- 
 gether by now, and Dionysos may have done so, too, for any- 
 thing the story knows. Anyhow, the instability of the planet 
 that had resulted from local frost did not affect Dave at all, 
 now that Michael had spilt them hashes over the groimd. Dave 
 was bubbhng over with valuable information about the provinces, 
 which had never reached the Metropolis before, and he was in 
 such a hurry to tell about a recent family of kittens, that he 
 scamped his greetings to his own family in order to get on to the 
 description of it. 
 
 But neither this, nor public indignation against the turpitude 
 of slide -makers generally and that young Micky in particular, 
 could avert his relatives' acknowledgments of their gratitude — 
 what a plague thanks are ! — ^from a benefactress who was merely 
 considting a personal dilettantism in her attitude towards her 
 species, and who regarded Dave as her most remunerative invest- 
 ment for some time past. 
 
 " We shall never know how to be grateful enough, ma'am, 
 for your kindness to Dave," said Aunt M'riar. " No — never !" 
 
 " Not if we was to Uve for ever," said Uncle Mo. And he 
 seemed to mean it, for he went on : — " It's a poor way of thanks 
 to be redooced to at the best, just to be grateful and stop it off 
 at that. But 'tis in the right of it as far as it goes. You take 
 me, missis ? I'm a bad hand to speak my mind; but you'll 
 coimt it up for hearty thanks, anyhow." 
 
 " Of course I will, Mr. Wardle," said Sister Nora. " But, oh 
 dear ! — ^what a fuss one does make about nothing ! Why, he's 
 such a ducky little chap, anybody would be glad to.' 
 
 Dave struck into the conversation, perceiving an oppor- 
 tunity to say something appropriate : " There was sisk duskses 
 in the pong in the field, and one of the duskses was a droyk 
 with green Uke ribbings, and Mrs. Thrale she said a Uttle boy 
 stumbled in the pong and was took out green, and some day I 
 should show Dolly the droyk and I should show Uncle Mo the 
 droyk and I should show Aunt M'riar the droyk. And there 
 was a bool." At which point the speaker suddenly became 
 shyly silent, perhaps feeUng that he was premature in referring 
 thus early to a visit of his family to Chorlton-under-Bradbury. 
 It would have been better taste to wait, he thought. 
 
 However, no offence seemed to be taken. Uncle Mo said: 
 " Oh, that was it — ^was it ? I hope the bull had a ring on his 
 nose." Dave appeared doubtful, with a wish to assent. Then 
 Aunt M'riar, who — ^however good she was — certainly had a 
 
76 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 commonplace mind, must needs say she hoped Dave had been a 
 very good Uttle boy. The banality of it ! 
 
 Dave felt that an effort should be made to save the conversa- 
 tion. The bull's nose and its ring suggested a hne to go on. 
 "The lady," said he decisively, "had rings on her fingers. 
 Dimings and pearls and scrapphires " — ^he took this very striking 
 word by storm — " and she giv' 'em me for to hold one at a time 
 . . . Yorce she did !" He felt sure of his facts, and that the 
 lady's rings on her fingers made her a legitimate and natural 
 corollary to a bull with one on its nose. 
 
 " The lady would be my Cousin Philippa," said Sister Nora. 
 " She's always figged up to the nines. Dave took her for a 
 drive in the carriage — didn't you, Dave ?" There was mis- 
 representation in this, but a way grown-up people have of 
 understanding each other over the heads of little boys prevented 
 the growth of false impressions. Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar 
 quite understood, somehow, that it was the lady that had taken 
 Dave for a drive. Dave allowed this convention to pas3 
 without notice, merely nodding. He reserved criticism for the 
 days to come, when he should have a wider vocabulary at com- 
 mand. 
 
 Then Sister Nora had gone, and Dave was having his first 
 experience of the shattered ideal. Sapps Court was neither so 
 large nor so distinguished as the conception of it that he had 
 carried away into the country with him; with the details of 
 which he had endeavoured to impress Granny Marrable and 
 the ogress. DoUy was not so large as he had expected to 
 find her; but then he had had that expectation owing to a 
 message, which had reached him in his absence, that she was 
 growing out of all knowledge. His visit was inside three months; 
 so this was absurd. One really should be careful what one says 
 to six-year-olds. The image of Dolly that Dave brought back 
 from the provinces nearly filled up the Sapps Court memory 
 supphed. It was just the same shape as DoUy, but on a much 
 larger scale. The reaUty he came back to was small and com- 
 pact, but not so influential. 
 
 Dolly's happiness at his return was great and unfeigned, but 
 its expression was handicapped by her desire that a doll Sister 
 Nora brought her should be allowed to sleep off the effects of an 
 exhausting journey. Only Shakespearean dramatic power could 
 have ascribed sleep to this doll, who was a simihtude of Struvvel 
 Peter in the collected poems of that name just published. Still, 
 Dolly gave all of herself that this matronly preoccupation could 
 
DAVE'S RETURN TO SAPPS COURT 77 
 
 spare to Dave. She very soon suggested that they should make 
 a joint visit to old Mrs. Picture upstairs. She could carry 
 Struwel Peter in her arms all the time, so that his sleep should 
 not be disturbed. 
 
 This was only restless love of change on Dolly's part, and 
 Uncle Mo protested. Was his boy to be carried off from him 
 wh^i only just this minute he got him back ? Who was Mrs. 
 Prichard that such an exaggerated consideration should be 
 shown to her ? Dave expressed himself in the same sense, but 
 with a less critical view of Mrs. Prichard's pretensions. 
 
 Aunt M'riar pointed out that there was no call to be in a 
 driving hurry. Presently, when Mr. Ahbone come in for a pipe, 
 like he said he would, then Dave and Dolly might go up and 
 knock at Mrs. Prichard's door, and if they were good they might 
 be let in. Aunt M'riar seized so many opportunities to influence 
 the young towards purity and holiness that her injunctions lost 
 force through the frequency of their recurrence, always dangling 
 rewards and punishments before their eyes. In the present case 
 her suggestions worked in with the general feeling, and Dave 
 and Dolly sat one on each knee of Uncle Mo, and made intelligent 
 remarks. At least, Dave did; Dolly's were sometimes confused, 
 and very frequently uncompleted. 
 
 Uncle Mo asked questions about Dave's sojourn with Widow 
 Thrale. Who was there lived in the house over and above the 
 Widow ? Well — said Dave — ^there was her Granny. Uncle 
 Mo derided the idea of a Widow's Granny. Such a thing was 
 against Nature. Her mother was possible but uncommon. 
 But as for her Granny ! — draw it mild, said Uncle Mo. 
 
 " But my dear Mo," said Aunt M'riar. " Just you give con- 
 sideration. You're always for sayin' such a many things. 
 Why, there was our upstairs old lady she says to me she was 
 plenty old enough to be my grandmother. Only this very 
 morning, if you'll beheve me, she said that very selfsame 
 thing. ' I'm plenty old enough to be your grandmother,' she 
 says." 
 
 " As for the being old enough, M'riar," said Uncle Mo, " there's 
 enough and to spare old enough for most anything if you come 
 to that. But this partick'lar sort don't come ofE. Just you 
 ask anybody. Why, I'll give ye aU England to hunt 'em up. 
 Can't say about foreigners, they're a queer lot; but England's 
 a Christian country, and you may rely upon it, and so I tell you, 
 you won't hght on any one or two widder's Grannies in the whole 
 show. You try it." Uncle Moses was not the first nor the 
 
'75 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 only person in the world that ever proposed an impracticable 
 test to be carried out at other people's expense, or by their 
 exertions. It was, however, a mere faqon de parler, and Aunt 
 M'riar did not show any disposition to start on a search for 
 widow's grandmothers. 
 
 The discussion was altogether too deep for Dave. So after 
 a moment of grave perplexity he started a new topic, dashing 
 into it without apology, as was his practice. " Grarmy Marrow- 
 bone's box on the chimley-piece is got glast you can see in, and 
 she's got two horses in a wagging, and the wheels goes round 
 and round and round Uke a clock, and there was her daddy 
 stood at the window and there was saskses was took up froo 
 a hole, and come back froo a hole, and there was Muggeridge 
 that see to loading up the cart, and there was her and her sister 
 bofe alike of one size, and there was the water run over . . ." 
 Here Dave flagged a little after so much eloquence, and no 
 wonder. But he managed to wind up : — " And then Granny 
 Marrowbone put it back on the mankleshelf for next time." 
 
 This narrative was, of course, quite unintelligible to its 
 hearers; but we understand it, and its mention of the carman's 
 name. A child that has to repeat a story will often confuse 
 incidents Umitlessly, and nevertheless hold on with the tenacity 
 of a bull-pup to some saving phrase heard distinctly once and 
 for ever. Even so, Dave held on to Muggeridge, that see to 
 loading up the cart, as a great fact rooted in History. 
 
 " H'm I" said Uncle Mo. " I don't make all that out. Who's 
 Muggeridge in it ?" 
 
 " He see to the sacks," said Dave. 
 
 " Counting of 'em out, I reckon." Uncle Mo was thinking 
 of coal-sacks, and the suggestions of a suspicious Company. 
 Dave said nothing. Probably Uncle Mo knew. But he was all 
 wrong, perhaps because the association of holes with coals 
 misled him. 
 
 " Was it Mrs. Marrable and her sister ?" asked Aunt M'riar. 
 " Why was they both of a size ?" 
 
 Dave jumped at the opportunity of showing that he had 
 profited by resumes of this subject with his hostess. " Because 
 they were the soyme oyge," said he. " Loyke me and DoUy. 
 We aren't the soyme oyge, me and Dolly." That is to say, he 
 and Dolly were an example of persons whose relative ages 
 came into court. Their classification differed, but that was a 
 detail. 
 
 Aunt M'riar was aUve to the possibility that the sister of 
 
DAVE'S RETURN TO SAPPS COURT 79 
 
 Granny Marrable was her twin, and said so. But Uncle Mo 
 took her up short for this opinion. "What!" said he, "the 
 same as the old party two pair up ? No, no ! — ^you won't con- 
 vince me there's two old parties at once with twin sisters. One 
 at a time's plenty on the way-bill." Because, you see, Aunt 
 M'riar had had a good many conversations with Mrs. Prichard 
 lately, and had repeated words of hers to Uncle Moses. " I 
 was a twin myself," she had said; and added that she had lost 
 her sister near upon fifty years ago. 
 
 The truth was too strange to occur to even the most observant 
 bystander; videlicet, on the whole, Mr. Alibone; who, coming in 
 and talking over the matter anew, only said it struck him as a 
 queer start. This expression has somehow a sort of flavour 
 of its user's intention to conduct inquiry no farther. Anyhow, 
 the subject simply dropped for that time being, out of sight and 
 out of mind. 
 
 It was very unfair to Dave, who was, after all, a model of 
 veracity, that he should be treated as a romancer, and never 
 confronted with witnesses to confirm or contradict his state- 
 ments. Even Uncle Mo, who took him most seriously, continued 
 to doubt the existence of widows' grandmothers, and to accept 
 with too many reservations his acooimt of the mill-model. Sister 
 Nora, as it chanced, did not revisit Sapps Court for a very long 
 time, for she was called away to Scotland by the sudden illness 
 of her father, who showed an equivocal affection for her by 
 refusing to let anyone else nurse him. 
 
 So it came about that Dave, rather mortified at having doubt 
 thrown on narratives he knew to be true, discontinued his 
 attempts to establish them. And that the two old sisters, so 
 long parted, still lived on apart; each in the firm belief that the 
 other was dead a lifetime since. How near each had been to 
 the knowledge that the other lived ! Surely if Dave had 
 described that mill-model to old Mrs. Picture, suspicions would 
 have been excited. But Dave said Httle or nothing about it. 
 
 It is nowise strange to think that the bitter, simultaneous 
 grief in the heart of either twin, now nearly fifty years ago, still 
 survived in two hearts that were not too old to love; for even 
 those who think that love can die, and be as though it had never 
 been, may make concession to its permanency in the case of twins 
 — ^may even think concession scientific. But it is strange — 
 strange beyond expression — ^that at the time of this story each 
 should have had love in her heart for the same object, our httle 
 Dave Wardle; that Master Dave's very kissable countenance 
 
80 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 had supplied the lips of each with a message of solace to a tired 
 soul. And most of all that the tears of each, and the causes of 
 them, had provoked the inquisitiveness of the same pair of blue 
 eyes and set their owner questioning, and that through all this 
 time the child had in his secret consciousness a few words that 
 would have fired the train. Never was a spark so near to fuel, 
 never an untold tale so near its hearer, never a draught so near 
 to lips athirst. 
 
 But Dave's account of the mill was for the time forgotten. 
 It happened that old Mrs. Prichardwas not receiving just at 
 the time of his return, so his visits upstairs had to be suspended. 
 By the time they were renewed the strange Ufe in the country 
 village had become a thing of the past, and important events 
 nearer home had absorbed the miU on the mantelshelf, and the 
 ducks in the pond and Widow Thrale and Granny Marrable aUke. 
 One of the important events was that Dave was to be took to 
 school after Christmas. 
 
 It was in this interim that old Mrs. Prichard became a very 
 great resource to Aunt M'riar, and when the time came for Dave 
 to enter on his curriculum of scholarship, the visiting upstairs 
 had become a recognised institution. Aunt M'riar being fre- 
 quently forsaken by Uncle Mo, who marked his objection to the 
 scholastic innovation by showing himself more in public, notably 
 at the Rising Sun, whose proprietor set great store by the 
 patronage of so respectable a representative of an Institution 
 not so well thought of now as formerly, but whose traditions 
 were still cherished in the confidential interior of many an ancient 
 pot-house of a like type — ^Aunt M'riar, so forsaken, made these 
 absences of her brother-iu-law a reason for conferring her own 
 society and Dolly's on the upstairs lodger, whenever the work 
 she was engaged on permitted it. She felt, perhaps, as Uncle 
 Mo felt, that the house wam't Hke itself without our boy; but 
 if she shared his feehng that it was a waste of early Ufe to spend 
 it in learning to read slowly, write illegibly, and C3rpher incorrectly , 
 she did so secretly. She deferred to the popular prejudice, 
 which may have had an inflated opinion of the advantages of 
 education; but she acknowledged its growth and the worldly 
 wisdom of giving way to it. 
 
 Old Mrs. Prichard and Aunt M'riar naturally exchanged con- 
 fidences more and more ; and in the end the old lady began to 
 speak without reserve about her past. It came about thus. 
 After Christmas, Dave being culture-bound, and work of a 
 profitable nature for the moment at a low ebb. Aunt M'riar had 
 
DAVE'S RETUEN TO SAPPS COURT 81 
 
 fallen back on some arrears of stocking-darning. Dolly was 
 engaged on the object to which she gave lifelong attention, that 
 of keeping her doll asleep. I do not fancy that Dolly was very 
 inventive; but then, you may be, at three-and-a-half, seductive 
 without being inventive. Besides, this monotonous fiction of 
 the need of her doll for sleep was only a scenario for another 
 incident — the fear of disturbance by a pleace'n with two heads, 
 a very terrible possibility. 
 
 Old Mrs. Prichard, whom I call by that name because she 
 was known by no other in Sapps Court, was knitting a comforter 
 for Dave. It went very slowly, this comforter, but was in- 
 valuable as an expression of love and goodwill. She couldn't 
 get up and downstairs because of her back, and she couldn't 
 read, only a very little, because of her eyes, and she couldn't hear 
 — ^not to say hear — ^when read aloud to. This last may have 
 been no more than what many of us have experienced, for she 
 heard very plain when spoke to. That is Aunt M'riar's testi- 
 mony. My impression is that, as compared with her twin sister 
 Phoebe, Maisie was at this date a mere invahd. But she looked 
 very like Phoebe for all that, when you didn't see her hands. The 
 veins were too blue, and their delicacy was made more deUcate 
 by the aggressive scarlet she had chosen for the comforter. 
 
 " It makes a rest to do a little darning now and again." 
 Aunt M'riar said this, choosing a worsted carefully, so it shouldn't 
 quarrel with its surroundings. " I take a pleasure in it more 
 than not. On'y as for knowing when to stop — there !" 
 
 " I mind what it was in my early days up-country," said the 
 old woman. " 'Twas not above once in the year any trade 
 would reach us, and suchlike things as woollen socks were got 
 at by the moth or the ants. They would sell us things at a high 
 price from the factory as a favour, but my husband could not 
 abide the sight of them. It was small wonder it was so, Mrs. 
 Wardle." That was the name that Aunt M'riar had come 
 to be called by, although it was not her own real name. Con- 
 fusion of this sort is not imcommon in the class she belonged to. 
 Sapps Court was aware that she was not Mrs. Wardle, but she 
 had to be accounted for somehow, and the name she bore was too 
 serious a tax on the brain-power of its inhabitants. 
 
 She repeated Mrs. Prichard's words : " Prom the factory, 
 ma'am ? I see." Because she did not imderstand them. 
 
 " It was always called the factory," said Mrs. Prichard. But 
 this made Aunt M'riar none the wiser. What was called the 
 factory ? The way in which she again said that she saw 
 
 6 
 
82 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 amounted to a request for enlightenment. Mrs. Prichard gave 
 it. " It was the Government quarters with the Residence, and 
 the prisons where the convicts were detained on their arrival. 
 They would not be there long, being told off to work in gangs 
 up-country, or assigned to the settlers as servants. But I've 
 never told you any of all this before, Mrs. Wardle." No more 
 she had. She had broached Van Diemens Land suddenly, 
 having gone no farther before than the mere fact of her son's 
 birth at Port Macquarie. 
 
 Aunt M'riar couldn't make up her mind as to what was ex- 
 pected of her, whether sympathy or mere interest or silent 
 acquiescence. She decided on a weak expression of the first, 
 saying: — " To think of that now — all that time ago !" 
 
 " Fifty long years ago ! But I knew of it before that, four 
 years or more," said the old lady. It did not seem to move 
 her much — probably felt to her like a previous state of existence. 
 She went on talking about the Convict Settlement, which she 
 had outUved. Her hearer only half understood most of it, not 
 being a prompt enough catechist to ask the right question at the 
 right time. 
 
 For Aunt M'riar, though good, was a slowcoach, backward 
 in cross-examination, and Mrs. Prichard's first depositions re- 
 mained unqualified, for discussion later with Uncle Mo. How- 
 ever, one inquiry came to her tongue. " Was you bom in those 
 parts yourseH, ma'am ?" said she. Then she felt a little sorry 
 she had asked it, for a sound Uke annoyance came in the answer. 
 
 " Who — I ? No, no — ^not I — dear me, no ! My father was 
 an Essex man. Darenth, his place was called." Aunt M'riar 
 repeated the name wrongly : — " Durrant ?" She ought to have 
 asked something concerning his status and employment. Who 
 knows but Mrs. Prichard might have talked of that mill and 
 suppUed a clue to speculation ? — ^not Aunt M'riar's ; speculation 
 was not her line. Others might have compared notes on her 
 report, literally given, with Dave's sporting account of the mill- 
 model. And yet — why should they ? With no strong leading 
 incident in common, each story might have been discussed with- 
 out any suspicion that the flour-mill was the same in both. 
 
 So that Mrs. Prichard's tale so far supplies nothing to Hnk 
 her with old Granny Marrable, as unsuspicious as herself. What 
 Aunt M'riar found her talking of, halt to herself, when her 
 attention recovered from a momentary fear that she might 
 have hurt the old lady's feelings, was even less likely to connect 
 the two lives. 
 
DAVE'S RETURN TO SAPPS COURT 83 
 
 " I followed my husband out. My child died — my eldest — 
 here in England. I went again to live at home. Then I 
 followed him out. He wrote to me and said that he was free. 
 Free on the island, but not to come home. We had been over 
 four years parted then." She said nothing of the child she left 
 behind in England. Too much to explain perhaps ? 
 
 Aunt M'riar was struck by a painful thought; the same that 
 had crossed her mind before, and that she had discarded as 
 somehow inconsistent with this old woman. The convicts — the 
 convicts ! She had grasped the fact that this couple had hved 
 in Van Diemen's Land, and inferred that children were bom to 
 them there. But — ^was the husband himself a convict ? She 
 repeated the words, " Free on the island, but not to come home ?" 
 as a question. 
 
 She was quite taken aback with the reply, given with no 
 visible emotion. " Why should I not tell you ? How will it 
 hurt me that you should know ? My husband was convicted 
 of forgery and transported." 
 
 " God's mercy on us !" said Aunt M'riar, dropping her work 
 dumbfoundered. Then it half entered her thought that the old 
 woman was wandering, and she nearly said: — " Are you sure ?" 
 
 The old woman answered the thought as though it had been 
 audible. "Why not?" she said. "I am all myself. Fifty 
 years ago ! Why should I begin to doubt it because of the 
 long time ?" She had ceased her knitting and sat gazing on the 
 fire, looking very old. Her interlaced thin fingers on the strain 
 could grow no older now surely, come what might of time and 
 trouble. Both had done their worst. She went on speaking 
 low, as one talks to oneself when alone. " Yes, I saw him go 
 that morning on the river. They rowed me out at dawn — a pair 
 of oars, from Chatham. For I had learned the day he would go, 
 and there was a sure time for the leaving of the hulks; if not 
 night, then in the early dawn before folk were on the move. 
 This was in the summer." 
 
 " And did you see him ?" said Aunt M'riar, hoping to hear 
 more, and tafclng much for granted that she did not understand, 
 lest she should be the loser by interruption. 
 
 " I saw him. I saw him. I did not know then that he saw 
 me. They dared not row me near the wicked longboat that 
 was under the hulk's side waiting — ^waiting to take my heart 
 away. They dared not for the ofi&cers. There was ten men 
 packed in the stem of the boat, and he was in among them. 
 And. as they sat, each one's hand was handcuffed to his neigh- 
 
84 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 bour. I saw him, but he could not raise his hand; and he dared 
 not call to me for the officers. I could not have known him in 
 his prison dress — ^it was too far — but I could read his number, 
 213M. Iknowitstill— 2I3M. . . . How did I know it ? Because 
 he got a letter to me." She then told how a man had followed 
 her in the street, when she was waiting in London for this chance 
 of seeing her husband, and how she had been afraid of this man 
 and taken refuge in a shop. Then how the shopkeeper had gone 
 out to speak to him and come back, saying: — " He's a bad man to 
 look at, but he means no harm. He says he wants to give you 
 a letter, miss." How she then spoke with the man and received 
 the letter, giving him a guinea for the rolled-up pencil scrawl, 
 and he said: — " It's worth more than that for the risk I ran to 
 bring it ye. But for my luck I might be on the ship still." 
 Whereupon she gave him her watch. That was how she came 
 to know 213M. 
 
 " But did you see your husband again 1" asked Aunt M'riar, 
 listening as Dave might have done; and, like him, wanting each 
 instalment of the tale rounded off. 
 
 " Yes. Climbing up the side of the great ship half-way to the 
 Nore. It was a four-hours' pull for the galley — six oars — each 
 man wristlocked to his oar; and each officer with a musket. But 
 we had a Uttle sail and kept the pace, though the wind was 
 easterly. Then, when we reached the ship where she lay, we 
 went as near as ever my men dared. And we saw each one 
 of them — the ten — ^imhandcuffed to climb the side, and a cord 
 over the side made fast to him to give him no chance of death 
 in the waters — ^no chance 1 And then I saw my husband and 
 knew he saw me." 
 
 " Did he speak ?" 
 
 " He tried to call out. But the ship's officer struck him a 
 cruel blow upon the mouth, and he was dragged to the upper 
 deck and hidden from me. We saw them all aboard, all the 
 ten. It was the last boat-load from the hulk, and all the yards 
 were manned by now, and the white saik growing on them. 
 Oh, but she was beautiful, the great ship in the sunshine !" The 
 old woman, who had spoken tearlessly, as from a dead, tearless 
 heart, of the worst essentials of her tragedy, was caught by a 
 sob at something in this memory of the ship at the Nore — ^why. 
 Heaven knows ! — ^and her voice broke over it. To Aunt M'riar, 
 cockney to the core, a ship was only a convention, necessary foB 
 character, in an offing with an orange-chrome sunset claiming 
 your attention rather noisily in the background. There were 
 
DAVE'S RETURN TO SAPPS COURT 85 
 
 pavement-artists in those days as now. This ship the old lady 
 told of was a new experience for her — this ship with hundreds 
 of souls on board, men and women who had all had a fair trial 
 and been represented by counsel, so had nothing to complain 
 of eyen if innocent. But all souls in HeU, for all that ! 
 
 The old voice seemed quite roused to animation — a sort of 
 heart-broken animation — ^by the recollection of this ship. " Oh, 
 but she was beautiful \" she said again. " I've dreamed of her 
 many's the time since then, with her three masts straight up 
 against the blue; you could see them in the water upside down. 
 I could not find the heart to let my men row away and leave her 
 there. I had come to see her go. and it was a long wait we 
 had. . . . Yea, it was on towards evening before the breeze 
 came to move her; and all those hours we waited. It was money 
 to my men, and they had a good wiU to it." She stopped, and 
 Aunt M'riar waited for her to speak again, feeUng that she too 
 had a right to see this ship's image move. Presently she looked 
 up from her darning and got a response. " Yes, she did move 
 in the end. I saw the sails flap, and there was the clink of the 
 anchor-chain. I've dreamt it again many and many a time, and 
 seen her take the wind and move, till she was all a mile away 
 and more. We watched her away with all aboard of her. And 
 when the wind rose in the night I was mad to think of her out 
 on the great sea, and how I should never see him again. But 
 the time went by, and I did." 
 
 This was the first time old Mrs. Prichard spoke so freely about 
 her former life to Aunt M'riar. It was quite spontaneous on 
 the old lady's part, and she stopped her tale as suddenly as it 
 had begun. The fragmentary revelations in which she dis- 
 closed much more of her story, as already summarised, came at 
 intervals; always dwelling on her Australian experiences, never 
 on her girlhood — never on her subsequent life in England. The 
 reason of this is not clear; one has to accept the fact. The 
 point to notice is that nothing she said could possibly associate 
 her with old Mrs. Marrable, as told about by Dave There had 
 been mention of Australia certainly. Yet why should Granny 
 Marrable's sister having died there forty-odd years ago connect 
 her with an old woman of a different name, now living ? 
 Besides, Dave was not inteUigible on this point. 
 
 Whatever she told to Aunt M'riar was repeated to Uncle Mo — 
 be sure of that ! Still, fragmentary stories, imless dressed up and 
 garnished by their retailer, do not remain vividly in the mind 
 of their hearer, and Uncle Mo's impressions of the upstairs 
 
86 WHEN ;GH0ST MEETS GHOST 
 
 tenant's history continued very mixed. For Aunt M'riar's 
 style was unpolished^ and she did not marshall her ideas in an 
 impressive or lucid manner. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 OF A WATERSIDE PtTBUC-HOUSB, AT CHISWICK, AND TWO MEN Df 
 ITS BACK GABDBN. HOW THE EIVBB POLICE TOOK AN IN- 
 TEREST IN THEM. A TROUBLESOME LANDING AND A BAD 
 SPILL. HOW rOTJR MEN WENT UNDER WATER, AND TWO WERE 
 NOT DROWNED. OE THE INQUEST ONE OP THE OTHERS TOOK 
 THE STAB PART IN. A MODEL WITNESS, AND HIS GREAT- 
 AUNT 
 
 Just off the Lower Mall at Hammersmith there still remains 
 a scrap of the waterside neighbourhood that, fifty years ago, 
 beUeved itself eternal; that still clung to the belief forty years 
 ago ; that had misgivings thirty years ago ; and that has suffered 
 such inroads from eUgible residences, during the last quarter of 
 a century, that its residuum, in spite of a superficial appearance 
 of duration, is really only awaiting the expiration of leases to 
 be given over to housebreakers, to make way for fiats. 
 
 Fifty years ago this comer of the world was so self-reliant 
 that it was content — ^more than content — to be unpatroUed 
 by police; in fact, felt rather resentful when an occasional ofBcer 
 passed through, as was inevitable from time to time. It would 
 have been happier it its law-abiding tendencies had always been 
 taken for granted. Then you could have drunk your half a pint, 
 your quart, or your measurable fraction of a hogshead, in peace 
 and quiet at the bar of the microscopic pub called The Pigeons, 
 without fear of one of those enemies of Society — your Society — 
 coming spying and prying round after you or any chance 
 acquaintance you might pick up, to help you towards making 
 that fraction a respectable one. If it was summer-time, and 
 you sat in the httle back-garden that had a ladder down to the 
 river, you might feel a moment's uneasiness when the river- 
 police rowed by, as sometimes happened; only, on the other 
 hand, you might feel soothed by their appearance of unconcern 
 in riparian matters, almost amounting to affectation. If any 
 
A VERDICT OF DEATH BY DROWNING 87 
 
 human teings took no interest in your antecedents, surely it 
 would be these two leisurely rowers and the superior person in 
 the stam, with the oilskin cape ? 
 
 It was not summer-time — ^far from it — on the day that con- 
 cerns this story, when two men in the garden of The Pigeons 
 looked out over the river, and one said to the other: — " Right 
 away over yonder it lies, halfway to Bam Elms." They were 
 so busy over the locating of it, whatever it was, that they did not 
 notice the police-wherry, oarless in the swift-running tide, as 
 it slipped down close inshore, and was abreast of them before 
 they knew it. Perhaps it was the fact that it was not summer, 
 and that these men must have left a warm fire in the parlour 
 of The Pigeons, to come out into a driving north-east wind 
 bringing with it needle-pricks of microscopic snow, hard and 
 cold and dry, that made the rowers drop their oars and hold 
 back against the stream, to look at them. 
 
 Or was it that the man in the stem had an interest in one of 
 them. An abrupt exclamation that he uttered at this moment 
 seemed, to the man rowing stroke, who heard more than his 
 mate, to apply to the thicker and taller man of the two. This 
 one, who seemed to treat his pal as an inferior or subordinate, 
 met his gaze, not fiinching. His companion seemed less at his 
 ease, and to him the big man said, scarcely moving his lips to 
 say it: — "Steady, fool! — ^it you shy, we're done." On which 
 the other remained motionless. What they said was heard by 
 a boy close at hand; but for whose version, given afterwards, 
 this story would have been in the dark about it. 
 
 The two rowers kept the boat stationary, backing water. 
 The steersman's left hand played with the tiller-rope, and the 
 boat edged slowly to the shore. There was a grating thrown 
 out over the water from the parapet of the river-wall, to the 
 side of which was attached a boat-ladder, now slung up, for 
 no boat's crew ever stopped here at this season. The boat was 
 nearing this — all but close — ^when the bigger man spoke, on 
 a sudden. But he only said it was a rough night, sergeant ! 
 
 It was a rough night, or meant to be one in an hour or so. 
 But it was impossible for an Official to accept another person's 
 opinion without loss of dignity. Therefore the sergeant, always 
 working the boat edgewise towards the ladder, only responded, 
 " Roughish !" qualifying the night, and implying a wider ex- 
 perience of rough nights than his hearer's. If impressions de- 
 rived from appearance are to be relied on, his experience must 
 have been a wide- one. For one thing, he himself seemed a dozen 
 
88 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 years at least the younger of the two. He added, as the boat 
 touched the ladder, bringing each in full view of the other, and 
 making speech easy between them: — " A man don't make the 
 voyage out to Sydney without seeing some rough weather." 
 
 A very attentive observer might have said that he watched the 
 man he addressed more closely than the talk warranted, and 
 certainly woidd have seen that the latter started. He half began 
 
 " Who the Hell ?" but flagged on the last word — ^just stopped 
 
 short of Sheol — and the growl that accompanied it turned into 
 " I've never been in those parts, master." 
 
 "Never said you had. / have, though." One might have 
 thought, by his tone, that this ofi&cer chuckled secretly over 
 something. He was pleased, at least. But he gave no clue 
 to his thoughts. He seemed disconcerted at the height above 
 the water of the projecting grating and slung-up ladder. An 
 active man, unencumbered, might easily enough have landed 
 himself on it from the boat. Yet a boy might have made it 
 impossible, standing on the grating. A resolute kick on the 
 first hand-grip, or in the face of the climber, would have met 
 the case, and given him a back-fall into the boat or the water. 
 A chilly thought that, on a day like this. But why should such 
 a thought cross the mind of this man, now ? It did, probably, 
 and he gave up the idea of landing. 
 
 Instead, he felt in his pocket, and drew out a spirit-flask. 
 " Maybe," said he, " your mate would obhge so far as to ask 
 the young lady at the bar to fill this up with Kinahan's LL ? 
 She won't make any bones about it if he says it's for me. Sergeant 
 Ibbetson — she'll know." He inverted it to see that it was 
 empty, and the man who had not spoken accepted the mission 
 at a nod from his companion, whose social headship the 
 speech of the policeman seemed somehow to have taken for 
 granted. 
 
 The sergeant watched him out of sight; then, the moment 
 he had vanished, said : — " Now I come to think of it. Cissy Tuttle 
 that was here has married a postman, and the young lady that's 
 took it over may not know my name." His speech had not the 
 appearance of a sudden thought, and the less so that he began 
 to get rid of his oilskin incumbrance almost before he had 
 uttered it. 
 
 The understanding of what then happened needs a clear picture 
 of the exact position of things at this moment. The boat, held 
 back by the dipped oars, but steadied now and again by the 
 hand of the sergeant on the grating or ladder lay uneasily 
 
A VERDICT OF DEATH BY DROWNING 89 
 
 between the wind and the current. The man on the grating 
 showed some unwillingness to lend the hand-up that was asked 
 for; and took exception, it seemed, to the safety of the landing 
 on any terms. " Maybe you want a dip in the river, master ?" 
 said he. " It's no concern of mine. Only I don't care to take 
 your weight on this greasy bit of old iron. I'm best out of the 
 water." 
 
 The sergeant paused, looked at the grating, which certainly 
 sloped outwards, then at the boat and at the ladder. " Catch 
 hold !" said he. 
 
 But the other held back. " Why can't your mate there 
 hand me the end of that painter, and slue her round ? 
 That's easy ! Won't take above a half a minute, and save 
 somebody a wet shirt. Tie her nose to the ring yonder ! — 
 just bring you up opposite to where I'm standing ! Think it 
 out, master." 
 
 The sergeant, however, seemed to have made up his mind 
 in spite of the reasonableness of this suggestion. For when 
 the man rowing bow stooped back and reached out for the 
 painter — the course seemed the obvious and natural one — he 
 was stopped by his chief, who said rather tartly: — " You take 
 your orders from me, Cookson !" and then held out his hand as 
 before, saying: — " You're a tidy weight, my lad. / shan't pull 
 you overboard." 
 
 He did, nevertheless, and it came about thus. The two men 
 at the oars saw the whole thing, and were clear in their account 
 of it after. Ibbetson, their sergeant, did not take the hand 
 that was proffered him, but seized its wrist. It seemed to 
 them that he made no attempt to lift himself up from the boat; 
 and the nearer one, pulling stroke, would have it that Ibbetson 
 even hooked the seat with his foot, as though to get a purchase 
 on the man's wrist that he held. Anyhow, the result was the 
 same. The man lost his footing under the strain, and pitched 
 sheer forward on his assailant; for the aggressive intention of 
 the latter may be taken as established beyond a doubt. As he 
 fell, he struck out with his left hand, landing on Ibbetson's 
 mouth, and cutting off his last words, an order, shouted to 
 ihe rowers : — " Sheer off, and row for the bridge ... I can . . ." 
 Both of them believed he would have said: — " I can manage him 
 by myself." 
 
 But nothing further passed. For the boat, not built to keep 
 an even keel. with two strong men strugghng together in the 
 stern, lurched over, shipping water the whole length of the 
 
90 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 counter. The rowers tried to obey orders, the more readily — 
 so they said after — that their chief seemed quite a match for 
 his man. There was a worse danger ahead, a barge moored in 
 the path, and they had to clear, one side or the other. The best 
 chance was outside, and they would have succeeded but for the 
 cable that held her. It just caught the bow oar, and the boat 
 swung round, the stroke being knocked down between the seats 
 in his effort to back water and keep her clear. Half -crippled 
 already and at least one-third full of water, she was in no trim 
 to dodge the underdraw of the sloping bows of an empty barge, 
 at the worst hour of ebb-tide. The boy in the garden, next 
 door to The Pigeons, whom curiosity had kept on the watoh, 
 saw the swerve off-shore; the men struggling in the stem; the 
 collision with the moorings; and the final wreck of the boat. 
 Then she vanished behind the barge, and was next seen, bottom- 
 up, by children on the bridge over the Uttle creek three minutes 
 lower down the stream, whose cries roused those in hearing 
 and brought help. When the man came back with the whisky- 
 flask, his mate had vanished, and the boat with its crew. If he 
 guessed what had passed, it was from the running and shouting 
 on the bank, and the boats that were putting off in haste; and 
 then, well over towards Hammersmith Bridge, that they reached 
 their quarry and were trying to right her on the water, possibly 
 thinking to find some former occupant shut in beneath. He 
 did not wait to see the upshot; but, pocketing the flask, got away 
 unnoticed by anyone, all eyes being intent upon the incident 
 on the river. 
 
 The sergeant, Ibbetson, was drowned, and the facts narrated 
 are taken Uterally, or inferred, from what came out at the 
 inquest. The theory that recommended itself to account for 
 his conduct was that he had recognised a culprit whom he had 
 known formerly, for whose apprehension a reward had been 
 offered, and had, without hesitation, formed a plan of separating 
 him from his companion — or companions, for who could say 
 they were alone ? — and securing him in the boat, when no escape 
 would have been possible, as they could have made straight 
 for the floating station at Westminster. It was a daring idea, 
 and might have succeeded but for that mooring-cable. 
 
 The body of the sergeant showed marks of the severity of the 
 struggle in which he had been engaged. The two upper front 
 teeth were loosened, probably by the blow he received at the 
 outset, and there were finger-nail dents on the throat as from 
 the grasp of a strangling hand. That his opponent should have 
 
A VERDICT OF DEATH BY DROWNING 91 
 
 disengaged himself from his clutch was matter of extreme sur- 
 prise to all who had experienced submersion, and knew its 
 meaning. Even to those who have never been under water 
 against their will, the phrase " the grip of a drowning man " 
 has a terribly convincing sound. That this opponent rose to 
 the surface alive, and escaped, was barely entertained as a 
 surmise, only to be dismissed as incredible; and this improba- 
 bility became even greater when his companion was captured 
 alone, a month later, in the commission of a burglary at Castelnau, 
 which — so it was supposed — the two had been discussing just 
 before the police-boat appeared. The two rowers were rescued, 
 one, a powerful swimmer, having kept the other afloat till the 
 arrival of help. At the inquest neither of these men seemed as 
 much concerned at Ibbetson's death as might have been expected, 
 and both condemned afterwards that officer's treacherous grip 
 of the hand extended to help him. Whatever he knew to his 
 proposed prisoner's disadvantage, there are niceties of honour 
 in these matters — Uttle chivalries all should observe. 
 
 The only evidence towards estabUshing the identity of the 
 man who had disappeared was that of the stroke-oar, Simeon 
 Rowe, the rescuer of his companion. This man's version of 
 Ibbetson's exclamation was " Thomey Davenant ! — I know you, 
 my man !" At the time of the inquest, no identification was 
 made with any name whose owner was being sought by the 
 PoUce, so no one caught the clue it furnished. There may have 
 been slowness or laxity of investigation, but a sufficient excuse 
 may he in the fact that Ibbetson certainly spoke the name 
 wrong, or that his hearer caught it wrong. The name was not 
 Davenant, but Daverill. He was the son of old Mrs. Prichard, 
 of Sapps Court, called after his father, and inheriting all 
 his worst qualities. If Sergeant Ibbetson spoke truly when he 
 said " I know you !" to him, he was certainly entitled to a 
 suspension of opinion by those who condemned his ruse for this 
 man's capture. 
 
 Still, a code of honour is always respectable, and these two 
 policemen may have supposed that their mate knew no worse 
 of this convict than that he had redistributed some property — 
 was what the first holder of that property would have called a 
 thief. One prefers to think that Ibbetson knew of some less 
 equivocal wickedness. 
 
 Perhaps this man, supposed to be drowned, would not have 
 reappeared in this story had it not been for one of the witnesses 
 
92 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 at the inquest, the boy who overheard the conversation between 
 him and his mate, before the arrival of the police-boat. 
 
 " This boy," said the Coroner's clerk, who seemed to have 
 an impression that this was a State Prosecution, and that he 
 represented the Crown, " can give evidence as to a conversation 
 between the " — he wanted to say " the accused " ; it would have 
 sounded so well, but he stopped himself in time — " between the 
 man whose body has not been found, and " — ^here he would have 
 liked to say " an accomplice " — " and another person who has 
 eluded the . , . that is to say, whom the poUce have, so far, failed 
 to identify . . ." 
 
 " That's all right," said the Coroner. " That'U do. Boy's 
 got something he can tell us. What's your name, my man ?" 
 
 " Wot use are you a-going to make of it ?" said the boy. He 
 did not appear to be over twelve years old, but his assurance 
 could not have been greater had he been twelve score. A 
 reporter put a dot on his paper, which meant " Laughter, in 
 which the Coroner joined, in a parenthesis." 
 
 An old woman who had accompanied the boy, as tutelary 
 genius, held up a warning finger at him. " Now, you Micky," 
 said she, " you speak civil to the gentleman, and answer his 
 questions accordin'." She then said to the Coroner, as one 
 qualified to explain the position: — " It's only his manners, sir, 
 and the boy has not a rebeUious spirit, being my grandnephew." 
 She utihsed a lax structure of speech to introduce her relationship 
 to the witness. She was evidently proud of being related to one, 
 having probably met with few opportunities of distinction hitherto. 
 
 The witness, under the pressure at once of family influence 
 and constituted authority, appeared to give up the point. 
 " 'Ave it your own way !" said he. " Michael Ragstroar." 
 
 " How am I to spell it ?" said the clerk, without taking his 
 pen out of the ink, as though it would dry in the air. 
 
 " This ain't school !" said our young friend from Sapps Court, 
 whom you probably remember. Michael had absconded from 
 his home, and sought that of his great-aunt; the only person, 
 said contemporary opinion, that had a bounce of influence with 
 him. It was not clear why such a confirmed reprobate should 
 quail before the moral force of a small old woman in a mysteriously 
 clean print-dress, and tortoise-shell spectacles she would gladly 
 have kept on while charing, only they always come off in the 
 pail. But he did, and when reproached by her for his need- 
 lessly defiant attitude, took up a more conciliatory tone. " Cam't 
 recollect, or p'r'aps I'd tell yer," said he. 
 
A VERDICT OF DEATH BY DROWNING 93 
 
 "Never mind the spelling!" said the Coroner, who had to 
 preside at another inquest at Kew very shortly. " Let's get 
 the young man's evidence." But Michael objected to giving 
 evidence. Whereupon the Coroner, perceiving his mistake, said : 
 "Well, then, suppose we let it alone for to-day. You may 
 go home, Micky, and find out how your name's spelt, against 
 next time it's wanted. Where's the other boy that heard what 
 the men were saying ? Call him." 
 
 " There wam't any other boy within half a mile," exclaimed 
 Michael indignantly. " I should have seen him. Think I've 
 got no eyes ? There wam't another blooming bloke in sight." 
 
 " Didn't the other boy see several other men in the back- 
 garden of the ale-house ?" said the Coroner. And the Inspector 
 of Poh'ce had the effrontery to reply: " Oh yes, three or four 1" 
 And then both of them looked at Michael, and waited. 
 
 Michael's indignation passed all bounds, and betrayed him 
 into the use of language of which his great-aunt would have 
 deemed him incapable. She was that shocked, she never ! 
 The expressions were not Michael's own vocabulary at all, but 
 corruptions that had crept into his phraseology from associations 
 with other boys, chance acquaintances, who had evolved them 
 among themselves, nourishing them from the corruption of their 
 own hearts. As soon as Michael — deceived by the mendacious 
 dialogue of the Coroner and the Inspector, and under the impres- 
 sion that the particulars he was giving, whether true or false, 
 were not evidence — had told with some colouring about the 
 two men in the garden and what they said, the old lady made 
 a powerful effort to detain the Coroner to give him particulars 
 of Michael's parentage and education, and to exculpate herself 
 from any possible charge of neglecting her grandnephew, to 
 whom she was a second parent. In fact, had her niece Ann 
 never married Daniel Rackstraw, she and her — Ann , that is — 
 would have done much better by Michael and his sisters. Which 
 left a false impression on her hearers' minds, that Michael was 
 an illegitimate son; whereas really she was only dealing with 
 his existence as rooted in the nature of things, and certain 
 to have come about without the intrusion of a male parent in 
 the family 
 
 As for the details of his testimony, surrendered unconsciously 
 as mere facts, not evidence, there was little in them that has 
 not been already told. The conversation of the two men, as 
 given in the text, was taken from Michael's version, and he 
 was the only hearer. But he only saw their backs, except that 
 
94 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 when the struggle came ofE he caught sight of the ex-convict'a 
 face for a moment. He would know him again if he saw him 
 any day of the week. Some days, he seemed to imply, were 
 worse for his powers of identification than others. It was un- 
 important, as both the survivors of the accident had noted the 
 man's face carefully enough, considering that he was to them 
 at first nothing beyond a chance bystander. He wasn't a bad- 
 looking man; that was clear. But he was possibly not in very 
 good drawing, as they agreed that he had a peculiarity — his two 
 halves didn't square. This no doubt referred to the same thing 
 Michael described by calling him " a sideways beggar." 
 
 The Coroner's Jury had some trouble to agree upon a verdict. 
 " Death by Misadventure " seemed wrong somehow. How 
 could drowning with the finger-nails of an adversary in his throat 
 be accounted misadventure ? No doubt Abel died by mis 
 adventure, in a sense. But no other verdict seemed possible 
 except Manslaughter by the person whom Ibbetson supposed 
 this man to be when he laid hands on him. And how it he was 
 mistaken ? " Manslaughter against some person unknown " 
 sounded well. Only if the person was unknown, why Man- 
 slaughter ? If Brown is ever so much justified in dragging 
 Smith under water by the honest belief that he is Jones, is Smith 
 guilty of anything but self-defence when he does his best to 
 get out of Brown's clutches ? Moreover, the annals of life- 
 saving from drowning show that the only chance of success for 
 the rescuer often depends on whether the drowning man can 
 be made insensible or overpowered. Otherwise, death for both. 
 If this imknown man was not the object of PoUce interest he 
 was supposed to have been taken for, he might only have been 
 doing his best to save the Uves of both. In that case, had the 
 inquest been on both, the verdict must have been one that would 
 ascribe Justifiable Homicide to him and Manslaughter to 
 Ibbetson. For surely if the pohce-sergeant had been the sur- 
 vivor, and the other man's body had been found to be that of 
 some inoffensive citizen, Ibbetson would have been tried for 
 manslaughter. In the end a verdict was agreed upon of Death 
 by Drowning, which everybody knew as soon as it was certain 
 that Life was extinct. 
 
 Somewhat later Ibbetson was supposed to have taken him 
 for a returned convict, whose name was variously given, but 
 who had been advertised for as Thornton, one of his aliases; 
 and in consequence of this discovery the vigilance of the PoUce 
 for the apprehension of the missing man, under this name, was 
 
A VERDICT OF DEATH BY DROWNING 95 
 
 increased and the reward doubled. And this, in spite of a 
 universal inference that he was dead, and that his body was 
 flavouring whitebait below bridge. This did not interfere with 
 a belief on the part of the crew of the patrolling boat — known to 
 Michael — owing to a popular chant of boys of his own age — as 
 " two blackbeetles and one water-rat," that his corpse would 
 float up one day near the place of his disappearance. But their 
 eyes looked for it in vain; and though the companion with whom 
 he was discussing the burglary to be executed at Bam Elms was 
 caught in flagrante delicto and sent to Portland Island, nothing 
 was heard of him or known of his whereabouts. 
 
 Michael ended his stay with his great-aunt shortly after- 
 wards, returning home with a budget of legends founded on his 
 waterside experience. As he had a reputation for audacious 
 falsehood without foundation, it is no matter of surprise that 
 the whole story of the water-rat's death and the inquest were 
 looked upon as exaggerations too outrageous for belief even 
 by the most credulous. Probably his version of the incidents, 
 owing to its rich substratum of the marvellous yet true, was 
 much more accurate than was usual with him when the mar- 
 vellous depended on his ingenuity to provide it. It was, how- 
 ever, roundly discredited in his own circle, and nothing in it 
 could have evoked recognition in Sapps Court even if the name 
 of the convict had reached the ears that knew it. For it was 
 not only wrongly reported but was still further distorted by 
 Michael for purposes of astonishment. 
 
96 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 OF THE EAELDOM OF ANOESTEB, AND ITS BARL's COUNTBSS's 
 OPINION OF HIM. HOW HEK SECOND DAUGHTER CAME OUT 
 IN THE GARDEN. HOW SHE SAW A TRESPASSER, WITH SUCH 
 A NICE DOG ! HE MUSTN't BE SHOT, CotTB QVB OOtTE ! A 
 LITTLE STONE BRIDGE. A SLIT IN A DOG's COLLAR. OLD 
 
 Michael's obstinacy, how Gwendolen ran away to 
 dress, and was unsociable at dinner. the voice of a 
 dog in trouble. achilles, and his recognition. how 
 they followed achilles, at his own request, and what 
 he showed the way to. but the man was not dead 
 
 If a stranger from America or Australia could have been shown 
 at a glance all that went to make up the Earldom of Ancestor, 
 he would have been deeply impressed. All the leagues of park- 
 land, woodland, moorland, farmland that were its inheritance 
 would have impressed him, not because of their area — because 
 Americans and AustraUans are accustomed to mere crude area 
 in their own departments of the planet — but because of the 
 amazing amount of old-world History -transacted within its 
 limits; the way the antecedent Earls meddled m it; their 
 magnificent record of treachery and bloodshed and murder; 
 wholesale in battle, retail in less showy, but perhaps even more 
 interesting, private assassination; fascinating cruelties and 
 horrors unspeakable ! They might have been impressed also, 
 though, of course, in a less degree, by the Earldom's very 
 creditable show of forbears who, at the risk of being uninteresting, 
 behaved with common decency, and did their duty in the station 
 to which God or Debrett had called them ; not drawing the sword 
 to decide a dispute until they had tried one or two of the less 
 popular expedients, and slighting their obligations to the Melo- 
 drama of the future. Which rightly looks for its supplies of 
 copy to persons of high birth and low principles. 
 
 The present Earl took after his less mediaeval ancestry; and 
 though he received the sanction of his wife, and of persons who 
 knew about things, it was always conceded to him with a certain 
 tone of allowance made for a simple and pastoral nature. In 
 the vulgarest tongue it might have been said that he would 
 never cut a dash. In his wife's it was said that really the Earl 
 was one of the most admirable of men, only never intended by 
 
AT THE TOWERS 97 
 
 Providence for the Lord-Lieutenancy of a County. He was 
 scarcely to blame, therefore, for his shortcomings in that posi- 
 tion. It could not rank as one to which God had called him, 
 without imputing instabihty, or an oversight, to his summoner. 
 As a summons from Debrett, there is no doubt he was not so 
 attentive to it as he ought to have been. 
 
 His own opinion about the intentions of Providence was 
 that they had been frustrated — by Debrett chiefly. If they 
 had fructified he would have been the Librarian of the Bodleian. 
 Providence also had in view for him a marvellous collection of 
 violins, unhmited Chinese porcelain, and some very choice 
 samples of ItaUan majoUca. But he would have been left to 
 the undisturbed enjoyment of his treasures. He could have 
 passed a peaceful life gloating over Pynsons and Caxtons, and 
 Wynkyn de Wordes, and GroUer binding, and Stradivarius, and 
 Guamerius, and Ming, and Maestro Giorgio of Gubbio. But 
 Debrett got wind of the intentions of Providence, and clapped 
 a coronet upon the head of their intended hineficiaire without 
 so much as with your leave or by your leave, and there he was — 
 an Earl ! He had all that mere possessions could bestow, but 
 always with a sense that Debrett, round the comer, was keeping 
 an eye on him. He had to assuage that gentleman — or principle, 
 or lexicon, or analysis, whatever he is ! — and he did it, though 
 rather grudgingly, to please his Countess, and from a generaj 
 sense that when a duty is a bore, it ought to be complied with. 
 His Countess was the handsome lady with the rings whom Dave 
 Wardle had taken for a drive in her own carriage. 
 
 This sideUght on the Earl is as much illumination as the 
 story wants, for the moment. The sidelight on the terrace of 
 Ancester Tower*;, at the end of a day in July following the 
 winter of Dave's accident, was no more than the Towers thought 
 their due after standing out all day against a grey sky, in a drift 
 of warm, small rain that made oilskins and mackintoshes an 
 inevitable Purgatory inside ; and beds of lakes, when horizontal, 
 outside. It was a rainbow-making gleam at the end of thirty- 
 six depressing hours, bursting through a cloud-rift in the South 
 with the exclamation — ^the Poet might have imagined — " Make 
 the most of me while you can; I shan't last." 
 
 To make the most of it was the clear duty of the owner of 
 a golden head of hair like that of Lady Gwendolen, the Earl's 
 second daughter. So she brought the head out into the rainbow 
 dazzle, with the hair on it, almost before the rain stopped; and, 
 indeed, braved a shower of jewels the rosebush at the terrace 
 
 7 
 
98 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 window drenched her with, coming out. What did it matter ? — • 
 when it was so hot in spite of the rain. Besides, India musUn 
 dries so quick. It isn't like woollen stuff. 
 
 If you could look back half a century and see Gwendolen 
 on the terrace then, you would not be grateful to any con- 
 temporary malicious enough to murmur in your ear: — " Old 
 Lady Blank, the octogenarian, who died last week, was this 
 girl then. So reflect upon what the conventions are quite in 
 earnest — for once — ^in calling your latter end." You would 
 probably dodge the subject, replying — ^for instance — " How 
 funny ! Why, it must have taken twelve yards to make a skirt 
 Uke that!" For these were the days of crinolines; of hair in 
 cabbage-nets, packed round rubber-inflations; of what may be 
 called proto-croquet, with hoops so large that no one ever failed 
 to get through, except you and me; the days when Ah die la 
 morte was the last new tune, and Landseer and Mulready the 
 last words in Art. They were the days when there had been 
 but one Great Exhibition — think of it ! — and the British Fleet 
 could still get under canvas. We, being an old fogy, would 
 so much like to go back to those days — ^to think of daguerreotypes 
 as a stupendous triumph of Science, balloons as indigenous to 
 Cremome, and table-turning as a nine-days' wonder ; in a word, to 
 feel our biceps with satisfaction in an epoch when wheels went slow, 
 folk played tunes, and nobody had appendicitis. But we can't ! 
 
 However, it is those very days into which the story looks back 
 and sees this girl with the golden hair, who has been waiting 
 in that rainbow-glory fifty years ago for it to go on and say what 
 it may of what followed. She comes out on the terrace through 
 the high middle-window that opens on it, and now she stands 
 in the bhnding gleam, shading her eyes with her hand. It is 
 late in July, and one may Usten for a blackbird's note in vain. 
 That song in the ash that drips a diamond-shower on the soaked 
 lawn, whenever the wind breathes, may still be a thrush; his 
 last song, perhaps, about his second family, before he retires 
 for the season. The year we thought would last us out so well, 
 for all we wished to do in it, will fail us at our need, and we shall 
 find that the summer we thought was Spring's success will be 
 Autumn, much too soon, as usual. Over half a century of years 
 have passed since then, and each has played off its trick upon 
 us. Each Spring has said to us: — " Now is your time for hfe. 
 Live !" and each Summer has jilted us and left us to be con- 
 soled by Autumn, a Job's comforter who only says: — " Make the 
 best of me while you can, for close upon my heels is Winter." 
 
AT THE TOWERS 99 
 
 You can still see the terrace much as this young woman. 
 Lady Gwendolen Rivers — that was her name — saw it on that 
 July evening, provided always that you choose one with such 
 another rainbow. There is not much garden between it and the 
 Park, which goes on for miles, and begins at the sunk fence over 
 yonder. They are long miles too, and no stint; and it is an 
 hour's walk from the great gate to the house, unless you run; 
 so says the host of the Rivers Arms, which is ten minutes from 
 the gate. You can lose yourself in this park, and there are red- 
 deer as well as fallow-deer; and what is more, wild cattle who 
 are dangerous, and who have lived on as a race from the days 
 of Welsh Home Rule, and know nothing about London or 
 EngUsh History. Even so in the Transvaal it is said that some 
 English scouts came upon a peaceful valley with a settlement 
 of Dutch farmers therein, who had to be told about the War 
 to check their embarrassing hospitality. The parallel fails, 
 however, for the wild white cattle of Ancester Park paw the 
 earth up and charge, when they see strangers. The railway 
 had to go round another way to keep their little scrap of ancient 
 forest intact; for the family at the Castle has always taken the 
 part of the bulls against all comers. Little does Urus know 
 how superficial, how skin-deep, his loneliness has become — that 
 he is really vmder tutelage unawares, and even surreptitiously 
 helped to suppUes of forage in seasons of dearth 1 Will his race 
 linger on and outlive the race of Man when that biped has 
 shelled and torpedoed and dynamited himself out of existence ? 
 And will they then fill the newest New Forest that will have 
 covered the smokeless land, with the descendants of the herds 
 that Caesar's troops found in the Hercynian wilds ? They are 
 a fascinating subject for a wandering pen, but the one that 
 writes this must not be led away from Lady Gwendolen on the 
 terrace that looks across their cramped inheritance of beech 
 and bracken. If she could always look like what the level sun 
 makes her now, in the heart of a rainbow, few things the world 
 can show would outbid her right to a record, or make the penning 
 of it harder. For just at this moment she looks simply beautiful 
 beyond belief. It is not all the doing of the sunrays, for she 
 is a fine sample of nineteen, of a type which has kindled en- 
 thusiasm since the comparatively recent incursion of WilUam 
 the Norman, and will continue to do so till finally dynamited out 
 of existence, ut supra. 
 
 She is looking out under her hand — to make sight possible, 
 against the blaze — at a man who is plodding across the nearest 
 
100 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 opening in the woodland. How drenched he must be ! What 
 can possess him, to choose a day hke this to go afoot through 
 an undergrowth of bracken a day's raindrift has left water- 
 charged ? She knows well what a deluge meets him at every 
 step, and watches him, pressing through it as one who has felt 
 the worst pure water can do, and is reckless. She watches him 
 into a clear glade, with a sense of relief on his behalf. She does 
 not feel ofiScially called upon to resent a stranger with a dog — 
 in a territory sacred to game ! — ^for the half -overgrown track 
 he seems to have followed is a world of fallow-deer and pheasants. 
 She is the daughter of the house, and trespassers are the concern 
 of Stephen Solmes the head gamekeeper. 
 
 The trespasser seems at a loss which way to go, and wavers 
 this way and that. His dog stands at his feet looking up at 
 him, wagging a slow tail; deferentially offering no suggestion, 
 but ready with advice if called upon. The young lady's thought 
 is: — " Why can't he let that sweet dog settle it for him ? He 
 would find the way." Because she is sure of the sweetness of 
 that collie, even at this distance. Ultimately the trespasser 
 leaves the matter to the dog, who appears gratified and starts 
 straight for where she stands. Dogs always do, says she to 
 herself. But there is the haw-haw fence between them. 
 
 The dog stops. Not because of the obstacle — what does he 
 care for obstacles ? — but because of the courtesies of life. The 
 man that made this sunk fence did it to intercept any stray 
 colUe in the parkland from scouring across into the terraced 
 garden, even to inaugurate communications between a strange 
 young lady and the noblest of God's creatures, his owner. That 
 is the dog's view. So he stands where the fence has stopped him, 
 a beseeching explanatory look in his pathetic eyes; and a silky 
 tail, that is nearly dry already, marking time slowly. A move- 
 ment of permission would bring him across into the garden ; but 
 then — is he not too wet ? Young Lady Gwendolen says " No, 
 dear !" regretfully, and shakes her head as though he would 
 understand the negative. Perhaps he does, for he trots back 
 to his master, who, however — ^it must be admitted — has whistled 
 for him. 
 
 The pedestrian turns to go, but sees the lady well, though not 
 very near her yet. She knows he sees her, as he raises his hat. 
 She has an impression of his personaUty from the action ; which, 
 it may be, guides her conduct in what follows. 
 
 He seems to have made up his mind to avoid the house, taking 
 a visible path which skirts it, and possibly to strike away from 
 
AT THE TOWERS 101 
 
 it into the wider parkland, over yonder where the great oaks 
 are. He is soon lost in a hazel coppice. 
 
 Then she thinks. That dog wiU be shot if Sohnes catches 
 sight of it. She knows old Stephen. Oh, for but one word with 
 the dog's master ! It might just make the whole difference. 
 
 She does not think long; in fact, there is no time to lose. 
 The man and the dog must pass over Arthur's Bridge if they 
 follow the path. She can intercept them there by taking a short 
 cut through the Trings; a name with a forgotten origin, which 
 hugs the spot unaccountably. " I wonder what a tring was, 
 and when," says Gwendolen to herself, between those unsolved 
 riddles and the bridge. 
 
 The bridge is a little stone bridge, just wide enough for a chaise 
 to go through gently. Gwendolen has soaked her shoes to reach 
 it. Still, she must save that dog from the Ranger's gun at any cost. 
 A fig for the wet ! She has to dress for dinner — indeed, her maid 
 is waiting for her now — and dry stockings will be a negligible 
 factor in that great total. There comes the pedestrian round by 
 Swayne's Oak — another name whose origin no man knows. 
 
 The dog catches sight of her, and is off hke a shot, his master 
 trying vainly to whistle him back. The young lady is quite 
 at ease — she is not afraid of dogs ! She even laughs at this one's 
 demonstrative salute, which leaves a paw-mark on either 
 shoulder. For dogs do not scruple to kiss those they love, 
 without making compliments. 
 
 His master is apologetic, coming up with a quickened pace. 
 At a rebiike from him the collie becomes apologetic too; would 
 be glad to explain, but is handicapped by language. He is, 
 however, aU repentance, and falls back behind his master, 
 leaving matters in his hands. At the least — ^though the way 
 of doing it may have been crude — he has brought about an 
 introduction, of a sort. 
 
 There is no intrusive wish on the man's part to take undue 
 advantage of it. His speech " Achilles means well; it is only 
 his cordiality " seems to express the speaker's feeling that some- 
 how he is certain to be understood. His addendum — " I am 
 really as sorry as I can be, all the same " — may be credited to 
 ceremonial courtesy, flavoured with contrition. His wind-up 
 has a sort of laugh behind it: — "Particularly because I have 
 no business in this part of the Park at all. I can only remedy 
 that by my absence.' 
 
 " You will promise me one thing, if you please . . /' 
 
 " Yes — whatever you wish." 
 
102 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Lead your dog till you are outside the Park. If he is seen 
 he may be shot. I could not bear that that dog should be shot." 
 Something in the man's tone and manner has made it safe for 
 the girl to overstep the boundaries of chance speech to an utter 
 stranger. 
 
 He has no right — ^that he feels — to presume upon this semi- 
 confidence of an impulsive girl, whoever she is. True, her beauty 
 in that last glory of the sunset puts resolution to the test. But 
 he has no right, and there's an end on't ! " I will tie Achillea 
 up," he says. " I should not Uke him to be shot." 
 
 " Oh !— is he AchiUes ?" 
 
 " His mother was Thetis." 
 
 " Then, of course, he is AchiUes." At this point the boundaries 
 of strangership seem insistent. After all, this man may be 
 Tom or Dick or Harry. " You will excuse my speaking to 
 you," says the young lady. " I had no one to send, and I saw 
 you from the terrace. It was for the dog's sake." 
 
 In his chivalrous determination not to overdraw the blank 
 cheque she has signed for him unawares, the stranger conceives 
 that a few words of dry apology will meet the case, and leave 
 him to go on his way. So, though powerfully ignoring the fact 
 that that outcome will be an unwelcome one, he rephes : — " I 
 quite understand, and I am sincerely grateful for your caution." 
 He gets at a dog-chain in the pocket of his waterproof overcoat, 
 and at the cUok of it Achilles comes to be tied up. As he fastens 
 the clasp to its collar, he adds : — " I should not have let him 
 run loose hke this, only that I am so sure of him. He is town- 
 bred and a stranger to the chase. He can collect sheep, owing 
 to his ancestry; but he never does it now, because he has been 
 forbidden." While he speaks these last words he is examining 
 something in the dog's leather collar. " It wiU hold, I think," 
 says he. " A cut in the strap — ^it looks Uke." Then this oddly 
 befaUen coUoquy ends and each gives the other a dry good- 
 evening. The young lady's last sight of that acquaintance of 
 five minutes shows him endeavouring to persuade the dog "not 
 to drag on his chain. For AchiUes, for some dog-reason man 
 wiU never know, is no sooner leashed than he makes restraint 
 necessary by puUing against it with all his might. 
 
 " I hope that coUar won't break," says the young lady as she 
 goes back to dress for dinner. The sun's gleam is dead, and the 
 black cloud-bank that hides it now is the rain that is coming soon. 
 See ! — ^it has begun already. 
 
AT THE TOWERS 103 
 
 Old Mrs. Solmes at the Ranger's Lodge, a mile distant, said 
 to her old husband: — " Thou'rt a bad ma-an, Stephen, to leave 
 thy goon about Iwoaded, and the vary yoong boy handy to any 
 mischief. Can'st thou not bide till there coom time for the 
 Iwoadin' of it ?" 
 
 Said old Stephen sharply, " Gwun, wench ? There be no 
 gwun. 'Tis a roifle ! And as fower the little Seth, yander 
 staaple where it hangs is well up beyond the reach of un. Let 
 a' be, Graimy \" 
 
 The old woman, in whom grandmotherhood had overweighted 
 all other quaUties, by reason of little Seth's numerous first 
 cousins, made no reply, but looked uneasily at the rifle on the 
 wall. Little Seth — her appropriated grandchild, both his 
 parents being dead — ^was too small at present to do any great 
 harm to anyone but himself ; but the time might come. He was 
 credited with having swallowed an inch-brad, without visible 
 inconvenience; and there was a threatening appearance in his 
 eye as of one who would very soon cUmb up everywhere, fall 
 off everything, appropriate the forbidden, break the frangible, 
 and, in short, behave as — according to his grandmother — ^his 
 father had done before him. 
 
 His old grandfather, who had a combative though not un- 
 amiable disposition, took down the rifle as an act of self-assertion, 
 and walked out into the twihght with it on his shoulder. It 
 was simply a contradictious action, as there was no warranty 
 for it in vert and venison. But he had to garnish his action 
 with an appearance of plausibility, and nothing suggested itself. 
 The only course open to him was to get away out of sight, with 
 implication of a purpose vaguely involving flre-arms. A short 
 turn in the oak-wood — as far, perhaps, as Drews Thurrock — 
 would fortify his position, without committing him to details: 
 he could make secrecy about them a point of discipline. He 
 walked away over the grassland, a fine, upright old figure; in 
 whose broad shoulders, seen from behind, an insight short of 
 clairvoyance might have detected what is called tem/per — meaning 
 a want of it. He vanished into the oak-wood, where the Druid's 
 Stone attests the place of sacrifice, human or otherwise. 
 
 Some few minutes later the echoes of a rifie-shot, unmistakable 
 ahke for that of shot-gun or revolver, circled the belt of hills 
 that looks on Ancestor Towers, and died at Grantley Thorpe. 
 Old Stephen, when he reappeared at the Lodge half an hour 
 later, could explain his share in this with only a mixed satis- 
 faction. For though his need of his rifle — ^whether real or not 
 
104 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 — ^had justified its readiness for use, he had failed as a marks- 
 man ; the stray dog he fired at, after vanishing in a copse for 
 a few minutes, having scoured away in a long detour; as he 
 judged, making for the Castle. 
 
 " And a rare good hap for thee, husband I" said the old 
 woman when she heard this. " Whatever has gotten thy wits, 
 ma'an, to win out and draa' trigger on a pet tyke of some visitor 
 lady at the Too'ers ?" 
 
 " Will ye be tellun me this, and tellun me that, Keziah ? I 
 tell 'ee one thing, wench, it be no consam o' mine whose dog he 
 run loose in th' Park. Be they the Queen's own, my orders 
 say shoot un ! Do'ant thee know next month be August 1" 
 Nevertheless, the old man was not altogether sorry that he had 
 missed. He might have been called over the coals for killing 
 a dog-visitor to the Towers. He chose to affect regret for 
 discipline's sake^ and alleged that the dog had escaped into the 
 wood only because he had no second cartridge. This was 
 absurd. In these days of quick-shooters it might have been 
 otherwise. In those, the only abominations of the sort were 
 Colonel Colt's revolvers ; and they were a great novelty, opening 
 up a new era in murder. 
 
 The truth was that this view of the culprit's identity had 
 dawned on him as soon as he got a second view of the dog visibly 
 making for the Castle — almost too far in any case for a shot at 
 anything smaller than a doe — and he would probably have held 
 his hand for both reasons even if a reload had been possible. 
 
 Lady Gwendolen, treasuring in her heart a tale of adventure 
 — however trivial — to tell at the dinner-table in the evening, 
 submitted herself to be prepared for that function. She seemed 
 absent in mind; and Lutwyche her maid, observing this, skipped 
 intermediate reasonings and straightway hoped that the cause 
 of this absence of mind had come over with the Conqueror and 
 had sixty thousand a year. Meanwhile she wanted to know 
 which dress, my lady, this evening ? — and got no answer. Her 
 ladyship was Ustening to something at a distance; or, rather, 
 having heard something at a distance, was Ustening for a repeti- 
 tion of it. " I wonder what that can have been ?" said she. 
 For fire-arms in July are torpid mostly, and this was a gunshot 
 somewhere. 
 
 " They are firing at the Butts at Stamford Norton, my lady," 
 said Lutwyche; who always knew things, sometimes rightly — 
 sometimes wrongly. This time, the latter. 
 
AT THE TOWERS 105 
 
 " Then the wind must have gone round. Besides, it would 
 come again. Listen \" Thus her ladyship, and both listened. 
 But nothing came again. 
 
 Lady Gwendolen was as beautiful as usual that evening, but 
 contrary to custom silent and distraite. She did not tell the 
 story of the Man in the Park and his dog. She kept it to herself. 
 She was unresponsive to the visible devotion of a Duke's eldest 
 son, who came up to Lutwyche's standard in all particulars. 
 She did not even rise to the enthusiasm of a very old family friend, 
 the great surgeon Sir Coupland Merridew, about the view from 
 his window across the Park, although each had seen the same 
 sunset effect. She only said : — " Oh — ^have they put you in the 
 Traveller's Room, Sir Coupland ? Yes — the view is very fine !" 
 and became absent again. She retired early, asking to be 
 excused on the score of fatigue; not, however, seriously resenting 
 her mother's passing reference to a nursery rhyme about Sleepy- 
 head, whose friends kept late hours, nor her " Why, child, you've 
 had nothing to tire you !" She was asleep in time to avoid the 
 sound of a dog whining, wailing, protesting vainly, with a great 
 wrong on his soul, not to be told for want of language. 
 
 She woke with a start very early, to identify this disturbance 
 with something she lost in a dream, past recovery, owing to 
 this sudden awakening. She had her hand on the bell-rope at 
 her bed's head, and had all but pulled it before she identified 
 the blaze of light in her room as the exordium of the new day. 
 The joy of the swallows at the dawn was musical in the ivy round 
 her window, open through the warm night; and the turtle-doves 
 had much to say, and were saying it, in the world of leafage out 
 beyond. But there was no joy in the persistent voice of that 
 dog, and no surmise of its hearer explained it. 
 
 She found her feet, and shoes to put them in, before she was 
 clear about her own intentions; then in all haste got herseH 
 into as much clothing as would cover the risks of meeting the 
 few early risers possible at such an hour — ^it could but be some 
 chance groom or that young gardener — and, opening her door 
 with thief -Uke stealth, stole out through the stillness night had 
 left behind, past the doors of sleepers who were losing the sweetest 
 of the day. So she thought — so we all think — ^when some chance 
 gives us precious hours that others are wasting in stupid sleep. 
 But even she would not have risen but for that plaintive inter- 
 mittent wail and a growing construction of a cause for it — all 
 fanciful perhaps — that heruneasymindwouldstill be atworkupon. 
 She must find out the story of it. More sleep now was absurd. 
 
106 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Two bolts and a chain — ^not insuperable obstacles — and she 
 was free of the side-garden. An early riser — ^the one she had 
 foreseen, a young gardener she knew — ^with an empty basket 
 to hold flowers for the still sleeping household to refresh the 
 house with in an hour, and its bed-bound sluggards in two or 
 three, was astir and touched a respectful cap with some inner 
 misgiving that this unwonted vision was a ghost. But he showed 
 a fine discipline, and called it " My lady " with presence of mind. 
 Ghost or no, that was safe ! " What is that dog, Oliver ?" said 
 the vision. 
 
 The question made all clear The answer was speculative. 
 " Happen it might be his lordship's dog that came yesterday — 
 feeling strange in a strange place belike ?" 
 
 " No dog came yesterday. Lord Cumberworld hasn't a dog. 
 I must know. Where is it ?" 
 
 Oliver was not actor enough not to show that he was concealing 
 wonderment at the young lady's vehemence. His eyes remained 
 wide open in token thereof. 
 
 " In the stables, by the sound of it, my lady," was his answer. 
 
 His lady turned without a word, going straight for the stables; 
 and he followed when, recollecting him, she looked back to say, 
 " Yes — come !' 
 
 Grooms are early risers in a well-kept stable. There is always 
 something to be done, involving pails, or straps, or cloths, or 
 barrows, or brushes, even at five in the morning in July. When 
 the young gardener, running on ahead, jangled at the side-gate 
 yard-bell, more than one pair of feet was on the move within; 
 and there was the cry of the dog, sure enough, almost articulate 
 with keen distress about some unknown wrong. 
 
 " What is the dog, Archibald ?— what is the dog ?" The 
 speaker was too anxious for the answer to frame her question 
 squarely. But the old Scotch groom understood. " Wha can 
 tell that ?" says he. " He's just stra'ad away from his home, 
 or lost the track of a new maister. They do, ye ken, even the 
 collies on the hillsides. Will your ladyship see him ?' 
 
 " Yes — yes ! That is what I came for. Let me." A younger 
 groom, awaiting this instruction, goes for the dog, whose clamour 
 has increased tenfold, becoming almost frenzy when he sees 
 his friend of the day before; for he is Achilles beyond a doubt. 
 Achilles, mad with joy — or is it unendurable distress ? — or both ? 
 
 " Your leddyship wiU have seen him before, doubtless," says 
 old Archibald. He does not say, but means: — " We are puzzled, 
 but submissive, and look forward to enlightenment." 
 
AT THE TOWERS 107 
 
 " Let him go — yes, I know him ! — don't hold him. Oh, 
 Achilles, you darling dog — ^it is you ! . . . Yes — yes — let him go — 
 he'll be all right. . . . Yes, dear, you shall kiss me as much aa 
 you like." This was in response to a tremendous accolade, after 
 which the dog crouched humbly at his idol's feet; whimpering 
 a Uttle still, beneath his breath, about something he could not 
 say. She for her part caressed and soothed the frightened 
 creature, asking the while for information about the manner 
 of his appearance the night before. 
 
 It seemed that on the previous evening about eight o'clock 
 he had been found in the Park just outside the door of the walled 
 garden south of the Castle, as though he was seeking to follow 
 someone who had passed through. That at least was the im- 
 pression of Margery, a kitchen-maid, whom inquiry showed to 
 have been the source of the first person plural in the narrative 
 of Tom Kettering, the young groom, who had come upon the 
 dog crouched against this door; and, judging him to be in danger 
 in the open Park, had brought him home to the stables for 
 security. 
 
 How had the coUie behaved when brought up to the stabel ? 
 Well — ^he had been fair quiet — only that he was always for 
 going out after any who were leaving, and always "wakeriff, 
 panting, and watching like," till he, Tom Kettering, tied him 
 up for the night. And then he started crying and kept on at 
 it till they turned out, maybe half an hour since. 
 
 " He has not got his own collar," said the young lady suddenly. 
 " Where is his own coUar ?" 
 
 " He had ne'er a one on his neck when I coom upon him," 
 says Tom. " So we putten this one on for a makeshift." 
 
 " It's mair than leekly, my lady," — thus old Archibald — 
 " that he will have slipped from out his ain by reason of eempair- 
 fect workmanship of the clasp. Ye'U ken there's a many cheap 
 collars sold. . . ." The old boy is embarking on a lecture on 
 collar-structure, which, however, he is not allowed to finish. 
 The young lady interrupts. 
 
 " I saw is collar," says she, " and it was not a collar like this " 
 — that is, a metal one with a hasp — " it was a strap with a buckle, 
 and his master said there was a out in it. That was why it 
 broke." Then, seeing the curiosity on the faces of her hearers, 
 who would have thought it rather presumptuous to ask for an 
 explanation, she volunteers a short one ending with : — " The 
 question is now, how can we get him back to his master ?" It 
 never crossed her mind that any evil hap had come about. After 
 
108 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 all, the dog's excitement and distress were no more than his 
 separation from his owner and his strange surroundings might 
 have brought about in any case. The whole thing was natural 
 enough without assuming disaster, especially as seen by the 
 hght of that cut in the strap. The dog was a town-bred dog, 
 and once out of his master's sight, might get demoraUsed and 
 all astray. 
 
 No active step for restoring Achilles to his owner seeming 
 practicable, nothing was left but to await the action that gentle- 
 man was sure to adopt to make his loss known. Obviously the 
 only course open to us now was to take good care of the wanderer, 
 and keep an ear on the alert for news of his owner's identity. 
 AU seemed to agree to this, except Achilles. 
 
 During the brief consultation the young lady had taken a 
 seat on a clean truss of hay, partly from an impulse most of us 
 share, to sit or lie on fresh hay whenever practicable; partly 
 to promote communion with the dog, who crouched at her feet 
 worshipping, not quite with the open-mouthed, loose-tongued 
 joy one knows so well in a perfectly contented dog, but now and ■ 
 again half-uttering a stifled sound — a sotmd that might have 
 ended in a wail. When, the point seeming established that no 
 further step could be taken at present. Lady Gwendolen rose 
 to depart, a sudden frenzy seized Achilles. There is nothing 
 more pathetic than a dog's effort to commimicate his meaning — 
 clear to him as to a man — and his inabiUty to do it for want of 
 speech. 
 
 " You darling dog !" said Gwendolen. " What can it be 
 he wants ? Leave him alone and let us see. . . . No — don't 
 touch his chain !" For AchiUes, crouched one moment at her 
 feet, the next leaping suddenly away, seemed like to go mad 
 with distress. 
 
 The young groom Tom said something with bated breath, 
 as not presuming to advise too loud. His mistress caught his 
 meaning, if not his words. " What !" — she spoke suddenly — 
 " knows where he is — his master ?" The thought struck a 
 cold chill to her heart. It could only mean some mishap to 
 the man of yesterday. What sort of mishap ? 
 
 Some understanding seems to pass between the four men — 
 Archibald, the two young grooms, and the gardener — something 
 they will not speak of direct to her ladyship. " What ? — 
 what's that ?" says she, impatient of their scrupulousness 
 towards her sheltered inexperience of calamity. " Tell me 
 straight out 1" 
 
AT THE TOWERS 109 
 
 Old Archibald takes upon himself, as senior, to answer her 
 question. " I wouldna' set up to judge, my lady, for my ain 
 part. But the lads are all of one mind — ^just to follow on the 
 dog's lead, for what may come o't." Then he is going on 
 " Ye ken maybe the mon might fall and be ill able to move . . ." 
 when he is caught up sharp by the girl's " Or be killed. Yes — 
 follow the dog." Why should she be kept from the hearing of 
 a mishap to this stranger, even of his death ? 
 
 Old Stephen at the Lodge saw the party and came out in haste. 
 He had his story to tell, and told it as one who had no blame 
 for his own share in it. Why should he have any ? He had 
 only carried out his orders. Yes — ^that was the dog he drew 
 trigger on. He could not be mistaken on that point. 
 
 " And you fired on the dog to kill it," says the young lady, 
 flashing out into anger. 
 
 The old man stands his groimd. " I had my orders, my lady," 
 says he. " If I caught sight of e'er a dog unled — to shoot un." 
 " The man he belonged to — did you not see him ?" 
 " No ma'an coom in my sight. Had I seen a ma'an, I would 
 have wa'amed and cautioned him to keep to the high road, not 
 to bring his dog inside o' the parkland. No — no — there was 
 ne'er a ma'an, my lady." He goes on, very slightly exaggerating 
 the time that passed between his shot at the dog and its re- 
 appearance, apparently going back to the Castle. He rather 
 makes a merit of not having fired again from a misgiAring that 
 the dog's owner might be there on a visit. Drews Thurrock, he 
 says, is where he lost sight of the dog, and that is where Achilles 
 seems bent on going. 
 
 Drews Thurrock is a long half-mile beyond the Keeper's Lodge 
 in Ancester Park, and the Lodge is a long half-mile from the 
 Towers. Still, if it was reasonable to follow the dog at all, where 
 would be the sense of holding back or flagging till he should 
 waver in what seemed assurance of his purpose. No — ^no ! 
 What he was making for might be five miles off, for all that the 
 party that followed him knew. But trust in the creature's 
 instinct grew stronger each time he turned and waited for 
 their approach, then scoured on as soon as it amounted to a 
 pledge that he would not be deserted. There was no faltering 
 on his part. 
 
 The river, little more than a brook at Arthur's Bridge, is wide 
 enough here to deserve its name. The grove of oaks which one 
 sees from the Ranger's Lodge hides the water from view. But 
 Gwendolen has it in her mind, and with it a fear that the dog's 
 
no WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 owner will be found drowned. It was there that her brother 
 Frank died four years since, and was found in the deep pool 
 above the stepping-stones, caught in a tangle of weed and hidden, 
 after two days' search for him far and wide. If that is to be 
 the story we shall know, this time, by the dog's stopping there. 
 Therefore none would hint at an abandonment of the search 
 haying come thus far, even were he of the mind to run counter 
 to the wish of the young lady from the Castle. None dares to 
 do this, and the party follows her across the stretch of gorse 
 and bracken called the Warren to the wood beyond. There the 
 dog has stopped, waiting eagerly, showing by half-starts and 
 returns that he knows he would be lost to sight if he were too 
 quick afoot. For the wood is dark in front of him and the boughs 
 hang low. 
 
 " Nigh enough to where I set my eye on him at the first of 
 it, last evening," says old Stephen. He makes no reference to 
 the affair of the gunshot. Better forgotten perhaps ! 
 
 But he is to remember that gunshot, many a wakeful night. 
 For the forecast of a mishap in that fatal pool is soon to be 
 dissipated. As the party draws nearer the dog runs back in 
 his eagerness, then forward again. And then Lady Gwendolen 
 follows him into the wood, and the men follow her in silence. 
 Each has some anticipation in his mind — a thing to be silent about. 
 
 There is a dip in the ground ahead, behind which Achilles 
 disappears. Another moment and he is back again, crying 
 wildly with excitement. The girl quickens a pace that has 
 flagged on the rising ground; for they have come quickly. And 
 now she stands on the edge of a buttress-wall that was once the 
 boundary — so says tradition — of an amphitheatre of sacrifice. 
 Twenty yards on yonder is the Druids' altar, or the top of it. 
 For the ground has climbed up stone and waU for fifteen hundred 
 years, and the moss is deep on both; rich with a green no dye 
 can rival, for the soaking of yesterday's rain is on it stiU. But 
 she can see nothing for the moment, for the dog has leapt the 
 wall and vanished. 
 
 " 'Tis down below, my lady — ^beneath the wall." It is the 
 young gardener who speaks. The others have seen what he sees, 
 but are shy of speech. He has more claim than they to the 
 position of a friend, after so many conferences with her ladyship 
 over roots and bulbs this year and last. He repeats his speech 
 lest she should not have understood him. 
 
 " Then quick !" says she. And all make for the nearest way 
 down the wall and through the fern and bramble. 
 
AT THE TOWERS 111 
 
 What the young gardener spoke of is a man's body, seeming 
 dead. No doubt of his identity, for the dog sits by him motion- 
 less, waiting. His part is finished. 
 
 Now that the thing is known and may be faced without dis- 
 guise the men are all activity. Knives are out cutting away 
 rebellious thorny stems that wiU not keep down for trampling, 
 and a lane is made through the bush that keeps us from the 
 body, while minutes that seem hours elapse. That will do now. 
 Bring him out, gently. 
 
 Shot through the head — ^is that it ? Is there to be no hope ? 
 The girl's heart stands still as old Stephen stoops down to 
 examine the head, where the blood is that has clotted all the 
 hair and beard and run to a pool in the bracken and leaked away 
 — ^who can say how plentifully ? — ^into a cleft in the loose stones 
 fallen from the wall. The old keeper is in no trim for his task — 
 one that calls for a cool eye and a steady finger-touch. For it 
 is he that has done this, and the white face and lifeless eye are 
 saying to him that he has slain a man. He has too much at 
 stake for us to accept his statement that the wound on the temple 
 is no bullet-hole in the skull, but good for profuse loss of blood 
 for all that. He has seen such a woimd before, he says. But 
 then his wish for a wound still holding out some hope of life 
 may have fathered this thought, and even a false memory of 
 his experience. Perhaps he is right, though, in one thing. 
 If the body is Ufted and carried, even up to the lodge, the blood 
 may break out again. Leave him where he is till the doctor 
 comes. 
 
 For, at the first sight of the body, the young groom was off 
 like a shot to harness up the grey in the dog-cart, a combination 
 favouring speed, and drive his hardest to Grantley Thorpe for 
 Dr. Nash, the nearest medical resource. He is gone before 
 the young lady, who knows of one still nearer, can be alive to 
 his action, or to anything but the white face and lifeless hand 
 Achilles licks in vain. 
 
 Then, a moment later, she is aware of what has been done, 
 and exclaims : — " Oh dear ! — why did you send him ? Dr. Merri- 
 dew is at the Castle." For she knew Sir Coupland before he 
 had his knighthood. Thereon the other groom is starting to 
 summon him, but she stops him. She will go herself; then the 
 great man will be sure to come at once. 
 
 Sir Coupland Ellicott Merridew, F.R.S., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., 
 etc. — a whole alphabet of them — was enjoying this moment of 
 
112 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the first unalloyed holiday he had had for two years, by lying 
 in bed till nine o'clock. If it made him too late for the collective 
 breakfast in the new dining-room — late Jacobean — he had only 
 to ring for a private subsection for himself. He had had a small 
 cup of coffee at eight, and was congratulating himself on it, and 
 was now absolutely in a position not to give any consideration to 
 anything whatever. 
 
 But cruel Destiny said No ! — he was not to round off his long 
 night's rest with a neat peroration. He was interrupted in the 
 middle of it by what seemed, in his dream-world, just reached, 
 the loud crack of a bone that disintegrated under pressure; but 
 that when he woke was clearly a stone flung at his window. 
 What a capital instance of dream-celerity, thought he ! Fancy 
 the first haK of that sound having conjured up the operating- 
 theatre at University College Hospital, fifteen years ago, and 
 a room full of intent faces he knew well, and enough of the 
 second half being available for him to identify it as — ^probably — 
 the poltergeist that infested that part of the house. Perhaps, 
 if he took no notice, the poltergeist would be discouraged and 
 subside. Anyhow, he wouldn't encourage it. 
 
 But the sound came again, and the voice surely of Gwendolen, 
 his very great friend, with panic in it, and breathlessness as of 
 a voice-reft runner. He was out of bed in twenty, dressing- 
 gowned in forty, at the window in fifty, seconds. Not a minute 
 lost! 
 
 " What's all that ? . . . A man shot ! All right, I'll come." 
 
 " Oh, do ! It's so dreadful. Stephen Solmes shot him by 
 mistake for a dog ... at least, I'll tell you directly." 
 
 " All right. I'll come now." And in less than half an hour 
 the speaker is kneehng by the body on the grass ; and those who 
 found it, with others who have gathered round even in this 
 soUtude, are waiting for the first authoritative word of possible 
 hope. Not despair, with a look Uke that on the face of a Fellow 
 of the Royal College of Surgeons. 
 
 " There is a Uttle blood coming still. Wait till I have stopped 
 it and I'll tell you." He stops it somehow with the aid of a 
 miraculous little morocco affair, scarcely bigger than a card-case. 
 He never leaves home without it. Then he looks up at the 
 anxious, beautiful face of the girl who stoops close by, holding 
 a dog back. " He is not dead," says he. " That is all I can say. 
 He must be moved as little as possible, but got to a bed — some- 
 where. Is that his dog ?" 
 
 " Yes. This is Achilles." 
 
MR. PELLEW AND MISS DICKENSON 113 
 
 " How do you know it is Achilles ?" 
 
 " I'll tell you directly. He told me his name yesterday." 
 She nods towards the motionless figure on the turf. It is not 
 a corpse yet; that is all that can be said, so far. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE HON. PERCIVAL PELLEW AND MISS CONSTANCE SMITH-DICKEN- 
 SON, WHOSE BLOOM HAD GONE OFF. OLD MAIDS WERE 
 TWENTY -EIGHT, THENADAYS. HOW THE TRAGEDY CAME OUT, 
 AND MR. PELLEW TALKED IT OVER WITH MISS SMITH-DICKEN- 
 SON, ALTHOUGH HER BLOOM REMAINED OFE. WHO THE SHOT 
 MAN WAS. OF MR. PELLEw's CAUTION, AND A DARK GREEN 
 FRITILLARY. WHAT YOU CAN DO AUD CAN't DO, WHEN YOU 
 ARE A LADY AND GENTLEMAN 
 
 At the Towers, in those days, there was always breakfast, but 
 very few people came down to it. In saying this the story accepts 
 the phraseology of the household, which must have known. 
 Norbury the butler, for instance, who used the expression to 
 the Hon. Percival Pellew, a guest who at half -past nine o'clock 
 that morning expressed surprise at finding himself the only 
 respondent to The Bell. It was the Mr. Pellew mentioned before, 
 a Member of Parliament whose humorous speeches always 
 commanded a hearing, even when he knew nothing ajbout the 
 subject under discussion; which, indeed, was very frequently 
 the case. 
 
 Perhaps it was to keep his hand in that he adopted a tone of 
 serious chafE to Mr. Norbury, such as some people think a weU- 
 chosen one towards children, to their great embarrassment. 
 He replied to that most responsible of butlers with some pom- 
 posity of maimer. " The question before the house," said he — 
 and paused to enjoy a perversion of speech — "the question 
 before the house comes down to breakfast I take to be this: — 
 Is it breakfast at all tiU somebody has eaten it ?" 
 
 " I could not say, sir." Mr. Norbury's manner is dignified, 
 deferential, and dry. More serious than need be perhaps. 
 
 The Hon. Percival is not good at insight, and sees nothing of 
 
 8 
 
114 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOSl 
 
 this. " It certainly appears to me," he says, taking his time 
 over it, " that until breakfast has broken someone's fast, or 
 someone has broken his own at the expense of breakfast . . . 
 What's that ?" 
 
 " One of the ladies coming down, sir." Mr. Norbury would 
 not, in the ordinary way of business, have mentioned this fact, 
 but it had given him a resource against a pleasantry he found 
 distasteful. Of course, he knew the event of the morning. Yet 
 he could not say to the gentleman: — "A truce to jocularity! 
 A man was shot dead half a mile off last night, and the body 
 has been taken to the Keeper's Lodge." 
 
 The lady coming downstairs was Miss Constance Smith- 
 Dickenson, also uninformed about the tragedy. She had made 
 her first appearance yesterday afternoon, and had looked rather 
 well in a pink-figured muslin at dinner. The interchanges 
 between this lady and the Hon. Percival, referring chiefly to 
 the fact that no one else was down, seemed to have no interest 
 for Mr. Norbury; who, however, noted that no new topic had 
 dawned upon the conversation when he returned from a revision 
 of the breakfast-table. The fact was that the Hon. Percival 
 had detected in Miss Dickenson a fossil, and was feeling ashamed 
 of a transient interest in her last night, when she had shown 
 insight, under the guidance — suppose we say — of champagne. 
 Her bloom had gone off, too, in a strange way, and bloom was a 
 sine qua non to this gentleman. She for her part was conscious 
 of a chiU having come between them, she having retired to rest 
 the evening before with a refreshing sensation that all was not 
 over — could not be — ^when so agreeable, a man could show her 
 such marked attention. That was all she would endorse of 
 a very temperate Vanity's suggestions, mentally crossing out 
 an a at the end of " attention." If you have studied the niceties 
 of the subject, you will know how much that letter would have 
 meant. 
 
 A single lady of a particular type gets used to this sort of 
 thing. But her proper pride has to be kept under steam, hke 
 a salvage-tug in harbour when there is a full gale in the Channel. 
 However, she is better off than her great-great-aunts, who were 
 erposed to what was described as satire. Nowadays, presumably, 
 Man is not the treasure he was, for a good many women seem 
 to scrat on cheerfully enough without him. Or is it that in 
 those days he was the only person employed on his own valua- 
 tion? 
 
 In the period of this story — that is to say, when our present 
 
MR. PELLEW AND MISS DICKENSON 115 
 
 veterans were schoolboys — the air was clearing a little. But 
 the smell of the recent Georgian era hung about. There was still 
 a fixed period in women's lives when they suddenly assumed 
 a new identity — became old maids and were expected to dress 
 the part. It was twenty-eight, to the best of our recollection. 
 Therefore Miss Smith-Dickenson, who was thirty-eight if she 
 was a minute, became a convicted impostor in the eyes of the 
 Hon. Percival, when, about ten hours after he had said to himself 
 that she was not a bad figure of a woman and that some of her 
 remarks were racy, he perceived that she was going off; that 
 her complexion didn't bear the daylight; that she wouldn't 
 wash; that she was probably a favourite with her own sex, and, 
 broadly speaking, an Intelligent Person. " Never do at all !" 
 said the Hon. Percival to himself. And Space may have asked 
 " What for ?" But nobody answered. 
 
 On the other hand, the lady perceived, in time, that the 
 gentleman looked ten years older by dayUght; that no one could 
 call him corpulent exactly; that he might be heavy on hand, 
 only perhaps he 'wanted his breakfast — men did; that the 
 Pall Mall and Piccadilly type of man very soon palled, and 
 that, in short, that steam-tug would be quite unnecessary this 
 time. 
 
 Therefore, when Lady Gwendolen appeared, point de vice for 
 breakfast as to dress, but looking dazed and preoccupied, she 
 found this lady and gentleman being well-bred, as shown by 
 scanty, feeUngless remarks about the absence of morning papers 
 as well as morning people. Her advent opened a new era for 
 them, in which they could cultivate ignorance of one another 
 on the bosom of^a newcomer common to both. 
 
 " Only you two I" said the newcomer; which Miss Dickenson 
 thought scarcely delicate, considering the respective sexes of 
 the persons addressed. " I knew I was late, but I couldn't help 
 it. Good-morning, Aunt Constance." She gave and got a 
 kiss. The Hon. Percival would have liked the former for him- 
 self. Why need he have sHghtly flouted its receiver by a mental 
 note that he would not have cared about its riposte ? It had 
 not been offered. 
 
 " How well you are looking, dear !" said Aunt Constance, 
 holding her honorary niece at arms' length to visualise her 
 robustness. She was not a real Aunt at all, only au old friend 
 of the family. 
 
 " I'm not," said Gwendolen. " Norbury, is breakfast ready ? 
 Shall we go in ? . . . Oh no, nothing ! Please don't talk to me 
 
116 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 about it. I mean I'm all right. Ask Sir Coupland to tell you." 
 For the great surgeon had come into the room, and was talking 
 in an undertone to the old butler. Lady Gwendolen added an 
 apology which she kept in stereotype for the non-appearance 
 of her mother at breakfast. The Earl's absence was a usage, 
 taken for granted. Some said he had a cup of coffee in his own 
 room at eight, and starved till lunch. 
 
 Other guests appeared, and the usual English country-house 
 breakfast followed : a haphazard banquet, a decorous scrimmage 
 for a svirfeit of eggs, and fish, and bacon, and tongue, and tea, 
 and coffee, and porridge, and even Heaven itself hardly knows 
 what. Less than usual vanished to become a vested interest 
 of digestion; more than usual went back to the kitchen for 
 appreciation elsewhere. For Sir Coupland, appealed to, had 
 given a brief, intelligent report of the occurrence of the morning. 
 Then followed undertones of conversation apart between him 
 and the Hon. Percival, who had not the heart for a pleasantry, 
 and groups of two or three aside. Lady Gwen alone was silent, 
 leaving the narration entirely to her medical friend, to whom 
 she had told the incident of last evening — her interview with 
 the man now lying between life and death, and the way his body 
 was found by following the dog. She left the room as early 
 as courtesy allowed, and Sir Coupland did not remain long. 
 He had to go and teU the matter to the Earl, he said. Gwendolen, 
 no doubt, had to do the same to her mother the Countess. It 
 was an awful business. 
 
 Said Miss Smith-Dickenson to the Hon. Percival, on the shady 
 terrace, a quarter of an hour afterwards, " He did tell you who 
 the man is, though ? Or perhaps I oughtn't to ask ?" Other 
 guests were scattered otherwhere, talking of the tragedy. Not 
 a smile to be seen ; still, the victim of the mishap was a stranger. 
 It was a cloud under which a man might enjoy a cigar, quand 
 mime. 
 
 The Hon. Percival knocked an instalment of caput mortuum 
 off his; an inch of ash which had begun on the terrace; so the 
 interview was some minutes old. " Yes," said he. " Yes, he 
 knows who it is. That's the worst of it." 
 
 " The worst of it ?" 
 
 " I don't know of any reason myself why I should not tell 
 you his name. Sir Coupland only said he wanted it kept quiet 
 till he could see his father, whom he knows, of course. I under- 
 stand that the family belongs to this county — lives about twenty 
 miles off." The lady felt so confident that she would be told 
 
MR. PELLEW AND MISS DICKENSON 117 
 
 the name that she seized the opportunity to show how discreet 
 she was, and kept silence. She was quite incapable of mere 
 vulgar inquisitiveness, you see. Her inmost core had the satis- 
 faction of feeling that its visible outer husk. Miss Constance 
 Smith-Dickenson, was killing two birds with one stone. The 
 way in which the gentleman continued justified it. " Besides, 
 I know I may rely upon you to say nothing about it." Clearly 
 the effect of her visible, almost palpable, discretion ! For really 
 — said the core — this good gentleman never set eyes on my husk 
 till yesterday evening. And he is a Man of the World and all 
 that sort of thing. 
 
 Miss Smith-Dickenson knew perfectly well how her sister 
 Lilian — ^the one with the rolling, Uquid eyes, now Baroness 
 Porchammer — ^would have responded. But she herself mis- 
 trusting her powers of gushing right, did not feel equal to " Oh, 
 but how nice of yoii to say so, dear Mr. Pellew !" And she 
 felt tha,t she was not cut out for a satirical puss neither, hke 
 her sister Georgie, now Mrs. Amphlett Stariax, to whom a 
 mental review of possible responses assigned, " Oh dear, how 
 complimentary we are, all of a sudden !" — ^with possibly a heavy 
 blow on the gentleman's fore-arm with a fan, if she had one. 
 So she decided on " Pray go on. You may rely on my dis- 
 cretion." It was simple, and made her feel Uke Elizabeth in 
 " Pride and Prejudice " — a safe model, if a httle old-fashioned. 
 
 The gentleman pulled at his cigar in a considerative way, 
 and said in a perfunctory one : — " I am sure I may." Neverthe- 
 less, he postponed his answer through a mouthful of smoke, 
 dismissing it into the atmosphere finally, to allow of speech 
 determined on during its detention : " I'm afraid it's Adrian 
 Torrens — there can't be two of the name who write poetry. 
 Besides — the dog !" 
 
 The lady said " Good Heavens !" in a frightened underbreath, 
 and was visibly shocked. For it is usually someone of whom 
 one knows nothing at all that gets shot accidentally. Now, 
 Adrian Torrens was the name of a man recently distinguished 
 as the author of some remarkable verse. A man of very good 
 family too. So — altogether ! . . . This was the expression 
 used by Miss Smith-Dickenson's core, almost unrebuked. " Of 
 course, I remember the poem about the collie-dog," she added 
 aloud. 
 
 " Can you remember the name of the dog ? Wasn't it 
 iEneas ?" 
 
 " No— Achilles." 
 
118 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I meant Achilles. Well — his dog's Achilles." 
 
 " I thought you said there was no name on the collar." 
 
 " No more there was. But I understand that Gwen met him 
 yesterday evening — down by Arthurs Bridge, I believe — and 
 had some conversation with him, I gather." 
 
 " Oh \" 
 
 " But why ? Why ' Oh !'— I mean ?" 
 
 " I didn't mean anything. Only that she was looking so 
 scared and unhappy at breakfast, and that would account for it." 
 
 " Surely . . ." 
 
 " Surely what ?' 
 
 " Well — does it want accounting for ? A man shot dead 
 almost in sight of the house, and by your own gamekeeper ! 
 Isn't that enough ?" 
 
 " Enough in all conscience. But it makes a difference. All 
 the difference. I can't exactly describe ... It is not as if she 
 had never met him in her life before. Now do you see ?. . ." 
 
 " Never met him in her life before ? . . ." The Hon. Percival 
 stands waiting for more, one-third of his cigar in abeyance between 
 his finger-tips. Getting no more, he continues : — " Why — you 
 don't mean to say ?...'■ 
 
 " What ?" 
 
 " Well — it's something like this, if I can put the case. Take 
 somebody you've just met and spoken to . . ." But Mr. Pellew's 
 prudence became suddenly aware of a direction in which the 
 conversation might drift, and he puUed up short. If he pushed 
 on rashly, how avoid an entanglement of himself in a personal 
 discussion ? If his introduction to this lady had been days old, 
 instead of merely hours, there would have been no quicksands 
 ahead. He felt proud of his astuteness in dealing with a wily sex. 
 
 Only he shouldn't have been so transparent. AU that the 
 lady had to do was to change the subject of the conversation 
 with venomous decision, and she did it. " What a beautiful 
 dark green fritillary !" said she. " I hope you care for butter- 
 flies, Mr. Pellew. I simply dote on them." She was conscious 
 of indebtedness for this to her sister LiHan. Never mind ! — 
 LiUan was married now, and had no further occasion to be 
 enchanting. A sister might borrow a cast-off. Its effect was 
 to make the gentleman clearly aUve to the fact that she knew 
 exactly why he had stopped short 
 
 But Miss Smith-Dickenson did not say to Mr. Pellew : — " I 
 am perfectly well aware that you, sir, see danger ahead — danger 
 of a delicate discussion of the difference our short acquaintance 
 
MR. PELLEW AND MISS DICKENSON 119 
 
 would have made to me if I had heard this morning that you 
 were shot overnight. Pray understand that I discern in this 
 nothing but restless male vanity, always on the alert to save its 
 owner — or slave — from capture or entanglement by dangerous 
 single women with no property. You would have been per- 
 fectly safe in my hands, even if your recommendations as an 
 Adonis had been less equivocal." She said no such thing. But 
 something or other — can it have been the jump to that butter- 
 fly ? — made Mr. Pellew conscious that if she had worded a 
 thought of the kind, it would have been just hke a female of 
 her sort. Because he wasn't going to end up that she wouldn't 
 have been so very far wrong. 
 
 A name ought to be invented for these httle ripples of human 
 intercourse, that are hardly to be called embarrassments, seeing 
 that their monde denies their existence We do not beHeve 
 it is only nervous and imaginative folk that are affected by them. 
 The most prosaic of mankind keeps a sort of internal or subjective 
 diary of contemporary history, many of whose entries run on such 
 events, and are so very unlike what their author said at the time. 
 
 The dark green fritiUary did not stay long enough to make 
 any conversation worth the name, having an appointment with 
 a friend in the air. Mr. Pellew hummed Non piu andrai 
 farfallon amoroso, producing on the mind of Miss Dickenson 
 vague impressions of the Opera, Her Majesty's — not displaced 
 by a Hotel in those days — tinctured with a consciousness of 
 Club-houses and Men of the World. This gentleman, with 
 his whiskers and monocular wrinkle responding to his right- 
 eye-glass-grip, who had as good as admitted last night that 
 his uncle was intimate with the late Prince Regent, was surely 
 an example of this singular class; which is really scarcely ad- 
 missible on the domestic hearth, owing to the purity of the latter. 
 Possibly, however, these impressions had nothing to do with 
 the lady's discovery that perhaps she ought to go in and find out 
 what " they " were thinking of doing this morning. It may be 
 that it was only due to her consciousness that you cannot — when 
 female and single — stand alone with a live single gentleman 
 on a terrace, both speechless. You can walk up and down with 
 him, conversing vivaciously, but you mustn't come to an anchor 
 beside him in silence. There would be a suspicion about it of 
 each valuing the other's presence for its own sake, which would 
 never do. 
 
 " Goin' in ?" said the Hon. Percival. " Well — ^it's been very 
 jolly out here." 
 
120 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Very pleasant, I am sure/' said Miss Constance Smith- 
 Dickenson. If either made a diary entry out of this, it was of 
 the slightest. She moved away across the lawn, her skirt 
 brushing it audibly, as the cage-borne skirt of those days did, 
 suggesting the advantages of Jack-in -the-Green's costume. 
 For Jack could leave his green on the ground and move freely 
 inside it. He did not stick out at the top. Mr. Pellew remained 
 on the shady terrace, to end up his cigar. He was a little dis- 
 quieted by the recollection of his very last words, which re- 
 membered themselves on his tongue-tip as a key remembers 
 itself in one's hand, when one has forgotten if one really locked 
 that box. Why, though, should he not say to a maiden lady 
 of a certain age — these are the words he thought in — that it 
 was very nice on this terrace ? Why not indeed ? But that 
 wasn't exactly the question. What he had really said was that 
 it had been very nice on this terrace. All the difference ! 
 
 Miss Dickenson was soon aware what the " they " she had 
 referred to was going to do, and offered to accompany it. The 
 Countess and her daughter and others were the owners of the 
 voices she could hear outside the drawing-room door when at 
 liberty to expand, after a crush in half a French window that 
 opened on the terrace. Her ladyship the Countess was as 
 completely upset as her husband's ancestry permitted — quite 
 white and almost crying, only not prepared to admit it. " Oh, 
 Constance dear," said she. " Are you there ? You are always 
 so sensible. But isn't this awful ?" 
 
 Aunt Constance perceived the necessity for a sympathetic 
 spurt. She had been taking it too easily, evidently. She was 
 equal to the occasion, responding with effusion that it was " so 
 dreadful that she could think of nothing else !" Which wasn't 
 true, for the moment before she had been collating the Hon. 
 Percival's remarks and analysing the last one. Not that she 
 was an unfeeUng person — only more hke everyone else than 
 everyone else may be inclined to admit. 
 
THE MAN WHO WAS SHOT 121 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HOW THE COUNTESS AND HEK DAUGHTER WALKED OVEE TO THE 
 VEEDBEEES' HALL. HOW ACHILLES KNEW BETTEE THAN THE 
 DOCTOES. THE ACCIDENT WAS NOT A FATAL ACCIDENT. AN 
 OLD GENEEAL WHO MADE A POOE IIGUEB AS A CORPSE. HOW 
 THE WOUNDED MAN's FATHEE AND SISTER CAME, AND HOW 
 HE HIMSELF WAS TO BE CAEBIED TO THE TOWERS 
 
 There was no need for a reason why Lady Gwendolen and her 
 mother should take the first opportunity of walking over to the 
 Lodge, where this man lay either dead or dying; but one pre- 
 sented itself to the Countess, as an addendum to others less 
 defined. " We ought to go/' said she, " if only for poor old 
 Stephen's sake. The old man will be quite off his head with 
 grief. And it was such an absolute accident." 
 
 This was on the way, walking over the grassland. Aunt 
 Constance felt a little unconvinced. He who sends a bullet 
 abroad at random may hear later that it had its billet all along, 
 though it was so silent about it. As for the girl, she was in a 
 fever of excitement; to reach the scene of disaster, anyhow— 
 to hear some news of respite, possibly. No one had vouched for 
 Death so far. 
 
 Sir Coupland was already on the spot, having only stayed 
 long enough to give particulars of the catastrophe to the Earl; 
 but he was not by the bedside. He was outside the cottage, 
 speaking with Dr. Nash, the local doctor from Grantley Thorpe, 
 who had passed most of the night there. There was a sort of 
 conclusiveness about their conference, even as seen from a 
 distance, which promised ill. As the three ladies approached, 
 he came to meet them. 
 
 " Is there a chance ?" said the Countess, as he came within 
 hearing. 
 
 Only a shake of the head in reply. It quenches aU the eager- 
 ness to hear in the three faces, each in its own degree. Aunt 
 Constance's gives place to " Oh dear !" and solicitude. Lady 
 Ancestor's to a gasp hke sudden pain, and " Oh, Sir Coupland ! 
 are you quite, quite sure ?" Her daughter's to a sharp cry, or 
 the first of one cut short, and " Oh, mamma !" Then a bitten 
 Up, and a face shrinking from the others' view as she turns and 
 looks out across the Park. That is Arthur's Bridge over yonder, 
 
122 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 where last evening she spoke with this man that now has dead, 
 and took some note of his great dark eyes in the living glory of 
 the sunset. 
 
 A.S the world and sky swim about her for a moment, even she 
 herself wonders why she should be so hard hit. A perfect 
 stranger ! A man she had never before in her life spoken to. 
 And then, for such a moment ! But the great dark eyes of the 
 man now dead are upon her, and she does not at first hear that 
 her mother is speaking to her. 
 
 " Gwen dear 1 . . . Gwen darling ! — you hear what Sir 
 Coupland says ? We can do no good." She has to touch her 
 daughter's arm to get her attention. 
 
 " Well \" The girl turns, and her tears are as plain on her 
 face as its beauty. "That means go home?" says she; and 
 then gives a sort of heart-broken sigh. " Oh dear !" Her lack 
 of claim to grieve for this man cuts Uke a knife. 
 
 '' We can do no good," her mother repeats. ' Now, can we V 
 
 " No, I see. Suppose we go." She turns as though to go, 
 but either her intention hangs fire, or she only wishes her face 
 unseen for the moment; for she pauses, saying to her mother: 
 " There is old Stephen. Ought we not to see him — one of us ?" 
 
 " Yes I" says her ladyship, decisive on reflection. " I had 
 forgotten about old Stephen. But / can go to him. You go 
 back ! . . . Yes, dear, you had better go back . . . What 1" 
 
 " I am not going back. I want to see the body — this man's 
 body. I want to see his face. . . , No; I am not a child, 
 mamma. Let me have my way." 
 
 " If you must, darling, you must. But I cannot see what use 
 it can be. See — here is Aunt Constance ! She does not want 
 to see it. ..." A confirmatory head-shake from Miss Dicken- 
 son. " Why should you ?" 
 
 " Aunt Constance never spoke to him. I did. And he spoke 
 to me. Let me go, mamma dear. Don't oppose me." Lideed, 
 the girl seems almost feverishly anxious, quite on a sudden, to 
 have this wish. No need for her mother to accompany her, she 
 adds. To which her mother replies : — " I would if you wished it, 
 dear Gwen"; whereupon Aunt Constance, perceiving in her 
 heart an opportunity for public service tending to distinction, 
 says so would she. Further, in view of a verdict from somebody 
 somewhere later on, that she showed a very nice feeling on this 
 occasion, she takes an opportunity before they reach the cottage 
 to say to Lady Gwendolen in an important aside: — " You won't 
 let your mother go into the room, dear. Anything of this sort 
 
THE MAN WHO WAS SHOT 123 
 
 tells so on her system." To which the reply is rather abrupt: — 
 " YoTi needn't come, either of you." So that is settled. 
 
 The body had not been carried into a room of the cottage, but 
 into what goes by the name of the Verderer's Hall, some fifty 
 yards off. That much carriage was spared by doing so. It now 
 Ues on the " Lord's table," so called not from any reference to 
 sacramental usage, but because the Lord of the Manor sat at it 
 on the occasions of the Manorial Courts. Three centiuies have 
 passed since the last Court Baron; the last landlord who sat in 
 real council with his tenantry under its roof having been Roger 
 Earl of Ancester, who was killed in the Civil War. But old 
 customs die hard, and every Michaelmas Day — except it fall on 
 a Sunday — ^the Earl or his Steward at twelve o'clock receives 
 from the person who enjoys a right of free-warren over certain 
 acres that have long since harboured neither hare nor rabbit, 
 an annual tribute which a chronicle as old as Chaucer speaks of 
 as " iiij tusshes of a wild bore." If no boars' tusks are forth- 
 coming, he has to be content with some equivalent devised to 
 meet their scarcity nowadays. Otherwise, the old Hall grows 
 to be more and more a museum of curios connected with the Park 
 and outlying woodlands, the remains of the old forest that 
 covered the land when even Earls were upstarts. A record pair 
 of antlers on the wall is still incredulously measured tip to tip by 
 visitors unconvinced by local testimony, and a respectable 
 approach to Roman Antiquities is at rest after a learned 
 description by Archaeology. The place smells sweet of an old 
 age that is so slow — that the centuries have handled so tenderly — 
 that one's heart thinks of it rather as spontaneous preservation 
 than decay. It will see to its own survival through some life- 
 times yet, it no man restores it or converts it into a Studio. 
 
 Is his rating " Death " or not, whose body is so still on its 
 extemporised couch — just a mattress from the keeper's cottage 
 close at hand ? Was the doctor's wording warranted when he 
 said just now under his breath: — " It is in here "? Could he not 
 have said " He "? What does the dog think, that waits and 
 watches immovable at its feet ? If this is death, what is he 
 watching for ? What does the old keeper himself think, who 
 lingers by this man whom he may have slain — this man who 
 may live, yet ? He has scarcely taken his eyes off that white 
 face and its strapped-up wound from the first moment of his 
 sight of it. He does not note the subdued entry of, Lady Gwen- 
 dolen and the two doctors, and when touched on the shoulder to 
 call his attention to the presence of a ladyship from the Castle, 
 
124 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 defers looking round until a fancy of his restless hope dies down 
 — a fancy that the mouth was closing of itself. He has had such 
 fancies by scores for the last few hours, and said farewell to each 
 with a groan. 
 
 " My mother is at the cottage, Stephen," says Gwen. " She 
 would like to see you, I know." Thereon the old man turns to 
 go. He looks ten years older than his rather contentious self of 
 yesterday. The young lady says no word either way of his 
 responsibiUty for this disaster. She cannot blame, but she 
 cannot quite absolve him yet, without a grudge. Her mother 
 can ; and will, somehow. 
 
 The dog has run to her side for a moment — has uttered an 
 undertone of bewildered complaint; then has gone back patiently 
 to his old post, and is again watching. The great surgeon and 
 the girl stand side by side, watching also. The humbler medico 
 stands back a little, his eyes rather on his senior than on the 
 body. 
 
 " It is absolutely certain — this ?" says Lady Gwen ; questioning, 
 not affirming. She is wonderfully courageous — so Sir Coupland 
 thinks — in the presence of Death. But she is ashy white. 
 
 He utters the barest syllable of doubt; then half -turns for 
 courtesy to his junior, who echoes it. Then each shakes his 
 head, looking at the other. 
 
 " Is there no sound — nothing to show ?" Gwen has some 
 hazy idea that there ought to be, if there is not, some official 
 note of death due from the dying, a rattle in the throat at least. 
 
 Sir Coupland sees her meaning. " In a case of this sort," says 
 he, " sheer loss of blood, the breath may cease so gradually that 
 sound is impossible. AU one can say is that there is no breath, 
 and no action of the heart — so far as one can tell." He speaks 
 in a business-Uke way that is a sort of compUment to his hearer; 
 no accommodation of facts as to a child ; then raises the lifeless 
 hand slightly and lets it fall, saying: — " See !" 
 
 To his surprise the girl, without any comment, also raises 
 the hand in hers, and stands holding it. "Yes — ^it will fall," 
 says he, as though she had spoken questioning it. But still 
 she holds it, and never shrinks from the horror of its mortality, 
 somewhat to the wonder of her only spectator. For the other 
 doctor has withdrawn, to speak to someone outside. 
 
 Of a sudden the dog Achilles starts barking. A short, sharp, 
 startled bark — once, twice — and is silent. The girl lays the 
 dead hand gently down, not dropping it, but replacing it where 
 it first lay. She does not speak for a moment — cannot, perhaps, 
 
THE MAN WHO WAS SHOT 125 
 
 Then it comes with a cry, neither of pain nor joy — mere tension. 
 " Oh, Dr. Merridew . . . the fingers closed . . . They closed on 
 mine . . . the fingers dosed. ... I know it. I know it . . . 
 The fingers closed ! . . ." She says it again and again as though 
 in terror that her word might be doubted. He sees as she turns 
 to him that all her pride of self-control has given way. She is 
 fighting against an outburst of tears, and her breath comes and 
 goes at will, or at the will of some power that drives it. Sir 
 Coupland may be contemplating speech — something it is correct 
 to say, something the cooler judgment wiU endorse — but what 
 ever it is he keeps it to himself. He is not one of those cheap 
 sages that has hysteria on his tongue's tip to account for every- 
 thing. It may be that; but it may be . . . Well — ^he has seen 
 some odd cases in his time. 
 
 So, without speaking to the agitated young lady, he simply 
 calls his colleague back; and, after a word or two aside with him, 
 says to her: — " You had better leave him to us. Go now." It 
 gives her confidence that he does not soothe or cajole, but speaks 
 as he would to a man. She goes, and as she walks across to the 
 Keeper's Lodge makes a little peace for her heart out of small 
 material. Sir Coupland said " him ' this time — look you ! — 
 not " it " as before. 
 
 The daughter finds the mother, five minutes later, trying a 
 well-meant word to the old keeper; to put a httle heart in him, 
 if possible. It was no fault of his ; he only carried out his orders, 
 and so on. Gwen is silent about her experience; she will not 
 raise false hopes. Besides, she is only half grieved for the old 
 chap — has only a languid sympathy in her heart for him who, 
 tampering with implements of Death, becomes Cain unawares. 
 If she is right, he will know in time. Meanwhile it will be a 
 lesson to him to avoid triggers, and will thus minimise the 
 exigencies of Hell. Also, she has recovered her self-command; 
 and will not show, even to her mother, how keen her interest 
 has been in this man in the balance betwixt life and death. 
 
 As to the older lady, who has fought shy of seeing the body, the 
 afEair is no more than a casualty, very little coloured by the fact 
 that its victim is a " gentleman." This sort of thing may impress 
 the groundlings, while a real Earl or Duke remains untouched. 
 A coronet has a very levelling effect on the plains below. Your 
 mere baronet is but a hillock, after all. Possibly, however, this 
 is a proletariate view, which always snubs rank, and her lady- 
 ship the Countess may never have given a thought to this side 
 of the case. Certainly she is honestly grieved on behalf of her 
 
126 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 old friend Stephen, whom she has known for thirty years past. 
 In fact, of the two, as they walk back to the Towers, the mother 
 shows more than the daughter the reaction of emotion. 
 
 Says her daughter to her as they walk back — the three as they 
 came — " I beUeve he will recover, for all that. I beheve Dr. 
 Merridew believes it, too. I am certain the fingers moved." 
 Her manner lays stress on her own equanimity. It is more self- 
 contained than need be, aU things considered. 
 
 " The eyesight is easily deceived," says Miss Dickenson 
 prompt with the views of experience. She always holds a brief 
 for common sense, and is considered an authority. " Even 
 experts are misled — sometimes — ^in such cases. . . ." 
 
 Gwen interrupts : — " It had nothing to do with eyesight. I 
 felt the fingers move." Whereupon her mother, roused by her 
 sudden emphasis, says : — " But we are so glad that it should be so,- 
 Gwen darling." And then, when the girl stops in her walk and 
 says: — " Of course you are — but why not ?" she has a halt-smile, 
 as for petulance forgiven, as she says : — " Because you fired up 
 so about it, darhng; that's aU. We did not understand that you 
 had hold of the hand. Was it stiff 1" This in a semi-whisper 
 of protest against the horror of the subject. 
 
 " Not the least. Cold ! — oh, how cold !" She shudders of 
 set purpose to show how cold. *' But not stiff." 
 
 The two other ladies go into a partnership of SBniority, 
 glancing at each other; and each contributes to a duet about 
 the duty of being hopeful, and we shall soon know, and at any 
 rate, the case could not be in better hands, and so on. But 
 whereas the elder lady was only working for reassurance — 
 puzzled somewhat at a certain flushed emphasis in this beautiful 
 daughter of hers — Miss Smith-Dickenson was taking mental 
 notes, and looking intuitive. She was still looking intuitive 
 when she joined the numerous party at lunch, an hour later. 
 She had more than one inquiry addresed to her about " this un- 
 fortunate accident," but she reserved her information, with 
 mystery, acquiring thereby a more defined importance. A river 
 behind a barrage is much more impressive than a pump. 
 
 Sir Coupland Merridew's place at table was still empty when 
 the first storm of comparison of notes set in over the events and 
 deeds of the morning. A conscious reservation was in the air 
 about the disaster of last night, causing talk to run on every 
 other subject, but betrayed by more interest in the door and its 
 openings than lunch generally shows. Presently it would open 
 
THE MAN WHO WAS SHOT 127 
 
 for the overdue guest, and he would have news worth hearing, 
 said Hope. For stinted versions of event had leaked out, and 
 had outhved the reservations and corrections of those who 
 knew. 
 
 Lunch was conscious of Sir Coupland's arrival in the house 
 before he entered, and its factors nodded to each other and said : 
 " That's him \" Nice customs of Grammar bow before big 
 mouthfuls. However, Miss Smith-Dickenson did certainly say: 
 " I believe that is Sir Coupland." 
 
 It was, and in his face was secret content and reserve. In 
 response to a volley of What ? — ^Well ? — ^Tell us ! — and so forth, 
 he only said : — " Shan't tell you anything till I've had something 
 to eat !" But he glanced across at Lady Gwen and nodded 
 slightly — ^a nod for her exclusive use. 
 
 Lim.ch, Uberated by what amounted to certainty that the 
 man was not killed, ran riot; almost all its factors taking a Uttle 
 more, thank you ! It was brought up on its haunches by being 
 suddenly made aware that Sir Coupland — Shaving had something 
 to eat — had spoken. He had to repeat his words to reach the far 
 end of the long table. 
 
 " Yes: — I said . . . only of course if you make such a row 
 you can't hear. ... I said that this gentleman cannot be said 
 to have recovered consciousness " — here he paused for a mistaken 
 exclamation of disappointment to get nipped in the bud, and 
 then continued- — " yet a while. However, I am glad to say I — 
 both of us. Dr. Nash and myself, I should say — were completely 
 mistaken about the case. It has turned out contrary to every 
 expectation that . . ." Nobody noticed that a pause here was 
 due to Lady Gwen having made " No !" with her lips, and looked 
 a protest at the speaker. He went on : — " Well ... in short ... I 
 would have sworn the man was dead . . . and he isn't ! 
 That's all I have to say about it at present. It might be over- 
 sanguine to say he is aHve — ^meaning that he will succeed in 
 keeping so — ^but he is certainly not dead." Miss Dickenson 
 lodged her claim to a mild form of omniscience by saying with 
 presence of mind: — " Exactly 1" but without presumption, so 
 that only her near neighbours heard her. Self-respect called for 
 no more. 
 
 Had the insensible man spoken ? — the Earl asked pertinently. 
 Oh dear, no ! Nothing so satisfactory as that, so far. The 
 vitality was almost nil. The Earl retired on his question 
 to listen to what a Peninsular veteran was sajdng to Gwen. 
 This ancient warrior was one who talked but little, and 
 
128 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 then only to two sorts, old men like himself, with old memories 
 of India and the Napoleonic wars, and young women like Gwen. 
 As this was his way, it did not seem strange that he should 
 address her all but exclusively, with only a chance side-word now 
 and then to his host, for mere courtesy. 
 
 " When I was in Madras in eighteen-two — ^no — eighteen-three," 
 he said, " I was in the Nineteenth Dragoons under Marwell — he 
 was killed, you know — in that affair with the Mahrattas . . ." 
 
 " I know. I've read about the Battle of Assaye, and how 
 General WeUesley had two horses shot under him. . . ." 
 
 " That was it. Scindia, you know — ^that affair ! They had 
 some very good artillery for those days, and our men had to 
 charge up to the guns. I was cut down in Maxwell's cavalry 
 charge, and went near bleeding to death. He was a fine fellow 
 that did it . . ." 
 
 " Never mind him ! You were going to tell me about yourself." 
 
 " Why — I was given up for dead. It was a good job I escaped 
 decent interment. But the surgeon gave me the benefit of the 
 doubt, and stood me over for a day or two. Then, as I didn't 
 decay properly . . ." 
 
 " Oh, General — don't be so horrible !" This from Miss Smith- 
 Dickenson close at hand. But Gwen is too eager to hear, to 
 care about delicacies of speech, and strikes in : — 
 
 " Do go on. General ! Never mind Aunt Constance. She is 
 so fussy. Go on — ' didn't decay properly ' . . ." 
 
 " Well — I was behindhand ! Not up to my duties, consi- 
 dered as a corpse ! The doctor stood me over another twenty- 
 four hours, and I came to. I was very much run down, certaiiily, 
 but I did come to, or I shouldn't be here now to tell you about it, 
 my dear. I should have been sorry." 
 
 A matter-of-fact gentleman " pointed out " that had General 
 Rawnsley died of his wounds, he would not have been in a 
 position to feel either joy or sorrow, or to be conscious that he 
 was not dining at Ancester. The General fished up a wandering 
 eyeglass to look at him, and said: — " Quite correct !" Miss 
 Smith-Dickenson remarked upon the dangers attendant on over- 
 literal interpretations. The Hon. Mr. Pellew perceived in this 
 that Miss Dickenson had a sort of dry humour. 
 
 " But you did come to. General, and you are telling me about 
 it," said Lady Gwen. " Now, how long was it before you 
 rejoined your regiment ?" 
 
 " H'm — ^well ! I wasn't good for much two months later, or 
 I should have come in for the fag-end of the campaign. AB 
 
THE MAN WHO WAS SHOT 129 
 
 right in three months, I should say. But then — I was a young 
 fellah ! — in those days. How old's your man ?" 
 
 " This gentleman who has heen shot ?" says Gwen, with some 
 stifEness. " I have not the slightest idea." But Sir Coupland 
 answered the question for her. " At a guess. General, twenty- 
 five or twenty-six. He ought to do well it he gets through the 
 next day or two. He may have a good constitution. I can't 
 say yet. Yours must have been remarkable." 
 
 " I had such a good appetite, you know," says the General. 
 " Such a devil of a twist ! If I had had my way, I should have 
 been at Argaum two months later. But, good Lard ! — they 
 wouldn't let me out of Hospital." The old soldier, roused by the 
 recollection of a fifty-year-old grievance, stiU rankUng, launched 
 into a denunciation of the effeminacy and timidity of Authori- 
 ties and Seniors, of all sorts and conditions. His youth was back 
 upon him with its memories, and he had forgotten that he too 
 was now a Senior. His torrent of thinly disguised execrations 
 was of service to Lady Gwen; as the original subject of the con- 
 versation, just shot, was naturally forgotten. She had got all 
 the enlightenment she wanted about him, and was cultivating 
 an artificial lack of interest in his accident. 
 
 She was, however, a httle dissatisfied with her own success 
 in this branch of horticulture. Her anxiety had felt itself fully 
 justified till now by the bare facts of the case. Her longing that 
 this man should not die was so safe while it seemed certain that 
 he could not live, that she felt under no obhgation to account to 
 herself for it. Analysis of niceties of feeling in the presence of 
 Death were uncalled for, surely ! But now, with at least a, 
 chance of his recovery, she felt that she ought to be able to 
 think of something else. So she talked of Sardanapalus and 
 Charles Keane at the Princesses' Theatre — the first a play, 
 the second a player — and the General, declining more than 
 monosyllables to the matter-o'-fact gentleman, subsided into 
 wrathful recollection of an exasperated young Dragoon chafing 
 under canvas beneath an Indian sun, and panting for news of 
 his regiment in the north, fifty years before. 
 ,4 But such intermittent conversation could not prevent her seeing 
 that Norbury the butler had handed a visiting-card, pencilled 
 on the back, to her father, and had whispered a message to him 
 with a sense of its gravity, and that her father had rephed : — " Yes, 
 say I will be there presently." Nor that — ^in response to remote 
 inquiry from his Countess at the end of an avenue of finger- 
 glasses — he had thrown the words " Hamilton Torrens and the 
 
 9 
 
130 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 daughter — mother too ill to come — ^won't come up to the house 
 until he's fit to move !" all the length of the table. That her 
 mother had said: — " Oh yes — you know them/' perhaps because 
 of an apologetic manner in her husband for being the recipient 
 of the message. Also that curiosity and information were mutual 
 in the avenue, and that next-door neighbours but one were 
 saying : — " What's that ?" and getting no answer. 
 
 However, the Intelligence Department did itself credit in the 
 end, and everyone knew that, immediately on the receipt of 
 sanction from headquarters, Tom Kettering the young groom had 
 mounted the grey mare — a celebrity in these parts — and made 
 a foxhunter's short cut across a stiff country to carry the news 
 of the disaster to Pensham Steynes, Sir Hamilton Torrens's 
 house twenty miles off, and that that baronet and his daughter 
 Irene Torrens had come at once. " I hope he hasn't killed the 
 mare," said the Earl apprehensively. But his wife summoned 
 Norbury to a secret confidence, saying after it: — " No — it's all 
 right — he came on the box—didn't ride." From which the 
 Earl knew — ^if the avenue didn't — that Tom Kettering the groom, 
 after an incredible break across country, stabled the mare at 
 Pensham Steynes, and rode back with the carriage. The whole 
 thing had been negotiated in less than three hours. 
 
 All these things Gwendolen comes to be aware of somehow. 
 But all of us know how a chance word in a confused conversation 
 stays by the hearer, who is forced to listen to what is no elucida- 
 tion of it, and is discontented. Such a word had struck this 
 young lady; and she watched for her father, as lunch died away, 
 to get the elucidation overdue. She was able to intercept him 
 at the end of a long colloquy with Sir Coupland. " What did 
 you mean, papa dearest, just now ? . . ." 
 
 " What did I mean, dear ? . . . When ?" 
 
 " By ' until he's fit to move ' ?" 
 
 " I meant until Sir Coupland says he can be safely brought 
 up to the house." 
 
 " This house, my dear ?" It is not Gwen who speaks, but 
 her mother, who has joined the conversation. 
 
 " Certainly, my love," says the Earl, with a kind of appealing 
 difl&dence. " If you have no very strong objection. He can 
 be carried. Sir Coupland says, as soon as the wound is safe from 
 inflammation. Of course he must not be left at the Hall." 
 
 " Of course not. But there are beds at the Lodge. . . ." 
 However, the Earl says with a meek self-assertion: — " I think I 
 would rather he were brought here. His father and George were 
 
THE M^ WHO WAS SHOT 131 
 
 at Christ Church together " Before which her ladyship con- 
 cedes the poiat. His lordship then says he shall go at once to 
 the Hall to see Sir Hamilton, and Gwen suggests that she shall 
 accompany him. She may persuade Miss Torrens to come up 
 to the Towers. 
 
 This assumption that the wounded man could be moved, 
 after conversation between the Earl and Sir Coupland, was so 
 reassuring, that Gwendolen felt it more than ever due to herself 
 to cultivate that indifference about his recovery. However, 
 she could not easily be too affectionate and hospitable to his 
 sister under the circumstances. 
 
 By-the-by, it was rather singular that she had never seen 
 this Irene Torrens, when they were almost neighbours — only 
 eighteen miles by road between them. And Irene's father had 
 been her Uncle George's great friend at Oxford; both at Christ 
 Church ! This uncle, who, like his friend Torrens, had gone into 
 the army, was killed in action at Rangoon, long before Gwendo- 
 len's day. 
 
 It alMakes so long to tell. The omission of half would shorten 
 the tale and spare the reader so much. What a very smaU 
 book the History of the World would be if all the events were 
 left out 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 BACK m SAPPS COtTRT. MICHAEL RAGSTEOAR's SECULARISM. 
 HIS EXTENDED KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE. YET A GAOL-BIED 
 PROPER WAS OUTSIDE IT. ONE IN QUEST OE A WIDOW. THE 
 DEAD BEETLE IN DOLLY's CAKE. HOW UNCLE MO DID NOT 
 TTTT-B THE man's looks. THERE WAS NO WIDOW DAVERIL, 
 AND NEITHER BURR NOR PEICHARD WOULD DO. HOW AUNT 
 m'RIAR had been AT CHAPEL. THE SONS OF LEVI. MICHABL's 
 NOBLE LOYALTY TOWARDS OUTLAWS 
 
 It was a fine Sunday morning in Sapps Court, and our young 
 friend Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. 
 Not that it was his custom to do so. Nevertheless, the way he 
 replied to a question by a chance loiterer into the Court seemed 
 to imply the contrary. The question was, what the Devil ho 
 was doing that for ? — and referred to the fact that he was walk- 
 
132 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 ing on his hands. His answer was, that it was because he 
 wasn't at Church. Not that all absentees from religious rites 
 went about upside down; but that, had he been at Church, the 
 narrow exclusiveness of its ritual would have kept him right 
 side up. 
 
 The speaker's appearance was disreputable, and his manner 
 morose, sullen, and unconciliatory. Michael, even while still 
 upside down, fancied he could identify a certain twist in his 
 face that seemed not unfamiliar; but thought this might be due 
 to his own drawbacks on correct observation. Upright again, 
 his identification was confirmed and he knew quite well whose 
 question he was answering by the time he felt his feet. It was 
 the man he had seen in the clutches of the water-rat at Hammer- 
 smith, when both were capsized into the river six months ago. 
 This put him on his guard, and he prepared to meet fiu'ther 
 questions with evasion or defiance. But he would flavour them 
 with substantial facts. It would confuse issues and make it 
 more difficult to convict him of mendacity. 
 
 " You don't look an unUkely young beggar," said the man. 
 " What name are you called ?" 
 
 Michael thought a moment and settled that it might be im- 
 poHtic to disclose his name. So he answered simply: — " Ikey." 
 Now, this name was not contrary to any statute or usage. The 
 man appeared to accept it in good faith, and Michael decided 
 in his heart that he was softer than what he'd took him for. 
 
 He recovered some credit, however, by his next enquiry 
 which seemed to place baptismal names among negligibles: 
 " Ah, that's it, is it ? But Ikey what ? What do they call your 
 father, if you've got one ?" 
 
 Three courses occurred to Michael; improbable fiction, evasive 
 or defiant; plausible fiction; and the undisguised truth. As the 
 first, the Duke of Wellington's name recommended itself. He 
 had, however, decided mentally that this man was a queer 
 customer, and might be an awkward customer. So he dis- 
 carded the Duke — satire might irritate — and chose the second 
 course to avoid the third. But he was betrayed by Reahsm, 
 which suggested that a study from Nature would carry convic- 
 tion. He decided on assuming the name of his friend the 
 apothecary round the comer, up the street facing over against 
 the Wheatsheaf. He replied that his father's name was Hee- 
 king's. It was easier to do this than to invent a name, which 
 might have turned out an insult to the human understanding, 
 He was disgusted to be met with incredulity. 
 
AN INQUIRY FOR A WIDOW 133 
 
 " Don't believe you," said the man. " You're a young liar. 
 Where's your father now — ^now this very minute 1" 
 
 " Abed." 
 
 " What's he doing there ?" 
 
 " Sleeping of it off. It was Saturday with him last night. 
 He had to be fetched from the King's Arms very careful. Perkins's 
 Entire. Barclay Perkins. Fetched him myself ! Mean to say I 
 didn't ?" But this part of the tale was probable and no com- 
 ment seemed necessary. 
 
 " Where's your mother ?" 
 
 " Cookin' 'im a bloater over the fire. It doos the temper 
 good. Can't yer smell it ?" A flavour of cooking confirmed 
 Michael's words, but he seemed to require a more formal ad- 
 mission of his veracity than a mere nostril set ajar and a glance 
 at an open window. " Say if you don't ! On'y there's no 
 charge for the smelling of it. She'll tell yer just the same Uke 
 me, word in and word out. You can arks for yourself. I can 
 'oiler 'er up less time than talkin' about it. You've only to 
 say !" 
 
 But this man, the twist of whose face had not been improved 
 by his recognition of the bloater, seemed to wish to confine his 
 communications to Michael, rather decisively. Indeed, there 
 was a sound of veiled intimidation in his voice as he said: — " You 
 leave your mother to see to the herrings, young 'un, and just 
 you Hsten to me. You be done with your kidding and listen 
 to me. You can tell me as much as I want to know. Sharp 
 young beggar ! — you know what's good for you." An in- 
 timidation of a possible douceur perhaps ? 
 
 Now Master Michael, though absolutely deficient in educa- 
 tion — ^his class, a sort of aristocracy of guttersnipes, was so in the 
 pre-Board-School fifties — ^was as sharp as a razor already even 
 in the days of Dave Wardle's early accident, and had added a 
 world of experience to his stock in the last few months. He had, 
 in fact, been seeing the Metropolis, as an exponent or auxiliary 
 of his father's vocation as a costermonger; and had made him- 
 self extremely useful, said Mr. Rackstraw, in the manner of 
 speaking. Only the manner of speaking, strictly reported, did 
 not use the expression extremely, but another one which we need 
 not dwell upon except to make reference to its inappropriateness. 
 Mr. Rackstraw was not a man of many words, so he had to fall 
 back upon the same very often or hold his tongue: a course un- 
 congenial to him. This word was a piece de rhistance — a kind 
 of sheet-anchor. 
 
134 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 In the course of these last few mouths of active costermongery, 
 of transactions in early peas and new potatoes, spring-cabbage 
 and ripe strawberries, he had acquired not only an insight into 
 commerce but apparently an intimate knowledge of every street 
 in London, and a very fair acquaintance with its celebrities; 
 meaning thereby its real celebrities — ^its sportsmen, patrons of 
 the Prize Ring, cricketers, rowing-men, billiard-players, jockeys — 
 what not ? Its less important representative men, statesmen, 
 bishops, writers, artists, lawyers; soldiers and sailors even, 
 though here concession was rife, had to take a second place. 
 But there was one class — a class whose members may have be- 
 longed to any one of these — of which Michael's experience was 
 very Umited. It was the class of gaol-birds. This type, the 
 most puzzling to eyes that see it for the first time, the most 
 unmistakable by those well read in it, was the type that was 
 now setting this juvenile coster's wits to work upon its classifica- 
 tion, on this May morning in Sapps Court. Michael's previous 
 record of him was an interrupted sight of his face in the river- 
 garden at Hammersmith, and a reference to his felonious ante- 
 cedents at the inquest. He was, by the time the conversation 
 assumed the interest due to a hint of emolument, able to say to 
 himself that he should know the Old Bailey again by the cut of 
 its jib next time he came across it. 
 
 In reply, he scorned circumlocution, saying briefly: — " Wot'll 
 it come to ? Wot are you good for ? That's the p'int." 
 
 " You tell me no Ues and you'll see. There's an old widow- 
 lady down this Court. Don't you go and say there ain't !" 
 
 " There's any number. Which old widder ?" 
 
 " Name of Daverill. Old enough to be your father's granny." 
 
 " No sich a name ! There's one a sight older than that 
 though — last house down the Court — ^top bell." 
 
 " How old do you make her out ?" 
 
 " Two 'underd next birthday !" But Michael perceived in 
 his questioner's eye a possible withdrawal of his offer of a con- 
 sideration, and amended his statement : — " Ninety -nine, p'raps ! — 
 couldn't say to arf a minute." 
 
 " House at the end where the old cock in a blue shirt's smoking 
 a pipe — ^is that it ?" 
 
 " Ah ! — up two flights of stairs. But she can't see you, nor 
 yet hear you, to speak of. ' 
 
 " Who's the old cock ?" 
 
 " This little boy's uncle. He b'longs to the Fancy. 'Eavyr 
 weight he was, wunst upon a time." And Dave Wardle, who 
 
AN INQUIRY FOR A WIDOW 135 
 
 had joined the colloquy, gave confirmatory evidence : " He's moy 
 Uncle Moses, he s. And he's moy sister Dolly's Uncle Moses, 
 he is. And moy sister Dolly she had a piece of koyk with a 
 beadle in it. She had. A dead beadle !" But this evidence 
 was ruled out of court by general consent; or rather, perhaps, 
 it should be said that the witness remained in the box giving 
 evidence of the same nature for his own satisfaction, while the 
 court's attention wandered. 
 
 " Oh — he was a heavyweight, was he ? An ugly customer, 
 I should reckon." The stranger said this more to himself than 
 to the boys. But he spoke direct to Michael with the question, 
 " What was it you said was the old lady's name, now ?" 
 
 The boy, shrewd as he was, was but a boy after all. Was it 
 wonderful that he should accept the impHcation that he had 
 given the name ? Thrown ofE his guard he answered : — " Name of 
 Richards." Whereupon Dave, who was stiU stuttering on 
 melodiously about the dead monster in Dolly's cake, endeavoured 
 to correct his friend without complete success. 
 
 " Pitcher, is it ?" said the stranger. Michael, disgusted to find 
 that he had been betrayed into giving a name, though he was 
 far from clear why it should have been reserved, was glad of 
 Dave's perverted version, as replacing matters on their former 
 footing. But the repetition of the name, by voices the stimulus 
 of definition had emphasized, caught the attention of Uncle 
 Moses, who thereon moved up the Court to find out who this 
 stranger could be, who was so evidently inquiring about the 
 upstairs tenant. As he reached close inspection-point his face 
 did not look as though the visitor pleased him. The latter said 
 good-morning first; but, simple as his words were, the gaol-bird 
 manner of guarded suspicion crept into them and stamped the 
 speaker. • 
 
 " Don't like the looks of you, mister 1" said Uncle Mo to 
 himself. But aloud he said : — " Good-morning to you, sir. I 
 understood you to be inquiring for Mrs. Prichard." 
 
 " No — Daverill. No such a name, this young shaver says." 
 
 " Not down this Court. It wasn't Burr by any chance now, 
 was it ?" 
 
 " No— DaveriU." 
 
 " Because there is a party by the name of Burr if you could 
 have seen your way." This was only the natural civihty which 
 sometimes runs riot with an informant's judgment, making him 
 anxious to meet the inquirer at any cost, whatever inalienable 
 stipulations the latter may have committed himself to. In this 
 
136 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 case it seemed that nothing short of Daverill, crisp and well 
 defined, would satisfy the conditions. The stranger shook his 
 head with as much decision as reciprocal civility permitted — 
 rather as though he regretted his inability to accept Burr — and 
 rephed that the name had " got to be " Daverill and no other. 
 But he seemed reluctant to leave the widows down this Court 
 unsifted, saying : — " You're sure there ain't any other old party 
 now?" To which Uncle Moses responded: "Ne'er a one, 
 master, to my knowledge. Widow Daverill she's somewheres 
 else. Not down this Court !" He said it in a valedictory way 
 as though he had no wish to open a new subject, and con- 
 sidered this one closed. He had profited by his inspection of 
 the stranger, and had formed a low opinion of him. 
 
 But the stranger's reluctance continued. " You couldn't say, 
 I suppose," said he, in a cautious, hesitating way, " you couldn't 
 say what countrywoman she was, now ?" His manner might 
 easily have been — so Uncle Mo thought at least — that of in- 
 digence trying to get a foothold with an eye to begging in the 
 end. It really waa the furtive suspiciousness that hangs alike 
 upon the miscreant and the mere rebel against law into whose 
 bones the fetter has rusted. The guilt of the former, if he can 
 cheat both the gaol and the gallows, may merge in the demeanour 
 of a free man ; that of the latter, after a decade of prison-service 
 you or I might have remitted, will hang by him till death. 
 
 Uncle Mo may have detected, through the mere blood-poison- 
 ing of the prison, the inherent baseness of the man, or may have 
 recoiled from the type. Anyway, his instinct was to get rid of 
 him. And evidently the less he said about anyone in Sapps 
 Court the better. So he rephed, surlily enough considering his 
 really amiable disposition : — " No — I could not say what country- 
 woman she is, master." Then he thought a smaU trifle of fiction 
 thrown in might contribute to the detachment of this man's 
 curiosity from Mrs. Prichard, and added carelessly : — " Some sort 
 of a foringer I take it." Which accounted, too, for his knowing 
 nothing about her. No true Englishman knows anything about 
 that benighted class. 
 
 Now the boy Michael, all eyes and ears, had somehow come 
 to an imperfect knowledge that Mrs. Prichard had been in 
 AustraUa once on a time. The imperfection of this knowledge 
 had affected the name of the place, and when he officiously 
 struck in to supply it, he did so inaccurately. " Horstrian she 
 is !" He added: — " Rode in a circus, she did." But this was 
 only the reaction of misinterpretation on a too inventive brain. 
 
AN INQUIRY FOR A WIDOW 137 
 
 " Then she ain't any use to me. Austrian, is she ?" Thus 
 the stranger; who then, after a slow glare up and do;^^! the 
 Court, in search of further widows perhaps, turned to go, saying 
 merely : — " I'll wish you a good-morning, guv'nor. Good-morn- 
 ing !" Uncle Mo watched him as he lurched up the Court, 
 noting the oddity of his walk. This man, you see, had been 
 chained to another like himself, and his bias went to one side 
 like a horse that has gone in harness. This gait is known in 
 the class he belonged to as the " darby-roll," from the name by 
 which fetters are often spoken of. 
 
 " How long has that charaokter been makin' the Court stink, 
 young Carrots ?" said Uncle Moses to Michael. 
 
 " Afore you come up, Mr. Moses." 
 
 " Afore I come up. How long afore I come up ?" 
 
 Michael appeared to pass through a paroxysm of acute calcula 
 tion, ending in a lucid calm with particulars. " Seven minute 
 and a half," said he resolutely. " Wanted my name, he did !" 
 
 " What did you tell him ?" 
 
 " I told 'im a name. Orl correct it was. Only it wam't 
 mine. I was too fly for him." 
 
 " What name did you tell him ?" 
 
 " Mr. Eking's at the doctor's shop. He'U find that aU right. 
 He can read it over the door. He's got eyes in his head." No 
 doubt sticklers for conscience will quarrel with the view that 
 the demands of Truth can be satisfied by an authentic name 
 appUed to the wrong person. 
 
 It did not seem to grate on Uncle Moses, who only said: — 
 " Sharp boy ! But don't you tell no more lies than's wanted. 
 Only now and again to shame the Devil, as the sayin' is. And 
 you, little Dave, don't you teU nothing but the truth, 'cos your 
 Aunt M'riar she says not to it." Dave promised to oblige. 
 
 Aunt M'riar, returning home with Dolly from a place known 
 as " Chapel " — a place generally understood to be good, and an 
 antidote to the Rising Sun, which represented Satan and was 
 bad — only missed meeting this visitor to Sapps by a couple of 
 minutes. She might have just come face to face with him the 
 very minute he left the Court, if she had not delayed a little at 
 the baker's, where she had prevailed on Sharmanses — ^the pro- 
 moter of some latent heat in the bowels of the earth which came 
 through to the pavement, making it nice and dry and warm to 
 set upon in damp, cold weather — ^to keep the family Sunday 
 dinner back just enough to guarantee it brown all through, and 
 the potatoes crackly all over. Sharmanses was that obliging 
 
138 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 he would have kep' it in — ^it was a shoulder of mutton — any time 
 you named, but he decUned to be responsible that the gravy 
 should not dry up. So Dolly carried her aunt's prayer-book, 
 feeling like the priests, the Sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of 
 the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the Shoulder 
 of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy, 
 The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure by comparison. 
 
 Why did our astute young friend Michael keep his counsel 
 about the identity of the bloke that come down the Court that 
 Sunday morning ? Well — it was not mere astuteness or vulgar 
 cunning on the watch for an honorarium. It was really a noble 
 chivahy akin to that of the schoolboy who vidll be flogged till 
 the blood comes, rather than tell upon his schoolfellow, even 
 though he loathes the misdemeanour of the latter. It was 
 enough for Michael that this man was wanted by Scotland 
 Yard, to make silence seem a duty — silence, at any rate, until 
 interrogated. He was certainly not going to volunteer informa- 
 tion — ^was, in fact, in the position of the Humanitarian how 
 declined to say which way the fox had gone when the scent was 
 at fault; only with this difference — ^that the hounds were not in 
 sight. Neither was he threatened with the hunting-whip of an 
 irate M.P.H. " Give the beggar his chance \" — that was how 
 Michael looked at it. He who knows the traditions of the class 
 this boy was bom in wiU understand and excuse the feeUng. 
 
 Michael was — said his entourage — ^that sharp at twelve that he 
 could understand a'most anything- He had certainly under- 
 stood that the man whom he saw in the grip of the police-ofScer 
 overturned in the Thames was wanted by Scotland Yard, to 
 pay an old score, with possible additions to it due to that 
 officer's death. He had understood, too, that the attempt to 
 capture the man had been treacherous according to his ideas of 
 fair play, while he had no information about his original crime. 
 He did not like his looks, certainly, but then looks wam't much 
 to go by. His conclusion was — silence for the present, without 
 prejudice to future speech if appUed for. When that time came, 
 he would tell no more Ues than were wanted. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 139 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 OF A VISIT MICHAEL PAID HIS AUNT, AND OF A FISH HE NEARLY 
 CAUGHT. THE PIGEONS, NEXT DOOR, AND A PINT OF HALF- 
 AND-HALF. MISS JULIA HAWKINS AND HER PARALYTIC FATHER. 
 HOW A MAN IN THE BAR BROKE HIS PIPE. OF A VISIT MICHAEL's 
 GREAT-AUNT PAID MISS HAWKINS. TWO STRANGE POLICE- 
 MEN. HOW MR. DAVEKILL MIGHT HAVE ESCAPED HAD HE 
 NOT BEEN A SMOKER. A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY, SPOILED 
 BY A STRAIGHT SHOT 
 
 Michael Raqstroar's mysterious attraction to his great-aunt 
 at Hammersmith was not discoimtenanced or neutralised by 
 his family in Sapps Court, but rather the reverse: in fact, his 
 visits to her received as much indirect encouragement as his 
 parents considered might be safely given without rousing 
 his natural combativeness, and predisposing him against the 
 ounce of influence which she alone exercised over his rebellious 
 instincts. Any suspicion of moral culture might have been fatal, 
 holy influences of every sort being eschewed by Michael on 
 principle. 
 
 So when Michael's mother, some weeks later than the foregoing 
 incident, remarked that it was getting on for time that her 
 branch of the family should send a quartern of shelled peas and 
 two pound of cooking-cherries to Aunt Elizabeth Jane as a 
 seasonable gift, her lord and master had replied that he wasn't 
 going within eleven mile of Hammersmith till to-morrow fort- 
 night, but that he would entrust peas and cherries, as specified, 
 to " Old Satiurday Night," a fellow-coster, so named in derision 
 of his adoption of teetotalism, his name being really Knight. 
 He was also called Temperance Tommy, without irony, his name 
 being really Thomas. He, a resident in Chiswick, would see that 
 Aunt Elizabeth Jane got the consignment safely. 
 
 Michael's father did this in furtherance of a subtle scheme 
 which succeeded. His son immediately said : — " Just you give 
 him 'era., and see if he don't sneak 'em. See if he don't bile the 
 peas and make a blooming pudd'n of the cherries. You see if 
 he don't ! That's aU I say, if you arsk me." A few interchanges 
 on these lines ended in Michael undertaking to deUver the goods 
 personally as a favour, time enough Sunday morning for Aunt 
 Elizabeth Jane herself to make a pudding of the cherries, bloom- 
 ing or otherwise. 
 
140 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 As a sequel, Michael arrived at his aunt's so early on the 
 following Sunday that the peas and the cherries had to wait for 
 hours to be cooked, while Aunt Ehzabeth Jane talked with 
 matrons round in the alley, and he himself took part in a short 
 fishing expedition, nearly catching a roach, who got away. The 
 Humanitarian — is that quite the correct word, by-the-by ? — 
 must rejoice at the frequency of this result in angUng. 
 
 " The 'ook giv'," said Michael, returning disappointed. " Wot 
 can you expect with inferior tarkle ?" He then undertook to get 
 a brown Toby jug filled at The Pigeons; though, being church- 
 time — the time at which the Heathen avail themselves of their 
 opportunity of stopping away from church — the purchase of one 
 pint full up, and no cheating, was a statutable offence on the 
 part of the seller. 
 
 But when a pubhc has a Uttle back-garden with rusticated 
 woodwork seats, painful to those rash enough to avail them- 
 selves of them, and a negotiable wall you and your jug can chmb 
 over and descend from by the table no one ever gets his legs 
 under owing to this same rusticity of structure, then you can do as 
 Michael did, and make your presence felt by whisthng through 
 the keyhole, without fear of incriminating the Egeria of the 
 beer -fountain in the locked and shuttered bar, near at hand. 
 
 Egeria was not far off, for her voice came saying: — " Say your 
 name through the keyhole; the key's took out. . . . No, you 
 ain't Mrs. Treadwell next door ! You're a boy." 
 
 " Ain't a party-next-door's grandnephew a boy ?" exclaimed 
 Michael indignantly. " She's sent me with her own jug for 
 a pint of arfnarf ! Here's the coppers, all square. You won't 
 have nothing to complain of. Mass 'Orkins." 
 
 Miss Hawkins, the daughter of The Pigeons, or at least of their 
 proprietor, opened the door and admitted Michael Ragstroar. 
 Her father had drawn his last quart for a customer many long 
 years ago, and his right-hand half was passing the last days of 
 its life in a bedroom upstairs. A nonagenarian paralysed all 
 down one side may be described as we have described Mr. 
 Hawkins. He was still able to see dimly, with one eye, the 
 glorious series of sporting prints that Uned the walls of his 
 room ; and such pulses as he had left were stirred with momentary 
 enthusiasm when the Pytchley Hunt reached the surviving half 
 of his understanding. The other half of him had Uved, and seemed 
 to have died, years ago. The two halves may have taken too 
 much when they were able to move about together and get at 
 it — too much brandy, rum, whisky; too many short nips and long 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 141 
 
 nips — too cordial cordials. Perhaps his daughter took the right 
 quantity of all these to a nicety, but appearances were against her. 
 She was a woman of the type that must have been recognised 
 in its girlhood as stunning, or ripping, by the then frequenters 
 of the bar of The Pigeons, and which now was reluctant to admit 
 that its powers to rip or stun were on the wane at forty. It 
 was that of an inflamed blonde putting on flesh, which meant to 
 have business relations with dropsy later on, unless — ^which 
 seemed unlikely — ^its owner should discontinue her present one 
 with those nips and cordials. She had no misgiving, so far, on 
 this point; nor any, apparently, about the seductive roll of a 
 really fine pair of blue eyes. While as for her hair, the bulk and 
 number of the curl-papers it was still screwed up in spoke 
 volumes of what its release would reveal to an astonished Sunday 
 afternoon when its hour should come — ^not far off now. 
 
 There was a man in the darkened bar, smoking a long clay. 
 Michael felt as if he knew him as soon as he set eyes on him, 
 but it was not till the pipe was out of his mouth that he saw 
 who he was. He had been ascribing to the weight or pressure of 
 the pipe the face-twist which, when it was removed, showed as 
 a slight distortion. It was the man he had seen twice, once in 
 the garden he had just left, and once at Sapps Court. Michael 
 considered that he was entitled to a gratuity from this man, 
 having interpreted his language as a promise to that effect, and 
 having received nothing so far. 
 
 He was not a diffident or timid character, as we know. " Seen 
 you afore, guv'nor !" was his greeting. 
 
 The man gave a start, breaking his pipe in three pieces, but 
 getting no farther than the first letter of an oath of irritation at 
 the accident. " What boy's this ?" he cried out, with an earnest- 
 ness nothing visible warranted. 
 
 " Lard's mercy, Mr. Wix !" exclaimed the mistress of the house, 
 turning round from the compounding of the half-and-half. 
 " What a turn you giv' ! And along of nothing but little Micky 
 from Mrs. Treadwell next door ! Which most, Micky ? Ale or 
 stout ?" 
 
 " Most of whichever costis most," answered Michael, with 
 simplicity. Thereon he felt himself taken by the arm, and 
 ttiming, saw the man's face looking close at him. It was the 
 sort of face that makes the end of a dream a discomfort to the 
 awakener. 
 
 " Now, you young beggar ! — where have you seen me afore T 
 I ain't going to hurt you. You tell up straight and tell the truth." 
 
142 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Not onlest you leave hold of my arm !" 
 
 " You do like he says, Mr. Wix. . . . Now you tell Mr. Wix, 
 Micky. He won't hurt you." Thus Miss Julia, procuring 
 liherty for the hand to receive the half-and-half she was balancing 
 its foam on. 
 
 Michael rubbed the arm with his free hand as he took the 
 brown jug, to express resentment in moderation. But he 
 answered his questioner: — " Round in Sappses Court beyont the 
 Dials acrost Oxford Street keepin' to your left off Tottenham 
 Court Road. You come to see for a widder, and there wam't 
 no widder for yer. Mean to say there was ?" 
 
 " Where I sent you, Mr. Wix," said Miss Julia. " To Sapps 
 Court, where Mrs. Treadwell directed me — where her nephew 
 lives. That's this boy's father. You'll find that right." 
 
 " Your Mrs. Treadmill, she's all right. Sapps Court's all right 
 of itself. But it ain't the Court I was tracking out. If it was, 
 they'd have known the name of Daverill. Why — the place ain't 
 no bigger than a prison yard ! About the length of down your 
 back-garden to the water's edge. It's the wrong Court, and 
 there you have it in a word. She's in Capps Court or Gapps 
 Court—some * * * of a Court or other — ^not Sapps." A meta- 
 phor has to be omitted here, as it might give offence. It was not 
 really a weU-chosen or appropriate one, and is no loss to the text. 
 " What's this boy's name, and no lies ?" he added after muttering 
 to himself on the same lines volcanically. 
 
 " How often do you want to be told that, Mr. Wix ? This 
 boy's Micky Rackstraw, lives with his grandmother next door. 
 . . . Well — her sister then ! It's all as one. Ain't you, 
 Micky ?" 
 
 " Ah I Don't live there, though. Comes easy-like, now and 
 again. Like the noospapers." 
 
 " He's a young liar, then. Told me his name was Ikey." 
 Miss Hawkins pointed out that Ikey and Micky were sub- 
 stantially identical. But she was unable to make the same claim 
 for Rackstraw and Ekings, when told that Micky had laid claim 
 to the latter. She waived the point and conducted the beer- 
 bearer back the way he came, handing him the brown jug over 
 the wall, not to spiU it. 
 
 But she suggested, in consideration of the high quality of the 
 half-and-half, that her next-door neighbour might oblige by 
 stepping in by the private entrance, to speak concerning Sapps 
 Court and its inhabitants; all known to her more or less, no 
 doubt. Which Aunt Elizabeth was glad to do, seeing that the 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 143 
 
 cherry-tart was only juat put in the oven, and she could spare 
 that few minutes without risk. . 
 
 Now, this old lady, though she was but a charwoman depend- 
 iQg for professional engagements rather on the goodwill — ^for 
 auld lang syne — of one or two f amihes in Chiswick, of prodigious 
 opulence in her eyes, yet was regarded by Sapps Court, when she 
 visited her niece, Mrs. Rackstraw, or Ragstroar, Michael's 
 mother, as distinctly superior. Aunt M'riar especially had been 
 so much impressed with a grey shawl with fringes and a ready 
 cule — ^spelt thus by repute — ^which she carried when she come 
 of a Sunday, that she had not only asked her to tea, but had 
 taken her to pay a visit to Mrs. Prichard upstairs. She had 
 also in conversation taken Aunt Elizabeth Jane largely into her 
 confidence about Mrs. Prichard, repeating, indeed, all she knew 
 of her except what related to her convict husband. About that 
 she kept an honourable silence. 
 
 It was creditable to Miss Juliarawkins, whose name — written 
 as pronounced — gives us what we contend is an innocent pleasure, 
 that she should have suspected the truth about Wix or Daverill's 
 want of shrewdness when he visited Sapps Court. She had been 
 biassed towards this suspicion by the fact that the man, when he 
 first referred to Sapps Court, had spoken the name as though 
 sure of it; and it was to test its validity that she invited Aunt 
 Elizabeth Jane round by the private door, and introduced her 
 to the darkened bar, where the ex-convict was lighting another 
 pipe. She had heard Mrs. Treadwell speak of Aunt M'riar; and 
 now, having formed a true enough image of the area of the Court, 
 had come to the conclusion that all its inhabitants would be 
 acquainted, and would talk over each other's aSairs. 
 
 " Who the Hell's that ?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had 
 stung him, as the old charwoman's knock came at the private 
 entrance alongside of the bar. He seemed very sensitive, 
 always on the watch for surprises. 
 
 " Only old Treadwell from next door. She ain't going to 
 hurt you, Tom. You be easy." Miss Hawkins spoke with 
 another manner as well as another name now that she and this 
 man were alone. She may never possibly have known his own 
 proper name, he having been introduced to her as Thomas Wix 
 twenty years ago. An introduction with a sequel which scarcely 
 comes into the story. 
 
 His answer was beginning: — " It's easy to say be easy . . ," 
 when the woman left the room to admit Aunt Elizabeth Jane. 
 Who came in finishing the drying of hands, suddenly washed. 
 
144 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 on a clean Sunday apron. " Lawsy me. Miss Hawkins \" said 
 she. " I didn't know you had anybody here." 
 
 It was not difficult to entamer the conversation. After a 
 short interlude about the weather, to which the man's contribu- 
 tion was a grunt at most, the old lady had been started on the 
 subject of her nephew and Sapps Court, and to this he gave atten- 
 tion. If she had had her tortoiseshell glasses she might have 
 been frightened by the way he knitted his brows to listen. But 
 she had left them behind in her hurry, and he kept back in a 
 dark comer. 
 
 " About this same aged widow body," said he, fixing the con- 
 versation to the point that interested him. " What sort of an 
 age now should you give her ? Eighty — ninety — ^ninety-five — 
 ninety-nine ?" He stopped short of a hundred. Nobody one 
 knows is a hundred. Centenarians are only in newspapers. 
 
 " I can tell you her age from her Ups, mister. Eighty-one 
 next birthday. And her name, Maisie Prichard." 
 
 Mr. Wix's attention deepened, and his scowl with it. " Now, 
 can you make that safe to go upon ?" he said with a harsh stress 
 on a voice already harsh. " How came the old lady to say her 
 Own christened name ? I'll pound it I might talk to you most 
 of the day and never know your first name. Old folks they half 
 forget 'em as often as not." 
 
 Miss Hawkins struck in : — " Now you're talking siUy, Mr. Wix. 
 How many young folk tell you their christened names right 
 off ?" But she had got on weak ground. She got off it again 
 discreetly. " Anyhow, Mrs. Treadwell she's inventing nothing, 
 having no call to." She turned to Aunt EUzabeth Jane with 
 the question: — " How come she to happen to mention the name, 
 ma'am ?" 
 
 " Just as you or I might. Miss Julia. Mrs. Wardle she said, 
 ' I was remarking of it to Mrs. Treadwell,' she said, ' only just 
 afore we come upstairs, ma'am,' she said, ' that you was one 
 of twins, ma'am,' she said. And then old Mrs. Prichard she 
 says, ' Ay, to be sure,' she says, ' twins we were — ^Maisie and 
 Phoebe. Forty-five year ago she died, Phoebe did,' she says. 
 ' And I've never forgotten Phoebe,' she says. ' Nor yet I 
 shan't forget Phoebe not if I live to be a hundred !' " 
 
 " Goard blind my soid !" Mr. Wix muttered this to himself, 
 and though Aunt Elizabeth Jane failed to catch the words, 
 she shuddered at the manner of them. She did not like this 
 Mr. Wix, and wished she had not forgotten her tortoiseshell 
 spectacles, so as to see better what he was like. The words she 
 
A SUCXJESSFUL CAPTURE 145 
 
 heard him say next had nothing in them to cause a shudder 
 though the manner of them showed vexation: — "If that ain't 
 tryin' to a man's temper ! There she was all the time !" It is 
 true he quaUfied this last substantive by the adjective the story 
 so often has to leave out, but it was not very uncommon in 
 those days along the riverside between Fulham and Kew. 
 
 " I thought you said the name was Daverill/' said Miss 
 Hawkins, taking the opportunity to release a curl-paper at a 
 looking-glass behind bottles. It was just upon time to open, 
 and the barmaid had got her Sunday out. 
 
 " Why the Hell shouldn't the name be Daverill ? In course 
 I did ! Ask your pardon for swearing, missis. . , ." This was 
 to the visitor, who had begun to want to go. " You'll excuse 
 my naming to you all my reasons, but I'll just mention this one> 
 not to be misunderstood. This here old lady's a sort of old 
 friend of mine, and when I came back from abroad I says to 
 myself I'd like to look up old Mrs. Daverill. So I make inquiry, 
 you see, and my man he tells me — ^he was an old mate of mine, 
 you see — she's gone to live at Sevenoaks — do you see ? — at 
 Sevenoaks. . . ." 
 
 " Ah, I see ! I've been at Sevenoaks." 
 
 " Well — there she had been and gone away to town again. 
 Then says I, ' What's her address ?' So they told me they didn't 
 know, it was so long agone. But the old woman — her name was 
 Killick, or Forbes was it ? — no, KiUick — ^remembered directing 
 on a letter to Mrs. Daverill, Sapps Court. And JuUar here she 
 said she'd heard tell of Sapps Court. So I hunted the place up 
 and found it. Then your Mrs. Wardle's husband — I take it he 
 was Moses Wardle the heavyweight in my young days — he 
 put me off the scent because of the name. The only way to 
 make Prichard of her I can see is — she married again. Well — 
 did no one ever hear of an old fool that got married again ?" 
 
 "That's nothing," said Miss Hawkins. "They'll marry 
 again with the rattle in their throats." 
 
 That tart was in the oven, and had to bo remembered. Or 
 else Aimt Elizabeth Jane wanted to see no more of Mr. Wix. " I 
 must be running back to my cooking," said she. " But if this 
 gentleman goes again to find out Sappses, he's only got to ask 
 for my niece at Number One, or Mrs. Wardle at Number Seven, 
 and he'll find Mrs. Prichard easy." She did not speak directly 
 to the man, and he for his part noticed her departure very 
 slightly, giving it a fraction of a grunt he wanted the rest of 
 later. 
 
 10 
 
14:6 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Nor did Aunt Elizabeth Jane seem in a great hurry to get 
 away when Miss Hawkins had seen her to the door. She 
 lingered a moment to refer to Aunt M'riar's talk of Widow 
 Prichard. Certainly Mrs. Wardle at Number Seven she said 
 nothing of any second marriage, and thought Prichard was the 
 name of the old lady's first husband, who had died in Van Die- 
 mens Land. Miss Julia paid very little attention. What 
 business of hers was Widow Prichard ? She was much more 
 interested in a couple of policemen walking along the lane. Not 
 a very common spectacle in that retired thoroughfare ! Also, 
 instead of following on along the riverside road it opened iiito, 
 they both wheeled right-about-face and came back. 
 
 Miss Julia, taking down a shutter to reinstate The Pigeons 
 as a tavern open to customers, noted that the faces of these 
 two were strange to her. Also that they passed her with the 
 barest good-moming, forbiddingly. The pohce generally culti- 
 vate intercourse with public-house keepers of every sort, but 
 when one happens to be a lady with ringlets especially so; even 
 should her complexion be partly due to correctives, to amalga- 
 mate a blotchiness. These ofi&cers overdid their indifference, 
 and it attracted Miss Julia's attention. 
 
 Aunt Elizabeth Jane thought at the time she might have 
 mistaken what she heard one of them say to the other. For, 
 of course, she passed them close. The words she heard seemed 
 to be: — "That will be Hawkins." Something in them rang 
 false with her concept of the situation. But there was the cherry- 
 tart to be seen to, and some peas to boil. Only not the whole lot 
 at once for only her and Michael ! As for that boy, she had sent 
 him off to the baker's, the minute he came back, to wait till the 
 bit of the best end of the neck was sure to be quite done, and 
 bring it away directly minute. 
 
 That day there was an unusually high spring-tide on the 
 river, and presumably elsewhere; only that did not concern 
 Hammersmith, which ascribed the tides to local impulses in- 
 herent in the Thames. Just after midday the water was all 
 but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith Bridge, and 
 the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows stand- 
 ing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no 
 longer able to speak for themselves, and the insolent plash of 
 ripples over wharves that had always thought themselves above 
 that sort of thing seemed to say: — " Thus far will I come, and a 
 little farther for that matter." Father Thames never quite 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 147 
 
 touched the landing of the boat-ladder^ at the end of the garden 
 at The Pigeons, but he went within six inches of it. 
 
 " The water wasn't like you see it now, that day," said a man 
 in the stem of a boat that was hanging about o£E the garden. 
 "All of five foot lower down, I should figure it, Ee didn't 
 want no help to get up — ^not he 1" 
 
 " It was a tidy jump up, any way you put it," said the stroke 
 oar. 
 
 " Well — he could have done it ! But he was aiming to help 
 his man to a seat in the boat, not to get a lift up for himself. 
 I've not a word to say against Toby Ibbetson, mind you ! He 
 took an advantage some wouldn't, maybe. And then it's how 
 you look at it, when all's done. You know what Daverill was 
 wanted for ?" Oh yes — ^both oars knew that. " I call to mind 
 the place — ^knew it well enough. Out near Waltham Abbey. 
 Lonely sort of spot. . . . Yes — ^the girl died. Not before she'd 
 had time to swear to the twist in his face. He had been seen 
 and identified none so far off an hour before. Quite a young girl. 
 Father cut his throat. So would you. Thought he ought to 
 have seen the girl safe home. So he ought. Ain't that our man's 
 whistle ?" The boat, slowly worked in towards The Pigeons, 
 lays to a few strokes o£E on the slack water. The tide's mandate 
 to stop has come. The sergeant is waiting for a second whistle 
 to act. 
 
 Inside the tavern the woman has closed the street - door 
 abruptly — has given the alarm. " There's two in the lane !" 
 she gasps. " Be sharp, Tom !" 
 
 " Through the garden ?" he says. " Run out to see." 
 
 She is back almost before the door she opens has swung to. 
 I" It's all up, Tom," she cries. " There's the boat !" 
 
 " Stand clear, Juli-ar !" he says. " I'll have a look at your 
 roof. Needn't say I'm at home. Where's the key ?" 
 
 " I'll give it you. You go up !" She forgets something, 
 tthough, in her hurry. His pipe remains on the table where he 
 left it smoking, lying across the unemptied pewter. He forgets 
 it, too, though he follows her deliberately enough. RecoUec- 
 ition and emergency rarely shake hands. 
 
 She meets him on the stairs coming down from the room 
 Nirhere the paralysed man lies, hearing but little, seeing only the 
 walls and the ceiling. " It's on the comer of the chimney-piece," 
 she says. " He's asleep." Daverill passes her, and just as he 
 Iraaches the door remembers the pipe. It would be fatal to call 
 but with that single knock at the house-door below. Too late ! 
 
148 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 She still forgets that pipe, and only waits to be sure he is 
 through, to open the door to the knocker. By the time she does 
 so he has found the key and passed through the dormer door 
 that gives on the leads. The paralysed man has not moved. 
 Moreover, he caxmot see the short ladder that leads to the exit. 
 It is on his dead side. 
 
 " You've a party here that's wanted, missis. Name of Wix 
 or Daverill. Man about five-and-forty. Dark hair and light 
 eyes. Side-draw on the mouth. Goes with a lurch. Two 
 upper front eye-teeth missing. Carries a gold hunting-watch on 
 a steel chain. Wears opal ring of apparent value. Stammers 
 slightly." So the police-ofScer reads from his warrant or 
 instructions, which he offers to show to Miss Hawkins, who 
 scarcely glances at it. 
 
 Who so surprised and plausible as she ? Why — her father is 
 the only man in the house, and him on his back this fifteen 
 years or more ! What's more, he doesn't wear an opal ring, 
 Nor any ring at all, for that matter ! But come in and see. 
 Look all over the house if desired. She. won't stand in the way, 
 
 " Our instruction is to search," says the officer. He looks 
 like a sub-inspector, and is evidently what a malefactor would 
 consider a " bad man " to have anything to do with. Miss 
 Hawkins knows that her right of sanctuary, if any, is a feeble 
 claim, probably overruled by some pohce regulation; and invites 
 the officers into the house, almost too demonstratively. Just 
 then she suddenly recollects that pipe. 
 
 "You can find your way in, mister," she says; and goes 
 through to the bar. The moment she does so the officer shows 
 alacrity. 
 
 ." Keep an eye to that cellar-flap, Jacomb," he says to his 
 mate, and follows the lady of the house. He is only just in 
 time. " Is that your father's pipe ?" he asks. In another 
 moment she would have hidden it. 
 
 " Which pipe ? — oh, this pipe ? — this pipe ain't nothing, 
 Left stood overnight, I suppose." And she paused to think of 
 the best means of getting the pipe suppressed. There was no 
 open grate in the bar to throw it behind. She was a poor 
 liar, too, and was losing her head. 
 
 " Give me hold a quarter of a minute," says the officer. She 
 cannot refuse to give the pipe up. " Someone's had a whifi ofl 
 this pipe since closing-time last night," he continues, touching 
 the stiU warm bowl; for all this had passed very quickly. AnI 
 he actually puts the pipe to his lips, and in two or three dra\«| 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 149 
 
 works up its lingering spark. " A good mouthful of smoke," 
 says he, blowing it out in a cloud. 
 
 " You can look where you like," mutters the woman sullenly. 
 " There's no man for you. Only you won't want to disturb my 
 father. He's only just fell asleep." 
 
 " He'll be sleeping pretty sound after fifteen year." Thus 
 the officer, and the unhappy woman felt she had indeed made a 
 complete mess of the case. " Which is his room now, ma'am ? 
 We'll go there first." 
 
 Up the stairs and past a window looking on the garden. The 
 day is hot beneath the July sun, and the two men in uniform 
 who are coming up the so-called garden, or rather gravelled 
 yard, behind The Pigeons, are mopping the sweat from their 
 brows. They might have been customers from the river, but 
 Miss Hawkins knows the look of them too well for that. The 
 house is surroimded — watched back and front. Escape is 
 hopeless, successful concealment the only chance. 
 
 " Been on his back like that for fifteen years, has he ?" So 
 says the officer looking at the prostrate figure of the old man on 
 the couch. He is not asleep now — ^far from it. His mouth begins 
 to move, uttering jargon. His one living eye has light in it. 
 There is something he wants to say and struggles for in vain. 
 " Can't make much out of that," is the verdict of his male hearer. 
 His daughter can say that he is asking his visitor's name and 
 what he wants. He can understand when spoken to, she says. 
 But the intruder is pointing at the door leading to the roof. 
 " Where does that go to ?" he asks. 
 
 " Out on the tiles. I'll see for the key and let you through, 
 if you'll stop a minute." It is the only good bit of acting she 
 has done. Perhaps despair gives histrionic power. She sees a 
 chance of deferring the breaking-down of that door, and who 
 knows what may hang on a few minutes of successful delay ? 
 Before she goes she suggests again that the paralysed man will 
 understand what is said to him if spoke to plain. Clearly, he who 
 speaks plain to him will do a good-natured act. -< 
 
 Whether the officer's motives are Samaritan or otherwise, he 
 takes the hint. As the woman gets out of hearing, he says: — 
 " You are the master of this house, I take it ?" And his hearer's 
 crippled mouth half succeeds in its struggle for an emphatic 
 assent. He continues: — " In course you are. I'm Sub-Inspector 
 Cardwell, N Division. There's a man concealed in your house 
 I'm after. He's wanted. . . . Who is he ?" — a right guess of 
 an unintelligible question — " You mean what name does he go 
 
150 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 by ? Well — ^hia name's Daverill, but he's called Tkomton or 
 Wix as may be. P'r'aps you know him, sir ?" Whether or no, 
 the name has had effect electrically on its hearer, who struggles 
 frantically — ^painfully — hopelessly for speech. The officer says 
 commiseratingly: — "Poor devil ! — he's quite off his jaw"; and 
 then, going to the open window, calls out to his mates of the 
 river-service, below in the garden: — " Keep an eye on th» roof, 
 boys." 
 
 Then he goes out on the stair-landing. That woman is too 
 long away — ^it is out of all reason. As he passes the paralytic 
 man, he notes that he seems to be struggling violently for some- 
 thing — either to speak or to rise. He cannot tell which, and he 
 does best to hasten the return of the woman who can. 
 
 Out on the landing. Miss Hawkins, who has not been looking 
 for keys, but supplying her first Sunday customers in their own 
 jugs, protests that she has fairly turned the house over in her key- 
 hunt — all in vain I Her interest seems vivid that these police 
 shall not be kept off her roof. She suggests that a builder's 
 yard in the Kew Road will furnish a ladder long enough to 
 reach the roof. " Shut on Sunday !" says Sub-Inspector Card- 
 well conclusively. Then let someone who knows how be sum- 
 moned to pick the lock. By all means, if such a person is at 
 hand. But no trade will come out Sunday, except the turn- 
 cock, obviously useless. That is the verdict. " You'll never be 
 for breaking down the door, Mr. Inspector, vrith my father 
 there ill in the room !" — ^is the woman's appeal. " Not till 
 we've looked everywhere else," is the reply. " I'll say that 
 much. I'll see through the cupboards in the room, though. 
 That won't hurt him." 
 
 Little did either of them anticipate what met their eyes as 
 the door opened. There on the couch, no longer on his back, 
 but sitting up and gasping for clearer speech, which he seemed to 
 have achieved in part, was the paralysis-stricken man. The 
 left hand, powerless no longer, was still uncertain of its purpose, 
 and wavered in its ill-directed motion; the right, needed to raise 
 him from his pillow, grasped the level moulding of the couch- 
 back. Its fingers still showed a better colour than those of its 
 fellow, which trembled and closed and reopened, as though to 
 make trial of their new-found power. His eyes were fixed on 
 this hand rather than on his daughter or the stranger. His 
 knees jerked against the light bondage of a close dressing-gown, 
 and his right foot was striving to lift or help the other down to 
 the floor. Probably life was slower to return to it than to the 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 151 
 
 hand, as the blood returns soonest to the finger-tips after frost. 
 Only the face was qtidte changed from its seeming of but ten 
 minutes back. The voice choked and stammered still, but speech 
 came in the end, breaking out with a shout-burst: — " Stop — 
 stop— stop !" 
 
 " Easy so — easy so !" says the police-officer, as the woman gives 
 way to a fit of hysterical crying, more the breaking-point of 
 nerve-tension than either joy or pain. " Easy so, master ! — 
 easy does it. Don't you be frightened. Plenty of time and to 
 spare \" 
 
 The old man gets his foot to the floor, and his daughter, under 
 no impulse of reason — mere nerve-paroxysm — runs to his side 
 crying out: — " No, dear father ! No, dear father ! Lie down — 
 He down !" She is trying to force him back to his pillow, while 
 he chokes out something he finds it harder to say than " Stop — 
 stop !" which still comes at intervals. 
 
 " I should make it easy for him. Mass Hawkins, if I was in 
 your place. Let the old gentleman please himself." Thus the 
 officer, whose sedateness of manner acts beneficially. She 
 accepts the suggestion, standing back from her father with a 
 stupid, bewildered gaze, between him and theexit to the roof. 
 " Give him time," says Sub-Lispector Cardwell. 
 
 He takes the time, and his speech dies down. But he can 
 move that hand better now — may make its action serve for 
 speech. Slowly he raises it and points — points straight at his 
 daughter. He wants her help — ^is that it ? She thinks so, but 
 when she acts on the impulse he repels her, feebly shouting out : 
 " No— no— no !" 
 
 " Come out from between him and the clock, missis," says 
 the officer, thinking he has caught a word right, and that a clock 
 near the door is what the old man points at. " He thinks it's 
 six o'clock." 
 
 But the word was not six. The daughter moves aside, and 
 yet the finger points. " It's nowhere near six, father dear 1" 
 she says. " Not one o'clock yet !" But still the finger points. 
 And now a wave of clearer articulation overcomes a sibilant that 
 has been the worst enemy of speech, and leaves the tongue free. 
 " Wix 1" That's the word. 
 
 " Got it !" exclaims the officer, and the woman with a shriek 
 falls insensible. He takes little notice of her, but whistles for 
 his mate below — a pecuUar whistle. It brings the man who 
 was keeping watch in the lane. " Got him all right," says his 
 principal. " Out here on the tiles. That's your meaning, I take 
 
162 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 it, Mr. Hawkins ?" The old man noda repeatedly. " And he's 
 took the key out with him and locked to the door. That's it, is 
 it ?" More nods, and then the ofl&cer momits the short ladder 
 and knocks hard upon the door. He speaks to the silence on 
 the other side. " You've been seen, Mr. Wix. It's a pity to 
 spoil a good lock. You've got the key. We can wait a bit. 
 Don't hurry !" 
 
 Footsteps on the roof, and a shout from the garden below ! 
 He is seen now — no doubt of it — whatever he was before. What 
 is that they are calling from the garden ? " He's got a loose tile. 
 Look out !" 
 
 " Don't give him a chance to aim with it," says Jacomb below 
 to his chief on the ladder. Who replies: — " He's bound to get 
 half a chance. Keep your eyes open !" A thing to be done, 
 sertainly, with that key sounding in the lock. 
 
 The officer Cardwell only waited to hear it turn to throw his 
 full weight on the door, which opened outwards. He scarcely 
 waited for the baok-cUck to show that the door, which had no 
 hasp or clutch beyond the key-service, was free on its hinges. 
 Nevertheless, he was not so quick but that the man beyond 
 was quicker, springing back sharp on the turn of his own hand. 
 CardweU stumbled as the door gave, unexpectedly easily, and 
 nearly fell his length on the leads. 
 
 Jacomb, on the second rung of the step-ladder, feels the 
 wind of a missile that all but touches his head. He does not 
 look round to see what it strikes, but he hears a cry; man or 
 woman, or both. In front of him is his principal, on his legs 
 again, grasping the wrist of the right hand that threw the tile, 
 while his own is on its owner's throat. 
 
 " All right — all right !" says Mr. Wix. " You can stow it 
 now. I could have given you that tile under your left ear. 
 But the right man's got the benefit. You may just as well 
 keep the snitchers for when I'm down. There's no such * * ♦ 
 hurry." Nevertheless, the eyes of both officers are keen upon 
 him as he descends the ladder under sufferance. 
 
 On the floor below, beside the bed he lay on through so many 
 weary years, lies Miss Juha's old father, stunned or dead. Her 
 own insensibihty has passed, but has left her in bewilderment, 
 dizzy and confused, as she kneels over him and tries for a sign of 
 life in vain. At the ladder-foot the officers have fitted their 
 prisoner with handcuffs; and then Cardwell, leaving him, goes 
 to Uft the old man back to his couch. But first he calls from 
 the window : — " Got him all right ! Fetch the nearest doctor." 
 
A SUCCESSFUL CAPTURE 153 
 
 Through the short interval between this and Daverill's 
 removal, words came from him which may bring the story home 
 or explain it if events have not done so already. " The old 
 * * * has got his allowance. He won't ask for no more. Who 
 was he, to be meddling ? You was old enough in all conscience, 
 July-ar !" His pronunciation of her name has a hint of a sneer 
 in it — a sneer at the woman he victimised, some time in the 
 interval between his desertion of his wife and his final error of 
 judgment — dabbling in burglary. She might have been spared 
 insult; for whatever her other faults were, want of affection for 
 her betrayer was not among them, or she would not have run the 
 risks of concealing him from the police. 
 
 Her paralytic father's sudden reanimation under stress of 
 excitement was, of course, an exceptionally well-marked instance 
 of a phenomenon well enough known to pathologists. It had 
 come within his power to avenge the wrong done to his daughter, 
 and never forgiven by him. Whether the officers would have 
 broken down the door, it he had not seized his opportunity, may 
 be uncertain, but there can be no doubt that the operative 
 cause of Daverill's capture was his recovery of vital force under 
 the stimulus of excitement at the amazing chance offered him 
 of bringing it about. 
 
 The affair made so Uttle noise that only a very few Simday 
 loiterers witnessed what was visible of it in the lane, which was 
 indeed Uttle more than the unusual presence of two policemen. 
 Then, after a surgeon had been found and had attended to the 
 injured man, it leaked out that a malefactor had been appre- 
 hended at The Pigeons and taken away in the pohce-boat to the 
 Station lower down the river. 
 
 That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, 
 had got to the cherry-tart before a passing neighbour, looking 
 in at their window, acquainted them what had happened. If 
 after Michael come from the bake-'us with the meat, which kep' 
 hot stood under its cover in the sun aU of five minutes and no one 
 any the worse, while the old lady boiled a potato — ^if Michael 
 had not been preoccupied with a puppy in this interim, he 
 might easy have seen the culprit took away in the boat. He 
 regretted his loss; but his aunt, from whom we borrow a word 
 now and then, pointed out to him that we must not expect 
 everything in this world. Also the many blessings that had 
 been vouchsafed to him by a Creator who had his best interests 
 at heart. Had he not vouchsafed him a puppy ? — on lease 
 certainly; but he would find that puppy here next time he visited 
 
154 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 HammersHiith, possibly firmer in his gait and nothing like so 
 round over the stomach. And there was the cherry-tart, and 
 the crust had rose beautiful. 
 
 Michael got home very late, and was professionally engaged all 
 the week with his father. He saw town, but nothing of his 
 neighbours, returning always towards midnight intensely ready 
 for bed. By the time he chanced across our friend Dave 
 on the following Saturday, other scenes of London Life had 
 obscured his memory of that interview at The Pigeons and its 
 sequel. So, as it happened, Sapps Court heard nothing about either, 
 
 The death of Miss Hawkins's father, a month later, did not add 
 a contemptible manslaughter to Thornton Daverill's black list 
 of crimes. For the surgeon who attended him — ^while admitting 
 to her privately that, of course, it was the blow on the temple 
 that brought about the cause of death — denied that it was itself 
 the cause; a nice distinction. But it seemed needless to add to 
 the score of a criminal with enough to his credit to hang him 
 twice over; especially when an Inquest could be avoided by 
 accommodation with Medical Jurisprudence. So the surgeon, 
 at the earnest request of the dead man's daughter, made out a 
 certificate of death from something that sounded plausible, 
 and might just as well have been cessation of life. It was 
 nobody's business to criticize it, and nobody did. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE BEBB AT THE KINO's AKMS. HOW UNCLE MO KEAD THE STAR, 
 LIKE A CHALDEAIT, AND BROKE HIS SPECTACLES. HOW THE 
 STAR TOLD OF A CONVICt's ESCAPE FEOM A JUG. HOW AUNT 
 m'bIAE OVERHEAED THE NAME " DAVEEILL," AND WAS QUITE 
 UPSET-UKB. HER DEGREES AND DATES OF INFOEMATION 
 ABOUT THIS MAN AND HIS ANTECEDENTS. UNCLE MO's IGNOR- 
 ANCE ABOUT HERS. HOW SHE DID NOT GIVE THE STAB TO 
 MES. BUEB INTACT 
 
 The unwelcome visitor who, in the phrase of Uncle Mo, had made 
 Sapps Court stink — a thing outside the experience of its in- 
 habitants — ^bade fair to be forgotten altogether. Michael, the 
 only connecting link between the two, had all memory of the 
 
WHAT AUNT M'EIAR OVERHEARD 155 
 
 Hammersmith arrest quite knocked out of his head a few days 
 later by a greater incident — his father having been arrested and 
 fined for an assault on a competitor in business, with an empty 
 sack. It was entirely owing to the quality of the beer at the 
 King's Arms that Mr. Rackstraw lost his temper. 
 
 But Daverill's corruption of the Court's pure air was not 
 destined to oblivion. It was revived by the merest accident; 
 the merest, that is, up to that date. There have been many 
 merer ones since, unless the phrase has been incorrectly used in 
 recent literature. 
 
 One day in July, when Uncle Moses was enjoying his after- 
 noon pipe with his old friend AffabiUty Bob, or Jerry Ahbone, 
 and reading one of the new penny papers — ^it was the one called 
 the Morning Star, now no more — ^he let his spectacles fall when 
 polishing them; and, rashly searching for them, broke both 
 glasses past all redemption. He was much annoyed, seeing that 
 he was in the middle of a sensational account of the escape of a 
 prisoner from Coldbath Fields house of detention; a gaol com- 
 monly known the " The Jug." It was a daring business, and 
 Uncle Mo had just been at the full of his enjoyment of it when 
 the accident happened. 
 
 " Have you never another pair. Mo ?" said Mr. AUbone. 
 And Uncle Mo called out to Aunt M'riar: — " M'riar ! — just take 
 a look round and see for them old glasses upstairs. I've stood 
 down on mine, and as good as spiled 'em. Look alive 1" For, 
 you see, he was all on end to know how this prisoner, who had 
 been put in irons for violence, and somehow got free and over- 
 powered a gaoler who came alone into his cell, had contrived 
 his final escape from the prison. 
 
 Mr, Alibone was always ready to deserve his name of Affability 
 Bob. " Give me hold of the paper. Mo," said he. " Where 
 was you ? . . . Oh yes — ^here we are ! . . . ' almost unparalleled 
 audacity.' . . . I'll go on there." For Uncle Mo had read some 
 aloud, and Mr. Alibone he wanted to know too, to say the truth. 
 And he really was a lot better scoUard than Mo — ^when it came 
 to readin out loud — and tackled " unparalleled " as if it was 
 just nothing at all; it being the word that brought Moses up 
 short; and. indeed. Aunt M'riar, whom we quote, had heard him 
 wrestling with it through the door, and considered it responsible 
 for the accident. Anyhow, Mr. Jerry was equal to it, and read 
 the remainder of the paragraph so you could hear every 
 word. 
 
 " What I don't make out," said Uncle Mo, " is why he didn't 
 
156 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 try the same game without getting the leg-irons on him. He 
 hadn't any call to be violent — ^that I see — ^barring ill-temper." 
 
 " That was all part of the game, Mo. Don't you see the 
 game ? It was putting reliance on the irons led to this here 
 warder making so free. You go to the Zoarlogical Gardens in 
 the Regency Park, and see if the keeper Ukes walking into the 
 den when the Bengal tiger's loose in it. These chaps get like 
 that, and they have to get the clinkers on 'em." 
 
 " Don't quite take your idear, Jerry. Wrap it up new." 
 
 " Don't you see, old Mo ? He shammed savage to get the 
 irons on his legs, knowing how he might come by a file — ^which 
 I don't, and it hasn't come out, that I see. Then he spends 
 the inside o' the night getting through 'em, and rigs himself up 
 like a picter, just so as if they was on. So the officer was took 
 in, with him going on like a lamb. Then up he jumps and 
 smashes his man's skull — makes no compliments about it, you 
 see. Then he closes to the door and locks it to enjoy a little 
 leisure. And then he changes their sootes of cloze across, and 
 out he walks for change of air. And he's got it !" 
 
 Uncle Mo reflected and said: — " P'r'aps !" Then Aant M'riar, 
 who had hunted up the glasses without waking the children, 
 reappeared, bringing them; and Uncle Mo found they wouldn't 
 do, and only prevented his seeing anything at all. So he was 
 bound to have a new pair and pay by the week. A cheap pair, 
 that would see him out, come to threepence a week for three 
 months. 
 
 The discovery of this painful fact threw the escaped prisoner 
 into the shade, and the Morning Star would have been lost sight 
 of — ^because it was only Monday's paper, after all ! — ^unless 
 Aunt M'riar she'd put it by for upstairs to have their turn of it, 
 and Mrs. Burr could always read some aloud to Mrs. Prichard, 
 failing studious energy on the part of the old lady. She 
 reproduced it in compliance with the current of events. 
 
 For Uncle Moses, settling down to a fresh pipe after supper, 
 said to his friend, similarly occupied: — "What, now, was the 
 name of that charackter — ^him as got out at the Jug ?" 
 
 " Something like Mackerel," said Mr. Ahbone. 
 
 " Wrong you are, for once, Jerry ! 'Twam't no more Mackerel 
 than it was Camberwell." 
 
 Said Mr. Jerry: — "Take an even tizzy on it. Mo?" He 
 twisted the paper about to recover the paragraph, and found it. 
 " Here we are ! ' Balph Daverill, alias Thornton, alias Wix, 
 alias /...'" 
 
WHAT AUNT M'RIAR OVERHEARD 157 
 
 " Never mind his ale-houses, Jerry. That's the name I'm 
 consamed with — Daverill . . . What's the matter with 
 M'riar ?" 
 
 Uncle Mo had not finished his sentence owing to an interrup- 
 tion. For Aunt M'riar, replacing some table-gear she was 
 shifting, had sat down suddenly on the nearest chair. 
 
 " Never you mind me, you two. Just you go on talking." 
 So said Aunt M'riar. Only she looked that scared it might 
 have been a ghost. So Mrs. Bm:r said after, who came in that 
 very minute from a prolonged trying on. 
 
 " Take a little something, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. He got 
 up and went to the cupboard close at hand, to get the some- 
 thing, which would almost certainly have taken the form of 
 brandy. But Aunt M'riar she said never mind her ! — she would 
 be all right in a minute. And in a metaphorical minute she 
 pulled herself together, and went on clearing off the supper- 
 table. Suggestions of remedies or assistance seemed alike 
 distasteful to her, whether from Mrs. Burr or the two men, and 
 there was no doubt she was in earnest in preferring to be left 
 to herself. So Mrs. Burr she went up to her own supper, with 
 thanks in advance for the newspaper when quite done with, 
 according to the previous intention of Aunt M'riar. 
 
 The two smokers picked life up at the point of interruption, 
 while Aunt M'riar made a finish of her operations in the kitchen. 
 Uncle Mo said : — " Good job for you I didn't take your wager, 
 Jerry. Camberwell isn't in it. Mackerel goes near enough to 
 landing — as near as Davenant, which is what young Carrots 
 called him." 
 
 This was the case — ^for Michael, though he had been silent 
 at the time about the Inquest, had been unable to resist the 
 temptation to correct Uncle Moses when the old boy asked: 
 " Wot did he say was the blooming name of the party he was 
 after — ^Daverill — Daffodil ?" His answer was : — " No it warn't ! 
 Davenant was what he said." His acumen had gone the length 
 of perceiving ia the stranger's name a resemblance to the version 
 of it heard more plainly in the Court at Hammersmith. This 
 correction had gratified and augmented his secret sense of 
 importance, without leading to any inquiries. Uncle Mo 
 accepted Davenant as more intrinsically probable than Daffodil 
 or Daverill, and forgot both names promptly. For a subsequent 
 mention of him as Devilskin, when he referred to the incident 
 later in the day, can scarcely be set down to a recollection of the 
 name. It was quite as much an appreciation of the owner. 
 
158 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " But what's your consarn with any of 'em. Mo ?" said Mr. 
 Jerry. 
 
 Uncle Moses took his pipe out of his mouth to say, abnost 
 oratorically: — "Don't you re-member, Jerry, me telling you — 
 Simday six weeks it was — about a loafing wagabond who came 
 into this Court to hunt up a widder named Daverill or Daffodil, 
 or some such a name ?" Uncle Moses paused a moment. A 
 plate had fallen in the kitchen. Nothing was broke. Aunt 
 M'riar testified, and closed the door. Uncle Mo continued: — " I 
 told you Davenant, because of young Radishes. But I'll pound 
 it I was right and he was wrong. Don't you caU to mind, 
 Jeremiah ?" For Uncle Mo often addressed his friend thus, for 
 a greater impressiveness. Jeremiah recalled the incident on 
 reflection. " There you are, you see," continued Uncle Mo. 
 "Now you bear in mind what I tell you, sir;" — ^this mode of 
 address was also to gain force — " He's him ! That man's him 
 — the very identical beggar ! And this widder woman he was 
 for hunting up, she's his mother or his aunt." 
 
 " Or his sister — ^no ! — sister-in-law." 
 
 " Not if she's a widder's usual age, Jerry." Uncle Mo always 
 figured to himself sisters, and even sisters-in-law, as essentially 
 short of middle Ufe. You may remember also his pecuUai view 
 that married twins could not survive their husbands. 
 
 " What sort of man did you make him out to be. Mo ?" 
 
 " A bad sort in a turn-up with no rules. Might be handy with 
 a knife on occasion. Foxy sort of wiper 1" 
 
 " Not your sort. Mo ?" 
 
 " Too much ill-will about him. Some of the Fancy may have 
 run into bad feeling in my time, but mostly when they shook 
 hands inside the ropes they meant it. How's yourself, M'riar ?" 
 Here Aunt M'riar came in after washing up, having apparently 
 overheard none of the conversation. 
 
 " I'm nicely. Mo, thankee ! Have you done with the paper, 
 Mr. AUbone ? . . . Thanks — I'll give it to 'em upstairs. . . . 
 Oh yes 1 I'm to rights. It was nothing but a swimming in 
 the head ! Good-night !" And off went Aunt M'riar, leaving 
 the friends to begin and end about two more pipes; to talk over 
 bygones of the Ring and the Turf, and to part after midnight. 
 
 Observe, please, that until Mr. Jerry read aloud from the Star 
 Mr. Wix's aliases. Aunt M'riar had had no report of this escaped 
 convict, except under the name of Davenant; and, indeed, very 
 little under that, because Uncle Mo, in narrating to her the 
 
WHAT AUNT M'RIAR OVERHEARD 159 
 
 man's visit to Sappa Court, though he gave the name of hia 
 inquiry as Davenant, spoke of the man himself almost exclu- 
 gively as Devilskin. And really she had paid very little atten- 
 tion to the story, or the names given. At the time of the man's 
 appearance in the Court nothing transpired to make her associate 
 him with any past ejcperience of her own. He was talked about 
 at dinner on that Sunday certainly; but then, consider the re- 
 sponsibilities of the carving and distribution of that shoulder of 
 mutton. 
 
 Aunt M'riar did not give the newspaper to Mrs. Burr, to 
 read to Mrs. Prichard, till next day. Perhaps it was too late, 
 at near eleven o'clock. When she did, it was with a reservation. 
 Said she to Mrs. Burr : — " You won't mind losing the bit I cut 
 out, just to keep for the address? — the cheapest shoes I ever did ! 
 — and an easy walk just out of Oxford Street." She added 
 that Dave was very badly off in this respect. But she said 
 nothing about what was on the other side of the shoe-shop 
 advertisement. Was she bound to do so ? Surely one side 
 of a newspaper-cutting justifies the scissors. If Aunt M'riar 
 could want one side, ever so little, was she under any obligation 
 to know anything about the other side ? 
 
 Anyhow, the result was that old Mrs. Prichard lost this 
 opportunity of knowing that her son was at large. And even 
 if the paragraph had not been removed, its small type might 
 have kept her old eyes at bay. Indeed, Mrs. Burr's testimony 
 went to show that the old lady's inspection of the paper scarcely 
 amounted to solid perusal. Said she, accepting the Star from 
 Aunt M'riar next morning, apropos of the withdrawn paragraph: 
 " That won't be any denial to Mrs. Prichard, ma'am. There's 
 a-many always wants to read the bit that's tore off, showin' a 
 contradictious temper like. But she ain't that sort, being more 
 by way of looking at the paper than studying of its contents." 
 Mrs. Burr then preached a short homily on the waste of time 
 involved in a close analysis of the daily press, such as would 
 enable the reader to discriminate between each day's issue and 
 the next. For her part the news ran similar one day with 
 another, without, however, blunting her interest in human 
 affairs. She imputed an analogous attitude of mind to old 
 Mrs. Prichard, the easier of maintenance that the old lady's 
 failing sight left more interpretations of the text open to her 
 imagination. 
 
 Mis. Burr, moreover, went on to say that Mrs. Prichard had 
 been that upset by heairing about the builders, that she wasn't 
 
160 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 herself. This odd result could not but interfere with the reading 
 of even the Ughtest literature. Its cause calls for explanation. 
 Circumstances had arisen which, had they occurred in the winter- 
 tinie, would have been a serious embarrassment to the attic 
 tenants in Sapps Court. As it chanced, the weather was warm 
 and dry; otherwise old Mrs. Prichard and Mrs. Burr would just 
 have had to turn out, to allow the builder in, to attend to the 
 front wall. For there was no doubt that it was bulging and 
 ought to have been seen to, aeons ago. And it was some days 
 since the landlord's attention had been called, and Bartletts the 
 builders had waked all the dwellers in Sapps Court who still slept 
 at six o'clock, by taking out a half a brick or two to make a 
 bearing for as many putlogs — pronounced pudlocks — ^as were 
 needed for a little bit of scaffold. For there was more than you 
 could do off a ladder, it you was God A'mighty Himself. Thus 
 Mr. Bartlett, and Aunt M'riar condemned his impiety freely. 
 Before the children ! Closely examined, his speech was rever- 
 ential, and an acknowledgment of the powers of the Constructor 
 of the Universe as against the octave-stretch forlorn of our 
 limitations. But it was Anthropomorphism, no doubt. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 OF LONDON EinLDEES, AND THME GEEAT SKILL. OF THE HUMILI- 
 ATING POSITION OF A SHAMEFACED BAT. HOW ME. BAETLETT 
 MADE ATT, GOOD. A PEEP INTO MES. PEICHAED's MIND, LEFT 
 ALONE WITH HEE PAST. ME. BAETLETT's TBUCK, AND DAVE 
 
 waedle's annexation of it. MES. tapping's IMPEESSION- 
 
 ABILITY. AN ITAXIAIT MUSICIAN'S MONKEY. A CLEAN FINISH. 
 ■ THE BULL AND THE DUCKPOND. OF MES. PEICHAEd's JEALOUSY 
 OF MES. MAEEOWBONE. CANON LAW. HOW DAVE DESOEIBED 
 HEE EIVAL. HEE SISTEE PHOEBE. BUT — ^WHY DAVEEILL, OF 
 ALL NAMES IN THE WOELD 1 FOUEPENNYWOETH OF CEUMPETS 
 
 If you have ever given attention to buildings in the course of 
 ereotion in London, you must have been struck with their 
 marvellous stability. The mere fact that they should remain 
 standing for five minutes after the removal of the* scaffold must 
 
THE INNEE LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 161 
 
 have seemed to you to reflect credit on the skill of the builder; 
 but that they should do so for a lifetime — even for a century ! — 
 a thing absolutely incredible. Especially you must have been 
 impressed by the nine-inch wall, in which every other course 
 at least consists of bats and closures. You will have marvelled 
 that so large a percentage of bricks can appear to have been 
 delivered broken; but this you would have been able to accoimt 
 for had you watched the builder at work, noting his vicious 
 practice of halving a sound brick whenever he wants a bat. 
 It is an instinct, deep-rooted in bricklayers, against which un- 
 professional remonstrance is useless — an instinct that he fights 
 against with difiiculty whenever popular prejudice calls for full 
 bricks on the face. So when the wall is not to be rendered in 
 compo or plaster, he just shoves a few in, on the courses of 
 stretchers, leaving every course of headers to a lifetime of 
 effrontery. What does it matter to him ? But it must be most 
 painful to a conscientious bat to be taken for a full brick by 
 every passer-by, and to be unable to contradict it. 
 
 Now the real reason why the top wall of No. 7, Sapps Court was 
 bulging was one that never could surprise anyone conversant to 
 this extent with nine-inch walls. For there is a weakest point 
 in every such wall, where the plate is laid to receive the joists, 
 or jystes; which may be pronounced either way, but should 
 always be nine-inch. For if they are six-inch you have to shove 
 'em in nearer together, and that weakens your wall, put it how 
 you may. You work it out and see if it don't come out so. So 
 said the builder, Mr. Bartlett, at No. 7, Sapps Court, when 
 having laid bare the ends of the top -floor joists in Mrs. Priohard's 
 front attic it turned out just like he said it would — six-inch 
 jystes with no hold to 'em, and onto that all perished at the ends ! 
 Why ever they couldn't go to a new floor when they done the 
 new roof Mr. Bartlett could not conceive. They had not, and 
 what was worse they had carried up the wall on the top of the 
 old brickwork, adding to the dead weight; and it only fit to pull 
 down, as you might say. 
 
 However, the weather was fine and warm aU the time Mr. 
 Bartlett rebuilt two foot of wall by sections; which he did careful, 
 a bit at a time. And all along, tiU they took away the scaffolding 
 and made good them two or three pudlock -holes off of a ladder, 
 they was no annoyance at all to IMts. Prichard, nor yet to Mrs. 
 Burr, excepting a little of that sort of flaviour that goes with old 
 brickwork, and a little of another that comes with new, and a bit 
 of plasterers' work inside to make good. Testimony was current 
 
 11 
 
162 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 in and about the house to this effect, and may be given broadly 
 in the terms in which it reached Uncle Moses. His comment was 
 that the building trade was a bad lot, mostly; you had only to 
 take your eye off it half a minute, and it was round at the nearest 
 bar trying the four-half. Mr. Jerry's experience had been the 
 same. 
 
 Mrs. Btirr was out all day, most of the time; so it didn't matter 
 to her. But it was another thing for the old woman, sometimes 
 alone for hours together; alone with her past. At such times her 
 sleeping or waking dreams mixed with the talk of the brick- 
 layers outside, or the sound of a piano from one of the superior 
 houses that back -wall screened the Court from — ^though they had 
 no call to give theirselves airs that the Court could see — a piano 
 on which talent was playing scales with both hands, but which 
 wanted tuning. Old Mrs. Prichard was not sensitive about a 
 httle discord now and again. As she sat there alone, knitting 
 worsteds or dozing, it brought back old times to her, before her 
 troubles began. She and her sister could both play easy times, 
 such as the " Harmonious Blacksmith " and the " Evening 
 Hymn," on the square piano she still remembered so well at 
 the Mill. And this modem piano — heard through open windows 
 in the warm summer air, and mixing with the indistinguishable 
 sounds of distant traffic — had something of the effect of that 
 instrument of seventy years ago, breaking the steady monotone 
 of rushing waters under the wheel that scarcely ever paused, 
 except on Sunday. What had become of the old square piano 
 she and Phcebe learned to play scales on ? What becomes of all 
 the old furnishings of the rooms of our childhood ? Did any 
 man ever identify the bed he slept in, the table he ate at, half a 
 century ago, in the chance-medley of second-hand — ^third-hand — 
 furniture his father's insolvency or his own consigned it to ? 
 Would she know the old square piano again now, with all its 
 resonances dead — a poor, faint jargon only in some few scattered 
 wires, far apart ? Yes — she would know it among a hundred, 
 by the inlaid bay -leaves on the lid that you could lift up to look 
 inside. But that was accounted lawless, and forbidden by 
 authority. 
 
 She dreamed herself back into the old time, and could see it 
 all. The sound of the piano became mixed, as she sat half dozing, 
 with the smell of the lilies of the valley which — according to a 
 pleasing fiction of Dolly Wardle — that little person's doll had 
 brought upstairs for her, keeping wide awake until she see 'em 
 safe on the table in a mug. But the sound and the smell were 
 
THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 163 
 
 of the essence of the mill, and were sweet to the old heart that 
 was dying slowly down — would soon die outright. Both merged 
 in a real dream with her sister's voice in it, saying inexplicably: 
 " In the pocket of your shot silk, dear." Then she woke with a 
 start, sorry to lose the dream; specially annoyed that she had 
 not heard what the carman — outside with her father — ^had begun 
 to say about the thing Phoebe was speaking of. She forgot what 
 that was, and it was very stupid of her. 
 
 That was Mr. Bartlett outside, laying bricks ; not the carman 
 at all. What was that he was saying ? 
 
 " B'longed to a Punch's show, he did. Couldn't stand it no 
 longer, he couldn't. The tune it got on his narves, it did ! If it 
 hadn't 'a been for a sort o' reel ease he got takin' of it quick and 
 slow — like the Hoarperer — he'd have gave in afore ; so there was 
 no pretence. It's all worry fine to say temp'ry insanity, but I tell 
 you it's the contrairy when a beggar comes to his senses and 
 drownds hisseK. Wot'd the Pope do if he had to play the same 
 tune over and over and over and over ? . . . Mortar, John ! 
 And 'and me up a nice clean cutter. That's your quorlity, my 
 son." And the Court rang musically to the destruction of a 
 good brick. 
 
 John — ^who was only Mr. Bartlett's son for purposes of rhetoric 
 — slapped his cold unwholesome mortar-pudding with a spade; 
 and ceded an instalment, presumably. Then his voice came: 
 " Wot didn't he start on a new toon for, for a wariation ?" 
 
 Mr. Bartlett was doing something very nice and exact with the 
 three-quarter he had just evolved, so his reply came in fragments 
 as from a mind preoccupied. " Tried it on he had — that game — 
 more times than once. . . . But the boys they took it up, and 
 aimed stones. . . . And the public kep' its money in its pocket 
 — ^not to encourage noo Frenchified notions — not like when they 
 was a boy. So the poor beggar had to jump in off of the end of 
 Southend Pier, and go out with the tide." He added, as 
 essential, that Southend Pier was better than two mile loqg; so 
 there was water to drownd a man when the tide was in. 
 
 The attention of very old people may be caught by a familiar 
 word, though such talk as this ripples by unheeded. The sad 
 tale of the Punch's showman — the exoteric one, evidently — 
 roused no response in the mind of old Mrs. Prichard, until it ended 
 with the tragedy at Southend. The name brought back that 
 terrible early experience of the sailing of the convict-ship — of 
 her despairing effort at a farewell to be somehow heard or seen 
 by the man whom she almost thought of aa in a grave, buried 
 
164 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 alive ! She was back again in the boat in the Medway, keeping 
 the black spot ahead in view — ^the accursed galley that was 
 bearing away her life, her very life; the man no sin could change 
 from what he was to her; the treasure of her being. She could 
 hear again the monotonous beat of her rowers' pair of oars, ill- 
 matched against the four sweeps of the convicts, ever gaining — 
 gaining. . . . 
 
 Surely she would be too late for that last chance, that seemed 
 to her the one thing left to live for. And then the upspringing 
 of that blessed breeze ofi the land that saved it for her. She 
 could recall her terror lest the flagging of their speed for the 
 hoisting of the sail should imdo them; the reassuring voice of a 
 hopeful boatman — " You be easy, missis ; we'll catch 'em up !" — 
 the less confident one of his mate — " Have a try at it, anyhow !" 
 Then her joy when the sail filled and the plashing of her way 
 spoke Hope beneath her bulwark as she caught the wind. Then 
 her dread that the Devil's craft ahead would make sail too, and 
 overreach them after all, and the blessing in her heart for her 
 hopeful oarsman, whose view was that the officer in charge would 
 not spare his convicts any work he could inflict. " He'll see to 
 it they am their breakfastis, missis. He ain't going to tmlock 
 their wristis off of the oars for to catch a ha'porth o' blow. You 
 may put your money on him for that." And then the sweet ship 
 upon the water, and her last sight of the man she loved as he 
 was dragged aboard into the Hell within — scarcely a man now — 
 only " 213 M " ! 
 
 Then the long hours that followed, there in the open boat 
 beneath the sun, whose setting found her still gazing in her dumb 
 despair on what was to be his floating home for months. Such a 
 home ! Scraps of her own men's talk were with her still — ^the 
 names of passing craft — the discontent in the fleet — the names 
 of landmarks on either coast. Among these Southend — ^the 
 word that caught her ear and set her a-thinMng. But there was 
 no pier two miles long there then. She was sure of that. 
 
 What was it Mr. Bartlett was talking about now ? A grievance 
 this time ! But grievances are the breath of life to the Human 
 Race. The source of this one seemed to be Sapps proprietor, 
 who was responsible for the restrictions on Mr. Bartlett's 
 enthusiasm, which might else have pulled the house down and 
 rebuilt it. " Wot couldn't he do like I told him for ?" — thus ran 
 the indictment — " Goard A'mighty don't know, nor yet any- 
 body else ! Why — he don't know, hisself ! I says to him, I 
 says, just you clear out them lodgers, I says, and give me the run 
 
THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 165 
 
 of the premises, I says, and it shan't cost you a fi'-pun note more 
 in the end, I says. Then if he don't go and tie me down to a price 
 for to make good front wall and all dy-lapidations. And onlest 
 he says wot he means by good, who's to know ? . . . Mortar, 
 John !" John supplied mortar with a slamp — a sound like the fall 
 of a pasty Titan on loose boards. The grievance was resumed, 
 but with a consolation. " Got 'im there, aocordin' as I think of 
 it ! Wot's his idear of good ? — ^that's wot / want to know. 
 Things is as you see 'em . . ." Mr. Bartlett would have said the 
 ease of things was percipi, had he been a Philosopher, and would 
 have felt as if he knew something. Not being one, he subsided — 
 with truisms — ^into silence, content with the weakness of Sapps 
 owner's entrenchments. 
 
 Mr. Bartlett completed his contract, according to his interpre- 
 tation of the word " good "; and it seems to have passed muster, 
 and been settled for on the nail. Which meant, in this case, 
 as soon as a surveyor had condemned it on inspection, and 
 accepted a guinea from Mr. Bartlett to overlook its short- 
 comings; two operations which, taken jointly, constituted a 
 survey, and were paid for on another naU later. The new bit of 
 brickwork didn't look any so bad, to the eye of impartiality, 
 now it was pointed up; only it would have looked a lot better — 
 mind you ! — ^if Mr. Bartlett had been allowed to do a bit more 
 pointing up on the surrounding brickwork afore he struck his 
 scafEold. But Sapp's landlord was a narrer-minded party — a 
 Conservative party — ^who wouldn't go to a sixpence more than 
 he was drove, though an economy in the long-run. The remarks 
 of the Court and its friends are embodied in these statements, 
 made after Mr. Bartlett had got his traps away on a truck, which 
 couldn't come down the Court by reason of the jam. It was, 
 however, a source of satisfaction to Dave Wardle, whose friends 
 climbed into it while he sat on the handle, outweighing him and 
 lifting him into the air. Only, of course, this joy lasted no 
 longer than till they started loading of it up. 
 
 It lasted long enough, for all that, to give quite a turn to 
 Mrs. Tapping, whom you may remember as a witness of Dave's 
 accident — ^the bad one — ^nine months ago. Ever since then — 
 if Mrs. Riley, to whom she addressed her remarks, would believe 
 her — Mrs. Tapping's heart had been in her mouth whenever she 
 had lighted her eye on young children a-playing in the gutters. 
 As children were plentiful, and preferred playing wherever the 
 chances of being run over seemed greatest, this must have been 
 a tax on Mrs. Tapping's constitution. She had, however, borne 
 
166 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 up wonderfully, showing no sign of loss of flesh; nor could her 
 flowing hair have been thinned — ^to judge by the tubular curls 
 that flanked her brows, which were neither blinkers nor cornu- 
 copias precisely; but which, opened like a scroll, would have 
 resembled the one; and, spirally prolonged, the other. It was the 
 careful culture of these which distracted the nose of Mrs. 
 Tapping's monde, preoccupied by a flavour of chandled tallow, 
 to a halo of pomatum. Mrs. Riley was also unchanged; she, 
 however, had no alarming cardiac symptoms to record. 
 
 But as to that turn Dave Wardle giv' Mrs. Tapping. It 
 really sent your flesh through your bones, all on edge like, to see 
 a child fly up in the air like that. So she testified, embellish- 
 ing her other physiological experience with a new horror unknown 
 to Pathologists. Mrs. Riley, less impressionable, kept an even 
 mind in view of the natural invulnerability of childhood and the 
 special guardianship of Divine Omnipotence. If these two 
 between them could not secure small boys of seven or eight 
 from disaster, what could ? The unbiassed observer — if he had 
 been passing at the time — ^might have thought that Dave's 
 chubby but vigorous handgrip and his legs curled tight round 
 the truck-handle were the immediate and visible reasons why he 
 was not shot across the truck into space. Anyhow, he held on 
 quite* tight, shouting loudly the next item of the programme — 
 " Now aU the other boys to jump out when oy comes to free. 
 One, two, free I" In view of the risk of broken bones the other 
 boys were prompt, and Dave came down triumphantly. Mrs. 
 Riley's confidence had been well founded. 
 
 " Ye'll always be too thinder-harruted about the young 
 spalpeens, me dyurr," she said. " Thrust them to kape their 
 skins safe ! Was not me son Phalim all as bad or wurruss. 
 And now to say his family of childher !" 
 
 Mrs. Tapping perceived her opportunity, and jumped at it. 
 " That is the truth, ma'am, what you say, and calls to mind the 
 very words my poor husband used frequent. So frequent, you 
 might say, that as often as not they was never out of his mouth. 
 ' Mary Ann Tapping, you are too tender-hearted for to carry on 
 at all; bein', as we are, subjick.' And I says back to him: 
 ' Tapping ' — I says — ' no more than my duty as a Christian 
 woman should. Read your Bible and you will find,' I says. 
 And Tapping he would say: — ' Right you are, Mary Ann, and 
 viewin' all things as a Gospel dispensation. But what I look at, 
 Mary Ann ' — he says — ' is the effect on your system. You are 
 that 'igh-strung and delicate organized that what is no account 
 
THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 167 
 
 to an 'arder fibre tells. So bear in mind what I say, Mary Ann 
 Tapping ' — be says — ' and crost across the way like the Good 
 Samaritan, keepin' in view that nowadays whatever we are we 
 are no longer Heathens, and cases receive attention from properly 
 constitooted Authorities, or are took in at the Infirmary/ 
 Referring, Mrs. Riley, ma'am, to an Italian organ-boy bit by his 
 own monkey, which though small was vicious, and open to 
 suspicion of poison. . . ." Mrs. Tapping dwelt upon her past 
 experience and her meritorious attitude in trying circumstances, 
 for some time. As, in this instance, she had offered refreshment 
 to the victim, which had been requisitioned by his monkey, who 
 escaped and gave way to his appetite on the top of a street- 
 lamp, but was recaptured when the lamplighter came with his 
 ladder. 
 
 " Shure there'll be nothing lift of the barrow soon barring the 
 bare fragmints of it," said Mrs. Riley, who had been giving 
 more attention to the boys and the truck than to the Italian and 
 the monkey. And really the repetition of the pleasing perform- 
 ance with the handle pointed to gradual disintegration of Mr. 
 Bartlett's property. 
 
 However, salvage was at hand. A herald of Mr. Bartlett 
 himself, or of his representatives, protruded slowly from Sapps 
 archway, announcing that his scaffold-poles were going back to 
 the sphere from wWch they had emanated on hire. It came 
 slowly, and gave a margin for a stampede of Dave and his 
 accomplices, leaving the truck very much aslant with the handle 
 in the air; whereas we all know that a respectable hand-barrer, 
 that has trusted its owner out of sight, awaits his return with the 
 quiet confidence of horizontality; or at least with the handle on 
 the ground. Mr. Bartlett's comment was that nowadays it 
 wam't safe to take one's eyes off of anything for half-a-quarter 
 of a minute, and there would have to be something done about 
 it. He who analyses this remark may find it hard to account 
 for its having been so intelligible at first hearing. 
 
 But Mrs. Tapping and Mrs. Riley — ^who were present — were 
 not analytical, and when Mr. Bartlett inquired suspiciously it 
 any of them boys belonged to either of you ladies, one of the 
 latter replied with a counter-inquiry: — " What harrum have the 
 young boys done ye, thin, misther ? Shure it's been a playzin' 
 little enjoymint forr thim afther school-hours !" Which re- 
 vealed the worst part of Mr. Bartlett's character and his satelUte 
 John's, a sullen spirit of revenge, more marked perhaps in the 
 man than in the master; for while the former merely referred to 
 
168 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the fact that he would know them again if he saw them, and 
 would then give them something to recollect him by, the latter said 
 he would halt-skin some of 'em aUve if he could just lay hands 
 on 'em. But the subject dropped, and Mr. Bartlett loaded up 
 his truck and departed. And was presently in collision with the 
 authorities for leaving it standing outside the Wheatsheaf , while 
 he and John consumed a haK-a-pint ia at the bar. 
 
 When the coast was quite clear, the offenders felt their way 
 back, not disguising their satisfaction at their transgression. 
 Mrs. Riley seemed to think that she ought to express the feeling 
 the Bench would have had, had it been present. For she saidr 
 " You'll be laying yoursilves open to pinalties, me boys, if ye 
 don't kape your hands off other payple's thrucks, and things 
 that don't consurrun ye. So lave thim be, and attind to your 
 schooling, till you're riddy for bid." Dave's blue eyes dwelt 
 doubtfully on the speaker, expressing their owner's imcertainty 
 whether she was in earnest or not. Indeed, her sympathy with 
 the offenders disqualified her for judicial impressiveness. Any- 
 how, Dave remained unimpressed, to judge by his voice as he 
 vanished down the Court to narrate this pleasant experience 
 to Uncle Moses. It was on Saturday afternoon that this took 
 place. Have you ever noticed the strange fatality which winds 
 up all building jobs on Saturday ? Only not this Saturday— 
 always next Saturday. It is called by some " making a clean 
 finish." 
 
 Old Mrs. Prichard lent herself to the fiction that she would 
 rejoice when the builders had made this clean finish. But she 
 pnly did so to meet expectation half-way. She had no such 
 eagerness for a qmet Sunday as was imputed to her. Very old 
 people, with hearing at a low ebb, are often hke this. The old lady 
 during the ten days Mr. Bartlett had contrived to extend his 
 job over — for his contract left all question of extras open — had 
 become accustomed to the sound of the men outside, and was 
 sorry when they died away in the distance, after breeding dis- 
 sension with poles in the middle distance; that is to say, the 
 Court below. She had felt alive to the proximity of human 
 creatures; for Mr. Bartlett and John still came under that 
 designation, though builders by trade. If it had not been 
 Saturday, with a prospect of Dave and Dolly Wardle when they 
 had done their dinners, she would have had no alleviation in 
 view, and would have had to divide the time between knitting 
 and dozing till Mrs. Burr came in — ^as she might or might not — 
 ftod tea eventuated : the vital moment of her day. 
 
THE INISTER LIFE OP SAPPS COURT 169 
 
 Howerer, this was Saturday, and Dave and Dolly came up 
 in full force as the afternoon mellowed; and Aunt M'riar accom- 
 panied them, and Mrs. Burr she got back early ofE her job, and 
 there was fourpennyworth of crumpets. Only that was three- 
 quarters of an hour later. 
 
 But Dave was eloquent about his adventure with the truck, 
 judgrag the old lady of over eighty quite a fit and qualified 
 person to sympathize with the raptures of sitting on a handle, 
 find being jerked violently into the air by a counterpoise of 
 confederates. And no doubt she was; but not to the extent 
 imputed to her by Dave, of a great sense of privation from 
 inability to go through the experience herself. Nevertheless 
 there was that in his blue eyes, and the disjointed rapidity of his 
 exposition of his own satisfaction, that could bridge for her the 
 gulf of two-thirds of a century between the sad old now — the 
 vanishing time — and the merry then of a growing hfe, and all 
 the wonder of the things to be. The dim illumination of her 
 smile spread a little to her eyes as she made believe to enter 
 into the glorious details of the exploit; though indeed she was 
 far from clear about many of them. And as for Dave, no 
 suspicion crossed his mind that the old lady's professions of 
 regret were feigned. He condemned Aunt M'riar's attitude, as 
 that of an interloper between two kindred souls. 
 
 "There, child, that'll do for about Mr. Bartlett's truct." 
 So the good woman had said, showing her lack of geist — her 
 Philistinism. "Now you go and play at The Hospital with 
 Dolly, and don't make no more noise than you can help." This 
 referred to a game very popular with the children since Dave's 
 experience as a patient. It promised soon to be the only record 
 of his injuries, as witness his gymnastics of this morning. 
 
 But he was getting to be such a big boy now — seven last 
 jjirthday — ^that playing at games was becoming a mere concession 
 to Dolly's tender youth. Old Mrs. Prichard's thin soprano had 
 an appeal to this effect in it — on Dave's behalf — as she said: 
 " Oh, but the dear child may tell me, please, all about the truck 
 and some more things, too, before he goes to play with Dolly. 
 He has always such a many things to tell, has this little man 1 
 Hasn't he now, Mrs. Wardle ?" 
 
 Aunt M'riar — good woman as she was — had a vice. She 
 always would improve occasions. This time she must needs 
 say: — "There, Davy, now! Hear what Mrs. Prichard says — 
 so kind ! You tell Mrs. Prichard all about Mrs. Marrowbone 
 and the bull in the duckpond. You tell her !" 
 
170 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Dave, with absolute belief in the boon he was conferring on his 
 venerable heaier, started at once on a complicated statement, 
 as one who accepted the instruction in the spirit in which it was 
 given. But first he had to correct a misapprehension. "The 
 bool wasn't in the duckpong. Tfeo bool was in Farmer Jones's 
 field, and the field was in the dackpong on the other side. And 
 the dusk was in the pong where there wasn't no green." Evi- 
 dently an oasis of black juice in the weed, which ducks enjoy. 
 Dave thought no explanation necessary, and went on : — " Then 
 Farmer Jones he was a horseback, and he rodid acrost the field, 
 he did. And he undooed the gate with his whip to go froo, and 
 it stumbled and let the bool froo, and Farmer Jones he rodid off 
 to get the boy that understoodid the bool. He fetched him back 
 behind his saddle, he did. And then the boy he got the bool'a 
 nose under control, and leaded him back easy, and they shet 
 to the gate." One or two words — " control," for instance — 
 treasured as essential and conscientiously repeated, gave Dave 
 some trouble; but he got through them triumphantly. 
 
 " Is that all the story, Dave ?" said Mrs. Prichard, who was 
 affecting deep interest; although it was by now painfully evident 
 that Dave had involved himseM in a narrative without much 
 plot. He nodded decisively to convey that it was substantially 
 complete, but added to round it off : — " Mr. Marrowbone the Smith 
 from Crincham he come next day and mended up the gate, only 
 the bool he was tied to a post, and the boy whistled him a tune, 
 or he would have tostid Mr. Marrowbone the Smith." 
 
 Said Aunt M'riar irrelevantly: — "What was the tune he 
 whistled, Dave ? You tell Mrs. Prichard what tune it was he 
 whistled !" To which Dave answered with reserve: — " A long 
 tune." Probably the whistler's stock was limited, and he 
 repeated the piece, whatever it was, da capo ad libitum. This 
 legend — ^the thin plot of Dave's story — ^will not strike some who 
 have the misfortune to own bulls as strange. In some parts of 
 the coimtry boys are always requisitioned to attend on bulls, 
 who especially hate men, perhaps resenting their monopoly of the 
 term manhood. 
 
 This conversation would scarcely have called for record but 
 for what it led to. 
 
 Old Mrs. Prichard, like Aunt M'riar, had a vice. It was 
 jealousy. Her eighty years' experience of a bitter world had 
 left her — ^for all that she would sit quiet for hours and say 
 never a word — still longing for the music of the tide that had 
 gone out for her for ever. The love of this little man — ^which 
 
THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 171 
 
 had not yet learned its value, and was at the service of age and 
 youth alike — ^was to her even as a return of the sea-waves to 
 some unhappy mollusc left stranded to dry at leisure in the sun. 
 But her heart was in a certain sense athirst for the monopoly of 
 his blue eyes. She did not grudge him to any legitimate claimant 
 — ^to Uncle Mo or to Aunt M'riar, nor even to Mrs. Burr; though 
 that good woman scarcely challenged jealousy. Indeed, Mrs. 
 Burr regarded Dave and Dolly as mere cake-consumers — a public 
 hungering for sweet-stuffs, and only to be bought off by occasional 
 concessions. It was otherwise with unknown objects of Dave's 
 affection, whose claims on him resembled Mrs. Prichard's own. 
 Especially the old grandmother at the Convalescent Home, or 
 whatever it was, where the child had recovered from his terrible 
 accident. She grudged old Mrs. Marrowbone teer place in Dave's 
 affections, and naturally lost no opportunity of probing into and 
 analysing them. 
 
 Said the old lady to Dave, when the bull was disposed of: 
 "Was Mr. Marrowbone the Smith old Mrs. Marrowbone's 
 grandson ?" Dave shook his head rather solemnly and regret- 
 fully. It is always pleasanter to say yes than no ; but in this 
 case Truth was compulsory. " He wasn't any fink of Granny 
 Marrowbone's. No, he wasn't !" said he, and continued shaking 
 his head to rub the fact in. 
 
 "Now you're making of it up, Dave," said Aimt M'riar, 
 " You be a good Uttle boy, and say Mr. Marrowbone the Smith 
 was old Mrs. Marrowbone's gi-andson. Because you know he 
 was — ^now don't you, Davy ? You tell Mrs. Prichard he was 
 old Mrs. Marrowbone's grandson !" Dave, however, shook his 
 head obdurately. No concession ! 
 
 " Perhaps he was her son," said Mrs. Prichard. But this 
 surmise only prolonged the headshake; which promised to 
 become chronic, to pause only when some ground of agreement 
 could be discovered. 
 
 " The child don't above half know what he's talking about, 
 not to say know J" Thus Aunt M'riar in a semi-aside to the 
 old lady. It was gratuitous insult to add: — " He don't reely 
 know what's a grandson, ma'am." 
 
 Dave's blue eyes flashed indignation. " Yorse I does know !" 
 cried he, loud enough to lay himself open to remonstrance. 
 He continued, under due restraint: — " I'm going to be old Mrs, 
 Marrowbone's grangson." He then remembered that the treaty 
 was conditional, and added a proviso : — " So long as I'm a 
 good boy !" 
 
172 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Won't you be my grandson, too, Davy darling ?" said old 
 Mrs. Prichard. And, if you can conceive it, there was pain in her 
 voice — real pain — as well as the treble of old age. She was 
 jealous, you see; jealous of this old Mrs. Marrowbone, who 
 seemed to come between her and her little new-found waterspring 
 in the desert. 
 
 But Dave was embarrassed, and she took his embarrassment 
 for reluctance to grant her the same status as old Mrs. Marrowbone. 
 It was nothing of the sort. It was merely his doubt whether 
 such an arrangement would be permissible under canon law. 
 It was bigamy, however much you chose to prevaricate. The 
 old lady's appealing voice racked Dave's feelings. " I carn't !" 
 he exclaimed, harrowed. " I've spromussed to be Mrg. Marrow- 
 bone's grangson— rl have." And thereupon old Mrs. Prichard, 
 perceiving that he was really distressed, hastened to set his mind 
 at ease. Of course he couldn't be her grandson, if he was already 
 Mrs. Marrowbone's. She overlooked or ignored the possible 
 compromise offered by the fact that two grandmothers are the 
 common lot of all mankind. But it would be unjust — this was 
 clear to her — ^that Dave should suffer in any way from her jealous 
 disposition. So she put her little grievance away in her inmost 
 heart — where indeed there was scarcely room for it, so pre- 
 occupied had the places been — and then> as an active step 
 towards forgetting it, went on to talk to Dave about old Mrs. 
 Marrowbone, although she was not Mr. Marrowbone the Smith's 
 grandmother. 
 
 " Tell us, Dave, dear, about old Mrs. Marrowbone. Is she 
 very old ? Is she as old as me ?" To which Aunt M'riar as a 
 sort of Greek chorus added: — " There, Davy, now, you be a good 
 boy, and tell how old Mrs. Marrowbone is." 
 
 Dave considered. " She's not the soyme oyge," said he. 
 " She can walk to chutch and back, Sunday <pioming." But this 
 was a judgment from physical vigour, possibly a fallible guide. 
 Dave, being prompted, attempted description. Old Mrs. 
 Marrowbone's hair was the only point he could seize on. A cat, 
 asleep on the hearthrug, supplied a standard of comparison. 
 "^Granny Marrowbone's head's the colour of this," said Dave, 
 with decision, selecting a pale grey stripe. And Widow Thrale's 
 was hke that — one with a deeper tone of brown, with scarcely 
 any perceptible grey. 
 
 " And which on Pussy is most like mine, Dave ?" said Mrs. 
 Prichard. There was no hesitation in the answer to this. It 
 was " that sort "; — that is, the colour of Pussy's stomach, un- 
 
THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 173 
 
 equivocal white. And which did Dave like best — an unfair 
 question which deserved and got a Parliamentary answer. 
 " All free/' said Dave. 
 
 But this was merely colour of hair, a superficial distinction. 
 How about Granny Marrowbone's nose. " It's the soyme 
 soyze/' was the verdict, given without hesitation. What colour 
 were her eyes ? " Soyme as yours." But Dave was destined 
 to incur public censure — Aunt M'riar representing the public — 
 for a private adventure into description. " She's more teef 
 than you," said he candidly. 
 
 " Well, now, I do declare if ever any little boy was so rude ! 
 I never did ! Whatever your Uncle Moses would say if he was 
 told, I can't think." Thus Aunt M'riar. But her attitude was 
 artificial, for appearance sake, and she knew perfectly well that 
 Uncle Moses would only laugh and encourage the boy. The 
 culprit did not seem impressed, though ready to make con- 
 cessions. Yet he did not really better matters by saying : — " She's 
 got some teef, she has " ; leaving it to be inferred that old Mrs. 
 Prichard had none, which was very nearly true. The old lady 
 did not seem the least hurt. Nor was she hurt even when Dave — 
 seeking merely to supply accurate detail — added, in connection 
 with the old hand that wandered caressingly over his locks and 
 brows : — " Her hands is thicker than yours is, a lot !" 
 
 " I often think, Mrs. Wardle," said she, taking no advantage 
 of the new topic offered, " what we might be spared if only our 
 teeth was less untrustworthy. Mine stood me out till over fifty, 
 and since then they've been going — agoing. Never was two such 
 rows of teeth as I took with me to the Colony. Over fifty years 
 ago, Mrs. Wardle !" 
 
 " To think of that !" said Aunt M'riar. It was the time — not 
 the teeth — that seemed so wonderful. Naturally old Mrs, 
 Prichard's teeth went with her. But fifty years ! And their 
 owner quite bright still, when once she got talking. 
 
 She was more talkative than usual this afternoon, and con- 
 tinued : — " No, I do not believe, Mrs. Wardle, there was ever a girl 
 with suchlike teeth as mine were then." And then this memory 
 brought back its companion memory of the long past, but with 
 no new sadness to her voice : " Only my dear sister Phoebe's, Mrs. 
 Wardle, I've told you about. She was my twin sister . . . I've 
 told you . . . you recollect ? . . ." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, ma'am, and died when you was in the Colony !" 
 
 " I've never seen another more beautiful than Phoebe." She 
 spoke with such supreme unconsciousness of the twinship that 
 
174 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Aunt M'riar forgot it, too, until her next worda came. " I 
 was never free to say it of her in those days, for they would have 
 made sport of me for saying it. There was none could tell us 
 apart then. It does not matter now." She seemed to fall away 
 into an absent-minded dream, always caressing Dave's sunny 
 locks, which wanted cutting. 
 
 Aunt M'riar did not instantly perceive why a twin could not 
 praise her twin's beauty; at least, it needed reflection. She was 
 clear on the point, however, by the time Dave, merely watchful 
 till now, suddenly asked a question : — " What are stwins ?" He 
 had long been anxious for enlightenment on this point, and now 
 saw his opportunity. His inquiry was checked — ^if his curiosity 
 was not satisfied — ^by a statement that when a little boy had a 
 brother the same age that was twins, incorrectly atwins. He had 
 to afEect satisfaction. 
 
 The old woman, roused by Dave's question, attested the 
 general truth of his informant's statements; then went back to 
 the memory of her sister. " But I never saw her again," said 
 she. 
 
 " No, ma'am," said Aunt M'riar. " So I understood. It was 
 in England she died ?" 
 
 " No — ^no 1 Out at sea. She was drowned at sea. Fifty 
 years ago . . . Yes ! — ^weU on to fifty years ago." She fell back 
 a little into her dreamy mood; then roused herseK to say: — " I 
 often wonder, Mrs. Wardle, suppose my sister had lived to be my 
 age, should we have kept on alike ?" 
 
 Aunt M'riar was not a stimulus to conversation as far as 
 perspicuity went. A general tone of sympathy had to make 
 up for it. " We should have seen, ma'am," said she. 
 
 " Supposing it had all gone on hke as it was then, and we had 
 just grown old together ! Supposing we had neither married, 
 and no man had come into it, should we all our lives have been 
 mistaken for one another, so you could not tell us apart ?" 
 
 Aunt M'riar said " Ah !" and shook her head. She was not 
 imaginative enough to contribute to a conversation so hypo- 
 thetical. 
 
 There was nothing of pathos, to a bystander, in the old woman's 
 musical voice, beyond its mere age — ^its reedy tone — ^which would 
 have shown in it just as clearly had she been speaking of any 
 topic of the day. Conceive yourself speaking about long for- 
 gotten events of your childhood to a friend bom thirty — ^forty — 
 fifty years later, and say if such speech would not be to you 
 what old Mrs. Prichard's was to herself and her hearer, much like 
 
THE INNER LIFE OF SAPPS COURT 175 
 
 revival of the past history of someone else. It was far too long 
 ago now — ^if it had ever been real; for sometimes indeed it 
 seemed all a dream — to lacerate her heart in recollecting it. The 
 memories that could do that belonged to a later time; some very 
 much later — the worst of them. Not but that the early 
 memories could sting, too, when dragged from their graves by 
 some remorseless resurrectionist — some sound, like that piano; 
 some smell, like those lilies of the valley. Measure her case 
 against your own experience, if its span of time is long enough to 
 supply a parallel. 
 
 Her speech became soliloquy — ^was it because of a certain 
 want of pliancy in Aunt M'riar ? — ^and seemed to dwell in a dis- 
 jointed way on the possibility that her sister might have changed 
 with time otherwise than herseK, and might even have been hard 
 to recognise had they met again later. It would be different 
 with two girls of different ages, each of whom would after a long 
 parting have no guide to the appearance of her sister; while 
 twins might keep alike; the image of either, seen in the glass, 
 forecasting the image of the other. 
 
 Aunt M'riar made a poor listener to this, losing clues and 
 forging false constructions. But her obliging disposition made 
 her seem to understand when she did not, and did duty for 
 intelligence. Probably Dave — on the watch for everything 
 within human ken — ^understood nearly as much as Aunt M'riar. 
 Something was on the way, though, to rouse her, and when it came 
 she started as from a blow. What was that the old lady had 
 just said ? How came that name in her mouth ? . . . 
 
 " What I said just now, Mrs. Wardle ? . . . Let me see ! . . . 
 About what my husband used to say — that Phoebe's memory 
 would go to sleep, not Uke mine, and I was a fool to fret so about 
 her. I would not know her again, maybe, if I saw her, nor she 
 me. . . . Yes — ^he said all that. . . . What ?" 
 
 " What was the name you said just now ? Ralph , . . some- 
 thing ! Ralph what ?" 
 
 " Oh — ^yes — I know ! What Phoebe would have been if she 
 had married my husband's brother — ^Mrs. Ralph Daverill. . . ." 
 
 " Good Lord !" exclaimed Aunt M'riar, 
 
 " Ah, there now !" said the old lady. " To think I should 
 never have told you his name !" She missed the full strength of 
 Aunt M'riar's exclamation; aocotmted it mere surprise at what 
 was either a reference to a former husband or an admission of a 
 pseudonym. Aunt M'riar was glad to accept matters as they 
 stood, merely disclaiming excessive astonishment and suggesting 
 
176 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 that she might easy have guessed that Mrs Prichard had been 
 married more than once. She was not — she said — one of the 
 prying sort. But she was silent about the cause of her amaze- 
 ment ; putting the name in a safe comer of her memory, to grapple 
 with it later. 
 
 The old woman, however, seemed to have no wish for conceal- 
 ments, saying at once : — " I never had but one husband, Mrs. 
 Wardle; but I'll teU you. I've always gone by the name of 
 Prichard ever since my son. . . . But I never told you of him 
 neither ! It is he I would forget. . . ." This disturbed her — 
 made her take the caressing hand restlessly from Dave's head, 
 to hold and be held by the other. She had to be silent a moment ; 
 then said hurriedly: — " He was Ralph Thornton, after his father 
 and uncle. His father was Thornton — Thornton Daverill. . . . 
 I'll tell you another time." Thereupon Aunt M'riar held her 
 tongue, and Mrs. Burr came in with the fourpennyworth of 
 crumpets. 
 
 An imskilful chronicler throws unfair burdens on his reader. 
 The latter need not read the chronicle certainly; there is always 
 that resource ! If, however, he reads this one, let him keep in 
 mind that Aunt M'riar did not know that the escaped prisoner 
 of her newspaper-cutting had been asking for a widow of the 
 name of Daverill, whom he had somehow traced to Sapps Court, 
 any more than she knew — at that date — ^that old Mrs. Prichard 
 should really have been called old Mrs. Daverill. She only knew 
 that his name was Daverill. So it was not in order to prevent 
 Mrs. Prichard seeing it that she cut that paragraph out of the 
 Morning Star. She must have had some other reason. 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 177 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, WHO HUNG MBE. NATURAL HISTORY, 
 AND AETIITCIAL CHRONOLOGY. NEITHER WAS TWENTY YEARS 
 YOUNGER. CONEIDENCES ABOUT ANOTHER LADY AND GENTLE- 
 MAN, SOME YEARS SINCE. HOW THE FIRST GENTLEMAN 
 FINISHED HIS SECOND CIGAR. DR. LIVINGSTONE AND SEKE- 
 LETU. MR. NOBBUBY's QUORUM. WHY ADRIAN TORREN3 
 WOKE UP, AND WHOSE VOICE PROMISED NOT TO MENTION HIS 
 EYES. FEUDAL BEEF-TEA, AND MRS. BAILEY. AN EARLY 
 VISIT, FROM AN EARL. AN EXPERIMENT THAT DISCLOSED A 
 PAINFUL FACT 
 
 It is three weeks later at the Castle ; three weeks later, that is, 
 than the story's last sight of it. It is the hottest night we have 
 had this year, says general opinion. Most of the many guests 
 are scattered in the gardens after dinner, enjoying the night- 
 air and the golden moon, which means to climb high in the 
 cirrus-dappled blue in an hour or so. And then it will be a fine 
 moonlight night. 
 
 On such a night there is always music somewhere, and this 
 evening someone must be staying indoors to make it, as it comes 
 from the windows of the great drawing-room that opens on the 
 garden. Someone is playing a Beethoven sonata one knows 
 well enough to pretend about with one's fingers, theoretically. 
 Only one can't think which it is. So says Miss Smith-Dickenson, 
 in the Shrubbery, to her companion, who is smoking a Havana 
 large enough to play a tune on if properly perforated. But 
 she wishes Miss Torrens would stop, and let Gwen and 
 the Signore sing some Don Juan. That is Miss Dickenson's 
 way. She always takes exception to this and to that, 
 and wants t'other. It does not strike the Hon. Percival 
 Pellew, the smoker of the big cigar, as a defect in her character, 
 but rather as an indication of its illumination — a set-off to her 
 appearance, which is, of course, at its best in the half -dark of a 
 Shrubbery by moonlight, but is paasee for all that. Can't help 
 that, now, can we ? But Mr. Pellew can make retrospective 
 concession; she must have told well enough, properly dressed, 
 fifteen years ago. She don't exactly bear the light now, and 
 
 one can't expect it. 
 
 ^ 12 
 
178 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The Hon. Percival complimented himself internally on a greater 
 Bpirituality, which can overlook such points — mere clay ? — and 
 discern a peculiar essence of soul in this lady which, had they 
 met in her more palatable days, might have been not uncon- 
 genial to his own. Rather a pity 1 
 
 Miss Dickenson could identify a glow-worm and correct the 
 ascription of its light to any fellow's cigar-end thrown away. 
 She made the best figure that was compatible with being in- 
 dubitably passie when she went down on one knee in connection 
 with this identification. Mr. Pellew felt rather relieved. Her 
 outlines seemed somehow to warrant or confirm the intelligence 
 he had pledged himself to. He remarked, without knowing any- 
 thing about it, that he thought glow-worms didn't show up 
 till September. 
 
 " Try again, Mr. Pellew. It's partridge-shooting that doesn't 
 begin till September. That's what you're thinking of." 
 • " WeU— August, then !" 
 
 "No — ^that's grouse, not glow-worms. You see, you are 
 reduced to July, and it's July still. Do take my advice, Mr. 
 Pellew, and leave Natural History alone. Nobody will ever 
 "know you know nothing about it, if you hold your tongue." 
 
 The Hon. Percival was silent. He was not thinking about 
 his shortcomings as a Natural Historian. The reflection in his 
 mind was : — " What a pity this woman isn't twenty years 
 younger !" He could discriminate — so he imagined — ^between 
 mere flippancy and spontaneous humour. The latter would 
 have sat so well on the girl in her teens, and he would then have 
 accepted the former as juvenile impertinence with so much less 
 misgiving that he was being successfully made game of. He 
 could not quite shake free of that suspicion. Anyhow, it was 
 a pity Miss Smith-Dickenson was thirty-seven. That was the 
 age her friend Lady Ancester had assessed her at, in private con- 
 versation with Mr. Pellew. " Though what the deuce my 
 cousin Philippa " — ^thus ran a very rapid thought through his 
 mind — " could think I wanted to know the young woman's age 
 for, I can't imagine." 
 
 " There it is !" said the lady, stooping over the glow-worm. 
 *' Little hairy thing ! I won't disturb it." She got on her feet 
 again, saying: — " Thank you — I'm all right !" in requital of a 
 slight excm'sion towards unnecessary help, which took the form 
 of a jerk cut short and an apologetic tone. " But don't talk 
 Zoology or Botany, please," she continued. " Because there's 
 something I want you to tell me about." 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 179 
 
 " Anything consistent with previous engagements. Can't 
 break any promises." 
 
 " Have you made any promises about the man upstairs ?" 
 
 " Not the ghost of a one ! But he isn't ' the man upstairs ' 
 to me. He's the man in the room at the end of my passage. 
 That's how I came to see him." 
 
 " You did see him ?" 
 
 " Oh yes — ^talked to him till the nurse stopped it. I foimd 
 we knew each other. Met him in the Tyrol — at Meran — ten years 
 ago. He was quite a boy then. But he remembered me quite 
 well. It was this morning." 
 
 " Did he recognise you, or you him ?" 
 
 "Why — neither exactly. We found out about Meran by 
 talking. No — poor chap ! — he can't recognise anybody, by 
 sight at least. He won't do that yet awhile." 
 
 The lady said " Oh ?" in a puzzled voice, as though she heard 
 something for the first time; then continued: " Do you know, I 
 have never quite realised that . . . that the eyes were so serious. 
 I knew all along that there was something, but . . . but I 
 understood it was only weakness." 
 
 " They have been keeping it dark — quite reasonably and 
 properly, you know — but there it is ! He can't see — simply can't 
 see. His eyes look all right, but they won't work. His sister 
 knows, of course, but he has boimd her over to secrecy. He made 
 me promise to say nothing, and I've broken my promise, I sup- 
 pose. But — somehow — I thought you knew." 
 
 " Only that there was something — ^no idea that he was blind. 
 But I won't betray your confidence." 
 
 " Thank you. It's only a matter of time, as I gather. But 
 a bad job for him till he gets his sight again." 
 
 " He will, I suppose, in the end ?" 
 
 " Oh yes — in the end. Sir Coupland is cautious, of course. 
 But I don't fancy he's really imeasy. His sight might come 
 back suddenly, he said, at any moment. Of course, he believes 
 his eyesight will come back. Only meanwhile he wants — ^it 
 was a phrase of his own — to keep all the excruciation for his 
 own private enjoyment. That's what he said !" 
 
 " I see. Of course, that makes a diJEEerence. And you think 
 Sir Coupland thinks he will get all right again ?" 
 
 Mr. Pellew says he does think so, reassuringly. " It has always 
 struck me as peculiar," says he, " that Tim's family ... I 
 beg pardon — I should have said the Earl's. But you see 
 I remember him as a kid — ^we are cousins, you know — and 
 
180 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 his sisters always called him Tim. . . . Well, I mean the family 
 here, you know, seem to know so little of the Torrenses. Lady 
 Gwen doesn't seem to have recognised this chap in the Park." 
 
 " I believe she has never seen him. He has been a great deal 
 abroad, you know." 
 
 " Yes, he's been at German Universities, and games of that 
 sort." 
 
 " Is that your third cigar, Mr. Pellew ?" 
 "No — second. Come, I say. Miss Dickenson, two's not 
 much. . . ." 
 
 But her remark was less a tobacco -crusade than a protest 
 against too abrupt a production of family history by a family 
 friend. Mr. Pellew felt confident it would come, though; and it 
 did, at about the third whiff of the new cigar. 
 " I suppose you know the story ?" 
 " Couldn't say, without hearing it first to know." 
 " About Philippa and Sir Hamilton Torrens ?" 
 " Can't say I have. But then I'm the sort of fellah nobody 
 ever tells things to." 
 
 " I suppose I oughtn't to have mentioned it." 
 " I shall not tell anyone you did so. You may rely on that." 
 Mj. Pellew gave his cigar a half-holiday to say this seriously, 
 and Miss Dickenson felt that his type, though too tailor-made, 
 was always to be relied on; you had only to scratch it to find a 
 Gentleman underneath. No audience ever fails to applaud the 
 discovery on the stage. Evidently there was no reserve needed 
 — a relation of the Earl, too ! Still, she felt satisfied at this 
 passing recognition of Prudence on her part. Preliminaries had 
 been done justice to. 
 
 She proceeded to tell what she knew of the episode of her friend's 
 early engagement to the father of the gentleman who had been 
 shot. It was really a very fiat story; so hke a thousand others 
 of its sort as scarcely to claim narration-space. Youth, beauty, 
 high spirits, the London season, first love — ^warranted the 
 genuine article — parental opposition to the union of Romeo and 
 Juliet, on the vulgar, unpoetical ground of Romeo having no 
 particular income and vague expectations; the natural im- 
 patience of eighteen and five-and-twenty when they don't get 
 their own way in everything; misunderstandings, ups-and-downs, 
 reconciliations and new misunderstandings; finally one rather 
 more serious than its predecessors, and judicious non-inter- 
 ference of bystanders — ^underhanded bystanders who were se- 
 cretly favouring another suitor, who wasn't so handsome and 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 181 
 
 showy as Romeo certainly, but who was of sterling worth and all 
 that sort of thing. Besides, he was very nearly an Earl, and 
 Hamilton Torrens was three-doors-of£ his father's Baronetcy 
 and Pensham Steynes. This may have had its weight with Juliet. 
 Miss Dickenson candidly admitted that she herself would have 
 been influenced; but then, no doubt she was a worldling. Mr. 
 Pellew admired the candour, discerning in it exaggeration to 
 avoid any suspicion of false pretence. He did not suspect him- 
 self of any imdue leniency to this lady. She was altogether too 
 passee to admit of any such idea. 
 
 The upshot of the flat episode, of course, was that PhiUppa 
 " became engaged " to her new suitor, and did not fall out with 
 him. They were married within the year, and three months 
 later her former fiance's father died, rather unexpectedly. His 
 eldest son, coming home from Burmah on sick-leave, died on the 
 voyage, of dysentery; and his second brother, a naval officer, 
 was in the autumn of the same year killed by a splinter at the 
 Battle of Navarino. So by a succession of fatalities Romeo 
 found himself the owner of his father's estate, and a not very 
 distant neighbour of Juhet and his successful rival. 
 
 It appeared that he had consoled himself by marrying a Miss 
 Abercrombie, Miss Dickenson beHeved. These Romeos always 
 marry a Miss Something; who, owing to the way she comes into 
 the story, is always on the top-rung of the ladder of insipidity. 
 Nobody cares for her; she appears too late to interest us. No 
 doubt there were several Miss Abercrombies on draught, and he 
 selected the tallest or the cleverest or the most musical, avoiding, 
 of course, the dowdiest. 
 
 However, there was Lady Ancestor's romance, told to account 
 for the languid intercourse between the Castle and Pensham 
 St«ynes, and the non-recognition of one another by Gwen and 
 the Man in the Park. Miss Dickenson added a rider to the effect 
 that she could quite understand the position. It would be a 
 matter of mutual tacit consent, tempered down by formal calls 
 enough to allay local gossip. " I think Miss Torrens has 
 stopped," said she collaterally; you know how one speaks 
 collaterally ? " Shall we walk towards the house ?" 
 
 Then the Hon. Percival made a speech he half repented of 
 later; videlicet, when he woke next morning. It became the 
 fulcrum, as it were, of an inexplicable misgiving that Miss 
 Dickenson would be bearing the light worse than ever when he 
 saw her at breakfast. The speech was : — " It's very nice out here. 
 One can hear the Don at Covent Garden. Besides . . . one can 
 
182 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 hear out here just as well." This must have been taken to mean 
 that two could. For the lady's truncated reply was : — " Till 
 you've finished your cigar, then !" 
 
 Combustion was lip-close when the cigar-end was thrown 
 away. The reader of this story may be able to understand a 
 thing its writer can only record without understanding — the 
 fact that this gentleman felt grateful to the fine moonlight night, 
 now nearly a fait-accompli, for enhancing this lady's white silk, 
 which favoured a pretence that she was only reasonably passie, 
 and enabled him to reflect upon the contour of her throat with- 
 out interruption from its skin. For it had a contour by moon- 
 light. Well ! — sufficient to the day is the evil thereof; dayUght 
 might have its say to-morrow. Consider the clock put back a 
 dozen years ! 
 
 " Oh yes, he's asleep still, but I've seen him — ^looked in on my 
 way down. Do you know, I really believe he will be quite fit 
 for the journey to-morrow. He's getting such a much better 
 colour, and last night he seemed so much stronger." Thus the 
 last comer to the morning-rally of breakfast claimants, in its 
 ante-room, awaiting its herald. Miss Irene Torrens is a robust 
 beauty with her brother's eyes. She has been with him con- 
 stantly since she came with her father three weeks ago, and the 
 two of them watched his every breath through the terrible day 
 and night that followed. 
 
 " Then perhaps he will let us see him," says Lady Gwen. " At 
 last !" 
 
 " You must not expect too much," says Miss Torrens. She 
 does not like saying it, but facts are overpowering. Her brother 
 has exacted a pledge from her to say nothing, even now, about 
 his blindness — merely to treat him as weak-eyed temporarily. 
 He will pass muster, he says — ^will squeak through somehow. 
 " I can't have that glorious girl made miserable," were the words 
 he had used to her, half an hour since. This Irene will be all 
 on tenterhooks till the interview is safely over. Meanwhile it is 
 only prudent not to sound too hopeful a note. It is as well to 
 keep a margin in reserve in case the performance should fall 
 through. 
 
 . Irene's response to her brother's words had been, " She is a 
 glorious girl," and she was on the way to "You should have 
 seen her eyes last night over that Beethoven !" But she broke 
 down on the word eyes. How else could it have been ? Then 
 the blind man had laughed, in the courage of his heart, as big a 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 183 
 
 laugh as his pitiable weakness could sustain, and had made light 
 of his affliction. He had never given way from the first hour 
 of his revival, when he had asked to have the shutters open, 
 and had been told they were already wide open, and the July 
 Bun streaming into the room. 
 
 It was the Coimtess who answered Irene's caution, as accom- 
 paniment to her morning salute. " We are not to expect any- 
 thing, my dear. That is quite understood. It would be un- 
 reasonable. And we won't stop long and tire him. But this 
 girl of mine will never be happy if he goes away without o\a — 
 well ! — becoming acquainted, I might almost say. Because 
 really we are perfect strangers. And when one has shot a man, 
 even by accident. . . ." Her ladyship did not finish, but went 
 on to hope the eyesight was recovering. 
 
 " Oh yes !" said Irene audaciously. " We are quite hopeful 
 about it now. It will be all right with rest and feeding up. 
 Only, if I let you in to see him you will promise me, won't 
 you — ^not to say a yrovA about his eyes ? It only frightens him, 
 and does no one any good." Of course. Miss Torrens got her 
 promise. It was an easy one to make, because reference to the 
 eyes only seemed a means towards embarrassment. Much 
 easier to say nothing about them. Gwen and Miss Torrens, very 
 lieea already, went out by the garden window to talk, but would 
 keep within hearing because breakfast was imminent. 
 
 More guests, and the newspapers; as great an event in the 
 early fifties as now, but with only a fraction of the twentieth 
 century's allowance of news. Old General Rawnsley, guilty of 
 his usual rudeness in capturing the Times from all comers, had 
 to surrender it to the Hon. Percival because none but a dog- 
 in-the-manger could read a letter from Sir C. Napier of Scinde, 
 and about Dr. Livingstone and Sekeletu and the Leeambye all 
 at the same time. All comers, or several male comers at least, 
 essayed to pinion the successful captor of the Times, thirsting 
 for information about their own special subjects of interest. 
 No — ^the Hon. Percival did not see anything, so far, about the 
 new Arctic expedition that was to unearth, or dis-ice, the Erebus 
 and Terror ; but the inquirer, a vague young man, shall have 
 the paper directly. Neither has he come on anything, as yet, 
 about a mutiny in the camp at Ghobham. But the paper shall 
 be at the disposal of this inquirer, too, as soon as the eye in 
 possession has been run down to the bottom of this column. 
 In due course both inquirers get hold of corners at the moment 
 of surrender, and then have paroxysms of polite concession 
 
184 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 which neither means in earnest, during which the bone of con- 
 tention becomes the prey of a passing wolf. Less poetically, 
 someone else gets hold of the paper and keeps it. 
 
 The Hon. Percival really surrendered the paper, not because 
 his interest in Lord Palmerston's speech had flagged, but because 
 he had heard Miss Dickenson come in, and that consideration 
 about her endurance of the daylight weighed upon him. On the 
 whole, she is standing the glare of day better than he expected, 
 and her bodice seems very nicely cut. It may have been an 
 accident that she looked so dowdy yesterday morning. He and 
 she exchange morning greetings, passionlessly but with civility. 
 The lady may be accounting a tete-d-tete by moonlight with a 
 gentleman, an hour long, an escapade, and he may be resolving 
 on caution for the future. By-the-by, can a lady have a tete-d- 
 tete with another lady by moonlight ? Scarcely ! 
 
 Mr. Norbury, the butler, always feels the likeness of the break- 
 fast rally to fish in a drop-net. If he acts promptly, he will 
 land his usual congregation. He must look in at the door to 
 see if there is a quorum. A quarum would do. A cujus is a 
 great rarity; though even that happens after late dances, or 
 when influenza is endemic. Mr. Norbury looked in at the rally 
 and recognised its psychological moment. More briefly, he 
 announced that breakfast was ready, while a gong rang up distant 
 sheep astray most convincingly. 
 
 Adrian Torrens, too weak still to show alacrity in waking, 
 hears the sound and is convinced. How he would rejoice to 
 join the party below ! He knows that, in his sleep; and resolves 
 as soon as he can speak to tell Mrs. Bailey the nurse he could 
 perfectly well have got up for breakfast. Yet he knows he is 
 glad to be kept lying down, for all that. 
 
 He wakes cherishing his determination to say this to his 
 tyrant, and is conscious of the sun by the warmth, and the 
 unanimity of the birds. He knows, too, that the casement is 
 open, by the sound of voices in the garden below. His sister's 
 voice and another, whose owner's image was the last thing human 
 he had seen, with the eyes that he dared not think had looked 
 their last upon the visible world, when the crash came from 
 Heaven-knows-where and shut it out. He could identify it 
 beyond a doubt ; could swear to it, now that he had come to imder- 
 Btand the real story of his terrible mishap, as the first sound that 
 mixed with his returning life, back from a painless darkness 
 which was a He?!.ven compared to the torture of his reviving 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 185 
 
 consciousness. It was strange to be told now that at that 
 moment the medical verdict had been given that he was dead. 
 But he could swear to the voice — even to the words ! What 
 was it sajdng now ? 
 
 " You may rely on me — ^indeed you may — to say nothing about 
 the eyes. He will be just able to see us, I suppose 1" 
 
 " He will hardly recognise you. How long was it altogether, 
 do you think ?" 
 " At Arthur's Bridge ? Five minutes — perhaps less." 
 " He took a good look at you ?" 
 
 " I suppose so. I think he did, as soon as he had got the dog 
 chained. Oh yes — I should say certainly ! I fancied he might 
 have seen me before, but it seems not." 
 
 " He says not. But you were not out when he went to 
 Konigsberg." 
 
 " Oh no — I had quite a long innings after that. . . . Well ! — 
 it does sound like cricket, doesn't it ? Go on." 
 
 " Oh — ^I see what you mean. What a ridiculous girl you are ! 
 What was I saying ! . . . Oh, I recollect ! That was just after 
 he graduated at Oxford. Then he went to South America with 
 Engelhardt. He really has been very little at home for three 
 years — over three years — past." 
 
 " We shall see if he knows me. I won't say anjrthing to guide 
 him." Then he heard his sister's voice reply to the speaker 
 with words she had used before : — " You know you must not 
 expect too much." To which Lady Gwendolen reiterated : 
 "|0h, you may trust me. I shall say nothing to him about it. 
 . . . Oh, you darling !" This was to Achilles, manifestly. He 
 had become restless at the sound of conversation below, and 
 had been looking round the door-jamb to see if by any chance 
 a dog could get out. The entry of the nurse a moment since, 
 with a proto-stimulant on a tray, had let him out to tear down 
 the stairs to the garden, rudely thrusting aside the noble owner 
 of the house, out of bounds in a dressing-gown and able to defy 
 Society. 
 
 No lack of sight can quench the image in its victim's brain of 
 Achilles' greeting to the owners of the two voices. His sister has 
 her fair share of it — no more ! — ^but her friend gets an accolade 
 of a piece with the one she received that momiug by Arthur's 
 Bridge, three weeks since. So his owner's brain-image says, con- 
 firmed by sounds from without. He is conscious of the absurdity 
 of building so vivid and substantial a superstructure on so little 
 foundatioii, and would like to protest against it. 
 
186 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Good-moming, Nurse. I'm better. What is it ? — ^beef-tea. 
 Earls' cooks make capital beef -tea. On the whole I am in favour 
 of Feudalism. Nothing can be sweeter or neater or completer — 
 or more nourishing — than its beef-tea. Don't put any salt ia 
 till I tell you. ... Oh no — I'm not going to spill it !" This is 
 prehminary; the protest follows. " Who's talking to my sister 
 under the window ? . . . that's her voice." Of course, he knew 
 perfectly well all the time. 
 
 The nurse listens a moment. "That's her ladyship," says 
 she, meaning the Countess. Gwen's voice is not unlike her 
 mother's, only fuller. " They are just going in to breakfast. 
 The gong went a minute ago." 
 
 Now is his time to condemn the tyranny which keeps him in 
 bed in the morning and lying down all day. " I could have got 
 up and gone downstairs, Mrs. Bailey, you know I could." 
 
 Mrs. Bailey pointed out that had this scheme been carried out a 
 life would have been sacrificed. She explained to a newcomer, 
 no less a person than the Earl himself, that Mr. Torrens would 
 kill himself in five minutes if she did not keep the eyes of a lynx 
 on him all the blessed day. She is always telling him so without 
 efiFect, he never being any the wiser, even when she talks her 
 head off. Patients never are, being an unmanageable class at 
 the best. A nurse with her head on ought to be a rarity, 
 according to Mrs. Bailey. 
 
 The image of the Earl in the blind man's mind is very little 
 helped by recollection of the few occasions, some years ago, on 
 which he has seen him. It becomes now, after a short daily 
 chat with him each morning since he gained strength for inter- 
 views, that of an elderly gentleman with a hesitating manner 
 anxious to accommodate difficulties, soothing an unreasonable 
 race with a benevolent optimism, pouring oil on the troubled 
 waters of local reb'gion and politics, taking no real interest in the 
 vortices into which it has pleased God to drag him, all with one 
 distinct object in view — that of adding to his collections un- 
 disturbed. That is the impression he has produced on Mr. Adrian 
 Torrens in a dozen of his visits to his beckide. His lordship has 
 made it a practice to look in at his victim — ^for that is the way he 
 thinks of him, will he nill he ! — ^as early every day as possible, 
 and as late. He has suffered agonies from constant longings 
 to talk about his Amatis or his Elzevirs or his Petitots, checked 
 at every impulse by the memory of the patient's blindness. He 
 is always beginning to say how he would like to show him this 
 or that, and collapsing. This also is an inference of Mr. Torrens, 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 187 
 
 drawn in the dark, from sudden hesitations and changes of 
 subject. 
 
 " How are we this morning. Nurse ?" On the mend, it seems, 
 being more refractory than ever; always a good sign with 
 patients. But we must be kept in bed, till midday at any rate, 
 for some days yet. Or weeks or months or years according to 
 the degree of our intractability. The Earl accepts this as 
 common form, and goes to the bedside saying sum-upwardly: — 
 ".No worse, at any rate I" 
 
 " Tremendously better. Lord Ancester ! Tremendously better, 
 thanks to you and Mrs. Bailey. . . . Catch hold of the cup. 
 Nurse ! . . . Yes, I've drained it to the dregs. ... I know what 
 you are going to say, my lord. . . ." 
 
 " I was going to say that Mrs. Bailey and I are not on the 
 same footing. Mrs. Bailey didn't shoot you. . . . Yes, now 
 grip hard ! That's right 1 Better since yesterday certainly — ^no 
 doubt of it !" 
 
 " Mrs. Bailey didn't shoot me in the mere vulgar literal sense. 
 But she was contributory, if not an accessory after the fact. It 
 was written in the Book of Fate that Mrs. Bailey would bring me 
 beef -tea this very day. If she had accepted another engagement 
 the incident would have had to be rewritten; which is impossible 
 by hypothesis. Moreover, so far as I can be said to have been 
 shot, it was as a trespasser, not as a man. ... Is there a close 
 season for trespEissers ? If there is, I admit that you may be 
 technically right. Qui facit per alium facit per se. . . . By-the- 
 by, I hope poor Alius is happier in his mind. . . ." 
 
 " Poor who ?" says the Earl. He is not giving close attention 
 to the convalescent's disconnected chatter. He has been one 
 himself, and knows how returning life sets loose the tongue. 
 
 " The alitis you facitted per. The poor chap that had the bad 
 luck to shoot me. Old Stephen — ^isn't he ? Poor old chap ! 
 What a mischance !" 
 
 " Oh yes — old Stephen ! I see — ^he's alius, of course. He 
 comes over two or three times a day to see how you are going 
 on. They think him rather a nuisance in the house, I believe. 
 I have tried to comfort him as well as I coiild. He will be glad of 
 to-day's report. But he can't help being dispirited, naturally." 
 
 " He's so unaccustomed to homicide, poor old chap ! People 
 should be educated to it, in case of accidents. They might be 
 allowed to kill a few women and children for practice — should 
 never be left to the mercy of their consciences, all raw and sus- 
 ceptible. Poor old Stephen ! I really think he might be 
 
188 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 allowed to come and see me now. I'm so very much im- 
 proved that a visit from my assassin would be a pleasant ex- 
 perience — a wholesome stimulus. Wouldn't throw me back at 
 all 1 Poor old Stephen !" He seemed seriously concerned about 
 the old boy ; would not be content without a promise that he and 
 his wife should pay him an early visit. 
 
 He had been immensely better after that M.P. paid him 
 a visit yesterday morning. Mrs. Bailey confirmed this, testi- 
 fying to the difficulty with which the patient had been per- 
 suaded to remain in bed. But she had the whip-hand of him 
 there, because he couldn't find his clothes without her help. 
 This gives the Earl an idea of the condition of the patient's eye- 
 sight beyond his previous concept of its infirmities. He has been 
 misled by its apparent soundness — ^f or no one would have guessed 
 the truth from outward seeming — and the nurse's accident of 
 speech rouses his curiosity. 
 
 " Ah, by-the-by," he says, " I was just going to ask." Which 
 is not strictly true, but apology to himself for his own neglect. 
 " How are the eyes ?" 
 
 " Oh, the eyes are right enough," says the patient. He goes on 
 to explain that they are no inconvenience whatever so long as he 
 keeps them shut. It is only when he opens them that he notices 
 their defect; which is, briefly, that he can't see with them. His 
 lordship seems to feel that eyes so conditioned are hardly satis- 
 factory. It is really new knowledge to him, and he accepts it 
 restlessly. He spreads his fingers out before the deceptive orbs 
 that look so clear, showing indeed no defect but a kind of im- 
 eertainty ; or rather perhaps a too great stillness as though always 
 content with the object in front of them. " What do you see 
 now ?" he asks in a nervous voice. 
 
 " Something dark between me and the light." 
 
 " Is that all ? Can't you see what it is ?" 
 
 '' A book." A mere guess based on the known predilections of 
 the questioner. 
 
 " Oh dear !" says the Earl. " It was my hand." He sees 
 that the nurse is signalling with headshakes and soundless hp- 
 words, but has not presence of mind to catch her meaning. 
 
 The other seems to feel his speech apologetically, as though it 
 were his own fault. " I see better later in the day," he says. 
 Which may be true or not. 
 
 The nurse's signalling tells, and the questioner runs into an 
 opposite extreme. " One is like that in the morning sometimes," 
 says he absurdly, but meaning well. He is not an Earl who would 
 
HOW ADRIAN WAS NURSED AT THE TOWERS 189 
 
 be of much use in a hospital for the treatment of nervous dis- 
 orders. However, having grasped the situation he shows tact, 
 changing the conversation to the heat of the weather and the 
 probable earUness of the crops. No one should ever shcno tact. 
 He will only be caught fxigrante, delicto. Mr. Torrens is perfectly 
 well aware of what is occurring; and, when he lies still and unre- 
 sponsive with his eyes closed, is not really resting after exertion, 
 which is the nurse's interpretation of the action, but trying to 
 think out something he wants to say to the Earl, and how to say 
 it. It is not so easy as light jesting. 
 
 The nurse telegraphs silently lipwise that the patient will doze 
 now for a quarter of an hour tiU breakfast; and the visitor, alive 
 to the call of discretion, has gone out gently before the patient 
 knows he has left the bedside. 
 
 Things that creak watch their opportunity whenever they hear 
 silence. So the Earl's gentle exit ends in a musical and pene- 
 trating arpeggio of a door-hinge, equal to the betrayal of Masonic 
 secrecy if delivered at the right moment. " Is Mrs. Bailey 
 gone ?" says the patient, ascribing the wrong cause to it. 
 
 " His lordship has gone, Mr. Torrens. He thought you were 
 dropping off." 
 
 " Stop him — stop him ! Say I have something particular to 
 say. Do stop him !" It must be something very particular, 
 Niu-se thinks. But in any case the patient's demand would have 
 to be compUed with. So the Earl is recaptured and brought 
 back. 
 
 " Is it anything I can do for you, Mr. Torrens? I am quite at 
 your service." 
 
 " Yes — something of importance to me. Is Mrs. Bailey 
 there ?" 
 
 " She is just going." She had not intended to do so. But 
 this was a hint clearly. It was accepted. 
 
 " All clear !" says the Earl. " And the door closed." 
 
 " My sister has promised to ask the Countess and yoiu- daughter 
 — ^Lady Gwen, is it not ?" 
 
 " That is my daughter's name, Gwendolen. ' Has promised 
 to ask them ' . . . what ?" 
 
 " To give me an opportunity before I go of thanking them both 
 for all the great kindness they have shown me, and of apologizing 
 for my wish to defer the interview." 
 
 " Yes — ^but why me ? . . . I mean that that is all quite in 
 order, but how do I come in ?" As the speaker's voice smiles 
 as well as his face, his hearer's blindness does not matter. 
 
190 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Only this way. You know the doctors say my eyesight is 
 not incurable — probably will come all to rights of itself. • . ." 
 " Yes— and then ?" 
 
 " I want them — her ladyship and . . ." 
 " My wife and daughter. I understand." 
 "... I want them to know as little about it aa possible; to 
 know no'Mng about it if possible. You knew very little about it 
 yourself till just now." 
 
 "I was misled — ^kindly, I know — but misled for all that. 
 And the appearance is so extraordinary. Nobody could 
 guess. . . ." 
 
 " Exactly. Because the eyes are really unaffected and are 
 sure to come right. See now what I am asking you to do for 
 me. Help me to deceive them about it. They will not test my 
 eyesight as you did just now. . . ." 
 " How do you know that ?" 
 
 " Because I heard Irene and your daughter talking in the garden 
 a few minutes ago — just after the breakfast-bell rang — ^talking 
 about me, and I eavesdropped as hard as I could. Lady 
 Gwendolen has promised Irene to say nothing about my eyesight 
 for my sake. She will keep her promise. . . ." 
 " How do you know that ?" 
 " By the sound of her voice." 
 " She is only a human girl." 
 
 " I am convinced that she will keep it; though, I grant you, 
 circumstances are against her. And neither she nor her mother 
 will try to find out, if they believe I see them dimly. That is 
 where you come in. Only make them believe that. Don't let 
 them suppose I am all in the dark. Say nothing of your crucial 
 experiment just now. Irene — dear girl — has been a good sister 
 to me, and has told many good round lies for my sake. But she 
 will explain to God. I cannot ask you. Lord Ancestor, to tell 
 stories on my behalf. My petition is only for a modest pre- 
 varication — the cultivation of a reasonable misapprehension to 
 attain a justifiable end. Consider the position analogous to that 
 of one of Her Majesty's Ministers catechized by an impertinent 
 demagogue. No fibs, you know — only what a truthful person 
 tells instead of a fib I For my sake !" 
 
 " I am not thinking of my character for veracity," says the 
 Earl thoughtfully. " You should be welcome to a sacrifice of 
 that under the circumstances. I was thinking what form of 
 false representation would be most likely to gain the end, and 
 safest. Do you know, I am inclined to favour the policy of 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADEIAN 191 
 
 saying as little as possible ? My dear wife is in the habit of 
 imputing to me a certain slowness and defective observation of 
 surrounding event. It is a common wifely attitude. You need 
 not fear my being asked any questions. In any case, I fully 
 understand your wishes, and you may rely on my doing my best. 
 Here is your breakfast coming. I hope you will not be knocked 
 up with all this talk." 
 
 CHAPTER XVin 
 
 BIHTD MEN can't SMOKE. CAh't THEY ? HOW THE COUNTESS 
 AND HBB DAUGHTEE AT LAST INTEEVIEWED THEIB GUEST. 
 HIS SUBTLE AEBANGEMENTS FOB SEEMINQ TO SEE THEM. A 
 BLUNDEB OVEB A HANDSHAKE, AND ATT. THE FAT IN THE 
 HEE, NEAELY ! AN ELECTBIO SHOCK. THE EXCELLENCE OF 
 ACHCLLES' HEAET. HOW ME. TOBBENS SPOILED IT ATT, ! 
 BLUE NANKIN IS NOT CEOWN DEBBY. GWEN's GEBAT SCHEME. 
 HOW SHE CAEBIED IT OUT 
 
 The morning passed, with intermittent visitors, one at a time. 
 Each one, coming away from the bedside, confirmed the report 
 of his predecessor as to the visible improvement of the conva- 
 lescent. Each one in turn, when questioned about the eyesight, 
 gave a sanguine report — an echo of the patient's own confidence, 
 real or affected, in its ultimate restoration. He would be all 
 right again in a week or so. 
 
 Underhand ways were resorted to of cheating despair and 
 getting at the pocket of Hope. Said one gentleman to the Earl — 
 who was keeping his counsel religiously — " He can't read small 
 print." Whereto the Earl replied, — " Not yet awhile, but one 
 could hardly expect that "; and felt that he was carrying out 
 -his promise with a minimum of falsehood. Yet his conscience 
 wavered, because an eyesight may be unable to read small print, 
 and yet imable to read large print, or any print at all. Perhaps 
 he had better have left the first broad indisputable truth to 
 impose on its hearer unassisted. 
 
 Another visitor scored a success on behalf of Optimism by 
 reporting that the patient had smoked a cigar in defiance of 
 medical prohibitions. " Can't be much wrong with his eyes," 
 
192 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 said this one, " if he can smoke. You shut your eyes, and try \" 
 Put to the proof, this dictum received more confirmation than 
 it deserved, solely to secure an audience for the flattering tales 
 of Hope. 
 
 Much of the afternoon passed too, but without visitors. 
 Because it would never do, said Irene, for her brother not to be 
 at his best when Gwen and her mother came to pay their visit, 
 resolved on this morning, at what was usually the best moment 
 of his day — about five o'clock. Besides, he was to be got up 
 and really dressed — ^not merely huddled into clothes — and this 
 was a fatiguing operation, never carried out in dire earnest 
 before. Doctor and Nurse had assented, on condition that Mr. 
 Torrens should be content to remain in his room, and not insist 
 on going downstairs. Where was the use of his doing so, with 
 such a journey before him to-morrow ? Better surely to husband 
 the last grain of strength — the last inch-milligramme of power — 
 for an eighteen-mile ride, even with all the tonics in the world to 
 back it ! Mr. Torrens consented to this reservation, and 
 promised not to be rebellious. 
 
 So — in time — ^the horn: was at hand when he would see. . . . 
 No ! — not see — there was the sting of it ! . . . that girl he had 
 spoken with at Arthur's Bridge. The vision of her in the sunset 
 was upon him still. He had pleaded with his sister that, come 
 what might, she should not come to him in his darkness, in the 
 hope that this darkness might pass away and leave her image 
 open to him as before. For this hope had mixed itself with that 
 strong desire of his heart that his own disaster should weigh upon 
 her as httle as possible. He had kept this meeting back almost 
 till the eleventh hour, hoping against hope that light would break; 
 longing each day for a gleam of the dawn that was to give him 
 his life once more, and make the whole sad story a matter of the 
 past. And now the time had come; and here he stood awaiting 
 the ordeal he had to pass successfully, or face his failure as he 
 might. 
 
 K he could but rig up an hour's colourable pretext of vision, 
 however imperfect, the reality might return in its own good time 
 — ^if that was the will of Allah — and that time might be soon 
 «siough. She might never know the terrible anticipations his 
 Hnderthought had had to fight against. 
 
 " You look better in the blue Mandarin silk than you would 
 in your tailor's abominations," said Irene, referring to a dressing- 
 gown costume she had insisted on. " Only your hair wants 
 cutting, dear boy ! I won't deceive you." 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 193 
 
 " That's serious !" He lets it pass nevertheless. " Look 
 here, 'Rene, I want you to tell me. . . . Where are you ? — oh, 
 here ! — all right. . . . Now tell me — should you say I saw you, 
 by the look of my eyes ?" 
 
 " Indeed I should. Indeed, indeed, nobody could tell. Your 
 eyes look as strong as — as that hooky bird's that sits in the sun 
 at the Zoological and nictitates . . . isn't that the word ? . . . 
 Goes twicky-twick with a membrane. . . ." 
 
 " Fish eagle, I expect." 
 
 " Shouldn't wonder ! Only, look here ! . . . You mustn't 
 claw hold of Gwen like that. How can you tell, without ?" 
 
 " Where they are, do you mean ? Oh, I know by the voice. You 
 go somewhere else and speak." Whereupon Irene goes furtively 
 behind him, and says suddenly: — "Now look at me !" It is a 
 success, for the blind man faces round, looking full at her. 
 
 She claps her hands. " Oh, Adrian !" she cries, " are you 
 sure you don't see — aren't you cheating ?" A memory, in this, 
 of old games of blindman's-buff. " You always did cheat, 
 darling, you know, when we played on Christmas Eve. How 
 do I know I can trust you ?" She goes close to him again 
 caressing his face. " Oh, do say, dear boy, you can see a little !" 
 But it is no use. He can say nothing. 
 
 There are a few moments of distressing silence, and then the 
 brother says: — " Never mind, dear ! It will be all right. They 
 say so. Take me to the window that I may look out !" They 
 stand together at the open casement, listening to the voices of 
 the birds. The shrewdest observer might fail to detect the flaw 
 in those two full clear eyes that seem to look out at the leagues of 
 park-land, the spotted deer in the distance, the long avenue-road 
 soon indistinguishable in the trees. The sister sees those eyes, 
 no other than she has always known them, but knows that they 
 see nothing. 
 
 " When I was here first," says the brother, " the thrushes were 
 still singing. They are off duty by now, the very last of them." 
 He stops listening. " That's a yellow-hammer. And that's a 
 linnet. You can't tell ore from the other." 
 
 " I know. I'm shockingly ignorant. . . . What, dear ? What is it 
 you want ?" Her brother has been exploring the window-frame 
 with a restless hand, as though in search of some latch or blind- 
 cord. He cannot find what he wants. 
 
 " I want to come to a clearness about the position of this 
 blessed window," he says. " Which direction is the bed in now ? 
 Well — describe it tliis wav, suppose ! Say I'm looking north 
 
 13 
 
194 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 now, with my shoulder against the window. Where's the bed ? 
 South-west— south-east — due south 1" 
 
 " South-west by south. Perhaps that's not nautical, but you 
 know what I mean." 
 
 " All right ! Now, loot here ! As I stand here — ^looking out 
 slantwise — ^where's the sunset ? I mean, where would it be ? — 
 where does it mean to be ?" 
 
 " You would be looking straight at it. Of course, you are not 
 really looking north. . . . There — now you are !" She had 
 taken her hands from the shoulder they were folded on and 
 turned his head to the right. " But, I say, Adrian dear ! . . ." 
 She hesitates. 
 
 " What, for instance ?" 
 
 " Don't try to humbug too much. Don't try to do it, darUng 
 boy. You'll only make a hash of it." 
 
 " All right, goosey-woosey ! I'll fry my own fish. Don't you 
 be uneasy !" And then they talk of other things : the journey 
 home to-morrow, and how it shall be as good as lying in bed to 
 Adrian, in the big carriage with an infinity of cushions; the new 
 friends they have made here at the Towers, with something of 
 wonderment that this chance has been so long postponed; the 
 kindness they have had from them, and the iU-requital Adrian 
 made for it yesterday by breaking that beautiful blue china tea- 
 cup — any trifle that comes foremost — anything but the great 
 grief that underlies the whole. 
 
 For Irene would have her brother at his best, that the visit 
 to him of her new-made friend Gwen may go off well, and steer 
 clear of the ambushes that beset it. Better that that visit should 
 never come off, than that her friend should be left to share their 
 fears for the future. Each is hiding from the other a weakeniag 
 confidence in the renewal of suspended eyesight, weaker at the 
 outset than either had been prepared to admit to the other. 
 
 " Look here, 'Bione," says Adrian, an hour later, during which 
 his sister has read aloud to him, Ijong by the open window. 
 " Never mind Becky Sharp ; she'll keep tiU the evening. Can 
 we see Arthur's Bridge from this window, where I saw your 
 friend Lady Gwen ? It was Arthur's, wasn't it ? What 
 Arthur ? King Arthur ?" 
 
 " Yes, if you Uke. Only don't go and call it Asses' Bridge, as 
 you did the other day — not when the family's here. It sounds 
 disrespectful." 
 
 " Not a bit. It only looks as if Euclid bad been round. But 
 answer my question. . . . Oh, we can see it ! Very well, then; 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 195 
 
 show me which way it lies. Is it visible — the actual bridge 
 itseK, I mean — not the place it's in ?" 
 
 Irene got up and looked out of the window from behind her 
 brother's chair. " Yes," she said. " One sees the stone arch 
 plain. How can I show you ?" She took his head in her hands 
 again to guide it to a true Kne of sight. 
 
 " Between us and the sunset ?" 
 
 " Thereabouts. Rather on the left." 
 
 " Very good. Now we can go on with Becky Sharp." 
 
 " That's it, my lord, is it ? Where was I ?— oh. Sir Pitt 
 Crawley. . . ." And then the reading was continued, till tea 
 portended, and Irene went away to capture her visitors. 
 
 All the sting of his darkness came upon him in its fulness as he 
 heard that voice on the stairs. Oh, could he but see her for one 
 moment — only one moment — to be sure that that dazzling image 
 of three weeks since was not a mere imagination ! He knew 
 well the enchantment of the rainbow gleam on sea and earth and 
 sky — ^the glory that makes Aladdin's palace of the merest hovel. 
 He could scarcely have said to a nicety why a self-deception on 
 this score seemed to him fraught with such evil. If it was a 
 terror on Gwen's behalf, that a false image cherished through 
 a period of reviving eyesight should in the end prove an injustice 
 to her, and cast a chill over his own passionate admiration- — 
 for it was that at least that a chance of five minutes had en- 
 thralled him with — he banished that terror artificially from his 
 mind. What could it matter to her, if he was taken aback and 
 disappointed at her not turning out what his excited fancy had 
 made her that evening at Arthur's Bridge ? What was he to 
 her that any chance man might not have been, after so scanty 
 an interchange of words ? 
 
 That was his dominant feeling, or underlying it, as her voice 
 neared the door of his room, saying : — " Fancy your carrying 
 him away without our seeing him — so much as thinking of it ! 
 I call you a wicked, unprincipled sister." To which another 
 voice, a maternal sort of voice, said what must have been: " Don't 
 speak so loud !" — or its equivalent. For the girl's voice dropped, 
 her last words being: — " He won't hear, at this distance." 
 
 Then, she was actually coming in at the door ! He could hear 
 the prodigious skirt-rustle that is now a thing of womanhood's 
 past—though we adored every comely example, mind you, we 
 oldsters in those days, for all that she carried a milliner's shop 
 on her back — and as it climaxed towards entry had to remember 
 by force how slight indeed had been his interchange of words 
 
196 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 with the visitor he wished to see — to see by hearing, and to touch 
 the hand of twice. For he had counted his coming privileges in 
 his heart akeady, even if his reason had made light of its arithme- 
 tic. He would be on the safe side now — so he said to himself — 
 and think of the elder lady as the player of the leading r6le. 
 No disparagement to her subordinate; the merest deference to 
 convention ! 
 
 There was no mishap about the first meeting; only a narrow 
 escape of one. The man in the dark reckoned it safest to extend 
 his hand and leave it, to await the first claimant. He took for 
 granted this would be the mother, and as his hand closed on a 
 lady's, not small enough to call his assumption in question, said 
 half interrogatively: — " Lady Ancester 1" 
 
 " That's Gwen," said his sister's voice. And at the word an 
 electric shock of a sort passed up his arm, the hand that still held 
 his showing no marked alacrity to release it. 
 
 " Yes, this is me," says the voice of its owner. " That's mamma." 
 
 Lady Ancester, standing close to her, meets his outstretched 
 hand and shakes it cordially. Then follows pleasantry about mis- 
 taking the mother for the daughter, with assumption of imperfect 
 or dim vision only to account for it, and a declaration from 
 Adrian that he had been cautioned not to confuse the one with 
 the other. There is a likeness, as a matter of fact, and Irene 
 has talked to him of it. The whole thing is shghter than the 
 telling of it. 
 
 Then the three ladies and the one man have grouped — com- 
 posed themselves — for reasonable chat. He is in his invalid 
 chair by special edict, at the window, and the two visitors face 
 him haK-flanking it. His sister leans over him behind on the 
 chair-back. She has kept very close to him, guiding him under 
 pretence that he wants support, which is scarcely the case now, 
 so rapid has been his progress in this last' week. She is very 
 anxious lest her brother should venture too rashly on fictitious 
 proofs of eyesight that does not exist. But it can all be put 
 down to uneasiness about his strength. 
 
 The platitudes of mere chat ensue, the Countess being pro- 
 locutrix. But she can be sincerely earnest in speaking of her 
 own concern about the accident, and her family's. Also to the 
 full about the rejoicing of everyone when it was " certain that 
 all would turn out well." She has been bound over to say 
 nothing about the eyesight, and keeps pledges; almost too trans- 
 parently, perhaps. A word or two about it as a thing of tem- 
 porary abeyance might have been more plausible. 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 197 
 
 Gwen has become very silent since that first warmth of her 
 greeting. She is leaving the conversation to her mother, which 
 puzzles Irene, who had framed a different picture of the inter- 
 view, and is disappointed so far. Achilles, the dog, too, may be 
 disappointed — may be feeUng that something more demon- 
 strative is due to the position. Irene imputes this view to him, 
 inferring it from his restless appeals to Gwen, as he leans against 
 her skirts, throwing back a pathetic gaze of remonstrance for 
 something too complex for his powers of language. Her com- 
 ment: — " He is always like that," — seems to convey an image of 
 his whereabouts to his master, confirmed perhaps by expressive 
 dog-substitutes for speech. 
 
 " You mustn't let my bow-wow worry you. Lady Gwendolen. 
 He presumes till he's checked, on principle. Send him to lie 
 down over here. Here, Ply, Ply, Ply 1 . . . Oh, won't he come V 
 Probably Achilles knows that his master, who speaks, is only 
 being civil. 
 
 "No — ^because I'm holding him. I want him here. He's a 
 darling !" So says Gwen; and then continues : — " Oh yes, / know 
 why he's Ply — short for Pehdes. I think he thinks I think it 
 was his fault, and wants forgiveness." 
 
 " Possibly. But it is also possible that he sees his way by 
 cajolery to all the sweet biscuits with a Uttle crown on them that 
 come about with tea. He wants none of us to have any. Pray 
 do not think any the worse of him. How is he to know that a 
 well-bred person hungers for little crown biscuits ? We are so 
 affected that there is nothing for him to go by." 
 
 " And he's a dear, candid darling ! Of course he is. He shall 
 have everything he wants." Achilles appears to accept the 
 concession as deserved, but to be ready to requite it with undying 
 love. 
 
 " It is all the excellence of his heart, I am aware, and a certain 
 simplicity and directness," says Adrian. " But all the same he 
 mustn't spoil ladies' dresses — beyond a certain point, of course. 
 I have been very curious to know. Lady Gwendolen, whether his 
 paws came off — the marks of them, I mean — on that lovely India 
 muslin I saw you in three weeks ago, just before this unfortunate 
 affair which has given so much trouble to everybody, at — at . . . 
 Arthur's Bridge, of course ! Couldn't think of the name at the 
 moment. At Arthur's Bridge. I'm afraid he didn't do that 
 dress any good." 
 
 " It wasn't a new dress," says Gwen, " as far as I remember," 
 A point her nia.i4 WQuld know more about, clearly. 
 
198 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Lady Ancester seoms to think a little ex post facto chaperonage 
 would not be inappropriate. " Gwen was out of bounds, I under- 
 stand," she says; which means absolutely nothing, but sounds 
 well. 
 
 The remark seems somehow to focus the conversation, and 
 become a stepping-stono to a review of the recent events. Evi- 
 dently the principal actor in them takes that view. " I had no 
 idea whom I was speaking to," he says, " still less that Lady 
 Gwendolen had taken the trouble to come away from the house 
 with so kind a motive. Of course, I have heard all about it 
 from my sister." 
 
 Gwen perfectly understands. " And then you walked over 
 to Drews Thurrock, and Achilles' collar broke, and he got away." 
 She speaks as one who waits for more. 
 
 " He did, and I am sorry to say he forgot himself. The old 
 Adam broke out in him in connection with the sudden springing 
 of a hare, just under his nose. It was almost the moment after 
 his collar broke, and it is quite possible he thought T meant to 
 let him go. But after all, Achilles is human, and really I could 
 not blame him in any case. Try to see the thing from his point 
 of view. Fancy discovering an vmused faculty lying dormant — 
 art, song, eloquence — and an unprecedented opportunity for 
 its use ! Do you know, I don't believe Achilles had ever so 
 much as seen a hare before 1 — ^not a Uve one ! He smelt one once 
 at a poulterer's — a dead one that was starting for the Antipodes 
 with its legs crossed. The poulterer lost his temper, very 
 absurdly. , . ." 
 
 " Well — did he catch the hare ? I mean the first hare." 
 
 " That I can't say. Both vanished, and I suspect the hare 
 got away. I'm sure of one thing, that if Achilles did catch him 
 he didn't know what to do with him. He has not the sporting 
 spirit. Cats interest him in his native town, but when they 
 show fight he comes and complains to me that they are out of 
 order. He overhauled a kitten three weeks old once, that had 
 come out to see the world, and it defied him to mortal combat. 
 Achilles tallied to me all the way down the street about that 
 kitten." 
 
 " I want to know what happened next." From Gwen. 
 
 " Yes — silly old chatterbox ! — keep to the point." Thus 
 Irene; and Lady Ancester, who has been accepting the hare 
 and the cats with dignity, even condescension, adds : — " We 
 were just at the most interesting part of the story." This was 
 practically her ladyship's first sight of the son of the man she had 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 199 
 
 gone so near to marrying over five-and-twenty years ago. 
 The search to discover a modv^ vivendi between a past and present 
 at war may have thrown her a little out of her usual demeanour. 
 Gwen wondered why mamma need be so ceremonious. 
 
 Adrian was perfectly unconscious of it, even if Irene was not. 
 He ran on: — " Oh — the story ! Yes — AchiUes forgot himseK, 
 and was oflE after the hare like a whirlwind. ... I don't know. 
 Lady Ancestor, whether you have ever blown a whistle in the 
 middle of an otherwise unoccupied landscape, with no visible 
 motive ?" 
 
 Her ladyship had not apparently. Irene found fault with the 
 narrator's style, suggesting a more prosaic one. But Gwen said: 
 " Oh, Irene dear, what a perfect sister you are ! Why can't you 
 let Mr. Torrens tell his tale his own way ?" 
 
 So Mr. Torrens went on : — " It doesn't matter. If you had ever 
 done so, I believe you would confirm my experience of the 
 position. If Orpheus had whistled, instead of singing to a lute, 
 Eurydice would have stopped with Pluto, and Orpheus would 
 have cut a very poor figure. I began to perceive that Achilles 
 wasn't going to respond, and I knew the hare wouldn't, all along. 
 So I walked on and got to a wood of oaks with an interesting 
 appearance. The interesting appearance was inviting, so I went 
 inside. Achilles was sure to turn up, I thought. Poor dear ! — 
 I didn't see him for some days after that, when I came to and 
 heard all about it. He had been very uneasy about me, I'm 
 afraid." 
 
 " But inside the wood with the interesting appearance — ^what 
 happened then ?" Gwen would not tolerate digression. 
 
 " WeU, I came to the edge of a wall with a little sunk glade 
 beyond, and was looking across some blackberry bushes when I 
 heard a rifle-shot, and the whirr of a bullet. I had just time to 
 notice that the whirr came with the gunshot — ^if it had been in 
 the opposite direction it would have followed it — ^when I was 
 struck on the head and fell. It was the fall that knocked me 
 insensible, but it was the gunshot that was responsible for all 
 that bleeding. . . . Do you know, I can't tell you how sorry I 
 am for that old boy that fiied the shot ? I can't imagine any- 
 thing more miserable than shooting a man by accident." 
 
 It was then that an uneasy feeling about those eyes, that 
 looked so clear and might be so deceiving, took hold of Gwen's 
 mind, and would not be ignored on any terms. The speaker's 
 " you " — ^was it addressed in this case to her or to her mother ? 
 The line of his vision seemed to pass between them. If he could 
 
200 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 see at all, ever so dimly, he could look towards the person he 
 addressed. One does not always do so; true enough ! But one 
 does not stare to right or to left of him. And she felt sure these 
 words had been spoken to herself. 
 
 So while her mother was joining in commiseration of old 
 Stephen, towards whom she herself felt rather brutal, she was 
 casting about for some means of coming at the truth. Irene 
 was no good, however altruistic her motives might be for story- 
 telling. ... No ! — his eyes looked at her in quite another 
 fashion that evening at Arthur's Bridge, in the light of the 
 sunset. She must get at the truth, come what might ! 
 
 She left her mother to express sympathy for old Stephen, 
 remaining rather obdurately silent; checking a wish to say that 
 it served the old man right for meddling with loaded guns. She 
 waited for the subject to die down, and then recurred to its pre- 
 decessor. Did Mr. Torrens walk straight from Arthur's Bridge 
 to the Thurrock or go roundabout ? She did not really want to 
 know — merely wanted to get him to talk about himself again. 
 He might say something about his sight, by accident. 
 
 He repUed : — " I did not go absolutely straight. I went first to 
 where a couple of stones — a respectable married couple, I should 
 say — ^were standing close together in the fern, with big initials 
 cut on them. Their own, I presume." Gwen said she knew 
 them; they were parish boundaries. "Well — probably that 
 hare was trying what it felt like to be in two parishes at once, 
 for he jumped from behind that stone and started for the 
 Thurrock— that's right, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Drews Thurrock ? Yes." 
 
 " It was unfortunately just then that the collar broke. I 
 whistled until I felt undignified, and then went straight for the 
 said Thurrock, rather dreading that I should find Achilles 
 awaiting applause for an achievement in — in leporicide, I 
 suppose. . . ." 
 
 " I'm sure you didn't." 
 
 " I did not. So I waited a little, and was thinking what I had 
 better do next, when the shot came. You can almost see the 
 place from this window." He got up from his chair, standing 
 exactly where he had stood when his sister made his hand point 
 out Arthur's Bridge in blind show. He made a certain amount 
 of pretence that he could see; and, indeed, seemed to do so. 
 No stranger to the circumstances could have detected it. " I 
 couldn't be sure about the place of the stones, though," said 
 he, carefully avoiding direct verbal falsehood; at least, so Irene 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 201 
 
 thought, trembling at his rashness. He went on: — " Oh dear, 
 how doddery one does feel on one's legs after a turn out of this 
 kind I" and fell back in his chair, his sister alone noticing how 
 he touched it with his hand first to locate it. "I shall be better 
 after a cup of tea," said he. And the whole thing was so natural 
 that although he had not said in so many words that he could 
 see anything, the impression that he could was so strong that 
 Gwen could have laughed aloud fov ioy. " He really does see 
 something .'" she exclaimed to herself. 
 
 If he could only have been content with this much of success ! 
 But he must needs think he could improve upon it — ^reinforce it. 
 His remark about the cup of tea had half -reference to its appear- 
 ance on the horizon; or, rather, on the httle carved-oak table near 
 the window, whose flaps were being accommodated for its recep- 
 tion as he spoke. The dwellers in this part of the country 
 considered five o'clock tea at this time an invention of their own, 
 and were rather vain of it. Another decade made it a national 
 institution. 
 
 " If there is one thing I enjoy more than another," he said, 
 " it is a copper urn that boils furiously by magic of its own 
 accord. When I was a kid our old cook Ursley used to allow 
 me to come into the kitchen and see the red-hot iron taken out 
 of the fire and dropped into the inner soul of ours, which was 
 glorious." This was all perfectly safe, because there was the 
 urn in audible evidence. Indeed, the speaker might have stopped 
 there and scored. Why need he go on ? " And these blue Nankin 
 cups are lovely. I never could go crockery-mad as some people do. 
 But good Nankin blue goes to my heart." And he really thought, 
 poor fellow, that he had done well, and been most convincing. 
 
 Alas for his flimsy house of cards ! Down it came. For there 
 had only been four left of that blue tea-service, and he had broken 
 one. The urn was hissing and making its hd jump in the middle 
 of a Crown Derby tea-set, so polychromatic, so self-assertive in 
 its red and blue and gold, that no ghost of a chance was left of 
 catching at the skirts of colour-bUndness to find a golden bridge 
 of escape from the blunder. The most colour-blind eyes in the 
 world never confuse monochrome and polychrome. 
 
 There is a sudden terror-struck misgiving on the beautiful face 
 of Gwen, and an uneasy note of .doubt in her mother's voice, 
 seeking by vague speech to elude and slur over the difficulty. 
 "The patterns are quite ahke," she says weakly. The blind 
 man feels he has made a mistake, and is driven to safe silence. 
 He understands hi? slip more clearly when the servant, speaking 
 
202 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 half -aside, but audibly, to the Countess, says : — " Mrs. Masham 
 said the blue was spoiled for four, my lady, and to bring four of 
 the China." Crown Derby is more distinctly China in EngUsh 
 vernacular than Nankin blue. 
 
 Please understand that the story is giving at great length 
 incidents that passed in fractions of a minute — incidents Time 
 recorded current calamo for Memory to rearrange at leisure. 
 
 The incident of the tea-cups was easily slurred over and for- 
 gotten. Adrian Torrens saw the risks of attempting too much, 
 and gave up pretending that he could see. Irene and the 
 Countess let the subject go; the former most wilHngly, the latter 
 with only slight reluctance. Gwen alone dwelt upon it, or rather 
 it dwelt upon her; her memory could not shake it off. Do what 
 she would the thought came back to her : " He cannot see at all. 
 I must know — I must know !" She could not join in the chit-chat 
 which went on under the benevolent influence of the tea-leaf, 
 the great untier of tongues. She could only sit looking beautiful, 
 gazing at the deceptive eyes she felt so sure were blind to her 
 beauty, devising some means of extracting confession from their 
 owner, and thereby knowing the worst, it it was to come. It 
 was interesting to her, of course, to hear Mr. Torrens talk of the 
 German Universities, with which he seemed very familiar; and 
 of South America, the area of which, he said, had stood in the 
 way of his becoming equally familiar with it. He had been 
 about the world a good deal for a man of five-and-twenty. 
 
 " Gwen thought you were more," said Irene. " At Arthur's 
 Bridge, you know ! She thought you were twenty-seven." 
 
 " Because I was so wet through. Naturally. I was soaked 
 and streaky. Are you sure it wasn't thirty-seven. Lady 
 Gwendolen '!" 
 
 It has been mentioned that Lady Ancestor had a matter-of- 
 fact side to her character. But was it this that made her say 
 thoughtfully : — " Twenty-five perhaps — certainly not more !" 
 Probably her mind had run back nearly thirty years, and she 
 was calculating from the date of this man's father's marriage, 
 which she knew; or from that of his eldest brother's birth, which 
 she also knew. She was not so clear about Irene. At the time 
 of that young lady's first birthday — her only one, in fact — her 
 close observation of her old flame's family dates was flagging. 
 But she was clear that this Adrian's birth had followed near 
 upon that of her own son Frank, drowned a few years since so 
 near the very place of this gunshot accident. The coincidence 
 may have made her identifications keener. Or Adrian's reckless 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 203 
 
 chat, so like his father's in old days that she had more than once 
 gone near to comment on it, may have roused old memories and 
 set her a-fixing dates. 
 
 Adrian laughed at the way his age seemed to be treated as an 
 open question. " We have the Registrar on our side, at any 
 rate. Lady Ancestor. I can answer for that. By-the-by, wasn't 
 my father . . . did not my father? . . ." He wanted to say: 
 " Was not my father a friend of your brother in old days ?" 
 But it sounded as if the friendship, whatever it was, had lessened 
 in newer days, and he knew of nothing to warrant the assumption. 
 He knew nothing of his father's early love passages, of course. 
 Fathers don't tell their sons what narrow escapes they have had 
 of being somebody else, or somebody else being they — an awk- 
 ward expression ! 
 
 Her ladyship thought over a phrase or two before she decided 
 on: — " Your father used to come to Clarges Street in my mother's 
 time." She was pleased with the selection; but less so with a 
 second, one of several she tried to herself and rejected. " We 
 have really scarcely met since those days. I thought him 
 wonderfully Httle changed." 
 
 Has a parent of yours, you who read — or of ours, for that 
 matter — ever spoken to one or other of us, I wonder, of some 
 fancy of his or her bygone days; one whose greeting, company 
 manners apart, was an embrace; whose letters were opened 
 greedily; whose- smile was rapture, and whose frown a sleepless 
 night ? If he or she did bo, was the outcome better than the 
 Countess's ? 
 
 She wanted to run away, but could not just yet. She made 
 believe to talk over antecedents — making a conversation of 
 indescribable baldness, and setting Irene's shrewd wits to work 
 to find out why. It was not her brother, but her husband's, who 
 had been Sir Hamilton's college-friend. Yes, her father was 
 well acquainted with Mr. Canning, and so. on. This wa:-' her con- 
 tribution to general chat, until such time had elapsed as would 
 warrant departure and round the visit plausibly off. 
 
 It was Clarges Street that had done it. Irene was sure of that ! 
 She, the daughter of the Miss Abercrombie her father had 
 married, sitting there and coming to conclusions ! 
 
 However, the Countess meant to go — ^no doubt of it. " You 
 have paid my brother such a short visit, after all," said Irene. 
 " Please don't go away because you fancy you are tiring him." 
 But it was no use. Her ladyship meant to go, and went. 
 Regrets of all sorts, of course; explanatory insincerities about 
 
204 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 stringent obligations elsewhere; even specific allegations of 
 expected guests; false imputation of exacting claims to the Earl. 
 All with one upshot — departure. 
 
 Gwen had taken little or no notice of what was passing, since 
 that betraying incident of the Crown Derby set. Her mind was 
 at work on schemes for discovery of the truth about those eyes. 
 She got on the track of a good one. If she could only contrive 
 to be alone with him for one moment. Yes — ^it was worth trying ! 
 
 It was her mother's inexplicable alacrity to be gone that gave 
 the opportunity. Her ladyship said good-bye to Mr. Torrens; 
 was sorry she had to go, but the Earl was so fussy about any- 
 thing the least like an appointnient — some concession to con- 
 science in the phrasing of this — ^in short, go she must ! Having 
 committed herself thus, to wait for her daughter would have been 
 the merest selt-stultification. She went out multiplying apolo- 
 gies, and Irene naturally accompanied her along the lobby, 
 assisted and sanctioned by Achilles. Gwendolen was alone with 
 the man who was still credited with sight enough to see sc/me- 
 thing — provided that it was a palpable something. Now — ^i£ she 
 could only play her part right ! 
 
 " Mamma is always in such a fuss to go somewhere and do 
 something else," she said, rather affecting the drawl of a fashion- 
 able young lady; for she could hide anxiety better, she felt, that 
 way. " Do you know, Mr. Torrens, I don't beHeve a word of 
 aU that about people coming. Nobody's coining. If there is, 
 they've been there ever so long. I did so want to talk to you 
 about one of your poems. I mustn't stop now, I suppose, or I 
 shall be in a scrape." But all the while that she was saying this 
 she was standing with her right hand outstretched, as though 
 to say good-bye. Only the word remained unspoken. 
 
 " Which of my poems was it ?" He was to all seeming looldng 
 full at her, yet his hand did not come out to meet hers. There 
 was hope still. How could he ratify an adieu with a handshake, 
 on the top of a question that called for an answer ? 
 
 Gwen had not arranged the point in her mind — had not 
 thought of any particular poem in fact. She took the first that 
 occurred to her. " It's the one called ' A Vigil in Darkness,'" 
 she said. And then she would have been so glad to withdraw 
 it and substitute another. That was not possible — she had to 
 finish: — " I wanted to know if any other EngHsh poet has ever 
 used ' starren ' for stars." 
 
 Adrian laughed. " I remember," said he ; then quoted : " ' The 
 daughters of the dream-witch come and go,' don't they ? ' The 
 
HOW GWEN AND THE COUNTESS VISITED ADRIAN 205 
 
 black bat hide the starren of the night.' That's it, isn't it ? . . . 
 No — so far as I know ! But they are a queer lot. Nobody ever 
 knows what they'll be at next in the way of jargon. It's some 
 rubbish I wrote when I was a boy. I put it with the others to 
 please 'Re." This was his shortest for Irene. 
 
 If he would only have toned down his blank ignorance of the 
 beautiful white hand stretched out so appealingly to him — 
 made the least concession ! If he had but held in readiness an 
 open-fingered palm, with intent, there would have been hope. 
 But alas ! — ^no such thing. When, instead, he thrust both hands 
 into the pockets of the blue Mandarin-silk dressing-gown, Gwen 
 felt exactly as if a knife had cut her heart. And there were his 
 two beautiful eyes looking — looking — straight at her I Need 
 Fate have worded an inexorable decree so cruelly ? 
 
 Hope caught at a straw, more suo. What was more likely than 
 that darkness was intermittent ? Many things — most things for 
 that matter ! Any improbability to outwit despair. Anytliing 
 rather than final surrender. Therefore, said Gwen to herself, her 
 hand outstretched should await his, however sick at heart its 
 owner felt, till the last pretext of belief had flagged and died — 
 belief in the impossibility of so terrible a doom, consistently with 
 any decent leniency of the Creator towards His creatures. 
 
 " Oh — to please Irene, was it ?" said Gwen, talking chance- 
 wise; not meaning much, but hungering all the while for the 
 slightest aUment for starving Hope. " Who were ' the daughters 
 of the Dream Witch ?' " Arid then she was sorry again. Better 
 that a poem about darkness should have been forgotten 1 She 
 kept her hand outstretched, mind you 1 — even though Adrian 
 made matters worse by folding his hands round hie arms on a hig'h 
 ihair-back, and leaning on it. "I wonder who she is," was the 
 jiri's thought, as she looked at a ring. 
 
 " Let me see I" said he. " How does it go ?" Then he quoted, 
 •unning the lines iato one : " ' In the night-watches in the garden 
 )f Night ever the watchman sorrowing for the Hght waiteth in 
 ilence for the silent Dawn. Dead sleep is on the city far below.' 
 Chen the daughters of the Dream Witch came and went as per 
 lontract. No — I haven't the slightest idea who they were. 
 They didn't leave their names." 
 
 " You wiU never be serious, Mr. Torrens." She felt too heart- 
 ick to answer his laugh. She never moved her hand, watching 
 Teedily for a sign that never came. There was Irene coming 
 lack, having disposed of her ladyship ! " I must go," said Gwen, 
 'because of mamma. She's the Dream Witch, I suppose, I 
 
206 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 must go. Good-bye, Mr. Torrens ! But I can leave my name— 
 Gwen or Gwendolen. Choose which you prefer." She had to 
 contrive a laugh, but it caught in her throat. 
 
 " Gwen, I think." It was such a luxury to call her by her 
 name, holding her hand in his — for, the moment she spoke 
 " good-bye," his hand had come to meet hers like a shot — that 
 he seemed in no hurry to relinquish it. Nor did she seem con- 
 cerned to have it back at the cost of dragging. " Did you ever 
 Uve abroad ?" said he. " In Italy they always kiss hands — ^it's 
 rather rude not to. Let's pretend it's Italy." 
 
 She was not offended; might have been pleased, in fact — for 
 Gwen was no precisian, no drawer of hard- and fast lines in 
 flirtation — if it had not been for the black cloud that in the last 
 few minutes had been stifling her heart. As it was, Adrian's 
 trivial presumption counted for nothing, unless, indeed, it was 
 as the resolution of a difficulty. It was good so far. Even so 
 two pugilists are glad of a way out of a close grip sometimes. 
 It ended a handshake neither could withdraw from gracefully. 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Torrens," she said, and contrived another 
 laugh. " I'll come again to talk about the poetry. I must go 
 now." She passed Irene, coming in from a moment's speech 
 with the nurse outside, with a hurried farewell, and ran on to 
 her mother's room breathless. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 GWEn's pessimism. it was AUL our fault ! HOW SHE KNEW 
 THAT ADBIAN TOEEENS WAS FIANCE, AND HOW HEE MOTHER 
 TOOK KINDLY TO THE IDEA. PEOPLE ONLY KNOW WHAT THE 
 WILL OF GOD IS, NOT WHAT IT ISN't. BUT ADEIAN TOERENS 
 DID NOT COME TO TABLE. LONELINESS, AND NIGHT — AT.T, 
 BUT SLEEPLESS. WANT OF COMMON SENSE. THE FATE OF 
 A FEATHER. COUNTING A THOUSAND. LOOKING MATTERS 
 CALMLY IN THE FACE. A GEEAT DECISION, AND WHAT 
 GWEN SAW m A MIEROE 
 
 Lady Ancestee, not sorry to get away from a position which 
 involved the consideration that she was unreasonable in feeling 
 reluctance to remain in it, endeavoured on arriving in her own 
 
GWEN'S VERY BAD NIGHT 207 
 
 room to congratulate herself on her own share in an embarrass- 
 ing interview. 
 
 She had got through it very well certainly^ but not so well as 
 she had been led to expect by her meeting with his father three 
 weeks since. She had had her misgivings before that interview, 
 and had been pleasantly surprised to find how thoroughly the 
 inexorable present had ridden rough-shod over the half -forgotten 
 past. Their old identities had vanished, and it was possible to 
 be civil and courteous, and that sort of thing; even to send 
 messages of sympathy, quite in earnest, to the lady who up till 
 now had been httle more than the Miss Abercrombie Hamilton 
 Torrens married. Being thus set at ease about what seemed 
 rocks of embarrassment ahead, in the father's case. Lady Ancestor 
 had looked forward with perfect equanimity to making the 
 acquaintance of the son — had, in fact, only connected him in her 
 mind with this deplorable accident, which, however, she quite 
 understood to be going to be a thing of the past. All in good 
 time. Her equanimity had, however, been disturbed by the 
 young man's inherited manner, which his father had so com- 
 pletely lost; above all things by his rapid nonsense, one of his 
 father's leading characteristics in youth. She condemned it as 
 more nonsensical, which probably only meant that she herself 
 was older. But the manner — the maim.er of it ! How it brought 
 back Clarges Street and her mother, and the family earthquake 
 over her resolution to marry a young Dragoon, with three good 
 lives between him and his inheritance ! She was taken aback 
 to find herself still so sensitive about that old story. 
 
 She had not succeeded in ridding herself of her disquieting 
 memories when her daughter followed her, choking back tense 
 excitement until she had fairly closed the door behind her. Then 
 her words came with a rush, for all that she kept her voice in 
 check to say them. 
 
 " He cannot see, mamma — he cannot see at all I He is dead 
 stone-blind — ^for life — for hfe ! And we have done it — we have 
 done it !" Then she broke down utterly, throwing herself on a 
 sofa to hide in its cushions the torrent of tears she could no longer 
 keep back. " We have done it — we have done it \" she kept on 
 crying. " We have ruined his life, and the guilt is ours — ours — 
 all!" 
 
 The Countess, good woman, tried to mix consolation with 
 protest against such outrageous pessimism. She pointed out 
 that there was no medical authority for such an extreme view aa 
 Gwen's. On the contrary. Sir Coupland had spoken most hope- 
 
208 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 fully. And, after all, if Mr. Torrens could see Arthur's Bridge 
 he could not be absolutely bHnd. 
 
 " He could not see Arthur's Bridge at all," said Gwen, sitting 
 up and wiping her tears, self-possessed again for the moment 
 from the stimulus of contradiction, always a great help. "I 
 stood facing him for five minutes holding out my hand for him 
 to shake, and he never — never — saw it !" 
 
 "Perhaps he doesn't like shaking hands," said her mother 
 weakly. " Some people don't." 
 
 " They do mine," said Gwen. " Besides, he did in the end, 
 and . . ." 
 
 " And what ?" 
 
 " And nothing." At which point Gwen broke down again, 
 crying out as before that he was blind, and she knew it. The 
 doctors were only talking against hope, and they knew it. " Oh, 
 mother, mother," she cried out, addressing her mother as she 
 would often do when in trouble or excited, " how shall we bear it, 
 years from now, to know that he can see nothing — nothing ! — 
 and to know that the guilt of his darkness Ues with us — is ours — 
 is yours and mine ? Have we ever either of us said a word of 
 protest against that wicked dog-shooting order ? It was in the 
 attempt to commit a crime that we sanctioned, that old Stephen 
 tried to shoot that darling Achilles. Oh, I know it was no fault 
 of old Stephen's !" She became a little calmer from indulgence 
 of speech that had fought for hearing. " Oh no, mother dear, 
 it's no use talking. If Mr. Torrens never recovers his eyesight 
 he has only us to thank for it." She paused a moment, and 
 then added : — " And how I shall look that girl in the face I don't 
 know !" 
 
 " What girl ?" 
 
 " Oh, didn't you see ? The girl he's got that engaged ring 
 on his finger about. You didn't see ? You never do see, 
 mamma dear !" 
 
 " I didn't notice any particular ring, dear." Her ladyship 
 may have felt a relief about something, to judge by her manner. 
 " Has Irene said anything to you ?" she asked. 
 
 Gwen considered a little. " Irene talks a good deal about a 
 Miss Gertrude Abercrombie, a cousin. But she has never said 
 anything." 
 
 " Oh ! — ^it's Miss Gertrude Abercrombie ? . . ." 
 
 " / know nothing about it. I was only guessing. She may 
 be Miss Gertrude Anybody. Whoever she is, it's the same 
 thing. Think what she's lost !" 
 
GWEN'S VERY BAD NIGHT 209 
 
 " She has, indeed, my dear," says the elder lady, who is not 
 going to give up this acceptable Miss Gertrude Anybody, 
 even at the risk of talking some nonsense about her. "And 
 we must all feel for the cruelty of her position. But if she is — 
 as I have no doubt she is — ^truly attached to Mr. Torrens, she 
 will find her consolation in the thought that it is given to her 
 to . . . to . . ." But the Countess was not rhetorician enough to 
 know that choice words should be kept for perorations. She 
 had quite taken the edge off her best arrow-head. She could 
 not wind up " to be a consolation to her husband " with any 
 convincingness. So when Gwen interrupted her with: — " I see 
 what you mean, but it's nonsense," she feU back upon the 
 strong entrenchment of seniors, who know the Will of God. 
 They really do, don't you know ? " At least," she said, " this 
 Miss Abercrombie must admit that no blame can fairly be laid 
 at our door for what was so manifestly ordained by the Almighty. 
 Sir Hamilton Torrens himself was the first to exonerate your 
 father. His own keeper is instructed to shoot all dogs except 
 poodles." 
 
 " It was not the Will of God at all . , ." 
 
 " My dear ! — how can you know that ?" 
 
 " Well — ^not more than everything else is ! It was old 
 Stephen's not hitting his mark. And he would have killed 
 Achilles, then. Oh dear, how I do sometimes wish God could 
 be kept out of it ! . . . No, mamma, it's no use looking shocked. 
 Whatever makes out that it was not our fault is wrong, and Sir 
 Hamilton Torrens didn't mean that when he said it." 
 
 " My dear, it is his own son." 
 
 " Very well, then, all the more ! Oh, you know what I 
 mean. . . . No mamma," said she as she left the room, " it isn't 
 any use. I am utterly miserable about it." 
 
 And she was, though she herself scarcely knew yet how miser- 
 able. So long as she had someone else to speak to, the whole 
 deadly truth lingered on the threshold of her mind and would not 
 enter. She ascribed weight to opinions she would have disregarded 
 had she had no stake on the chance of their correctness. 
 
 She caught at the narration of her maid Lutwyche, prolonging 
 her hair-combing for talk's sake. Lutwyche had the pecu- 
 liarity of always accommodating her pronunciation to the class 
 she was speaking with, elaborating it for the benefit of those 
 socially above her. So her inquiry how the gentleman was 
 getting on was accounted for by her having seen him from the 
 guardian. Speaking with an equal, she would have said garden. 
 
 14 
 
210 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 She had seen him therefrom, and been struck by his appearance 
 of recovered vigoiu', especially by his visible enjoyment of the 
 land escape. She would have said landscape to Cook. Pro- 
 nounced anyhow, her words were a comfort to her young 
 mistress, defending her a very Uttle against the black thoughts 
 that assailed her. Similarly, Miss Lutwyche's miderstanding 
 that Mr. Torrens would come to table this evening was a flatter- 
 ing unction to her distressed soul, and she never questioned her 
 omniscient handmaid's accuracy. On the contrary, she utihsed 
 a memory of some chance words of her mother to Irene, sug- 
 gesting that her brother might be " up to coming down " that 
 evening, as a warrant for replying : — " I believe so." 
 
 Nevertheless, she had no hope of seeing him make his appear- 
 ance in the brilliantly illuminated Early Jacobean drawing- 
 room, where at least two of the upstairs servants had to light 
 wax tapers for quite ten minutes at dusk, to be even with a 
 weakness of the Earl's for wax-candlelight and no other. And 
 when Irene appeared without him, her " Oh dear ! — ^your brother 
 wasn't up to coming down, then ?" was spiritless and per- 
 functory. Nor did she believe her friend's " No — ^we thought 
 it best to be on the safe side." For she knew now why it was 
 that this absence from the evening banquet — " family dinner- 
 table " is too modest a phrase — had been so strenuously insisted 
 on. There was no earthly reason why Irene's brother should 
 not have dressed and sat at table. Were there no sofas in the 
 Early Jacobean drawing-room ? There was no reason against 
 his presence at all except that his absolute blindness must needs 
 have been manifest to every observer. She could see it all 
 now. 
 
 " You know, dear," said Irene, " if Adrian were a reasonable 
 being, there would be no harm in his dining down, as Lutwyche 
 calls it. He could sit up to dinner perfectly, but no earthly 
 persuasion would get him up to bed till midnight. And as for 
 lying down on sofas in the drawing-room after dinner, you could 
 as soon get a mad bull to lie down on a sofa as Adrian, if there 
 was what Lutwyche calls company." 
 
 So that evening the beauty of the Earl's daughter — ^whose 
 name among the countryfolk, by-the-by, was " Gwen o' the 
 Towers " — ^was less destructive than usual to the one or two 
 new bachelors who helped the variation of the party. For 
 monumental beauty kills only poets and dreamers, and these 
 young gentlemen were Squires. The verdict of one of them 
 about her tells its tale: — " A stunner to look at, but too stand- 
 
GWEN'S VERY BAD NIGHT 2H 
 
 offish for my money !" She was nothing of the sort; and would 
 gladly, to oblige, have shot a smile or an eye-flash at either of 
 them if her heart had not been so heavy. But she wanted 
 terribly to be alone and cry all the evening, and was of no use 
 as a beauty. Perhaps it was as well that it was so, for these 
 unattached males. 
 
 When the time came for the loneliness of night she was 
 frightened of it, and let Irene go at her own door with reluctance. 
 In answer to whom she said at parting: — " No — ^no, dear ! I'm 
 perfectly well, and nothing's the matter." Irene spoke back after 
 leaving her: — " You know I'm not the least afraid about him. 
 It will be all right." Then Gwen mustered a poor laugh, and with 
 " Of course it will, dear !" vanished into her bedroom. 
 
 She got to sleep and slept awhile ; then awoke to the worst 
 solitude a vexed soul knows — those terrible " small hours " of 
 the morning. Then, every mere insect of evil omen that dayhght 
 has kept in bounds grows to the size of an elephant,. and what 
 was the whirring of his wings becomes discordant thunder. 
 Then palliatives lose their market-value, and every clever self- 
 deception that stands between us and acknowledged ill bursts, 
 bubblewise, and leaves the soul naked and unarmed against 
 despair. 
 
 Gwen waked without provocation at about three in the 
 morning; waked Heaven knew why ! — ^for there was all the raw 
 material of a good night's rest; the candidate for the sleeper- 
 ship; a prodigiously comfortable bed; dead silence, not so much 
 as an owl in the still night she looked out into during an ex- 
 cursion warranted to promote sleep — but never sleep itself ! 
 She had been dragged reluctantly from a dreamless Nirvana into 
 the presence of a waking nightmare — two great beautiful eyes 
 that looked at her and saw nothing; and this coercion, she 
 somehow felt, was really due to an unaccountable absence of 
 mind on her part. Surely she could have kept asleep with a 
 little more common sense. She would go back from that 
 excursion reinforced, and bid defiance to that nightmare. Sleep 
 would come to her, she knew, if she could find a modus vivendi 
 with a loose flood of golden hair, and could just get hold of a 
 feather-quill that was impatient of imprisonment and wanted 
 to see the world. She searched for it with the tenderest of 
 finger-tips because she knew — as all the feather-bed world knows 
 —that if one is too rough with it, it goes in, and comes out again 
 just when one is dropping off. . . . 
 
 There ! — it was caught and pulled out. She would not burn 
 
212 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 it. It would smell horribly and make her think of Lutwyche's 
 remedy for fainting fits, burned feathers held to the nostrils. 
 No ! — she would put it through the casement into the night- 
 air, and it would float away and think of its days on the breast 
 of an Imbergoose, and believe them back again. Oh, the 
 difference between the great seas and winds, and the inside of 
 that stuffy ticking ! Poor little breast-feather of a foolish bird 1 
 Yes — now she could go to sleep ! She knew it quite well — 
 she had only to contrive a particular attitude. . . . There, that 
 was right ! Now she had only to put worrying thoughts out 
 of her head and count a thousand . . . and then — oblivion ! 
 
 Alas, no such thing ! In five minutes the particular attitude 
 was a thing of the past, and the worrying thoughts were back 
 upon her with a vengeance. Or, rather, the worrying thought; 
 for her plural number was hypocrisy. She was in for a deadly 
 wakeful night, a night of growing fever, with those sightless eyes 
 expelhng every other image from her brain. She was left alone 
 with the darfaiess and a question she dared not try to answer. 
 Suppose that when those eyes looked upon her that evening at 
 Arthur's Bridge for the first time — suppose it was also the last ? 
 What then ? How could she know it, and know how the thing 
 came about, and whom she held answerable for it, and go on 
 living ? . . . 
 
 No — her life would end with that. Nothing would again be 
 as it had been for her. Her childhood had ended when she 
 first saw Death; when her brother's corpse was carried home 
 dripping from within a stone's throw of this new tragedy. But 
 was not that what bills of lading call the " Act of God " — ^fair 
 play, as it were, on the part of Fate ? What was this ? . . . 
 Come — ^this would never do, with a pulse like that ! 
 
 No one should ever feel his pulse, or hers, at night. Gwen waa 
 none the better for doing it. Nor did she benefit by an operation 
 which her mind called looking matters calmly in the face. It 
 consisted in imaginary forecasts of a status quo that was to come 
 about. She had to skip some years as too horrible even to 
 dream of; years needed to live down the worst raw sense of guilt, 
 and become hardened to inevitable life. Then she filled in her 
 scenario with Sir Adrian Torrens, the blind Squire of Pensham 
 Steyiies, and his beautiful and accomplished wife, a dummy with 
 no great vitaUty, constructed entirely out of a ring on Mr. 
 Torrens's finger and an allusion of Irene's to the Miss Gertrude 
 Aberorombie, whose skill in needlework surpassed Arachne's. 
 Gwen did not supply this lady with a sufficiently well-marked 
 
GWEN'S VERY BAD NIGHT 213 
 
 human heart. Perhaps the temptation to make her clever and 
 shrewd but not sympathetic, not quite up to her husband's 
 deserts, was irresistible. It allowed of an unprejudiced con- 
 sciousness of what she, Gwen, would have been in this dummy's 
 situation. It g.llowed latitude to a fancy that portrayed Lady 
 Gwendolen Whatever-she-had-become — because, of course, she 
 would have to marry some fool — as the staunch and constant 
 friend of the family at Pensham. Her devotion to the dummy 
 when in trouble — and, indeed, she piled up calamities for the 
 unhappy lady — ^was monumental; an example to her sex. 
 And when, to the bitter grief of her devoted husband, the dummy 
 died — all parties being then, at a rough estimate, forty — and 
 she herself, his dearest friend, stood by the dummy's grave with 
 him, and, generally speaking, sustained him in Ms tribulation, 
 a disposition to get the fool out of the way grew strong enough 
 to make its victim doubt her own vouchers for her own absolute 
 disinterestedness. She turned angrily upon her fancies, tore 
 them to tatters, flung them to the winds. One does this, and 
 then the pieces join themselves together and reappear intact. 
 
 She was no nearer sleep after looking matters calmly in the 
 face, that way, for a full hour. Similar trials to dramatize a 
 probable future all ended on the same Unes, and each time Gwen 
 was indignant with herself for her own folly. What was this 
 man to her, whom she had seen twice ? Little enough ! — she 
 pledged herself to it in the Court of Conscience ! What was she 
 to him, who had spoken with her twice certainly; but seen her — 
 oh, how little ! Why, she had seen him more, of the two, if one 
 came to close quarters with Time. See how long he was stooping 
 over that unfortunate dog-chain ! 
 
 Sitting up in bed in the dim July dawn, wild-eyed in an un- 
 shepherded flock of golden locks, this young lady was certainly 
 surpassingly beautiful. She was revolving in her poor, aching 
 head a contingency she had not fully allowed for. Suppose — 
 merely to look other things in the face, you see ! — suppose there 
 were no dummy ! What chance would the poor fellow have 
 then of winning the love of any woman, with those blind eyes 
 in his head ? Gwen got up restlessly and went to the casement, 
 meeting a stream of level sunUght that the swallows outside in 
 the ivy were making the subject of comment, and stood looking 
 out over the leagues of the ancient domain of her forefathers. 
 " Gwen o' the Towers " — ^that was her name. It seemed to join 
 chorus with her own answer to the last question, to her satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
214 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 To offer the consolation of her love, to give all she had to give, 
 to this man as compenBation for the great curse that had fallen 
 on him through the fault of her belongings, seemed to her in hei 
 excited state easy and nowise strange — mere diC&oulty of the 
 negotiation apart. She elected to shut her eyes to a fact we 
 and the story can guess — we are so shrewd, you see ! — and to 
 make a parade in her own eyes of a seK -renunciation approaching 
 that of Marcus Curtius. If only the gulf would open to receive 
 her she would fling herself in. She ignored the dissimilarities 
 of detail in the two cases, especially the conceivable promised 
 land at the bottom of her gulf. The Roman Eques had nothing 
 but death and darkness to look forward to. 
 
 The difficulties of the scheme shot across her fevered con- 
 ception of it. How if, though he was not affianced to the dummy, 
 or any other lay figure she might provide, his was a widowed 
 heart left barren by the hand of Death ? How it some other 
 disappointment had marred his life ? — some passion for a woman 
 who had rashly accepted somebody else before meeting him ? 
 This happens we know; so did Gwen, and was sorry. How iE 
 some minx — Lutwyche's expression — had bewitched him and 
 slighted him ? He might nurse a false ideal of her till Doomsday. 
 Men did sometimes, cceteris paribus. But how could she — how 
 could she ? . . . Anyhow, Gwen might have seen her way through 
 that difficulty with a fair chance. But — ^to be ia visible 1 
 
 The morning sun had been at variance with some flames, hard 
 to beHeve clouds, and had just dispersed them so successfully 
 that their place in the heavens knew them no more. His rays, 
 unveiled, bore hard upon the blue eyes, sore with watching, of 
 the girl a hundred milhon miles off, and drove her from her case- 
 ment. Gwen of the Towers fell back into the room, all the 
 flowing lawn of the most luxurious robe-de-nuit France could 
 provide tm^ed to gold by the touch of Phoebus. She paused a 
 moment before a mirror, to glance at her pallor in it, and to 
 wonder at the sunlight in the wealth of its setting of ungroomed, 
 uncontrollable locks. It was not vanity exactly that provoked 
 the despairing thought: — " But he will never see me — ^never 1" 
 A girl would have been a hypocrite indeed who could shut her 
 eyes to what Gwen saw in that looking-glass. She knew all 
 about it — had done so from babyhood. 
 
 Some relaxation of the mind gave Morpheus an opportunity, 
 and he took such advantage of a willing victim that Lutwyche, 
 coming three hours later, scarcely knew how to deal with the 
 case, and might have been uneasy at such an intensive cultiva- 
 
SLOW AISID FAST APPROXIMATION 215 
 
 tion of sleep if she had been a nervous person. But she was 
 prosaic and phlegmatic, and held to the general opinion that 
 nothing unusual ever happened. So she was content to make 
 a little extra noise; and, when nothing came of it, to go away 
 till rung for. That was how Gwen came to be so late at break- 
 fast that morning. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 HOW THE HON. PERCIVAL GAVE MISS DICKENSON HIS ACCOUNT OF 
 THE BUND MAN. HOW THAT ANY YOUNG MAN SOBVEB IS 
 GLAD THAT ANY YOUNG LADY SOEVER ISN't FIANCEE, EXCEPT 
 SHE BE UGLY. MISS DICKENSON's EITEONTEBY. HOW MK. 
 PELLEW SAID " POOH !" IKENE's ABSENCE, VISITING. EVERY- 
 ONE else's absence, EXCEPT THE BUND MAN's, GWBN's, 
 AND MRS. bailey's, WHO HAD A LETTER TO WRITE 
 
 The Hon. Percival Pelew had not been at the Towers con- 
 tinuously throughout the whole three weeks following the 
 accident. The best club in London could not have spared him 
 as long as that. He had returned to his place in the House a 
 day or two later, had voted on the Expenses at Elections Bill, 
 and had then gone to a by-election in Cornwall to help his candi- 
 date to keep his expenses at a minimum. His way back to the 
 club did not he near Ancester Towers, but he reconciled a 
 renewal of his visit there to his conscience by the consideration 
 that an unusually late Session was predicted. A Uttle more 
 country air would do him no harm, and the Towers was the 
 best club in the country. 
 
 He had had absolutely no motive whatever for going there, 
 outside what this imphes. Unless, indeed, something else was 
 imphed by his pledging his honour to himself that this was the 
 case. Self-deception is an art that Mail gives a great deal of 
 attention to, and Woman nearly as much. 
 
 The Countess said to him, on the evening of his reappear- 
 ance in time to dress for dinner: — " Everybody's gone, Percy — 
 I mean everybody of your lot a fortnight ago." Whereto he 
 rephed: — " How about the wounded man ?" and her ladyship 
 said; — " Mr. Torrens ? Oh yes, Mr. Torrens is here still and his 
 
216 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sister — they'll be here a few days longer. . . . There's nobody 
 else. Yes, there's Constance Dickenson. Norbury, tell them to 
 keep dinner back a httle because of Mr. Pellew." This was all 
 in one sentence, chiefly to the butler. She ended : — " All the rest 
 are new," and the gentleman departed to dress in ten minutes 
 — long ones probably. This was two or three evenings before 
 Miss Dickenson saw that glow-worm in the garden. Perhaps 
 three, because two are needed to account for the lady's attitude 
 about that cigar, and twelve hours for a coolness occasioned by 
 her ladyship's saying in her inconsiderate way: — " Oh, you are 
 quite old friends, you two, of course — I forgot." Only fancy- 
 saying that a single lady and gentleman were " quite old friends " ! 
 Both parties exhibited mature courtesy, enriched with smiles 
 in moderation. But for all that their relations painfully re- 
 sembled civility for the rest of that evening. 
 
 However, whatever they were then, they were reinstated by 
 now; that is to say, by the morning after Gwen's bad night. 
 Eavesdrop, please, and overhear what you can in the arbutus 
 walk, half-way through the Hon. Percival's first cigar. 
 
 The gentleman is accounting for something he has just said. 
 " What made me think so was his being so curious about our 
 friend Cumberworld. As for Gwen, I wouldn't trust her not 
 to be romantic. Girls are." 
 
 The lady speaks discreetly : — " Certainly no such construction 
 would have occurred to me. One has to be on one's guard against 
 romantic ideas. She might easily be — a — iprise, to some extent 
 — as girls are. ..." 
 
 " But spooney, no ! Well — perhaps you're right." 
 
 " I don't know whether I ought to say even that. I shouldn't, 
 only to you. Because I know I can rely on your discretion. . . ." 
 
 " Rather. Only you must admit that when she appeared 
 this morning — and last night — ^she was looking . . ." 
 
 " Looking what ?" 
 
 " Well . . . rather too statuesque for jollity." 
 
 " Perhaps the heat. I know she complains of the heat; it 
 gives her a headache." 
 
 " Come. Miss Dickenson, that's not fair. You know it was 
 what you said began it." 
 
 " Began what ?" 
 
 " Madam, what I am saying arises naturally from . . ." 
 
 " There ! — do stop being ParUamentary and be reasonable. 
 What you mean is — have those two fallen head over ears in love, 
 or haven't they ?" Discussions of this subject of Love are 
 
SLOW AND FAST APPROXIMATION 217 
 
 greatly lubricated by exaggeration of style. It is almost as 
 good as a foreign tongue. She continued more seriously: — " Tell 
 me a little more of what Mr. Torrens said." 
 
 " When I saw him this morning ?" Mr. Pellew looked thought- 
 fully at what was left of his cigar, as if it would remind him if 
 he looked long enough, and then threw it abruptly away as 
 though he gave it up as a bad job. " No/' he said, falling back 
 on his own memory. "It wasn't what he said. It was the 
 way of saying it. Manner is incommunicable. And he said 
 so httle about her. He talked a good deal about Philippa in 
 a chaffy sort of way — said she was exactly his idea of a Countess 
 — ^why had one such firm convictions about Countesses and 
 Duchesses and Baronets and so on ? It led to great injustice, 
 causing us to condemn nine samples out of ten as Pretenders, 
 not real Countesses or Duchesses or Baronets at all. He was 
 convinced his own dear dad was a tin Baronet; or, at best, 
 Britannia-metal . Alfred Tennyson had spoken of two sorts — ^httle 
 lily-handed ones and great broad-shouldered brawny English- 
 men. Neither would eat the sugar nor go to sleep in an arm- 
 chair with the Times over his head. His father did both. I 
 admitted the force of his criticism, but could not follow his 
 distinction between Countesses and Duchesses. Duchesses were 
 squarer than Countesses, just as Dukes were squarer than 
 Earls." 
 
 " I think they are," said Miss Dickenson. She shut her eyes 
 a moment for reflection, and then decided: — " Oh yes — certainly 
 squarer — ^not a doubt of it !" Mr. Pellew formed an image in 
 his mind, of this lady fifteen years ago, with its eyes shut. He 
 did not the least know why he did so. 
 
 " Torrens goes on like that," he continued. " Makes you 
 laugh sometimes ! But what I was going to say was this. 
 When he had disposed of Philippa and chaffed Tim a little — 
 not disrespectfully you know — he became suddenly serious, and 
 talked about Gwen — spoke with a hesitating deference, almost 
 ceremoniously. Said he had had some conversation with Lady 
 Gwendolen, and been impressed with her intelligence and wit. 
 Most young ladies of her age were so frivolous. He was the 
 more impressed that her beauty was undeniable. The brief 
 glimpse he had had of her had greatly affected him artistically — 
 it was an Esthetic impression entirely. He overdid this." 
 
 Miss Dickenson nodded slightly in confidence with herself. 
 Her insight jotted down a brief memorandum about Mr. Pellew's, 
 and the credit it did him. That settled, she recalled a something 
 
218 WHEN GHOST ^EETS GHOST 
 
 he had left unfinished earlier. " You were asking about Lord 
 Cumberworld, Mr. Pellew ?" 
 
 " Whether there was anything afoot in that quarter ? Yes, 
 he asked that, and wanted to know if Mrs. Bailey, who had been 
 retaihng current gossip, was rightly informed when she said that 
 there was, and that it was going to come off. He was very 
 anxious to show how detached he was personally. Made jokes 
 about its ' coming off ' like a boot. . . ." 
 
 " Stop a minute to see it I understand. ... Oh yea — ^I see. 
 ' If there was anything afoot.' Of course. Go on." 
 
 " It was a poor quip, and failed of its purpose. His relief was 
 too palpable when I disallowed Mrs. Bailey. . . . By-the-by, 
 that's a rum thing. Miss Dickenson, — ^that way young men have. 
 I believe if I did it once when I was a young fillah I did it fifty 
 times." 
 
 " Did what ?" 
 
 " Well — breathed free on hearing that a girl wasn't engaged. 
 Doesn't matter how doosid little they know of her — only seen 
 her in the Park on horseback, p'r'aps — they'll eat a lot more 
 lunch if they're told she's still in the market. Pact 1" 
 
 Miss Dickenson said that no doubt Mr. Pellew knew best, and 
 that it was gratifjdng to think how many young men's lunches 
 her earlier days might have intensified without her knowing any- 
 thing about it. The gentleman felt himself bound to reassure and 
 confirm, for was not the lady passie ? " Rather !" said he; this 
 favourite expression this time implying that the name of these 
 lunches was no doubt Legion. An awkward sincerity of the 
 lady caused her to say: — " I didn't mean that." And then she 
 had to account for it. She was intrepid enough to venture on: 
 " What I meant was, never being engaged," but not cool enough 
 to keep of one colour exactly. It didn't rise to the height of 
 embarrassment, but something rippled for all that. 
 
 A cigar Mr. Pellew was lighting required unusual and special 
 attention. It had a mission, that cigar. It had to gloss over a 
 slight flush on its smoker's cheeks, and to take the edge ofi the 
 abruptness with which he said, — " Oh, gammon 1" as he threw a 
 Vesuvian away. 
 
 He picked up the lost thread at the point of his own indis- 
 creet excursion into young-manthropology — his own word when 
 he apologized for it. " Anyhow," said he, " it struck me that 
 our friend upstairs was very hard hit. He made such a parade 
 of his complete independence. Of course, I'm not much of a 
 judge of such matters. Not my line. I understand that he 
 
SLOW AND FAST APPROXIMATION 219 
 
 has been prorogued — I mean his departure has. He's to try his 
 luck at coining downstairs this evening after feeding-time. He 
 funks finding the way to his mouth in public. Don't wonder — 
 poor chap I" 
 
 Then this lady had a fit of contrition about the way in which 
 she had been gossiping, and tried to back out. She had the 
 loathsome meanness to pretend that she herself had been entirely 
 passive, a mere listener to an indiscreet and fanciful companion. 
 " What gossips you men are \" said she, rushing the position 
 boldly. " Fancy cooking up a romance about this Mr. Torrens 
 and Gwen, when they've hardly so much as," she had nearly said, 
 " set eyes on each other "; but revised it in time for press. It 
 worked out " when she has really only just set eyes on him, and 
 chatted half an hour." 
 
 Mr. Pellew's indignation found its way through a stammer 
 which expressed the struggle of courtesy against denunciation. 
 " Come — hang it all !" said he. " It wasn't my romance. . . . 
 Oh, well, perhaps it wasn't yours either. Only — play fair. Miss 
 Dickenson, Six of the one and half a dozen of the other 1 
 Confess up !" 
 
 The lady assumed the tone of Tranquillity soothing Petulance. 
 "Never mind, Mr. Pellew !" she said. "You needn't lie 
 awake about it. It doesn't really matter, you know. . . . Have 
 you got the right time ? Because I have to be ready at half- 
 past eleven to drive with Philippa. I promised. . . . What ! 
 — a quarter past ? I must run." She looked back to reassure 
 possible perturbation. " It really does not matter between us," 
 said she, and vanished down the avenue. 
 
 The Hon. Percival Pellew walked slowly in the opposite 
 direction in a brown study, leaving his thumbs in his armholes, 
 and playing la ci darem with his fingers on his waistcoat. He 
 played it twice or thrice before he stopped to knock a phenomenal 
 ash off his cigar. Then he spoke, and what he said was 
 " Pooh !" 
 
 The story does not know why he said " Pooh !" It merely 
 notes, apropos of Miss Dickenson's last words, that the first 
 person plural pronoim, used as a dual by a lady to a gentle- 
 man, sometimes makes hay of the thirdness of their respective 
 persons singular. But if it had done so, this time, " Pooh !" was 
 a weak counter-blast against its infiuence. 
 
 Irene's friend Gretchen von Trendelenstein had written that 
 morning that she was coming to stay with the Mackworth 
 
220 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Clarke's at Toft, only a couple of miles off. She would only have 
 two days, and could not hope to get as far as Pensham, but couldn't 
 Irene come to her? She was, you see, Irene's bosom friend. 
 The letter had gone to Pensham and been forwarded, losing 
 time. This was the last day of visiting-possibility at Toft. So 
 Irene asked to be taken there ; and, if she stayed, would find her 
 way back somehow. Mr. Norbury, however, after referring to 
 Archibald, the head of the stables, made dernier ressorts needless, 
 and Irene was driven away behind a spirited horse by the young 
 groom, Tom Kettering. 
 
 Her brother would have devolved entirely on Mrs. Bailey and 
 chance visitors, if he had not struck vigorously against confine- 
 ment to his room, after a recovery of strength sufficient to warrant 
 his removal to his home eighteen miles away. If he was strong 
 enough for that, he was strong enough for an easy flight of stairs, 
 down and up, with tea between. Mrs. Bailey, the only obstacle, 
 was overruled. Indeed, that good woman was an anachronism 
 by now, her only remaining function being such succour as a 
 newly bhnded man wants till he gets used to his blindness. 
 Tonics and stimulants were coming to an end, and her profes- 
 sional extinction was to follow. Nevertheless, Mr. Torrens held fast 
 to dining in sohtude until he recovered his eyesight, or at least 
 until he had become more dexterous without it. 
 
 Now, it happened that on this day of all others three attractive 
 events came all at once — ^the Flower Show at Brainley Thorpe, 
 the Sadleigh Races, and a big Agricultural Meeting at King's 
 Grantham, where the County Members were to address con- 
 stituents. The Countess had promised to open the first, and 
 the absence of the Earl from the second would have been looked 
 upon as a calamity. All the male non-coronetted members of 
 the company of mature years were committed to Agriciilture or 
 Bookmaking, and the younger ones to attendance on Beauty 
 at the Flower Show. Poor Adrian Torrens ! — ^there was no 
 doubt he had been forgotten. But he was not going to admit 
 the slightest concern about that. " Go away to your Von, 
 darling Stupid !" said he. " And turn head over heels in her and 
 wallow. Do you want to be the death of me ? Do you want to 
 throw me back when I'm such a credit to Mrs. Bailey and Dr. 
 Nash 1" Irene had her doubts — but there ! — ^wasn't Gretchen 
 going to marry an Herr Professor and be a Frau when she went 
 back to Berlin, and would she ever see her again ? Moreover, 
 Gwen said to her : — " He won't be alone if he's downstairs in the 
 drawing-room. Some of the women are sure to stop. It's 
 
SLOW AND FAST APPROXIMATION 221 
 
 too hot for old Lady Cumberworld to go out. I heard her 
 say so." 
 " She'll be no consolation for him," said Irene. 
 " No — ^that she won't ! But unless there's someone else there 
 she'll have Inez — ^you've seen the Spanish dame-de-compagnie ? — 
 and she'll enjoy a flirtation with your brother. He'll speak 
 Spanish to her, and she'U sing Spanish songs. He won't hurt for 
 a few hours." 
 
 So Tom Kettering drove Irene away in the gig, and Adrian 
 was guided downstairs to an empty hall by Mrs. Bailey at four 
 o'clock, so as to get a little used to the room before anyone 
 should return. Prophecy depicted Normal Society coming back 
 to tea, and believed in itself. Achilles sanctioned his master's 
 new departure by his presence, accompanying him to the 
 drawing-room. This dog was not only tolerated but encouraged 
 everywhere. Dogs are, when their eyes are pathetic, their 
 coats faultless, and their compliance with household supersti- 
 tions unhesitating. 
 " Anybody in sight, Mrs. Bailey ?" 
 " Nobody yet, Mr. Torrens." 
 
 " Speriamo I Perhaps there's a piano in the room, Mrs. 
 Bailey ?" 
 
 "There's two. One's stood up against the wall shut. The 
 other's on three legs in the middle of the room." That one was 
 to play upon, she supposed, the other to sing to. 
 
 " If you will be truly obliging — ^you always are, you know — 
 and conduct me to the one on three legs in the middle of the 
 room, I will play you an air from Gluok's ' Orfeo,' which I am 
 sure you will enjoy. . . . Oh yes — I can do without any 
 music-books because I have played it before, not infre- 
 quently. . . ." 
 
 " I meant to set upon." In fact, Mrs. Bailey regarded this as 
 the primary purpose of music-books ; and so it was, at the home 
 of her niece, who could play quite nicely. There was only two 
 and they " just did." She referred to this while Mr. Torrens was 
 spinning the music-stool to a suitable height for himself. He 
 responded with perfect gravity — ^not a fraction of a smile — that 
 books were apt to be too high or too low. It was the fault of the 
 composers clearly, because the binders had to accept the scores 
 as they found them. If the binders were to begin rearranging 
 music to make volumes thicker or thinner, you wouldn't be able 
 to play straight on. Mrs. Bailey concurred, saying that she had 
 always said to her niece not to offer to play a tune till she could 
 
222 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 play it right through from beginning to end. Mr. Torrens said 
 that was undoubtedly the view of all true musicians, and struck 
 a chord, remarking that the piano had been left open. " How- 
 ever could you tell that now, Mr. Torrens 1" said Mrs. Bailey, 
 and felt that she was in the presence of an Artist. 
 
 Nevertheless, she seemed to be lukewarm about Che faro, 
 merely remarking after hearing it that it was more Uke the slow 
 tunes her niece played than the quick ones. The player said 
 with unmoved gravity this was andante. Mrs. Bailey said that 
 her niece, on the contrary, had been christened Selina. She 
 could play the Polka. So could Mr. Torrens, rather to the good 
 woman's surprise and, indeed, delight. He was so good-humoured 
 that he played it again, and also the Schottische ; and would 
 have stood Gluck over to meet her taste indefinitely, but that 
 voices came outside, and the selection was interrupted. 
 
 The voice of Lady Ancestor was one, saying despairingly: — 
 " My dear, if you're not ready we must go without you. I must 
 be there in time." Miss Dickenson's was another, attesting that 
 if the person addressed did not come, sundry specified individuals 
 would be in an awful rage. 
 
 " WeU, then, you must go without me. Flower shows always 
 bore me to death." This was a voice that had not died out of 
 the blind man's ears since yesterday ; Lady Gwendolen's, of 
 course. It added that its owner must finish her letter, or it 
 would miss the six o'clock post and not catch the mail; which 
 would have, somehow, some disastrous result. Then said her 
 mother's voice, she should have written it before. Then justifi- 
 cation and refutation, and each voice said its say with a differ- 
 ence — ^more of expounding, explaining — ^with a result Kke in 
 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha's mountainous fugue, that one of 
 them, Gwen's, stood out all the stiSer hence. No doubt you 
 know your Browning. Gwen asserted herself victor all along 
 the hne, and remonstrance died a natural death. But what was 
 she going to do all the afternoon ? A wealth of employments 
 awaited her, she testified. Rarely had so many arrears remained 
 unpaid. Last and least she must try through that song, because 
 she had to send the music back to the Signore. So the Countess 
 supposed she must go her own way, and presently Adrian 
 Torrens was conscious that her ladyship had gone hers, by the 
 curt resurrection of sounds in abeyance somewhile since; soimds 
 of eight hoofs and four wheels; suddenly self-assertive, soon 
 evanescent. 
 
 Was Gwen really going to come to sing at this piano ? That 
 
SLOW AND FAST APPROXIMATION 223 
 
 was something worth living for, at least. But no ! — conclusions 
 must not be jumped in that fashion. Perhaps she had a piano 
 in her own room. Nothing more likely. 
 
 Achilles had stepped out, hearing sounds as of a departure; 
 and now returned, having seen that all was in satisfactory order. 
 He sighed over his onerous responsibihties, and settled down to 
 repose — ^well-earned repose, his manner suggested. 
 
 " I suppose I shall have to clear out when her young ladyship 
 comes in to practise," said Mrs. Bailey. Mr. Torrens revolted 
 inwardly against ostracising the good woman on social grounds ; 
 but then, did he want her to remain if Gwen appeared ? Just 
 fancy — to have that newcomer all to himself for perhaps an hour, 
 as he had her for five minutes yesterday I Too good to be true ! 
 He compromised with his conscience about Mrs. Bailey. " Don't 
 go away till she does, anyhow," said he. And then he sang Irish 
 Melodies with Tom Moore's words, and rather shocked his hearer 
 by the message the legatee of the singer received about his heart. 
 She preferred the Polka. 
 
 It chanced that Mrs. Bailey also had weighty correspondence 
 on hand, relating to an engagement with a new patient; and, 
 with her, correspondence was no light matter. Pride had always 
 stood between Mrs. Bailey and culture, ever since she got her 
 schooling done. Otherwise she might have acquired style and a 
 fluent caligraphy. As it was, her style was imcertain and her 
 method slow. Knowing this — ^without admitting it — she was 
 influenced by hearing a six o'clock post referred to, having 
 previously thought her letters went an hour later. So she 
 developed an intention of completing her letter, of which short 
 instalments had been turned out at intervals already, as soon as 
 ever the advent of a guest or visitor gave he? an excuse for 
 desertion. Of course a member of the household was better 
 than either; so she abdicated without misgiving when — as she 
 put it — she heard her young ladyship a-coming. 
 
 Her young ladyship was audible outside long enough for Mrs. 
 Bailey to abdicate before she entered the room. They met on 
 the stairs and spoke. Was that Mr. Torrens at the piano ? — 
 asked Gwen. Because if it was, she mustn't stop him. She 
 would cry off and try her song another time. 
 . But Mrs. Bailey reassured her, saying: — " He won't go on 
 long, my lady. You'll get your turn in five minutes," in an 
 imdertone. She added: — " He won't see your music-paper. 
 Trust him for that." These words must have had a new hope 
 in them for the young lady, for she said quickly: " You think he 
 
224 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 does see something, then ?" The answer was ambiguous. 
 " Nothing to go by." Gwen had to be content with it. 
 
 Is there any strain of music known to man more harrowingly 
 pathetic than the one popularly known as Erin go bragh ? Does 
 it not make hearers without a drop of Erse blood in their veins 
 thrill and glow with a patriotism that complete ignorance of the 
 history of Ireland nfever interferes with in the least ? Do not 
 their hearts pant for the blood of the Saxon on the spot, even 
 though their father's name be Baker and their mother's Smith 7 
 Ours does. 
 
 Adrian Torrens, though his finger-tips felt strange on the keys 
 in the dark, and his hands were weak beyond his own suspicion of 
 their weakness, could still play the Polka for Mrs. Bailey. When 
 his audience no longer claimed repetition of that exciting air, 
 he struck a chord or two of some Beethoven, but shook his head 
 with a sigh and gave it up. However, less ambitious attempts 
 were open to him, and he had happened on Irish minstrelsy; so, 
 left to himself, he sang Savourneen Dheelish through. 
 
 Gwen, entering unheard, was glad she could dry her eyes un- 
 detected by those sightless ones that she knew showed nothing 
 to the singer — nothing but a black void. The pathos of the air 
 backed by the pathos of a voice that went straight to her heart, 
 made of it a lament over the blackness of this void — over the 
 glorious bygone sunlight, never a ray of it to be shed again for 
 him ! There was no one in the room, and it was a rehef to her 
 to have this right to unseen tears. 
 
 The feverish excitement of her sleepless night had subsided, 
 but the memory of a strange resolve clung to her, a resolution to 
 do a thing that then seemed practicable, reasonable, right; that 
 had seemed since, more than once, insurmountable — yes ! 
 Insane — ^yes ! But wrong — ^no ! Now, hard hit by Savourneen 
 Dheelish, the strength to think she might cross the barriers 
 revived, and the insanity of the scheme shrank as its rightness 
 grew and grew. After all, did she not belong to herself ? To 
 whom else, except her parents ? Well — ^her duty to her parents 
 was clear; to ransom their consciences for them; to enable them 
 to say " We destroyed this man's eyesight for him, but we gave 
 him Gwen." If only this pianist could just manage to love her 
 on the strength of Arthur's Bridge and that rainbow gleam ! But 
 how to find out ? She could see herself in a mirror near by as 
 she thought it, and the resplendent beauty that she could not 
 handle was a bitterness to her; she gazed at it as a warrior might 
 
SLOW AJSTD FAST APPROXIMATION 225 
 
 gaze at his sword with his hands lopped off at the wrists. Still, 
 he had seen her; that was something ! She would not have 
 acknowledged later, perhaps, that at this moment her mind was 
 rmrning on a foohsh thought: — "Did I, or did I not, look my 
 best at that moment V 
 
 She never noticed the curious naivete which left unquestioned 
 her readiness to play the part she was casting for herself — the 
 role of an eyeless man's mate for life — ^yet never taxed her with 
 loving him. Perhaps it was the very fact that the circumstancee 
 of the case released her from confessing her love, that paved ths 
 way for her to action that would else have been impossible. 
 " By this light," said Beatrice to Benedick, " I take thee for pure 
 pity." It was a vast consolation to Beatrice to say this, no 
 doubt. 
 
 Achilles stopped Savoumeen Dhedish by his welcome to the 
 newcomer. To whom Gwen said: — " Oh, you darling !" But to 
 his master she said: — " Go on, it's me, Mr. Torrens. Gwen." 
 
 " I know — ' Gwen or Gwendolen.' " How easy it would have 
 been for this quotation from yesterday's postscript to seem 
 impertinent ! This man had just the right laugh to put every- 
 thing in its right place, and this time it disclaimed audacious 
 Christian naming. He went on : — " I mustn't monopolize your 
 ladyship's piano," and accommodated this mode of address to 
 the previous one by another laugh, exactly the right protest 
 against misinterpretation. 
 
 "My ladyship doesn't want her piano," said Gwen. "She 
 wants to hear you go on playing. I had no idea you were so 
 musical. Say good-evening, and play some more." 
 
 He went lis nearest to meeting her hand, and his guesswork 
 was not much at fault. A galvanic thrill again shot through 
 him at her touch, and again neither of them showed any great 
 alacrity to disconnect. " You are sorry for me," said he. 
 
 "Indeed I am. I cannot teU you how much so." She 
 seemed to keep his hand in hers to say this, and the action and 
 the word were mated, to his mind. She could not have done 
 this but for my misfortune, thought he to himself. But oh ! — 
 what leagues apart it placed them, that this semi-famiHarity 
 should have become possible on so short an acquaintance ! 
 Society reserves would have kept him back still in the ranks of 
 men. This placed him among cripples, a disqualified ruin. 
 
 His heart sank, for he knew now that she had no belief that 
 this awful darkness would end. So be it ! But, for now, there 
 was the pure joy of holding that hand for a moment 1 Forget 
 
 IS 
 
226 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 it all— forget everything ! — think only of thia little stolen delirium 
 I can cheat the cruelty of God out of, before I am the forsaken 
 prey of Chaos and black Night. That was his thought. He 
 said not a word, and she continued: — " How much can you play ? 
 I mean, can you do the fingering in spite of your eyes ? Try 
 some more." She had barely withdrawn her hand even then. 
 
 " I only make a very poor business of it at present," he said. 
 " I shall have to practise vmder the new circumstances. When 
 the music jumps half a mile along the piano I hit the wrong 
 note. Anything that runs easy I can play." He played the 
 preliminary notes of the accompaniment of Deh vieni alia 
 finestra. " Anything like that. But I can't tackle anything 
 extensive. My hands haven't quite got strong again, I suppose. 
 Now you come !" 
 
 He was beginning a hesitating move from the music-stool 
 with a sense of the uncertainty before him when his anchorage 
 was forsaken, but postponed it as a reply to his companion's 
 remark: — " I'm not coming yet. I'll play presently. . . . You 
 were accompanying yourself just now. I was listening to you 
 at the end of the piano." 
 
 " Anybody can accompany himself; he's in his own con- 
 fidence." He struck a chord or two, of a duet, this time, 
 and she said: — " Yes — sing that. I can recollect it without the 
 music. I've sung it with the Signore no end of times." They 
 sang it together, and Gwen kept her voice down. She was not 
 singing with the tenor known all over Europe, this time; nor 
 was the room at any time, big as it was, more than large enough 
 for this young lady a pleine voix. Besides, Mr. Torrens was 
 not in force, on that score. In fact, at the end of this one song 
 he dropped his fingers on his knees from the keyboard, and said 
 in a tone that professed amusement at his own exhaustion: 
 " That's all I'm good for. Funny, isn't it ?" 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 227 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 BOTHBB MES. BAILEY ! A GOOD CEEATUEB. MABOOS CUBTIUS 
 AND UMMAIDENLINESS. THE DEEAM WITCH AND HEB 
 DAHGHTEES. HOW GWEN TOLD OF HEE TEICK, AND MB. 
 TOEBENS OF HOW HE WAKED UP TO HIS OWN BLtNDNESS. 
 THE PECULIAEITIES OF DOWAGEE-DUCHESSE3. CAN GEiGS 
 BEAD DIAMOND TYPE ? THE HYPOTHESIS ME. TOEBENS WAS 
 AFFIANCED TO. ADONIS, AND THAT DETESTABLE VENTTS. 
 EAENESTNESS AND A CLIMAX. AN EAETHQUAKB, OE HEAET- 
 QT7AKE 
 
 The Philosopher may see absurdity in the fact that, when two 
 persons make concordant consecutive noises for ten minutes, the 
 effect upon their relativities is one that without them might not 
 have come about in ten weeks. We are not prepared to condemn 
 the Philosopher, for once. He is prosy, as usual; but what he 
 says refers to an indisputable truth. Nothing turns diversity into 
 duality quicker than Music. 
 
 Gwen did not think the breakdown of the tenor at all funny, 
 and was rather frightened, suggesting Mrs. Bailey. " Bother 
 Mrs. Bailey !" said Adrian. " Only it's very ungrateful of me 
 to bother Mrs. Bailey." Said Gwen: — " She really is a good 
 creature." He replied: — "That's what she is precisely. A 
 good creature !" Gwen interpreted this as disposing of Mrs. 
 Bailey. Acting as her agent, she piloted the blind man through 
 the perils of the furniture to a satisfactory sofa, but could not 
 prevail on him to lie down on it. He seemed determined to 
 assert his claim to a discharge cured; allowing a small discount, 
 of course, in respect of this plaguy eye-affection. In defence 
 of his position that it was a temporary inconvenience, sure to 
 vanish with returning vigour, he simply nailed his colours to 
 the mast — ^would hear of no surrender. 
 
 Tea was negotiated, as customary at the Towers, and he 
 made a parade of his independence over it. No great risks were 
 involved, the little malachite table placed as a cup-haven being 
 too heavy to knock over easily. He was able, too, to make 
 a creditable show of eyesight over the concession of little brown 
 biscuits to Achilles; only really Achilles did all the seeing. A 
 certain pretence of vision was possible too, in the distinguishing 
 of those biscuits which were hard from a softer sort ; which 
 
228 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Achilles accepted, under protest always, with an implication 
 that he did it to obUge the donor. He had sacrificed his sleep 
 — ^that was his suggestion — and he did not deserve to be put off 
 with shoddy goods. 
 
 " He always has a nap dmring music now," said his master. 
 " He used to insist on singing too, if he condescended to listen. 
 I had some trouble to convince him that he couldn't sing — 
 hadn't been taught to produce his voice . . ." 
 
 " Dear creature ! — his voice produced itself like mine. 
 M. Sanson — you know the great training man ? — ^wanted me to 
 sing in one of my thoraxes or glottises or cesophaguses. I 
 believe I have several, but I don't know which is which. He 
 said my voice would last better. But I said I would have both 
 helpings at once; a recollection of nursery dinner, you know . . ." 
 
 " I understand — ^Achilles's view. There, you see !" This 
 was a claim that an audible tail-fiap on the groimd was applause. 
 It really was nothing but its owner's courteous recognition of 
 his own name, to which he was always ahve. 
 
 Gwen continued: — " Luckily I met the Signore, who told me 
 Sanson's view was very natural. What would become of all 
 the trainers if people produced their own voices ?" 
 
 " What, indeed ? But you did get some sort of drill ?" 
 
 " Of course. The dear old Signore gave me some lessons. 
 He told me an infallible rule for people with souls. I was to 
 sing as if the composer w£is listening. I might sing scales and 
 exercises if I liked. They had a use. They prevented one's 
 spoiling the great composers by hacking them over and over 
 before one could sing." 
 
 Adrian felt that chat of this sort was the best after all, to keep 
 safe for him his modus vivendi with this girl, in a world she was 
 suddenly lighting up for him in defiance of his darkness. He 
 could have friendship, and he was not prepared to admit that 
 estrangement might be the more livable modus of the two. So 
 he shut his mental eyes as close as his physical ones, and chatted. 
 He told a story of how a great poet, being asked a question in 
 a lady's album : — " What is your favourite employment ?" 
 wrote in reply: — " Cursing the schoolmaster who made me hate 
 Horace in my boyhood." It was a pity to spoil " Ah vous 
 dirai-je, maman ?" for the young pianist, but pluies de perlea 
 taught nobody anything. 
 
 Gwen for her part was becoming painfully ahve to the diffi- 
 culties of her Quixotic undertaWng. Marcus Curtius's self- 
 immolation was easy by comparison, with all the cheers of 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 229 
 
 assembled Rome crowding the Forum to back him. If only 
 the horse her metaphor had mounted would take the bit in his 
 teeth and bolt, tropically, how useful a phantasy it would be ! 
 She became terribly afraid her heroic resolve might die a natural 
 death dimng intelligent conversation. ^ Bother pluiea de perles 
 and the young pianist ! This dry alternation of responses 
 quashed all serious conversation. And if this Adrian Toirens 
 went away, to-morrow or next day, what chance would there 
 be in the uncertain future to compare with this one ? When 
 could she be sure of being alone with him for an hour, at his 
 father's house or elsewhere ? She must — she would — ^at least 
 find from him whether some other parallel of the Roman Knight 
 had bespoken the plunge for herself. She could manage that 
 surely without being " unmaidenly," whatever that meant. 
 If she couldn't, she would just cut the matter short and be wa.- 
 maidenly. But know she must I 
 
 There is a time before the sun commits himself to setting — 
 as he has done every day till now, and we aU take it for granted 
 he will do to-morrow — ^when the raw afternoon relents and the 
 shadows lengthen over the land; an hour that is not sunset yet, 
 but has begun to know what sunset means to do for roof and 
 tree-top, and the high hills when a forecast of the night creeps 
 round their bases; and also for the good looks of man and wench 
 and beast, and even ugly girls. This hour had come, and with 
 it the conviction that everybody was sure to be very late to- 
 night, before Gwen, sitting beside the blind man on the sofa 
 he had flouted as a couch, got a chance to turn the conversation 
 her way — ^to groom the steed, so to speak, of Marcus Curtius 
 for that appointment in the Forum. It came in a lull, consequent 
 on the momentary dispersion of subject-matter by the recogni- 
 tion of Society's absence and its probably late recurrence. 
 
 " I was so sorry yesterday, Mx. Torrens." A^modulation of 
 Owen's tone was not done intentionally. It came with her 
 wish to change the subject. 
 
 " What for, then ?" said Mr. Torrens, affecting a slight Irish 
 accent with a purpose not quite clear to himself. It might 
 have given his words their degree on a seriometer, granted the 
 instrument. 
 
 " Don't laugh at me, because I'm in earnest. I mean for 
 being so unfeeling. . . ." 
 
 " Unfeeling ?" 
 
 " Yes. I don't think talking about it again can make it 
 any worse. But I do want you to know that I only said it 
 
230 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 because I got caught — ^you know how words get their own waj 
 Bometimes. . . ." 
 
 " But what ? — ^why ? — ^when ? What words got their way 
 this time ?" 
 
 " I'm almost sony I've spoken, if you didn't notice it. 
 Because then I'm such a fool for raking it up again. . . . Why, 
 of course, when I pitched on those lines of yours. And any 
 others would have done just as well. . . ." 
 
 " Lord 'a massy me ! — as Mrs. Bailey says. ' The daughters 
 of the Dream Witch ' ? What's the matter with them ? 
 TJiey're all right," 
 
 " Oh yes — ^they're all right, no doubt. But I was thinking 
 of . . . Oh, I can't bear to talk about it ! . . . Oh dear I — ^I 
 wish I hadn't mentioned it. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, but do mention it. Mention it again. Mention it 
 lots of times. Besides, I know what you mean, . . ." 
 
 " What ?" 
 
 " The ' watchman sorrowing for the light,' of course I It 
 seemed like me. Do you know it never crossed my mind in 
 that connection ?" 
 
 " Is that really true ? But, then, what an idiot I was for 
 saying anything about it ! Only I couldn't help myself. I 
 was so miserable ! It laid me awake all night to think of it." 
 This was not absolutely true, because Gwen had really lain 
 awake on the main question, the responsibility of her family 
 for that shot of old Stephen's. But, to om: thinking, she was 
 justified in using any means that came to hand. She went 
 on: — "I'm not sure that it would not have come to nearly 
 the same thing in any case — the sleepless night, I mean. I 
 did not know till yesterday how . . . b-bad your eyes were " 
 — ^for she had nearly said the word blind — " because they kept 
 on making the best of it for our sakes, Irene and Mrs. Bailey 
 did . . ." 
 
 Adrian cut her speech across with an ebullition of sound sense 
 — a protest against extremes — a counterblast to hysterical 
 judgments. Obviously his duty 1 He succeeded in saying 
 with a sufficient infusion of the correct bounce: — "My dear 
 Lady Gwendolen, indeed you are distressing yourself about me 
 altogether beyond anything that this unlucky mishap warrants. 
 In a case of this sort we must submit to be guided by medical 
 opinion; and nothing that either Sir Coupland Merridew or 
 Dr. Nash has said amounts to more than that recovery will be 
 a matter of time. We must have patience. In the meantime 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 231 
 
 I am really the gainer by the accident, for I shall always look 
 upon my involuntary intrusion on your hospitality as one of the 
 most fortunate events of my life. . . ." 
 
 " ' Believe me to remain very sincerely joxiib, Adrian 
 Torrens.' " She struck in with a ringing laugh, and finished 
 up what really would have been a very civil letter from him. 
 " Now, dear Mr. Torrens, do stop being artificial. Say you're 
 Borry, and you won't do so any more." 
 
 " Please, I'm sorry and I won't do so any more. . . . But 
 I did do it very well, now didn't I ? You must allow that." 
 
 "You did indeed, and Heaven knows how glad I shoidd be 
 to be able to be taken in by it and believe every word the doctors 
 say. But when one has been hocus-pocussed about anything 
 one . . . one feels very strongly about, one gets suspicious of 
 everybody. . . . Oh yes — ^indeed, I think very likely the doctors 
 are right, and if Dr. Merridew had only said that you couldn't 
 see at all now, but that the sight was sure to come back, I should 
 have felt quite happy yesterday when . . ." She stopped, 
 hesitating, brought up short by suddenly suspecting that she 
 was driving home the fact of his blindness, instead of helping 
 him to keep up heart against it. But how could she get to her 
 point without doing so ? How coidd Marcus Curtius saddle 
 up for his terrible leap, and keep the words of the Oracle a 
 secret ? 
 
 At any rate, he could not see her confusion at her own mala- 
 propoa — ^that was something ! She recovered from it to find 
 him saying: — " But what I want to know is — what happened 
 yesterday ? I mean, how came you to know anything you did 
 not know before 7 Was it anything I did ? I thought I got 
 through it so capitally." He spoke more dejectedly than 
 hitherto, palpably because his efforts at pretence of vision had 
 failed. The calamity itself was all but forgotten. 
 
 Gwen saw nothing ahead but confession. Well — ^it might 
 be the best way to the haven she wanted to steer for. " It 
 was not what you did" said she. " You made believe quite 
 beautifully all the time we were sitting there, talking talk. 
 It was when I was just going. You remember when mamma 
 had gone away with 'Rene, and I put my foot in it over those 
 verses ?" 
 
 " Yes, indeed I do. Only, you know, that wasn't because of 
 the Watchman. I never mixed him in — ^not with my affairs. 
 A sort of Oriental character !" 
 
 " Well — that was my mistake. You remember when, any- 
 
232 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 how ? Now, do you Imow, all the time I was standing there 
 talking about the Watchman, I was holding out my hand to you 
 to say good-night, and you never offered to take it, and put 
 your hands in your pockets ? It must have gone on for quite 
 two minutes. And I was determined not to give a hint, and 
 there was no one else there. . . ." Gwen thought she could 
 understand the gesture that made her pause, a sudden move- 
 ment of the blind man's right hand as though it had been stung 
 by the discovery of its own backwardness. 
 
 He dropped it immediately in a sort of despairing way, then 
 threw it up impatiently. "All no use !" he said. "No use — 
 no use — ^no use !" The sound of his despair was in his voice 
 as he let the hand fall again upon his knee. He gave a heart- 
 broken sigh: — " Oh dear I" and then sat on silent. 
 
 Gwen was afraid to speak. For all she knew, her first word 
 might be choked by a sob. After a few moments he spoke 
 again : — " And there was I — thinking — ^thinking . . ." and 
 stopped short . 
 
 " Thinking what ?" said Gwen timidly. 
 
 " I wiU tell you some time," he said. " Not now !" And 
 then he drew a long breath and spoke straight on, as though 
 some obstacle to speech had gone. " It has been a terrible 
 time. Lady Gwendolen — ^this first knowledge of ... of what 
 I have lost. Put recovery aside for a moment — ^let the chance 
 of it lie by, until it is on the horizon. Think only what the 
 black side of the shield means — the appalling darkness in the 
 miserable time to come — ^the old age when folk will call me the 
 blind Mr. Torrens; will say of me: — 'You know, he was not 
 born blind — ^it was an accident — a gunshot wound — a long while 
 back now.' And all that long while back will have been a long 
 vacuity to me, and Heaven knows what burden to others. . . , 
 I have known it all from the first. I knew it when I waked 
 to my senses in the room upstairs — ^to all my senses but one. 
 I knew it when I heard them speak hopefully of the case; hope 
 means fear, and I knew what the fear was they were hoping 
 against. That early morning when stupor came to an end, and 
 my consciousness came back, I remembered all. But I thought 
 the darkness was only the sweet, wholesome darkness of night, 
 and my heart beat for the coming of the day. The day came, 
 sure enough, but I knew nothing of it. The first voice I heard 
 was Mrs. Bailey's, singing paeans over my recovery.. She had 
 been lying in wait for it, in a chair beside the bed which I picture 
 to myself as a chair of vast scope and pretensions. I did not 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 233 
 
 use my tongue, when I found it, to ask where I was — because 
 I knew I waa somewhere and the bed was very comfortable. 
 I asked what o'clock it was, and was told it was near nine. Then, 
 said I, why not open the shutters and let in the light ?" 
 " What did Mrs. Bailey say ?" 
 
 " Mrs. Bailey said Lord have mercy, gracious-goodness-her, 
 and I at once perceived that I was in the hands of a good crea- 
 ture. I must have done so, because I exhorted her to act in 
 her official capacity. When she said : — ' Why ever now, when the 
 sun's a-shining fit to brile the house up !' I said to her — ^to 
 remove ambiguity, you see — ' Do be a good creature and tell 
 me, is the room hght or dark ?' She repUed in a form of 
 affidavit: — ' So help me, Mr. Torrens, if this was the last Bible 
 word I was to speak, this room is hght, not dark, nor yet it 
 won't be, not till this blessed evening when there come candles 
 or the lamp, as preferred.' I had a sickening perplexity for 
 a while whether I was sane or mad, awake or dreaming, lying 
 there with my heart adding to my embarrassment needlessly 
 by beating in a hurry. Then I remember how it came to me 
 all at once — ^the whole meaning of it. Till now, blind men had 
 been other people. Now I was to be one myself. . . . Say 
 something ! . . . I don't like my own voice speaking alone. . . . 
 there is no one else in the room, is there ?" 
 
 " Not a soul. And nobody will come. The dowager-duchess 
 is having tea in her own room, and all the others will be late." 
 
 Something in this caused Mr. Torrens to say, with ridiculous 
 inconsecutiveness: — " Then you're not engaged to Lord Cumber- 
 world ?" 
 
 " I certainly am not engaged to Lord Cumberworld," said 
 Gwen with cold emphasis, " Why did you think I was ?" 
 " Mrs. Bailey." 
 
 " Mrs. Bailey ! And why did you think I wasn't ?" 
 " That requires thought. I don't quite see, now I come to 
 think of it, why a lady shouldn't be engaged to a party and 
 speak about his grandma as . . ." 
 
 " As I spoke of his just now ? Why not, iadeed ? She m 
 a dowager-duchess." 
 
 " I admit it. But there are ways and ways of calling people 
 dowager-duchesses. It struck me that your way suggested 
 that there was something ridiculous about . . . about dowadging." 
 " So there is — ^to me. I believe it arose from the newspaper 
 saying, when we had a ball in London for me to come out, that 
 the Dowager Lady Seamander had a magnificent diamond 
 
234 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 stomacher. Perhaps you don't happen to know the shape of 
 that good lady ? , . . Never mind. Anyhow, I am not engaged 
 to this one's grandson; and she's safe in the west wing, where 
 the ghost never goes. We've got it all to ourselves. Go on !" 
 
 " My first idea was how to prevent Europe and Asia finding 
 it out and frightening my family, at least until my eyes had had 
 time to turn round. The next voice I heard was the doctor's, 
 summoned, I suppose, by Mrs. Bailey. It was cheerful, and 
 said that was good hearing, and now we should do. He said: — 
 ' You lie quiet, Mr. Torrens, and I'll tell you what it all was; 
 because I daresay you don't know, and would like to.' I said 
 yes — very much. So he told me the story in a comfortable 
 optimist way — said it was a loss of blood from the occipital 
 artery that had made such a wreck of me, but that a contusion 
 of the head had been the cause of the insensibility, which had 
 nearly stopped the action of the heart, else I might have bled 
 to death. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, how white you were when we found you !" Gwen ex- 
 claimed — " So terribly white ! But I half think I can see how 
 it happened. Your heart stopped pumping the blood out, 
 because you were stunned, and that gave the artery a chance 
 to pull itself together. That's the sort of idea Dr. Merridew 
 gave me, with the long words left out." 
 
 " What a very funny thing !" said Adrian thoughtfully, " to 
 have one's life saved by being nearly killed by something else. 
 Similia similihus curantur. However, all's fish that comes to 
 one's net. Well — ^when Sir Coupland had told me his story, 
 he said casually: — 'What's all this Mrs. Bailey was telling me 
 about your finding the room so dark ?' I humbugged a little 
 over it, and said my eyesight was very dim. Whatever he 
 thought, he said very little to me about it. Indeed, he only 
 said that he was not surprised. A shock to the head and loss 
 of blood might easily react on the optic nerve. It would 
 gradually right itself with rest. I said I supposed he could try 
 tests — lenses and games — ^to find out if the eyes were injured. 
 He said he would try the lenses and games later, if it seemed 
 necessary. For the present I had better stay quiet and not, 
 think about it. It would improve. Then my father and 'Rene 
 came, and were jolly glad to hear my voice again. For I had 
 only been half-conscious for days, and only less than half 
 audible, if, indeed, I ever said anything. But I was on my 
 guard, and my father went away home without knowing, and 
 I don't believe 'Rene quite knows now. It was your father 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 235 
 
 who spotted the thing first. Had he told you, to put you up 
 to the hand-shaking device ?" 
 
 " He never said a word. The handshaking was my own 
 brilliant idea. When I fotmd — ^what I did find out — ^I went 
 away and had a good cry in mamma's room." This speech 
 was an effort on Gwen's part to get a little nearer — ever so little 
 — ^to Marcus Curtius; nearer, that is, to her metaphorical 
 parallel of his heroism. Marcus had got weaker as an imitable 
 prototype during the conversation, and it had seemed to Gwen 
 that he might slip through her fingers altogether, if no help came. 
 Her " good cry " reinforced Marcus, and quite blamelessly; for 
 who could find fault with her for that much of concern for so 
 fearful a calamity ? What had she said that she might not 
 have said to a friend's husband, cruelly and suddenly stricken 
 blind ? Indeed, could she as a friend have said less ? Was 
 her human pity to be limited to women and children and cases 
 of special licence, or pass current merely under chaperonagef 
 No — she was safe so far certainly. 
 
 " Oh, Lady Gwendolen, I can't stand this," was Adrian's 
 exclamation in a tone of real distress. " Why — ^why — should I 
 make you miserable and lay you awake o' nights ? I couldn't 
 help your finding out, perhaps. But what a selfish beast I am 
 to go on grizzling about my own misfortune. . . . Well — I Juive 
 been grizzling ! And all the while, as like as not, the medicos 
 are right, and in six weeks I shall be reading diamond type as 
 merry as a grig. . . ." 
 
 " Do grigs read diamond type 1" 
 
 " I may be doing so, anyhow, grigs or no !" He paused an 
 instant, his absurdity getting the better of him. " I may have 
 employed the expression ' grigs ' rashly. I do not really know 
 how small type they can read. I withdraw the grigs. Besides, 
 there's another point of view. . . ." 
 
 " What's that ?" Gwen is a little impatient and absent. 
 Marcus Curtius has waned again perceptibly. 
 
 " Why — suppose I had been knocked over two miles off, 
 carried in, for instance, at the Mackworth Clarkes, where 'Rene's 
 gone . . . !" 
 
 " But you weren't !" 
 
 "Lady Gwendolen, you don't understand the nature of an 
 hypothesis " — ^his absurdity gets the upper hand again — " the 
 nature of an hypothesis is that its maker is always in the right. 
 I am, this time. If I had been nursed round at the Mackworth 
 Clarkes, you would have known nothing about me except as a 
 
236 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 mere accident — a person in the papers — a person one inquires 
 after. . . ." 
 
 Gwen interrupts him with determination. " Stop, Mr. Tor- 
 rens," she says, " and listen to me. If you had been struck by a 
 bullet fired by my father's order, by his servant, on his land, it 
 would not have mattered what house you were taken to, nor who 
 nursed you round. I should have felt that the guilt — ^yes, the 
 guilt ! — the sin of it was on the conscience of us all; everyone 
 of us that had had a hand, a finger, in it, directly or indirectly. 
 How could I have borne to look your sister in the face . . . ?" 
 
 " You wouldn't have known her ! Come, Lady Gwen 1" 
 
 " Very well, then, give her up. Suppose, instead, the girl you 
 are engaged to had been a friend of mine, how could I have borne 
 to look her in the face ?" 
 
 " She's a hypothesis. There's no such interesting damsel — 
 that I know of . . ." 
 
 " Oh, isn't there ? . . . Well — she's a hypothesis, and I've a 
 right to as many hypothesisses as you have." 
 
 " I can't deny it." 
 
 " Then how should I look her in the face ? Answer my 
 question, and don't prevaricate." 
 
 " What a severe — ^Turk you are ! But I won't prevaricate. 
 You wouldn't be called on to look the hypothesis in the face. 
 She would have broken me ofE, like a sensible hypothesis that 
 knew what was due to itself and its family. . . ." 
 
 " Do be serious. Indeed / am serious. It was in my mind 
 all last night — such a dreadful haunting thought ! — ^what would 
 this girl's feelings be to me and mine ? I made several girls I 
 know stand for the part. You know how one overdoes things 
 when one is left to oneself and the darkness? . ." 
 
 " Yes — that I do ! No doubt of it !" The stress of a meaning 
 he could not help forced its way into his words, in spite of himself. 
 Surely you need not have shown it, said an inner voice to him. 
 He made no reply. But he did not see how. 
 
 Almost before he had time to repent she had cried out: — " Oh, 
 there now ! See what I have done again ! I did not mean it. 
 Do forgive me !" Neither saw a way to patching up this lapse^ 
 and it was ruled out by tacit consent. Gwen resumed: — " You 
 know, I mean, how one dreams a thousand things in a minute, 
 and everything is as big as a house, even when it's only strong 
 coffee. This was worse than strong coffee. There were plenty 
 of them, these hypothesisses. ... Oh yes ! — -we know plenty 
 of girls you do. I could count you up a dozen. . . ." 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 237 
 
 " One'8 enough ! — ^that means that one's the allowance, not that 
 it's one too many. . . ." 
 
 " Well — ^there were a many reproachful dream-faces, and 
 everyone of them said to me: — 'See what you have made of 
 my life that might have been so happy. See how you have 
 con . . ."' Gwen had very nearly said condemned, but stopped 
 in time. She could not refer to the demands of an eyeless mate 
 for constant help in little things, and all the irksomeness of a 
 home. 
 
 Adrian, pretending not to hear " con," spoke at once. " But 
 did none of these charming girls — ^I'm sure I should have loved 
 heaps of them — did none of them remind you that they were 
 hypothetical ?" 
 
 " Dear Mr. Torrens, I can't tell you how good and brave you 
 seem to me for laughing so much, and turning everything to a 
 joke. But I was in earnest." 
 
 " So was I." 
 
 " Then I did not understand." 
 
 " What did you think I meant ?" 
 
 " I thought you were playing fast and loose with the nonsense 
 about the hypothesis. I did indeed." 
 
 " Well, I was serious imdemeath. Listen, and I'll tell you. 
 This fiancie of mine that you seem so cocksure about has no 
 existence. I give you my honour that it is so, and that I am 
 glad of it. . . . Yes — glad of it ! How could I bear to think 
 I was inflicting myself on a woman I loved, and making her life a 
 misery to her ?" 
 
 Gwen thought of beginning: — " If she loved you," and giving 
 a little sketch of a perfect wife imder the circumstances. It 
 never saw the light, owing to a recrudescence of Marcus Cbrtius, 
 who stood to win nothing by his venture — ^was certainly not in 
 love with Erebus. An act of pure self-sacrifice on principle I 
 Nothing could be farther from her thoughts, be so good as to 
 observe, than that she loved this man ! 
 
 He went on uninterrupted: — " No, indeed I am heartily glad 
 of it. It would be a terrible embarrassment at the best. I 
 should want to let her off, and she would feel in honour bound to 
 hold on, and really of all the things I can't abide self-sacrifice 
 is. . . . Well, Lady Gwendolen, only consider the feelings of 
 the chap on the altar ! Hasn't he a right to a little unselfishness 
 for his own personal satisfaction ?" This was a sad wet blanket 
 for Marcus Curtius. 
 
 Gwen did not believe that Adrian's disclaimer of any pre- 
 
238 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 occupation of his afiections was genuine. According to her 
 theory of life — and there is much to be said for it — a full-blown 
 Adonis, that is to say, a lovable man, refusing to love any 
 woman on any terms, was a sort of monstrosity. The original 
 Adonis of Art and Song was merely an homme incompria, according 
 to this young lady. He hated Venus — odious woman ! — ^and no 
 wonder. She to claim the rank of a goddess I Besides, Gwen 
 suspected that Adrian was only prevaricating. Trothplight was 
 one thing, ofl&cial betrothal another. It was almost too poor a 
 shuffle to accuse him of, but she was always flying at the throat 
 of equivocation, even when she knew she might be outclassed 
 •by it. " You are playing with words, Mr. Torrens," said she. 
 " You mean that you and this yoimg lady are not ' engaged to 
 be married ' ? Perhaps not, but that has nothing to do with 
 the matter. I cannot feel it in my bones — as Mrs. Bailey says — 
 that any woman you could care for would back out of it because 
 you . . . because of this dreadful accident." Her voice was 
 irresolute in referring to it, and some wandering wave of that 
 electricity that her finger-tips were so full of made a cross-circuit 
 and quickened the beating of her hearer's heart. The vessel it 
 struck in mid-ocean had no time to right itself before another 
 followed. " Surely — if she were worth a straw — ^if she were 
 worth the name of a woman at all-^she would feel it her greatest 
 happiness to make it up to you for such. ..." She was going 
 to say " a privation," but she always shied off designating the 
 calamity. In her hurry to escape from " privation " she landed 
 her speech in a phrase she had not taken the full measure of — 
 " Well — perhaps I oughtn't to say that ! I may be taking the 
 young woman's name in vain. I only mean that that is what / 
 should feel in her position." 
 
 It had come as a chance speech before she saw its bearings. 
 There was not the ghost of an arriere pensie behind the simple 
 i&ct that she had no choice but to judge another woman's mind 
 by her own; a natural thought I Her first instinct was to spoil 
 the force she had not meant it to have, by dragging the red 
 herring of some foolish joke across the trail. 
 
 But — ^to think of it 1 Here had she been hatching such a 
 brave scheme of making her own life, and all the devotion she 
 somehow believed she could give, a compensation for a great wrong, 
 and here she was now affrighted at the smell of powder 1 Pride 
 stepped in, and the memory of Quintus Curtius. No — she would 
 not say a single word to undo the effect of her heedlessness. 
 Let the worst stand ! They had left her in the place of that 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 239 
 
 hypothesis whom she had herself discarded. It was no fault of 
 hers that had involved her personally Was she bound to back 
 out ? She bit her lip to check her own impulse to utter some 
 cheap corrective. 
 
 Until that rather scornful disclaimer of the Duke's son, Mrs. 
 Bailey's piece of fashionable intelligence had served — ^whether 
 Adrian beUeved it or not — ^as a sort of chaperon's aegis extended 
 over this interview. It had protected him against himself — 
 against his impulse to break through a silence that his three 
 weeks' memory of this girl's image had made painful. RecoUect 
 that her radiant beauty, in that setting sun-gleam, was the last 
 thing human his eyes had rested on before the night came on 
 him — ^the night that might be endless. It was not so easy, now 
 that an imaginary fiancie had been curtly swept away, to fight 
 against a temptation he conceived himself bound in honour not 
 to give way to. Not so easy because something, that he hoped 
 was not his vanity, was telling him that this girl beside him, her 
 very self that he had seen once, whose image was to last for 
 ever, was at least not placing obstacles in his way. For anything 
 that she was doing to prevent it, he might drive a coach-and-six 
 through the social code that blocks a declaration of passion to a 
 girl under age without the consent of her parents. He was 
 conscious of this code, and his general acceptance of it. But 
 ho was not so law-abiding but that he must needs get on the box 
 — of the coach-and-six — and flick the leaders with his whip. 
 
 For he asked abruptly: — " How do you know that ?" driving 
 home the nail of personality to the head. 
 
 "Perhaps I am wrong," said Gwen, dropping her flag an 
 inch. " But I was thinking so aU last night. I was in a sort of 
 fever, you see, because I felt so guilty, and it grew worse and 
 worse. . . ." 
 " You were thinking that . . . ?" 
 
 " Well — ^you know — ^it was before I had any idea she was a 
 hypothesis. I thought she was real because of the ring." 
 
 " My ring ! Fancy ! . . . But I'll teU you about my ring 
 presently. Tell me what you were thinking. . . ." 
 « Why— what I said before !" 
 " But what was it ?" 
 
 " Do you know, I think it was only a sort of attempt to get a 
 little sleep. You were so fearfully on my conscience, and it 
 made it so much easier to bear. . . . Only it worried me to 
 think that perhaps she might turn round and say: — " This was 
 no fault of mine. Why should I bear for life the burden of other 
 
240 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 people's sins ? . . . If she was a perfect beast — beast, you 
 know ! . . ." 
 
 " The hypothesis would not have been a perfect beast. She 
 would have been a perfect lady, and Mrs. Bailey would have 
 attested it. She would have pointed out the desirability of a 
 sister's love — at reasonable intervals; visits and so on — ^fora 
 man with his eyes poked out. She might even have gone the 
 length of insinuating that the finger of Providence did it. . . ." 
 
 " Now you are talking nonsense again. Do be serious !" 
 
 " Well — diet's be serious ! Suppose you tell me what it was you 
 were thinking that made the existence of that very dry and 
 imsatisfying hypothesis such a consolation !" 
 
 " I should like to tell you — only I know I shall say it wrong, 
 and you will think me an odd girl; or unfeeling, which is worse." 
 
 " I should do nothing of the sort. But I'U tell you what I 
 should think — what I have thought all this time I have been 
 hearing your voice — ^I merely mention it as a thing of pathological 
 interest. . . ." 
 
 " Go on." 
 
 " I should think it didn't matter what you said so long as you 
 went on speaking. Because whenever I hear your voice I can 
 shut my eyes and forget that I am blind." 
 
 " Is that empty comphment, or are you in earnest ?" 
 
 " I was jesting a minute ago, but now I am in earnest. I mean 
 what I say. Your voice takes the load off my heart and the 
 darkness off my brain, and we are standing again by that stone 
 bridge over yonder — ^Arthur's Bridge — and I see you in all your 
 beauty — oh ! such beauty — as I look up from Ply's cut collar 
 against the sunset sky. That was my last hour of vision, and 
 its memory will go with me to the grave. And now when I hear 
 yoiu" voice, it aU comes back to me, and the terrible darkness 
 has vanished — or the sense of it anyhow ! . . ." 
 
 " If that is so you shall hear it until your sight comes back — 
 it will — ^it must !" 
 
 " How if it never comes back ? How if I remain as I am 
 now for life ?" 
 
 " I shall not lose my voice." 
 
 How it came about neither could ever say; but each knew that 
 it happened then, just at that turn in the conversation, and that 
 no one came rushing into the drawing-room as they easily might 
 have done — this lax structure of language was employed later 
 in reference to it — ^nor did any of the thousand interruptions 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 241 
 
 ■occur that mi^t have occurred. Mrs. Bailey might have come 
 to Mr. Torrens to know how many g's there were in agreeable, 
 or a tea-collector might have prowled in to add rehcs to her 
 collection, or even the sound of the carriage afar — ^inaudible by 
 man — might have caused Achilles to requisition the opening of 
 the drawing-room door, that he might rush away to sanction its 
 arrival. Two guardian angels — ^the story thinks — stopped any 
 of these things happening. What did happen was that Gwen 
 and Adrian, who a moment before were nominally a lady and 
 gentleman chatting on a sofa near the piano, whose separation 
 involved no consequences definable for either, were standing 
 speechless in each other's arms — speechless but waiting for the 
 power to speak. For nobody can articulate whose heart is 
 thumping out of all reason. He has to wait — or she, as may be. 
 One of each is needed to develope an earthquake of this particular 
 kind. 
 
 It was just as well that the Hon. Percival Pellew and Aunt 
 Constance Smith-Dickenson, who had started to walk from the 
 flower-show with a couple of young monkeys whose object in 
 Ufe was to spare everybody else their company from selfish 
 motives, did not come rushing into the drawing-room just then, 
 but a quarter of an hour later. For even if the parties had 
 caught the sound of their arrival in time, the peculiarity of Mr. 
 Torren's bhndness would have stood in the way of any successful 
 pretence that he and Lady Gwendolen had been keeping their 
 distance up to Society point. We know how easy it is for normal 
 people, when caught, to pretend they are looking at dear Sarah's 
 interesting watercolours together, or anything of that sort. 
 And even if the blind man had been able to strike a bar or two 
 carelessly on the piano, to advertise his isolation, their faces would 
 have betrayed them. Not that the tears of either could have 
 been identified on the face of the other. It was a matter of 
 expression. Every situation in this world has a stamp of its own 
 for the human face, and no stamp is more easily identified than 
 that on the face of lovers who have just found each other out. 
 
 Anyhow this story cannot go on, until the absurd tempest 
 that has passed over these two allows them to speak. Then they 
 do so on an absolutely new footing, and the man calls the girl his 
 dearest and his own, and Heaven knows what else. There one 
 sees the difference between the B.C. and a.d. of the Nativity of 
 Love. It is a new Era. Call it the Hegira, if you like. 
 
 "I saw you once, dear love-" — he is saying — "I saw you 
 
 16 
 
242 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 once, and it was you — you — you ! The worst that Fate has in 
 store for me cannot kill the memory of that moment. And if 
 blindness was to be the price of this — of this — ^why I would 
 sooner be blind, and have it, than have all the eyes of Argus and 
 . . . and starve." 
 
 " You wouldn't know you were starving," says Qwen, who is 
 becoming normal — ^resuming the equanimities. " Besides, you 
 would be such a Guy. No — please don't ! Somebody's coming !" 
 
 "Nobody's coming. It's all right. I tell you, Gwen, or 
 Gwendolen — do you know I all but called you that, when you 
 came in, before we sang . . . ?" 
 
 " \Vhy didn't you quite ? However, I'm not sorry you didn't 
 on the whole. It might have seemed paternal, and I should have 
 felt squashed. And then it might never have happened at all, 
 and I should just have been a young lady in Society, and you a 
 gentleman that had had an accident." 
 
 " It would have happened just the same, / believe. Because 
 why ? I had seen you. At least, it might have." 
 
 " It has happened, and must be looked in the face. Now what- 
 ever you do, for Heaven's sake, don't go talking to papa and 
 being penitent, till I give you leave." 
 
 " What should I be able to say to him ? / don't know. I 
 can't justify my actions — as the World goes. . . ." 
 
 " Why not ?" 
 
 " Nobody would hold a man blameless, in my circumstances, 
 who made an offer of marriage to a young lady under . . ." 
 
 " It's invidious to talk about people's ages." 
 
 " I wasn't going to say twenty-one. I was going to say under 
 her father's roof. . . ." 
 
 " Nobody ever makes offers of marriage on the top of any- 
 body's father's roof. Besides, you never made any offer, strictly 
 speaking. You said , . ." 
 
 " I said that if 1 had my choice I would have chosen it all as 
 it now is, only to hear your voice in the dark, rather than to 
 be without it and have all the eyes of . . . didn't I say 
 Argus ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^you said Argus. But that was a facon-de-parler ; at 
 least I hope so, for the sake of the Hypothesis. . . . Oh dear ! — 
 what nonsense we two are talking. . . ." Some silence; other- 
 wise the statiis quo remained unchanged. Then he said: — "/ 
 wonder if it's all a dream and we shall wake." And she replied: 
 " Not both — ^that's absurd I" But she made it more so by 
 adding : — " Promise you'll tell me your dream when we wake, and 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 243 
 
 I'll tell you mine." He assented:— -"All right ! — ^but don't let's 
 wake yet." 
 
 By now the sun was sinking in a flame of gold, and every 
 little rabbit's shadow in the fern was as long as the tallest man's 
 two hours since, and longer. The level glare was piercing the 
 sheltered secrets of the beechwoods, and choosing from them 
 ancient tree-trunks capriciously, to turn to sudden fires against 
 the depths of hidden purple beyond — ^the fringe of the mantle 
 the vanguard of night was weaving for the hills. Not a dappled 
 fallow-deei in the coolest shade but had its chance of a. robe 
 of glory for a little moment — ^not a bird so sober in its plumage 
 but became, if only it flew near enough to Heaven, a spark 
 against the blue. And the long, unhesitating rays were not 
 so busy with the world without, but that one of them could 
 pry in at the five-light window at the west end of the Jacobean 
 drawing-room at the Towers, and reach the marble Ceres the 
 Earl's grandfather brought from Athens. And on the way it 
 paused and dwelt a moment on a man's ^hand caressing the 
 stray locks of a flood of golden hair he could not see — might 
 never see at all. Or who might live on — such things have been 
 — to find it grey to a half -illuminated sight in the dusk of hfe. 
 So invisible to him now; so vivid in his memory of what seemed 
 to him no more than a few days since ! , For half the time, re- 
 member, had been to him oblivion — a mere blank. And now, 
 in the splendid intoxication of this new discovery, he could 
 well afford to forget for the moment the black cloud that over- 
 hung the future, and the desperation that might well he hidden 
 in its heart, waiting for the day when he shoiild know that 
 Hope was dead. That day might come. 
 
 " Shall I tell you now, my dearest, my heart, my hfe " — this 
 is what he is saying, and every, word he says is a mere truth to 
 him; a sort of scientific fact — " shall I tell you what I was going 
 to say an hour ago ? . . ." 
 
 " It's more than an hour, but I know when. About me 
 sticking my hand out ?" 
 
 " Just exactly then. I was thinking all the while that in 
 another moment I should have your hand in mine, and keep 
 it as long as I dared. Eyes were nothing — sight was nothing 
 — ^life itself was nothing — nothing was anything but that one 
 moment just ahead. It would not last, but it would fill the 
 earth and the heavens with light and music, aad keep death 
 and the fiend that had been eating up my soul at bay — as long 
 as it lasted. Dear love, I am not exaggerating . . ." 
 
244 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Do you expect me to believe that ? Now be quiet, and 
 perhaps I'll tell you what I was thinking when I found out you 
 couldn't see — have been thinking ever since. I thought it well 
 over in the night, and when I came into this room I meant it. 
 I did, indeed." 
 
 " Meant what ?" 
 
 " Meant to get at the truth about that ring of yours. I had 
 got it on the brain, you see. I meant to find out whether she 
 was anybody or nobody. And if she was nobody I was going 
 to . . ." She comes to a standstill; for, even now — even after 
 such a revelation, with one of his arms about her waist, and his 
 free hand caressing her hair — Marcus Curtius sticks in her 
 throat a little. 
 
 " What were you going to ?" said Adrian, really a little 
 puzzled. Because even poets don't imderstand some women. 
 
 " Well— i£ it wasn't you I wouldn't tell. I ... I had made 
 up my mind to apply for the vacant place." This came with 
 a rush, and might not have come at all had she felt his eyes 
 could see her; knowing, as she did, the way the blood would quite 
 unreasonably mount up to her face the moment she had uttered! 
 it. " It all seemed such plain sailing in the middle of the night, 
 and it turned out not quite so easy as I thought it would be. 
 You know. ... Be quiet and let me talk now ! ... it was the guilt 
 — my share in it — that was so hard to bear. I wanted to do 
 something to make it up to you. And what could I do ? A 
 woman is in such a fix. Oh, how glad I was when you opened 
 fire on your own account 1 Only frightened, you know." He 
 was beginning to say something, but she stopped him with: — 
 " I know what you are going to say, but that's just where the 
 difficulty came in. If only I hadn't cared twopence about you 
 it would have been so easy ! . . . Did you say how ? FooUsh 
 man ! — can't you see that if I hadn't loved you one scrap, or 
 only half across your lips as we used to say when we were 
 children, it would have been quite a let-off to be met with ofEers 
 of a brother's love . . . and that sort of thing. . . . Isn't that 
 them ?" This was colloquial. No doubt Gwen was excep- 
 tional, and all the other yoimg ladies in the Red Book would 
 have said: — " Are not these they ?" 
 
 This story does not believe that Gwen's statement of her 
 recent embarrassment covered the facts. Probably a woman 
 in her position would be less held at bay by the chance of a 
 rebuff, than by a deadly fear of kisses chilled by a spirit of self' 
 sacrifice. . . . Ugh ! — the hideous suspicion ! The present writer. 
 
A RAPID ARRIVAL 245 
 
 from information received, believes that little girls like to think 
 that they are made of sugar and spice and all that's nice, and 
 that their lover's synthesis of slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' 
 tails doesn't matter a rap so long as they are ravenous. But 
 they mustn't snap, however large a percentage of puppy-dogs 
 they contain. 
 
 Anyhow, Marcus Curtius never came o£E. He was really 
 impossible; and, as we all know, what's impossible very seldom 
 comes to pass. And this case was not among the exceptions. 
 
 It wasn't them. But a revision of the relativities was necessary. 
 When Miss Dickenson and the Hon. Percival did come in, 
 Gwen was at the piano, and Adrian at the right distance for 
 hearing. Nothing could have been more irreproachable. The 
 newcomers, having been audibly noisy on the stairs, showed as 
 hypocritical by an uncalled-for assumption of preternatural 
 susceptibility to the absence of other members of their party 
 acknowledging their necessity to make up a Grundy quorum. 
 There is safety in number when persons are of opposite sexes, 
 which they generally are. 
 
 " Can't imagine what's become of them !" said Mr. Pellew, 
 rounding off some subject with a dexterous implication of its 
 nature. " By Jove ! — that's good, though ! Mr. Torrens 
 down at last !" Greetings and civilities, and a good pretence by 
 the blind man of seeing the hands he meets half-way. 
 
 " That young Lieutenant What's-his-name and the second 
 Accrington girl, Gwen dear. They must have missed us and 
 gone round by Furze Heath. I shall be in a fearful scrape with 
 Lady Accrington, I know. Why didn't you come to the flower- 
 show ?" Thus Miss Dickenson, laying unnecessary stress on 
 the absentees. 
 
 " I had a headache," says Gwen, " and Gloire de Dijon roses 
 always make my headaches worse. . . . Yes, it's very funny. 
 Mr. Torrens and I have been boring one another half the after- 
 noon. But I've written some letters. Do you know this in 
 the new Opera — Verdi's ?" She played a phrase or two of the 
 Trovatore. For it was the new Opera that year, and we were 
 boys . . . eheu fugaces / 
 
 " I really think I ought to walk back a little and see about 
 those young people," says Aunt Constance fatuously. There- 
 upon Gwen finds she would Uke a Uttle walk in the cool, and 
 will accompany Aunt Constance. But just after they have 
 left the room Achilles, whose behaviour has really been perfect 
 all along, is seized with a paroxysm of interest in an inaudible 
 
246 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sound, and storms past them on the stairs to meet the carriage 
 and keep an eye on things. So they only take a short turn on 
 the terrace in the late glow of the sunset, and go up to dress. 
 
 Adrian and the Hon. Percival spend five minutes in the 
 growing twilight, actively ignoring all personal relations during 
 the afternoon. They discuss flower-shows on their merits, and 
 recent Operas on theirs. They censure the fashions in dress — 
 the preposterous crinolines and the bonnets almost hanging 
 down on the back like a knapsack — touch politics slightly : Louis 
 Napoleon, Palmerston, Russian Nicholas. But they follow 
 male precedents, dropping trivialities as soon as womankind 
 is out of hearing, and preserve a discreet silence — two discreet 
 silences — about their respective recencies. They depart to 
 their rooms, Adrian risking his credit for a limited vision by 
 committing himself to Mr. Pellew's arm and a banister. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THBOPHILUS QOTOBBD. HOW A TENOR AND A SOPRANO VANISHED . 
 HOW GWEN ANNOUNCED HER INTENDED MARRIAGE. PRAC- 
 TICAL ENCOURAGEMENT. AUNT CONSTANCE AND MR. PELOiW, 
 AND HOW THEY WERE OLDER THAN ROMEO, JULIET, GWEN, 
 AND MR. TORRENS. HOW THEY STAYED OUT MVE MINUTES 
 LONGER, AND MISS DICKENSON CAME ACROSS THE EARL WITH 
 A CANDLE-LAMP. HOW GWBn's FATHER KNEW ATT. ABOUT 
 IT. NEVERTHELESS THE EARL DID NOT KNOW BROWNING. 
 BUT HE SUSPECTED GWEN OF QUIXOTISM, FOR ALL THAT. 
 one's tongue, and the CHOICE BETWEEN BITING IT OFFOR- 
 HOLDING IT. HOW GWEN HAD BORROWED LORD CUMBEK- 
 WORLD's pencil. MRS. BAILEY AND PARISIAN PROFLIGACY 
 
 The galaxy of wax lights had illuminated the Jacobean drawing- 
 room long enough to have become impatient, if only they had 
 had human souls, before the first conscientious previous person 
 turned up dressed for dinner, and felt ashamed and looked at a 
 book. He affected superiority to things, sajdng to the subsequent 
 conscientious person:—" Seen this 1 — ' The Self -Renunciation of 
 Theophilus Gotobed ?' — R'viewers sayts 'musing;" and handing 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 247 
 
 him Vol. I., which he was obUged to take. He just looked mside, 
 and laid it on the table. " Looks intristin' \" he said. 
 
 It was bad enough, said Mr. Norbury to the Cook sympathetic- 
 ally in confidence, to put back three-quarters of an hour, without 
 her ladyship making his lordship behindhander still. This was 
 because news travelled to the kitchen — mind you never say 
 anything whatever in the hearing of a servant ! — that their two 
 respective ships were in collision in the Lib'ary ; harguing was 
 the exact expression. It was the heads of the household who 
 were late. Lady Gwendolen apologized for them, saying she 
 was afraid it was her fault. It was. But she didn't look 
 penitent. She looked resplendent. 
 
 The two couples who had parted company, being anxious 
 to advertise their honourable conduct, executed a quartet- 
 without-music in extenuation of what appeared organized 
 treachery. The soprano and tenor had lost sight of the alto 
 and basso just on the other side of Clocketts Croft, where you 
 came to a stile. They had from sheer good-faith retraced their 
 eteps to this stile and sat on it reluctantly, in bewilderment of 
 spirit, praying for the spontaneous reappearance of the wanderers. 
 These latter testified unanimously that they had seen the tenor 
 assist the soprano over this stile, and that then the couple had 
 disappeared to the right through the plantation of young larches, 
 and they had followed them along a path of enormous length 
 with impenetrable arboriculture on either hand, without seeing 
 any more of them, and expected to find them on arriving. The 
 tenor and soprano gave close particulars of their return along 
 this self-same path, All the evidence went to show that a 
 suspension of natural laws had taken place, the simultaneous 
 presence of all four at that stile seeming a mathematical cer- 
 tainty from which escape was impossible. 
 
 Guilty conscience — so Gwen thought at least — was discernible 
 in every phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for 
 Lieutenant Tatham and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. 
 But why Aunt Constance and her middle-aged M.P. ? If they 
 wanted to, why couldn't they, without any nonsense ? That 
 Was the truncated inquiry Gwen's mind made. 
 
 She herself was radiant, dazzling, in the highest spirits. But 
 her mother was silent and pre-occupied, and rather impatient 
 with her more than once during the evening. The Earl was 
 the same, minus the impatience. 
 
 This was because of two very short colloquies under pressure, 
 between Gwen's departure upstairs and the Countess's overdue 
 
248 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 appearance at dinner. The first began in the lobby outside" 
 Gwen's room, where her mother overtook her on her way to her' 
 own. Here it is in full: 
 
 " Oh — ^there you are, child ! What a silly you were not to 
 come ! How's your headache ? . . . I do wish your father 
 would have those stairs altered. It's like the ascent of Moimt 
 Parnassus." Buckstone was presenting a burlesque of that 
 name just then, and her ladyship may have had it running in 
 her head. 
 
 " It wasn't a real headache — only pretence. Come in here, 
 mamma. I've something to say. . . . No — I haven't rung 
 for Lutwyche yet. She's all right. Come in and shut the door." 
 
 " Why, girl, what's the matter ? Why are you ...'?' 
 
 " Why am I what ?" 
 
 " Well — ^twinkling and — ^breathing and — and altogether 1" 
 Her ladyship's descriptive power is fairly good as far as it goes, 
 but it has its limits. 
 
 " I don't believe I'm either twinkling or breathing or alto- 
 gether . . . Well, then — ^I'm whatever you like — all three ! Only 
 listen to me, mamma dear, because there's not much time. I'm 
 going to marry Adrian Torrens. There !" 
 
 " Oh — my dear !" It is too much for the Countess after 
 those stairs ! She sinks on a chair clutching her fingers tight, 
 with wide eyes on her daughter. It is too terrible to believe. 
 But even in that moment Gwen's beauty has such force that 
 the words " A blind man ! — never to see it \" are articulate in 
 her mind. For her child never looked more beautiful — one 
 half queenly eJEErontery, her disordered locks against the window- 
 light making a halo of rough gold round the sUght fiush its 
 wearer would resent the name of shame for; the other half, the 
 visible flinching from confession she would resent still more for 
 justifying it. 
 
 " Why — do you know anything against him ?" 
 
 " Darling ! — ^you might marry anybody, and you know it." 
 
 "Oh, yes; I know bJI about it. I prefer this one. But do 
 you know anything against him ?" 
 
 " Only . . . only his eyea J . . . Oh dear ! You know you said 
 so yourself yesterday — that the sight was destroyed . . ." 
 
 " Who destroyed his sight ? Tell me that !" 
 
 " If you are going to take that tone, Gwendolen, I really 
 cannot talk about it. You and your father must settle it 
 between you somehow. It was an accident — a very terrible 
 accident, I know — but I must go away to dress. It's eight. . . . 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 249 
 
 Anyhow, one thing, dear ! You haven't given him any en- 
 couragement — at least, I hope not . . ." 
 
 " Given him any what ?" 
 
 " Any practical encouragement . . . any . . ." 
 
 " Oh yes — ^any quantity." She has to quash that flinching 
 and brazen it out. One way is as good as another. " I didn't 
 tell him to puU my hair down, though. I didn't mind. But 
 if he had been able to see I should have been much more 
 strict." 
 
 " Gwen dear — ^you are perfectly . . . shameless ! . . . Well — 
 you are a very odd girl . . ." This is concession; oddity is not 
 shamelessness. 
 
 " Come, mamma, be reasonable ! If you can't see anybody 
 and you mayn't touch them, it comes down to making remarks 
 at a respectful distance, and then it's no better than acquaint- 
 ance — visiting and leaving cards and that sort of thing. . . . 
 Come in !" Lutwyche interrupted with hot water, her ex- 
 pression saying distinctly : — " I am a young woman of unim- 
 peachable character, who can come into a room where a titled 
 lady and her daughter are at loggerheads, no doubt about a 
 love-affair, and can shut my eyes to the visible and my ears to 
 the audible. Go it !" 
 
 Nevertheless, the disputants seemed to prefer suspension 
 of their discussion, and the elder lady departed, saying they 
 would both be late for dinner. 
 
 This was the first short colloquy. The second was in the 
 Earl's dressing-room, from which he was emerging when his wife, 
 looking scared, met him coming out in grande tenue through the 
 district common to both, the room Earls and Countesses had 
 occupied from time immemorial. He saw there was some ex- 
 citement afoot, but was content to await the information he 
 knew would come in the end. Tacit reciprocities of misunder- 
 standing ensuing, he felt it safest to say: — " Nothing wrong, I 
 hope ?" This is what followed : 
 
 "I think you might show more interest. I have been very 
 much startled and annoyed. . . . But I must tell you later. 
 There's no time now." 
 
 " I think," says his lordship deferentially, " that, having 
 mentioned it, it might be better to . . ." 
 
 " I suppose you mean I oughtn't to have mentioned it, . . . 
 Starfield, I caimot possibly wear that thick dress to-night. 
 It's suffocating. Get something thinner. . . . Oh, well — if 
 I must tell you I must tell you ! Go back in your room a 
 
250 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 minute while Starfield finds that dress.. ... Oh no — she's not 
 listening . . . never mind her 1 There, the door's shut \" 
 
 " WeU— what is it 1" 
 
 " It's Gwen. However, I dare say it's only a flash in the 
 pan, and she'll be off after somebody else. If only my advice 
 had been taken he never would have come into the house. . . ." 
 
 " But who is he, and what is it ?" 
 
 " My dear, I'll tell you if you'll not be so impatient. It's 
 this young Torrens. . . . Yes — ^now you're shocked. So was 
 I." For no further explanations are necessary. When one 
 hears that " it " is John and Jane, one knows. 
 
 " But, Philippa, are you sure ? It seems to me perfectly 
 incredible." 
 
 " Speak to her yourself." 
 
 " She's barely seen him; and as for him, poor fellow, he has 
 never seen her at all." The rapidity of events seems out of all 
 reason to a constitutionally cautious Earl. 
 
 " My dear, how unreasonable you are ! If he could see her, 
 of course, she wouldn't think of him for one moment. At least, 
 I suppose not." 
 
 " I cannot understand," says the bewildered Earl. And 
 then he begins repeating her ladyship's words " If — he — 
 could . . ." as though inviting a more intelligible repetition. 
 This is exasperating — a clear insinuation of unintelligibility. 
 
 " Oh dear, how slow men are !" The lady passes through a 
 short phase of collapse from despair over man's faculties, then 
 returns to a difiScult task crisply and incisively. " Well at, 
 any rate, you can see this ? The girl's got it into her head that 
 the accident was our fault, and that it's her duty to make it up 
 to him." 
 
 " But, then, she's not really in love with him, if it's a self- 
 deiiying ordinance." 
 
 The Countess is getting used to despair, so she only shrugs 
 a submissive shoulder and remarks with forbearance: — "It is 
 no use trying to make you understand. Of course, it's becatise 
 she is in love with him that she is going in for . . . what did 
 you call it ? . ..." 
 
 " A self-denying ordinance." 
 
 " / call it heroics. If she wasn't in love with him, do you 
 suppose she would want to fling herself away ?" 
 
 " Then it isn't a self-denying ordinance at all. I confess 
 I don't understand. I must talk to Gwen herself." 
 
 " Oh, talk to her by all means. But don't expect to make. 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 251 
 
 any impression on her. I know what she is when she gets the 
 bit in her teeth. Certainly talk to her. I really must go and 
 dress now . . ." 
 
 " Stop one minute, Philippa. . . ." 
 
 " Well— what ?" 
 
 " Apart from the blindness — poor fellow ! — ^is there anything 
 about this young man to object to ? There's nothing about his 
 family. Why ! — his father's Hamilton Torrens, that was 
 George's great friend at Christ Church. And his mother was 
 an Abercrombie. . . ." 
 
 " I can't go into that now." Her ladyship outs Adrian's 
 family very short. Consider her memories of bygonea I No 
 wonder she became acutely alive to her duties as a hostess. 
 She had created a precedent in this matter, though really her 
 husband scarcely knew anything about her affaire de coeur with 
 Adrian's father thirty years ago. It was not a hanging matter, 
 but she could not object to the young man's family after such 
 a definite attitude towards his father. 
 
 Here ends the second short colloquy, which was the one that 
 caused the Earl to be so more than usually absent that evening. 
 It had the opposite effect on her ladyship, who felt better after 
 it; braced up again to company-manners after the first one. 
 Gwen, as mentioned before, was dazzling; superb; what is apt 
 to be called a cynosure, owing to something Milton said. Never- 
 theless, the Shrewd Observer, who happened in this case to 
 be Aunt Constance, noticed that at intervals the young lady 
 let her right-hand neighbour talk, and died away into pre- 
 occupation, with a vital undercurrent of rippled lip and thought- 
 ful eye. Another of her shrewd observations was that when the 
 Hon. Percival, referring to Mr. Torrens, still an absentee by 
 choice, said: — "I tried again to persuade him to come down at 
 feeding-time, but it was no go," Gwen came suddenly out of one 
 dream of this sort to say from her end of the table, miles off: — " He 
 really prefers dining by himself, I know," and went in again. 
 
 It was this that Aunt Constance referred to in conversation 
 with Mr. Pellew, at about half-past ten o'clock in that same 
 shrubbery walk. They had cultivated each other's absence 
 carefully in the drawing-room, and had convinced themselves 
 that neither was necessary to the other. That clause having 
 been carried nem. con., they were entitled to five minute's chat, 
 without prejudice. Neither remembered, perhaps, the convert 
 to temperance who decided that passing a public-house door 
 d conire-coeur entitled him to half-a-pint. 
 
252 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " How did you get on with little Di Accrington 1" the lady 
 had said. And the gentleman had answered : — " First-rate. 
 Talked to her about your partner all the time. How did you 
 hit it off with him ?" A sjraipathetic laugh over the response: 
 " Capitally — ^he talked about her, of course !" quite undid the 
 fiction woven with so much pains indoors, and also as it were 
 lighted a little collateral fire they might warm their fingers at, 
 or bum them. However, a parade of their well-worn seniority, 
 their old experience of life, would keep them safe from that. 
 Only it wouldn't do to neglect it. 
 
 Mr. Pellew recognised the obligation first. " Offly amusin' ! — 
 young people," said he, claiming, as the countryman of Shake- 
 speare, his share of insight into Romeo and Juhet. 
 
 " Same old story, over and over again I" said Aunt Constance, 
 They posed as types of elderliness that had no personal concern 
 in love-affairs, and could afford to smile at juvenile flirtations. 
 Mr. PeUew felt interested in Miss Dickenson's bygone romances, 
 implied in the slight shade of sentiment in her voice — wondered 
 in fact how the dooce this woman had missed her market; this 
 was the expression his internal soliloquy used. She for her part 
 was on the whole glad that an intensely Platonic friendship didn't 
 admit of catechism, as she was better pleased to leave the cus- 
 tomers in that market to the uninformed imagination of others, 
 than to be compelled to draw upon her own. 
 
 The fact was that, in spite of its thinness and shghtness, this 
 Platonic friendship with a mature bachelor whose past — ^while 
 she acquitted him of atrocities — she felt was safest kept out of 
 sight, had already gone quite as near to becoming a love-affair 
 as anything her memory could discover among her own rather 
 barren antecedents. So there was a certain sort of aflfectation in 
 Aunt Constance's suggestion of familiarity with Romeo and 
 Juhet. She wished, without telling lies, to convey the idea that 
 the spinsterhood four very married sisters did not scruple to 
 taimt her with, was either of her own choosing or due to some 
 tragic event of early Ufe. She did not rehsh the opposite pole 
 of human experience to her companion's. Of course, he was a 
 bachelor nominally unattached — she appreciated that — ^justas 
 she was a spinster very actually unattached. But all men of 
 his type she had understood were ahke; only some — this one 
 certainly — ^were much better than others. Honestly she was 
 quite unconscious of any personal reason for assigning to him a 
 first-class record. 
 
 Attempts to sift the human mind throw very httle light upon 
 
A CONTESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 253 
 
 it, and the dust gets in the eyes of the story. Perhaps that is 
 why it cannot gi'^e Miss Dickenson's reason for not following up 
 her last remark with: — -" And will go on so, I suppose, to the 
 end of time !" as she had half-intended to do, philosophically. 
 Possibly she thought it would complicate the topic she was 
 hankering after. It would be better to keep that provisionally 
 clear of subjects made to the hand of writers of plays. She would 
 not go beyond hypnotic suggestion at present. She approached 
 it with the air of one who dismisses a triviality. 
 
 " It seems Mr. Adrian Torrens is a musician as well as a poet." 
 
 " Had they been playing the piano ?" 
 
 " Really, Mr. Pellew, how absiurd you are ! Where does 
 • they ' come in ?" 
 
 " Oh — ^well — a — of course — ^I thought you were referring 
 to . . ." 
 
 " Whom did you suppose I was referring to ?" Aggressive 
 equanimity here that can wait weeks, if necessary. 
 
 " Torrens and my cousin Gwen I Be hanged if I can see why 
 I shouldn't refer to them !" 
 
 " Do so by all means. I wasn't, myself; but it doesn't matter. 
 It was Nurse Bailey told Lutwyche, whom I borrow from Gwen 
 sometimes, that Mr. Torrens was a great musician." 
 
 " How does Nurse Bailey know ?" 
 
 " He was playing to her quite beautiful in the drawing-room 
 just before her young ladyship came in. And then Mrs. Bailey 
 went upstairs to write a letter because there was plenty of time 
 before the post." 
 
 " Can't say I believe Niurse Bailey's much of a dab at music." 
 Mr. Pellew was reflecting on the humorous background of Miss 
 Dickenson's character, clear to his insight in her last speech. 
 " But it w£is just post-time when we got back from the flower- 
 show. . . . What then ? Why, her yotmg ladyship must have 
 been there long enough for Mrs. Bailey to write a letter." 
 
 " Is that the way you gossip at your Club, Mr. Pellew ?" 
 
 " Come, I say. Miss Dickenson, that's too bad ! I merely 
 remark that a lady and gentleman must have had plenty of 
 time for music, and you call it ' gossip.' " 
 
 " Precisely." 
 
 " Well, I say it's a jolly shame ! . . . You don't suppose 
 there is anything there, do you ?" This came with a sudden 
 efflux of seriousness. 
 
 Aunt Constance had landed her fish and was blameless. 
 Nobody could say she had been indiscreet. She, too, could 
 
254 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 afiEord to be suddenly serious. " I don't mind saying so to you, 
 Mr. Pellew," she said, " because I know I can rely upon you. 
 But did you notice at dinner-time, when you said you had tried 
 to persuade Mr. Torrens to come down, that Gwen took upon 
 herself to answer for him all the way down the table ?" 
 
 " By Jove — so she did 1 I didn't notice it at the time. At 
 least, I mean I did notice it at the time, but I didn't take much 
 notice of it. Well — you know what I mean !" As Mi. a 
 Dickenson knows perfectly well, she tolerates technical flaws of 
 speech with a nod, and allows Mr. Pellew to go on: — " But, I 
 say, this will be an awful smash for the family. A blind man \" 
 Then he becomes aware that a conclusion has been jumped at, 
 and experiences relief. " But it may be all a mistake, you 
 know." Aunt Constance's silence has the force of speech, and 
 calls for further support of this surmise. " They haven't had the 
 time. She has only known him smce yesterday. At least he 
 had never seen her but once — he told me so — ^that time just before 
 the accident." 
 
 " Gwen is a very peculiar girl," says the lady. " A spark wDl 
 fire a train. Did you notice nothing when we came in from the 
 flower-show ?" 
 
 " Nothing whatever. Did you ?" 
 
 " Little things. However, as you say, it may be all a mistake. 
 I don't think anything of the time, though. Some young people 
 are volcanic. Gwen might be." 
 
 " I saw no sign of an eruption in him — ^np lunacy. He chatted 
 quite reasonably about the division on Thursday, and the crops 
 and the weather. Never mentioned Gwen !" 
 
 " My dear Mr. Pellew, you really are quite pastoral. Of 
 course, Gwen is exactly what he would not mention." 
 
 Mr. Pellew seems to concede that he is an outsider. " You 
 think it was Love at flrst sight, and that sort of thing," he says. 
 " Well — I hope it will wash. It don't always, you Imow." 
 
 " Indeed it does not." The speaker cannot resist the tempta- 
 tion to flavour philosophy with a suggestion of tender regrets — 
 a hint of a life-drama in her own past. No questions need be 
 answered, and will scarcely be asked. But it is candid and 
 courageous to say as little as may be about it, and to favour a 
 cheerful outlook on Life. She is bound to say that many of the 
 happiest marriages she has known have been marriages of 
 second — third — ^fourth — fifth — wth Love. She had better have 
 let it stand at that if she wanted her indistinct admirer to screw 
 up his courage then and there to sticking point. For the Hon. 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 255 
 
 Percival had at least seen in her words a road of approach to a 
 reasonably tender elderly avowal. But she must needs spoil it 
 by adding — ^really quite unconsciously — ^that many such mar- 
 riages had been between persons in quite mature years. Some- 
 how this changed the nascent purpose kindled by a suggestion 
 of mth love in Autumn to a sudden consciousness that the con- 
 versation was sailing very near the wjnd — some wind undefined — 
 and made Mr. Pellew rim away pusiUanimously. 
 
 " By-the-by, did you ever see the Macganister More man that 
 died the other day ? Married the Earl's half-sister ?" 
 
 " Never. Of course, I know Clotilda perfectly well." 
 
 " Let's see — oh yes ! — she's Sister Nora. Oh yes, of course I 
 know Clotilda. She's his heiress, I fancy — comes into all the 
 -property — ^no male heir. She'll go over to Rome, I suppose." 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " Always do — ^with a lot of independent property. Unless 
 some fillah cuts in and snaps her up." 
 
 " Do tell me, Mr. Pellew, why it is men can never credit any 
 woman with an identity of her own ?" 
 
 " Well, I only go by what I see. If they don't marry they go 
 over to Rome — ^when there's property — dessay I'm wrong. . . . 
 What o'clock's that ? — ten, I suppose. No ? — ^well, I suppose 
 it must be eleven, when one comes to think of it. But it's a 
 shame to go in — anight like this !" And then this weak-minded 
 couple impaired the effect of their little declaration of inde- 
 pendence of the united state — ^the phrase sounds familiar some- 
 how ! — by staying out five or six minutes longer, and going in 
 half an hour later; two things only the merest pedant would 
 declare incompatible. But it kept the servants up, and Miss 
 Dickenson had to apologise to Mr. Norbury. 
 
 How many of us living in this present century can keep alive 
 to the fact that the occupants of country-mansions, now 
 resplendent with an electric glare which is destroying their eye- 
 sight and going out suddenly at intervals, were sixty years ago 
 dependent on candles and moderator lamps, which ran down and 
 had to be wound up, and then ran down again, when there was 
 no oil. There was no gas at the Towers; though there might 
 have been, granting seven miles of piping, from which the gas 
 would have escaped into the roots of the beeches and killed 
 them. 
 
 Even it there had been, it does not follow that Miss Dickenson, 
 in full flight to her own couch, would not have come upon the 
 
256 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Earl in the lobby near Mr. Torrens's quarters, with a candle-lamp 
 in his hand, which he carried about in nocturnal excursions to 
 make sure that a great conflagration was not raging somewhere 
 on the premises. He seemed. Miss Dickenson thought, to bo 
 gazing reproachfully at it. It was burning all right, nevertheless. 
 She wished his lordship good-night, and fancied it was very late. 
 The Earl appeared sure of it. So did a clock with clear ideas on 
 the subject, striking midnight somewhere, ponderously. The lady 
 passed on; not, however, failing to notice that the lamp stopped 
 at a door on the way, and that its bearer was twice going to 
 knock thereat and didn't. Then a dog within intimated that 
 he should bark presently, unless attention was given to an occxir- 
 rence he could vouch for, which his master told him to hold his 
 tongue about; calling out "Come in!" nevertheless, to cover 
 contingencies. 
 
 The passer-by connected this with Gwen's behaviour at dinner, 
 and other little things she had noticed, and meant to he awake 
 on the chance of hearing his lordship say good-night to Mr. 
 Torrens, perhaps illuminating the situation. But resolutions to 
 lie awake are the veriest gossamer, blown away by the breath 
 that puts the bedside candle out. Miss Dickenson and Oblivion 
 had joined hands some time when his lordship said good-night 
 to Mr. Torrens. 
 
 He had found him standing at his window, as though the warm 
 night-air was a luxury to him, in the blue sUk dressing-gown he 
 had affected since his convalescence. There was no light in the 
 room; indeed, light would have been of no service to him in his 
 state. He did not move, but said: " I suppose I ought to be 
 thinking of turning in now, Mrs. Bailey ?" 
 
 "It isn't Mrs. Bailey," said the Earl. "It's me. Gwen's father." 
 
 " God bless my soul !" exclaimed Adrian, starting back from 
 the window. " I thought it was the good creature. I had given 
 you up. Lord Ancester — ^it got so late." For his lordship had 
 made a visit of inquiry and a short chat with this involuntary 
 guest an invariable fiiiish to his daily programme, since the 
 latter recovered consciousness. " I'm afraid there's no Ught in 
 the room," said Adrian. " I told 'Rene to blow the candles 
 out. I can move about very fairly, you see, but I never feel safe 
 about knocking things down. I might set something on fire." 
 If he had had his choice, he would rather not have had another 
 interview with his host until he was at hberty to confess all and 
 say peccavi. Even " Gwen's father's " announcement of him- 
 self did not warrant his breaking his promise. 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 257 
 
 " There is no light/' said the visitor, " except mine that I have 
 brought with me. I expected to find you in the dark — ^indeed, I 
 was afraid I might wake you out of your first sleep. I came 
 because of Gwen — ^because I felt I must see you before I went 
 to bed myself." He paused a moment, Adrian remaining silent, 
 BtUl at a loss; then continued: — "This has been very sudden, so 
 sudden that it has quite. . . ." 
 
 Then Adrian broke out: — " Oh, how you must be blaming me ! 
 Oh, what a brute I've been ! . . ." 
 
 " No — ^no, no — no ! Not that, not that at all ! Not a word 
 of blame for anybody ! None for you — ^none for' Gwen. But it 
 has been so — so sudden. . . ." Indeed, Gwen's father seems as 
 though all the breath, morally speaking, had been knocked out of 
 his body by this escapade of his daughter's. For, knowing from 
 past experience the frequent tempestuous suddenness of her 
 impulses, and convinced that Adrian in his position neither could 
 nor would have shown definitely the aspirations of a lover, his 
 image of their interview made Gwen almost the first instigator in 
 
 the affair. " Why you — you have hardly seen her " he says, 
 
 referring only to the shortness of their acquaintance, not to 
 eyesight. 
 
 Adrian accepts the latter meaning without blaming him. 
 " Yes," he says, " but see her I did, though it was but a glimpse. 
 I tell you this. Lord Ancester — and it is no rhapsody; just bald 
 truth — ^that if this day had never come about. ... I mean if 
 it had come about otherwise ; I might have gone away this 
 morning, for instance . . . and if I had had to learn, as I yet may, 
 that this black cloud I live in was to be my life for good, and all 
 that image I saw for a moment of Gwen — Gwen in her glory in 
 the light of the simset, for one moment — one moment ! . . ." 
 He breaks down over it. 
 
 The Earl's voice is not in good form for encouragement, but 
 he does his best. " Come — come ! It's not so bad as all that 
 yet. See what Merridew said. Couldn't say anything for certain 
 for another three months. Indeed he said it might be more, and 
 yet you might have your sight back again without a flaw in 
 either eye. He really said so !" 
 
 " Well — he's a jolly good fellow. But what I mean is, what 
 I was going to say was that my recollection of her in that one 
 moment would have been the one precious thing left for me to 
 treasure through the pitch-darkness. . . . You remember — or 
 perhaps not — ^that about a hand's breadth of it — the desert, you 
 know — shining alone in the salt leagues round about. . . ." 
 
 17 
 
258 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " N-no. I don't think I do. Is it . . . a . . . Coleridge ?" 
 
 " No — ^Robert Brovming. He'd be new to you. You would 
 hardly know him. However, I should try to forget the rest of 
 the desert this time." 
 
 The Earl did not follow, naturally, and changed the subject. 
 " It is very late," he said, " and I have only time to say what 
 I came to say. You may rely on my not standing arbitrarily 
 in the way of my daughter's wishes when the time comes — and 
 it has not come yet — ^for looking at that side of the subject. It 
 can only come when it is absolutely certain that she knows her 
 own mind. She is too young to be allowed to take the most 
 important step in life under the influence of a romantic — ^it may 
 be Quixotic — ^impulse. I have just had a long talk with her 
 mother about it, and I am forced to the conclusion that Gwen's 
 motives are not so unmixed as a girl's should be, to justify 
 bystanders in allowing her to act upon them — bystanders I mean 
 who would have any right of interference. ... I am afraid I am 
 not very clear, but I shrink from saying what may seem im- 
 feeling. . . ." 
 
 " Probably you would not hurt me, and I should deserve it, if 
 you did." 
 
 " What I mean is that Gwen's impulse is ... is derived from 
 . . . from, in short, your unhappy accident. I would not go 
 so far as to say that sho ha?' schemed a compensation for this 
 cruel disaster . . . which wu need hardly be so gloomy about 
 yet awhile, it seems to me. But this I do say " — here the Earl 
 seemed to pick up heart and find his words easier — " that if 
 Gwen has got that idea I thoroughly sympathize with her. I 
 give you my word, Mr. Torrens, that not an hoxir passes, for me, 
 without a thought of the same kind. I mean that I should jump 
 at any chance of making it up to you, for mere ease of mind. But 
 I have nothing to give that would meet the case. Gwen has a 
 treasure — herself ! It is another matter whether she should be 
 allowed to dispose of it her own way, for her own sake. Her 
 mother and I may both feel it our duty to oppose it." 
 
 Adrian said in an undertone, most dejectedly: "You would 
 be right. How could I complain ?" Then it seemed to him 
 that his words struck a false note, and he tried to quality them. 
 " I mean — how could I say a word of any sort ? Could I com- 
 plain of any parents, for trying to stop their girl linking her life 
 to mine ? And such a life as hers ! And yet if it were all to do 
 again, how could I act otherwise than as I did a few hours since. 
 Is there a man so strong anywhere that he could put a curb on 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 259 
 
 his heart and choke down his speech to convention-point, if he 
 thought that a girl like Gwen ... I don't know how to say what 
 I want. All speech goes wrong, do what I will." 
 
 " If he thought that a girl like Gwen was waiting for him to 
 speak out ? Is that it ? . . . Oh — ^well — ^not exactly that ! 
 But something of the sort, suppose we say ?" For Adrian's 
 manner had entered a protest. " Anyhow I assure you I quite 
 understand my Gwen is — very attractive. But nobody is 
 blaming anybody. After all, what would the alternative have 
 been ? Just some hypocritical beating about the bush to keep 
 square with the regulations — ^to level matters down to — ^what 
 did you call it ? — convention-point ! Nothing gained in the end I 
 Let's put all that on one side. What we have to look at is this — 
 meaning, of course, by 'we,' my wife and myself: — ^Is Gwen 
 really an independent agent ? Is she not in a sense the slave of 
 her own imagination, beyond and above the usual enthralment 
 that one accepts as part of the disorder. I myself believe that 
 she is, and that the whole root and essence of the business may 
 be her pity for yourself, and also I should say an exaggerated 
 idea of her own share in the guilt. . . ." 
 
 " There was none,' Adrian struck in decisively. " But I 
 understand your meaning exactly. Listen a minute to this. 
 If I had thought what you think possible — ^well, I would have 
 bitten my tongue off rather than speak. Why, think of it ! To 
 ask a girl like that to sacrifice herself to a cripple — a half -cripple, 
 at least. . . ." 
 
 " Without good grounds for supposing she was waiting to be 
 asked," said the Earl; adding, to anticipate protest: — "Come 
 now ! — that's what we mean. Let's say so and have done with 
 it," to which Adrian gave tacit assent. BQs lordship continued : — 
 " I quite believe you; at least, I believe you would rather have 
 held your tongue than bitten it off. I certainly should. But — 
 pardon my saying so — ^I cannot understand . . . I'm not finding 
 fault or doubting you ... I cannot understand how you came to 
 be so — so ... I won't say cocksure — diet's call it sanguine. If 
 there had been time I could have understood it. But I cannot 
 see where the time came in." 
 
 Adrian fidgetted uneasily, and felt his cheeks flush. " I can 
 answer for when it began, with me. I walked across that glade 
 from Arthur's Bridge quite turned into somebody else, with 
 Gwen stamped on my brain like a Queen's head on a shilfing 
 and her voice in my ears as plain as the lark's overhead. But 
 whether we started neck and neck, I know not. I do know thi^ 
 
260 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 though, that I shall never beheve that if I had been first seen by 
 her in my character as a corpse, either she or I would ever have 
 been a penny the wiser." 
 
 " You are the wiser ? — quite sure ?" The Earl seemed to 
 have his doubts. 
 
 " Quite sure. Do you recollect how ' the Duke grew suddenly 
 brave and wise ' ? He was only the ' fine empty sheath of a 
 man ' before. But it's no use quoting Browning to you." 
 
 " Not the sUghtest. I suppose he was referring to a case of 
 love at first sight — ^is that it ? , . . It is a time-honoured phe- 
 nomenon, only it hardly comes into practical pohtics, because 
 young persons are so secretive about it. I can't recollect any 
 lady but Rosalind who mentioned it at the time — or any gentle- 
 man but Romeo, for that matter. Gwen has certainly kept her 
 own counsel for three weeks past." 
 
 " Dear Lord Ancestor, you are laughing at me. . . ." 
 
 " No — ^no ! No, I wouldn't do that. Perhaps I was laughing 
 a Uttle at human nature. That's excusable. However, I under- 
 stand that you are cocksure — or sanguine — ^about the similarity 
 of Romeo's case. I won't press Gwen about Rosalind's. Of 
 course, if she volunteers information, I shall have to dismiss the 
 commiseration theory — ^you understand me ? — and suppose that 
 she is healthily in love. By healthily I mean selfishly. If no 
 information is forthcoming, all I can say is — the doubt remains; 
 the doubt whether she is not making herself the family scape- 
 goat, carrying way the sins of the congregation into> the 
 wilderness." 
 
 " You know I think that all sheer nonsense, whatever Gwen 
 thinks ? She may think the sins of the congregation are as 
 scarlet. To me they are white as wool." 
 
 " The whole question turns on what Gwen thinks. BeUeving, 
 as I do, that my child may be sacrificing herself to expiate a sin 
 of mine, I have no course but to do my best to prevent her, or, at 
 least to postpone irrevocable action until it is certain that she 
 is animated by no such motive. I might advocate that you and 
 she should not meet, for — suppose we say — a twelvemonth, but 
 that I have so often noticed that absence not only ' makes the 
 heart grow fonder,' as the song says, but also makes it very 
 turbulent and imruly. So I shall leave matters entirely alone — 
 leave her to settle it with her mother. . . . Your sister knows of 
 this, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Oh yes ! Gwen told her of it across the table at dinner- 
 time/' 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 261 
 
 " Across the table at dinner-time ? /wip-ossible I" 
 
 " Well — ^look at this \" Adrian produces from his dressing- 
 gown pocket a piece of paper, much crumpled, with a gilt frill 
 all roimd, and holds it out for the Earl to take. While the latter 
 deciphers it at his candle-lamp, he goes on to give its history. 
 Irene had been back very late from the Mackworth Clarkes, and 
 had missed the soup. She had not spoken with Gwen at all, and 
 as soon as dessert had effloresced into little confetti, had been told 
 by that young lady to eatch, the thing thrown being the wrapper 
 of one of these, rolled up and scribbled on. " She brought it up 
 for me to see," says Adrian, without thought of cruel fact. Blind 
 people often speak thus. 
 
 The Earl cannot help laughing at what he reads aloud. " ' I 
 am going to marry your brother ' — that's aU I" he says. " That's 
 what she borrowed Lord Cumberworld's pencil for. Really 
 Gwen is . . . !" But this wild daughter of his is beyond worda 
 to describe, and he gives her up. 
 
 If the Duke's son had not been honourable, he might have 
 peeped and known his own fate. For he had been entrusted 
 with this missive, to hand across the table to Irene lower 
 down. Lady Gwendolen ought to have given it to Mr. Norbury, 
 to hand to Miss Torrens on a tray. That was Mr. Norbury'a 
 opinion. 
 
 When the Earl looked up from deciphering the pencil-scrawl, 
 he saw that Adrian's powers were visibly flagging; and no 
 wonder, convalescence considered, and such a day of strain and 
 excitement. He rose to go, saying : — " You see what I want — 
 nothing in a hurry." 
 
 Adrian's words were slipping away from him as he repHed, or 
 tried to reply: — " I see. If I were to get my eyes back, Gwen 
 might change her mind." But he failed over the last two letters. 
 Mrs. Bailey, still in charge, lived on the other side of a door; at 
 which the Earl tapped, causing a scuttling and a prompt appear- 
 ance of the good creature, who seemed to have an ambush 
 of grog ready to spring on her patient. It was what was 
 wanted. 
 
 " Remember this, Mr. Torrens," said his lordship, when a 
 rally encouraged him to add a postscript, " that in spite of what 
 you say, I feel just as Gwen does, that the blame of your mishap 
 lies with me and mine — ^with me chiefly. . . ." 
 
 " All nonsense, my lord ! Excuse my contradicting you flatly. 
 Yoxir instruction, not expressed but impUed, to old Stephen, was 
 clearly not to miss his mark. If he had killed Achilles you would 
 
262 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 have been responsible, as Apollo was responsible for the arrow of 
 Paris. , , . Yes, my dear, we were talking about you." This 
 was to the collie, who woke up from deep sleep at the sound of 
 his name, and felt he could mix with a society that recognised 
 him. But not without shaking himself violently and scratching 
 his head, until appealed to to stop. 
 
 The Earl let further protest stand over, and said good-night, 
 rather relieved at the beneficial effect of the good creature's 
 ministrations. The excellent woman herself, when the grog was 
 disposed of, facilitated her charge's dispositions for the night, and 
 retired to rest with an ill-digested idea that she had interrupted 
 a conversation about the corrupt gaieties of a vicious foreign 
 capital, inhabited chiefly by atheists and idolaters. 
 
 The Countess's long talk with her husband, wedged in between 
 an early abdication of the drawing-room and the sound of Gwen 
 laughing audaciously with Miss Torrens on the staircase, and 
 more temperate good-nights below, had tended towards a form 
 of party government in which the Earl was the Liberal and her 
 ladyship the Conservative party. The Bill before the House 
 was never exactly read aloud, its contents being taken for granted. 
 When the Coimtess had said, in their previous interview, first 
 that it was Gwen, and then that it was this young Torrens, she 
 had really exhausted the subject. 
 
 Nevertheless she seemed now to claim for herself credit for a 
 clear exposition of the contents of this Bill, in spite of constant 
 interruptions from a factious Opposition. " I hope," she said, 
 " that, now that I have succeeded in making you understand, 
 you will speak to Gwen yourself. I suppose she's not going to 
 stop downstairs all night." 
 
 The Earl also supposed not. But even in that very improb- 
 able event the resources of human ingenuity would not be 
 exhausted. He could, for instance, go downstairs to speak to 
 her. But other considerations intervened. Was her ladyship's 
 information unimpeachable ? Was it absolutely impossible that 
 she should have been misled in any particular ? Could he, in 
 fact, consider his information official ? 
 
 The Countess showed unexampled forbearance under extreme 
 trial. " My dear," she said, " how perfectly absurd you are ! 
 How can there be any. doubt of the matter ? Listen to me for 
 one moment and think. When a gicl insists on talking to her 
 mother when both are late for dinner, and have hardly five 
 minutes to dress, and says flatly, ' Mamma dear, I am going to 
 
A CONCESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 263 
 
 marry So-and-so, or So-and-so' — because it's exactly the same 
 thing, whoever it is — how can there be any possibility of a 
 mistake ?" 
 
 " Very httle, certainly," says the Earl reflectively. He 
 seemed to consider the point slowly. " But it can hardly be 
 said to be exactly the same thing in all cases. This case is 
 pecuhar — ^is pecuhar." 
 
 " I can't see where the peculiarity comes in. You mean his 
 eyes. But a girl either is, or is not, in love with a man, whether 
 he has eyes in his head or not." 
 
 " Indisputably. But it complicates the case. You must 
 admit, my dear, that it complicates the case." 
 
 " You mean thai; I am unfeeling ? Wouldn't it be better to 
 say so instead of beating about the bush ? But I am nothing of 
 the sort." 
 
 " My dear, am I likely to say so ? Have you ever heard me 
 hint such a thing ? But one may be sincerely sorry for the 
 victim of such an awful misfortune, and yet feel that his bUndness 
 comphcates matters. Because it does." 
 
 " I'm not sure that I imderstand what you are driving at. 
 Perhaps we are talking about different things." This ia not 
 entirely without forbearance — may show a trace of uncalled-for 
 patience, as towards an undeserved conundrum-monger. 
 
 " Perhaps we are, my dear. But as to what I'm driving at. 
 Can you recall what Gwen said about his eyes ?" 
 
 " I think so. Let me see. . . . Yes — she said did I know 
 anything against him. I said — ^nothing except his eyes. And 
 then she said — I recollect it quite plainly — ' Who destroyed his 
 sight ? Tell me that !' " 
 
 " What did you answer to that ?" 
 
 " I refused to talk any longer, and said you and she must 
 settle it your own way." 
 
 " Nothing else ?" 
 
 " Oh — ^well — ^nothing — ^nothing to speak of ! Lutwyche came 
 worrying in with hot water." 
 
 The Earl sat cogitating untU her ladyship roused him by 
 saying " Well !" rather tartly. Then he echoed back : — " Well, 
 Philippa, I think possibly you are right." 
 
 " Only possibly !" 
 
 " Probably then. Yes — certainly probably !' 
 
 " What about ?" 
 
 " I thought I understood you to say that, in your opinion, 
 Gwen had got it into her head that . . ." 
 
264 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Oh dear ! . . . There — never mind ! — go on." She con- 
 sidered her husband a prolix Earl^ sometimes. 
 
 "... That the accident was our fault, and that it was her 
 duty to make it up to him." 
 
 " Of cotirse she has. What did you suppose? " 
 
 " I supposed she might have — a — ^fallen in love with him. 
 I thought you thought so, too, from what you said." 
 
 " My dear Alexander, shall I never make you understand ?" 
 Her ladyship only used the long inconvenient name to emphasize 
 rhetoric, which she did also in this instance by making every note 
 staccato. " Gwen, has, fallen, in, love,with, Mr. Torrens, because, 
 we, did it ? Now do you see 1" 
 
 " She has a — mixture of motives, in fact ?" 
 
 " Absolutely none whatever ! She's over head and ears in 
 love with him because his eyes are out. No other reason in hf e ! 
 What earthly good do you think the child thinks she could do 
 him if she didn't love him ? Men will never imderstand girls if 
 they live till Doomsday." 
 
 The Earl did not grapple with the problems this suggested; but 
 reflected, while her ladyship waited explicitly. At last he said : — 
 " It certainly appears to me that if Gwen's . . . predilection for 
 this man depends in any degree on a mistaken conviction of 
 duty, the only course open to us is to — ^to temporise — to de- 
 precate rash actions and undertakings. Under the circum- 
 stances it would be impossible to condemn or find fault with 
 either. It is perfectly inconceivable that poor Torrens — should 
 have — should have taken any initiative. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, my dear, what nonsense ! Of course, Gwen did that. 
 She proposed to him when I was away at the flower-show. . . ." 
 
 " Philippa — how can you ? How would such a thing be 
 possible ? Really — really ! . . ." 
 
 " Well, really really as much as you Uke, but any woman could 
 propose to a blind man — a little way off, certainly — only I don't 
 know that Gwen . . ." However, the Countess stopped short 
 of her daughter's reference to a respectful distance and card- 
 leaving. 
 
 It was at this point that Gwen and Irene were audible on the 
 stairs, suggesting the lateness of the hour. The Earl said: — " I 
 think I shall go and see Torrens as soon as there's quiet. I have 
 gone to him every evening till now. I may speak to him about 
 this." To which her ladyship replied: — "Now mind you put 
 your foot down. What I am always afraid of with you is 
 indecision." He made no answer, but listened, waiting for the 
 
A CONFESSION AND ITS EFFECTS 265 
 
 last disappearance couchwards. Then he went to his room for 
 his hand-lamp, as described, and after satisfying himself about 
 that conflagration's non-existence, was just in time to cross Miss 
 Dickenson, a waif overdue, and wonder what on earth had made 
 that very spirit and image of all conformity guilty of such a 
 lapse. 
 
 Then followed his interview with Mr. Torrens already detailed. 
 Perhaps the foregoing should have come first. If ever you retell 
 the tale you can make it do so. But whatever you do be careful 
 to insist on that point of not talking before the servants. Dwell 
 on the fact that Miss Lutwyche went straight to the Servants' 
 Hall, after putting a finishing touch on her young ladyship, and 
 said to the housekeeper: — " You'll be very careful, Mrs. Masham, 
 to say nothing whatever about her yoimg ladyship and Mr. 
 Torrenson "; it being one of her peculiarities to alter the names 
 of visitors on the strength of alleged secret information, to prove 
 that she was in the confidence of the family. To which Mrs. 
 Masham replied: — " Why not be outspoken, Anne Lutwyche ?" 
 provoking, or licensing, further illumination on the subject; with 
 the result that in half an hour the household was observing 
 discreet silence about it, and exacting solemn promises of equal 
 discretion from acquaintances as discreet as itseM. But there 
 were words between Mrs. Star field, the Countess's abettor in 
 dressing, and Miss Lutwyche; the former having found herself 
 forestalled in her theory of the argument in the Lib'ary, which 
 she had reported as the cause of delay, by the latter's prompt 
 expression of cautious reserve, and having accused her of throwing 
 out Mats and nothing to go upon. Whereupon the young 
 woman had indignantly repudiated the idea that a frank nature 
 like hers could be capable of an underhand insinuendo, and had 
 felt a great and just satisfaction with her powers of handling her 
 mother-tongue. 
 
266 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 PSYCHOLOGIES ABOUT THE COTINTESS. HOW GWEN WOULDN'T 
 GO TO ATHENS, OR ROME, OB TO STONE GRANGE. BUT SHE 
 WOULD GO WITH HER COUSIN CLO TO CAVENDISH SQUARE. 
 HOW THEY DROVE OVER TO GRANNY MARRABLE's, AND DAVE's 
 LETTER WAS TALKED ABOUT. HIS AMANUENSIS. OH, BUT 
 HOW STRANGE THAT PHCEBE SHOULD READ MAISIE's WRITING 
 AGAIN ! AN ODIOUS LITTLE GIRL, WITH A STYE IN HER EYE. 
 AN IMPRESSIONIST PICTURE. HOW MICHAET.'s FRIENDS SHOULD 
 BE ESCHEWED, IF NOT HIMSELF. HOW GRANNY MAKRABLE 
 AND HER SISTER HAD MADE SLIDES ON ICE THAT THAWED 
 SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW A LADY AND GENTLEMAN JUMPED 
 FARTHER OFF 
 
 The Countess of Ancester was mistaken when she said to Gwen's 
 mother that that young lady was sure to cool down, as other 
 young ladies, noteworthily her own mother's daughter, had done 
 under hke circumstances. The story prefers this elaborate 
 way of referring to what that august lady said to herself, to more 
 Uteral and commonplace formulas of speech; because it empha- 
 sizes the official, personal, and historical character of the speaker, 
 the hearer, and the instance she cited, respectively. She spoke 
 as a Countess, a Woman of the World, one who knew what her 
 duty was to herself and her daughter, and had made up her mind 
 to perform it, and not be influenced by sentimental nonsense. 
 She listened as a parent, really very fond of this beautiful creature 
 for which she was responsible, and painfully conscious of a bias 
 towards sentimental nonsense, which taxed her respect for her 
 official adviser. She referred to her historical precedent — her 
 own early experience — with a confidence akin to that of the 
 passenger in sight of Calais, who dares to walk about the deck 
 because he knows how soon it will be safe to say he was always 
 a very good sailor. 
 
 But just as that very good sailor is never quite free from 
 painful memories of moments on the voyage, over which he might 
 have had to draw a veil, so this lady had to be constantly on her 
 guard against recurrent images of her historical precedent, during 
 her periods of wavering between her two suitors. Could she not 
 remember — could she ever forget rather ? — ^Romeo's passionate 
 epistles and Juliet's passionate answers, during that period of 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MARRABLE 267 
 
 enforced separation; when the latter had not begun to cool 
 down, and was still able to speak of Gwen's father — ^undeveloped 
 then in that capacity — as a tedious, middle-aged prig whom her 
 ridiculous aunt wanted to force upon her ? Was it a sufficient 
 set-o£E against all this fiery correspondence that she had burned 
 one preposterous — and red-hot— effusion, and started seriously 
 on cooling, because a friend brought her news that Romeo was 
 not pining at all, but had, on the contrary, danced three waltzes 
 with a fascinating cousin of hers ? Of course it was, said the 
 Countess officially, and she had behaved hke a good historical 
 precedent, which Gwen would follow in due course. Give her 
 time. 
 
 Nevertheless her unofficial self was grave and reflective more 
 than once over the hkeness of this young Adrian to Hamilton, his 
 father, especially in his faculty for talking nonsense. Some 
 people seemed to think his verses good. Perhaps the two things 
 were not incompatible. Hamilton had never written verses, as 
 far as she knew. No doubt that Miss Abercrombie his father 
 married was responsible for the poetry. If he had married 
 another Miss Abercrombie it might have been quite different. 
 She found it convenient to utilise a second example of the same 
 name; some suppositions are more convenient than others. 
 She shirked one which would have cancelled Gwen, as an impos- 
 sibility. One must look accomplished facts in the face. 
 
 The cooling down did not start with the alacrity which her 
 ladyship had anticipated. She had expected a fall of at least 
 one degree in the thermometer within a couple of months. Time 
 seems long or short to us in proportion as we are, so to speak, 
 brought up against it. Only the unwatched pot boils over; 
 and, broadly speaking, pudding never cools, and blowing really 
 does very little good. This lady would have bhmm her daughter 
 metaphorically — perhaps thrown cold water on her passion would 
 be a better metaphor — if her husband had not earnestly dis- 
 suaded her from doing so. It would only make matters worse. 
 If Gwen was to marry a blind man, at least do not let her do it 
 in order to contradict her parents. Fights and Love Affairs alike 
 are grateful to bystanders who do not interfere; but interference 
 is admissible in the former, to assist waverers up to the scratch. 
 In the latter, the sooner time is called, the better for all parties. 
 But if time is called too soon, ten to one the next round will last 
 twice as long. 
 
 The Earl also interposed upon his wife's attempt to stipulate 
 for a formal declaration of reciprocal banishment. " Very 
 
268 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 well, my dear Philippa I" said he. " Forbid their meeting, if you 
 Hke ! You can do it, because Adrian is bound in honour to 
 forward it if we insist. But in my opinion you will by doing so 
 destroy the last chance of the thing dying a natural death." 
 Said Phihppa: — " I don't beheve you want it to " — a construc- 
 tion denounced, we believe, by sensitive grammarians. The 
 Earl let it pass, replying: — " I do not wish it to die a violent 
 death." Her ladyship dropped the portcuUis of her mind against 
 a crowd of useless reflections. One was, whether her own rela- 
 tion with this young man's father had died a violent death ; 
 and, if so, was she any the worse ? The rest were a motley crowd, 
 with " might have been !" tattooed upon their brows and woven 
 into the patterns of the garments. Among them, two images — 
 a potential Adrian and a potential Gwen — each with one variation 
 of parentage, but quite out of court for St. George's, Hanover 
 Square. Are the Countess's thoughts obscure to you ? They 
 were, to her. So she refused to entertain them. 
 
 In the Earl's mind there was an element bred of his short 
 daily visits to the young man, whose disaster had been a constant 
 source of self-reproach to him. If only its victim had been 
 repugnant to him, he would have been greatly helped in the 
 continual verdicts of the Court of his own conscience, which 
 frequently discharged him without a stain on his character. How 
 came it, then, that he so soon found himself back in the dock, or 
 re-arguing the case as counsel for the prisoner ? Probably his 
 sentiments towards the young man himself were responsible for 
 some of his discontent with his own impartial justice, however 
 emphatically he rejected the idea. There is nothing like a course 
 of short attendances at the bedside of a patient to generate an 
 affection for its occupant, and in this case everything was in its 
 favour. All question of responsibihty for Adrian's accident 
 apart, there was enough in his personality to get at the Earl's 
 soft corners, especially the one that constantly reminded its 
 owner that he was now without a son and heir. For, since his 
 son Frank was drowned, he was the father of daughters only. It 
 was not surprising that he should enter some protest against any 
 but a spontaneous cancelling of Gwen's trothplight. It was only 
 fair that spontaneity should have a chance. He did not much 
 beheve that the cooling down process would be materially 
 assisted by a spell of separation; but if Philippa would not be 
 content without it, try it, by all means ! If she could persuade 
 her daughter to go with her to Paris, Rome, Athens — ^New York, 
 for that matter ! — ^why, go ! But the Earl's shrug as he said 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MAKRABLE 269 
 
 this meant that her young ladyship had still to be reckoned with, 
 and that pig-headed young beauties in love were kittle cattle to 
 shoe behind. Those were the words his brain toyed with, over 
 the case, for a moment. 
 
 The reckoning bristled with difficulties, and every unit was 
 disputed. Paris was not fit to be visited, with the present 
 government; and was not safe, for that matter. Cholera was 
 raging in Rome. Athens was a mass of ruins from the recent 
 earthquakes. Gwen wavered a moment over New York, not 
 seriously suggested. It was so absurd as to be worth a thought. 
 This seems strange to us, nowadays; but it was then nearly as 
 far a cry to Broadway as it is now to Tokio. 
 
 Appeals to Gwen to go abroad with her mother failed. She 
 also made difficulties — good big ones — about going with her 
 parents to Scotland. Her scheme was transparent, though she 
 indignantly disclaimed it. How could anything be more absurd 
 than to accuse her of conspiring with Irene towards a visit to that 
 young lady at Pensham Steynes ? Had she not promised to live 
 without seeing Adrian for six months, and was she not to be 
 trusted to keep her word ? 
 
 She really wished to convince her father of the reality of her 
 attachment, apart from compensation due to loss of sight. So 
 she agreed to accompany Cousin Clotilda to London, and 
 to stay with her at the town-mansion of the Macganister More, 
 who had just departed this life, leaving the whole of his proprety 
 to the said Cousin, his only daughter and heiress. She rather 
 looked forward to a sojourn in the great house in Cavendish 
 Square, a mysterious survival of the Early Georges, which had 
 not been reaUy tenanted for years, though Sister Nora had 
 camped in it on an upstairs floor you could see Hampstead Heath 
 from. It would be fun to lead a g3^sy life there, building castles 
 in the air with Sister Nora's great inheritance, and sometimes 
 peeping into the great unoccupied rooms, all packed-up mirrors 
 and chandeliers and consoles and echoes and rats — a very rough 
 inventory, did you say ? But admit that you know the house ! 
 Its individuality is unimportant here, except in so far as it suppUed 
 an attraction to London for a love-sick young lady. Its fasci- 
 nation, and mystery were strong. So were the philanthropies 
 that Sister Nora was returning to, refreshed by a twelve-month 
 of total abstinence, with more power to her elbow from a huge 
 balance at her banker's, specially contrived to span the period 
 needed for the putting of affairs in order. 
 
 So when Miss Grahame — that was the family name — ^went on 
 
270 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to London, after a month's stay at the Towers, Gwen was to 
 accompany her. That was the arrangement agreed upon. But 
 before they departed, they paid a visit to Granny Marrable at 
 Choriton, who was delighted at the reappearance of Sister Nora, 
 and was guilty of some very transparent insincerity in her pro- 
 fessions of heartfelt sorrow for the Macganister More. He, 
 however, was very soon dismissed from the conversation, to 
 make way for Dave Wardle. 
 
 Her young ladyship from the Castle hardly knew anything 
 about Dave. In fact, his fame reached her for the first time as 
 they drove past the little church at Choriton on their way 
 to Strides Cottage, Mrs. Marrable's residence. Sister Nora was 
 suddenly afraid she had " forgotten Dave's letter after all." 
 But she found it, in her bag; and rejoiced, for had she not 
 promised to return it to Granny Marrable, to whom — not to 
 herself — ^it was addressed, after Dave's return last year to his 
 parents. Lady Gwendolen was, or professed to be, greatly 
 interested; reading the epistle carefully to herself while her 
 cousin and Granny Marrable talked over its writer. But she was 
 fain to ask for an occasional explanation of some obscurity in 
 the text. 
 
 It was manifestly a dictated letter, written in a shaky hand as 
 of an old person, but not an uneducated one by any means; the 
 misspellings being really intelligent renderings of the pro- 
 nunciation of the dictator. As, for instance, the opening: — 
 " Dear Granny Marrowbone," which caused the reader to remark : 
 — " I suppose that doesn't mean that the writer thinks you spell 
 your name that way, Mrs. Marrable, only that the child says 
 Marrowbone." The owner of the name assented, saying: — 
 " That would be so, my lady, yes." And her ladyship proceeded : 
 " I Hke you. I like Widow Thrale. I Uke Master Marmaduke !" — 
 This was the other small convalescent, he who had an unnatural 
 passion for Dave's crutch, likened to Ai'iadne — " I like Sister 
 Nora. I like the Lady. I like Farmer Jones, but not much. 
 I am going to scrool on Monday, and shall know how to read and 
 write with a peng my own self." " Quite a love-letter," said Gwen, 
 after explanations of the persons referred to — as that " the lady " 
 was the mother of her own personal ladyship ; that is, the 
 Countess herself. Gwen continued, identifying one of the 
 characters : — " But that was hypocrisy about Farmer Jones. 
 He didn't like Farmer Jones at all. I don't. . . . That's not 
 all. What's this ?" She went on, reading aloud: — "' Writited 
 for me by Mrs. Picture upstairs on her decks with hink.' I 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MARRABLE 271 
 
 see he haa signed it himself, rather large. I wonder who is 
 
 Mrs. Picture, who writes for him." 
 
 " We heard a great deal about Mrs. Picture, my lady." Sister 
 
 Nora thought her name might be Mrs. Pitcher, though odd. 
 
 " I could hardly say myself," said Granny Marrable diffidently. 
 Gwen speculated. " Pilcher, or Pilchard, perhaps ! It couldn't 
 
 be Picture. What did he tell you about her ?" 
 
 " Oh dear — a, many things ! Mrs. Picture had been out to 
 
 sea, in a ship. But she will be very old, too, Mrs. Picture. I 
 
 call to mind now, that the dear child couldn't tell me from Mrs. 
 
 Picture when he first came, by reason of the white hair. So she 
 
 may be nigh my own age." 
 Gwen was looking puzzled over something in the letter. 
 
 " ' Out to sea in a ship !' " she repeated. " I wonder, has 
 
 ' decks ' anything to do with that ? , . . N-n-no ! — ^it must be 
 
 ' desk.' It can't be anything else." It was, of course, Mrs. 
 
 Prichard's hteral acceptance of Dave's pronunciation. But it 
 
 had a nautical air for the moment, and seemed somehow in 
 keeping with that old lady's marine experience. 
 
 Widow Thrale then came in, bearing an armful of purchases 
 from the village. With her were two convalescents; who must 
 have nearly done convalescing, they shouted so. The ogress 
 abated them when she found her granny had august company, 
 and removed them to sup apart with an anaemic eight-year-old 
 Uttle girl; in none of whom Sister Nora showed more than a 
 lukewarm interest, comparing them all disparagingly with Dave. 
 In fact, she was downright unkind to the anaemic sample, likening 
 her to knuckle of veal. It was true that this little girl had a stye 
 in her eye, and two corkscrew ringlets, and lacked complete 
 training in the use of the pocket-handkerchief. All the ogress 
 seemed to die out of Widow Thrale in her presence, and the visitors 
 avoided contact with her studiously. She seemed malignant, 
 too, driving her chin like a knife into the nuque of one of the 
 small boys, who kicked her shins justifiably. However, they all 
 went away to convalesce elsewhere, as soon as their guardian the 
 ogress had transplanted from a side-table a complete tea- 
 possibility; a tray that might be likened to Minerva, springing 
 fully armed from the head of Jove. " Your ladyship will take 
 tea," said Granny Marrable, in a voice that betrayed a doubt 
 whether the Norman Conquest could consistently take tea with 
 Gurth the Swineherd. 
 
 Her ladyship had no such misgiving. But an aristocratic 
 prejudice dictated a reservation: — " Only it must be poured 
 
272 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 straight off before it gets like ink. . . . Oh, stop ! — ^it's too 
 black already. A little hot water, thank you !" And then Mrs 
 Thrale, in cold blood, actually stood her Rockingham teapot 
 on the hob; to become an embittered deadly poison, a slayer 
 of the sleep of all human creatures above a certain standard of 
 education. When all other class distinctions are aboUshed, this 
 one will remain, like the bones of the Apteryx. 
 
 "We'll pay a visit to Dave," said Sister Nora. "Perhaps 
 he'll introduce us to Mrs. Kcture." Nothing hung on the con- 
 versation, and Mrs. Picture, always under that name — there 
 being indeed none to correct it — cropped up and vanished as 
 often as Dave was referred to. One knows how readily the dis- 
 tortions of speech of some lovable little man or maid will dis- 
 place proper'names, whose owners usually surrender them without 
 protest. That Granny Marrowbone and Mrs. Picture were 
 thereafter accepted as the working designations of the old twins 
 was entirely owing to Dave Wardle. 
 
 " Mrs. Picture lives upstairs, it seems," said Gwen, referring 
 to the letter. " I wonder yon saw nothing of her. Cousin 
 Chloe." 
 
 " Why should I, dear ? I never went upstairs. I heard of 
 her because the little sister-poppet wanted to take the doll I gave 
 her to show to a person the old prizefighter spoke of as the old 
 party two-pair-up. But I thought the name was Bird." 
 
 " A prizefighter !" said Gwen. " How interesting ! We must 
 pay a visit to the Wardle family. Is it a very awful place they 
 live in ?" This question was asked in the hope .of an affirmative 
 answer, Gwen having been promised exciting and terrible 
 experiences of London slums. 
 
 " Sapps Court ?" said Miss Grahame, speaking from ex- 
 perience. " Oh no ! — quite a respectable place. Not like places 
 I could show you out of Drury Lane. I'll show you the place 
 where Jo was, in this last Dickens." Which would fix the date 
 of this story, if nothing else did. 
 
 Granny Marrowbone looked awestruck at this lady's impres- 
 sive knowledge of the wicked metropohs, and was, moreover, 
 uneasy about Dave's surroundings. She had had several other 
 letters from Dave; the latter ones to some extent in his own 
 caligraphy, which often rendered them obscure. But the 
 breadth of style which distinguished his early dictated corre- 
 spondence was always in evidence, and such passages as lent 
 themselves to interpretation sometimes contained suggestions 
 of influences at work which made her uneasy about his future. 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MARRABLE 273 
 
 These were often reinforced by hieroglyphs, and one of these in 
 particular appeared to refer to persons or associations she shrank 
 from picturing to herself as making part of the child's life. 
 She handed the letter which contained it to Sister Nora, and 
 watched her face anxiously as she examined it. 
 
 Sister Nora interpreted it promptly. " A culprit running 
 away from the Police, evidently. His legs are stiff, but the 
 action is brisk. I should say he would get away. The police 
 seem to threaten, but not to be acting promptly. What do you 
 think, Gwen 1" 
 
 " Unquestionably !" said Gwen. " The Police are very impres- 
 sive with their batons. But what on earth is this thing imder- 
 neath the malefactor ?" Sister Nora went behind her chair, 
 and they puzzled over it, together. It was inscrutable. 
 
 At last Sister Nora said slowly, as though still labouring with 
 perplexity: — " Is it possible ? — ^but no, it's impossible — possible 
 he means that ? . . ." 
 
 " Possible he means what ?" 
 
 " My idea was — but I think it's quite out of the question 
 
 Well ! — ^you know there is a prison called ' The Jug,' in that 
 sort of class ?" 
 
 " I didn't know it. It looks very like a jug, though — ^the 
 thing does. . . . Yes — he's a prisoner that's got out of prison. 
 He must have had the Jug all to himself, though, it's so 
 small !" 
 
 " I do believe that's what it is, upon my word. There was 
 an escape from Coldbath Fields — which is called the Stone Jug — 
 some time back, that was in the papers. It made a talk. That's 
 it, I do believe !" Sister Nora was pleased at the solution of the 
 riddle; it was a feather in Dave's cap. 
 
 Said Gwen: — " He did escape, though ! I'm glad. He must 
 have been a cheerful little culprit. I should have been sorry for 
 him to get into the hands of those wooden police." Her accept- 
 ance of Dave's Impressionist Art as a presentment of facts was 
 a tribute to the force of his genius. Some explanatory lettering, 
 of mixed founts of type, had to be left undeciphered. 
 
 The ogress came back from the convalescraits; having assigned 
 them their teas, and enjoined peace. " You should ask her 
 ladyship to read what's on the back. Granny," she said; not to 
 presume overmuch by direct speech to the young lady from the 
 Towers. The old lady said acquiescingly: — "Yes, child, that 
 umild be best. If you please, my lady !" 
 
 " This writing here ?" said Gwen, turning the paper. " Oh 
 
 18 
 
274 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 yes — this is Mrs. Picture again. ' Dave says I am to write for 
 him what this is he has drawed for Gramiy Marrowbone to see. 
 The lady may see it, too.' . . . That's not me; he doesn't 
 know me. . . . Oh> I see ! — ^it's my mother. . . ." 
 
 " Yes — that's Cousin Philippa. Go on." 
 
 Gwen went on: — " ' It is the Man in High Park at the Tur- 
 pentine, Micky' — some illegible name — 'knew, and that is 
 Micky in the comer larfing at the Spohce. The Man has got 
 out of sprizzing and the Spolice will not cop him.' There was 
 no room for Michael Somebody, and he hasn't worked out well," 
 said Gwen, turning the image of Michael several ways up, to 
 determine its components. But it was too Impressionist. " I 
 suppose ' cop ' means capture ?" said she. 
 
 " That's it," said Sister Nora. " I think I know who Michael 
 is. He's Michael Rackstraw, a boy. Dave's Uncle had a bad 
 impression of him — said he would live to be hanged at an early 
 date. He wouldn't be surprised to hear that that young Micky 
 had been pinched, any minute. ' Pinched ' is the same as 
 ' copped.' Uncle Moses' slang is out-of-date." 
 
 She looked again at the undeciphered incsription. " I think 
 ' Michael ' explains this lot of big and little letters," she said; 
 and read them out as " ' m, i, K, e, y, S, f, r, e, N, g.' Mickey's 
 friend, evidently !" 
 
 " Oh, dearie me!" said the old lady. "To think now that 
 that dear child should be among such dreadful ways. I do 
 wonder now — and, indeed, my lady and Miss Nora, I've been 
 thinking a deal about him^ with his blue eyes and curly brown 
 hair, and him but just turned of seven. ... I have been 
 thinking, my lady, only perhaps it's hardly for me to say . . . 
 I have been a wondering whether this . . . elderly person . . . 
 only God forgive me if I do her wrong ! . . . whether this Mrs. 
 Picture. . . ." Gramiy Marrable wavered in her indictment — 
 hoped perhaps that one of the ladies would catch her meaning 
 and word her interpretation. 
 
 Sister Nora understood, and was quite ready with one. " Oh 
 yes, I see what you mean, Mrs. Marrable — ^whether the old 
 woman is the right sort of old woman for Dave. And it's very 
 natural and quite right of you to wonder. / shoidd if I hadn't 
 seen the boy's parents — his uncle and aunt. ... Oh yes, of 
 course, they are not his parents in the vulgar sense ! Don't be 
 commonplace, Gwen ! . . . nice, quiet, . old-fashioned sort of 
 folk, devoted to the children. As for the prizefighting, I don't 
 think anything of that. I'm sure he fought fair; and it was the 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MARRABLE 275 
 
 same for both anyhow I He's an old darling, / think, I'll show 
 him to you, Gwen, down his native court. Really, dear Graimy 
 Marrable, I don't think you need be the least uneasy. We'll go 
 and see Dave the moment we get up to London — ^won't we, 
 Gwen ?" 
 
 " We'll go there first," said Gwen. But for all this reassurance 
 the old lady was clearly uneasy. "With regard to the boy 
 Michael,'' said she hesitatingly, " did you : happen, ma'am, to 
 see the boy Michael. ... I mean, did he ? . . ." 
 
 " Did he turn up when I was there, you mean ? Well — no, 
 he didn't 1 But after all, what does the boy Michael come to in 
 it ? He'd made a shde down the middle of the Court, and 
 Uncle Moses prophesied bis death on the gallows I But, dear 
 me, all children make sUdes — girls as well as boys. I used to 
 make slides, all by myself, in Scotland." 
 
 Granny Marrable's mind ran back seventy years or so. " Yes 
 indeed, that is true; and so did I." She nodded towards the 
 chimney - shelf , where the mill -model stood ^-Dave's model. 
 " There's the mill where I had my childhood, and it's there to this 
 day, they tell me, and working. And the backwater above the 
 dam, it's there, too, I lay, where my sister Maisie and I made a 
 many slides when it froze over in the winter weather. And there's 
 me and Maisie in our lilac frocks and white sun-bonnets. Five- 
 and-forty years ago she died, out in Australia. But I've not 
 forgotten Maisie." 
 
 She could mention Maisie more serenely than Mrs. Prichard, 
 per contra, could mention Phoebe. But, then, think how 
 differently the forty-five years had been filled out in either case. 
 Maisie had been forced to ricordarsi del tempo felice through so 
 many years of miseria. Phoebe's journey across the desert of 
 Life had paused at many an oasis, and their images remained in 
 her mind to blunt the tooth of Memory. The two ladies at least 
 heard nothing in the old woman's voice that one does not hear 
 in any human voice when it speaks of events very long past. 
 
 Gwen showed an interest in the mill. *' You and your sister 
 were very much alike>" she said. 
 
 " We were twins," said Granny Marrable. But, as it chanced, 
 Gwen at this moment looked at her watch, and found it had 
 stopped. .She missed the old woman's last words. When she 
 had satisfied herself that the watch was still going she found that 
 Granny Marrable's speech had lost its slight trace of sadness. 
 She had become a mere recorder, viva voce. " Maisie married 
 and went abroad — oh dear, near sixty years ago ! She died out 
 
276 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 there just after our father — yes, quite forty-five — ^forty-six 
 years ago !" Her only conscious suppression was in slurring over 
 the gap between Maisie's departure and her husband's ; for both 
 ladies took her meaning to be that her sister married to go abroad, 
 and did not return. 
 
 It was more conversation-making than curiosity that made 
 Gwen ask: — " Where was ' abroad ' ? I mean, where did your 
 sister go ?" The old lady repeated: — " To where she met her 
 death, in Australia. Five-and-forty years ago. But I have 
 never forgotten Maisie." Gwen, looldng more closely at the 
 mill-model as one bound to show interest, said : — " And this is 
 where you used to slide on the ice with her, on the mill-dam, all 
 that time ago. Just fancy 1" The reference to Maisie was the 
 merest chat by the way; and the conversation, at this mention 
 of the ice, harked back to Sapps Court. 
 
 " Of course you made slides. Granny Marrable," said Sister 
 Nora; "and very likely somebody else tumbled down on the 
 slides. But you have never been hanged, and Michael won't be 
 hanged. It was only Uncle Moses's fim. And as for old Mrs. 
 Picture, I daresay if the truth were known, Mrs. Picture's a very 
 nice old lady ? I like her for taking such pains with Dave's 
 letter-writing. But we'll see Mrs. Picture, and find out all about 
 it. Won't we, Gwen ?" Gwen assented con a/more, to reassure 
 the Granny, who, however, was evidently only silenced, not 
 convinced, about this elderly person in London, that sink of 
 iniquities. 
 
 Gwen resumed her seat and took another cup of tea, really 
 to please her hosts, as the tea was too strong for anything. 
 Then Feudalism asserted itself as it so often does when County 
 magnates foregather with village minimates — ^is that the right 
 word ? Landmarks, too, indisputable to need recognition were 
 ignored altogether, and all the hearsays of the countryside were 
 reviewed. The grim severance between class and class that up- 
 to-date legislation makes every day more and more well-defined 
 and bitter had no existence in fifty-four at Chorlton-under- 
 Bradbury. Granny Marrable and the ogress, for instance, 
 could and did seek to know how the gentleman was that met with 
 the accident in July, Of course, they knew the story of the 
 gentleman's relation with " Gwen o' the Towers," and both 
 visitors knew .they knew it; but that naturally did not come into 
 court. It underlay the pleasure with which they heard that 
 Mr. Adrian Torrens was all but well again, and that the doctors 
 said his eyesight would not be permanently affected. Gwen 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MARRABLE 277 
 
 herself volunteered this lie, with Sir Coupland's assurance in her 
 mind that, if Adrian's sight returned, it would probably do so 
 outright, as a salve to her conscience. 
 
 " There now !" said Widow Thrale. " There will be good 
 hearing for Keziah when she comes nigh by us next, maybe this 
 very day. For old Stephen he's just gone near to breaking his 
 heart over it, taking all the fault to himself." Keziah was 
 Keziah Solmes, Stephen Solmes's old wife, whose sentimentaUsm 
 would have saved Adrian Torrens's eyesight if she had not had 
 such an obstinate husband ? Stephen was a connection of the 
 departed saddler, the speaker's husband. 
 
 Said Sister Nora as they rose to rejoin the carriage: — "Now 
 remember ! — ^you're not to fuss over Dave, Mrs. Thrale. We'll 
 see that he comes to no harm." The ogress did not seem so 
 uneasy about the child, saying: — "It's the picture of the man 
 running from the Police Granny goes by, and 'tis no more than 
 any boy might draw." Whereat Sister Nora said, laughing: 
 " You needn't get scared about Mickey, if that's it. He's just a 
 young monkey." But the old woman seemed still to be con- 
 cealing disquiet, saying only: — " I had no thought of the boy." 
 She had formed some misapprehension of Dave's surrounding 
 influences, which seemed hard to clear up. 
 
 Riding home Gwen turned suddenly to her cousin, after 
 reflective silence, saying: — "What makes the old Goody so 
 ferocious against the httle boy's Mrs. Picture ?" To which the 
 reply was: — "Jealousy, I suppose. What a beautiful sunset! 
 That means wind." But Sister Nora was talking rather at 
 random, and there may have been no jealousy of old Maisie in 
 the heart of old Phoebe. 
 
 Moreover, Gwen's was not an inquiry-question demanding an 
 answer. It was interrogative chat. She was thinking all the 
 while how amused Adrian would have been with Dave's letter 
 and the escaped prisoner. Then her thought was derailed by one 
 of the sudden jerks that crossed the Une so often in these days. 
 Chat with herself must needs turn on the mistakes she had made 
 in not borrowing that letter to enclose with her next one to 
 Adrian, for him to ... to what ? There came the jerk ! What 
 could he see ? Indeed, one of the sorest trials of this separation 
 from him was the way her correspondence — ^for she had insisted 
 on freedom in this respect — ^was handicapped by his inability to 
 read it. How could she allow all she longed to say to pass under 
 the eyes even of Irene, dear friend though she had become ? 
 Shp would h9,ve given worlds for an automaton that could read 
 
278 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 aloud, whose speech would repeat all its eyes saw, without passing 
 the meaning of it through an impertinent mind. 
 
 Sister Nora was quite in her confidence about her love-afiEair; 
 in fact, she had seen Adrian for a moment, her arrival at the 
 Towers on her way from Scotland after her father's death having 
 overlapped his departure — ^which had been delayed a few days by 
 pretexts of a shallow nature — ^just long enough to admit of the 
 introduction. She inclined to partisanship with the Countess. 
 Why — see how mad the whole thing was ! The girl had fancied 
 herself in love with him after seeing him barely once, for five 
 minutes. It never could last. She was, however, quite prepared 
 to back Gwen if it did show signs of being, or becoming, a.grande. 
 possum. Meanwhile, evidently the kindest thing was to tvim 
 her mind in another direction, and the inoculation of an Earl's 
 daughter with the virus of an enthusiasm which has been since 
 called slumming presented itself to her in the light of an effort- 
 worthy end. Sister Nora was far ahead of her time; it should 
 have fallen twenty years later. 
 
 But she was not going to imperil her chances of success by 
 using too strong a virus at the first injection. Caution was 
 everything. This projected visit to Sapps Court was a perfect 
 stepping-stone to a stronger regimen, such as an incursion into 
 the purlieus of Drury Lane. Tom-all-alone's might overtax the 
 nervous system of a neophyte. The full-blown horrors which 
 civilisation creates wholesale, and remedies retail, were not to be 
 grappled with by untrained hands. A time might come for 
 that; meanwhile— Sapps Court, clearly ! 
 
 The two ladies had a quiet drive back to the Towers. How 
 very quiet the latter end of a drive often is, as far as talk goes ! 
 Does the Ozymandian silence on the box react upon the rank 
 and file of the expedition, or is it the hypnotic effect of hoof- 
 monotony ? Lady Gwen and Miss Grahame scarcely exchanged 
 a word imtil, within a mile of the house, they identified two 
 pedestrians. Of whom their conversation was precisely what 
 follows, not one word more or less : — 
 
 " There they are. Cousin Chloe, exactly as I prophesied." 
 
 " Well— why shouldn't they be ?" 
 
 " I didn't say anything about shoulds and shouldn'ts. I 
 merely referred to facts. . . . Come — say you think it 
 ridiculous !" 
 
 " I can't see why. Their demeanour appears to me unexcep- 
 tionable, and perfectly dignified. Everything one would expect, 
 knowing the parties. . . ." 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO MRS. MARRABLE 279 
 
 " Are they going to walk about like that to all eternity, being 
 unexceptionable ? That's what I want to know ?" 
 
 " You are too impatient, dear !" 
 
 " They have been going on for months hke that; at least, it 
 seems months. And never getting any nearer 1 And then when 
 you talk to them about each other, they speak of each other 
 respectfully J They really do. He says she is a shrewd observer 
 of human nature, and she says he appears to have had most 
 interesting experiences. Indeed, I'm not exaggerating." 
 
 " My dear Gwen, what do you expect ?" 
 
 " Oh— ycm know ! You're only making believe. Why, when 
 I said to him that she had been a strikingly pretty girl in her 
 young days, and had refused no end of offers of marriage, he . . . 
 WJiat do you say t" 
 
 " I said ' not no end.' " 
 
 " WeU — of course not ! But I thought it as well to say so." 
 
 " And what did he say to that ?" 
 
 " He got his eyeglass right to look at her, as if he had never 
 seen her before, and came to a critical decision: — 'Ye-es, yes, 
 yes — so I should have imagined. Quite so !' It amounted to 
 acquiescing in her having gone off, and was distinctly rude. 
 She's better than that when I speak to her about him, certainly. 
 This morning she said he smoked too many cigars." 
 
 " How absurd you are, Gwen ! Why was that better ?" 
 
 " H'm — ^it's a little difficult to say ! But it is better, dis- 
 tinctly. There — they've heard us coming !" 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " Because they both jumped farther off. They were far 
 enough already, goodness knows ! . . . Good evening, Eercy ! 
 Good evening, Aimt Constance ! We've had such a lovely drive 
 home from Chorlton. I suppose the others are on in front." 
 And so forth. Every modus vivendi, at arm's length, between 
 any and every single lady and gentleman, was to be fooled to the 
 top of its bent, in their service. 
 
 The carriage was aware it was de trap, but was also alive to 
 the necessity of pretending it was not. So it interested itself for 
 a moment in some palpable falsehoods about the cause of the 
 pedestrians figuring as derelicts; and then, representing itself as 
 hungering for the society of their vanguard, started professiedly 
 to overtake it. It was really absolutely indifferent on the subject. 
 
 " I suppose," said Miss Grahame enigmatically, as soon as 
 inaudibility became a certainty, " I suppose that's why you 
 wanted Miss Smith-Dickenson to come to Cavendish Square ?" 
 
280 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Gwen did not treat this as a riddle; but said, equally inex- 
 plicably: — " He could call." And very little light was thrown 
 on the mystery by the reply: — " Very well, Gwen dear, go 
 your own way." Perhaps a little more, though not much, by 
 Gwen's marginal comment: — " You know Aunt Constance lives 
 at an outlandish place in the country ?" 
 
 " Do yon know, Gwen dear," said Miss Grahame, after reflec- 
 tion, " I really think we ought to have offered them a lift up to 
 the house. Stop, Blencom !" Blencorn stopped, without 
 emotion. Gwen said : — " What nonsense. Cousin Chloe ! They're 
 perfectly happy. Do leave them alone. Go on, Blencom !" 
 Who, utterly unmoved, went on. But Sister Ncwra said: — " No, 
 Gwen dear, we really ought ! Because I know Mr. Pellew has 
 to catch his train, and he'll be late. Don't go on, Blencom !" 
 Gwen appearing to assent reluctantly, the arrangement stood; 
 as did the horses, gently conversing with each other's noses about 
 the caprices of the carriage. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT THE LADY AlTD GENTLEMAN COUXD 
 JUMP FAETHEB OFF. WHAT MISS DICKENSON WANTED TO 
 SAY AND didn't, AND THE EEPLY MB. PELLEW DIDN't MAKE, 
 IN FULL. OP A SPLIT PATHWAY, AND THE SHBEWDNESS OF 
 BABBITS. BUT THESE WAS NO BABBIT, AND WHEN BLENOOEN 
 STOPPED AGAIN, THEY OVEBTOOK THE CABBIAGE. THEIE 
 FABEWELL, ASB HOW MB. PELLEW BAN AGAINST THE EAEL 
 
 The Hon. Percival was called away to town that evening, and 
 was to catch the late train at Grantley Thorpe, where it stopped 
 by signal. There was no need to hurry, as he belonged to the 
 class of persons that catch trains. This class, when it spends a 
 hoUday at a country-house, dares to leave its packing-up, when 
 it comes away, to its valet or lady's-maid pro tern., and knows to 
 a nicety how low it is both liberal and righteous to assess their 
 services. •> 
 
 If this gentleman had not belonged to this class, it is, of course, 
 possible that he would still have joined the party that had 
 walked over, that afternoon, to pee the Roman Villa at Tjcksey, 
 
THE SLOW APPROXIMATION GOES SLOWLY ON 281 
 
 the ancient Coenobantium, in company with sundry Antiquaries 
 who had lunched at the Towers, and had all talked at once in 
 the most interesting possible way on the most interesting possible 
 subjects. It was the presence of these gentlemen that, by impli- 
 cation, suppUed a reason why Gwen and Sister Nora should prefer 
 the others, on in front, to the less pretentious stragglers whom 
 they had overtaken. 
 
 Archaic Research has an interest short of the welfare of 
 Romeo and Juliet; or, perhaps, murders. But neither of these 
 topics lend themselves, at least until they too become ancient 
 history, to discussion by a Society, or entry on its minutes. Per- 
 haps it was the accidental occurrence of the former one, just as 
 the party started to walk back to the Towers, that had caused Mr. 
 Percival and Aunt Constance to lag so far behind it, and sub- 
 stitute their own interest in a contemporary drama for the one 
 they had been professing, not very sincerely, in hypocausts 
 and mosaics and terra-cottas. 
 
 For this lady had then remarked that, for her part, she thought 
 the Ancient Romans were too far removed from our own daily 
 life for any but Antiquarians to enter sympathetically into theirs. 
 She herself doted on History, but was inclined to draw the line 
 at Queen Ann. It would be mere affectation in her to pretend 
 to sympathize with Oliver Cromwell or the Stuarts, and as for 
 Henry the Eighth he was simply impossible. But the Recent Past 
 touched a chord. Give her the four Georges. This was just as 
 she and the Hon. Percival began to let the others go on in front, 
 and the others began to use their opportunity to do so. 
 
 Three months ago the gentleman might have decided that the 
 lady was talking rot. Her position now struck him as original, 
 forcible, and new. But he was so keenly alive to the fact that 
 he was not in the least in love with her, that it is very difficult to 
 account for his leniency towards this rot. It showed itself as 
 even more than leniency, it he meant what he said in reply: — 
 " By Jove, Miss Dickenson, I shouldn't wonder if you were 
 right. I never thought of it that way before !" 
 
 "I'm not quite sure I ever did," she answered; telling the 
 truth ; and not seeming any the worse, in personality, for doing so. 
 " At least, until I got rather bored by having to listen. I really 
 hate speeches and lectiu:es and papers and things. But what I 
 said is rather true, for all that. I'm sure I shall be more inter- 
 ested in the house the Prince Regent was drunk in, where I'm 
 going to stay in town, than in any number of atriums. It doeii 
 go home to one more — ^now, doesn't \% 1" 
 
282 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Mr. Pellew did not answer the question. He got his eyeglass 
 right, and looked round — he had contracted a habit of doing 
 this — ^to see if Aunt Constance was justifying the tradition of her 
 youth, reported by her adopted niece. He admitted that she 
 was. Stimulated by this conviction, he decided on: — "Are you 
 going to stay in town ? Where ?" 
 
 " At Clotilda's — Sister Nora, you know. In Cavendish Square. 
 I hope it's Uke what she says. Scarcely anything has been 
 moved since her mother died, when she was a baby, and for 
 years before that the drawing-rooms were shut up. Why did you 
 ask ?" This was a perfectly natural question, arising out of the 
 subject before the house. 
 
 Nevertheless it frightened the gentleman into modifying what 
 he meant to say next, which was : — " May I call on you there ?" 
 He gave it up, as too warm on the whole, considering the context, 
 and said instead: — " I could leave your book." Something 
 depended on the lady's answer to this. So she paused, and 
 worded it: — "By all means bring it, if you prefer doing so," 
 instead of: — " You needn't take any trouble about returning the 
 book." Only the closest analysis can be even with the con- 
 tingencies of some stages in the relativities of grown-ups, how- 
 ever easily one sees through the common human girl and boy. 
 Miss Dickenson's selected answer just saved the situation by the 
 skin of its teeth. For there certainly was a situation of a sort. 
 Nobody was falling in love with anybody, that saw itself; but 
 for all that a fatality dictated that Mr. Pellew and Aunt Con- 
 stance were in each other's pockets more often than not. Neither 
 had any wish to come out, and popular observation supplied the 
 language the story has borrowed to describe the fact. 
 
 The occupant of Mr. Pellew's pocket was, however, dissatisfied 
 with her answer about the book. Her tenancy might easily 
 become precarious. She felt that the maintenance of Cavendish 
 Square, as a subject of conversation, would soften asperities and 
 dispel misunderstandings, if any. So, instead of truncating the 
 subject of the book-return, she interwove it with the interesting 
 mansion of Sister Nora's family, referring especially to the 
 causes of her own visit to it. " Gwen and Cousin Clo, as she 
 calls her, very kindly asked me to go there if I came to London; 
 and I suppose I shall, if my sister Georgie and her husband are 
 not at Eoehampton. Anyway, even if I am not there, I am 
 sure they will be delighted to see you. ... Oh no ! — Roe- 
 hampton's much too far to come with it, and I can easily call for 
 it." This was most ingenious, for it requested Mr. PeUew to 
 
THE SLOW APPROXIMATION GOES SLOWLY ON 283 
 
 make his call a definite visit, while depersonalising that visit by a 
 hint at her own possible absence. This uncertainty also gave 
 latitude of speech, her hypothetical presence warranting an 
 attitude which would almost have impMed too warm a welcome 
 from a certainty. She even could go so far as to add : — " However, 
 I should like to show you the Prince's drawing-room — ^theycall 
 it so because he got drunk there; it's such an honour, yoi^ see ! — 
 so I hope I shall be there." 
 
 " Doosid int'ristin' — shall certainly come ! Gwen's to go to 
 London to get poor Torrens out of her head — ^that's the game, 
 isn't it ?" 
 
 " That sort of thing, I believe. Change of scene and so on." 
 Miss Dickenson spoke as one saturated with experience of 
 refractory lovers, not without a suggestion of having in her 
 youth played a leading part in some such drama. 
 
 " Well — ^I'm on his side. P'r'aps that's not the right way to 
 put it; I suppose I ought to say their side. Meaning, the young 
 people's, of course ! Yes, exactly." 
 
 " One always takes part against the stem parent." The 
 humour of this received a tributary laugh. " But do you really 
 think Philippa wrong, Mr. Pellew ? I must say she seems to me 
 only reasonable. The whole thing was so absurdly sudden." 
 
 Mi. Pellew was selecting a cigar — ^why does one prefer smoking 
 the best one first ? — and was too absorbed to think of anything 
 but " Dessay !" as an answer. His choice completed, he could 
 and did postpone actually striking a match to ask briefly: — 
 " Think anything'll come of it ?" 
 
 Miss Dickenson, being a lady and non-smoker, could converse 
 consecutively, as usual. " Come of what, r. Pellew ? Do 
 you mean come of sending Gwen to London to be out of the 
 yoimg man's Way, or come of . . . come of the . . . the love- 
 affair ?" 
 
 " Well-^whichever you like ! Either-^both !" The cigar, 
 being lighted, drew well, and the smoker was able to give serious 
 attention. " What do you suppose wiU be the upshot ?" 
 
 " Impossible to say ! Just look at all the circumstances. She 
 sees him first of all for five minutes in the Park, and then he gets 
 shot. Then she sees him when he's supposed to be dead, just 
 long enough to find out that he's alive. Then she doesn't see 
 him for a fortnight— or was it three weeks ? Then she sees him 
 and finds out t&at his eyesight is destroyed. . . ." 
 
 " That's not certain." 
 
 "Perhaps not. We'll hope not. She finds out— what she 
 
284 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 finds out, suppose we say ! Then they get left alone at the piano 
 the whole of the afternoon, and . . ." 
 
 " And all the fat was in the fire ?" 
 
 " What a coarse and unfeeling way of putting it, Mr. Pellew !" 
 
 " Well — / saw it was, the moment I came into the room. So 
 did you. Miss Dickenson ! Don't deny it." 
 
 " I certainly had an impression they had been precipitate." 
 
 " Exactly. Cut along !" 
 
 " And then, you know, he was to have gone home next day, 
 and didn't. He was really here four days after that; and, of 
 course, all that time it got worse." 
 
 " They got worse ?" 
 
 " I was referring to their infatuation. It comes to the same 
 thing. Anyhow, there was plenty of time for it, or for them — 
 which ever one calls it — to get up to fever-heat. Four days is 
 plenty, at their time of life. But the question is, will it last ?" 
 
 " I should say no ! . . , Well, no — I should say yes !" 
 
 " Which ?" 
 
 " H'm — ^well, perhaps no I Yes — no I At the same time, 
 the parties are peculiar. He'll last — ^there's no doubt of that ! 
 . . . And I don't see any changed conditions ahead. . . . 
 Unless. . . ." 
 
 " Unless what ?" 
 
 " Unless he gets his eyesight again." 
 
 " Do you mean that Gwen will put him off, if he sees her V 
 
 " No — come now — I say. Miss Dickenson — hang it all !" 
 
 " Well, I didn't know ! How was I to ?" 
 
 Some mysterious change in the conditions of the conversation 
 came about unaccountably, causing a laugh both joined in with 
 undisguised cordiaKty; they might almost be said to have hob- 
 nobbed over a unanimous appreciation of Gwen. Its efEect was 
 towards a mellower famiUarity — an expurgation of starch, which 
 might even hold good until one of them wrote an order for some 
 more. For this lady and gentleman, however much an interview 
 might soften them, had always hitherto restififened for the next 
 one. At this exact moment, Mr. Pellew entered on an explana- 
 tion of his meaning in a lower key, for seriousness; and walked 
 perceptibly nearer the lady. Because a dropped voice called 
 for proximity. 
 
 " What I meant to say was, that pity for the poor chap's mis- 
 fortune may have more to do with Gwen's feelings towards him 
 — you understand ? — than she herself thinks." 
 " J quite understand. Go on," 
 
THE SLOW APPROXIMATION GOES SLOWLY ON 285 
 
 " If he were to recover his sight outright there would be 
 nothing left to pity him for. Is it not conceivable that she 
 might change altogether ?" 
 
 " She would not admit it, even to herself." 
 
 " That is very likely-— pride and amour propre, and that sort of 
 thing ! But suppose that he suspected a change ?" 
 
 " I see what you mean." 
 
 " These affairs are so confoundedly . . . ticklish. Heaven 
 only knows sometimes which way the cat is going to jump ! It 
 certainly seems to me, though, that the peculiar conditions of 
 this case supply an element of insecurity, of possible disinte- 
 gration, that does not exist in ordinary everyday life. You must 
 admit that the circumstances are . . . are abnormal." 
 
 " Very. But don't you think, Mr. Pellew, that circumstances 
 very often are abnormal ? — more often than not, I should have 
 said. Perhaps that's the wrong way of putting it, but you 
 know what I mean." Mr. Pellew didn't. But he said he did. 
 He recognised this way of looking at the unusual as profoimd 
 and perspicuous. She continued, reinforced by his approval: — 
 " What I was driving at was that when two yoimg folks are 
 very — as the phrase goes — spooney, they won't admit that 
 peculiar conditions have anything to do with it. They have 
 always been destined for one another by Fate." 
 
 " How does that apply to Gwen and Torrens ?" 
 
 " Merely that when Mr. Torrens's sight comes back. . . . 
 What ?" 
 
 " Nothing. I only said I was glad to hear you say when, not 
 if. Go on." 
 
 " When his sight comes back — ^unless it comes back very 
 quickly — ^they wUl be so convinced they were intended for one 
 another from the beginning of Time, that they ■w^on't credit the 
 accident with any share in the business." 
 
 " Except as an Agent of Destiny. I think that quite likely. It 
 supplies a reason, though, for not getting his sight back in too 
 great a hurry. How long should you say would be safe ?" 
 
 " I should imagine that in six months, if it is not broken off, 
 it will have become chronic. At present they are rather . . . 
 rather . . ." 
 
 " Rather imderdone^ I see. Well — I don't imderstand that 
 anyone wants to take them off the hob. . . ." 
 
 " I think her mother does." 
 
 " Not exactly. She only wishes them to stand on separate 
 hobs for three months. They will hear each other simmer, 
 
286 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 My own belief is that they, will be worked up to a sort of frenzy, 
 compared to which those two parties in Dante . . . you know 
 which I mean ? . . ." 
 
 " Paolo and Francesca ?" 
 
 Mr. Pellew thought to himself how well informed Miss Dicken- 
 son was. He said aloud: — " Yes, them. Paolo and Francesca 
 would be quite lukewarm — sort of negus !— compared to our 
 young friends. Correspondence is the doose. Not so bad in 
 this case, p'r'aps, because he can't read her letters himself. . . . 
 I don't know, though — ^that might make it worse,. . . . Couldn't 
 say I" And he seemed to find that cigar very good, and, indeed, 
 to be enjoying himself thoroughly. 
 
 Had Avint Constance any sub-intent in her next remark ? Had 
 it any hinterland of discussion of the ethics of Love, provo- 
 cative of practical application to the lives of old maids and old 
 bachelors — ^if the one, then the other, in this case — strolliag in a 
 leisurely way through bracken and beechmast, fancy-free, no 
 doubt ? H she had, and her companion suspected it, he was 
 not seriously alarmed, this time. But then he was o£E to London 
 in a couple of hours. 
 
 Her remark was: — " You seem to be quite an authority on the 
 subject, Mr. Pellew." 
 
 " No — you don't mean that ? Does me a lot of credit, though ! 
 Guessin', I am, all through. No experience — honour bright !" 
 
 " You don't expect me to believe that, Mr. Pellew ?" 
 
 " Needn't believe it, unless you like. Miss Dickenson. But 
 it's true, for all that. Never was in love in my life !" 
 
 " You must have found life very dull, Mr. Pellew. How a 
 man can contrive to exist without. . . . Isn't that wheels ?" 
 It didn't matter whether it was or not, but the lady's speech had 
 stumbled intq a pitfall — she was exploring a district full of them 
 — and she thought the wheels might rescue her. 
 
 But the gentleman was not going to let her ofi, though he 
 was ready to suppose the wheels were the carriage coming back. 
 " It won't catch us up for ever so long, you'll see ! Such a quiet 
 evening as this, one hears miles ofi. . . ." He interrupted his 
 own speech by a variation of tone, repeating the, pitfall words: — 
 " ' Contrive to exist without ' "; — and then supplied as sequel: — 
 " ' womankind somehow or other.' That's what you mean to 
 say, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Yes." No quaUfication ! — more pitfalls, perhaps. 
 
 " Only I never said anything of the sort ! Never meant it, 
 anyhow. What I meant was that I had never caught the dia- 
 
THE SLOW APPROXIMATION GOES SLOWLY ON 287 
 
 order like my blind friend. He went off at score like Orlando in 
 ' Winter's Tale.' " 
 
 " In ' As You Like It.'" 
 
 " I meant ' As You Like It.' I suppose it was because he 
 happened to come across thingummybob— Rosalind." 
 
 " It always is." 
 
 " P'r'aps I never came across Rosalind. Anyhow, I give you 
 my honour I never had any experience to make me an authority 
 on the subject. I expect you are a much better one than I." 
 
 " Why ?" Miss Dickenson's share of the conversation had 
 become very dry and monosyllabic. 
 
 What was passing in her mind, and reducing her to mono- 
 syllables, was the thought that she was a woman, and, as such, 
 handicapped in speech with a man; while he could say all he 
 pleased about himself, and expect her to listen to it with interest. 
 They had been gradually becoming intimate friends, and this 
 intimacy had ripened sensibly even during this short chat, the 
 sequel of the separation from the Archaeological Congress, which 
 it suited them to believe only just out of sight and hearing: quite 
 within shot considered as cha/ptrcms. Their famiUarity had got 
 to such a pitch that the Hon. Percival had contrived to take her 
 into his confidence about his own life, and she had to remain 
 tongue-tied about hers, being a woman. 
 
 How could she say to him : — " I have never had the ghost of a 
 love-affair in the whole of my colourless, but irreproachable, 
 life. A r&ystie usage of my family of four sisters, a nervous 
 invaUd mother, and an absent-minded father, determined my 
 status in early girlhood. I was to show a respectful interest in 
 the love-affairs of my sisters, who were handsome and pretty and 
 charming and attractive and piqv^zntes, while I was relatively 
 plain and backward, besides having an outcrop on one cheek 
 which has since been successfully removed. I was not to presume 
 upon my position as a sister to express opinions about these 
 said love-affairs, because I was not supposed to know anything 
 about such matters. They were not in my department. My 
 rdle was a domestic one, and I had a high moral standpoint; 
 which I would gladly have dispensed with, but the force of family 
 tradition overpowered me. It has been a poor consolation to me 
 to carry about this standpoint hke a campstool to the houses 
 of the friends I visit at intervals, now that my sisters are all 
 married, and my mother has departed this life, and my father 
 has married a Mra. Duboso, with whom I don't agree. I lead 
 a life of constant resentment against unattached mankind, who 
 
288 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 decide, after critical inspection, that they won't, when I have 
 really never asked them to. You and I have been more com- 
 panionable — more Uke keeping company, as Lutwyche would 
 say — than any man I ever came across, and I should Uke to be 
 able to say to you that, even as you never met with Rosalind, 
 even so I never met with Orlando, but without any phase of my 
 career to correspond with the one you so delicately hinted at 
 just now, in your own. For I fancied I read between your lines 
 that your scheme of life had not been precisely that of an 
 anchorite. Pray understand that I have never supposed it was 
 so, and that I rather honour your attempt to indicate the fact to 
 me without outraging my maidenly — old maidish, if you will — 
 susceptibilities " ? 
 
 It was because Miss Constance Dickenson, however improbable 
 it may seem, had wanted to say all this and a great deal more, 
 and could not see her way to any of it, that she had become dry 
 and monosyllabic. It was because of this compulsory silence 
 that she felt that even her brief: — " Why ?" in answer to Mr. 
 Pellew's suggestion that an Orlando must have come on her 
 stage though no Rosalind had come on his, struck her after it 
 had passed her hps as a false step. 
 
 He in his turn was at a loss to get something worded so as 
 not to overstep his famiharity -licence. Rough-hewn, it might 
 have run thus : — " Because no girl, as pretty as you must have 
 been, fifteen or twenty years ago, ever goes without a lover in 
 posse, though he may never work out as a husband in esse, nor 
 even a fianci." He did not see his way to polishing and finishing 
 it so that it would be safe. He could manage nothing better than 
 " Obviously I" He said it twice certainly, and threw away the 
 end of his cigar to repeat it. But he might not have done this if 
 he had not been so near departure. 
 
 Somehow, it left them both silent. Saimtering along on 
 the new-fallen beechmast, struck by the gleams of a sunset 
 that seemed to be giving satisfaction to the ringdoves overhead, 
 it could not be necessary to prosecute the conversation. All the 
 same, if it had paused on a different note, an incredibly slight 
 incident that counted for something quite measurable in the 
 judgment of each, might have had no importance whatever. 
 
 But really it was so slight an incident that the story is almost 
 ashamed to mention it. It was this. An island of bracken, with 
 briars in its confidence, not negotiable by skirts — especially in 
 those days — must needs spUt a path of turf-velvet wide enough 
 for acquaintances, into two paths narrow enough for lovers. 
 
THE SLOW APPROXIMATION GOES SLOWLY ON 289 
 
 Practically, the choice between walking iii one of these at the 
 risk of some little rabbit misinterpreting their relations, and 
 going round the island, lay with the gentleman. The Hon. 
 Percival did not mince the matter, as he might have done last 
 week, but diminished his distance from his companion in order 
 that one narrow pathway should accommodate both. It was 
 just after they had passed the island that Miss Dickenson 
 exclaimed : — " There's the carriage," and Gwen perceived their 
 consciousness of its proximity. The last episode of the story 
 comes abreast of the present one. 
 
 The story is ashamed of its own prolixity. But how is justice 
 to be done to the gradual evolution of a situation if hard-and-fast 
 laws are to be laid down, restricting the number of words that its 
 chronicler shall employ ? Condemn him by all means, but admit 
 at least that every smallest incident of the foregoing narrative 
 had its share of influence on the futiu:e of its actors. 
 
 It is true that nothing very crucial followed. For when, 
 after the carriage had pulled up and interrupted the current of 
 conversation, and gone on again leaving it doubtful how it should 
 be resumed, it again stopped for the pedestrians to overtake 
 it, it became morally incumbent on them to do so, and also 
 prudent to accept its statement that it was nearly half -past six, and 
 to take advantage of a lift that it offered. For Mr. Pellew must 
 not miss that train. The carriage may have noticed that it never 
 overtook the Archaeological Congress, which must have walked 
 very quick, unless indeed the two stragglers walked very slow. 
 
 Miss Dickenson must have dressed for dinner much quicker 
 than they walked along the avenue. For when Mr. Pellew, after 
 a short snack, on his way to put himself in the gig beside his 
 traps, looked in at the drawing-room to see if there was anyone 
 he had failed to say good-bye to, he found that lady very suc- 
 cessfully groomed in spite of her alacrity, and suggesting surprise 
 at its success. Fancy her being down before everyone else after 
 all ! Here is the conversation: 
 
 " Well, good-bye ! I'll remember the book. I've enjoyed my 
 visit enormously." 
 
 " It has been quite dehghtful. We've had such wonderful 
 weather. Don't put yourself out of the way to bring the book, 
 though. I don't want it back yet a while." 
 
 " All right. Thursday morning you leave here, didn't I hear 
 you say ? I shall have read it by then. I could drop round 
 Thursday evening Just suit me J" 
 
 19 
 
?90 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " That will do perfectly. Only not if it's the least trouble- 
 some to bring it." 
 
 " Oh no; not the very slightest ! Nine ? — half -past ?" 
 
 " Nine any time. I would say come to dinner, only I 
 haven't mentioned it to Miss Grahame, and I don't know her 
 arrangements. . . ." 
 
 " Bless me, no — ^the idea 1 I'll drop round after dinner at the 
 Club. Nine or half-past." 
 
 " We shall expect you. Good-bye !" 
 
 " Good-bye !" But Mr. Pellew, turning to go and leaving 
 his eyes behind him, colhded with the Earl, who was adhering to 
 a conscientious rule of always being punctual for dinner. 
 
 " Oh — Percy ! You'll lose your train. Stop a minute ! — ^there 
 was something I wanted to say. What was it ? . . . Oh, I 
 know. Gwen's address in London — have you got it ? She's 
 going to stay with her cousin, you know — hundred-and-two. 
 Cavendish Square. She'll be glad to see you if you call, I know." 
 This was founded on a misapprehension, which the family resented, 
 that it was not able to take care of itself in his absence. The 
 Countess would have said : — "Fancy Gwen wanting to be provided 
 with visitors !" 
 
 This estimable nobleman was destined to suspect he had put 
 his foot in it, this time, from the way in which his suggestion 
 was received. An inexpUcable nuance of manner pervaded his 
 two guests, somewhat such as the Confessional might produce 
 in a penitent with a sense of humour, who had committed a 
 funny crime. It was, you see, difficult to assign a plausible 
 reason why Mr. Pellew and Miss Dickenson should have already 
 signed a treaty on the subject. 
 
 Perhaps it was not altogether disinterested in the gentleman 
 to look at his watch, and accept its warning that nothing short 
 of hysterical haste would catch his train for him. However, the 
 grey mare said, through her official representative in the gig 
 behind her, that we should do it if the train was a minute or so 
 behind. So possibly he was quite sincere. 
 
A GAME OF WHIST 291 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 CONCE&NING CAVENDISH SQUARE, AND ITS WHEEEAEOtrTS IN 
 THE EARLY FirriES. MRS. EITZHERBERT AND PRINCESS 
 CAROLINE. TWO LONG-FORGOTTEN CARD-PACKS. DUMMY, 
 AND HOW MR. PELLEW TOOK HIS HAND. GWEN's PERVERTED 
 WHIST-SENSE. THE DUST OF AGES, AT ITS FINEST. HOW IT 
 TURNED THE TALK, AND MOULDED EVENT. HOW GWEN's 
 PEN SCRATCHED ON INTO THE NIGHT 
 
 iEsTHBTic Topography is an interesting study. Seen by its 
 light, at the date of this story, Oxford Street was certainly at 
 one and the same time the South of the North of London, and 
 the North of the South. For whereas Hanover Square, which 
 is only a stone's throw to the south of it, is, so to speak, saturated 
 with Piccadilly — and when you are there you may just as well 
 be in Westminster at once — ^it is undeniable that Cavendish 
 Square is in the zone of influence of Eegents Park, and that 
 Harley and Wimpole Streets, which run side by side north from 
 it, never pause to breathe until they all but touch its palings. 
 Once in Regents Park, how can Topography — the geometric 
 fallacy apart — ^ignore St. John's Wood ? And once St. John's 
 Wood is admitted, how is it possible to turn a cold shoulder to 
 Primrose Hill ? Cross Primrose Hill, and you may just as well 
 be out in the country at once. 
 
 But there ! — our impressions may be but memories of fifty 
 years ago, and our reader may wonder why Cavendish Square 
 suggests them. 
 
 He himself, probably very much our junior — a bad habit 
 other people acquire as Time goes on — may consider Harley 
 Street and Wimpole Street just as much town as Hanover 
 Square, and St. John's Wood — even Primrose Hill ! — as on all 
 fours with both. We forgive him. One, or possibly we ought 
 to say several, should learn to be tolerant of the new-fangled 
 opinions of hot-headed youth. We were like that ourself, when 
 a boy. But let him have his own way. These streets shall be 
 unmitigated Town now, to please him, in spite of the walks 
 Dr. Johnson had in Marylebone Fields. To be sure, Marylebone 
 Fields soon became Gardens thenabouts, like Ranelagh, and you 
 drove along Harley Street to a musical entertainment there, 
 with music by Pergolesi and Galuppi. 
 
292 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The time of this story is post-Johnsonian, but it is older than 
 its readers; unless, indeed, a chance oldster now and then opens 
 it to see if it is a proper book to have in the house. The world 
 in the early fifties was very unUke what it is in the present century, 
 and that isn't yet in its teens. It was also very unUke what it 
 had been in the days when the family mansion in Cavendish 
 Square, that had not had a family in it then for forty years, waa 
 as good as new. It was so, no doubt, for a good while after 
 George the Third ceased to be King, because the thorough 
 griming it has had since had hardly begun, and fields were sweet 
 at Paddington, and the Regent could be bacchanaUan in that big 
 drawing-room on the first floor without any consciousness that he 
 had a Park in the neighbourhood. Oh dear — how near the 
 country Cavendish Square was in those days ! 
 
 By the time Queen Victoria was on the throne the grime had 
 set in in earnest, and was hard at work long before the fifty-one 
 Exhibition reported progress — progress in bedevilment, says the 
 Pessimist ? Never mind him ! Let him sulk in a corner while 
 the Optimist dwells on the marvellous developments of which 
 fifty-one was only symptomatic — the quick-firing guns and 
 smokeless powder; the mighty ships, a dozen of them big enough 
 to take all the Athenians of the days of Pericles to the bottom 
 at once; the machines that turn out books so cheap that their 
 contents may be forgotten in six months, and no one be a penny 
 the worse; the milhonaires who have so much money they can't 
 spend it — heaps and heaps of wonders up-to-date that no one 
 ever feels surprised at nowadays. The Optimist wiU tell you 
 all about them. For the moment, let's pretend that none of 
 them have come to pass, and get back to Cavendish Square at 
 the date of the story, and the suite of rooms on the second floor 
 that had been Sister Nora's town anchorage when she first 
 made Dave Wardle's acquaintance as an unconscious Hospital 
 patient, and that had been renovated since her father's death 
 to serve as a pied-d-terre until she could be sure of her arrange- 
 ments in the days to come. 
 
 Her friends were not the least too tired, thank you, after the 
 journey, to be shown the great drawing-room, on which the 
 touching incident in the life of a Royal Personage had con- 
 ferred an historical dignity. " I think — " said she " — only 
 I haven't quite made up my mind yet — that I shall call this 
 ward Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the next room Princess Caroline. 
 Or the other way round. Which do you think ?" For one of 
 her schemes was to turn the old family mansion into a Hospital. 
 
A GAME OF WHIST 293 
 
 " Let me see !" said Gwen. " I've forgotten my history. 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert was his wife, wasn't she ?" 
 
 Miss Dickenson was always to be relied on for general infor- 
 mation. " Unquestionably/' said she. " But he repudiated 
 her for political reasons, a course open to him as heir to the 
 throne. Legally, Princess Caroline of Brunswick was his lawful 
 wife. . . ." 
 
 " And, lawfully," said Gwen, " Mrs. Fitzherbert was his 
 legal wife. Nothing can be clearer. Yes — ^I should say cer- 
 tainly call the big room Mrs. Fitzherbert. Whom shall you call 
 the other rooms after, Clo ?" 
 
 " AU the others. There's any number ! Mrs. Robinson, 
 Lady Jersey, Lady Gonyngham. . . . one for every room in the 
 house, and several over. Just fancy ! — ^the room has never 
 been altered, since those days. It was polished up for my poor 
 mother — ^whom no doubt I saw in my youth, but took no notice 
 of. You see, I wasn't of an age to take notice, when she departed 
 to Kingdom-come, and my father exiled himself to Scot- 
 land. . . ." 
 
 " And he kept it packed up hke this — how long ?" 
 
 " Well — you know how old I am. Twenty-seven." 
 
 Aunt Constance corrected dates. " George the Fourth," said 
 she chronologically, " ascended the throne in 1820, Conse- 
 quently he cannot have become intoxicated in this room. ^ . ." 
 
 Sister Nora interrupted. Of couise he couldn't — ^not in her 
 father's time. The cards and dice were going in her great- 
 uncle's time, who drank himself to death forty years ago. 
 " There used to be some packs of cards," said she, " in one of 
 these drawers. I know I saw some there, only it's a long time 
 back — almost the only time I ever came into the rooni. I'll 
 look. . . . Take care of the dust !" 
 
 It was lucky that the cabinet-maker who framed that inlaid 
 table knew his business — they did, in his day — or the rounded 
 front might have called for a jerk, instead of giving easily to the 
 pull it had awaited so patiently, through decades. " There 
 they are,!" said Gwen, " with nobody to deal them. Poor 
 cards — blocked up in the dark all these years ! Do let's have 
 them out and play dummy to-night." 
 
 A spirit of Conservatism suggested that it would be impious 
 to disturb a status quo connected with Royalty. But Gwen 
 said, touching a visible ace: — " Just think, Clo, if you were an 
 ace, and had a chance of being trumps, how would you like to 
 be shut up in a drawer again ?" This appeal to our common 
 
294 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 humanity had its effect, and a couple of packs were brought out 
 for use. No language could describe the penetrating powers of 
 the dust that accompanied their return to active duties. It 
 ended the visit en passant of these three ladies, who were not 
 sorry to find themselves in an upstairs suite of rooms with a 
 kitchen and a miniature household, just estabhshed regardless 
 of expense. Because three hundred a year was what Miss 
 Grahame was " going to " live upon, as soon as she had " had 
 time to turn round," and for the moment it was absurd to draw 
 hard and fast Unes. Just wait and give her time, to get a little 
 settled ! 
 
 The fatigue of the journey was enough to negative any idea of 
 going out anywhere, and indeed there was nothing in the way 
 of theatre or concert that was at all tempting. But it was not 
 enough to cause collapse, and whist became plausible within 
 half an hour after dinner. There was something delightful in 
 the place, too, with its windows opening on the tree-tops of the 
 Square, and the air of a warm autumn evening bringing in the 
 sound of a woebegone brass band from afar, mixed with the 
 endless hum of wheels with hoof-beats in the heart of it, Uke 
 currants in a cake. The air was aU the sweeter that a whiS of 
 chimney-smoke broke into it now and again, and emphasized 
 its quality. When the band left off the " Bohemian Girl " and 
 rested, and imagination was picturing the trombone in half, at 
 odds with condensation, a barrel-organ was able to make itself 
 heard, with II Pescatore, till the band began again with The 
 Sicihan Bride, and drowned it. 
 
 Miss Dickenson had been discreet about her expectation of 
 a visitor. She maintained her discretion even when the sound 
 of a hansom's lids, followed by " Yes — this house I" and a double 
 knock below, tm-ned out not to be a mistake, but the Hon. 
 Percival Pellew, Carlton Club. She nevertheless roused the 
 interested suspicion of Gwen and her hostess, who looked at each 
 other, and said respectively: — " Oh, it's my cousin Percy," and 
 " Oh, Mr. Pellew "; the former adding: — " He can take Dummy's 
 hand"; the latter, — "Oh, of course, ask him to come up, 
 Maggie ! Don't let him go away on any account." But neither 
 of these ladies expressed any surprise at the rather prompt 
 recrudescence of Mr. Pellew, last seen at the Towers two days 
 since. 
 
 The only flaw in a pretext that Mr. Pellew had come to leave 
 Tennyson's " Princess," with his card in it, and run away as if 
 the book-owner would bite him, was perhaps the ostentation 
 
A GAME OP WHIST 295 
 
 with which that lady left his detention to her hostess. It would 
 have been at once more candid and more skilful to say, " Oh 
 yes, it's my book. But I didn't want Mr. PeUew to bother 
 about bringing it back," with a judicious infusion of enthusiasm 
 that the visitor's efforts to get away should fail. However, the 
 flaw was slight, and no one cared about the transparency of the 
 pretext. Moreover, Maggie, a new importation from the High- 
 lands, thought that her young ladyship, whose beauty had over- 
 whelmed her, was at the bottom of it — ^not Aunt Constance. 
 
 " Now you are, here, Percy, you had better make yourself 
 useful. Sit as we are. I'm not sorry you're come, because I 
 hate playing dummy." This was Gwen, naturally. 
 
 The impersonality of Dummy furnished a topic to tide over 
 the assimilation of things, and help the social fengshui to 
 plausibility. There was a fillah — said Mr. Pellew — at the Club, 
 who wouldn't take Dummy unless that fiction was accom- 
 modated with a real chair. And there was another fillah who 
 couldn't play unless the vacant chair was taken away. Some- 
 thing had happened to this fillah when he was a boy, and any- 
 thing hke a ghost was uncongenial to him. You shouldn't lock 
 up children in the dark or make grimaces at them if you wanted 
 them not to be nervous in after-life . . . and so forth. 
 
 Gwen was a bad whist-player, sometimes taking a very per- 
 verted view of the game. As, for instance, when, after Mr. 
 Pellew had dealt, she asked her partner how many trumps 
 she held. " Because, Clo," said she, " I've only got two, and 
 unless you've got at least four, I don't see the use of going on." 
 Public opinion condemned this attitude as imsportsmanlike, and 
 demanded another deal. Gwen welcomed the suggestion, having 
 only a Knave and a Queen in all the rest of her hand. 
 
 Her partner expressed disgust. " I think," she said, " you 
 might have held your tongue, Gwen, and played it out. But 
 I shan't tell you why." 
 
 " Oh, I know, of course, without your telling me. You're 
 made of trumps. I'm so sorry, dear ! There — see ! — I've led." 
 She played Knave. 
 
 " This," said Mr. Pellew, with shocked gravity, " is not 
 whist." 
 
 " Well," said Gwen, " I can not see why one shouldn't say how 
 many cards one has of any suit. Everyone knows, so it must 
 be fair. Everyone sees Dummy's hand." 
 
 " I see your point. But it's not whist." 
 
 " Am I to play, or not ?" said Aunt Constance. Sne looked 
 
296 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 across at her partner, as a serious player rather amused at the 
 childish behaviour of their opponents. A sympathetic bond 
 was thereby established — solid seriousness against frivolity. 
 
 " Fire away !" said Gwen. " Second player plays lowest." 
 Miss Dickenson played the Queen. " That's not whist, aunty," 
 said Gwen triumphantly. Her partner played the King. 
 " There now, you see !" said Gwen. She belonged to the class 
 of players who rejoice aloud, or show depression, after success 
 or failure. 
 
 This time her exultation was premature. Mr. Pellew, with- 
 out emotion, pushed the turn-up card, a two, into the trick, 
 saying to his partner: — "Your Queen was all right. Quito 
 correct !" The story does not vouch for this. It may have 
 been wrong. 
 
 " Do you mean to say, Cousin Percy "—thus Gwen, with 
 indignant emphasis — " that you've not got a club in your hand, 
 at the very first round. You cannot expect us to believe that !" 
 Mr. Pellew pointed out that if he revoked he would lose three 
 tricks. " Very well," said Gwen. " I shall keep a very sharp 
 look out." But no revoke came, and she had to console herself 
 as a loser with the reflection that it was only the odd trick, after 
 all — one by cards and honours divided. 
 
 This is a fair sample of the way this game went on establishing 
 a position of moral superiority for Mr. Pellew and his partner, 
 who looked down on the irregularities of their opponents from a 
 pinnacle of True Whist. Their position as superior beings 
 tended towards mutual imderstandings. A transition state 
 from their relations in that easy-going Ufe at the Towers to the 
 more sober obligations of the metropolis was at least acceptable; 
 and this isolation by a better understanding of tricks and trumps, 
 a higher and holier view of ruffing and finessing, appeared to 
 provide such a state. There was partnership of souls in it, over 
 and above mere vulgar scoring. 
 
 Nothing of interest occurred until, in the course of the second 
 rubber, Gwen made a misdeal. Probably she did so because she 
 was trying at the same time to prove that having four by honours 
 was absittd in itself — an affront to natural laws. It was the 
 merest accident, she maintained, when all the court-cards were 
 dealt to one side — ^no merit at all of the players. Her objection 
 to whist was that it was a mixture of skill and chance. She was 
 inclined to favour games that were either quite the one or quite 
 the other. Roulette was a good game. So was chess. But 
 whist was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. . . . Mis- 
 
A GAME OF WHIST 2a7 
 
 deal ! The analysis of games stopped with a jerk, the dealer 
 being left without a turn-up card. 
 
 " But what a shame \" said Gwen. " Is it fair I should lose, 
 my deal when the last card's an ace ? How would any of 
 you hke it 1" The appeal was too touching to resist, though 
 Mr. Pellew again said this wasn't whist. A count of the hands 
 showed that Aimt Constance held one card too few and Gwett 
 one too many. A question arose. If a card were drawn from 
 the dealer's hand, was the trump to remain on the table ? Con- 
 troversy ensued. Why should not the drawer have her choice; 
 of thirteen cards, as in every analogous case ? On the other 
 hand, said Gwen, that ace of hearts was indisputably the last 
 card in the pack; and therefore the trump-card, by predestina- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Pellew pointed out that it mattered less than Miss Dicken- 
 son thought, as if she pitched on this very ace to make up her 
 own thirteen, its teeth would be drawn. It would be no longer 
 a tum-up card, and some new choice of trumps would have to 
 be made, somehow; by aortes Virgiliance, or what not. Better 
 have another deal. Gwen gave up the point, under protest, 
 and Miss Dickenson dealt. Spades were trumps, this time. 
 
 It chanced that Gwen, in this deal, held the Knave and Queem 
 of hearts. She led the Knave, and only waiting for the next 
 card, to be sure that it was a low one, said dehberately to her 
 partner: — " Don't play your King, Cousin Clo; Percy's got the 
 ace," in defiance of all rule and order. 
 
 " Can't help it,' said Cousin Clo. " Got nothing else !" Out 
 came the King, and down came the ace upon it, naturally. 
 
 " There now, see what I've done," said Gwen. " Got your 
 King squashed !" But she was consoled when Mr. Pellew 
 pointed out that if Miss Grahame had played a small card her 
 King would almost certainly have fallen to a trump later. " It 
 was quite the right play," said he, " because now your Queen 
 makes. You couldn't have made with both." 
 
 " I beUeve you've been cheating, and looking at my hand," 
 said Gwen. " How do you know I've got the Queen ?" 
 
 " How did you know I had got the ace ?" said Mr. Pellew. 
 And really this was a reasonable question. 
 
 " By the mark on the back. I noticed it when I timied it up 
 when hearts were trumps, last deal. I don't consider that 
 cheating. All the same, I enjoy cheating, and always cheat 
 whenever I cant Card games are so very dull, when there's no 
 cheating," 
 
298 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " But, Gwen dear, I don't see any mark." This was Miss 
 Grahame, examining the last trick. She put the ace, face down, 
 before this capricious whist-player, who, however, adhered to 
 her statement, saying incorrigibly: — " WeU, look at it \" 
 
 " I only see a shadow," said Mr. Pellew. But it wasn't a 
 shadow. A shadow moves. 
 
 Explanation came, on revision of the ace's antecedents. It 
 had lain in that drawer five-and-twenty years at least, with 
 another card half-covering it. In the noiseless air-tight dark- 
 ness where it lay, saying perhaps to itself: — " Shall I ever take 
 a trick again ?" there was still dust, dust of thought-baffling 
 fineness ! And it had fallen, fallen steadily, with immeasurable 
 slowness and absolute impartiality, on all the card above had 
 left unsheltered. There was the top-card's silhouette, quite 
 recognisable as soon as the shadow was disestabhshed. 
 " It will come out with India-rubber," said Miss Grahame. 
 " I shouldn't mess it about, if I were you," said Gwen. " I 
 know India-rubber. It grimes everything in, and makes black 
 streaks." Which was true enough in those days. The material 
 called bottle-rubber was notable for its power of defiling clean 
 paper, and the sophisticated sort for becoming indurated if not 
 cherished in one's trouser-pockets. The present epoch in the 
 World's history can rub out quite clean for a penny, but then 
 its dramatis personce have to spend their lives dodging motor- 
 cars and biplanes, and holding their ears for fear of gramophones. 
 Still, it's something I 
 
 Mr. Pellew suggested that the best way to deal with the soiled 
 card would be for whoever got it to exhibit it, as one does some- 
 times when a card's face is seen for a moment, to make sure 
 everyone knows. We were certainly not playing very strictly. 
 This was accepted nem. con. 
 
 But the chance that had left that card half-covered was to 
 have its influence on things, still. Who can say events would 
 have run in the same grooves had it not directed the conversa- 
 tion to dust, and caused Mr. Pellew to recollect a story told by 
 one of those Archaeological fillahs, at the Towers three days 
 ago ? It was that of the tomb which, being opened, showed a 
 forgotten monarch of some prehistoric race, robed, crowned, 
 and sceptred as of old; a little shrunk, perhaps, a bit discoloured, 
 but still to be seen by his own ghost, if earth-bound and at all 
 interested. Still to be seen, even by Cook's tourists, had he but 
 had a little more staying-power. But he was never seen, as a 
 matter of fact, by any man but the deseorator of his tomb. 
 
A GAME OF WHIST 299 
 
 For one whiff of fresh air brought him down, a crumbling heap 
 of dust with a few imperishable ornaments buried in it. His 
 own ghost would not have known him again; and, in less time 
 than it takes to tell, the wind blew him about, and he had to 
 take his chance with the dust of the desert. 
 
 " I suppose it isn't true," said Gwen incredulously. " Things 
 of that sort are generally fibs." 
 
 " Don't know about this one," said Mr. Pellew, sorting his 
 cards. " Funny coincidence ! It was in the Quarterly Review — 
 very first thing I opened at — Egyptian Researches. . . . That's 
 our trick, isn't it 1" 
 
 " Yes— my ten. I'll lead. ... Yes !— I think I'll lead a 
 diamond. I always envy you men your Clubs. It must be so 
 nice to have all the newspapers and reviews. . . ." Aunt Con- 
 stance said this, of course. 
 
 " It wasn't at the Club. Man left it at my chambers three 
 months ago — ^readin' it by accident yesterday evening — ^funny 
 coincidence — talkin' about it same morning ! Knave takes. 
 No — ^you can't trump. You haven't got a trump." 
 
 " Now, however did you know that ?" said Gwen. 
 
 " Very simple. All the trumps are out but two, and I've got 
 them here in my hand. See ?" 
 
 " Yes, I see. But I prefer real cheating, to taking advantages 
 of things, like that. . . . What are you putting your cards 
 down for. Cousin Percy ?" 
 
 " Because that's game. Game and the rubber. We only 
 want two by cards, and there they are !" 
 
 When rubbers end at past ten o'clock at night, well-bred 
 people wait for their host to suggest beginning another. Ill- 
 bred ones, that don't want one, say suddenly that it must be 
 getting late — as if Time had slapped them — and get at their 
 watches. Those that do, say that that clock is fast. In the 
 present case no disposition existed, after a good deal of travelling, 
 to play cards till midnight. But there was no occasion to hustle 
 the visitor downstairs. 
 
 Said Miss Dickenson, to concede a short breathing pause: — 
 " Pray, Mi. Pellew, when a gentleman accidentally leaves a book 
 at your rooms, do you make no effort to return it to him ?" 
 
 " Well !" said Mr. Pellew, tacitly admitting the implied im- 
 peachment; " It is rather a jolly shame, when you come to think 
 of it. I'll take it round to him to-morrow. Gloucester Place, 
 is it — or York Place — end of Baker Street ? . . . Can't re- 
 member the Allah's name to save my life. Married a Miss Berg- 
 
300 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 stein — rich bankers. Got his card at home, I expect. How- 
 ever, that's where he lives — ^York Place. He's a Sir Somebody 
 Something. . . . What were you going to say ?" 
 
 " Oh — nothing. . . . Only that it would have been very 
 interesting to read that accoimt. However, Sir Somebody 
 Something must be wanting his Quarterly Review. . . . Never 
 mind !" 
 
 Gwen said: — "What nonsense! He's bought another copy 
 by this time. He can afford it, if he's married a Miss Bergstein. 
 Bring it round to-morrow, Percy, to keep Aunt Constance quiet. 
 We shan't take her with us to see Clo's little boy. We should 
 make too many." Then, in order to minimise his visit next 
 day, Mr. Pellew sketched a brief halt in Cavendish Square at 
 half -past three precisely to-morrow afternoon, when Miss Dicken- 
 son could " run her eye " through the disintegration of that 
 Egyptian King, without interfering materially with its subse- 
 quent delivery at Sir Somebody Something's. It was an 
 elaborate piece of humbug, welcomed with perfect gravity as the 
 solution of a perplexing and difficult problem. Which being so 
 happily solved, Mr. Pellew could take his leave, and did so. 
 
 " Didn't I do that capitally, Clo V 
 
 " Do which, dear ?" 
 
 " Why — ^making her stop here to see him. Or giving her 
 leave to stop ; it's the same thing, only she would rather do it 
 against her will. I mean saying we should make too many at 
 Scraps Court, or whatever it is." 
 
 " Oh yes — quite a stroke of genius ! Gwen dear, what an 
 inveterate matchmaker you are !" 
 
 " Nonsense, Clo ! I never . . ." Here Gwen hung fire for 
 a moment, confronted by an intractability of language. She 
 took the position by storm, more suo : — " I never mutchmoke in 
 my life. . . . What ? — Well, you may laugh, Clo, but I never 
 did I Only when two fools irritate one by not flying into each 
 other's arms, and wanting to all the time. . . . Oh, it's ex- 
 asperating, and I've no patience !" 
 
 " You are quite sure they do . . . want to ?" 
 
 " Oh yes — ^I think so. At least, I'm quite sure Percy does." 
 
 " Why not Aunt Constance ?" 
 
 " Because I can't imagine anyone wanting to rush into any of 
 my cousins' arms — my he-cousins. It's a peculiarity of cousins, 
 I suppose. If any of mine had been palatable, he would have 
 caught on, and it would have come off. Because they all want 
 me, always." 
 
A GAME OF WHIST 301 
 
 " That's an old story, Gwen dear." The two ladies looked 
 ruefully at one another, with a slight shoulder-shrug apiece over 
 a hopeless case. Then Miss Grahame said: — "Then you con- 
 sider Constance Dickenson is still palatable ?" She laughed on 
 the word a Uttle — a sort of protest. " At nearly forty ?" 
 
 "Oh dear, yes 1 Not that she's forty, nor anything hke it. 
 She's thirty-six. Besides, it has nothing to do with age. Or 
 very little. Why — how old is that dear old lady at Chorlton 
 that was jealous of your little boy's old woman in London V 
 
 " Old Goody Marrable ? Over eighty. But the other old 
 lady is older still, and Dave speaks well of her, anyhow ! We 
 shall see her to-morrow. We must insist on that." 
 
 " Well — ^I could kiss old Goody Marrable. I should be sorry 
 for her bones, of course. But they're not her fault, after all I 
 She's quite an old darling. I hope Aunt Connie and Percy will 
 manage a little common sense to-morrow. They'll have the 
 house to themselves, anyhow. Ta bye-bye, Chloe dear !" 
 
 Miss Grahame looked in on her way to her own room to see 
 that Miss Dickenson had been provided with all the accessories 
 of a good night — a margin of pillows and blankets a choix, and 
 80 on. Hot-water-bottle time had scarcely come yet, but hos- 
 pitality might refer to it. There was, however, a word to say 
 touching the evening just ended. What did Miss Grahame 
 think of Gwen ? Aimt Constance's parti pris in life was a 
 benevolent interest in the affairs of everybody else. 
 
 Miss Grahame thought Gwen was all right. The amount of 
 nonsense she had talked to-night showed she was a Uttle excited, 
 A sort of ostentatious absurdity, like a spoiled child ! Well — 
 she has been a spoiled child. But she — ^the speaker — always 
 had believed, did still beheve, that Gwen was a fine character 
 underneath, and that all her nonsense was on the surface. 
 
 " Will she hold to it, do you thmk ?" 
 
 " How can I tell ? I should say yes. But one never knows. 
 She's writing him a long letter now. She's in the next room to 
 me, and I heard her scratching five minutes after she said good- 
 night. I hope she won't scribble all night and keep me awake. 
 My belief is she would be better for some counter-excitement. 
 A small earthquake ! Anything of that sort. Good-night ! It's 
 very late." But it came out next day that Gwen's pen was still 
 scratching when this lady got to sleep an hour after. 
 
302 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 A PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION ACEOSS A COUNTER, AND HOW 
 THE STORY OF THE MAN IN HYDE PARK WAS TOLD BY DOLLY. 
 HOW AUNT m'rIAR KNEW THE NAME WAS NOT " DARRABLE." 
 HOW SHE TOLD UNCLE MO WHOSE WIFE SHE WAS AND WHOSE 
 MOTHER MRS. PBICHARD WAS. HOW POLLY DAVERILL JUNIOR 
 HAD DIED UNBAPTIZED, AND ATTEMPTS TO BULLY THE DEVIL 
 ABE FUTILE. HOW HER MOTHER WAS FORMERLY BAEMAID 
 AT THE ONE TUN, BUT BECAME AUNT m'bIAB LATEB, AND HOW 
 THE TALLOW CANDLE JUST LASTED OUT. HOW DOLLY, VERY 
 SOUND ASLEEP, WAS GOOD FOR HER AUNT 
 
 " I shouldn't take any violent exercise, if I was you, Mr. 
 Wardle/' said Mr. Ekings, the Apothecary, whose name you may 
 remember Michael Ragstroar had borrowed and been obliged to 
 relinquish. "I should be very careful what I ate, avoiding 
 especially pork and richly cooked food. A diet of fowls and fish 
 — preferably boiled. . . ." 
 
 " Can't abide 'em !" said Uncle Moses, who was talking over 
 his symptoms with Mr. Ekings at his shop, with Dolly on his 
 knee. " And whose a-going to stand Sam for me, livin' on this 
 and livin' on that ? Roasted ducking's very pretty eating, for 
 the sake of the soarsages, when you're a Lord Mayor; but for 
 them as don't easy run to half-crowns for mouthf uls, a line has 
 to be drawed. Down om: Court a shiUing has to go a long way, 
 Dr. Ekings." 
 
 The medical adviser shook his head weakly. " You're an 
 intractable patient, Mr. Moses," he said. He knew that Uncle 
 Moses's circumstances were what is called moderate. So are a 
 church mouse's; and, in both cases, the dietary is compulsory. 
 Mr. Ekings tried for a common ground of agreement. " Fish 
 doesn't mount up to much, by the poxmd," he said, vaguely. 
 
 "Fishes don't go home like butcher's meat," said Uncle 
 Moses. 
 
 " You can't expect 'em to do that," said Mr. Ekings, glad of 
 an indisputable truth. " But there's a vast amount of nourish- 
 ment in 'em, anyway you put it." 
 
 " So there is. Dr. Ekings. In a vast amount of 'em. But 
 you have to eat it all up. Similar, grass and cows. Only there's 
 no bones in the grass. Now, you know, what I'm wanting is a 
 pick-me-up — something with a nice clean edge in the smell of it. 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 303 
 
 like a bottle o' salts with holes in the stopper. And tasting of 
 lemons. I ain't speaking of the sort that has to be shook when 
 took. Nor yet with peppermint. It's a clear sort to see through, 
 up against the light, what I want." 
 
 Mr. Ekings, a humble practitioner in a poor neighbourhood, 
 supplied more mixtures in response to suggestions hke Uncle 
 Mo's, than to legitimate prescriptions. So he at once undertook 
 to fill out the order, saying in reply to an inquiry, that it would 
 come to threepence, but that Uncle Mo must bring or send back 
 the bottle. He then added a few drops of chloric ether and 
 ammonia, and some lemon to a real square bottleful of aq. pur. 
 )iaust., and put a label on it with superhuman evenness, on 
 which was written " The Mixture — one tablespoonful three times 
 a day." Uncle Moses watched the preparation of this elixir 
 vitoB with the extremest satisfaction. He foresaw its beneficial 
 efiect on his system, which he had understood was to blame for 
 his occasional attacks of f aintness, which had latterly been rather 
 more frequent. Anything in such a clean phial, with such a 
 new cork, would be sure to do his system good. 
 
 Mrs. Riley came in for a bottle which was consciously await- 
 ing her in front of the leeches, and identified it as " the linimint," 
 before Mr. Ekings could call to mind where he'd stood it. She 
 remarked, while calculating coppers to cover the outlay, that 
 she understood it was to be well r-r-r-rhubbed in with the 
 pamim of her hand, and that she was to be thr-rusted not to lit 
 the patiint get any of it near his mouth, she having been borrun 
 in Limerick morr' than a wake ago. She remarked to Uncle Mo 
 that his boy was looking his bist, and none the wurruss for his. 
 accidint. Uncle Mo felt braced by the Celtic atmosphere, and 
 thanked Mrs. Riley cordially, for himself and Dave. 
 
 " Shouldn't do that, if I was you, Mr. Wardle," said Mr. 
 Ekings the Apothecary, as Unole Mo hoisted Dolly on his 
 shoulder to carry her home. 
 
 " No more shouldn't I, if you was me. Dr. Ekings," was the 
 intractable patient's reply. " Why, Lard bless you, man alive, 
 Dolly's so light it's as good as a lift-up, only to have her on your 
 shoulders ! Didn't you never hear tell of gravitation ? Well — 
 that's it !" But Uncle Mo was out of his depth. 
 
 " It'll do ye a powerful dale of good, Mr. Wardle," said Mrs. 
 Riley. " Niver you mind the docther !" And Uncle Mo de- 
 parted, braced again, with his elixir vitce in his left hand, and 
 Dolly on his right shoulder, conversing on a topic suggested by 
 Dr. Ekings's remarks about diet. 
 
304 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " When Dave tooktid Micky to see the fisses corched in the 
 Turpentine, there was a jenklum corched a fiss up out of the 
 water, and another jenklum corched another fiss up out of the 
 water. . . ." Dolly was pursuing the subject in the style of 
 the Patriarchs, who took their readers' leisure for granted, and 
 never grudged a repetition, when Uncle Mo interrupted her to 
 point out that it was not Dave who took Michael Ragstroar to 
 Hy' Park, but vice versa. Also that the whole proceeding had 
 been a disgraceful breach of discipline, causing serious alairm to 
 Mmself and Aunt M'riar, who had nearly lost their reason in 
 consequence — the exact expression being " fritted out of their 
 Tvits." If that young Micky ever did such a thing again. Uncle 
 Mo said, the result would be a pretty how-do-you-do, involving 
 Tpossibly fatal consequences to Michael, and certainly local 
 flagellation of unheard-of severity. 
 
 Dolly did not consider this was to the point, and pursued her 
 narrative without taking notice of it. "There was a jenklum 
 corched a long fiss, and there was another jenklum corched a 
 short fiss, and there was another jenklum corched a short 
 fiss. . . ." This seemed to bear frequent repetition, but came 
 to an end as soon as history ceased to supply the facts. Then 
 another phase came, that of the fishers who didn't corch no fiss, 
 whose name appeared to be Legion. They lasted as far as the 
 arch into Sapps Court, and Uncle Mo seemed rather to relish 
 the monotony than otherwise. He would have made a good 
 Scribe in the days of the Pharaohs. 
 
 But Dolly came to the end of even the unsuccessful fishermen. 
 Just as they reached home, however, she produced her con- 
 vincing incident, all that preceded it having evidently been 
 introduction pure and simple. " And there was a man saided 
 fings to Micky, and saided fings to Dave, and saided fings to . . ." 
 Here Dolly stuttered, became confused, and ended up weakly: 
 " No, he didn't saided no fings, to no one else." 
 
 A little finesse was necessary to land the elixir vitce on the 
 parlour chimney-piece, and DoUy on the hearthrug. Then Uncle 
 Mo sat down in his own chair to recover breath, saying in the 
 course of a moment: — " And what did the man say to Dave, and 
 what did he say to young Sparrowgrass ?" He did not suppose 
 that " the man " was a person capable of identification; he was 
 an unknown unit, but good to talk about. 
 
 " He saided Mrs. Picture." Dolly placed the subject she 
 proposed to treat broadly before her audience, with a view to 
 -its careful analysis at leisure. 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 305 
 
 " What on 'arth did he say Mrs. Pictiire for ? He don't know 
 Mrs. Picture." The present tense used here acknowledged the 
 man's authenticity, and encouraged the little maid — three and 
 three-quarters, you know ! — ^to further testimony. It came 
 fairly fluently, considering the witness's recent acquisition of 
 the English language. 
 
 " He doos know Mrs. Picture, ass he doos, and he saided 
 Mrs. Picture to Micky, ass he did." This was plenty for a time, 
 and during that time the witness could go on nodding with her 
 eyes wide open, to prevent the subject lapsing, for she had found 
 out already how sHppery grown-up people are in argument. 
 Great force was added by her curls, which lent themselves to 
 flapping backwards and forwards as she nodded. 
 
 It was impossible to resist such evidence, outwardly at least, 
 and Uncle Mo appeared to accept it. "Then the man said 
 Mrs Picture to Dave," said he. " And Dave told it on to you, 
 was that it ?" He added, for the general good of morahty: — 
 " You're a nice lot of young Pickles !" 
 
 But this stopped the nodding, which changed suddenly to a 
 negative shake, of great decision. " The man never saided 
 nuffint to Dave, no he didn't." 
 
 " Thought you said he did. You're a good 'un for a witness- 
 box ! Come up and sit on your old uncle. The man said Mrs. 
 Picture to young Sparrowgrass — ^was that it ?" Dolly nodded 
 violently. " And young Sparrowgrass he passed it on to Dave 1" 
 But it appeared not, and Dolly had to wrestle with an explana- 
 tion. It was too much involved for letterpress, but Uncle Mo 
 thought he could gather that Dave had been treated as a mere 
 bystander, supposed to be absorbed in angUng, during a con- 
 versation between Michael Ragstroar and the Man. " Dave he 
 came home and told you what the Man said to Micky — ^was that 
 it ?" So Uncle Mo surmised aloud, not at all clear that Dolly 
 would understand him But, as it turned out, he was right, and 
 Dolly was glad to be able to attest his version of the facts. She 
 resumed the nodding, but slower, as though so much emphasis 
 had ceased to be necessary. " Micky toldited Dave," she said. 
 She then became immensely amused at a way of looking at the 
 event suggested by her uncle. The Man had told Micky; Micky 
 had told Dave; Dave had told Dolly; and Dolly had told Uncle 
 Mo, who now intensified the interest of the event by saying he 
 should tell Aunt M'riar. Dolly became vividly anxious for this 
 climax, and felt that this was life indeed, when Uncle Mo called 
 out to Aunt M'riar : — " Come along here, M'riar, and see what 
 
 20 
 
S06 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sort of head and tail you can make of this here little Dolly !" 
 Whereupon Aunt M'riar came in from out at the back, and 
 listened to a repetition of Dolly's tale while she dried her arms, 
 which had been in a wash-tub. 
 
 " Well, Mo," she said, when Dolly had repeated it, more or 
 less chaotically, " if you ask me, what I say is — ^you make our 
 Dave speak out and tell you, when he's back from school, and 
 say you won't have no nonsense. For the child is that secretive 
 it's all one's time is worth to be even with him. . . . What's 
 the Doctor's stuff for you've been spending your money on at 
 EMngses ?" 
 
 " Only a stimulatin' mixture for to give tone to the system. 
 Dr. Ekings says it'll do it a world o' good. Never known it fail, 
 he hasn't." 
 
 " Have you been having any more alarming symptoms. Mo, 
 and never told me ?" 
 
 " Never been better in my life, M'riar. But I thought it was 
 getting on for time I should have a bottle o' stuff, one sort or 
 other. Don't do to go too long without a dose, nowadays." 
 Whereupon Aunt M'riar looked incredulous, and read the label, 
 and smelt the bottle, and put it back on the mantelshelf. And 
 Uncle Mo asked for the wineglass broke off short, out of the 
 cupboard; because it was always best to be beforehand, whether 
 you had anything the matter or not. 
 
 Whatever Aunt M'riar said, Dave was not secretive. Prob- 
 ably she meant communicative, and was referring to the fact 
 that Dave, whenever he was called on for information, though 
 always prompt to obhge, invariably made reply to his questioner 
 in an undertone, in recognition of a mutual confidence, and 
 exclusion from it of the Universe. He had a soul above the 
 vulgarities of publication. Aunt M'riar merely used a word 
 that sounded well, irrespective of its meaning — a common 
 literary practice. 
 
 Therefore Dave, when applied to by Uncle Mo for particulars 
 of what " the Man " said, made a statement of which only 
 portions reached the general public. This was the usual public 
 after supper; for Mr. Alibone's companionship in an evening pipe 
 was an almost invariable incident at that hour. 
 
 " What's the child a-sayin' of. Mo ?" said Aunt M'riar. 
 
 " Easy a bit, old Urry Scurry !" said Uncle Mo, drawing on 
 his imagination for an epithet. " Let me do a bit of listening. 
 . . . What was it the party said again, Davy — ^just pre- 
 cisely ? . . ." Dave was even less audible than before in his 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAB'S STORY CAME OUT 307 
 
 response to this, and Uncle Mo evidently softened it for repeti- 
 tion: — " Said if Micky told him any — etceterer — ^Ues he'd rip his 
 heart out ? Was that it, Dave ?" 
 
 " Yorce," said Dave, aloud and emphatically. " This time !" 
 Which seemed to imply that the speaker had refrained from 
 doing so, to his credit, on some previous occasion. Dave laid 
 great stress on this point. 
 
 Aunt M'riar seemed rather panic struck at the nature of this 
 revelation. " Well now. Mo," said she, " I do wonder at you, 
 letting the child tell such words 1 And before Mr. Alibone, 
 too !" 
 
 Mr. Jerry's expression twinkled, as though he protested 
 against being credited with a Pharisaical purity, susceptible to 
 shocks. Uncle Mo said, with less than usual of his easy-going 
 manner: — " I'm a going, M'riar, to get to the bottom of this here 
 start. So you keep outside o' the ropes !" and then after a little 
 by-play with Dave and Dolly, which made the hair of both 
 rougher than ever, he said suddenly to Dave: — "Well, and 
 wasn't you frightened ?" 
 
 " Micky wasn't frightened," said Dave, discreetly evasive. 
 He objected to pursuing the subject, and raised a new issue. 
 The sketch that followed of the interview between Micky and 
 the Man was a good deal blurred by constant India-rubber, but 
 its original could be inferred from it — probably as follows, any 
 omissions to conciliate public censorship being indicated by stars. 
 Micky speaks first: 
 
 " Who'll you rip up ? You lay 'ands upon me, that's all ! 
 You do, and I'll blind your eyesight, s'elp me ! Why, I'd sum- 
 ming a Police Orficer, and have you took to the Station, just as 
 soon as look at you. . . ." It may be imagined here that 
 Michael's voice rose to a half-shriek, following some movement 
 of the Man towards him. " I would, by Goard ! You try it 
 on, that's all !" 
 
 " Shut up with yom: * * row, you * * young * * . . . No, 
 master, I ain't molestin' of the boy; only just frightening him 
 for a bit of a spree ! / don't look like the sort to hurt boys, 
 do I, guVnor ?" This was addressed to a bystander, named in 
 Dave's report as " the gentleman." Who was accompanied by 
 another, described as " the lady." The latter may have said 
 to the former: — " I think he looks a very kind-hearted man, my 
 dear, and you are making a fuss about nothing." The latter 
 certainly said " Hggrromph !" or something like it, which the 
 reporter found difficult to render. Then the man assumed a 
 
308 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 hypocritical and plausible manner, saying to Michael: — " Fm your 
 friend, my boy, and there's a new shilling for you, good for two 
 * * tanners any day of the week." Micky seemed to have been 
 softened by this, and entered into a colloquy with the donor, 
 either not heard or not understood by Dave, whose narrative 
 seemed to point to his having been sent to a distance, with a 
 doubt about inappHcable epithets bestowed on him by the Man, 
 calUng for asterisks in a close report. Some of these were prob- 
 ably only half -understood, even by Micky; being, so to speak, the 
 chirps of a gaol-bird. But Dave's report seemed to point to 
 " Now, is that * * yoimg * * to be trusted not to split ?" 
 although he made Uttle attempt to render the asterisky parts of 
 speech. 
 
 Uncle Mo and Mr. Jerry glanced at one another, seeming to 
 understand a phrase that had puzzled Aunt M'riar. 
 
 " That was it. Mo," said Mr. Jerry, exactly as if Uncle Mo 
 had spoken, " spit upon meant split upon." Dave in his inno- 
 cence had supposed that a profligacy he was himself sometimes 
 guilty of had been referred to. He felt that his uncle's knee 
 was for the moment the stool of repentance, but was relieved 
 when a new reading was suggested. There could be no disgrace 
 in sphtting, though it might be painful. 
 
 " And, of course," said Uncle Mo, ruffing Dave's locks, " of 
 course, you kept your mouth tight shut — hay ?" Dave, be- 
 wildered, assented. He connected this bouche cousue with his 
 own decorous abstention, not without credit to himself. Who 
 shall trace the inner workings of a small boy's brain ? " Instead 
 of telling of it all, straight off, to your poor old uncle !" There 
 was no serious indignation in Uncle Mo's tone, but the boy was 
 too new for nice distinctions. The suggestion of disloyalty 
 wounded him deeply, and he rushed into explanation. " Be- 
 corze — ^becorze — becorze — ^becorze," said he — " becorze Micky 
 said not to !" He arrived at his chmax hke a squib that attains 
 its ideal. 
 
 " Micky's an owdacious young varmint," said Uncle Mo. 
 " Small boys that listened to owdacious yoimg varmints never 
 used to come to much good, not in my time !" Dave looked 
 shocked at Uncle Mo's experience. But he had reservations 
 to offer as to Micky, which distinguished him from vulgar 
 listeners to incantations. " Micky said not to, and Micky said 
 Uncle Mo didn't want to hear tell of no Man out in Hoy' Park, 
 and me to keep my mouth shut till I was tolded to speak." 
 
 " And you told him to speak, and he spoke !" said Mr. Jerry, 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAE'S STORY CAME OUT 309 
 
 charitably helping Dave. " You couldn't expect any fairer than 
 that, old Mo." PubUc opinion sanctioned a concession in this 
 sense, and Dave came ofE the stool of repentance. 
 
 " Very good, then \" said Uncle Mo. " That's all squared, 
 and we can cross it off; But what I'm trying after is, how did 
 this here . . . bad-languagee " — he halted a minute to make 
 this word — " come to know anything about Goody Prichard 
 upstairs ?" 
 
 " Did he ?" said Mr. Jerry, who of com-se had only heard Dave 
 on the subject. 
 
 " This yoimg party said so," said Uncle Mo, crumpling Dolly 
 to identify her, " at the very first go off. Didn't you, httle 
 ginger-pop, hay ?" This new epithet was a passing recognition 
 of the suddenness with which Dolly had broken out as an in- 
 formant. It gratified her vanity, and made her chuckle. 
 
 Dave meanwhile had been gathering for an oratorical effort, 
 and now culminated. " I never told Dolly nuffint about Mrs. 
 Picture upstairs. What / said was ' old widder lady.' " 
 
 " Dolly translated it. Mo, don't you see ?" said Mr. Jerry. 
 Then, to illuminate possible obscurity, he added : — " Off o' one 
 slate onto the other ! Twig ?" 
 
 " I twig you, Jerry." Uncle Mo winked at his friend to show 
 that he was alive to surroundings, and tickled Dave suddenly 
 from a motive of policy. " How come this cove to know any- 
 thing about any widder lady — hay ? That's a sort of p'int 
 we've got to consider of." Dave was impressed by his uncle's 
 appearance of profoimd thought, and was anxious not to lag 
 behind in the solution of stiff problems. He threw his whole 
 soul into his answer. " Because he was The Man." Nathan 
 the prophet can scarcely have been more impressive. Perhaps, 
 on the occasion Dave's answer recalls, someone said: — " Hullo !" 
 in Hebrew, and gave a short whistle. That was what Mr. Jerry 
 did, this time. 
 
 Uncle Mo enjoined self-restraint, telegraphically; and said, 
 verbally: — " What man, young Legs ? Steady a minute, and tell 
 us who he was." Which will be quite intelligible to anyone 
 whose experience has included a small boy in thick boots sitting 
 on his knee, and becoming excited by a current topic. 
 
 Dave restrained his boots, and concentrated his mind on a 
 statement. It came with pauses and repetitions, which may 
 be omitted. " He worze the same Man as when you and me and 
 Micky, only not Dolly, see him come along down the Court 
 Sunday morning. Munce ago !" This was emphatic, to express 
 
310 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the date's remoteness. " He wanted for to be told about old 
 Widow Darrable who Kved down this Court, and Micky he said 
 no such name, nor yet anywhere's about this neighbourhood, he 
 said. And the Man he said Micky was a young Uar. And Micky 
 he said who are you a-callin' Mar ">...." 
 
 " What name did he say t" Uncle Mo interrupted, with grow- 
 ing interest. Dave repeated his misapprehension of it, which 
 incorporated an idea that similar widows would have similar 
 surnames. K one was Marrable, it was only natural that another 
 should be Darrable. 
 
 Aunt M'riar, whose interest also had been some time growing, 
 struck in incisively. " The name was Daverill. He's mixed it 
 up with the old- lady in the country he calls his granny." She 
 was the more certain this was so owing to a recent controversy 
 with Dave about this name, ending in his surrender of the 
 pronunciation " Marrowbone " as untenable, but introducing a 
 new element of confusion owing to Marylebone Church, a familiar 
 landmark. 
 
 There was something in Aunt M'riar's manner that made 
 Uncle Mo say: — "Anything disagreed, M'riar 1" Because, ob- 
 serve, his interest in this mysterious man in the Park turned 
 entirely on Mrs. Prichard's relations with him, and he had never 
 imputed any knowledge of him to Aunt M'riar. Why should 
 he ? Indeed, why should we, except from the putting of two 
 and two together ? Of which two twos. Uncle Mo might have 
 known either the one or the other — according to which was 
 which — ^but not both. This story has to confess to occasional 
 uncertainty about some of its facts. There may have been more 
 behind Uncle Mo's bit of rudeness about Aimt M'riar's disquiet 
 than showed on the surface. However, he never asked any 
 questions. 
 
 Those who have ever had the experience of keeping their own 
 counsel for a long term of years know that every year makes it 
 harder to take others into confidence. A concealed troth-plight, 
 marriage, widowhood — ^to name the big concealments involving 
 no disgrace — gets less and less easy to publish as time slips by, 
 even as the hinges rust of doors that no man opens. There 
 may be nothing to blush about in that cellar, but the key may 
 be lost and the door-frame may have gripped the door above, 
 or the footstone jammed it from below, and such fungus-growth 
 as the darkness has bred has a claim to freedom from the light. 
 Let it all rest — that is its owner's word to his own soul^ — let it 
 
HOW AUNT M'EIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 311 
 
 rest and be forgotten ! All the more when the cellar is full of 
 garbage, and he knows it. 
 
 There was no garbage in Aunt M'riar's cellar that she was 
 guilty of, but for all that she would have jumped at any excuse 
 to leave that door tight shut. The difficulty was not so much 
 in what she had to tell — ^for her conscience was clear — as in 
 rousing an unprepared mind to the hearing of it. Uncle Mo, 
 quite the reverse of apathetic to anything that concerned the 
 well-being of any of his surroundings, probably accounted Aimt 
 M'riar's as second to none but the children's. Nevertheless, the 
 difficulty of rousing him to an active interest in this hidden 
 embarrassment of hers, of which he had no suspicion, was so 
 palpable to Aunt M'riar, that she was sorely put to it to decide 
 on a course of action. And the necessity for action was not 
 imaginary. Keep in mind that all Uncle Mo's knowledge of 
 Aunt M'riar's antecedents was summed up in the fact of her 
 widowhood, which he took for granted — although he had never 
 received it totidem verbis when she first came to supplant Mrs. 
 Twiggins — ^and which had been confirmed as Time went on, and 
 no husband appeared to claim her. Even it he could have sus- 
 pected that her husband was still living, there was nothing in 
 the world to connect him with this escaped convict. No wonder 
 Uncle Mo's complete unconsciousness seemed to present an im- 
 passable barrier to a revelation. Aunt M'riar had not the ad- 
 vantages of the Roman confessional, with its suggestive guichet. 
 Had some penitent, deprived of that resource, been driven back 
 on the analogous arrangement of a railway booking-office, the 
 difficulty of introducing the subject could scarcely have been 
 greater. 
 
 However, Aunt M'riar was not going to be left absolutely 
 without assistance. Next evening — the evening, that is, of 
 the day when Dave told the tale of the Man in the Park — 
 Uncle Moses showed an unusual restlessness, following on a 
 period of thoughtfulness and silence. After supper he said 
 suddenly: — "I'm a-going to take a turn out, M'riar. Any 
 objection ?" 
 
 " None o' my making. Mo. Only Mr. Jerry, he'll be roimd. 
 What's to be told him ?" 
 
 "Ah — ^I'll tell you. Just you say to Jerry — ^just you tell 
 him . . ." 
 
 " What'll I teU him ?" For Uncle Mo appeared to waver. 
 " Just you tell him to drop in at the Sun, and bide till I come. 
 They've a sing-song going on to-night, with the pianner. He'll 
 
312 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 make hisself happy for an hour. I'll be round in an hour's time, 
 teU him." 
 
 " And where are you off for all of an hour. Mo ?" 
 
 " That's part of the p'int, M'riar. Don't you be too inquis- 
 eye-tive. . . . No — I don't mind tellin' of ye, if it's partic'lar. 
 I'm going to drop round to the Station to shake hands with 
 young Simmun Rowe — ^they've made him Inspector there — he's 
 my old pal Jerky Rowe's son I knew from a boy. Man under 
 forty, as I judge. But he won't let me swaller up his time, 
 trust him ! Tell Jerry I'll jine him at half-after nine, the very 
 latest." 
 
 " I'll acquaint him what you say. Mo. And you bear in mind 
 what Mr. Jeffcoat at The Sun had to say about yourself. Mo." 
 
 " What was it, M'riar ? Don't you bottle it up." 
 
 " Why, Mr. Jeffcoat he said, after passing the time of day, 
 round in Clove Street, ' I look to Mr. Wardle to keep up the 
 character of The Sun,' he said. So you bear in mind. Mo." 
 
 Whereupon Uncle Mo departed, and Aunt M'riar was left to 
 her own reflections, the children being abed and asleep by now ; 
 Dolly certainly, probably Dave 
 
 Presently the door to the street was pushed open, and Mr. 
 Jerry appeared. " I don't see no Moses ?" said he. 
 
 Aunt M'riar gave her message, over her shoulder. To justify 
 this she should have been engaged on some particular task of 
 the needle, easiest performed when seated. Mr. Alibone, to whom 
 her voice sounded unusual, looked round to see. He only saw that 
 her hands were in her lap, and no sign was visible of their em- 
 ployment. This was unlike his experience of Aunt M'riar. 
 " Find the weather trying, Mrs. Wardle ?" 
 
 " It don't do me any harm." 
 
 " Ah — some feels the heat more than others." 
 
 Aunt M'riar roused herself to reply: — " If you're meaning me, 
 Mr. AMbone, it don't touch me so much as many. Only my 
 bones are not so young as they were — ^that's how it came I was 
 sitting down. Now, supposin' you'd happened in five minutes 
 later, you might have found me tidin' up. I've plenty to do 
 yet awhile." But this was not convincing, although the speaker 
 wished to make it so; probably it would have been better had 
 less effort gone to the utterance of it. For Aunt M'riar's was 
 too obvious. 
 
 Mr. Jerry laughed cheerfully, for consolation. " Come now. 
 Aunt M'riar," said he, " you ain't the one to talk as if you was 
 forty, and be making mention of yom' bones. Just you let them 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 313 
 
 alone for another fifteen year. That'll be time." Mr. Jerry 
 had been like one of the family, so pleasantry of this sort was 
 warranted. 
 
 It was not unwelcome to Aunt M'riar. " I'm forty-six, Mr. 
 Jerry," she said. " And forty-six is six-and-forty." 
 
 " And fifty-six is six-and-fifty, which is what I am, this very 
 next Michaelmas. Now I call that a coincidence, Mrs. Wardle." 
 
 Aunt M'riar reflected. " I should have said it was an acci- 
 dent, Mr. Jerry. Like anythin' else, as the sayin' is. You 
 mention to Mo, not to be late, no more than need be. Not to 
 throw away good bedtime !" Mr. Jerry promised to impress 
 the advantages of early hours, and went his way. But his re- 
 flections on his short interview with Aunt M'riar took the form 
 of asking himself what had got her, and finding no answer to the 
 question. Something evidently had, from her manner, for there 
 was nothing in what she said. 
 
 He asked the same question of Uncle Mo, coming away from 
 The Sun, where they did not wait for the very last tune on the 
 piano, to the disgust of Mr. Jeffcoat, the proprietor. " What's 
 got Aunt M'riar ?" said Uncle Mo, repeating his words. " No- 
 thing's got Aunt M'riar. She'd up and tell me fast enough if 
 there was anything wrong. What's put you on that lay, 
 Jerry ?" 
 
 " I couldn't name any one thing. Mo. But going by the looks 
 of it, I should judge there was a screw loose in somebody's wheel- 
 barrow. P'r'aps I'm mistook. P'r'aps I ain't. S'posing you 
 was to ask her. Mo ! — asking don't cost much." 
 
 Uncle Moses seemed to weigh the outlay. " No," he said. 
 " Asking wouldn't send me to the work'us." And when he had 
 taken leave of his friend at their sundering-point, he spent the 
 rest of his short walk home in speculation as to what had set 
 Jerry off about Aunt M'riar. It was with no misgiving of hear- 
 ing of anything seriously amiss that he said to her, as he sat in 
 the little parlour recovering his breath, after walking rather fast, 
 while she cultured the flame of a candle whose wick had been 
 cut off short: — " Everything all right, M'riar ?" He was under 
 the impression that he asked in a nonchalant, easy-going manner, 
 and he was quite mistaken. It was only perfectly palpable that 
 he meant it to be so, and he who parades his indifference is apt 
 to overreach himself. 
 
 Aunt M'riar had been making up her mind that she must tell 
 Mo what she knew about this man Daverill, at whatever cost 
 to herself. It would have been much easier had she known 
 
314 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 much less. Face to face with an opportunity of telling it, her 
 resolution wavered and her mind, imperfectly made up, favoured 
 postponement. To-morrow would do. " Ho yes," said she. 
 " Everything's all right. Mo. Now you just get to bed. Time 
 enough, I say, just on to midnight !" But her manner was 
 defective and her line of argument ill-chosen. Its result was 
 to produce in her hearer a determination to discover what had 
 got her. Because it was evident that Jerry was right, and that 
 something had. 
 
 " One of the kids a-sickenin' for measles ! Out with it, 
 M'riar ! Which is it— Dave ?" 
 
 " No, it ain't any such a thing. Nor yet Dolly. . . . Any- 
 one ever see such a candle ?" 
 
 " Then it's scarlatinal, or mumps. One or other on 'em !" 
 
 " Neither one nor t'other. Mo. T'aint neither Dave nor 
 Dolly, this time." But something or other was somebody or 
 something, that was clear ! Aunt M'riar may have meant this, 
 and yet not seen how very clear she made it. She recurred to that 
 candle, and a suggestion of Uncle Mo's. " It's easy sayin', ' Run 
 the toller off,' Mo; but who's to do it with such a Uttle flame ?" 
 
 Presently the candle, carefully fostered, picked up heart, and 
 the tension of doubt about its future was relieved. " She'll do 
 now," said Uncle Mo, assigning it a gender it had no claim to. 
 " But what's gone wrong, M'riar ?" 
 
 The appeal for information was too simple and direct to allow 
 of keeping it back; without, at least, increasing its implied im- 
 portance. Aunt M'riar only intensified this when she an- 
 swered : — " Nothing at all ! At least, nothing to nobody but me. 
 Tell you to-morrow. Mo ! It's time we was all abed. Mind 
 you don't wake up Dave !" For Dave was becoming his uncle's 
 bedfellow, and Dolly her aunt's; exchanges to vary monotony 
 growing less frequent as the children grew older. 
 
 But Uncle Mo did not rise to depart. He received the candle, 
 adolescent at last, and sat holding it and thinking. He had 
 become quite aUve now to what had impressed Mr. Jerry in 
 Aimt M'riar's appearance and manner, and was hajking back 
 over recent events to find something that would account for it. 
 The candle's secondary education gave him an excuse. It's 
 maturity would have left him no choice but to go to bed. 
 
 A Ught that flashed through his mind anticipated it. " It's 
 never that beggar," said he, and then, seeing that his description 
 was insufficient: — "Which one? Why, the one we was a- 
 talking of only this morning. Him I've been rounding off with 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 315 
 
 Inspector Rowe — our boy's man Le saw in the Park. You've 
 not been alarmin' yourseli about him ?" For Uncle Mo thought 
 he could see his way to alarm for a woman, even a plucky one, 
 in the mere proximity of such a ruffian. He would have gone 
 on to say that the convict was, by now, probably again in the 
 hands of the police, but he saw as the candle flared that Aunt 
 M'riar's usually fresh complexion had gone grey-white, and that 
 she was nodding in confirmation of something half-spoken that 
 she could not articulate. 
 
 He was on his feet at his quickest, but stopped at the sound 
 of her voice, reviving. " What — ^what's that, M'riar ?" he 
 cried. " Say it again, old girl !" So strange and incredible had 
 the words seemed that he thought he heard, that he could not 
 believe in his own voice as he repeated them: — " Your husband !" 
 He was not clear about it even then ; for, after a pause long 
 enough for the candle to bum up, and show him, as he fell back 
 in his seat. Aunt M'riar, tremulous but relieved at having spoken, 
 he repeated them again : — " Your husband / Are ye sure you're 
 saying what you mean, M'riar ?" 
 
 That it was a relief to have said it was clear in her reply: — 
 "Ay, Mo, that's all right — right as I said it. My husband. 
 You've known I had a husband. Mo." His astonishment left 
 him speechless, but he just managed to say: — " I thought him 
 dead;" and a few moments passed. Then she added, as though 
 deprecatingly: — " You'll not be angry with me. Mo, when I tell 
 you the whole story ?" 
 
 Then he found his voice. " Angry ! — ^why, God bless the 
 wench ! — ^what call have I to be angry ? — let alone it's no con- 
 cern of mine to be meddlin' in. Angry ! No, no, M'riar, it it's 
 so as you say, and you haven't gone dotty on the brain !" 
 
 " I'm not dotty. Mo. You'll find it all right, just like I tell 
 you " 
 
 " Well, then, I'm mortal sorry for you, and there you have it, 
 in a word. Poor old M'riar !"' His voice went up to say: — 
 " But you shan't come to no harm through that character, if 
 that's what's in it. I'll promise ye that." It fell again. " No — 
 I won't wake the children. ... I ain't quite on the shelf yet, nor 
 yet in the dustbin. There's my hand on it, M'riar." 
 
 " I know you're good. Mo." She caught at the hand he held 
 out to give her, and kept it. " I know you're good, and you'll 
 do like you say. Only I hope he won't come this way no more. 
 I hope he don't know I'm here." She seemed to shudder at thg 
 thought of him, 
 
316 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Don't he know you're here ? That's rum, too. But it's 
 rum, all round. Things cure rum, sometimes. Now, just you 
 take it easy, M'riar, and if there's anything you'll be for telling 
 me — because I'm an old friend like, d'ye see ? — ^why, just you 
 tell me as much as comes easy, and no more. Or just tell me 
 nothing at all, if it sootes you better, and I'll set here and give 
 an ear to it." Uncle Mo resumed his former seat, and Aunt 
 M'riar put back the hand he released in her apron, its usual 
 place when not on active service. 
 
 " There's nothing in it I wouldn't tell. Mo — ^not to you — ^and 
 it won't use much of the candle to teU it. I'd be the easier for 
 you to know, only I'm not so quick as some at the telhng of 
 things." She seemed puzzled how to begin. 
 
 Uncle Moses helped. " How long is it since you set eyes on 
 him?" 
 
 " Twenty-five years — all of twenty-five years." 
 
 Uncle Mo was greatly relieved at hearing this. " Well, 
 but, M'riar — twenty -five years ! You're shet of the beggar — 
 clean shet of him ! You are that, old girl, legally and factually. 
 But then," said he, " when was you married to him ?" 
 
 " I've got my Unes to show for that. Mo. July six, eighteen 
 twenty-nine." 
 
 Uncle Mo repeated the date slowly after her, and then seemed 
 to plunge into a perplexing calculation, very distorting to the 
 natural repose of his face. Touching his finger-tips appeared to 
 make his task easier. After some effort, which ended without 
 clear results, he said: — "What I'm trying to make out is, how 
 long was you and him keeping house ? Because it don't figure 
 up. How long should you say ?" 
 
 " We were together six weeks — ^no more." 
 
 " And you — you never seen him since 1" 
 
 " Never since. Twenty-five years agone, this last July !" 
 At which Uncle Mo was so confounded that words failed him. 
 His only resource was a long' whistle. Aunt M'riar, on the 
 contrary, seemed to acquire narrative powers from hearing her 
 own voice, and continued: — " I hadn't known him a twelve- 
 month, and I should have been wiser than to hsten to him — at 
 my age, over one-and-twenty !" 
 
 " But you made him marry you, M'riar ?" 
 
 " I did that. Mo. And I have the lines and my ring, to show 
 it. But I never told a soul, not even mother. I wouldn't have 
 told her, to be stopped — so bad I was ! . . . What ! — ^DoUy — 
 Dolly's mother ? Why, she was just a young child, Dave's age. 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 317 
 
 . . . How did I come to know him ? It was one day in the 
 bar — he came in with Tom Spring, and ordered him a quart of 
 old Kennett. He was dressed like a gentleman, and free with 
 his money. . . ." 
 
 " I knew old Tom Spring — he's only dead this two years past. 
 I s'pose that was The Tun, near by Piccadilly, I've heard you 
 speak on." 
 
 "... That was where I see him. Mo, worse luck for the day ! 
 The One Tun Inn. They called him the gentleman from Aus- 
 tralia. He was for me and him to go to Brighton by the coach, 
 and find the Parson there. But I stopped him at that, and we 
 was maixied in London, quite regular, and we went to Brighton, 
 and then he took me to Doncaster, to be at the races. There's 
 where he left me, at the Crown Inn we went to, saying he'd be 
 back afore the week was out. But he never came — only letters 
 came with money — I'll say that for him. Only no address of 
 where he was, nor scarcely a word to say how much he was 
 sfending. JBut I kep' my faith towards him; and the promise I 
 made, I kep' all along. And I've never borne his name nor said 
 one word to a living soul beyond one or two of my own folk, 
 who were bound to be quiet, for their sake and mine. Dolly's 
 mother, she came to know in time. But the Court's called me 
 Aunt M'riar all along." 
 
 A perplexity flitted through Uncle Mo's reasoning powers, and 
 vanished unsolved. Why had he accepted " Aunt M'riar " as a 
 sufficient style and title, almost to the extent of forgetting the 
 married name he had heard assigned to its owner five years 
 since ? He would probably have forgotten it outright, if the 
 post had not, now and then — but very rarely — ^brought letters 
 directed to " Mrs. Catchpole," which he had passed on, if he 
 saw them first, with the comment: — " I expect that's meant for 
 you. Aunt M'riar"; treating the disposition of some person 
 unknown to use that name as a pardonable idiosyncracy. When 
 catechized about her, he had been known to answer: — " She 
 ain't a widder, not to my thinking, but her husband he's as 
 dead as a door-nail. Name of Scratchley; or Simmons — some 
 such a name !" As for the designation of " Mrs. Wardle " used 
 as a ceremonial title, it was probably a vague attempt to bring 
 the household into tone. Whoever knows the class she moved 
 in will have no trouble in recalling some case of a similar uncer- 
 tainty. 
 
 This is by way of apology for Uncle Mo's so easily letting that 
 perplexity go, and catching at another point. " What did he 
 
318 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 make you promise him, M'riar ? Not to let on, I'll pound 
 it ! He wanted you to keep it snug — ^wasn't that the way of 
 it ?" 
 
 " Ah, that was it. Mo. To keep it aU private, and never say 
 a word." Then Aunt M'riar's answer became bewildering, in- 
 explicable " Else his family would have known, and then I 
 should have seen his mother. Seein' I never did, it's no wonder 
 I didn't know her again. I might have, for all it's so many 
 years." It was more the manner of saying this than the actual 
 words, that showed that she was referring to a recent meeting 
 with her husband's mother. 
 
 Uncle Mo sat a moment Uterally open-mouthed with astonish- 
 ment. At length he said : — " Why, when and where, woman aUve, 
 did you see his mother ?" 
 
 " There now. Mo, see what I said — ^what a bad one I am at 
 telling of things ! Of course, Mrs. Prichard upstairs, she's 
 Ralph Daverill's mother, and he's the man who got out of 
 prison in the Mornin' Star and killed the gaoler. And he% 
 the same man came down the Court that Sunday and Dave 
 see in the Park. That's Ralph Thornton Daverill, and he's 
 my husband !" 
 
 Uncle Mo gave up the idea of answering. The oppression of 
 his bewilderment was too great. It seemed to come in gusts, 
 checked off at intervals by suppressed exclamations and knee- 
 slaps. It was a knockdown blow, with no one to call time. 
 But then, there were no rules, so when a new inquiry presented 
 itself, abrupt utterance followed: — "Wasn't there any? . . . 
 wasn't there any ? . . ." followed by a pause and a difficulty of 
 word-choice. Then in a lowered voice, an adjustment of its 
 terms, due to dehcacy: — "Wasn't there any consequences — 
 such as one might expect, ye know ?" 
 
 Aunt M'riar did not seem conscious of any need for deHcacies. 
 " My baby was bom dead," she said. " That's what you meant. 
 Mo, I take it ?" Then only getting in reply: — " That was it, 
 M'riar," she went on: — " None knew about it but mother, when 
 it was all over and done with, later by a year and more. I would 
 have called the child Polly, being a girl, if it had lived to be 
 christened. . . . Why would I ? — ^because that was the name 
 he knew me by at The Tim." 
 
 Uncle Mo began to say: — " If the Devil lets him off easy, 
 I'll . . ." and stopped short. It may have been because he 
 reflected on the limitations of poor Humanity, and the futihty 
 of bluster in this connection, or because he had a question to 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAE'S STORY GAME OUT 319 
 
 ask. It related to Aunt M'riar'^s unaccountable ignorance 
 throughout of Daverill's transportation to Norfolk Island, and 
 the particular felony that led to it. " If you was not by way 
 of seeing the police-reports, where was all your friends, to say 
 never a word ?" 
 
 " No one said nothing to me," said Aunt M'riar. She seemed 
 hazy as to the reason at first; then a light broke: — " They never 
 ibiew his name, ye see. Mo." He replied on reflection: — 
 " Course they didn't — right you are !" and then she added : — 
 " I only told mother that; and she's no reader." 
 
 A mystery hung over one part of the story — how did she 
 account for herself to her family ? Was she known to have 
 been married, or had popular interpretation of her absence 
 inclined towards charitable silence about its causes — asked no 
 questions, in fact, giving up barmaids as past praying for ? She 
 seemed to think it sufl&cient Ught on the subject to say: — " It was 
 some length of time before I went back home. Mo," and he had 
 to press for particulars. 
 
 His conclusion, put briefly, was that this deserted wife, re- 
 appearing at home with a wedding-ring after two years' absence, 
 had decided that she would fulfil her promise of silence best by 
 giving a false married name. She had engineered her mother's 
 inspection of her marriage-lines, so as to leave that good woman 
 — a poor scholar — ^under the impression that Daverill's name 
 was Thornton; not a very difficult task. The name she had 
 chosen was Catchpole; and it still survived as an identifying 
 force, if called on. But it was seldom in evidence, " Aunt 
 M'riar " quashing its unwelcome individuadfcv. The general 
 feehng had been that " Mrs. Catchpole " might be anybody, and 
 did not recommend herself to the understanding. There was 
 some sort o' sense in " Aunt M'riar." 
 
 The eUciting of these points, hazily, was all Uncle Mo was 
 equal to after so long a colloquy, and Aunt M'riar was not 
 in a condition to tell more. She relit another haK-candle 
 that she had blown out for economy when the talk set in, 
 and called Uncle Mo's attention to the moribund condition 
 of his own: — "There's not another end in the house. Mo," 
 said she. So Uncle Mo had to use that one, or get to bed in the 
 dark. 
 
 He had been already moved to heartfelt anger that day against 
 this very Daverill, having heard from his friend the Police- 
 Inspector the story of his arrest at The Pigeons, at Hammer- 
 smith; and, of course, of the atrocious crime which had been his 
 
320 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 latest success with the opposite sex. This Police-Inspector must 
 have been Simeon Rowe, whom you may remember as stroke- 
 oar of the boat that was capsized there in the winter, when 
 Sergeant Ibbetson of the river-police met his death in the 
 attempt to capture Daverill. Uncle Mo's motive in visiting 
 the police-station had not been only to shake hands with the 
 son of an old acquaintance. He had carried what information 
 he had of the escaped convict to those who were responsible for 
 his recapture. 
 
 If you turn back to the brief accoimt the story gave of Maisie 
 Daverill's — or Prichard's — return to England, and her son's 
 marriage, and succeed in detecting in Polly the barmaid at the 
 One Tun any trace of the Aimt M'riar with whom you were 
 already shghtly acquainted, it will be to the discredit of the 
 narrator. For never did a greater change pass over human 
 identity than the one which converted the beauti de diable of 
 the young wench just of age, who was serving out stimulants to 
 the Ring, and the Turf, and the men-about-town of the late 
 twenties, to that of the careworn, washtub-wom, and needle- 
 worn manipulator of fine Unen and broidery, who had been in 
 charge of Dolly and Dave Wardle since their mother's death 
 three years before. Never was there a more striking testimony 
 to the power of Man to make a desolation of the life of Woman, 
 nor a shrewder protest against his right to do so. For Polly 
 the Barmaid, look you, had done nothing that is condemned by 
 the orthodox morahties; she had not even flown in the face of 
 her legal duty to her parents. Was she not twenty-one, and 
 does not that magic numeral pay all scores ? 
 
 The Australian gentleman had one card in his pack that was 
 Ace of Trumps in the game of Betrayal. He only played it 
 when nothing lower would take the trick. And PoUy got little 
 enough advantage from the sanction of the Altar, her marriage- 
 Unes and her wedding-ring, in so far as she held to the condition 
 precedent of those warrants of respectability, that she should 
 observe silence about their existence. The only dupKcity of 
 which she had been guilty was the assumption of a false married 
 name, and that had really seemed to her the only possible com- 
 promise between a definite breach of faith and passive acceptance 
 of undeserved ill-fame. And when the hideous explanation of 
 Daverill's long disappearance came about, and eclaircissement 
 seemed inevitable, she saw the strange discovery she had 
 made of his relation to Mrs. Prichard, as an aggravation 
 
HOW AUNT M'RIAR'S STORY CAME OUT 321 
 
 to the embarrassment of acknowledging his past relation to 
 herself. 
 
 There was one feeling only that one might imagine she might 
 have felt, yet was entirely a stranger to. Might she not have 
 experienced a longing — a curiosity, at any rate — to set eyes 
 again on the husband who had deserted her all those long years 
 ago ? And this especially in view of her imcertainty as to how 
 long his absence had been compulsory ? As a matter of fact, 
 her only feeling about this terrible resurrection was one of 
 shrinking as from a veritable carrion, disinterred from a grave 
 she had earned her right to forget. Why need this gruesome 
 memory be raked up to plague her ? 
 
 The only consolation she could take with her to a probably 
 sleepless pillow was the last charge of the old prizefighter to 
 her not to fret. " You be easy, M'riar. He shan't come a-nigh 
 you. I'll square Mm fast enough, if he shows up down this 
 Comrt — ^you see if I don't \" But when she reached it, there 
 was still balm in Gilead. For was not Dolly there, so many 
 fathoms deep in sleep that she might be kissed with impunity, 
 long enough to bring a relieving force of tears to help the night- 
 mare-haunted woman in her battle with the past ? 
 
 As for Mo, his threat towards this convicted miscreant had no 
 connection with his recent interview with his police-officer friend 
 — ^no hint of appeal to Law and Order. The anger that burnt 
 in his heart and sent the blood to his head was as unsullied, as 
 pure, as any that ever Primeval Man sharpened flints to satisfy 
 before Law and Order were invented. 
 
 21 
 
322 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HOW UNCLE MO MADE THE DOOE-OHAIN SECUBE, AND A SUN- 
 IIOWEB LOOKED ON THE WHILE. HOW AXTNT m'BIAR STOPPED 
 HER EARS. A BIT OF XJNCLB MO's MIND. HOW DOLLY 
 KISSED HIM THEOUGH THE DOOR-CRACK, BUT NOT MBS. BURR. 
 CONCERNING RATS, TO WHICH UNCLE MO TOOK THE OPPOSITE 
 VIEW. OE ONE, OR SOME, WHICH TRAVELLED OUT TO AUS- 
 TEALIA WITH OLD MRS. PBICHARD. HOW DAVE MET THREE 
 LADIES IN A CARRIAGE, NONE OE WHOM KISSED HIM. HOW 
 UNCLE MO WENT UPSTAIRS WITH THE CHILDEEN, IN CONNEC- 
 TION WITH THE BATS HE HAD DISCBEDITED, AND STAYED UP 
 QUITE A TIME. HOW HE INTERVIEWED ME. BAETLETT ABOUT 
 THEM 
 
 "You'ee never fidgeting about him?" said Aunt M'riar to 
 Uncle Mo, one morning shortly after she had told him the story 
 of her marriage. " He's safe out of the way by now. You may 
 rely on your police-inspectin' friend to inspect him. Didn't he 
 as good as say he was took. Mo ?" 
 
 " That warn't precisely the exact expression used, M'riar," 
 said Uncle Mo, who was doing something with a tool-box at the 
 door that opened on the front-garden that opened on the Court. 
 Dolly was holding his tools, by permission — only not chisels or 
 gouges, or gimlets, or bradawls, or anything with an edge to it 
 — and the sunflower outside was watching them. Uncle Mo was 
 extracting a screw with difficulty, in spite of the fact that it was 
 all but out already. He now elucidated the cause of this diffi- 
 culty, and left the Police Inspector alone. " 'Tain't stuck, if you 
 ask me. I should say there never had been no holt to this screw 
 from the beginning. But by reason there's no life in the thread, 
 it goes round and roimd rayther than come out. . . . Got it ! 
 — ^wanted a little coaxin', it did." That is to say, a few back- 
 turns with very hght pressure brought the screw-head free 
 enough for a finger-grip, and the rest was easy. " It warn't of 
 any real service," said Uncle Mo. " One size bigger would ketch 
 and hold in. This here one's only so much horse-tentation. 
 Now I can't get a bigger one through the plate, and I can't 
 rimer out the hole for want of a tool — ^not so much as a small 
 roimd file. . . . Here's a long 'un, of a thread with the first. 
 He'll ketch in if there's wood-backin' enough. . . . That's got 
 him ! Now it'll take a Hemperor, to get that out." Uncle Mo 
 
HOW SAPPS HEAED A VISITOR WAS COMING 323 
 
 paused to enjoy a moment's triumph, then harked back: — 
 "No — ^the percise expression made use of was, they might put 
 their finger on him any minute." 
 
 " Which don't mean the same thing," said Aunt M'riar. 
 
 " No more it don't, M'riar, now you mention it. But he won't 
 trust his nose down this Court. If he does, and I ain't here, 
 just you do like I tell you. . . ." 
 
 Aunt M'riar interrupted. " I couldn't find it in me to give 
 him up. Mo. Not for all I'm worth !" She spoke in a quick 
 undertone, with a stress in her voice that terrified Dolly, who 
 nearly let go a hammer she had been allowed to hold, as harm- 
 
 " Not if you knew what he's wanted for, this time ?" 
 " Don't you tell me. Mo. I'd soonest know nothing. . . . 
 No — no — don't you tell me a word about it !" And Aunt M'riar 
 clapped her hands on her ears, leaving an iron, that she had been 
 trying to abate to a professional heat, to make a brown island 
 on its flannel zone of influence. All her colour — she had a fair 
 share of it — had gone from her cheeks, and DoUy was in two 
 minds whether she should drop the hammer and weep. 
 
 Uncle Mo's reassuring voice decided her to do neither, this 
 time. " Don't you be frightened, M'riar," said he. " I wasn't 
 for telling you his last game. Nor it wouldn't be any satisfac- 
 tion to tell. I was only goiag to say that if he was to turn up 
 in these parts, just you put the chain down — ^it's all square and 
 sotmd now — and tell him he'U find me at The Sun." He closed 
 the door and put the chain he had been revising on its mettle; 
 adding as he did so, in defiance of Astronomy: — " 'Tain't any so 
 far oflE, The Sun." Dolly's amtisement at the fimction of the 
 chain, and its efficacy, was so great as to cause her aunt to rule, 
 as a point of Law, that six times was plenty for any little girl, 
 and that she must leave her uncle a minute's peace. 
 
 Dolly granting this. Aunt M'riar took advantage of it, to ask 
 what course Uncle Mo woidd pursue, if she complied with his 
 instructions. " If you gave him up to the PoUce, Mo," she said, 
 " and I'd sent him to you, it would be all one as if I'd done it." 
 
 " I'll promise not to give him to the Police, if he comes to 
 me off of your sending, M'riar. In course, if he's only himself 
 to thank for coming my way, that's another pair of shoes." 
 
 " But if it was me, what'll you do. Mo ?" Aunt M'riar wasn't 
 getting on with those cuffs. 
 
 " What'll I do ? Maybe I'll give him ... a bit of my 
 mind." 
 
324 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " No — what'll you do. Mo 1" There was a new apprehension 
 in her voice as she dropped it to say: — " He's a younger man 
 than you, by nigh twenty years." 
 
 The anticipation of that bit of Uncle Mo's mind had gripped 
 his jaw and knitted his brow for an instant. It vanished, and 
 left both free as he answered: — " You be easy, old girl ! I won't 
 give him a chance to do me no harm." Aunt M'riar bent a 
 suspicious gaze on him for a moment, but it ended as an even 
 more than usually genial smile spread over the old prizefighter's 
 face, and he gave way to Dolly's request to be sut out only dest 
 this once more; which ended in a Pyramus and Thisbe accommo- 
 dation of kisses through as much thoroughfare as the chain 
 permitted. They were painful and dangerous exploits; but it 
 was not on either of those accounts that Mrs. Burr, coming 
 home rather early, declined to avail herself of Dolly's sugges- 
 tion that she also should take advantage of this rare opportu- 
 nity for uncomfortable endearments; but rather in deference 
 to pubhc custom, whose rules about kissing Dolly thought 
 ridiculous. 
 
 The door having to be really shut to release the chain, its 
 reopening seemed to inaugurate a new chapter, at liberty to 
 igiiore Dolly's flagrant suggestions at the end of the previous 
 one. Besides, it was possible for Uncle Mo to affect ignorance; 
 as, after all, Dolly was outside. Mrs. Burr did not tax him with 
 insincerity, and the subject dropped, superseded by less inter- 
 esting matter. 
 
 " I looked in to see," said Aunt M'riar, replying to a question 
 of Mrs. Burr's. " The old lady was awake and knitting, last 
 time. First time she'd the paper on her knee, open. Next time 
 she was gone off sound." 
 
 " That's her way, ma'am. Off and on — on and off. But she 
 takes mostly to the knitting. And it ain't anything to wonder 
 at, I say, that she drops off, reading. I'm sure I can't hold my 
 eyes open five minutes over the newspaper. And books would 
 be worse, when you come to read what's wrote in them, if it 
 wasn't for having to turn over the leaves. Because you're 
 bound to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow 
 on." Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their 
 own experience. It was agreed further that small type — ^Parlia- 
 mentary debates and the like — ^was more soporific than large, 
 besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of 
 turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too 
 prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable 
 
HOW SAPPS HEARD A VISITOR WAS COMING 325 
 
 forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at that old Mrs. 
 Prichard should go to sleep over the newspaper at her age, 
 seeing that none but the profoundest scholars could keep awake 
 for five minutes while perusing it. The minute Dave came in 
 from school he should take Dolly upstairs to pay the old lady 
 a visit, and brighten her up a bit. 
 
 " Very like she's been extra to-day " — ^thus Mrs. Burr con- 
 tinued — " by reason of rats last night, and getting no sleep." 
 
 " There ain't any rats in your room, missis," said Uncle Mo. 
 " We should hear 'em down below if there was." 
 
 " What it is if it ain't rats passes me then, Mr. Wardle. I do 
 assure you there was a loud crash hke a gun going off, and we 
 neither of us hardly got any sleep after." 
 
 " Queer, anyhow !" said Uncle Mo. But he evidently doubted 
 the statement, or at least thought it exaggerated. 
 
 " I'll be glad to tell her you take the opposite view to rats, 
 Mr. Moses," said Mrs. Burr. " For it sets her on fretting when 
 she gets thinking back. And now she'll never be tired of telling 
 about the rats on the ship when she was took out to Australia. 
 Rimning over her face, and starting her awake in the night ! 
 It gives the creeps only to hear." 
 
 " There, Dolly, now you listen to how the rats run about on 
 Mrs. Picture when she was on board of the ship." Thus Aunt 
 M'riar, always with that haunting vice of perverting Art, Litera- 
 ture, Morals, and Philosophy to the oppressive improvement of 
 the young. She seldom scored a success, and this time she was 
 hoisted with her own petard. For Dolly jumped with delight 
 at the prospect of a romance of fascinating character, combining 
 Zoology and Travel. She applied for a place to hear it, on the 
 knee of Mrs. Burr, who, however, would have had to sit down 
 to supply it. So she was forced to be content with a bald 
 version of the tale, as Mrs. Burr had to see to getting their 
 suppers upstairs. She was rather disappointed at the size and 
 number of the rats. She enquired: — "Was they large rats, or 
 small ?" and would have preferred to hear that they were about 
 the size of small cats — ^not larger, for fear of inconveniencing old 
 Mrs. Picture. And a circumstance throwing doubt on their 
 number was unwelcome to her. For it appeared that old Mrs. 
 Picture slept with her fellow-passengers in a dark cabin, and 
 no one might hght a match all night for fear of the Captain. 
 And rats ran over those passengers' faces ! But it may have 
 been all the same rat, and to Dolly that seemed much less satis- 
 factory than troops. She was rather cast down about it, but 
 
326 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 there was no need to discourage Dave. She could invent some 
 extra rats, when he came back from school. 
 
 Lay down the book, you who read, and give but a moment's 
 thought to the strangeness of these two episodes, over half a 
 century apart. One, in the black darkness of an emigrant's 
 sleeping-quarters on a ship outward-bound, all its tenants huddled 
 close in the stifling air; child and woman, weak and strong, sick 
 and healthy even, penned in alike to sleep their best on ranks of 
 shelves, a mere packed storage of human goods, to be delivered 
 after long months of battle with the seas, ten thousand miles from 
 home. Or, if you shrink from the thought that Maisie's luck on 
 her first voyage was so cruel as that, conceive her interview with 
 those rodent fellow-passengers as having taken place in the best 
 quarters money could buy on such a ship — and what would they 
 be, against a good steerage-berth nowadays ? — ^and give her, at 
 least, a couch to herself. Picture her, if you wiU, at liberty to 
 start from it in terror and scramble up a companion ladder to 
 an open deck, and pick her way through shrouds and a bare 
 headway of restless sprits above, and Heaven knows what of 
 coiled cordage and inexplicable bulkhead underfoot, to some 
 haven where a merciful old mariner, alone upon his watch, shuts 
 his eyes to his duty and tolerates the beautiful girl on deck, 
 when he is told by her that she caimot sleep for the rats. Make 
 the weather fair, to keep the picture at its best, and let her 
 pass the hours tiU the coming of the dawn, watching the main- 
 mast-truck sway to and fro against the Southern Cross, as the 
 breeze falls and rises, and the bulwark-plash is soft or loud upon 
 the waters. 
 
 And then — ^all has vanished ! That was halt a century ago, 
 and more. And a very Uttle girl with very blue eyes and a 
 disgracefully rough shock of golden curls has just been told of 
 those rats, and has resolved to add to their number — shaving 
 power to do so, like a Committee — ^when she comes to retell 
 the tale to her elder brother; and then they will both — and 
 this is the strangest of all ! — ^they will both go and make a 
 noisy and excited application to an authority to have it con- 
 firmed or contradicted. And this authority will be that girl 
 who sat on that deck beneath the stars, and listened to the 
 bells sounding the hours through the night, to keep the ship's 
 time for a forgotten crew, on a ship that may have gone to the 
 bottom many a year ago, on its return voyage home perhaps — 
 who knows? 
 
HOW SAPPS HEARD A VISITOR WAS COMING 327 
 
 Before Dave heard Dolly's version of the rats, he had a 
 tale of his own to tell, coming in just after Mrs. Biirr had de- 
 parted. As he was excited by the event he was yearning to 
 narrate, he did not put it so lucidly as he might have done. 
 He said : — " Oy saw the lady, and another lady, and another lady, 
 all in one carriage. And they see me. And the lady " — he 
 still pronoimced this word loydy — "she see me on the poyve- 
 ment, and ' Stop ' she says. And then she says, ' You're Doyvy, 
 oyn't you, that had the ax'nent V I says these was my books 
 I took to scrool. . . ." 
 
 " Didn't you say you was Davy ?" said Uncle Mo. And 
 Aunt M'riar she actually said: — " Well I never ! — ^not to tell the 
 lady who you was !" 
 
 Dave was perplexed, looking with blue-eyed gravity from one 
 to the other. "The loydy said I was Doyvy," said he, in a 
 shghtly injured tone. He did not at all like the suggestion that 
 he had been guilty of discoiui}esy. 
 
 " In course the lady knew, and knew correct," said Uncle 
 Mo, drawing a distinction which is too often overlooked. " Cut 
 along and tell us some more. What more did the lady say ?" 
 
 Dave concentrated his intelligence powerfully on accuracy: — 
 " The loydy said to the yuther loydy — ^the be-yhooterful 
 loydy . . ." 
 
 " Oh, there was a beautiful lady, was there ?" 
 
 Dave nodded excessively, and continued: — " Said here's a 
 friend of mine, Doyvy Wardle, and they was coming to poy a 
 visit to, to-morrow afternoon." 
 
 " And what did the other lady say ?" 
 
 Dave gathered himself together for an effort of intense 
 fidelity: — " She said — she said — ' He's much too dirty to kiss 
 in the open street ' — she said, and better not to touch. Yorce !" 
 He seemed magnanimous towards Gwen, in spite of her finical 
 delicacy. 
 
 Aunt M'riar tximed his face to the light, by the chin. " What's 
 the child been at ?" said she. 
 
 " The boys had some corks," was Dave's explanation. Nothing 
 further seemed to be required; Uncle Mo merely remarking: 
 " It'll come off with soap." However, there was ssme doubt 
 about the identity of these carriage ladies. Was one of them 
 the original lady of the rings; who had taken Dave for a drive 
 or vice versa. " Not her !" said Dave; and went on shaking his 
 head so long to give his statement weight, that Aunt M'riar 
 abruptly requested him to stop, as her nervous system could 
 
328 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 not bear the strain. It was enough, she said, to make her eyes 
 come out by the roots. 
 
 " She must have been somebody else. She couldn't have 
 been nobody," said Uncle Mo cogently. " Spit it out, old chap, 
 Who was she ?" 
 
 It was easy to say who she was; the strain of attestation had 
 turned on who she wasn't. Dave became fluent: — " Whoy, the 
 loydy what was a cistern, and took me in the roylwoy troyne 
 and in the horse-coach to Granny Marrowbone." For he had 
 never quite dissociated Sister Nora from ball-taps and plumb- 
 ings. He added after reflection: — " Only not dressed up like 
 then \" 
 
 At this point Dolly, whose preoccupation about those rats had 
 stood between her and a reasonable interest in Dave's adventure, 
 struck in noisily and rudely with disjointed particulars about 
 them, showing a poor capacity for narrative, and provoking 
 Uncle Mo to tickling her with a view to their suppression. Aunt 
 M'riar seized the opportunity to capture Dave and subject him 
 to soap and water at the sink. 
 
 As soon as the boys' corks, or the effect of using them after 
 ignition as face-pigments, had become a thing of the past, Dave 
 and Dolly were ready to pay their promised visit to Mrs. Prichard, 
 Uncle Mo suggested that he might act as their convoy as far as 
 the top-landing. This was a departure from precedent, as stair- 
 climbing was never very welcome to Uncle Mo. But Aunt 
 M'riar consented, the more readily that she was all behind with 
 her work. Uncle Mo not only went up with the children, but 
 stayed up quite a time with the old lady and Mrs. Burr. When 
 he came down he did not refer to his conversation with them, 
 but went back to Dave's encounter with his aristocratic friends 
 in the street. 
 
 " The lady that sighted our boy out," said he, " she'll be 
 Miss What's-her-name that come on at the Hospital — her with 
 the clean white tucker. . . ." This referred to a vaguely recol- 
 lected item of the costume in which Sister Nora was dressed up 
 at the time of Dave's accident. It had lapsed, as inappropriate, 
 during her nursing of her father in Scotland, and had not been 
 resumed. 
 
 " That's her," said Aunt M'riar. " Sister of Charity— that's 
 what she is. The others are ladyships, one or both. They all 
 belong." The tone of remoteness might have been adopted in 
 speaking of inhabitants of Mars and Venus. 
 
 " I thought her the right sort, herself," said Uncle Mo, im- 
 
HOW SAPPS HEARD A VISITOR WAS COMING 329 
 
 plying that others of her monde might be safely assumed to be 
 the wrong sort, pending proof of the contrary. " An3rways, 
 she's coming to pay Dave a visit, and I'll be glad of a sight of 
 her, for one !" 
 
 " Oh, I've no fault to find. Mo, if that's what you mean." 
 Aunt M'riar was absorbed in her mystery, doing justice to what 
 was probably a lady's nightgear, of imperial splendour. So she 
 probably had spoken rather at random; and, indeed, seemed to 
 think apology necessary. She took advantage of the end of an 
 episode to say, while contemplating the perfection of two un- 
 impeachable cuffs: — " So long as the others don't give theirselves 
 no airs." Isolated certainly, as to structure; but, after all, has 
 speech any use except to communicate ideas ? 
 
 Uncle Mo presumably understood, as he accepted the form 
 of speech, saying: — "And so long as we do ourselves credit, 
 M'riar." 
 
 " Well, Mo, you never see me do anjrthing but behave." 
 
 " That I never did, M'riar. Right you are !" Which ended 
 a Uttle colloquy that contained or implied a protest against the 
 compulsory association of classes, expressed to a certain extent 
 by special leniency towards an exceptional approach from with- 
 out. Having entered his own share of the protest. Uncle Mo 
 announced his intention of seeking Mr. Bartlett the builder, to 
 speak to him about them rats. This saying Aunt M'riar did not 
 even condemn as enigmatical, so completely did all that relates 
 to buildings lie outside her jurisdiction. 
 
 " I've got my 'ands so fidl just now," said Mr. Bartlett, when 
 Uncle Mo had explained the object of his visit, " or I'd step 
 round to cast an eye on that bressumer. Only you may make 
 your mind easy, and say I told you to it. If we was all of us 
 to get into a prespiration whenever a board creaked or a bit of 
 loose parging come down a chimley, we shouldn't have a minute's 
 peace of our lives. Some parties is convinced of Ghosts the 
 very first crack ! Hysterical females in partic'lar." Mr. Bart- 
 lett did not seem busy, externally; but he contrived to give an 
 impression that he was attending to a job at Buckingham 
 Palace. 
 
 Uncle Mo felt abashed at his implied rebuke. It was not 
 deserved, for he was guiltless of superstition. However, he had 
 accepted the position of delegate of the top-floor, which, of 
 course, was an hysterical floor, owing to the sex of its tenants. 
 For Mr. Bartlett's meaning was the conventional one, that all 
 women were hysterical, not some more than others. Uncle Mo 
 
330 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 felt that his position was insecure; and that he had better retire 
 from it. Noises, he conceded, was usually nothing at all; but 
 he had thought he would mention them, in this case. 
 
 1H&. Bartlett professed himself sincerely obliged to all persons 
 who would mention noises, in spit© of their equivocal claims to 
 existence. It might save a lot of trouble in the end, and you 
 never knew. As soon as he had a half an hour to spare he 
 would give attention. Till Tuesday he was pretty well took 
 up. No one need fidget himself about the noises he mentioned; 
 least of all need the landlord be communicated with, as he was 
 not a Practical Man, but in Independent Circumstances. More- 
 over, he lived at Brixton. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 OF A RAID ON DOLLY 's GARDEN. THAT YOUNG DRUITT'S BE- 
 HAVIOUR TO HIS SISTER. MR. RAGSTROAR's ACCIDENT, AND 
 HIS MOKE. HOW THE TWO LADIES CAME AT LAST. LADY 
 GWENDOLEN RIVERS, AND HOW DOLLY GOT ON HER LAP. 
 HOW DAVE WENT UPSTAIRS TO GET HIS LETTER. HOW MRS. 
 PBICHARD HAD TAKEN MRS. MARROWBONE TO HEART, AND 
 VICE TESSA. HOW DOLLY GOT A LOCK OF GWEN's HAIR, AND 
 VICE VERSA. HOW DAVE DELAYED AND DOLLY AND GWEN 
 WENT TO FETCH HIM. A REMARKABLE SOUND. THEN GOD- 
 KNOWS-WHAT, OUTSIDE ! 
 
 An effort of horticulture was afoot in the front-garden of No. 7, 
 Sapps Court. Dave Wardle and Dolly were engaged in an 
 attempt to remedy a disaster that had befallen the Sunfiower. 
 There was but one — ^the one that had been present when Uncle 
 Mo was adjusting that door-chain. 
 
 Its career had been cut short prematurely. For a boy had 
 climbed up over the end wall of those gardens acrost the Court, 
 right opposite to where it growed; and had all but cut through 
 the stem, when he was cotched in the very act by Michael Rag- 
 stroar. That young coster's vigorous assertion of the rights of 
 property did a man's heart good to see, nowadays. The man 
 was Uncle Mo, who got out of the house plenty of time to stop 
 
GWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 331 
 
 Michael half-murdering the marauder, as soon as he considered 
 the latter had had enough, he being powerfully outclassed by 
 the costermonger boy. Why, he was only one of them young 
 Druitts, when all was said and done ! Michael felt no stem joy 
 in him — ^a foeman not worth licking, on his merits. But the 
 knife that he left behind, with a buckhom handle, was a fizzing 
 knife, and was prized in after-years by Michael. 
 
 The Wardle household had gone into mourning for the Sun- 
 flower. Was it not the same Sunflower as last year, reincarnated ? 
 Dolly sat under it, shedding tears. Uncle Mo showed ignorance 
 of gardening, saying it might grow itself on again if you giv' it 
 a chance; not if you kep' on at it like that. Dave disagreed 
 with this view, but respectfully. His Hospital experience had 
 taught him the use of ligatures; and he kept on at it, obtaining 
 from Mrs. Burr a length of her wide toyp to tie it in position. 
 If limbs healed up under treatment, why not vegetation ? The 
 operator was quite satisfied with his handiwork. 
 
 In fact, Dave and Dolly both foresaw a long and prosperous 
 life for the flower. They rejected Aunt M'riar's suggestion, that 
 it should be cut clear o£E and stood in water, as a timid com- 
 promise — a stake not worth playing for. And Michael Eag- 
 stroar endorsed the flattering tales Hope told, citing instances 
 in support of them derived from his own experience, which 
 appeared to have been exceptional. As, for instance, that over- 
 supplies of fruit at Covent Garden were took back and stuck on 
 the stems again, as often as not. " I seen 'em go myself," said 
 he. " 'Ole cartloads I" 
 
 " Hark at that unblushing young story !" said Aunt M'riar, 
 busy in the kitchen, Michael being audible without, lying freely. 
 " He'll go on Uke that till one day it'll surprise me if the ground 
 don't open and swallow him up." 
 
 But Uncle Mo had committed himself to an expression of 
 opinion on the vitality of vegetables. He might condemn 
 exaggeration, but he could scarcely repudiate a principle he 
 had himself almost affirmed. He took refuge in obscurity. 
 " 'Tain't for the likes of us, M'riar," said he, shaking his head 
 profoundly, " to be sayin' how queer starts there mayn't be. 
 My jiminy I — ^the things they says in lectors, when they gets 
 the steam up !" He shook his head a little quicker, to recover 
 credit for a healthy incredulity, and arranged a newspaper he 
 was reading against difficulties, to gain advantages of position 
 and a better discrimination of its columns. 
 
 " If it was the freckly one with the red head," said Aunt 
 
332 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 M'riar, referring back to the fracas of the morning, "all I can 
 say is, I'm sorry you took Micky off him." From which it 
 appeared that this culprit was not unknown. Indeed, Aunt 
 M'riar was able to add that Widow Druitt his mother couldn't 
 call her soul her own for that boy's goings on. 
 
 " He'd got a tidy good punishing afore I got hold of the 
 scruff of my man's trousers," said Uncle Mo, who seemed well 
 contented with the culprit's retribution ; and, of coxirso, he knew. 
 " Besides," he added, " he had to get away over them bottles." 
 That is to say, the wall-top, bristling with broken glass. 
 Humanity had paved the way for the enemy's retreat. Uncle 
 Mo added inquiry as to how the freckly one's behaviour to his 
 family had come to the knowledge of Sapps Court. 
 
 " You can see acrost from Mrs. Prichard's. He do lead 'em 
 all a life, that boy ! Mrs. Burr she saw him pour something 
 down his sister's back when she was playing scales. Ink, she 
 says, by the look. But, of course, it's a way off from here, 
 over to Mrs. Druitt's." 
 
 " Oh — she's the one that plays the pyanner. Same tune all 
 through — first up, then down ! Good sort of tune to go to 
 sleep to !" 
 
 " 'Tain't a tune. Mo. It's scales. She's being learned how. 
 One day soon she'll have a tune to play. An easy tune. Mrs. 
 Prichard says she could play several tunes before she was that 
 girl's age. Then she hadn't no brother to werrit her. I lay 
 that made a difference." Aunt M'riar went on to mention other 
 atrocities ascribed by Mrs. Burr to the freckly brother. His 
 behaviour to his musical sister had, indeed, been a matter of 
 serious concern to the upstairs tenants, whose window looked 
 directly upon the back of Mrs. Druitt's, who took in lodgers in 
 the main street where Dave had met with his accident. 
 
 The boy Michael was suffering from enforced leisure on the 
 day of this occurrence, as his father's cart had met with an 
 accident, and was under repair. Its owner had gone to claim 
 compensation personally from the butcher whose representative 
 had ridden him down; not, he alleged, by misadventure, but 
 fiom a deep-rooted malignity against all poor but honest men 
 struggling for a livelihood. No butcher, observe, answers this 
 description. Butchers are a class apart, whose motives are ex- 
 tortion, grease, and blood. They wallow in the last with joy, 
 and practise the first with impimity. If they can get a chance 
 to run over you, they'll do it ! Trust them for that ! Never- 
 theless, so hopeless would this butcher's case be if his victim 
 
GWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 333 
 
 went to a lawyer, that it was worth having a try at it afore he 
 done that — so Mr. Rackstraw put it, later. Therefore, he had 
 this afternoon gone to High Street, Clapham, to apply for seven 
 pun' thirteen, and not take a penny less. Hence his son's 
 ability to give attention to local matters, and a temporary 
 respite to his donkey's labours in a paddock at Netting Hill. 
 As for Dave, and for that matter the freckly boy, it was not 
 term-time with them, for some reason. Dave was certainly at 
 home, and was bidden to pay a visit to Mrs. Prichard in the 
 course of the afternoon, if those lady-friends of his whom he 
 met in the street yesterday did not come to pay him a visit. 
 It was not very likely they would, but you never could tell. 
 Not to place reliance ! 
 
 Uncle Mo kept looking at his watch, and saying that if this 
 here lady meant to turn up, she had better look ahve. Being 
 reproved for impatience by Aant M'riar, he said very good, 
 then — he'd stop on to the hour. Only it was no use runnin' 
 through the day like this, and nothing coming of it, as you 
 might say. This was only the way he preferred of expressing 
 impatience for the visit. It is a very common one, and has the 
 advantages of concealing that impatience, putting whomsoever 
 one expects in the position of an importunate seeker of one's 
 society, and suggesting that one is foregoing an appointment in 
 the City to gratify him. Uncle Mo did unwisely to tie himseK 
 to the hour, as he became thereby pledged to depart, he having no 
 particular wish to do so, and no object at all in view. 
 
 But he was not to be subjected to the indignity of a recanta- 
 tion. As the long hand of his watch approached twelve, and 
 he was beginning to feel on the edge of an embarrassment, Dave 
 left off watering the Sunflower, and ran indoors with the news 
 that there were two ladies coming down the Court, one of whom 
 was Sister Nora, and the other " the other lady." Dave's con- 
 science led him into a long and confused discrimination between 
 this other lady and the other other lady, who had shared with 
 her the back-seat in that carriage yesterday. It was quite un- 
 important which of the two had come, both being unknown to 
 Dave's family. Moreover, there was no time for the inventory 
 of their respective attributes Dave wished to supply. He was 
 still struggling with a detail, in an undertone lest it should 
 transpire in general society, when he found himself embraced 
 from behind, and kissed with appreciation. He had not yet 
 arrived at the age when one is surprised at finding oneself sud- 
 denly kissed over one's shoulder by a lady. Besides, this was 
 
334 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 his old acquaintance, whom he was delighted to 'welcome, but 
 who made the tactical mistake of introducing " the other lady " 
 as Lady Gwendolen Rivers. Stiffness might have resulted, if it 
 had not been for the conduct of that young lady, which would 
 have thawed an iceberg. It was not always thus with her; but, 
 when the whim wfis upon her, she was irresistible. 
 
 " I know what Dave was saying to you when we came in, 
 Mr. Wardle," said she, after capturing Dolly to sit on her knee, 
 and coming to an anchor. " He was telling you exactly what 
 his friend had said to him about me. He was Micky. I've 
 heard all about Micky. This chick's going to teU me what 
 Micky said about me. Aren't you, DoUy ?" She put Dolly 
 at different distances, ending with a hug and a kiss, of which 
 Dolly reciprocated the latter. 
 
 Dolly would have embarked at once on a full report, if left 
 to herself. But that unfortunate disposition of Aimt M'riar's 
 to godmother or countersign the utterances of the young, very 
 nearly nipped her statement in the bud. " There now, Dolly 
 dpar," said the excellent woman, " see what the lady says ! — 
 you're to tell her just exactly what Micky said, only this very 
 minute in the garden." Which naturally excited Dolly's sus- 
 picion, and made her impute motives. She retired within her- 
 self — a self which, however, twinkled with a consciousness of 
 hidden knowledge and a resolution not to disclose it. 
 
 Gwen's tact saved the position. " Don't you tell them, you 
 know — only me ! You whisper it in my ear. . . . Yes — quite 
 close up, like that." Dolly entered into this with zest, the 
 possession of a secret in common with this new and refulgent 
 lady obviously conferring distinction. 
 
 Sister Nora — ^not otherwise known to Sapps Court — ^was re- 
 suming history during the past year for the benefit of Uncle Mo. 
 She had seen nothing of Dave, or, indeed, of London, since 
 October; till, yesterday, when she got back from Scotland, whom 
 should she see before she had been five minutes out of the 
 station but Dave himself ! Only she hardly knew him, his face 
 was so black. Here Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar shook penitential 
 heads over his depravity. Sister Nora paid a passing tribute to 
 the Usages of Society, which rightly discourage the use of burnt 
 cork on the countenance, and proceeded. She had heard of him, 
 though, having paid a visit to Widow Thrale in the country, 
 where he got well after the Hospital. 
 
 This was a signal for Dave to find his voice, and he embarked 
 with animation on a variegated treatment of subjects con- 
 
GWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 335 
 
 nected with his visit to the country. A comparison of his affec- 
 tion for Widow Thrale and Granny Marrable, with an undis- 
 guised leaning to the latter; a reference to the lady with the 
 rings, her equipage, and its driver's nose; Farmer Jones's bull, 
 and its imtrustworthy temper; the rich qualities of duckweed; 
 the mill-model on the mantelshelf, and individualities of his 
 fellow-convalescents. This took time, although some points 
 were only touched lightly. 
 
 Possibly Uncle Moses thought it might prove prolix, as he 
 said: — " If I was a young shaver now, and ladies was to come 
 to see me, I should get a letter I was writing, to show 'em." 
 The delicacy and tact with which this suggestion was offered 
 was a Uttle impaired by Aunt M'riar's: — "Yes, now you be a 
 good boy, Dave, and . . ." and so forth. 
 
 Many Uttle boys would not have been so magnanimous as Dave, 
 and would have demurred or offered passive resistance. Dave 
 merely removed Sister Nora's arm rather abruptly from his 
 neck, saying: — " Storp a minute !" and ran up the stairs that 
 opened on the kitchen where they were sitting. There was more 
 room there than in the little parlour. 
 
 Uncle Moses explained : — " You see, ladies, this here young 
 Dave, for all he's getting quite a scholar now, and can write 
 any word he can spell, yet he don't take to doing it quite on 
 his own hook just yet a while. So he gets round the old lady 
 upstairs, for to let him set and write at her table. Then she can 
 tip him a wink now and again, when he gets a bit fogged." 
 
 " That's Mrs. Picture," said Gwen, interested. But she did 
 not speak loud enough to invite correction of her pronunciation 
 of the name, and Sister Nora merely said: — " That's her !" and 
 nodded. Dolly at once launched into a vague narrative of a 
 misadventure that had befallen her putative offspring, the doll 
 that Sister Nora had given her last year. Struvvel Peter had 
 met with an accident, his shock head having got in a candle- 
 flame in Mrs. Picture's room upstairs, so that he was quite 
 smooth before he could be rescued. The interest of this super- 
 seded other matter. 
 
 " Davy he's a great favoxuite with the ladies," said Uncle 
 Mo, as Struvvel Peter subsided. " He ain't partic'lar to any 
 age. Likes 'em a bit elderly, if anythin', I should say." He 
 added, merely to generalise the conversation, and make talk: — 
 " Now this here old lady in the country she's maybe ten years 
 younger than our Mrs. Prichard, but she's what you might call 
 getting on in years." 
 
336 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Prichard," said Gwen, for Sister Nora's ear. " I thought it 
 couldn't be Picture." 
 
 " Prichard, of course ! How funny we didn't think of it — so 
 obvious !" 
 
 " Very — when one knows ! I think I Uke Picture best." 
 
 Aunt M'riar, not to be out of the conversation, took a formal 
 exception to Uncle Mo's remark: — " The ladies they know how 
 old Old Mrs. Marrable in the country is, without your telling of 
 'em. Mo." 
 
 " Right you are, M'riar ! But they don't know nothing about 
 old Mrs. Prichard." Uncle Mo had spoken at a guess of Mrs. 
 Marrowbone's age, of which he knew nothing. It was a sort of 
 emulation that had made him assess his old lady as the senior. 
 He felt vulnerable, and changed the conversation. " That 
 young Squire's taking his time, M'riar. Supposin' now I was 
 just to sing out to him ?" 
 
 But both ladies exclaimed against Dave being hurried away 
 from his old lady. Besides, they wanted to know some more 
 about her — ^what sort of classification hers would be, and so 
 on. There were stumbHng-blocks in this path. Better keep 
 clear of classes — stick to generalities, and hope for lucky chances ! 
 
 " What made Dave think the old souls so much aUke, Mrs. 
 Wardle ?" said Sister Nora. " Children are generally so sharp 
 to see differences." 
 
 " It was a kind of contradictiousness, ma'am, no better I do 
 think, merely for to set one of 'em alongside the other, and look 
 at." Aunt M'riar did not really mean contradictiousness, and 
 can hardly have meant contradistinction, as that word was not 
 in her vocabulary. We incline to look for its origin in the first 
 six letters, which it enjoys in common with contrairiwise and 
 contrast. This, however, is Philology, and doesn't matter. Let 
 Aunt M'riar go on. 
 
 " Now just you think how ahke old persons do get, by reason 
 of change. 'Tain't any fault of their own. Mrs. Prichard she's 
 often by way of inquiring about Mrs. Marrowbone, and I should 
 say she rather takes her to heart." 
 
 " How's that, Mrs. Wardle ? Why ' takes her to heart '?" 
 A joint question of the ladies. 
 
 " Well — now you ask me — I should say Mrs. Prichard she 
 wants the child all to herself." Aunt M'riar's assumption that 
 this inquiry had been made without suggestion on her own part 
 was unwarranted. 
 
 " I'll tell you, ladies," said Uncle Mo, rolling with laughter. 
 
GWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 337 
 
 " The old granny's just as jealous as any school-girl ! She's 
 that, and you may take my word for it." He seemed afraid 
 this might be interpreted to Mrs. Prichard's disadvantage; for 
 he added, recovering gravity: — "Not that I blame her for it, 
 mind you !" 
 
 " Do you hear that, Gwen ?" said Sister Nora. " Mrs. Pic- 
 ture's jealous of Granny Marrowbone. ... I must tell you 
 about that, Mrs. War die. It's really as much as one's place is 
 worth to mention Mrs. Prichard to Mrs. Marrable. I assure you 
 the old lady believes I-don't-know-what about her — ^thinks she's 
 a wicked old witch who will make the child as bad as herself ! 
 She does, indeed ! But then, to be sure. Goody Marrable thinks 
 everyone is wicked in London. . . . What's that, Gwen ?" 
 
 " We want a pair of scissors, Dolly and I do. Do give us a 
 pair of scissors. Aunt Maria. . . . Yes, go on, Clo. I hear 
 every word you say. How very amusing ! . . . Thank you. 
 Aunt Maria !" For Gwen and Dolly had just negotiated an 
 exchange of locks of hair, which had distracted the fuU atten- 
 tion of the former from the conversation. She had, however, 
 heard enough to coniSrm a half -made resolution not to leave the 
 house without seeing Mrs. Prichard. 
 
 " Ass ! Vis piece off vat piece," says Dolly, making a selec- 
 tion from the mass of available gold, which Gwen snips off ruth- 
 
 " Well !" says Aunt M'riar, with her usual record of inex- 
 perience of childhood. " I never, never did, in all my christened 
 days !" 
 
 " Quip off a bid, bid piece with the Adders," says Dolly, 
 delighted at the proceeding. " A bid piece off me at the vethy 
 top." The ideal in her mind is analogous to the snuffing of a 
 candle. A lock of a browner gold than the one she gives it for 
 is sectired — ^big enough, but not what she had dreamed of. 
 
 Uncle Mo was seriously concerned at Dave's prolonged ab- 
 sence. Not that he anticipated any mishap ! — ^it was only a 
 question of courtesy to visitors. Supposing Aunt M'riar was 
 to go up and collar Dave and fetch him down, drastically ! Uncle 
 Mo always shirked stair-climbing, partly perhaps because he so 
 nearly filled the stairway. He overweighted the part, aestheti- 
 cally. 
 
 Gwen perceived her opportunity. " Please do nothing of the 
 sort. Aunt Maria," said she. " Look here ! Dolly and I are 
 going up to fetch him. Aren't we, Dolly ?" 
 
 It would have needed presence of mind to invent obstacles to 
 
 22 
 
338 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 prevent this, and neither Uncle Mo nor Aunt M'riar showed it, 
 each perhaps expecting Action on the other's part. Moreover, 
 Dolly's approval took such a tempestuous form that opposition 
 seemed useless. Besides, there was that fatal assurance about 
 Gwen that belongs to young ladies who have always had their 
 own way in everything. It cannot be developed in its fulness 
 late in life. 
 
 Aunt M'riar's protest was feeble in the extreme. " Well, I 
 should be ashamed to let a lady carry me ! That I should !" 
 If Aunt M'riar had known the resources of the Latin tongue, 
 she might have introduced the expression ceteris paribus. No 
 EngUsh can compass that amount of slickness; so her speech 
 was left crude. 
 
 Uncle Mo really saw no substantial reason why this beautiful 
 vision should not sweep Dolly- upstairs, if it pleased her. He 
 may have felt that a formal protest would be graceful, but he 
 could not think of the right words. And Aunt M'riar had fallen 
 through. Moreover, his memory was confident that he had left 
 his bedroom-door shut. As to miscarriage of the expedition 
 into Mrs. Prichard's territory, he had no misgiving. 
 
 Miss Grahame was convinced that the incursion would have 
 better results if she left it to its originator, than if she encum- 
 bered it with her own presence. After all, the room could be 
 no larger than the one she sat in, and might be smaller. Any- 
 how, they could get on very well without her for half an hour. 
 And she wanted a chat with Dave's guardians; she did not really 
 know them intimately. 
 
 "The two little ones must be almost hke your oTvn children 
 to you, Mr. Wardle," said she, to broach the conversation. 
 
 " Never had any, ma'am," said Uncle Mo, literal-minded from 
 constitutional good-faith. 
 
 " If you had had any was what I meant." Perhaps the reason 
 Miss Grahame's eye wandered after Aunt M'riar, who had fol- 
 lowed Gwen and Dolly — ^to " see that things were straight," she 
 said — ^was that she felt insecure on a social point. Uncle Mo's 
 eye followed hers. 
 
 "Nor yet M'riar," said he, seeing a precaution necessary. 
 " Or perhaps I should say one. Not good for much, though ! 
 Bom dead, I believe — ^years before ever my brother married her 
 sister. Never set eyes on M'riar's husband ! Name of Catch- 
 pole, I believe. ... That's her coming down." He raised his 
 voice, dropped to say this, as she came within hearing: — " Yes 
 '—me and M'riar we share 'em up, the two young characters. 
 
OWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 339 
 
 but we ain't neither of us their legal parents. Not strickly as 
 the Law goes, but we've fed upon 'em like, in a manner of 
 speaking, from the beginning, or nigh upon it. Little Dave, 
 he's sort of kept me a-going from the early days, afore we buried 
 his poor father — my brother David, you see. He died down this 
 same Court, four year back, afore little Dolly was good for much, 
 to look at. . . . They all right, M'riar ?" 
 
 " They're making a nice racket," said Aunt M'riar. " So I 
 lay there ain't much wrong with them." She picked up a piece 
 of work to go on with, and explored a box for a button to meet 
 its views. Evidently a garment of Dolly's. Probably this was 
 a slack season for the higher needlework, and the getting up of 
 fine linen was below par. 
 
 Uncle Mo resumed: — " So perhaps you're right to put it they 
 are like my own children, and M'riar's." He was so chivalrously 
 anxious not to exclude his co-guardian from her rights that he 
 might have laid himself open to be misunderstood by a stranger. 
 Miss Grahame understood him, however. So she did, thoroughly, 
 when he went on: — " I don't take at all kindly, though, to their 
 growing older. Can't be helped, I suppose. There's a many 
 peculiar starts in this here world, and him as don't Uke 'em just 
 has to lump 'em. As I look at it, changes are things one has 
 to put up with. If we had been handy when we was first made, 
 we might have got our idears attended to, to oblige. Things 
 are fixtures, now." 
 
 Miss Grahame laughed, and abstained consciously from re- 
 ferring to the inscrutable decrees of Providence, which called 
 aloud for recognition. " Of course, children shouldn't grow," 
 she said. " I should like them to remain three, especially the 
 backs of their necks." Uncle Mo's benevolent coimtenance 
 shone with an unholy cannibalism, as he nodded a mute ap- 
 proval. There was something very furmy to his hearer in this 
 old man's love of children, and his professional engagements of 
 former years, looked at together. 
 
 Aunt M'riar took the subject au serieux. " Now you're talk- 
 ing silly. Mo," she said. " If the children never grew, where 
 would the girls be. And a nice complainin' you men would 
 make then !" 
 
 Miss Grahame made an efEort to get away from abstract 
 Philosophy. " I'm afraid it can't be helped now, anyhow," 
 said she. " Dave is growing, and means to be a man. Oh dear 
 — he'll be a man before we know it. He'll be able to read and 
 write in a few months." 
 
340 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Uncle Mo's face showed a cloud. " Do ye really think that, 
 ma'am 1" he said. " Well — I'm afeared you may be right." 
 He looked so dreadfully downcast at this, that Miss Grahame 
 was driven to the conclusion that the subject was dangerous. 
 
 She could not, however, resist saying: — " He mitst know some 
 time, you know, Mr. Wardle. Surely you would never have 
 Dave grow up uneducated ?" 
 
 " Not so sure about that, ma'am I" said Uncle Mo, shaking a 
 dubious head. " There's more good men spiled by schoolmasters 
 than we hear tell of in the noospapers." What conspiracy of 
 silence in the Press this pointed at did not appear. But it was 
 clear from the tone of the speaker that he thought interested 
 motives were at the bottom of it. 
 
 Now Miss Grahame was said by critical friends — not enemies; 
 at least, they said not — ^to be over-anxious to confer benefits of 
 her own selection on the Human Race. Her finger-tips, they 
 hinted, were itching to set everyone else's house in order. 
 Naturally, she had a strong bias towards Education, that most 
 formidable inroad on ignorance of what we want to know nothing 
 about. Uncle Mo regarded the human mind, if not as a strong- 
 hold against knowledge, at least as a household with an inalien- 
 able right to choose its guests. Miss Grahame was in favour of 
 invitations issued by the State, and vise'd by the Church. 
 Everything was to be correct, and sanctioned. But it was quite 
 clear to her that these views would not be welcome to the old 
 prizefighter, and she was fain to be content with the slight 
 protest against Obscurantism just recorded. In short. Miss 
 Grahame found nothing to say, and the subject had to drop. 
 
 She could, however, lighten the air, and did so. " What on 
 earth are they about upstairs ?" said she. " I really think I 
 might go up and see." And she was just about to do so, with 
 the assent of Aunt M'riar, when the latter said suddenly: — 
 " My sakes and gracious ! What's that ?" — rather as though 
 taken aback by something unaccountable than alarmed by it. 
 
 Uncle Mo hstened a moment, undisturbed; then said, placidly: 
 — " Water-pipes, / should say." For in a London house no 
 sound, even one like the jerk of a stopped skid on a half -buried 
 boulder, is quite beyond the possible caprice of a choked supply- 
 pipe. 
 
 Miss Grahame would have accepted the sound as normal, with 
 some reservation as to the strangeness of everyday noises in 
 this house, but for Aunt M'riar's exclamation, which made her 
 say:—" Isn't that right ?" 
 
GWEN'S VISIT, AND WHAT ENDED IT 341 
 
 It was not, and the only human reply to the question was a 
 further exclamation from Aunt M'riar — one of real alarm this 
 time — at a disintegrating cracking sound, fraught with an 
 inexplicable sense of insecurity. " That ain't water-pipes," 
 said Uncle Mo. 
 
 Then something — something terrifying — happened in the Court 
 outside. Somethiig that came with a rush and roar, and ended 
 in a crash of snapping timber ajtid breaking glass. Something 
 that sent a cloud of dust through the shivered window-panes 
 into the room it darkened. Something that left behind it no 
 sound but a sharp cry for help and moaning cries of pain, and 
 was followed by shouts of panic and alarm, and the tramp of 
 running feet — a swift flight to the spot of helpers who could see 
 it without, the thing that had to be guessed by us within. 
 Something that had half-beaten in the door that Uncle Mo, as 
 soon as sight was possible, could be seen wrenching open, shout- 
 ing loudly, inexplicably: — "They are underneath — they are 
 underneath \" 
 
 Who were underneath ? The children ? And underneath 
 what? 
 
 A few seconds of dumb terror seemed an age to both women. 
 Then, Gwen on the stairs, and her voice, with rehef in its ring 
 of resolution. " Don't talk, but come up at once I The old lady 
 must be got down, somehow ! Come up !" A consciousness of 
 Dolly crying somewhere, and of Dave on the landing above, 
 shouting: — " Oy say, oy say !" more. Miss Grahame thought, as 
 a small boy excited than one afraid; and then, light through the 
 dust-cloud. For Uncle Mo, with a giant's force, had released 
 the jammed door, and a cataract of brick rubbish, falling in- 
 wards, left a gleam of clear sky to show Gwen, beckoning them 
 up, none the less beautiful for the tension of the moment, and the 
 traces of a rough baptism of dust. 
 
 What was it that had happened ? 
 
342 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 OF A LADY AND GENTLEMAN ON THE EDGE OF A LONG VOYAGE 
 TOGETHER. SHALL THEY TAKE THE TICKETS? HOWMK.PELLEW 
 HEAED SEVERAL CLOCKS STRIKE ONE. HOW HE CALLED 
 NEXT DAY, AND HEAED ABOT^T THE CHOBEY FAMILY. THE 
 PROFANITY OF POETS, WHEN PROFANE. HOW MR. PELLEW 
 SOMETIMES WENT TO CHURCH. THE POPULAR SUBJECT OF 
 LOVE, IN THE END. MRS. AMPHLETT STARFAX'S VIEWS. 
 KISSING FROM A NEW STANDPOINT. HOW MR. PELLEW FOE- 
 GOT, OR RECOLLECTED, HIMSELF. BONES, BELOW, AND HIS 
 BAD GUESSING. HOW THE CARRIAGE CAME BACK WITH A 
 FEIEND IT HAD PICKED UP, WHOM ME. PELLEW CARRIED 
 UPSTAIES. UNEQUIVOCAL SIGNS OF AN ATTACHMENT WHICH 
 
 Had Gwen really been able to see to the bottom of her cousin's, 
 the Hon. Percival's mind, she might not have felt quite so certain 
 about his predispositions towards her adopted aimt. The de- 
 scription of these two as wanting to rush into each other's arms 
 was exaggerated. It would have been fairer to say that Aunt 
 Constance was fully prepared to consider an ofEer, and that Mr. 
 Pellew was beginning to see his way to making one. 
 
 The most promising featvu:e in the lady's state of mind was 
 that she was formulating consolations, dormant now, but actively 
 available if by chance the gentleman did not see his way. She 
 was saying to herself that if another flower attracted this bee, 
 she herself would thereby only lose an admirer with a disposition 
 — only a slight one perhaps, but still undeniable — ^to become 
 corpulent in the course of the next few years. She could subor- 
 dinate her disUke of smoking so long as she could suppose him 
 ever so little in earnest; but, if he did waver by any chance, 
 what a satisfaction it would be to dweU on her escape from — 
 here a mixed metaphor came in — ^the arms of a tobacco shop ! 
 She could shut her eyes, if she was satisfied of the sincerity of a 
 redeeming attachment to herself, to all the contingencies of the 
 previous life of a middle-aged bachelor about town; but they 
 would no doubt supply a set-off to his disaffection, if that was 
 written on the next page of her book of Fate. In short, she 
 wo\ild be prepared in that case to accept the conviction that she 
 was well rid of him. But all this was subcutaneous. Given 
 only the one great essential, that he was not merely philander- 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 343 
 
 ing, and then neither his escapades in the past, nor his cigars, nor 
 even his suggestions towards a corporation, would stand in the 
 way of a whole-hearted acceptance of a companion for life who 
 had somehow managed to be such a pleasant companion during 
 that visit at the Towers. At least, she woidd be better off than 
 her four sisters. For this lady had a wholesome aversion for 
 her brothers-in-law, tending to support the creed which teaches 
 that the sacrament of marriage makes of its votaries, or victims, 
 not only parties to a contract, but one flesh, and opens up 
 undreamed-of possibilities of real fraternal dissension. 
 
 The gentleman, on the other hand, was in what we may 
 suppose to be a corresponding stage of uncertainty. He too 
 was able to perceive, or affect a perception, that, after all, if 
 he came to the scratch and the scratch eventuated — as scratches 
 do sometimes — ^in a paralysis of astonishment on the lady's part 
 that such an idea should ever have entered into the applicant's 
 calculations, it wouldn't be a thing to break his heart about 
 exactly. He would have made rather an ass of himself, 
 certainly. But he was quite prepared not to be any the 
 worse. 
 
 This was, however, not subcutaneous, with him. He said it 
 to himself, quite openly. His concealment of himself from 
 himself turned on a sort of passive resistance he was offering to 
 a growing reluctance to hear a negative to his appHcation. He 
 was, despite himself, entertaining the question: — Was this 
 woman whom he had been assessing and wavering over, more 
 masculino, conceivably likely to reject him on his merits ? 
 Might she not say to him: — " I have seen your drift, and found 
 you too pleasant an acquaintance to condemn offhand. But 
 now that you force me to ask myself the question. Can I love 
 you ?' you leave me no choice but to answer, ' I can't.' " And 
 he was beginning to have a misgiving that he would very much 
 rather that that scratch, if ever he came to it, should end on 
 very different lines from this. All this, mind you, was under 
 the skin of his reflections. 
 
 As he walked away slowly in the moonlight, with the appoint- 
 ment fresh in his mind to return next day on a shallow archaeo- 
 logical pretext, he may have been himself at a loss for his reason 
 for completing a torn: of the square, and pausing to look up at 
 the house before making a definite start for his Club, or his rooms 
 in Brook Street. Was any reason necessary, beyond the fine- 
 ness of the night ? He had an indisputable right to walk round 
 Cavendish Square without a reason, and he exercised it. He 
 
344 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 rather resented the poUceman on his beat saying goodnight to 
 him, as though he were abnormal, and walked away in the 
 opposite direction from that officer, who was searchUghting areas 
 for want of something to do, with an implication of profound 
 purpose. He decided on loneliness and a walk exactly the 
 length of a cigar, throwing its last effort to bum his fingers 
 away on his doorstep. He carried the animation of his thoughts 
 on his face upstairs to bed with him, for it lasted through a 
 meditation at an open window, through a chorus of cats about 
 their private affairs, and the usual controversy about the hour 
 among all the town-clocks, which becomes embittered when 
 there is only one hour to talk about, and compromise is im- 
 possible. Mr. Pellew heard the last opinion and retired for the 
 night at nine minutes past. But he first made sure that that 
 Quarterly Review was in evidence, and glanced at the Egyptian 
 article to confirm his impression of the contents. They were 
 still there. He beUeved all his actions were sane and well 
 balanced, but this was credulity. One stretches a point some- 
 times, to believe oneself reasonable. 
 
 It was a model September afternoon — and what can one say 
 more of weather ? — ^when at half-past three precisely Mr. 
 Pellew's hansom overshot the door of 102, Cavendish Square, 
 and firmly but amiably insisted on turning round to deposit its 
 fare according to the exact terms of its contract. Its pro- 
 prietor said what he could in extenuation of its maladroitness. 
 They shouldn't build these here houses at the comers of streets; 
 it was misguiding to the most penetrating intellect. He ad- 
 dressed his fare as Captain, asking him to make it another six- 
 pence. He had been put to a lot of expense last month, along 
 of the strike, and looked to the public to make it up to him. 
 For the cabbies had struck, some weeks since, against sixpence 
 a mile instead of eightpence. Mr. Pellew's heart was touched, 
 and he conceded the other sixpence. 
 
 There at the door was Miss Grahame's open landaulet, and 
 there were she and Gwen in it, just starting to see the former's 
 little boy. That was how Dave was spoken of, at the risk of 
 creating a scandal. They immediately lent themselves to a 
 gratuitous farce, having for its object the liberation of Mr. 
 Pellew and Miss Dickenson from external influence. 
 
 " Constance was back, wasn't she ?" Thus Miss Grahames 
 and Gwen had the effrontery to say she was almost certain, but 
 couldn't be quite sure. If she wasn't there, she would have to 
 go without that pulverised Pharaoh, as Sir Somebody Something's 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 345 
 
 just yearnings for his Quarterly were not to be made light of, 
 " Don't you let Maggie take the book up to her, Percy. You 
 go up in the sitting-room — ^you know, where we were playing 
 last night ? — and if she doesn't turn up in five minutes don't 
 you wait for her !" Then the two ladies talked telegraphically, 
 to the exclusion of Mr. Pellew, to the effect that Aunt Constance 
 haa only gone to buy a pair of gloves in Oxford Street, and was 
 pledged to an early return. The curtain fell on the farce, and 
 a very brief interview with Mary at the door ended in Mr. Pellew 
 being shown upstairs, without reservation. So he and Aunt 
 Constance had the house to themselves. 
 
 To do them justice, the attention shown to the covering 
 fiction of the book-loan was of the very smallest. It could not 
 be ignored altogether; so Miss Dickenson looked at the article. 
 She did not read a word of it, but she looked at it. She went 
 further, and said it was interesting Then it was allowed to lie 
 on the table. When the last possible book has been printed — 
 for even Literature must come to an end some time, if Time 
 itself does not collapse — ^that will be the last privilege accorded 
 to it. It will lie on the table, while all but a few of its prede- 
 cessors will stand on a booksheK. 
 
 " It's quite waim out of doors," said Mr. Pellew. 
 
 " Warmer than yesterday, I think," said Miss Dickenson. 
 And then talk went on, stiffly, each of its contribuents execrat- 
 ing its stiffness, but seeing no way to relaxation. 
 
 " Sort of weather that generally ends in a thunderstorm." 
 
 " Does it ? Well — ^perhaps it does." 
 
 "Don't you think it does ?" 
 
 " I thought it felt very like thunder an hour ago." 
 
 " Rather more than an hour ago, wasn't it ?" 
 
 " Just after lunch — ^about two o'clock." 
 
 " Dessay you're right. I should have said a quarter to." 
 Now, if this sort of thing had continued, it must have ended 
 in a joint laugh, and recognition of its absurdity. Aunt Con- 
 stance may have foreseen this, inwardly, and not been prepared 
 to go so fast. For she accommodated the conversation with a 
 foothold, partly ethical, partly scientific. 
 
 " Some people feel the effect of thunder much more than 
 others. No doubt it is due to the electrical condition of the 
 atmosphere. Before this was tmderstood, it was ascribed to all 
 sorts of causes." 
 
 " I expect it's nerves. Haven't any myself ! Rather like 
 tropical storms than otherwise." 
 
346 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Here was an opportunity to thaw the surface ice. The lady 
 could have done it in an instant, by talking to the gentleman 
 about himself. That is the " Open Sesame !" of human inter- 
 course. She preferred to say that in their village — her clan's, 
 that is — ^in Dorsetshire, there was a sept named Chobey that 
 always went into an underground cellar and stopped its ears, 
 whenever there was a thunderstorm. 
 
 Mr. Pellew said weakly: — " It runs in families." He had to 
 accept this one as authentic, but he would have questioned its 
 existence if anonymous. He could not say: — " How do you 
 know ?" to an informant who could vouch for Chobey. Smith 
 or Brown would have left him much freer. The foothold of the 
 conversation was giving way, and a resolute effort was called 
 for to give it stability. Mr. Pellew thought he saw his way. 
 He said: — "How jolly it must be down at the Towers — day 
 like this I" 
 
 " Perfectly delicious I" was the answer. Then, in considera- 
 tion of the remoteness of mere landscape from personalities, it 
 was safe to particularise. " I really think that walk in the 
 shrubbery, where the gentian grew in such quantity, is one of 
 the sweetest places of the kind I ever was in." 
 
 " I know I enjoyed my . . ." Mr. Pellew had started to say 
 that he enjoyed himself there. He got alarmed at his own 
 temerity and backed out ..." my cigars there," said he. A 
 transparent fraud, for the possessive pronoun does not always 
 sound alike. " My," is one thing before " self," another before 
 " cigars." Try it on both, and see. Mr. Pellew felt he was 
 detected. He could slur over his blunder by going straight on; 
 any topic would do. He decided on: — " By-the-by, (fid you 
 see any more of the dog ?" 
 
 " Achilles ? He went away, you know, with Mr. Torrens 
 and his sister, a few days after." 
 
 " I meant that. Didn't you say something about seeing 
 him with the assassin — the old gamekeeper — ^what was his 
 name ?" 
 
 " Old Stephen Solmes ? Yes. I saw them walking together, 
 apparently on the most friendly terms. Gwen told me after- 
 wards. They were walking towards his cottage, and I believe 
 Achilles saw him safe home, and came back." 
 
 " Just so. Torrens told me about the dog when old Solmes 
 came to say good-bye to him, and do a little more penance in 
 sackcloth and ashes. I am using Torrens's words. The old 
 chap made a scene — went down on his knees and burst out 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 347 
 
 crying — and the dog tried to console him. Torrens seemed quite 
 clear about what was passing in the dog's mind." 
 
 " What did he say the dog meant ? Can you remember ?" 
 Miss Dickenson was settling down to chat, perceptibly. 
 
 " Pretty well. Achilles had wished to say that he personally, 
 so far from finding fault with Mr. Sohnes for trying to shoot 
 him, fully recognised that he drew trigger under a contract to do 
 so, given circumstances which had actually come about. He 
 would not endeavour to extenuate his own conduct, but sub- 
 mitted that he was entitled to a lenient judgment, on the ground 
 that a hare, the pursuit of which was the indirect cause of the 
 whole mishap, had jumped up from behind a stone. . . . Well — 
 I suppose I oughtn't to repeat all a profane poet thinks fit to 
 say. ..." 
 
 " Please do ! Never mind the profanity \" It really was a 
 stimulus to the lady's curiosity. 
 
 Mr. Pellew repeated the apology which the collie's master had 
 ascribed to him. Achilles had only acted in obedience to In- 
 stincts which had been Implanted in him in circumstances for 
 which he was not responsible, and which might, for anything he 
 knew, have been conceived in a spirit of mischief by the Author 
 of all Good. This levity was stopped by a shocked expression 
 on the lady's face. " Well," said the gentleman, " you mustn't 
 blow me up. Miss Dickenson. I am only repeating, as desired, 
 the words of a profane poet. He had apologized, he told me, 
 for what he said, when his sister boxed his ears." 
 
 " Serve him right. But what was his apology ?" 
 
 " That he owed it to Achilles, who was unable to speak for 
 himself, to lay stress on what he conceived to be the dog's 
 Manichsean views, which he had been most unwillingly forced 
 to infer from his practice of suddenly barking indignantly at 
 the Universe, in what certainly seemed an unprayeriul spirit." 
 
 " It was only Mr. Torrens's nonsense. He wanted to blas- 
 pheme a Uttle, and jumped at the opportunity. They are all 
 alike. Poets. Look at Byron and Shelley !" 
 
 Mr. Pellew, for his own purposes no doubt, managed here to 
 insinuate that he himself was not without a reverent side to bis 
 character. These fillahs were no doubt the victims of their 
 own genius, and presumably Mr Torrens was a bird of the same 
 feather. He himself was a stupid old-fashioned sort of fillah, 
 and couldn't always follow this sort of thing. It was as delicate 
 a claim as he could make to sometimes going to Church on 
 Sunday, as was absolutely consistent with Truth. 
 
348 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 To his great relief. Miss Dickenson did not catechize him 
 closely about his reUgious views. She only remarked, reflec- 
 tively and vaguely: — " One hardly knows what to think. Any- 
 one would have said my father was a religious man, and what 
 does he do but marry a widow, less than three years after my 
 mother's death !" 
 
 Certainly the coherency of this speech was not on its surface. 
 But Mr. Pellew accepted it contentedly enough. At Ieast,it 
 clothed him with some portion of the garb of a family friend; 
 say shoes or gloves, not the whole suit. Whichever it was, he 
 pulled them on, and felt they fitted. He began to speak, and 
 stopped; was asked what he was going to say, and went on. 
 encouraged: — " I was going to say, only I pulled up because it 
 felt impertinent. . . ." 
 
 " Not to me ! Please tell me exactly \" 
 
 " I was going to ask, how old is your father ? Is he older 
 than me V 
 
 " Why, of course he is ! I'm thirty-six. How old are you ? 
 Tell the truth !" At this exact moment a fimny thing happened. 
 The passie elderly young lady vanished — she who had been so 
 often weighed, found wanting, and been put back in the balance 
 for reconsideration. She vanished, and a desirable alter ego — 
 Mr. Pellew's, as he hoped — was looking across at him from the 
 sofa by the window, swinging the tassel of the red blind that 
 kept the sun in check, and hushed it down to a fiery glow on 
 the sofa's occupant waiting to know how old he was. 
 
 " I thought I had told you. Nearly forty-six." 
 
 " Very well, then ! My father is five-and-twenty years your 
 senior." 
 
 " If you had to say exactly why you dislike your father's 
 having married again, do you think you could ?" 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! I'm quite sure I couldn't. But I think it 
 detestable for all that." 
 
 " I'm not sure that you're right. You may be, though ! 
 Are you sure it hasn't something to do with the . . . with the 
 party he's married ?" 
 
 " Not at all sure." Dryly. 
 
 " Can't understand objecting to a match on its own account. 
 It's always something to do with the outsider that comes in — 
 the one one knows least of." 
 
 " You wouldn't like this one." It may seem inexplicable, 
 that these words should be the cause of the person addressed 
 taking the nearest chair to the speaker, having previously been 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 349 
 
 a nomad with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. 
 Close analysis may connect the action with an extension of the 
 family-friendship wardrobe, which it may have recognised — a 
 neckcloth, perhaps — and may be able to explain why it seemed 
 doubtful form to the Hon. Percival to keep his thumbs in those 
 waistcoat-loops. To us, it is perfectly easy to understand — 
 without any analysis at all — why, at this juncture. Miss Dicken- 
 son said: — "I suppose you know you may smoke a cigarette, 
 if you hke ?" 
 
 In those days you might have looked in tobacconist's shop- 
 windows all day and never seen a cigarette. It was a foreign 
 fashion at which sound smokers looked askance. Mossoos might 
 smoke it, but good, sohd John Bull suspected it of being a kick- 
 shaw not imconnected with Atheism. He stuck to his pipe 
 chiefly. Nevertheless, it was always open to skill to fabricate 
 its own cigarettes, and Mr. Pellew's aptitude in the art was 
 known to Miss Dickenson. The one he screwed up on receipt 
 of this licence was epoch-making. The interview had been one 
 that was going to last a quarter of an hour. This cigarette made 
 its duration indeterminate. Because a cigarette is not a cigar. 
 The latter is hke a chapter in a book, the former hke a para- 
 graph. At the chapter's end vacant space insists on a pause for 
 thought, for approval or condemnation of its contents. But 
 every paragraph is as it were kindled from the last sentence of 
 its predecessor; as soon as each ends the next is ready. The 
 reader aloud is on all fours with the cigarette-smoker. He 
 doesn't always enjoy himself so much, but that is neither here 
 nor there. 
 
 It was not dmdng the first cigarette that Mr. Pellew said to 
 Aunt Constance: — " Where is it they have gone to-day, do you 
 know ?" That first one heard, if it Ustened, all about the lady's 
 home in Dorsetshire and her obnoxious stepmother. It may 
 have wondered, if it was an observant cigarette, at the unreserve 
 with which the narrator took its smoker into the bosom of her 
 confidence, and the Uvely interest her story provoked. If it had 
 — ^which is not likely, considering the extent of its expericjice — 
 a shrewd perception of the philosophy of reciprocity, probably 
 it wondered less. It heard to the end of the topic, and Mr. Pellew 
 asked the question above stated, as he screwed up its successor, 
 and exacted the death-duty of an ignition from it. 
 
 " They ought to be coming back soon," was the answer. " I 
 told them I wouldn't have tea till they came. They're gone to 
 see a protigi of Clotilda's, who lives down a Court. It's not 
 
350 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 very far off; under a mile, I should think. We saw him in the 
 street, coming from the railway-station. He looked a nice boy. 
 That is to say, he would have looked nice, only he and hia 
 friends had all been blacking their faces with burnt cork." 
 
 " What a lark ! Why didn't you go to the Court ? . . . I'm 
 jolly glad you didn't, you know, but you might have. . . ." This 
 was just warm enough for the position. With its slight extenua- 
 tion of slang, it might rank as mere emphasized civihty. 
 
 It was Miss Dickenson's turn to word something ambiguous 
 to cover all contingencies. " Yes, I should have been very 
 sorry if you had come to bring the book, and not found me here." 
 This was clever, backed by a smile. She went on: — "They 
 thought two would be quite enough, considering the size of 
 the Court." 
 
 A spirit of accommodation prevailed. Oh yes — Mr. Pellew 
 quite saw that. Very sensible ! " It don't do," said he, " to 
 make too much of a descent on this sort of people. They never 
 know what to make of it, and the thing don't wash !" But ho 
 was only saying what came to hand; because he was extremely 
 glad Miss Dickenson had not gone with the expedition. How 
 far he perceived that his own visit underlay its arrangements, 
 who can say ? His perception fell short of being ignorant that 
 he was aware of it. Suppose we leave it at that ! 
 
 Still, regrets — scarcely Jeremiads — ^that she had not been 
 included would be becoming, all things considered. They could 
 not be misinterpreted. " I was sorry not to go," she said. 
 " His father was a prizefighter and seems interesting, according 
 to Clotilda. Her idea is to get Gwen enthusiastic about people 
 of this sort, or any of her charitable schemes, rather than dragging 
 her off to Switzerland or Italy. Besides, she won't ga !" 
 
 " That's a smasher ! The idea, I suppose, is to get her away 
 and let the Torrens business die a natural death. Well — it 
 won't !" 
 
 " You think not ?" 
 
 " No thinking about it ! Sure of it ! I've known my cousin 
 Gwen jrom a child — so have you, for that matter ! — and I know 
 it's useless. If she will, she vrill, you may depend on't; and if 
 she won't she won't, and there's an end on't. You'll see, she'll 
 consent to go fiddling about for three months or six months to 
 Wiesbaden or Ems or anywhere, but she'll end by fixing the day 
 and ordering her trousseau, quite as a matter of course I As 
 for his changing — pooh !" Mr. Pellew laughed aloud. Miss 
 Dickenson looked a very hesitating concurrence, which he felt 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 351 
 
 would bear refreshing. He continued: — " Why, just look at the 
 case ! A man loses his eyesight and is half Mlled five minutes 
 after seeing — ^f or the first time, mind you, for the first time ! — 
 my cousin Gwen Rivers, imder specially favourable circum- 
 stances. When he comes to himself he finds out in double 
 quick time that she loves him ? He change? Not he !" 
 
 " Do tell me, Mr. Pellew. . . . I'm only asking, you know; 
 not expressing any opinion myself. . . . Do tell me, don't you 
 think a possible that it might be better for both of them — ^f or 
 Gwen certainly, if it ... if it never . . ." 
 
 " If it never came off ? If you ask me, all I can say is, that 
 I haven't an opinion. It is so absolutely their afiair and nobody 
 else's. That's my excuse for having not an opinion, and you 
 see I jump at it." 
 
 " Of course it is entirely their affair, and one knows. But one 
 can't help thinking. Just fancy Gwen the wife of a bh'nd 
 country Squire. It is heartbreaking to think of — ^now isn't it ?" 
 
 But Mr. Pellew was not to be moved from his position. " It's 
 their own look out," said he. " Nobody else's !" He suddenly 
 perceived that this might be taken as censorious. " Not find- 
 ing fault, you know ! You're all right. Naturally, you think 
 of Gwen." 
 
 " Whom ought I to think of ? Oh, I see what you mean. 
 It's true I don't know Mr. Torrens — have hardly seen him !" 
 
 " I saw him a fairish number of times — one time with another. 
 He's a sort of fiUah ... a sort of fiUah you can't exactly describe. 
 Very unusual sort of fillah !" Mr. Pellew held his cigarette a 
 little way off to look at it thoughtfully, as though it were the 
 usual sort of fellow, and he was considering how he could dis- 
 tinguish Mr. Torrens from it. 
 
 " You mean he's unusually clever ?" 
 
 " Yes, he's that. But that's not exactly what I meant, 
 either. He's clever, of course. Only he doesn't give you a 
 chance of knowing it, because he turns everything to nonsense. 
 What I wanted to say was, that whatever he says, one fancies 
 one would have said it oneself, if one had had the time to think 
 it out." 
 
 Miss Dickenson didn't really identify this as a practicable 
 shade of character, but she pretended she did. In fact she said : — 
 " Oh, I know exactly what you mean. I've known people like 
 that," merely to lubricate the conversation. Then she asked: 
 " Did you ever talk to the Earl about him ?" 
 
 " Tim ? Yes, a little. He doesn't disguise his Uking for him. 
 
352 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 personally. He's rather . . . rather besotted about him, I 
 should say." 
 
 " She isn't." How Mr. Pellew knew who was meant is not 
 clear, but he did. 
 
 " Her mother, you mean," said he. " Do you know, I doubt 
 if PhiUppa dishkes him ? I shouldn't put it that way. But I 
 think she would be glad for the thing to die a natural death for 
 all that. Eyes apart, you know." When people begin to 
 make so very few words serve their purpose it shows that their 
 circumferences have intersected — no mere tangents now. A 
 portion of the area of each is common to both. Forgive geo- 
 metry this intrusion on the story, and accept the metaphor. 
 
 " Yes, that's what it is," said Aunt Constance. And then in 
 answer to a glance that, so to speak, asked for a confirmation 
 of a telegram : — " Oh yes, I know we both mean the same thing. 
 You were thinking of that old story — the old love-affair. I 
 quite imderstand." She might have added " this time," be- 
 cause the last time she knew what Mr. Pellew meant she was 
 stretching a point, and he was subconscious of it. 
 
 " That's the idea," said he. "I fancy Philippa's feelings must 
 be rather difficult to define. So must his papa's, I should 
 think." 
 
 " I can't fancy anything more embarrassing." 
 
 " Of course Tim has a mighty easy time of it, by comparison." 
 
 " Does he necessarily know anything about it ?" 
 
 " He must have heard of it. It wasn't a secret, though it 
 wasn't announced in the papers. These things get talked about. 
 Besides, she would tell him." 
 
 " Tell him ? Of course she would ! She would tell him that 
 that young Torrens was a ' great admirer ' of hers." 
 
 " Yes — I suppose she would make use of some expression of 
 that sort. Capital things, expressions !" 
 
 Aunt Constance seemed to think this phrase called for some 
 sort of elucidation. " I always feel grateful," said she, " to 
 that Frenchman — Voltaire or Talleyrand or Rochefoucauld or 
 somebody — who said language was invented to conceal our 
 thoughts. That was what you meant, wasn't it ?" 
 
 "Precisely. I suppose Sir Torrens — ^this chap's papa — told 
 the lady he married . . ." 
 
 " She was a Miss Abercrombie, I believe." 
 
 " Yes — I believe she was. . . . Told her he was a great ad- 
 mirer of her ladyship once on a time — a boyish freak — ^that sort 
 of thing ! Pretends all the gilt is off the gingerbread now. 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 353 
 
 Wish I had been there when Sir Hamilton turned up at the 
 Towers, after the accident." 
 " I was there." 
 " Well ! And then ?" 
 
 " Nothing and then. They were — just like anybody else. 
 When I saw them was after his son had begun to pull round. 
 Till then I fancy neither he nor the sister . . ." 
 
 " Irene. ' 'Rene/ he calls her. Jolly sort of girl, and very 
 handsome." 
 
 "Neither Irene nor her father came downstairs much. It 
 was after you went away." 
 
 " And what did they say ? — him and Philippa, I mean." 
 " Oh — say ? What did they say ? Really I can't remember. 
 Said what a long time it was since they met. Because I don't 
 believe they had met — ^not to shake hands — ^for five-and-twenty 
 years !" 
 
 " What a rum sort of experience ! Do you know ? . . . only 
 of course one can't say for certain about anything of this sort . . ." 
 " Do I know ? Go on." 
 
 " I was going to say that if I had been them, I should have 
 burst out laughing and said what a couple of young asses we 
 were !" The Hon Percival was very colloquial, but syntax 
 was not of the essence of the contract, if any existed. 
 
 Aunt Constance was not in the mood to pooh-pooh the ten- 
 dresses of a youthful passion. She was, if you will have it so, 
 sentimental. " Let me think if I should," said she, with a 
 momentary action of closing her eyes, to keep inward thought 
 free of the outer world. In a moment they were open again, 
 and she was saying: — " No, I should not have done anything of 
 the sort. One laughs at yoimg people, I know, when they are 
 so very inflammatory. But what do we think of them when they 
 are not ?" She became quite warm and excited about it, or 
 perhaps — so thought Mr. Pellew as he threw his last cigarette- 
 end away through that open window — the blaze of a sun that 
 was forecasting its afterglow made her seem so. Mr. Pellew 
 having thrown away that cigarette-end conscientiously, and 
 made a pretence of seeing it safe into the front area, was hardly 
 bound to go back to his chair. He dropped on the sofa, beside 
 Miss Dickenson, with one hand over the back. He loomed over 
 her, but she did not shy or flinch. 
 
 " What indeed !" said he seriously, answering her last words. 
 " A yoimg man that does not fall in love seldom comes to any 
 good." He was really thinking to himself: — " Oh, the mistakes 
 
 23 
 
354 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 I should have been saved in life, if only this had happened to 
 me in my twenties !" He was not making close calculation of 
 what the lady's age would have been in those days. 
 
 She was dwelling on the abstract question: — "You know, 
 say what one may, the whole of their lives is at stake. And we 
 never think them young geese when the thing comes off, and 
 they become couples." 
 
 "No. True enough. It's only when it goes o£E and they 
 don't." 
 
 " And what is so creepy about it is that we never know whether 
 the couple is the right couple." 
 
 " Never know anjrthing at all about anything beforehand !" 
 Mr. Pellew was really taUdng at random. Even the value of 
 this trite remark was spoiled. For he added : — " Nor afterwards, 
 for that matter !" 
 
 Miss Dickenson admitted that we could not lay too much 
 stress on our own limitations. But she was not in the humour 
 for platitudes. Her mind was running on a problem that might 
 have worried Juliet Capulet had she never wedded her Romeo 
 and taken a dose of hellebore, but lived on to find that Coimty 
 Paris had in him the makings of a lovable mate. Quite possible, 
 you know ! It was striking her that if a trothplight were nothing 
 but a sort of civil contract — civil in the sense of courteous, polite, 
 urbane, accommodating — an exchange of letters through a 
 callous Post Office — a woman might be engaged a dozen times 
 and meet the males impUcated in after-life, without turning a 
 hair. But even a hand-clasp, left to enjoy itself by its parents 
 — not nipped in the bud — might poison their palms and recru- 
 desce a little in Society, long years after ! While, as for lips. . . . 
 Something crossed her reflections, just on the crux of them — 
 their most critical point of all. " There !" said she. " Did you 
 hear that ? I knew we should have thunder." 
 
 But Mr. Pellew had heard nothing and was incredulous. He 
 verified his incredulity, going to the window to look out. " Blue 
 sky all round !" said he. " Must have been a cart !" He went 
 back to his seat, and the explanation passed muster. 
 
 Miss Dickenson picked up her problem, with that last per- 
 plexity hanging to it. No, it was no use ! — that equable de- 
 portment of Sir Hamilton and Philippa remained a mystery to 
 her. She, however — mere single Miss Dickenson — could not of 
 course guess how these two would see themselves, looking back, 
 with aU the years between of a growing Gwen and Adrian; to 
 her, it was just the lapse of so much time, nothing more — a year 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 355 
 
 or so over the time she had known Philippa. For Romeo and 
 Juliet were metaphors out of date when she came on the scene, 
 and Philippa was a Countess. 
 
 She was irritated by the inability she felt to comment freely 
 on these views of the position. It would have been easier if 
 she saw this — ^to do so had Mr. Pellew gone back to his chair, 
 instead of sitting down again beside her on the sofa. It was her 
 own fault perhaps, because she could not have sworn this time 
 that she had not seemed to make room. That unhappy sex — 
 the female one — lives under orders to bristle with incessant safe- 
 guards against misinterpretation. Heaven only knows — or 
 should we not rather say. Hell only knows 1 — ^what latitudes have 
 claimed " encouragement " as their excuse ! That lady in 
 Browning's poem never should have looked at the gentleman 
 so, had she meant he should not love her. So he said ! But 
 suppose she saw a fly on his nose — how then ? 
 
 Therefore it would never have done for Miss Dickenson to go 
 into close analysis of the problems suggested by the meeting of 
 two undoubted fianch of years long past, and the inexplicable 
 self-command with which they looked the present in the face. 
 She had to be content with saying : — " Of course we know 
 nothing of the intentions of Providence. But it's no use pre- 
 tending that it would not feel very — queer." She had to clothe 
 this word with a special emphasis, and backed it with an implied 
 contortion due to teeth set on edge. She added: — " All I know 
 is, I'm very glad it wasn't me." After which she was clearly not 
 responsible if the topic continued. 
 
 Mr. Pellew took the responsibility on himself of saying with 
 deep-seated intuition:^" I know precisely what you mean. 
 You're perfectly right. Perfectly !" 
 
 "A hundred little things," said the lady. The dragging in 
 of ninety-nine of these, with the transparent object of sltirring 
 over the hundredth, which each knew the other was thinking of, 
 merely added to its vividness. Aunt Constance might just as 
 well have let it alone, and suddenly talked of something else. 
 For instance, of the Sun God's abnormal radiance, now eloquent 
 of what he meant to do for the metropohs when he got a few 
 degrees lower, and went in for setting, in earnest. Or if she 
 shrank from that, as not prosaic enough to dilute the conversa- 
 tion down to mere chat-point, the Ethiopian Serenaders who had 
 just begun to be inexplicable in the Square below. But she left 
 the first to assert its claim to authorship of the flush of rose 
 colour that certainly made her tell to advantage, and the last 
 
356 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to account for the animation which helped it. For the enigmatic 
 character of South Carolina never interferes with a certain brisk 
 exhilaration in its bones. She repeated in a vague way: — "A 
 hundred things I" and shut her lips on particularisation. 
 
 " I don't Imow exactly how many/' said Mr. Pellew gravely. 
 He sat drawing one whisker through the hand whose elbow was on 
 the sofa-back, with his eyes very much on the flush and the 
 animation. " I was thinking of one in particular." 
 
 " Perhaps 7 was. I don't know." 
 
 " I was thinking of the kissin'." 
 
 " Well — so was I, perhaps. I don't see any use in mincing 
 matters." She had been the mincer-in-chief, however. 
 
 " Don't do the slightest good ! When it gets to kissin'-point, 
 it's all up. If I had been a lady, and broken a Allah off, I think 
 I should have been rather grateful to him for getting out of the 
 gangway. Should have made a point of getting out, myseM." 
 
 The subject had got comfortably landed, and could be philo- 
 sophically discussed. " I dare say everyone does not feel the 
 point as strongly as I do," said Miss Dickenson. " I know my 
 sister Georgie — Mrs. Amphlett Starfax — looks at it quite dif- 
 ferently, and thinks me rather a . . . prig. Or perhaps prig isn't 
 exactly the word. I don't know how to put it. . . ." 
 
 " Never mind. I know exactly what you mean." 
 
 " You see, the circumstances are so different. Georgie had 
 been engaged six times before Octavius came on the scene. But, 
 oh dear, how I am telling tales out of school ! . . ." 
 
 " Never mind Georgie and Octavius. They're not your sort. 
 You were saying how you felt about it, and that's more interest- 
 ing. Interests me more !" Conceive that at this point the lady 
 glanced at the speaker ever so slightly. Upon which he followed 
 a shght pause with: — " Yes, why are you a prig, as she thought 
 fit to put it ?." 
 
 " Because I told her that it ever I found a young man who 
 suited me — and vice versa — and it got to ... to what you called 
 just now ' kissing-point,' I should not be so ready as she had 
 been to pull him off Uke an old glove and throw him away. 
 That was when I was very young, you know. It was just after 
 she jilted Ludwig, who afterwards married my sister LdUan — 
 Baroness Porchammer; my eldest sister. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, she jilted Ludwig, and he married your sister Lilian, 
 was that it ?" Mr. Pellew, still stroking that right whisker 
 thoughtfully, was preoccupied by something that diverted in- 
 terest from this family history. 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 357 
 
 Aunt Constance did not seem to notice his abstraction, but 
 talked on. " Yes — and what is so funny about Georgie with 
 Julius is that they don't seem to mind kissing now from a new 
 standpoint. Georgie particularly. In fact, I've seen her kiss 
 him on both sides and call him an old stupid. However, as you 
 say, the cases are not aHke. Perhaps if Philippa's old love had 
 married her sister — Lady Clancarxock of Garter, you know — 
 instead of Uncle Cosmo, as they call him, they could have got 
 used to it, by now. Only one must look at these things from 
 one's own point of view, and by the light of one's experience." 
 A ring on her right hand might have been one of the things, and 
 the sun-ray through the blind-slip the light of her experience, as 
 she sat accommodating the flash-light of the first to the gleam 
 of the second. 
 
 If everyone knew to a nicety his or her seeming at the precise 
 point of utterance of any speech, slight or weighty, nine-tenths 
 of our wit or profundity would remain unspoken. Man always 
 credits woman with knowing exactly what she looks like, and 
 engineering speech and seeming towards the one desired end of 
 impressing him — ^important Him ! He acquits himself of study- 
 ing the subject ! Probably he and she are, as a matter of fact, 
 six of the one and half a dozen of the other. Of this one thing 
 the story feels certain, that had Miss Dickenson been conscious 
 of her neighbour's incorporation into a imit of magnetism — he 
 being its victim — of her mere outward show in the evening light 
 with the subject-matter of her discourse, this little lecture on 
 the ethics of kissing would never have seen the light. But let 
 her finish it. Consider that she gives a pause to the ring-gleam, 
 then goes on, quite in earnest. 
 
 " It's very funny that it should be so, I know — but there it 
 is ! If I had ever been engaged, or on the edge of it — I never 
 have, really and truly ! — ^and the infatuated youth had . . . had 
 complicated matters to that extent, I never should have been 
 able to wipe it off. That's an expression of a small niece of 
 mine — ^three-and-a-quarter. ... Oh dear — but I never said 
 you might ! . . ." 
 
 For the gentleman's conduct had been extraordinary; un- 
 warranted, perhaps, according to some. According to others, 
 he may only have behaved as a many in his position would 
 have behaved half an hour sooner. " I am," said he, " the 
 infatuated youth. Forgive me. Aunt Constance !" For he 
 had deliberately taken that lady in his arms and kissed 
 her. 
 
358 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The foregoing is an attempt to follow through an interview 
 the development of events which led to its climax — a persistent 
 and tenacious attempt, more concerned with its purpose than 
 with inquiring into the interest this or that reader may feel who 
 may chance to light upon this narrative. No very close analysis 
 of the sublatent impulses and motives of its actors is professed 
 or attempted; only a fringe of guesswork at the best. But let 
 a protest be recorded against the inevitable vernacular judgment 
 in disfavour of the lady. " Of course — the minx ! As if she 
 didn't know what she was about the whole time. As if she 
 wasn't leading him on I" Because that is the attitude of mind 
 of the correct human person in such a case made and provided. 
 That is, if an inevitable automatic action can be called an atti- 
 tude of mind. Is rotation on its axis an attitude of a wheel's 
 mind ? To be sure, though, a wheel may turn either of two ways. 
 A ratchet-wheel is needed for this metaphor. 
 
 However, the correct human person may be expressing a 
 universal opinion. This is only the protest of the story, which 
 thinks otherwise. But even if it were so, was not Miss Dickenson 
 well within her rights? The story claims that, anyhow. At 
 the same tinie, it records its behef that four-fifths of the de- 
 nouement was due to Helios. The magic golden radiance in- 
 toxicated Mr. Pellew, and made him forget — or remember — 
 himself. The latter, the story thinks. That ring perhaps 
 had its finger in the pie — ^but this may be to inquire too 
 curiously. 
 
 One thing looks as though Miss Dickenson had not been work- 
 ing out a well-laid scheme. Sudden success does not stop the 
 heart with a jerk, or cause speechlessness, even for a moment. 
 Both had happened to her by the time she had uttered her 
 pro forma remonstrance. Her breath lasted it out. Then she 
 found it easiest to remain passive. She was not certain it would 
 not be correct form to make a show of disengaging herself from 
 the arms that still held her. But — she didn't want to ! 
 
 This may have justified Mr. Pellew's next words : — " You do 
 forgive me, don't you ?" more as assertion than inquiry. 
 
 She got back breath enough to gasp out: — " Oh yes — only 
 don't talk ! Let me think !" And then presently: — " Yes, 
 I forgive you in any case. Only — I'll tell you directly. Let's 
 look out of the window. I want to feel the air blow. . . . You 
 startled me rather, that's all !" 
 
 Said Mr. Pellew, at the window, as he reinstated an arm 
 dispossessed during the transit: — " I did it to ... to clinch the 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 359 
 
 matter, don't you see ? I thought I should make a mess of it 
 if I went in for eloquence." 
 
 " It was as good as any way. I wasn't the least angry. 
 Only . . ." 
 
 " Only what ?" 
 
 " Only by letting you go on Uke this " — half a laugh came in 
 here — " I don't consider that I stand committed to anything." 
 
 " I consider that / stand committed to everything." The 
 arm may have slightly emphasized this. 
 
 " No — that's impossible. It must be the same for both." 
 
 " Dearest woman ! Just as you hke. But I know what I 
 mean." Indeed, Mr. Pellew did seem remarkably clear about it. 
 Where, by-the-by, was that passee yoimg lady, and that middle- 
 aged haunter of Clubs ? Had they ever existed ? 
 
 Bones was audible from below, as they stood looking out at 
 the west, where some cirro-stratus clouds were waiting to see 
 the sun down beyond the horizon, and keep his memory golden 
 for half an hour. Bones was affecting ability to answer conun- 
 drums, asked by an unexplained person with a banjo, who 
 treated him with distinction, calling him " Mr. Bones." Both 
 were affecting an air of high courtesy, as of persons familiar with 
 the Thrones and Chancelleries of Europe. The particulars of 
 these conundrums were inaudible, from distance, but the scheme 
 was clear. Bones offered several solutions, of a fine quahty of 
 wit, but wrong. He then produced a sharp click or snap, after 
 his kind, and gave it up. His friend or patron then gave the 
 true solution, whose transcendent humour was duly recognised 
 by Europe, and moved Bones to an unearthly dance, dryly but 
 decisively accompanied on his instrument. A sudden outburst 
 of rhythmic banjo-thuds and song followed, about Old Joe, who 
 kicked up behind and before, and a yellow girl, who kicked up 
 behind Old Joe. Then the Company stopped abruptly and went 
 home to possible soap and water. Silence was left for the lady 
 and gentleman at No. 202 to speak to one another in undertones, 
 and to wonder what o'clock it was. 
 
 " They ought to be back by now," says she. " I wonder they 
 are so late. They are making quite a visitation of it." 
 
 Says he : — " Gwen is fascinated with the old prizefighter. 
 Just like her ! I don't care how long they stop; do you ?" 
 
 " I don't think it matters," says she, " to a quarter of an hour. 
 The sunset is going to be lovely." This is to depersonalise the 
 position. A feeble attempt, under the circumstances. 
 
 It must have been past the end of that quarter of an hour. 
 
360 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 when — ^normal relations having been resumed, of course — Miss 
 Dickenson interrupted a sub-vocal review of the growth of 
 their acquaintance to say " Come in !" The tap that was told 
 to come in was Maggie. Was she to be making the tea ? Was 
 she to lay it ? On the whole she might do both, as the delay 
 of the absentees longer was in the nature of things impossible. 
 
 But, subject to the disposition of Mr. Pellew's elbows on the 
 window-sill, they might go on looking out at the sunset and feel 
 reglis. Short of endearments, Maggie didn't matter. 
 
 The self-assertion of Helios was amazing. He made nothing 
 of what one had thought would prove a cloud-veil — ^tore it up, 
 brushed it aside. He made nothing, too, of the powers of eye- 
 sight of those whose gaze dwelt on him over boldly. 
 
 "It is them," said Miss Dickenson, referring to a halt-recog- 
 nised barouche that had turned the comer below. " But who 
 on earth have they got with them ? I can't see for my 
 
 " Only some friend they've picked up," said Mr. Pellew. But 
 he rubbed his own eyes, to get rid of the sun. Recovered sight 
 made him exclaim : — " But what are the people stopping f or ? . . . 
 I say, something's up ! Come along !" For, over and above a 
 mysterious impression of the unusual that could hardly be set 
 down to the bird's-eye view as its sole cause, it was clear that 
 every passer-by was stopping, to look at the carriage. Moreover, 
 there was coniusion of voices — Gwen's dominant. Mr. Pellew 
 did not wait to distinguish speech. He only repeated: — 
 " Come along !" and was off downstairs as fast as he could go. 
 Aunt Constance kept close behind him. 
 
 She was too bewildered to be quite sure, offhand, why Gwen 
 looked so more than dishevelled, as she met them at the stair- 
 foot, earnest with excitement. Not panic-struck at all — ^that 
 was not her way — but at highest tension of word and look, as 
 she made the decision of her voice heard: — " Oh, there you are, 
 Mr. Pellew. Make yourself useful. Go out and bring her in. 
 Never mind who ! Make haste. And Maggie's to fetch the 
 doctor." Mr. Pellew went promptly out, and Miss Dickenson 
 was beginning : — " Why ! — ^what ? . . ." But she had to stand 
 inquiry over. For nothing was possible against Gwen's : — ' ' Now, 
 Aunt Connie dear, don't ask questions. You shall be told the 
 whole story, all in good time ! Let's get her upstairs and get 
 the doctor." They both followed Mr. Pellew into the street, 
 where a perceptible crowd, sprung from nowhere, was already 
 offering services it was not qualified to give, in ignorance of the 
 
HOW THE SLOW COUPLE BECAME ENGAGED 361 
 
 nature of the emergency that had to be met, and in defiance of 
 a policeman. 
 
 Mr. Pellew had taken his instructions so quickly from Miss 
 Grahame, still in the carriage, that he was already carrying the 
 doctor's patient, whoever and whatever she was, but carefully 
 as directed, into the house. At any rate it was not Miss Grahame 
 herself, for that lady's voice was saying, collectedly: — " I don't 
 think it's any use Maggie going, Gwen, because she doesn't know 
 London. James must fetch him, in the carriage. Dr. Dal- 
 rymple, 65, Weymouth Street, James ! Tell him he mvst come, 
 at once ! Say / said so." It was then that Aunt Constance 
 perceived, in the clear light of the street, that not only was the 
 person Mr. Pellew was carrying into the house — ^whom she could 
 only identify otherwise as having snow-white hair — covered 
 with dust and soiled, but that Gwen and Miss Grahame were in 
 a like pUght, the latter in addition being embarrassed by a rent 
 skirt, which she was fain to hold together as she crossed the 
 doorstep. Once in the house she made short work of it, finish- 
 ing the rip, and acquiescing in the publicity of a petticoat. It 
 added to Aunt Constance's perplexity that the carriage and James 
 appeared in as trim order as when they left the door three hours 
 since. These hours had been eventful to her, and she was really 
 feeling as if the whole thing must be a strange dream. 
 
 She got no explanation worth the name at the time of the 
 incident. For Gwen's scattered information after the old snow- 
 white head was safe on her own pillow — she insisted on this — 
 and its owner had been guaranteed by Dr. Dahymple, was 
 really good for very little. The old lady was Cousin Clo's httle 
 boy's old Mrs. Picture, and she was the dearest old thing. There 
 had been an accident at the house while they were there, and a 
 man and a woman had been hurt, but no fatality. The man 
 had not been taken to the Hospital, as his family had opposed 
 his going on the ground of his invulnerabiUty. The old prize- 
 fighter was uninjured, as well as those two nice children. They 
 might have been killed. But as to the nature of the accident, 
 it remained obscure, or perhaps the ever-present consciousness 
 of her own experience prevented Aunt Constance getting a full 
 grasp of its details. The communication, moreover, was crossed 
 by that lady's exclamation: — " Oh dear, the events of this after- 
 noon !" just at the point where the particulars of the mishap 
 were due, to make things intelhgible. 
 
 At which exclamation Gwen, suddenly ahve to a restless 
 conscious manner of Aunt Constance's, pointed at her as one she 
 
362 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 could convict without appeal, saying remorselessly : — " Mr. 
 PeUew has proposed and you have accepted him while we were 
 away. Aunt Connie ! Don't deny it. You're engaged !" 
 
 " My dear Gwen," said Miss Dickenson, " if what you 
 suggest were true, I should not dream for one moment of con- 
 cealing it from you. But as for any engagement between us, I 
 assure you there is no such thing. Beyond showing unequivocal 
 signs of an attachment which . . ." 
 
 Gwen clapped the beautiful hands, still soiled with the dirt 
 of Sapps Court, and shook its visible dust from her sleeve. Her 
 laugh rang all through the House. " That's aU right !" she cried. 
 " He's shown unequivocal signs of an attachment which. Well — 
 what more do you want ? Oh, Aunt Connie, I'm so glad !" 
 
 All that followed had for Miss Dickenson the same dream- 
 world character, but of a dream in which she retained presence 
 of mind. It was needed to maintain the pretext of unruflSed 
 custom in her communications with her male visitor; the claim 
 to be, before all things, normal, on the part of both, in the 
 presence of at least one friend who certainly knew all about it, 
 and another who may have known. Because there was no 
 trusting Gwen. However, she got through it very well. 
 
 Regrets were expressed that Sir Somebody Something had 
 not got his Quarterly after all-; but it would do another time. 
 Hence consolation. After Mr. Pellew had taken a farewell, 
 which may easily have been a tender one, as nobody saw it, 
 she heard particulars of the accident, which shall be told here 
 also, in due course. 
 
 Some embarrassment resulted from Gwen's headstrong action 
 in bringing the old lady away from the scene of this accident. 
 She might have been provided for otherwise, but Gwen's beauty 
 and positiveness, and her visible taking for granted that her 
 every behest would be obeyed, had swept all obstacles away. 
 As for her Cousin Clotilda, she was secretly chuckling all the 
 while at the wayTvard young lady's reckless incurring of re- 
 sponsibilities towards Sapps Court. 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH 363 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE LETTER GWEN WROTE TO MR. TORRENS, TO TEIi OF IT* 
 MATILDA, WHO PLAYED SCALES, BUT NOT "THE HARMONIOUS 
 BLACKSmTH." THE OLD LADY's JEALOUSY OF GRANNY 
 MARROWBONE, AND DAVE's ETDBLITY TO BOTH. HOW 
 BEHEMOTH HICCUPPED, AND DAVE WENT TO SEE WHAT WAS 
 BROKEN. THE EARTHQUAKE AT PISA. IT WAS OWING TO 
 THE REPAIRS. HOW PETER JACKSON APPEARED BY MAGIC. 
 HOW MR. BARTLETT SHORED NO. 7 UP TEMPORY, AND THE 
 TENANTS TTAD TO MAKE THE BEST OF WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT. 
 UNCLE MO'S ENFORCED BACHELOR LIFE 
 
 If love-letters were not so full of their writers mutual satisfac- 
 tion with their position, what a resource amatory correspond- 
 ence would be to history ! 
 
 In the letters to her lover with which Gwen at this time filled 
 every available minute, the amatory passages were kept in check 
 by the hard condition that they had to be read aloud to their 
 blind recipient. So much so that the account which she wrote 
 to him of her visit to Sapps Court will be very little the shorter 
 for their complete omission. 
 
 It begins with a suggestion of suppressed dithyrambics, the 
 suppression to be laid to the door of Irene. But with sympathy 
 for her, too — for how can she help it ? It then gets to business. 
 She is going to tell " the thing " — spoken of thus for the first 
 time — in her own way, and to take her own time about it. It 
 is not even to be read fast, but in a leisurely way; and, above all, 
 Irene is not to look on ahead to see what is coming; or, at least, 
 if she does she is not to tell. Quite enough for the present that 
 he should know that she, Gwen, has escaped without a scratch, 
 though dusty. She addresses her lover, most unfairly, as " Mr. 
 Impatience," in a portion of the letter that seems devised ex- 
 pressly to excite its reader's curiosity to the utmost. The fact 
 is that this young beauty, with all her inherent stability and 
 strength of character, was apt to be run away with by impish 
 proclivities, that any good, serious schoolgirl would have been 
 ashamed of. This letter offered her a rare opportunity for 
 indulging them. Let it tell its own tale, even though we begin 
 on the fifth page. 
 
364 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I must pause now to see what sort of a bed Lutwyche has 
 managed to arrange for me, and ring Maggie up if it isn't com- 
 fortable. Not but what I am ready to rough it a little, rather 
 than that the old lady should be moved. She is the dearest old 
 thing that ever was seen, with the loveliest silver hair, and must 
 have been surpassingly beautiful, I should say. She keeps on 
 reminding me of someone, and I can't tell who. It may be 
 Daphne Palliser's grandmother-in-law, or it may be old Madame 
 Edelweissenstein, who's a chanoinesse. But the nice old lady on 
 the farm I told you of keeps mixing herself up in it — and really 
 all old ladies are very much aUke. By-the-by, I haven't ex- 
 plained her yet. Don't be in such a hurry ! . . . There now ! — 
 my bed's all right, and I needn't fidget. Clo says so. The old 
 lady is asleep with a stayed pulse, says Dr. Dalrymple, who has 
 just gone. And anything more beautiful than that silver hair 
 in the moonlight I never saw. Now I really must begin at the 
 beginning. 
 
 " Clo and I started on our pilgrimage to Sapps Court at half- 
 past three, without the barest suspicion of anything pending, 
 least of all what I'm going to tell. Go on. We left Mr. Percival 
 Pellew on the doorstep, pretending he was going to leave a book 
 for Aunt Constance, and go away. Such fun ! He went up- 
 stairs and stopped two hours, and I do believe they've got to 
 some sort of decorous trothplight. Only A. C. when accused, 
 only says he has shown unmistakable evidence of something or 
 other, I forget what. Why on earth need people be such fools ? 
 There they both are, and what more can they want ? She 
 admits, however, that there is ' no engagement ' ! When any- 
 body says that, it means they've been kissing. You ask Irene 
 if it doesn't. Any female, I mean. Now go on, 
 
 " A more secluded little comer of the world than Sapps Court 
 I never saw ! Clo's barouche shot us out at the head of the 
 street it turns out of, and went to leave a letter at St. John's 
 Wood and be back in half an hour. We had no idea of a visita- 
 tion, then. Besides, Clo had to be at Down Street at half-past 
 five. There is an arch you go in by, and we nearly stuck and 
 could go neither way. I was sorry to find the houses looked so 
 respectable, but Clo tells me she can take me to some much 
 better ones near Drury Lane. Dave, the boy, and his Uncle 
 and Aimt, and a httle sister, Dolly, whom I nearly ate, live in 
 the last house down the Court. When we arrived Dolly was 
 watering a simflower, almost religiously, in the front-garden 
 eight feet deep. It would die vethy thoon, she said, if neglected. 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH 365 
 
 She told us a long screed, about Heaven knows what — I think 
 it related to the sunflower, which a naughty boy had chopped 
 froo wiv a knife, and Dave had tighted on, successfully. 
 
 " The old prizefighter is just hke Dr. Johnson, and I thought 
 he was going to hug Clo, he was so delighted to see her, and so 
 affectionate. So was Aunt Maria, a good woman who has lost 
 her looks, but who must have had some, twenty years ago. I 
 got Dolly on my knee, and we did the hugging, Dolly telling me 
 secrets deUciously, and tickling. She is four next birthday, a 
 fact which Aunt Maria thought should have produced a sort of 
 what the Maestro calls precisione. I preferred Dolly as she was, 
 and we exchanged locks of hair. 
 
 " We had only been there a very short time when Uncle Moses 
 suggested that Dave should fetch a letter he was writing, from 
 ' Old Mrs. Prichard's Room ' upstairs, and Dave — ^who is a 
 dear Uttle chap of six or seven or eight — crushed upstairs to get 
 it. I forgot how much I told you about the family, but I know 
 I said something in yesterday's letter. Anyhow, ' old Mrs. 
 Prichard ' was not new to me, and I was very cm-ious to see her. 
 So when more than five minutes had passed and no Dave re- 
 appeared, I proposed that Dolly and I should go up to look for 
 him, and we went. Aunt Maria following in our wake, to cover 
 contingencies. She went back, after introduciag me to the very 
 sweet old lady in a high-backed chair, who comes in as the 
 explanation of the beginning of this illegible scrawl. How funny 
 children are ! I do believe Uncle Moses was right when he 
 said that Dave, if anything, preferred his loves to be ' a bit 
 elderly.' I am sure these babies see straight through wrinkles 
 and decay and toothless gums to the burning soul the old shell 
 imprisons, and love it. Do you recollect that picture in the 
 Louvre we both had seen, and thought the same about ? — the 
 old man with the sweet face and the appalling excrescence on 
 the nose, and the httle boy's unflinching love as he looks up at 
 him. Oh, that nose ! ! ! However, there is nothing of that in 
 old Mrs. Picture, as Dave called her, according to her own 
 spelling. Her face is simply perfect. . , . There ! — I went in 
 to look at it again by the moonUght, and I was quite right. And 
 as for her wonderful old white hair ! . . . I could write for ever 
 about her. 
 
 " I thiuk our incursion must have frightened the old soul, 
 because she had hved up there by herself, except for her woman- 
 friend who is out all day, and Aunt Maria and the children now 
 and then, since she came to the house; so that a perfect stranger 
 
366 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 rushing in lawlessly — ^well, can't you fancy ? However, she 
 really stood it very well, considering. 
 
 " ' I have heard of you, ma'am, from Dave. He's told me 
 all about your rings. Where is the boy ? . . . Haven't you, 
 Dave — told me all about the lady's rings ?' 
 
 " Dave came from some absorbing interest at the vdndow, to 
 say: — 'It wasn't her,' with a sweet, impressive candour. He 
 went back immediately. Something was going on outside. I 
 explained, as I was sharp enough to guess, that my mother was 
 the lady with the rings. I got into conversation with the old 
 lady, and we soon became friends. She was very curious about 
 ' old Mrs. Marrable ' in the country. Indeed, I believe Uncle Mo 
 was not far wrong when he said she was as jealous as any school- 
 girl. It is most amusing, the idea of these two octogenarians 
 falling out over this small bone of contention ! 
 
 " While we talked, Dave and Dolly looked out of the window, 
 Dave constantly supplying bulletins of the something that was 
 going on without. I could not make it out at first, and his inter- 
 jections of ' Now she's took it off ' — ' Now she's put it on again ' 
 — made me think he was inspecting some lady who was ' trying 
 on ' in the opposite house. It appeared, however, that the thing 
 that was taken off and put on was not a dress, but some sort of 
 plaister or liniment applied to the face of a boy. the miscreant 
 who had made a raid on Dave's garden that morning, and 
 spoiled his sunflower (see ante). It was because Dave had 
 become so engrossed in this that he had not come downstairs 
 again with his letter. 
 
 " The old lady, I am happy to say, was most amiable, and 
 took to me immensely. I couldn't imdertake to say now 
 exactly how we got on such good terms so quickly. We agreed 
 about the wickedness of that boy, especially when Dave re- 
 ported ingratitude on his part towards the sister, who was 
 tending him, whom he smacked and whose hair he pulled. To 
 think of his smacking that dear girl that played the piano so 
 nicely all day ! And puUing her back-tails so she called out 
 when she was actually succouring his lacerated face. I gathered 
 that her name may have been Matilda, and that she wore plaits. 
 
 " ' I think her such a nice, dear girl,' said old Mrs. Picture — 
 I like that name for her — ' because she plays the piano all day 
 long, and I sit here and listen, and think of old times.' I asked 
 a question. ' Why, no, my dear ! — I can't say she knows any 
 tunes. But she plays her scales all day, very nicely, and makes 
 me think of when my sister and I played scales — oh, so many 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH 367 
 
 years ago ! But we played tunes too. I sometimes think I 
 could teach her " The Harmonious Blacksmith/' if only we was a 
 bit nearer.' I could see in her old face that she was ba«k in the 
 Past, listening to a memory. How I wished I had a piano to 
 play " The Harmonious Blacksmith " for her again ! 
 
 " I got her somehow to talk of herseH and her antecedents, 
 but rather stiagily. She married young and went abroad, but 
 she seemed not to want to talk about this. I could not press 
 her. She had come back home — ^from wherever she was — many 
 years after her husband's death, with an only son, the survivor 
 of a family of four children. He was a man, not a boy; at least, 
 he married a year or so after. She ' could not say that he was 
 dead.' Otherwise, she knew of no living relative. Her means 
 of livehhoodwas an annuity ' bought by my poor son before . . ,' 
 — ^before something she either forgot to tell, or fought shy of — 
 the last, I think. ' I'm very happy up here,' she said. ' Only 
 I might not be, if I was one of those that wanted gaiety. Mrs, 
 Burr she lives with me, and it costs her no rent, and she sees 
 to me. And my children — I call 'em mine — come for company, 
 'most every day. Don't you, Dave ?' 
 
 " Dave tore himself away from the pleasing spectacle of his 
 enemy in hospital, and came to confirm this. ' Yorce !' said 
 he, with emphasis. ' Me and Dolly !' He recited rapidly all 
 the days of the week, an appointment being imputed to each. 
 But he weakened the force of his rhetoric by adding: — ' Only 
 not some of 'em always !' Mrs. Picture then said : — ' But you 
 love your old granny in the country better than you do me, 
 don't you, Davy dear ?' Whereupon Dave shouted with all 
 his voice : — ' I doesn't !' and flushed quite red, indignantly. 
 
 " The old lady then said, most unfairly : — ' Then which do 
 you love best, dear child ? Because you must love one best, 
 you know !' I thought Dave's answer ingenious : — ' I loves 
 whichever it w, best.' If only all young men were as candid 
 about their loves, wouldn't they say the same ? 
 
 " Dolly had picked up the recitation of the days of the week 
 for her own private use, and was repeating it ad libitum in a melo- 
 dious undertone, always becoming louder on Flyday, Tackyday, 
 Tunday. She was hanging over the window-sill watching the 
 surgical case opposite. How glad I am now when I recollect 
 my impulse to catch the little maid and keep her on my knee ! 
 Dolly's good Angel prompted this, and had a hand in my in- 
 spiration to tell the story of Cinderella, with occasional refrains of 
 song which I do believe old Mrs. Picture enjoyed as much as 
 
368 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the two smalls. I shudder as I think what it would have been 
 if they had still been at the window when it came — ^the thing I 
 have been so long postponing. 
 
 " It came without any warning that it would have been possible 
 to act upon. We might certainly have shouted to those below 
 to stand clear, if tve Jiad ourselves understood. But how could 
 we ? You can have no idea how bewildering it was. 
 
 When something you can't explain portends Heavens-know- 
 what, what on earth can you do ? Pretend it's ghosts, and very 
 curious and interesting ? I think I might have done so this 
 time, when an alarming noise set all our nerves on the jar. It 
 was not a noise capable of description — something like Behemoth 
 hiccuping goes nearest. Only I didn't want to frighten the 
 babies, so I said nothing about the ghosts. Dolly said it wasn't 
 her — an obvious truth. Old Mrs. Picture, said it must have been 
 her chair — an obvious fallacy. She then deserted her theory 
 and suggested that Dave should ' go down and see if anything 
 was broken,' which Dave immediately started to do, much 
 excited. 
 
 " I felt very uncomfortable and creepy, for it recalled the shock 
 of earthquake Papa and I were in at Pisa two years ago — ^it is 
 a feeling one never gets over, that terremotitis, as Papa called it. 
 I beheve I was more alarmed than Dolly, and as for Dave, I 
 am sure that so far he thought the whole thing the best fun 
 imaginable. Picture to yourself, as he slams the door behind 
 him and shouts his message to the world below, that I remain 
 seated facing the light, while Dolly on my knee Hstens to a 
 postscript of Cinderella. My eyes are fixed on the beauty of 
 the old side-face I see against the Ught. Get this image clear, 
 and then I will teU you what followed. 
 
 " Even as I sat looking at the old lady, that noise came again, 
 and plaster came tumbUng down from the ceihng, obscuring the 
 window behind. As I fixed my eyes upon it, falling, I saw 
 beyond it what really made me think at first that I was taking 
 leave of my senses. The houses opposite seemed to shoot straight 
 up into the air, as though they were reflections in a mirror which 
 had fallen forward. An instant after, I saw what had happened. 
 It was the window that was moving, not the houses. 
 
 " It was so odd ! I had time to see all this and change my 
 mind, before the great crash came to explain what had happened. 
 For until the roar of a cataract of disintegrated brickwork, 
 followed by a cloud of choking dust, showed that the wall of 
 the room had fallen outwards, leaving the world clear cut and 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH 369 
 
 visible under a glorious afternoon sky until that dust-cloud 
 came and veiled it, I could not have said what the thing was, or 
 why. There seemed to be time — good solid time ! — between 
 the sudden day-blaze and the crash below, and I took advan- 
 tage of it to wonder what on earth was happening. 
 
 " Then I knew it all in an instant, and saw in another instant 
 that the ceiling was sagging down ; for aught I knew, under the 
 weight of a falling roof. 
 
 " Old Mrs. Picture was not frightened at all. ' You get this 
 little Dolly safe, my dear,' said she to me. ' I can get myself 
 as far as the landing. But don't you fret about me. I'm near 
 my time.' She seemed quite alive to the fact that the house 
 was falUng, but at eighty, what did that matter ? She added 
 quite quietly : — ' It's owing to the repairs.' Dolly suddenly began 
 to weep, panic-struck. 
 
 " I saw that Mrs. Picture could not rise from her chair, though 
 she tried. But what could I do ? Any attempt of mine to pick 
 her up and carry her would only have led to delay. I saw it 
 would be quicker to get help, and ran for it, overtaking Dave 
 on the stairs. 
 
 " Below was chaos. The kitchen where I had left my cousin 
 talking with Uncle Mo and Aunt Maria was all but darkened, 
 and the place was a cloud of dust. I could see that Uncle Mo 
 was wrenching open the street-door, which seemed to have 
 stuck, and then that it opened, letting in an avalanche of rubbish, 
 and some hght. Cries came from outside, and Aimt Maria 
 called out that it was Mrs. Burr. Thereon Uncle Mo, crying 
 ' Stand clear, all !' began flinging the rubbish back into the room 
 with marvellous alacrity for a man of his years, and no con- 
 sideration at all for glass or crockery. I felt sick, you may fancy, 
 when it came home to me that someone was crying aloud with 
 pain, buried under that heap of fallen brickwork. 
 
 " But we could be of no use yet a while, so I told Clo and Aunt 
 Maria to come upstairs and help to get the old lady down. They 
 did as they were bid, being, in fact, terrified out of their wits, 
 and quite unable to make suggestions. A male voice came from 
 within the room where I had just left Mrs. Picture by herself. 
 I took it quite as a matter of course. 
 
 " ' You keep out on that landing, some of you, till I tell you 
 to come in. This here floor won't carry more than my weight.' 
 This was what I heard a man say, speaking from where the 
 window had been, mysteriously. I was aware that he had 
 stepped from some ladder on to the floor of the room, jumping 
 
 24 
 
370 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 on it recklessly as though to test its bearing power. Then that 
 he had gathered up my old new acquaintance in a bundle, care- 
 fully made in a few seconds, and had said: — ' Come along down !' 
 to all whom it might concern. He shepherded us, all three 
 women and the two children, into a back-bedroom below, and 
 went away, leaving his bundle on the bed; saying, after glancing 
 round at the cornice: — ' You'll be safe enough here for a bit, just 
 till we can see our way.' He had a peculiar hat or cap, and I 
 saw that he was a fireman. I did not know that firemen held 
 any intercourse with human creatures. It appears that they 
 do occasionally, under reserves. 
 
 " Then it was that I became alarmed about my old lady. 
 Her face had lost what colour it had, and her finger-tips had 
 become blue and lifeless. But she spoke, faintly enough, al- 
 though quite clearly, always urging us to go to a safer place, and 
 leave her to her luck. This was, of course, nonsense. Nor was 
 there any safer place to go to, so far as I understood the position. 
 Aimt Maria went down to find brandy, if possible, in the heart 
 of the confusion below. She found half a wineglassful somewhere, 
 and brought back with it a report of progress. They had to be 
 cautious in removing the rubbish, so that no worse should come 
 to the sufEerer it had half buried. We kept it from the old lady 
 that this was her fellow-lodger, Mrs. Burr, and made her take 
 some brandy, whether she liked it or no. I then went down to 
 see for myself, and Clo came too. 
 
 " The police had taken prompt possession of the Court, and 
 only a limited force of volunteers were allowed to share in the 
 removal of the rubbish. Uncle Mo and the fireman, who seemed 
 to be a personal friend, were attacking the ruin from within, 
 throwing the loose bricks back into the kitchen, and working 
 for the dear life. 
 
 " As we came in they halted, in obedience to, ' Easy a minute, 
 you inside there. Gently does it,' from the spontaneous leading 
 mind, whoever he was, without. Uncle Mo, streaming with 
 perspiration, and forgetful of social niceties, turned to me say- 
 ing: — ' You go back, my dear, you go back ! 'Tain't for you 
 to see. You go back!' I replied: — 'Nonsense, Mr. Wardle ! 
 What do you take me for ?' For had I not stood beside y(m, 
 my darling, when you lay dead in the Park ? 
 
 " I could see what had taken place. The woman had been 
 just about to knock at the door when the wall fell from above. 
 Nothing had struck her direct, else she would almost surely 
 have been killed. The ruin had fallen far enough from the house 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH 371 
 
 to avoid this, but the recoil of its disintegration (I'm so proud 
 of that expression) had jammed her against the wall and 
 choked the door. . . . I'm so sleepy I can't write another 
 word."' 
 
 No doubt the sequel described how Mrs. Burr, rescued alive, 
 but insensible, was borne away on a stretcher to the Hospital, 
 and how the party were released from the house, whose complete 
 collapse must have presented itself to their excited imaginations 
 as more than a possibility. No doubt also obscure points were 
 made plain; as, for instance, the one which is prominent in the 
 short newspaper report, which runs as follows : — " A singular 
 fall of brickwork, the consequences of which might easily have 
 proved fatal, occurred on Thursday last at Sapps Court, Maryle- 
 bone, when the greater part of the front-wall of No. 7 fell forward 
 into the street, blocking the main entrance and causing for a 
 time the greatest alarm to the inhabitants, who, however, were 
 all ultimately rescued uninjured. A remarkable circumstance 
 was that the cloud of dust raised by the shower of loose brick- 
 work was taken for smoke and was sufficient to cause an alarm 
 of fire; as a matter of fact, two engines had arrived before the 
 circumstances were explained. The mistake was not altogether 
 unfortunate, as an escape ladder which was passing at the time 
 was of use in reaching the upper floors, whose tenants were at 
 one time in considerable danger. A sempstress, Mrs. Susan 
 Burr, living upstairs, was returning home at the moment of the 
 calamity, and was severely injured by the falling brickwork, but 
 no serious result is anticipated. A costermonger of the name of 
 Rackstraw also received some severe contusions, but if we may 
 trust the report of his son, an intelligent lad of thirteen, he is 
 very little the worse by his misadventure." 
 
 Although " no serious result was anticipated " in Mrs. Burr's 
 case — ^in the newspaper sense of the words, which referred to 
 the Coroner — ^the results were serious enough to Mrs. Burr. She 
 was disabled from work indefinitely, and was too much damaged 
 to hope to leave the Hospital, for weeks at any rate. A relative 
 was found, ready to take charge of her when that time should 
 arrive, but apparently not ready to disclose her own name. For, 
 so far as can be ascertained, she was never spoken of at Sapps 
 Court otherwise than as " Mrs. Burr's married niece." 
 
 Mr. Bartlett was on the spot, within an hour, taking measures 
 for the immediate safety of the inmates, and his own ultimate 
 pecuniary advantage. He pointed out it was quite unneces- 
 
372 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sary for anyone to turn out of the rooms below, although 
 he admitted that the open air had got through the top story. 
 His immediate resources were quite equal to a temporary 
 arrangement practicable in a couple of hours or so. A contriv- 
 ance of inconceivable slightness, involving no drawbacks what- 
 ever to families occupying the premises it was engendered in, 
 was necessary to hold the roof up tempory, for fear it should 
 come with a run. It was really a'most nothing in the manner of 
 speaking. You just shoved a len'th of quartering into each 
 room, all down the house to the bottom, with a short scaffold- 
 board top and bottom to distribute out the weight, and tapped 
 'em across with a 'ammer, and there you were ! The top one 
 ketched the roof coming down, and you had no need to be appre- 
 hensive, because it would take a tidy weight — double what Mr. 
 Bartlett was going to put upon it. 
 
 This was a security against a complete collapse of the roof and 
 upper floor, but if it come on heavy rain, what would keep Aunt 
 M'riar's room dry ? She and Dolly could not sleep in a puddle. 
 Mr. Bartlett, however, pledged himself to make all that good 
 with a few yards of tarpauling, and Aunt M'riar and Dolly went 
 to bed, with sore misgivings as to whether they would wake 
 aUve next day. Dolly woke in the night and screamed with 
 terror at what she conceived was a spectre from the grave, but 
 which was really nothing but a short length of scaffold-pole 
 standing upright at the foot of her bed. 
 
 This was bad enough, but it further appeared next day that 
 a new floor would be de rigueur overhead in Mrs. Prichard's 
 room. Not only were sundry timber balks shoved up 
 against the house outside so they couldn't constitoot a hindrance 
 to anyone — so Mr. Bartlett said when he giv' in a price for the 
 job — but the street-door wouldn't above half shet to, and all 
 the windows had to be seen to. Add to this afflictions from 
 tarpaulings that would keep you bone-dry even if there come a 
 thunderstorm — or perhaps, properly speaking, that would have 
 done so only they were just a trifle wore at critical points — and 
 smells of damp plaster that quite took away the relish from your 
 food, and you will form some idea what remaining in the house 
 during the repairs meant to Uncle Mo and his belongings. 
 
 Not that Dolly and Dave took their sufferings to heart much. 
 The novelties of the position went far to compensate them for 
 its drawbacks. One supreme grief there was for them, certainly. 
 The avalanche of brickwork had destroyed, utterly and irre- 
 vocably, that cherished sunflower. They had clung to a linger- 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CEASH 373 
 
 ing hope that, as soon as the claims of humanity had been dis- 
 charged by the rescue of the victims of the catastrophe, the 
 attention of the rescuers would be directed to carefully removing 
 the debris from above their buried treasure. They were shocked 
 at the callous indifference shown to its fate. It was an early 
 revelation of the heartlessness of mankind. Nevertheless, the 
 shattered sunflower was recovered in the end, and Dolly took it 
 to bed with her, and cried herself to sleep over it. 
 
 So it seemed impossible for Dave and Dolly, and their uncle 
 and aunt, all to remain on in the half -wrecked house. But then 
 — where had they to go to ? It was clear that Dolly and her 
 aunt would have to turn out, and the only resource seemed to 
 be that they should go away for a while to her grandmother's, 
 an old lady at Ealing, who existed, but went no further. She 
 had never entered Sapps Court, but her daughters. Aunt M'riar 
 and Dolly's mother, had paid her dutiful visits. There was no 
 ill-feeling — ^none whatever ! So to Ealing Aunt M'riar went, 
 two or three days later, and Dave went too, although he was 
 convinced Uncle Mo couldn't do without him. 
 
 The old boy himself remained in residence, being fed by the 
 Rising Sun; which sounds like poetry, but relates to chops and 
 sausages and a hal£-a-pint, a monotonous dietary on which he 
 subsisted until his family returned a month later to a reinstated 
 mansion. He hved a good deal at the Sun during this period, 
 relying on the society of his host and his friend Jerry. His 
 retrospective chats with the latter recorded his impressions of 
 the event which had deprived him of his household, and left him 
 a childless wanderer on the surface of Marylebone. 
 
 " Red-nosed Tommy," said he, referring to Mr. Bartlett, " he 
 wouldn't have put in that bit of bressemer to ketch up those 
 rotten joists over M'riar's room if I hadn't told him. We should 
 just have had the floor come through and p'r'aps my Httle maid 
 and M'riar squashed dead right off. You see, they would have 
 took it all atop, and no mistake. Pore Susan got it bad enough, 
 but it wasn't a dead squelch in her case. It come sideways." 
 Uncle Mo emptied his pipe on the table, and thoughtfully made 
 the ash do duty first for Mrs. Burr, and then for Aunt M'riar 
 and Dolly, by means of a side-push and a top-squash with his 
 finger. He looked at the last result sadly as he refilled his pipe 
 — a hypothetically bereaved man. Dolly might have been as 
 flat as that ! 
 
 " How's Susan Burr getting on ?" asked Mr. Alibone. 
 
374 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " That's according to how much money you're inclined to 
 put on the doctors. Going by looks only — ^what M'riar says — 
 she don't give the idea of coming to time. Only then, there's 
 Sister Nora — Miss Grahame they call her now; very nice lady — 
 she's on the doctor's side, and says Mrs. Burr means to pull 
 round. Hope so !" 
 
 " How's Carrots— Carrots senior— young Radishes' dad ?" 
 
 " Oh — him ? Er's all right. He ain't the sort to take to 
 bein' doctored. He's getting about again." 
 
 " I thought a bit of wall came down on him." 
 
 " Came down bodily, he says. But it don't foller that it did, 
 because he says so. Anyhow, he got a hard comer of his nut 
 against it. He. ain't delicate. He says he'll have it out of the 
 landlord — action for damages — ^wilful neglect — 'sorlt and battery 
 ■ — that kind o' thing !" 
 
 " Won't Mrs. Burr ?" 
 
 " Couldn't say — don't know if a woman counts. But it don't 
 matter. Sister Nora, she'll see to lier. Goes to see her every 
 day. She or the other one. I say, Jerry ! . . ." 
 
 " What say, old Mo ?" 
 
 " "Sou haven't seen the other one." 
 
 " Oh, that's it, is it ?" Mr. Jerry spoke perceptively, appre- 
 ciatively. For Uncle Mo, by partly closing one eye, and slightly 
 varying the expression of his lips, had contrived somehow to 
 convey the idea that he was speaking of dazzling beauty, not by 
 any means unadorned. 
 
 " I tell you this, Jerry, and you can believe me or not, as you 
 like. If I was a young feller, I'd hang about Hy' Park all day 
 long only to get a squint at her. My word ! — there's nothing 
 to come anigh her — ever I saw ! And there she was, a-kissing 
 our little Dolly, hke e'er a one of us !" 
 
 " What do you make out her name to be," said Mr. Jerry. 
 
 " Sister Nora called her Gwen," repUed Mo, speaking the name 
 mechanically but firmly. " But what the long for that may be, 
 I couldn't say. 'Tain't Gwenjamin, anyhow." He stopped to 
 Ught his pipe. 
 
 " It was this young ladyship that carried off old Prichard in 
 a two-horse carriage, I take it." 
 
 Uncle Mo nodded. " Round to Sister Nora's — ^in Cavendish 
 Square — ^with a black Statute stood upright — behind paUn's. 
 M'riar she's been round to see the old lady there, being 
 told to. And seemin'ly this here young Countess " — Uncle Mo 
 seemed to object to using this word — " she's a-going to carry the 
 
GWEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CRASH 375 
 
 old lady off to the Towels, where she lives when she's at 
 home. . . ." 
 
 " The Towels ? Are you sure it isn't Towers ? Much more 
 likely !" 
 
 Uncle Mo made a mental note about Jerry, that he was 
 tainted with John Bull's love of a lord. How could anything 
 but a reverent study of Debrett have given such an insight into 
 the names of Nob's houses ? " It don't make any odds, that I 
 can see !" was his comment. The correction, however, resulted 
 in an incumbrance to his speech, as he was only half prepared 
 to concede the point. He continued: — " She's a-going, as I 
 understand from M'riar, to pack off Mrs. Prichard to this here 
 Towels, or Towers, accordin' as we call it. And, as I make it 
 out, she'll keep her there till so be as Mr. Bartlett gets through 
 the repairs. Or she'll send her back to a lodgin'; or not, as 
 may be. Either, or eye-ther." Having thus, as it were, satur- 
 ated his speech with freedom of alternative. Uncle Mo dismissed 
 the subject, in favour of Gwen's beauty. " But — ^to look at 
 her !" said he. The old man was quite in love. 
 
 Mr. Jerry disturbed his contemplation of the image Gwen had 
 left him. " How long does Bartlett mean to be over the job ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " He means to complete in a month. If you trust his word. 
 I can't say I do." 
 
 " When viill he complete. Mo ? That's the question. What's 
 the answer ?" 
 
 " The Lord alone knows." Uncle Mo shook his head solemnly. 
 But he recalled his words. " No — He don't ! Even the Devil 
 don't know. I tell you this, Jerry — there never was a buildin' 
 job finished at any time spoke of af orehand. It's always after any 
 such a time. And if you jump on for to catch it up, it's afterer." 
 
 " Best to hold one's tongue about it, eh ? Anyway, the old 
 lady's got a berth for a time. Rum story ! She'd have been put 
 to it if it hadn't been for the turn things took. When's she to go?" 
 
 " To these here Towels, or Towers, whichever you call 'em ? 
 M'riar didn't spot that. When she's took back, I suppose. 
 When the young lady goes." 
 
 " What'll your young customer say to Mrs. Prichard being 
 gone, when his aunt brings him back ?" 
 
 Uncle Mo seemed to cogitate over this. He had not perhaps 
 been fully alive to the disappointment in store for Dave when 
 he came back and found no Mrs. Picture at Sapps Court. Poor 
 little man ! The old prizefighter's tender heart was touched on 
 
376 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 his boy's behalf. But after all there would be worse trials than 
 this on the rough road of hfe for Dave. " He'll have to lump it, 
 I expect, Jerry," said he. " Besides, Mrs. P., she'll come back 
 as soon as the new plaster's dry. She's not going to stop at the 
 Towels — Towers — ^whatever they are ! — for a thousand years." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 HOW QWEN GOT AT MRS. PEICHARD's HISTORY, OR SOME OF IT. 
 ONE CRIME MORE OF HER SON's. THE WAIiS OE TROY, AND 
 THOSE OF SAPPS COURT. AUNT m'RIAR's VISIT OF INSPECTION. 
 HOW SHE CALLED ON MRS. RAGSTROAR, WHO SENT HER SECRE- 
 TIVE SON ROUND. HIS MESSAGE FROM MR. WIX. WHO WAS 
 COMING TO SEE HIS MOTHER, UNLESS SHE WAS SOMEBODY ELSE. 
 A MESSAGE TO MR. WIX, UNDERTAKEN BY MICHAEL. UNCLE 
 MO'S JOY AT THE PROSPECT OF DAVE AND DOLLY 
 
 How very improbable the Actual would sometimes feel, were it 
 not for our knowledge of the events which led up to it ! 
 
 Nothing could have been more improbable per se than that 
 old Mrs. Prichard, upstairs at No. 7, down Sapps Court, should 
 become the guest of the Earl and Coimtess of Ancestor, at The 
 Towers in Rocestershire. But a number of improbable antecedent 
 events combined to make it possible, and once its possibiHty 
 was established, it only needed one more good substantial im- 
 probabiUty to make it actual. Gwen's individuality was more 
 than enough to supply this. But just think what a succession 
 of coincidences and strange events had preceded the demand 
 for it ! 
 
 To our thinking the New Mud wanted for Dave's barrage 
 was responsible for the whole of it. But for that New Mud, 
 Dave would not have gone to the Hospital. But for the Hospital, 
 he would never have excited a tender passion in the breast of 
 Sister Nora; would never have visited Granny Marrowbone; 
 would never have been sought for by The Aristocracy at his 
 residence in Sapps Court. Some may say that at this point 
 nothing else would have occurred but for the collapse of Mr. 
 Bartlett's brickwork, and that therefore the rarity of sound bricks 
 in that conglomerate was the vera causa of the events that 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 377 
 
 followed. But why not equally the imperfection of old Stephen's 
 aim at Achilles ? If he had killed Aoldlles, it is ten to one Gwen 
 would have gone abroad with her mother, instead of being 
 spirited away to Cavendish Square by her cousin in order that 
 she should thereby become entangled in slums. Or for that 
 matter, why not the death of the Macganister More ? Had he 
 been living still. Cousin Clo would never have visited Ancester 
 Towers at all. 
 
 No — ^ho ! Depend upon it, it was the New Mud. But then. 
 Predestination would have been dreadfully put out of temper 
 if, instead of imperious impulsive Gwen, ruling the roast and the 
 boiled, and the turbot with mayonnaise, and everything else for 
 that matter, some young woman who could be pulverised by a 
 reproof for Quixotism had been her imderstudy for the part, 
 and she herself had had mumps or bubonic plague at the time 
 of the accident. In that case Predestination would hardly have 
 known which way to turn, to get at some sort of compromise or 
 accommodation that would square matters. For there can be 
 no reasonable doubt that what did take place was quite in order, 
 and that — broadly speaking — every one had signed his name 
 over the pencil marks, and fiUed in his witness's name 
 and residence, in the Book of Fate. If Gwen's understudy had 
 been called on, there would have been — ^to borrow a favourite 
 expression of Uncle Mo's — a pretty how-do-you-do, on the part 
 of Predestination. 
 
 Fortunately no such thing occurred, and Predestination's 
 powers of evasion were not put to the test. The Decrees of 
 Fate were fulfilled as usual, and History travelled on the line of 
 least resistance, to the great gratification of The Thoughtful 
 Observer. In the case of Unes of compUance with the will of 
 Gwen, there was no resistance at all. Is there ever any, when a 
 spoiled young beauty is ready to kiss the Arbiters of Destiny as 
 a bribe, rather than give way about a whim, reasonable or un- 
 reasonable. 
 
 And, after all, so many improbabiHties having converged 
 towards creating the situation, there was nothing so very un- 
 reasonable in Gwen's whim that old Mrs. Picture should go back 
 with her to the Towers. It was only the natural solution of a 
 difficulty in a conjunction of circumstances which could not 
 have varied materially, unless Gwen and her cousin had de- 
 volved the charge of the old lady on some Institution — say the 
 Workhouse Infirmary — or a neighbour, or had forsaken her 
 altogether. They preferred carrying her off, as the story has 
 
378 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 seen, in a semi-insensible state from the shock, to their haven 
 in Cavendish Square. Next day an arrangement was made 
 which restored to Gwen — ^who had slept on a sofa, when she was 
 not writing the letter quoted in the foregoing text — the couch 
 she had insisted on dedicating to " Old Mrs. Picture," as she 
 continued to call her. 
 
 It was very singular that Gwen, who had seen the old twin 
 sister — as we know her to have been — should have fallen so in 
 love with the one whose acquaintance she last made. The 
 story can only accept the fact that it was so, without speculating 
 on its possible connection with the growth of a something that 
 is not the body. It may appear — or may not — to many, that, 
 in old Maisie's life, a warp of supreme love, shuttle-struck by 
 a weft of supreme pain, had clothed her soul, as it were, in a 
 garment unhke her sister's; a garment some eyes might have 
 the gift of seeing, to which others might be blind. Old Granny 
 Marrable had had her share of trouble, no doubt; but Fate had 
 shown her fair play. Just simple everyday Death ! — maternity 
 troubles hved through in shelter; nursing galore, certainly — 
 who escapes it ? Of purse troubles, debts and sordid plagues, 
 a certain measure no doubt, for who escapes them ? But to that 
 life of hers the scorching &es that had worked so hard to slay 
 her sister's heart, and failed so signally, had never penetrated. 
 Indeed, the only really acute grief of her placid Uf e had been the 
 supposed death of this very sister, now so near her, unknown. 
 StiU, Gwen might, of course, have taken just as strongly to 
 Granny Marrable if some slight chance of their introduction had 
 happened otherwise. 
 
 The old lady remained at Cavendish Square three weeks, 
 Uving chiefly in an extra little room, which had been roughly 
 equipped for service, to cover the contingency. As Miss Lut- 
 wyche seemed to fight shy of the task, Maggie, the Scotch 
 servant, took her in hand, grooming her carefully and exhibiting 
 her as a sort of sweet old curiosity picked up out of a dustheap, 
 and now become the possession of a Museum. Aunt Constance, 
 who kept an eye of culture on Maggie's dialect, reported that she 
 had said of the old lady, that she was a " douce auld luckie ": 
 and that she stood in need of no " bonny-wawlies and whigma- 
 leeries," which. Miss Grahame said, meant that she had no need 
 of artificial decoration. She was very happy by herself, reading 
 any easy book with big enough print. And though she was 
 probably not so long without the society of grown people as she 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 379 
 
 had often been at Sapps Coiirt, she certainly missed Dave and 
 Dolly. But she seemed pleased and gratified on being told that 
 Dave was not gone, and was at present not going, anywhere 
 near old Mrs. Marrable in the country. 
 
 The young lady broached her little scheme to her venerable 
 friend, or protigee, as soon as it became clear that a return to 
 the desolation to which Mr. Bartlett had converted Sapps Court 
 might be a serious detriment to her health. Mr. Bartlett himself 
 admitted the facts, but disputed the inferences to be drawn 
 from them. Yes — there was, and there would be, a trifle of 
 myesture hanging round; nothing in itself, but what you might 
 call traces of ewaporation. You saw similar phenomena in 
 sinks, and at the back of cestems. But you never come across 
 anyone the worse for 'em. He himself benefited by a hatmo- 
 sphere, as parties called it nowadays, such as wam't uncommon 
 in basements of unoccupied premises, and in morasses. But 
 you were imable to account for other people's constitutions not 
 bemg identical in all respects with your own. Providence was 
 inscrutable, and you had to look at the symptoms. These were 
 the only guides vouchsafed to us. He would, however, wager 
 that as soon as the paperhanger was out of the house and the 
 plaster giv' a chance to 'arden, all the advantages of a bone-dry 
 residence would be enjoyed by an incoming tenant. 
 
 Portions of this opinion leaked out during a visit of Aunt M'riar 
 to Mrs. Prichard, at Cavendish Square, she having come from 
 EaUng by the bus to overhaul the position with Uncle Mo, and 
 settle whether she and Dave and Dolly could return next week 
 with safety. They had decided in the negative, and ]VIr. Bartlett 
 had said it was open to them to soote themselves. Uncle Mo's 
 sleeping-room had, of course, been spared by the accident, so 
 he only suffered from a clammy and depressing flavour that 
 wouldn't hang about above a day or two. At least, Mr. Bartlett 
 said so. 
 
 Gwen treated the idea that Mrs. Prichard should so much 
 as talk about returning to her quarters, with absolute derision. 
 
 " I'm going to keep you here and see you properly looked 
 after, Mrs. Picture, till I go to the Towers. And then I shall 
 just take you with me." For she had installed the name Picture 
 as the old lady's working designation with such decision that 
 everyone else accepted it, though one or two used it in inverted 
 commas. " I always have my own way," she added with a 
 full, rich laugh that Lord William Bentinck might have heard 
 on his black pedestal in the Square below. 
 
380 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Aunt M'riar departed, not to be too late for her bus, and 
 Gwen stayed for a chat. She often spent half an hour with the 
 old lady, trying sometimes to get at more of her past history, 
 always feeling that she was met by reticence, never liking to 
 press roughly for information. 
 
 The two thin old palms that had once been a beautiful young 
 girl's closed on the hand that was even now scarcely in its fullest 
 glory of life, as its owner's eyes looked down into the old eyes 
 that had never lost their sweetness. The old voice spoke first. 
 " Why — oh why," it said, " are you so kind to me ? My 
 dear !" 
 
 " Is it strange that I should be kind to you ?" said Gwen, 
 speaking somewhat to herself. Then louder, as though she had 
 been betrayed into a claim to benevolence, and was ashamed : — 
 " The kindness comes to very Uttle, when all's said and done. 
 Besides, you can . . ." She paused a moment, taking in the 
 pause a seat beside the arm-chair, without loosing the hand she 
 held; then made her speech complete: — " Besides, you can pay 
 it all back, you know I" 
 
 " I pay ! How can I pay it back ?" 
 
 " You can. I'm quite in earnest. You can pay me back 
 everything I can do for you — everything and more — by telling 
 me. . . . Now, you mustn't be put out, you know, if I tell you 
 what it is." Gwen was rather frightened at her own temerity. 
 
 " My dear — ^just fancy ! Why should I want you not to 
 know — anything I can teU, if I can remember it to tell you ? 
 What is it ?" 
 
 " How you come to be Uving in Sapps Court. And why you 
 are so poor. Because you are poor." 
 
 " No, I have a pound a week still. I have been better off — 
 yes ! I have been well off." 
 
 " But how came you to live in Sapps Court ?" 
 
 " How came I ? . . . Let me see ! . . . I came there from Skil- 
 licks, at Sevenoaks, where I was last. Six shilliugs was too much 
 for me alone. It is only seven-and-sixpence at Sapps for both 
 of us. It was through poor Susan Burr that I came there. To 
 think of her in the Hospital !" 
 
 " She's going on very nicely to-day. I went to see her with 
 my cousin. Go on. It was through her ? . . ." 
 
 " Through her I came to Sapps. She wanted to be in town 
 for her work, and found Sapps. She had no furniture, or just 
 a bed. And I had been able to keep mine. Then, you see, I 
 wanted a helping hand now and again, and she had her sight, 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 381 
 
 and could make shift to keep order in the place. I had every 
 comfort, be sure I" This was spoken with roused emphasis, as 
 though to dissipate uneasiness about herself. 
 
 " I saw you had some nice furniture," said Gwen. " I was 
 on the look out for your desk, where Dave's letters were 
 written." 
 
 " Yes, it's mahogany. I was frightened about it, for fear it 
 should be scratched. But Davy's Aunt Maria was saying Mr. 
 Bartlett's men had been very civil and careful, and all the 
 furniture was safe in the bedroom at the back, and the door 
 locked." 
 
 " But \/here did the furniture come from ?" 
 
 " From the house." 
 
 " The house where you Hved with your husband 1" 
 
 The old woman started. " Oh no ! Oh no — ^no ! All that 
 was long — long ago." She shrank from disinterring all but the 
 most recent past. 
 
 But it was the deeper stratum of oblivion that had to be 
 reached, without dynamite if possible. " I see," Gwen said, 
 " Your own house after his death ?" 
 
 Memory was restive, evidently — ^rather resented the inquiry. 
 Still, a false inference could not be left uncorrected. " Neither 
 my husband's nor mine," was the answer. " It was my son's 
 house, after my husband's death." Its tone meant plainly: — 
 " I tell you this, for truth's sake. But, please, no more 
 questions !" 
 
 Gwen's idea honestly was to drop the curtain, and her half- 
 dozen words were meant for the merest epilogue. When she 
 said : — " And he is dead, too ?" she only wanted to round off the 
 conversation. She was shocked when the two deUcate old hands 
 hers lay between closed upon it almost convulsively, and could 
 hardly beUeve she heard rightly the articulate sob, rather than 
 speech, that came from the old lady's Ups. 
 
 " Oh, I hope so — I hope so !" 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Picture, you hope so ?" For Gwen could not 
 reconcile this with the ideal she had formed of the speaker. At 
 least, she could not be happy now without an explanation. 
 
 Then she saw that it would come, given time and a sym- 
 pathetic listener. " Yes, my dear, I hope so. For what is his 
 life to him — my son — ^if he is alive ? The best I can think of for 
 him, is that he is long dead." 
 " Was he mad or bad ?" 
 " Both, I hope. Perhaps only mad. Then he would be 
 
382 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 neither bad nor good. But he was lost for me, and we were well 
 apart: before he was " — she hesitated — " sent away. . . .' 
 
 " Sent away ! Yes — ^where ?" 
 
 " I ought not to tell you this . . . but will you promise me ? . . ." 
 
 " To tell no one ? Yes — I promise." 
 
 " I know you will keep your promise." The old lady kept 
 on looking into the beautiful eyes fixed on hers, still caressing 
 the hand she held, and said, after a few moments' silence : — " He 
 was sent to penal servitude, not under his own name. They 
 said his name was . . . some short name ... at the trial. That 
 was at Bristol." Then, after another pause, as though she had 
 read Gwen's thoughts in her scared, speechless face: — " It was 
 all right. He deserved his sentence." 
 
 "Oh, I am so glad!" Gwen was quite relieved. "I was 
 afraid he was innocent. I thought he could not be guilty, 
 because of you. But was he really wicked — bad, I mean — as 
 well as legally guilty ?" 
 
 " I like to hope that he was mad. The offence that sent him 
 to Norfolk Island was scarcely a wicked one. It was only 
 burglary, and it was a Bank." The old face looked forgiving 
 over this, but set itself in lines of fixed anger as she added: — " It 
 was not like the thing that parted us." 
 
 " You wish not to tell me that ?" 
 
 " My dear, it is not a thing for you to hear." The gentleness 
 of the speaker averted the storm of indignation and contempt 
 which similar expressions of the correctitudes had more than 
 once excited in this rebellious young lady. 
 
 But Gwen felt at Uberty to laugh a little at them, or could 
 not resist the temptation to do so. " Oh dear !" she cried. 
 " Am I a new-born baby, to be kept packed in cotton-wool, and 
 not allowed to hear this and hear that ? Do, dear Mrs. Picture 
 — you don't mind my calhng you by Dave's name ? — do tell me 
 what it was that parted you and your son. I shall understand 
 you. I'm not Mary that had a Httle lamb." 
 
 " Well, my dear, when I was about your age, before I was 
 married, I'm not at all sure that I should have understood. 
 Perhaps that is really the reason why I took the girl's part. . . ." 
 
 " Why you took the girl's part ?" said Gwen, who had not 
 understood, so far, and was puzzled at the expression. 
 
 " Yes. I beUeved her story. They tried to throw the blame 
 on her; he did, himself. My dear, it was his cowardice and 
 treachery that made me hate him. You are shocked at that ?" 
 
 " No — at least, I mean, I don't believe you meant it." 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 383 
 
 " I meant it at tke time, my dear. And I counted him as 
 dead, and tried to forget him. But it is hard for a mother to 
 forget her son." 
 
 "I should have thought so." Gwen was not quite happy 
 about old Mrs. Picture's inner soul. How about a possible cruel 
 comer in it ? 
 
 The old lady seemed to suspect this question's existence, 
 unexpressed. Apology in her voice hinted at need of forgive- 
 ness — pleaded against condemnation. " But," she said, after a 
 faltered word or two, short of speech, " you do not know, my 
 dear, how bad a man can be. How should you ?" 
 
 Perhaps the tone of her voice threw a light on some obscurity 
 accepted ambiguities had left. For Gwen said, rather suddenly : 
 " You need not tell me any more. You have told me plenty 
 and I understand it." And so she did, for working purposes, 
 though perhaps some latitudes in the sea of this Ralph Daverill's 
 iniquities were by her unexplored and unexplorable. 
 
 This particular atrocity of his has no interest for the story, 
 beyond the fact that it was the one that led to his separation 
 from his mother, and that it accounts for the very slight knowledge 
 that she seems to have had of the details of his conviction and 
 deportation. It must have happened between his desertion of 
 his lawful wife, Dave's Aunt M'riar, and his ill-advised attempt 
 at burglary. Whether his offence against " the girl " whose 
 part his mother took was made the subject of a criminal indict- 
 ment is not certain, but if it was he must have escaped with a 
 slight punishment, to be able to give his attention to the strong 
 room of that Bank so soon after. Those who are inclined to 
 think that his mother was tmf orgiving towards her own son, to 
 the extent of vindictiveness, may find an excuse for her in a 
 surmise which some facts connected with the case made plausible, 
 that he adduced some childish levities on this girl's part as!a warrant 
 for his atrocious behaviour towards her, and so escaped legal 
 penalty. Those who know with what alacrity male jxirymen will 
 accept evasions of this sort, will admit that this is at least possible. 
 
 This is conjecture, by the way, as Gwen asked to know no 
 more of the incident, seeming to shrink from further knowledge 
 of it in fact. She allowed it to pass out of the conversation, 
 retaining the pleasant and wholesome attempt to redistribute 
 the Bank's property as at least fit for discussion, and even 
 pardonable — an act due to a mistaken economic theory — re- 
 distribution of property by a free lance, not wearing the uniform 
 of a School of Political Thought. 
 
384 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " But how long was his term of service ?" she asked, coming 
 back into the fresher air of mere housebreaking. 
 
 " I am afraid it was for fourteen years. But I have never 
 known. I can hardly believe it now, but I know it is true for 
 all that, -that he was convicted and transported without the 
 trial coming to my ears at the time. I only knew that he had 
 disappeared, and thought it was by his own choice. And what 
 means had I of finding him, if I had wanted to ? That I never 
 did." 
 
 " Because of . . . because of the girl ?" 
 
 " Because of the girl Emma. ... Oh yes ! I was his mother, 
 but . . ." She stopped short. Her meaning was clear; some 
 sons would cripple the strongest mother's love. 
 
 " Then you had to give up the house," said Gwen, to help 
 her away from the memory that stung her, vividly. 
 
 " I gave it up and sold the furniture, all but one or two bits 
 I kept by me — ^Dave Wardle's desk, and the arm-chair. I went 
 to a lodging at Sidcup — a pretty place with honeysuckles round 
 my window. I Uved there a many years, and had friends. 
 Then the railway came, and they pulled the cottage down — 
 Mrs. Hutchinson's. And all the folk I knew were driven away 
 — ^went to America, many of them; all the Hutchinsons went. 
 I remember that time well. But oh dear — ^the many moves I 
 had after that ! I cannot tell them all one from another. . . ." 
 
 " It tires you to talk. Never mind now. Tell me another 
 time." 
 
 " No — I'm not tired. I can talk. Where was I ? Oh — the 
 lodgings ! I moved many times — the last time to Sapps Court, 
 not so very long ago. I made friends with Mrs. Burr at SkilUcks, 
 as I told you." 
 
 " And that is what made you so poor ?" 
 
 " Yes. I have only a few hundred pounds of my own, an 
 annuity — ^it comes to sixty pounds a year. I have learned how 
 to make it quite enough for me." Nevertheless, thought Gwen 
 to herself, the good living in her temporary home in Cavendish 
 Square had begun to tell favourably. Enough is seldom as 
 good as a feast on sixty pounds a year. The old lady seemed, 
 however, to dismiss the subject, going on with something ante* 
 cedent to it: — " You see now, my dear, why I said ' I hope.' 
 What could the unhappy boy be to me, or I to him ? But I 
 shall never know where he died, nor when." 
 
 Gwen tried to get at more about her past; but, at some point 
 antecedent to this parting from her son, she seemed to become 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 335 
 
 more reserved, or possibly she had overtasked her strength by 
 so much talk. Gwen noticed that, in all she had told her, she 
 had not mentioned a single name of a person. Some slight 
 reference to Australia, which she had hoped would lead naturally 
 to more disclosure, seemed rather, on second thoughts, to furnish 
 a landmark or limit, with the inscription : — " Thus far and no 
 farther." You — ^whoever you are, reading this — may wonder why 
 Gwen, who had so lately heard of Australia, and Mrs. Marrable's 
 sister who went there over haK-a-century ago, did not forthwith 
 put two and two together, and speculate towards discovery 
 of the truth. It may be strange to you to be told that she was 
 reminded of old Mrs. Marrable's utterance of theword " Australia " 
 when old Mrs. Prichard spoke it, and simply let the recollection 
 drop idly, because it was so unlikely the two two's would add 
 up. To be sure, she had quite forgotten, at the moment, what 
 the old Granny at Chorlton had said about the Antipodes. It 
 is only in books that people remember all through, quite to the 
 end. 
 
 Bear this in mind, that this sisterhood of Maisie and Phoebe 
 was entrenched in its own improbabihty, and that one ante- 
 cedent belief of another mind at least would have been needed 
 to estabhsh it. A hint, a suggestion, might have capitaUsed a 
 dozen claims to having said so all along. But all was primeval 
 silence. There was not a murmur in Space to connect the two. 
 
 Mr. Bartlett, the builder, after inspecting the collapse of the 
 wall, lost no time in drawing up a contract to reinstate same 
 and make good roof, replacing all defective work with new 
 where necessary ; only in his haste to come to his impressive 
 cUmax — " the work to be done to the satisfaction of yourself or 
 your Surveyor for the sum of £99 .8.4 (ninety-nine pounds 
 eight shillings and fourpence)," — he spelt this last word nesseracy. 
 He called on the landlord, the gentleman of independent means 
 at Brixton, with this document in his pocket and a strong con- 
 viction of his own honesty in his face, and pointed out that what 
 he said all along had come to pass. As his position had been 
 that unless the house was rebuilt — ^by him — at great expense, 
 it was pretty sure to come tumbUng down, as these here old 
 houses mostly did, it was difficult for the gentleman of inde- 
 pendent means to gainsay him, especially as the latter's wife 
 became a convert to Mr. Bartlett on the spot. It was his re- 
 sponsible and practical manner that did it. She directed her 
 husband — a feeble sample of the manhood of Brixton — not to 
 
 25 
 
386 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 set up his judgment against that of professional experience, but 
 to affix his signature forthwith to the document made and 
 provided. He said weakly: — " I suppose I must." The lady 
 said: — " Oh dear, no ! — he must do as he liked." He naturally 
 surrendered at discretion, and an almost holy expression of 
 contentment stole over Mr. Bartlett's countenance, superseding 
 his complexion, which otherwise was apt to remain on the 
 memory after its outlines were forgotten. 
 
 To return once more to the drying of the premises after their 
 reconstruction. The accepted view seemed to be that as soon 
 as Mr. Bartlett and his abettors cleared out and died away, the 
 walls would begin to dry, and would make up for lost time. 
 Everyone seemed inclined to palliate this backwardness in the 
 walls, and to feel that they, themselves, had they been in a like 
 position, could not have done much drying — ^with all them work- 
 men in and out all day; just think ! 
 
 But now a new era had dawned, and what with letting the air 
 through, and setting alight to a bit of fire now and again, and 
 the season keeping mild and favourable, with only light frostis 
 in the early morning — only what could you expect just on to 
 Christmas ? — ^there seemed grounds for the confidence that these 
 walls would do themselves credit, and yield up their chemically 
 uncombined water by evaporation. HOg, who existed in those 
 days, was welcome to stay where he was. 
 
 However, these walls refused to come to the scratch on any 
 terms. Homer is silent as to how long the walls of Hium took 
 to dry; they must have been wet if they were built by Neptune. 
 But one may be excused for doubting if they took as long as 
 wet new plaster does, in premises parties are waiting to come into, 
 and getting impatient, in London. Ascribe this laxity of style 
 to the historian's fidelity to his sources of information. 
 
 Not that it would be a fair comparison, in any case. For the 
 walls of Troy were peculiar, having become a meadow with 
 almost indecent haste during the boyhood of Ascanius, who was 
 bom before Achilles lost his temper; and before the decease of 
 Anchises, who was old enough to be unable to walk at the sack- 
 ing of the city. But no doubt you will say that that is all Virgil, 
 and Virgil doesn't count. 
 
 The point we have to do with is that the walls at No. 7 did 
 not dry. And you must bear in mind that it was not only Mrs. 
 Prichard's apartment that was replastered, but that there was 
 a lot done to the ceiling of Aunt M'riar's room as well, and a bit 
 of the cornice tore away where the wall gave; so that the surveyor 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 387 
 
 he ordered, when he come to see it, all the brickwork to come 
 down as far as flush with the window, which had to be allowed 
 extra for on the contract. Hence the decision — and even that 
 was coming on to November — ^that the children should stop 
 with their granny at Eahng while their aunt come up to get 
 things a little in order, and the place well aired. 
 
 Aunt M'riar's return for this purpose drags the story on two 
 or three weeks, but may just as well be told now as later. 
 
 When she made this second journey up to London, she found 
 Mr. Bartlett's ministrations practically ended, his only repre- 
 sentatives being a man, a boy, and a composite smell, whereof 
 one of the components was the smell of the man. Another at 
 the moment of her arrival, putty, was going shortly to be a 
 smell of vivid green paint, so soon as ever he had got these two 
 or three panes made good. For he was then going to put a 
 finishing coat on all woodwork previously painted, and leave his 
 pots in the way till he thought fit to send for them, which is a 
 house-painter's prerogative. He seemed to be able to absorb 
 lead into his system without consequences. 
 
 " There's been a yoimg sarsebox making inquiry arter you, 
 missis," said this artist, striving with a lump of putty that no 
 incorporation could ever persuade to become equal to new. He 
 was making it last out, not to get another half-a-pound just yet 
 a while. " Couldn't say his name, but I rather fancy he belongs 
 in at the end house." 
 
 Aunt M'riar identified the description, and went up to her 
 room wondering why that young Micky had been asking for her. 
 Uncle Moses was away, presumably at The Sun. She busied 
 herself in endeavours to reinstate her sleeping-quarters. Dis- 
 heartening work ! — ^we all know it, this circumventing of Chaos. 
 Aunt M'riar worked away at it, scrubbed the floor and made 
 the bed, taking the dr5aiess of the sheets for granted because 
 it was only her and not Dolly to-night, and she could give them 
 a good airing in the kitchen to-morrow. The painter-and- 
 glazier, without, painted and glazed ; maintaining a morose 
 silence except when he imposed its observance also on a boy 
 who was learning the trade from him very gradually, and suffer- 
 ing from ennui very acutely. He said to this boy at intervals : — 
 " You stow that drumming, young Ebenezer, and 'and me up 
 the turps " — or some other desideratum. Which suspended the 
 drumming in favour of active service, after which it was furtively 
 resumed. 
 
 Uncle Mo evidently meant to be back late. The fact was. 
 
388 WHEN GHOST ME ETS GHOST 
 
 his home had no attraction for him in the absence of his family, 
 and the comfort of the Sun parlour was seductive. Aunt 
 M'riar's visit was unexpected, as she had not written in advance. 
 So when the painter-and-glazier began to prepare to leave his 
 tins and pots and brushes and graining-tools behind him till he 
 could make it convenient to call round and fetch them. Aunt 
 M'riar felt threatened by loneliness. And when he finally took 
 his leave, with an assurance that by to-morrow morning any 
 person so disposed might rub his Sunday coat up against his 
 day's work, and never be a penny the worse. Aunt M'riar felt 
 so forsaken that she just stepped up the Court to hear what she 
 might of its news from Mrs. Ragstroar, who was momentarily 
 expecting the return of her son and husband to domestic dulness, 
 after a commercial career out Islington way. They had only 
 got to stable up their moke, whose home was in a backyard about 
 a half a mile off, and then they would seek their Penates, who 
 were no doubt helping to stew something that smelt much nicer 
 than all that filthy paint and putty. 
 
 " That I could not say, ma'am," said Mrs. Ragstroar, in answer 
 to an inquiry about the object of Micky's visit. " Not it you 
 was to offer five pounds. That boy is Secrecy Itself ! What 
 he do know, and what he do not know, is 'id in Ids 'art; and what 
 is more, he don't commoonicate it to neither me nor his father. 
 Only his great aunt ! But I can send him round, as easy as not." 
 
 Accordingly, about half an hour later, when Aunt M'riar was 
 beginning to wonder at the non-appearance of Uncle Mo, Master 
 Micky knocked at her door, and was admitted. 
 
 " 'Cos I've got a message for you, missis," said he. He 
 accepted the obvious need of his visit for explanation, without 
 incorporating it in words. " It come from that party — party 
 with a side-twist in the mug — party as come this way of a 
 Sunday morning, askin' for old Mother Prichard — party I see 
 in Hy' Park along of young Dave. ..." 
 
 Aunt M'riar was taken aback. " How ever come you to see 
 more of Mm ?" said she. For really this was, for the moment, a 
 greater puzzle to her than why, being seen, he should send her a 
 message. 
 
 Micky let the message stand over, to account for it. " 'Cos 
 I did see him, and I ain't a Uar. I see him next door to my 
 great-aunt, as ever is. Keep along the 'Ammersmith Road 
 past the Plough and Harrow, and so soon as ever you strike the 
 Amp'shrog, you bear away to the left, and anybody'!! tell you 
 the Pidgings, as soon as look at you. Small 'ouse, by the river. 
 
MRS. PICTURE AT CAVENDISH SQUARE 389 
 
 Kep' by Miss Horkings, now her father's kicked. Female party." 
 This was due to a vague habit of the speaker's mind, which 
 divided the opposite sex into two genders, feminine and neuter ; 
 the latter including all those samples, unfortunate enough — or 
 fortunate enough, according as one looks at it — to present no 
 attractions to masculine impulses. Micky would never have 
 described his great aunt as a female party. She was, though 
 worthy, neuter beyond a doubt. 
 
 Aunt M'riar accepted Miss Hawkins, without further analysis. 
 " She don't know me, anyways," said she. " Nor yet your 
 Hyde Park man, as far as I see. How come he to know my 
 name ? Didn't he never tell you ?" She was incredulous about 
 that message. 
 
 " He don't know nobody's name, as I knows on. Wot he 
 said to me was a message to the person of the house at the end 
 o' the Court. Same like you, missis !" 
 
 " And what was the message ?" 
 
 " I'll tell you that, missis, straight away and no hes." Micky 
 gathered himself up, and concentrated on a flawless dehvery of 
 the message : — " He said he was a-coming to see his mother ; 
 that's what he said — his mother, the old lady upstairs. Providin' 
 she wasn't nobody else ! He didn't say no names. On'y he 
 said if she didn't come from SkiUick's she was somebody 
 else." 
 
 " Mrs. Prichard, she came from SkilUck's, I know. Because 
 she said so. That's over three year ago," Aunt M'riar was of 
 a transparent, truthful nature. If she had been more politic, 
 she would have kept this back. " Didn't he say nothing else ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " Yes, he did, and this here is what it was : — ' Tell the person 
 of the house,' he says, ' to mention my name,' he says. ' Name 
 o' Darvrill,' he says. So I was a-lyin', missis, you see, by a 
 sort o' chance Uke, when I said he said no names. 'Cos he did. 
 lie said his own. Not but what he goes by the name of Wix." 
 
 " What does he want of old Mrs. Prichard now ?" 
 
 " A screw. Sov'rings, if he can get 'em. Otherwise bobs, if 
 he can't do no better." 
 
 " Mrs. Prichard has no money." 
 
 " He says she has and he giv' it her. And he's going to have 
 it out of her, he says." 
 
 " Did he say that to you ?" 
 
 " Not he ! But he said it to Miss Horkings. Under his nose, 
 like." No doubt this expreasion, Michael's own, was a deriva- 
 
390 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 tive of " under the rose." It owed something to sotto voce, and 
 something to the way the finger is sometimes laid on the nose to 
 denote acumen. 
 
 " Look you here, Micky ! You're a good boy, ain't you 1" 
 
 " Middlin'. Accordin'." An uncertain sound. It conveyed 
 a doubt of the desirability of goodness. 
 
 " You don't bear no ill-will neither to me, nor yet to old Mrs. 
 Prichard ?" 
 
 " Bones alive, no !" This also may have been coined at 
 home. " That was the idear, don't you twig, missis ? I never 
 did 'old with windictiveness, among friends." 
 
 " Then you do like I tell you. When are you going next to 
 your aunt at Hammersmith ?" 
 
 Micky considered a minute, as if the number of his booked 
 engagements made thought necessary, and then said decisively: 
 " To-morrow momin', to oblige." 
 
 " Very well, then ! You go and find out this gentleman . . ." 
 
 " He ain't a gentleman. He's a varmint." 
 
 " You find him out, and say old Mrs. Prichard she's gone in 
 the country, and you can't say where. No more you can't, and 
 I ain't going to tell you. So just you say that !" 
 
 " I'm your man, missis. On'y I shan't see him, like as not. 
 He don't stop in one place. The orficers are after him — ^the 
 police." 
 
 Then Aunt M'riar showed her weak and womanish character. 
 Let her excuse be the memory of those six rapturous weeks, 
 twenty-five years ago, when she was a bride, and all her hfe was 
 rosy till she found herself deserted — left to deal as she best 
 might with Time and her lonehness. You see, this man actually 
 was her husband. Micky could not understand why her voice 
 should change as she said: — "The pohce are after him — yes I 
 But you be a good boy, and leave the catching of him to them. 
 'Tain't any concern of yours. Don't you say nothing to them, 
 and they won't say nothing to you !" 
 
 The boy paused a moment, as though in doubt; then said 
 with insight: — "I'll send 'em the wrong way." He thought 
 explanation due, adding : — " I'm fly to the game, missis." Aunt 
 M'riar had wished not to be transparent, but she was not good 
 at this sort of thing. True, she had kept her counsel all those 
 years, and no one had seen through her, but that was mere 
 opacity in silence. 
 
 She left Micky's apprehension to fructify, and told him to 
 go back and get his supper. As he opened the door to go Uncle 
 
AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 391 
 
 Mo appeared, coining along the Court. ^The sight of him was 
 welcome to Aunt M'riar, who was feeling very lonesome. And 
 as for the old boy himself, he was quite exhilarated. "Now 
 we shall have those two young pagins back 1" he said. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 WHY NOT KEEP COBIPANY WHEN TOTT HAVE A CHANCE ? GUIZOT 
 AND MONTALEMBBET. MES. BEMBBIDGE COELETT's EYE- 
 GLASSES. KINKAJOUS. THE PYTHON's ATTITUDE. AN 
 OSTBICH's OAEESS. how SIE COUPLAND MEEEIDiyW CALLED 
 ON LADY GWENDOLEN WITH A LETTEE. EOYALTY. NECEOSIS. 
 ILLEGIBILITY. SEPTtMHTS SEVEBUS. HOW GWEN CALLED 
 AGAIN IN SAPPS COUET, AND KNOCKED IN VAIN. HOW OLD 
 MES. PBICHAED WAS SPIBITED AWAY TO EOCESTEESHIEE, 
 AND THOUGHT SHE WAS DEEAMING 
 
 Me. Pbecival Pellbw and Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson 
 had passed, under the refining influence of Love, into a new 
 phase, that of not being formally engaged. It was to be dis- 
 tinctly understood that there was to be nothing precipitate. 
 This condition has its advantages; very particularly that it 
 postpones, or averts, family introductions. Yet it cannot be 
 enjoyed to the full without downright immoraUty, and it always 
 does seem to us a pity that people should be forced into Evil 
 Courses, in order to shun the terrors of Respectability. Why 
 should not some compromise be possible ? The Ufe some couples 
 above suspicion contrive to lead, each in the other's pocket as 
 soon as the eyes of Europe wander elsewhere, certainly seems 
 to suggest a basis of negotiation. 
 
 No doubt you know that Uttle poem of Browning about the 
 lady and gentleman who watched the Seine, and saw Guizot 
 receive Montalembert, who rhymed to " flare " ? Of course, the 
 case was hardly on all fours with that of our two irreproachables, 
 but we suspect a point in common. We feel sure that those 
 lawless loiterers in a dissolute capital were joyous at heart at 
 havingescaped the fangs of the brothers of the one, and the sisters 
 of the other, respectively, although at the cost of having the 
 World's bad names applied to both. In this case there were 
 
392 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 no brothers on the lady's part^ and only one sister on the gentle- 
 man's. But Aunt Constance was not sorry for a breathing-pause 
 before being subjected to an inspection through glasses by the 
 Hon. Mrs. Bembridge Corlett, which was the name of the unique 
 sister-sample, and herself subjecting Mr. Pellew to a similar 
 overhauUng by her own numerous relatives. She had mis- 
 givings about the accolade he might receive from Mrs. Amphlett 
 Starfax, and also about the soul-communion which her sister 
 LiUan, who had a sensitive nature, demanded as the price of 
 recognition in pubUo a second time of aU persons introduced to 
 her notice. 
 
 Mr. Peilew's description of the Hon. Mrs. Corlett had im- 
 pressed her with the necessity of being ready to stand at bay 
 when the presentation came off. 
 
 " Dishy will look at you along the top of her nose, with her 
 chin in the air," said he. " But you mustn't be alarmed at 
 that. She only does it because her glasses — ^we're all short- 
 sighted — shp o£E her nose at ordinary levels. And when you 
 come to think of it, how can she hold them on with her 
 fingers when she looks at you. Like taking interest in a 
 specimen !" 
 
 " I am a little alarmed at your sister Boadicea, Percy, for all 
 that," said Miss Dickenson, and changed the conversation. 
 This was only a day or two after the Sapps Court accident, and 
 the phase of not being formally engaged had begun lasting as 
 long as possible, being found satisfactory. So old Mrs. Prichard 
 was a natural topic to change to. " Isn't it funny, this whim 
 of Gwen's, about the old lady you carried upstairs ?" 
 
 " What whim of Gwen's ?" 
 
 " Oh, don't you know. Of course you don't ! Gwen's fallen 
 in love with her, and means to take her to the Towers with her 
 when she goes back." 
 
 " Very nice for the old girl. What's she doing that for ?" 
 
 " It's an idea of hers. However, there is some reason in it. 
 The old lady's apartments must be dry before she goes back to 
 them, and that may be weeks." 
 
 " Why can't she stop where she is 1" 
 
 " All by herself ? At least, only the cook ! When Miss 
 Grahame goes to Devonshire, Maggie goes with her, to lady's- 
 maid her." 
 
 " I thought we were going to be pastoral, and only spend 
 three hundred a year on housekeeping." 
 
 " So we are — how absurdly you do put things, Percy ! — ^when 
 
AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 393 
 
 we make a fair start. But just till we begin in earnest, there's 
 no need for such strictness. Anyhow, if Maggie doesn't go to 
 Devonshire, she'll go back to her parents at Livercandlish. So 
 the old lady can't stop. And Gwen will go back to the Towers, 
 of course. I don't the least believe they'll hold out six 
 months, those two . . . What Uttle ducks Kinkajous are ! Give 
 me a biscuit. . . . No — one of the soft ones !" 
 
 For, you see, they were at the Zoological Gardens. They had 
 felt that these Gardens, besides being near at hand, were the 
 kind of Gardens in which the eyes of Europe would find plenty 
 to occupy them, without staring impertinently at a lady and 
 gentleman who were not formally engaged. Who would care 
 to study them and their ways when he could see a Thibetan 
 Bear bite the nails of his hind-foot, or observe the habits of 
 Apes, or sympathize with a Tiger about his lunch ? Our two 
 visitors to the Gardens had spent an hour on these and similar 
 attractions, noting occasionally the flavour that accompanies 
 them, and had felt after a visit to the Pythons, that they could 
 rest a while out of doors and think about the Wonders of Crea- 
 tion, and the drawbacks they appear to suffer from. But a 
 friendly interest in a Python had lived and recrudesced as the 
 Kinkajou endeavoured to get at some soft biscuit, in spite of a 
 cruel wire screen no one bigger than a rat could get his little 
 claw through. 
 
 " I don't beUeve that fillah was moving. He was breathing. 
 But he wasn't moving. I know that chap perfectly well. He 
 never moves when anyone is looking at him, out of spite. He 
 hears visitors hope he'll move, and keeps quite still to disap- 
 point them." It was Mr. Pellew who said this. Miss Dickenson 
 shook her head incredulously. 
 
 " He was moving, you foolish man. You should use your 
 eyes. That long straight middle piece of him on the shelf 
 moved; in a very dignified way, considering. The move moved 
 along him, and went slowly all the way to his tail. When I 
 took my eyes off I thought the place was moving, which is a 
 proof I'm right. . , . Oh, you little darling, you've dropped it ! 
 I'm so sorry. I must have another, because this has been in 
 the mud, and you won't like it." This was, of course, to the 
 Kinkajou. 
 
 Mr. Pellew supplied a biscuit, but improved the occasion: — 
 " Now iE this httle character could only keep his paws off the 
 Public, he wouldn't want a wire netting. Couldn't you give 
 him a hint ?" 
 
394 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I could, but he wouldn't take it. He's a little darling, but 
 he's pig-headed. ..." A pause, and then a quick explanatory 
 side-note: — " Do you know, I think that's Sir Coupland Merri- 
 
 dew coming along that path. I hope he isn't coming this way 
 
 I'm afraid he is, though. You know who I mean ? He was at 
 the Towers " 
 
 " I know. Yes, it's him. He's coming this way. If he sees 
 it's us, he'll go off down the side-path. But he won't see — he's 
 too short-sighted. Can't be helped !" 
 
 " Oh dear — ^what a plague people are ! Let's be absorbed in 
 the Kinkajou. He'll pass us." 
 
 But the great surgeon did nothing of the sort. On the con- 
 trary he said : — " I saw it was you. Miss Dickenson." Then he 
 reflected about her companion, and said he was Mr. PeUew, he 
 thought, and further: — " Met you at Ancestor in July." It 
 was a great rehef that he did not say : — " You are a lady and 
 gentleman, and can perhaps explain yourselves. / can't !" 
 He appeared to decide on silence about them, as irrelevant, and 
 went on to something more to the purpose: — "Perhaps you 
 know if the family are in town — any of them 1" Miss Dickenson 
 testified to the whereabouts of Lady Gwendolen Rivers, and 
 Sir Coupland wrote it in a notebook. There seemed at this 
 point to be an opportunity to say how delightful the Gardens 
 were this time of the year, so Miss Dickenson seized it. 
 
 " I didn't come to enjoy the gardens," said the F.R.C.S. " I 
 wish I had time. I came to see to a broken scapula. Keeper 
 in the Ostrich House — ^bird pecked him from behind. Did it 
 from love, apparently. Said to be much attached to keeper. 
 Two-hundred-and-two, Cavendish Square, is right, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Two-hundred-and-two; comer house. . . . Must you go on ? 
 Sorry ! — ^you could have told us such interesting things." The 
 effect of this one word " us," indiscreetly used, was that Sir 
 Coupland, walking away to his carriage outside the turnstiles, 
 wondered whether it would come off, and if it did, would there 
 be a family ? Which shows how very careful you have to be, 
 when you are a lady and gentleman. 
 
 The former, in this case, remained unconscious of her lapsus 
 linguae ; saying, in fact : — " I think we did that very well 1 I 
 wonder whether he will go and see Gwen !" 
 
 " I hope he will. Do you know, I couldn't help suspecting 
 that he had something to say about Torrens's eyesight — some- 
 thing good. Perhaps it was only the way one has of catching 
 at straws. Still, unless he has, why should he want to see 
 
AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 395 
 
 Gwen ? He couldn't want to tell her there was no hope — ^to 
 rub it in \" 
 
 " I see what you mean. But I'm afraid he only put down the 
 address for us to tell her he did so — ^just to get the credit of a 
 call without the trouble." 
 
 " When did you take to Cynicism, madam ? . . . No — come, 
 I say — that's not fair ! It's only my second cigar since I came 
 to the Gardens. . . ." The byplay needed to make this intelli- 
 gible may be imagined, without description. 
 
 Does not the foregoing lay further stress on the curious fact 
 that the passSe young lady and the oscillator between Pall Mall 
 and that Club at St. Stephens — this describes the earUer 
 seeming of these two — have really vanished from the story ? Is 
 it not a profitable commentary on the mistakes people make in 
 the handling of their own lives ? 
 
 Sir Coupland Merridew was not actuated by the contemptible 
 motive Aunt Constance had ascribed to him. Moreover, the 
 straw Mr. Pellew caught at was an actual straw, though it may 
 have had no buoyancy to save a swimmer. It must have had 
 some though, or Sir Coupland would never have thrown it to 
 Gwen, struggling against despair about her lover's eyesight. 
 Of course he did not profess to do so of set purpose; that would 
 have pledged him to an expression of confidence in that straw, 
 which he could hardly have felt. 
 
 When he called at Cavendish Square two days later at an 
 unearthly hour, and foimd Gwen at breakfast, he accounted for 
 his sudden intrusion by producing a letter recently received from 
 Miss Irene Torrens, of which he said that, owing to the pectdi- 
 arity of the handwriting, he had scarcely been able to make out 
 anything beyond that it related to her brother's blindness. 
 Probably Lady Gwendolen knew her handwriting better than 
 he did. At any rate, she might have a shot at trying to make 
 it out. But presently, when she had time ! He, however, 
 would take a cup of coffee, and would then go on and remove 
 a portion of a diseased thigh-bone from a Royal leg — that 
 of Prince Hohenslebenschlangenspielersgeiststein — only he never 
 could get the name right. 
 
 The story surmises that, having carefully read every word 
 of the letter, he chose this way of letting Gwen know of a 
 fluctuation in Adrian's eye-symptoms; which, he had inferred, 
 would not reach her otherwise. But he did not wish false hopes 
 to be built on it. The deciphering of the illegibilities by 
 
396 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Gwen, under correctives from himself, would exactly meet the 
 case. 
 
 " I can not see that 'Eene's writing is so very illegible," said 
 Gwen. " Now be quiet and let me read it." She settled down 
 to perusal, while Sir Coupland sipped his coffee, and watched 
 her colour heighten as she read. That meant, said he to himself, 
 that he must be ready to throw more cold water on this letter 
 than he had at first intended. 
 
 Said Gwen, when she had fimished: — "Well, that seems to 
 me very plain and straightforward. And as for illegibility, I 
 know many worse hands than 'Re's." 
 
 " What's that word three lines down ? . • . Yes, that one !" 
 
 " ' Dreaming.' " 
 
 " I thought it was ' drinking.' " 
 
 " It certainly is ' dreaming ' plain enough !" 
 
 " What do you make of it ? Don't read it all through. Tell 
 me the upshot." 
 
 " I don't mind reading it. But I'll tell it short, as you're in 
 a hurry. Adrian dropped asleep on the sofa, and woke with a 
 start, saying: — 'What's become of Septimius Severus on the 
 bookshelf V It was a bust, it seems. 'Re said: — ' How did you 
 know it had been moved ?' and he seemed quite puzzled and 
 said : — ' I can't tell. I forgot I was blind, and saw the whole 
 room,' Then 'Re said, he must have been dreaming. ' But,' 
 said he, ' you say it has been moved.' So what does 'Re do but 
 say he must have heard somehow that it was moved, because it 
 was impossible that he should have been able to see only just 
 that much and no more. ... Oh dear !" said Gwen, breaking off 
 suddenly. " What a pleasure people do seem to take in being 
 silly !" 
 
 Sir Coupland proceeded to show deference to correct form. 
 " It is far more Hkely," said he, " that Mr. Torrens had heard 
 someone say the bust was moved, and had forgotten it tiU he 
 woke up out of a dream, than that he should have a sudden 
 flash of vision." A more cautious method than Irene's, of 
 assuming the point at issue. 
 
 Gwen paid no attention to this, putting it aside to apologize 
 to Irene. " However, 'Re had the sense to write straight to 
 you about it. I'll say that for her." Then she read the letter 
 again while Sir Coupland spun out his cup of coffee. She was 
 still dwelling on it when he looked at his watch suddenly and said : 
 " I must be off. Consider Prince Hohenschlangen's necrosis !" 
 Then said Gwen, pinning him to truth with the splendour of 
 
AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 397 
 
 her eyes : — " You are perfectly and absolutely certain. Dr. 
 Merridew, that a momentary gleam of true vision in such a case 
 would be impossible ?" 
 
 " I never said thai," said Sir Coupland. 
 " What dii you say ?" said Gwen. 
 
 " As improbable as you please, short of impossible. Now 
 I'm off. Impossible's a long word, you know, and very hard 
 to spell." Sir Coupland went off in a hurry, leaving Irene's 
 letter in Gwen's possession, which was dishonourable; because 
 he had really read the injunction it contained, on no account to 
 show it to Gwen in case she should build false hopes on it. But 
 then Gwen had not read this passage aloud to him, so he did not 
 know it officially. 
 
 Lunch was the next conclave of the small household, and 
 although Mr. Pellew was there — ^it was extraordinary how seldom 
 he was anjnivhere else ! — Irene's letter was freely handed roimd 
 the table and made the subject of comment. 
 " It won't do to build upon it," said Cousin Clo. 
 " Why not ?" said Gwen. 
 
 " It never does to be led away," said Miss Dickenson. Her 
 reputation for sagacity had to be maintained. 
 " Doesn't it ?" said Gwen. 
 
 Mr. Pellew was bound, in consideration of his company, to 
 dwell upon the desirableness of keeping an even mind. Having 
 done full justice to this side of the subject, he added a rider. 
 He had always said the chances were ten to one Torrens would 
 recover his eyesight, and this sort of thing looked uncommonly 
 like it. Now didn't it ? Whereupon Gwen, who shook hands 
 with him across the table to show her approval, said that any- 
 how she must hear Adrian's own account of this occurrence 
 from his own mouth forthwith, and she should go back to-morrow 
 to the Towers, and insist upon driving over to Pensham Steynes 
 whether or no ! 
 
 Miss Grahame remonstrated with her later, when Aunt Con- 
 stance and her swain had departed to some dissipation — ^the 
 story is not sure it was not Madame Tussaud's — and pointed out 
 that she really had solemnly promised not to see Mr. Torrens 
 for six months. She admitted this, but counterpointed out that 
 she could just see him for half an hour to hear his own account 
 of the incident, and then they could begin fair. She was a girl 
 of her word, and meant to keep it. Only, no date had been 
 fixed. As for her pledges to assist her cousin's schemes for 
 benefiting Sapps Court and its analogues, in Drury Lane or 
 
398 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 elsewhere, was she not going to carry off the old fairy godmother 
 she had discovered and give her such a dose of fresh air and good 
 living as she had not had for twenty years past ? Could any 
 Patron Saint of Philanthropy ask more ? 
 
 Gwen, of course, had her way. She did not cut her visit to 
 Cavendish Square needlessly short. She remained there long 
 enough to give some colour to the pretext that she was exploring 
 slums with philanthropy in view, and actually to make a visit 
 with her cousin to the reconstructed home of the Wardles in 
 Sapps Court. But no response came to knocking at door or 
 window, and it was evident that Aunt M'riar had not returned. 
 Michael Ragstroar, the making of whose acquaintance on this 
 occasion gratified both ladies, offered to go to the Sun for Uncle 
 Mo and bring him round; but his offer was declined, as their 
 time was limited. This must have been a few days before the 
 return of Aunt M'riar and the children, and in the interim her 
 young ladyship had taken flight to the home of her ancestors, 
 contriving somehow to convey away with her her new-made old 
 friend, and to provide her with comfortable lodgment in the 
 housekeeper's quarters, making Mrs. Masham, the housekeeper, 
 responsible for her comforts. 
 
 As for the old lady herself, she was very far from being sure 
 that she was not dreaming. 
 
 END OF PART I 
 
WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 PAET II 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Micky's attnt, who had a cold. maschiIj the chief mtj- 
 
 SICIAN, AND DOEG THE EDOMITE. A SUNDAY-KAPTUKE. 
 THE BEEB. HOW MISS JTJTJA HAWKINS THOUGHT THE GLASS 
 A FRAUD. HOW MICKY DELIVEEED HIS MESSAGE. A CON- 
 DITIONAL OFFER OF MARRIAGE. JANUS HIS BASKET. ALE- 
 THEA's aunt TREBELCOCK. a shrewd and HOOKY KITTEN 
 WHO GOT OUT. HER MAJESTY's HORSE-SLAUGHTERER. OF 
 A LEAN LITTLE GIRL. HER BROTHER'S NOSE. HOW MR. WIX 
 KNOCKED AT AUNT m'bIAr's DOOR. THE CHAIN. HOW AUNT 
 m'RIAR IMPRESSED MR. WIX AS AN IDIOT. WHO WAS THE 
 WOMAN ? HOW SHE OPENED THE DOOR FOB MTCKY's SAKE, 
 AND LOOKED HARD AT HER HUSBAND. HIS LAWFUL WIFE ! 
 SCRIPTURE READINGS IN HELL. HOW SHE WENT TO FETCH 
 ATT, THE MONEY SHE HAD IN THE HOUSE. HOW ME. WIX 
 CAPTURED UNCLE MO's OLD WATCH. HOW AUNT m'rIAR 
 TRIPPED UNCLE MO UP 
 
 The return of the two young pagans to Sapps Court, and the 
 complete re-establishment of Uncle Mo's household, had to be 
 deferred yet one or two more days, to his great disappointment. 
 On the morning following Aunt M'riar's provisional return, the 
 weather set in wet, and the old boy was obliged to allow that 
 there ought to be a fire in the grate of Aimt M'riar's wrecked 
 bedroom for at least a couple of days before Dolly returned to 
 sleep in it. He attempted a weak protest, saying that his niece 
 was a dry sort of little party that moisture could not injure. 
 But he conceded the point, to be on the safe side. 
 
 Aunt M'riar said never a word to him about the message she 
 had received from the convict through the boy Micky, and the 
 answer she had returned. She had not forgotten Uncle Mo's 
 commimications with that PoUce-Inspector, and felt confident 
 that her reception of a message from Mr. Wix at his old haunt 
 would soon be known to the latter if she did not keep her coimsel 
 about it. The words she used in her heart about it were nearly 
 identical with Hotspur's. Uncle Moses would not utter what 
 he did not know. She had not a thought of blame for Mo, for 
 she knew that her disposition to shield this man was idiosyncracy 
 — could not in the nature of things be shared, even by old and 
 tried friends, 
 
 401 
 
402 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 There was a fine chivalric element about this defensive silence 
 of hers. The man was now nothing to her — dust and ashes, 
 dead and done with ! This last phrase was the one her heart 
 used about him — ^not borrowed from Browning any more than 
 its other speech from Shakespeare. " I've done with him for 
 good and all/' said she to herself. " But the Law shall not catch 
 him along o' me." He was vile — vile to her and to all women — 
 but she could bear her own wrong, and she was not bound to 
 fight the battles of others. He was a miscreant and a felon, the 
 mere blood on those hands was not his worst moral stain. He 
 was foul from the terms of his heritage of life, with the super- 
 added foulness of the galleys. But she had loved him once, and 
 he was her husband. 
 
 Micky kept his word, going over to his great-aunt the following 
 Sunday; to oblige, as he said. Mrs. Treadwell had a cold, and 
 was confined to the house; but the boy was a welcome visitor. 
 " There now, Michael," said she, " I was only just this minute 
 thinking to myself, if Micky was here he could go on reading me 
 the Psalms, where I am, instead of me putting my eyes out. 
 For the sight is that sore and inflamed, and my glasses getting 
 that wore out from being seen through so much, that I can't 
 hardly make out a word." 
 
 Micky's only misgivings on his visits to Aunt Ehzabeth Jane 
 were connected with a Family Bible to which his old relative 
 was devoted, and with her disposition to make him read the 
 Psalms aloud. Neither of them attached any particular mean- 
 ing to the text; she being contented with its rehgious aura and 
 fitness for Sunday, and he absorbed in the detection of correct 
 pronunciation by spelling, a syllable at a time. So early an 
 allusion to this affliction disheartened Micky on this occasion, 
 and made him feel that his long walk from Sapps C!ourt had been 
 wasted, so far as his own enjoyment of it was concerned. 
 
 " Oh, 'ookey, Amtey," said he dejectedly, " I say now — 
 look here ! Shan't I make it Baron Munch Hawson, only just 
 this once ?" For his aunt possessed, as well as the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, a copy of Baron Munchausen's Travels and a Pilgrim's 
 Progress. Conjointly, they were an Institution, and were known 
 as Her Books. 
 
 But she resisted the secular spirit. " On Sunday morning, 
 my dear !" she exclaimed, shocked. " How ever you can I 
 Now if on'y your father was to take you to Chapel, instead of 
 such a bad example, see what good it would do you both." 
 
 The ounce of influence that Aunt Elizabeth Jane alone pos- 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 403 
 
 sessed told on Michael's stubborn spirits and he did not contest 
 the point. " Give us the 'Oly Bible !" said he briefly. " Where's 
 where you was ?" 
 
 " That's a good boy ! Now you just set down and read on 
 where I was. ' To, the, chief, musician,' and the next word's a 
 hard word, and you'll have to speU it." For, you see. Aunt 
 Elizabeth Jane's method was to go steadily on with a text, and 
 not distinguish titles and stage directions. 
 
 So her nephew, being docile, tackled the fifty-second Psalm, 
 and did not flinch from m, a, s, mass — c. A, i, I, chill; total, 
 Mass-Chill — ^nor from d, o, do; e, g, hegg; total, Do-Hegg. But 
 when he came to Ahimelech, he gave him up, and had to be told. 
 However, he laboured on through several verses, and the old 
 charwoman listened in what might be called a Sunday rapture, 
 conscious of religion, but not attaching any definite meaning 
 to the words. As for Micky, he only perceived that David and 
 Saul, Doeg the Edomite, and Ahimelech the Priest, were religious, 
 and therefore bores. He had a general idea that the Psalmist 
 could not keep his hair on. He might have enjoyed the pic- 
 turesque savagery of the story if Aimt Elizabeth Jane had known 
 it well enough to teU him. But when you read for flavour, and 
 ignore import, the plot has to go to the wall. 
 
 Aunt Elizabeth Jane kept her nephew to his unwelcome 
 devotional enterprise until the second " Selah " — a word which 
 always seemed to exasperate him — ^provoked his restiveness 
 beyond his powers of restraint. " I say. Aunt Betsy," said he, 
 " shan't I see about gettin' in the beer ?" This touched a deli- 
 cate point, for his visit being unexpected, rations were Ukely 
 to be short. 
 
 Some reproof was necessary. " There now, ain't you a tire- 
 some boy, speaking in the middle !" But this was followed by: 
 " Well, my dear, I can't take anything myself, the cold's that 
 heavy on me. But that's no reason, against a glass for you, 
 after your walk. On'y I tell you, you'll have to make your 
 diimer off potatoes and a herring, that you will, by reason 
 there's nothing else for you. And all the early shops are shut 
 an hour ago." 
 
 Then Michael showed how great his foresight and resource 
 had been. " Bought a mutting line-chop coming along, off of 
 our butcher. Fivepence 'a'pen'y. Plenty for two if you know 
 how to cook it right, and don't cut it to waste." In this he 
 showed a thoughtfulness beyond his years, for the knowledge 
 that the amount of flesh, on any bone, may be doubled — even 
 
404 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 quadrupled — ^by the skill of its carver, is rarely found except 
 in veterans. 
 
 Aunt Elizabeth Jane paid a tribute of admiration. " My 
 word !" said she, " who ever would have said a boy could ! Now 
 you shall cook that chop while I tell you how." So the fifty- 
 second Psalm lapsed, and Michael was at Uberty to forget Doeg 
 the Edomite. 
 
 But the glass of beer claimed attention first, because it would 
 never do to leave that chop to get cold while he went for it next 
 door. Aunt Elizabeth Jane allowed Michael to take the largest 
 glass, as he had read so good and bought his own chop, and 
 with it he crossed the wall into the garden of The Pigeons, as the 
 story has seen him do before. 
 
 Miss Juliarawkins, summoned by a whistle through the key- 
 hole, looked a good deal better in sackcloth and ashes than she 
 had done in several discordant colours. She was going to stop 
 as long as ever she could in mourning for her father, so as to 
 get the wear out of the stuff, and make it of some use. Some 
 connection might die, by good luck. She was one of those that 
 held with making the same sackcloth and ashes do for two. 
 
 She looked critically at the rather large tumbler Micky had 
 brought for his beer, and made difficulties about filling of it 
 right up, even with the top. For this was a supply under con- 
 tract. A glass full was to be paid for as a short half -pint. But 
 as Miss Hawkins truly said, no glass had any caU to be half as 
 big as Saint Paul's. Her customer, however, was not to be put 
 ofE in this way. A glass was a glass, and a half-pint was a halt 
 a pint. There was no extry reduction when the glass was 
 undersized. You took the good with the bad. 
 
 A voice Micky knew growled from a recess: — " Give the young 
 beggar full measure, Juliar. What he means is, you go by a 
 blooming average." 
 
 Miss Hawkins filled up the glass this once, but said: — " You 
 tell your Aunt Treadwell she'll have to keep below the average 
 till Christmas. I never see such a glass !" 
 
 Micky was not sorry to find that he could deliver his message 
 direct. He had not hoped to come upon the man himself. He 
 paid for his beer on contract terms, and said confidentially: — 
 " I say, missis, I got a message for him in there." 
 
 " Mrs. TreadweU's nephew Michael from next door says he's 
 got a message for you, and you can say if you'U see him. Or 
 not." This was spoken snappishly, as though a coolness were 
 afoot. 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 405 
 
 The man replied with mock amiability, meant to irritate. 
 " You can send him in here, Juhar. You're open to." But 
 when in compliance with the woman's curt: — " You hear — you 
 can go in," the boy entered the httle back-parlour, he turned 
 on him suddenly and fiercely, saying: — " You're the * * * young 
 nark of some damned teck — some * * * copper, by Goard !" 
 
 If the boy had flinched before this accusation, which meant 
 that he was a police-spy employed by a detective, he might have 
 repented it. But Micky was no coward, and stood his ground; 
 all the more firmly that he fully grasped the man's precarious 
 position, in the very house where he had been once before cap- 
 tured. He answered resolutely: — " I could snitch upon you this 
 minute, master, if I was to choose. But you aren't no concern 
 of mine, further than I've got a message for you." 
 
 " The boy's all safe," said Miss Hawkins briefly, outside. 
 Whereupon the man, after a subsiding growl or two, said: — 
 " You gave the party my message ? What had she got to say 
 back again ? You may mouth it out and cut your lucky." 
 
 Micky gave his message in a plain and business-like manner. 
 " Mrs. Wardle she's back after the accident, and Mrs. Prichard 
 she's in the country, and she don't know where." 
 
 " Who don't know where ? Mrs. Prichard ?" 
 
 " Mrs. Wardle. I said you was a-ooming to see your mother, 
 onlest the old lady wasn't your mother. Then you shouldn't 
 come." 
 
 " What did she say about SkilUcks ?" 
 
 " Said Mrs. Prichard come from SkilUckses. Three year 
 agone." 
 
 " You hear that. Miss Hawkins ?" Mr. Wix seemed pleased, 
 as one who had scored, adding: — "I knew it was the old 
 woman. . . . Anything else she said ?" 
 
 Micky appeared to consider his answer; then replied: — " Said 
 I wasn't to split upon you." 
 
 " What the Hell does she say that for ? She don't know who 
 I am." 
 
 Micky considered again, and astutely decided, perceiving his 
 mistake, to say as little as possible about Aunt M'riar's seeming 
 interest in Mr. Wix's safety from the Law. Then he said: — 
 " She don't know nothing about you, bui when I says to her the 
 Pohce was after you, she cuts in sharp, and says, she does, that 
 was no concern o' mine, and I was to say nothing to them, and 
 they wouldn't say nothing to me." 
 
 Mr. Wix said, " Rum !" and Miss Hawkins, who had been 
 
406 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 keeping her ears open close at hand, looked in through the bar- 
 casement to say: — "You go then, Wix, and back to gaol you 
 go ! I only tell you," And retired, leaving the convict knitting 
 tighter the perplexed scowl on his face. He called after her: — 
 " Come back here, you Juliar !" 
 
 " I can hear you/' 
 
 " What the Devil do you mean ?" 
 
 " Can't you see for yourself ? This woman don't want the 
 boy to get fifty pound. K I was in her shoes, I shouldn't neither." 
 Micky only heard this imperfectly. 
 
 " You wouldn't do anj^hing under a hundred, you wouldn't. 
 Good job for me they don't double the amount. . . . Easy does 
 it, JuHar— only a bit of my fun !" For Miss Hawkins, even as 
 a woman stung by a cruel insult, had shown her flashing eyes, 
 heightened colour, and panting bosom at the bar-opening as 
 before. Mr. Wix seemed gratified. " Pity you don't flare up 
 oftener, Juliar," said he. " You've no idea what a much better 
 woman you look. Damn it, but you do !" 
 
 The woman made an effort, and choked her anger. " God 
 forgive you, Wix !" said she, and fell back out of sight. Michael 
 thought he heard her sob. He was not too young to understand 
 this little drama, which took less time to act than to tell. 
 
 The convict had lost the thread of his examination, and had 
 to hark back. Why was it Mrs. Prichard had gone away into 
 the country ? . . . Oh, the house had fallen down, had it ? 
 But, then, how came Mrs. Wardle to be living in it still ? Be- 
 cause, said Michael, it was only the wall fell off of the front, and 
 now Mr, Bartlett he'd made aU that good, and Mis. Prichard 
 was only kep' out by the damp. Did Mrs. Wardle really not 
 know where Mrs. Prichard was ? She had not told Michael, 
 that was all he could say. Old Mo he'd never slept out of the 
 house, only the family. And they was coming back soon now. 
 Was old Mo an invalid, who never went out ? " No fear !" said 
 Michael. " He's all to rights, only a bit oldish, hke. He 
 spends the artemoons roimd at the Sun, and then goes home to 
 supper." The interview ended with a present of haK-a-buU to 
 Micky from the convict, which the boy seemed to stickle at 
 accepting. But he took it, and it strengthened his resolution 
 not to turn informer, which was probably Mr. Wix's object. 
 
 He came away with an impression that Miss Hawkins had 
 said: — " The boy's lying. How could the front-wall of a house 
 fall down?" But he had heard no more and was glad to 
 come away. He went back to his Aunt Betsy and cooked 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 407 
 
 his chop xinder her tutelage. What a time he had been away, 
 said she ! 
 
 It Micky had remembered word for word the whole of this 
 interview, he might have had misgivings of the effect of one 
 thing he had said imawares. It was his reference to Uncle Mo's 
 absence at the Sun during the late afternoon. Manifestly, it 
 left the house in Mr. Wix's imagination untenanted, during some 
 two hoTirs of the day, except by Aunt M'riar, and the children 
 perhaps. And what did they matter ? 
 
 " You're mighty wise, JuHar, about the party of the house 
 and the fifty-pun' reward." So said the convict when the 
 woman came back, after seeing that Micky had crossed the wall 
 unmolested by authority. " Folk ain't in any such a hurry to 
 get a man hanged when they know what'U happen if they fail 
 of doing it. Not even for fifty poimd !" 
 
 " What loiU happen ?" 
 
 "Cbuldn't say to a nicety. But she would stand a tidy 
 chance of getting ripped up, next opportimity." He seemed 
 pleased at his expression of this fact, as he took the first pulls 
 at a fresh pipe, on the window-seat with his boots against the 
 shutter and a grip of interlaced fingers behind his close-cut head 
 for support. Why in Heaven's name does the released gaol- 
 bird crop his hair ? One would have thought the first instinct 
 of regained freedom would have been to let it grow. 
 
 Miss Hawkins looked at him without admiration. " I often 
 wonder," said she, " at the many risks I run to shelter you, for 
 you're a bloody-minded knave, and that's the truth. It was a 
 near touch but I might havei lost my licence, last time." 
 
 " The Beaks were took with your good looks, Juliar. They're 
 good judges of a fine woman. An orphan you was, too, and the 
 mourning sooted you, prime !" He looked lazily at her, pufQng — 
 not without admiration, of a sort. Her resentment seemed to 
 gratify hini more than any subserviency. He continued: — 
 " WeU, nobody can say I haven't offered to make an honest 
 woman of you, JuUar." 
 
 " Much it was worth, yom: offer ! As if you was free ! And 
 me to sell The Pigeons and go with you to New York ! No — 
 no ! I'm better off as I am, than that." 
 
 " I'm free, accordin' to Law. Never seen the girl, nor heard 
 from her — over twenty years now — ^twenty-three at least. 
 Scot-free of her, anyhow ! Don't want none of her, cutting in 
 to spoil my new start in life. Ee-spectable man — ^justice of 
 peace, p'r'aps." He puffed at his pipe, pleased with the pros- 
 
408 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 pect. Then he sounded the keynote of his thought, adding: — 
 "Why — how much could you get for the freehold of this Uttle 
 tiddleywink ?" 
 
 If Miss JuHa had been ever so well disposed towards being 
 made technically an honest woman by her betrayer of auld 
 lang syne, this declaration of his motives might easily have 
 hardened her heart against him. What fatuity of affection 
 could have survived it ? Yet his candour was probably his only 
 redeeming feature. He was scarcely an invariable hypocrite; 
 he was merely heartless, sensual, and cruel to the full extent of 
 man's possibilities. Nevertheless, he could and would have Ued 
 black white with a purpose. He was, this time, thrown off his 
 guard, as it were, and truthful by accident. Whether the way 
 in which the woman silently repelled his offer was due to her 
 disgust at its terms, or whether she had her doubts of the sound- 
 ness of his jurisprudence, the story can only guess. Probably 
 the latter. She merely said: — " I'm going to open the house," 
 and left his inquiry imanswered. This was notice to him that 
 his free run of the lower apartments was ended. He went 
 upstairs to some place of concealment. 
 
 "What was you and young Carrots so busy about below 
 here ?" said Uncle Mo next day, coming down the stairs to break- 
 fast in the kitchen an hour later than Aunt M'riar. 
 
 " Telling me of his Aunt Betsy yesterday. Mind your shirt- 
 sleeve. It's going in the butter." 
 
 " What's Aunt Betsy's little game ? . . . No, it's all right— 
 the butter's too hard to hurt. . . . Down Chiswick way, ain't 
 she?" 
 
 " Hammersmith." Aunt M'riar wasn't talkative; but then, 
 this morning, it was bloaters. They should only just hot 
 through, or they dry. 
 
 " Who was the bloke he was talking about ? Somebody he 
 called him." Uncle Mo's ears had been too sharp. 
 
 " There ! — I've no time to be telling what a boy says. No 
 one any good, I'll go bail !" Whereupon, as Uncle Mo's curiosity 
 was not really keenly excited, the subject dropped. 
 
 But, as a matter of fact, Michael had contrived in a short 
 time to give an account of his experience of yesterday. And 
 he had left Aunt M'riar in a state of disquiet and apprehension 
 which had to be concealed, somehow. For she was quite clear 
 that she would not take Mo into her confidence. She saw she 
 had to choose between risking an interview with this convict 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 409 
 
 husband of hers, and giving him up to the Law, probably to the 
 gallows. 
 
 The man would come again to seek out his old mother, to 
 extort money from her; that was beyond a doubt. But would 
 he of necessity recognise the wife of twenty-three years ago in 
 the very middle-aged person Aunt M'riar saw in the half of a 
 looking-glass that Mr. Bartlett's careful myrmidons had not 
 broken ? Would she recognise him ? Need either see the 
 other ? Well— no ! Communications might be restricted to 
 speech through a door with the chain up. 
 
 She took the boy Michael freely into her confidence about 
 her unwillingness to see this man. But that she could do on 
 the strength of his bad character; her own relation to him of 
 course remained concealed. She puzzled her confidant not a 
 little by her seeming inconsistency — so repugnant was she to 
 the miscreant himself, yet so anxious that he should not fall 
 into the hands of the PoHce. Micky kept his perplexity to 
 himself, justifying his mother's estimate of his character. 
 
 But this much was clearly understood between them, that 
 should the convict be seen by Micky on his way to the house, 
 he should forthwith take one of two courses. If Uncle Mo was 
 absent at the time, he was to warn Aunt M'riar of Mr. Wix's 
 approach. If otherwise, he was to warn the unwelcome visitor 
 of the risk he would run if he persisted in his attempt to procure 
 an interview. Of course the chances were that Micky would 
 be away on business, selling apples, potatoes, and turnips. 
 
 As it turned out> however, he was able to observe one of the 
 conditions of this compact. 
 
 It was on the Tuesday following the boy's visit to his great- 
 aunt that Mrs. Tapping had words with her daughter Alethea. 
 They arose out of Alethea's young man, an upstart. At least, 
 he was so designated by Mrs. Tapping, for aspiring to the hand 
 of this young lady; who, though plain by comparison with her 
 mother at the same age, and no more figure than what you see, 
 was that sharp with her tongue when provoked, it made your 
 flesh curdle within you to hear her expressions. We need hardly 
 say that we have to rely on her mother for these facts. It was, 
 however, the extraction of Alethea that determined the pre- 
 sumptuousness of her young man's aspirations. He was marry- 
 ing into two families, the Tappings and the Davises, which, 
 though neither of them lordly, had always held their heads high 
 and their behaviour according. Whereas this young Tom was 
 
410 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 metaphorically nobody, though actually in a shoe-shop and 
 giving satisfaction to his employers, with twenty-one shillings 
 a week certain and a rise at Christmas. You cannot do that 
 unless you are a physical entity, but when your grandmother 
 is in an almshouse and your father met his death in an inferior 
 capacity at a Works, you have no call to give yourself airs, and 
 the less you say the better. 
 
 This brief sketch of the status quo was given to Mrs. Riley by 
 Mrs. Tapping, in her woollen shawl for the first time, because 
 of the sharp edge in the wind, with a basket on her arm that 
 Janus would have found useful, owing to its two lids, 
 one each side the handle. They were at the entrance to 
 Mrs. Riley's shop, and that good woman was bare-armed and 
 bonnetless in the cold north wind. She had not lost her Irish 
 accent. 
 
 " It is mesilf agrays with you intoirely," said she sympathe- 
 tically. 
 
 " Not but what I do freely admit," said Mrs. Tapping, pursu- 
 ing her topic in a spirit of magnanimity, " that young Rundle 
 himseK never makes bold, and is always civil spoke, which we 
 might expect, seeing what is called for, measuring soles. For 
 I always do say that the temptation to forget theirself is far 
 more than human, especially flattenin' down the toe to get the 
 len'th, though of course the situation would be sacrificed, and 
 no character." This was an allusion to the delicacy of the 
 position of one who adjusts a sliding spanner to the foot of 
 Beauty, to determine its length to a nicety. The subject sug- 
 gests curious questions. Suppose — ^to look at its romantic side, 
 as easier of discussion — that you, young lady, were passionately 
 adored by the young man at your shoe-shop, and he were to 
 kiss your foot as Vivien did MerUn's, could you — would you — 
 complain at the desk and lose him his situation ? And how about 
 the Pope ? Is his Holiness never measured — salva reverentia ! — 
 for his shoes ? Or does the (Ecumenical Council guess, and strike 
 an average ? However, the current of the story need not be 
 interrupted to settle that. 
 
 " He intinds will," said Mrs. Riley. This was merely a vague 
 compliment to Alethea's suitor. " Ye see, me dyurr, it's taking 
 the young spalpeen's part she'll be, for shure ! It is the nature 
 of thim." That is to say, lovers. 
 
 " But never to the point of calling tyrant, Mrs. Riley. Nor 
 ejus vulgarity. Nor epithets I will not repeat, relating to family 
 connections. Concerning which, / say, God forgive Alethear ! 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 411 
 
 For the accommodation at a nominal rent of persons in reduced 
 circumstances is not an almshouse, say what she may. And her 
 Aunt Trebiloock is not a charitable object, nor yet a deserving 
 person, having mixed vdth the best. And in so young a girl 
 texts are not becoming, to a parent." 
 
 " Which was the tixt, thin ?" said Mrs. Riley, interested. 
 " I'm belavin' ye, me dyurr !" This was to encourage Mrs, 
 Tapping, and disclaim incredulity. 
 
 " Since you're asking me, Mrs. Riley ma'am, I will not conceal 
 from you the Scripture text used only this morning by my own 
 daughter, to my face. ' Pride goeth before destruction, and a 
 haughty spirit before a fall.' Whereupon I says to Alethear, 
 ' Alethear,' I says, ' be truthful, and admit that old Mrs. Rimdle 
 and your Aunt Trebilcock are on a dissimular footing, one being 
 distinctly a Foimdation in the Whitechapel Road, and the other 
 Residences, each taking their own Milk." Some further particu- 
 lars came in here, relating to the bone of that morning's con- 
 tention, which had turned on Mrs. Tapping's objections to her 
 daughter's demeaning, or bemeaning, herself, by marrying into 
 a lower rank of life than her own. 
 
 All this conversation of these two ladies has nothing to do 
 with the story. The only reason for referring to it is that it 
 took place at this time, just opposite Mrs. Riley's shop, and led 
 her to remark: — " You lave the young payple alone, Mrs. Tap- 
 ping, and they'll fall out. You'll only kape thim on, by takin' 
 order with thim. Thrust me. Whativer have ye got in the 
 basket ?" 
 
 Mrs. Tapping explained that she was using it to convey a 
 kitten, bom in her establishment, to Miss Druitt at thirty-four 
 opposite, who had expressed anxiety to possess it. It was this 
 kitten's expression of impatience with its position that had ex- 
 cited Mrs. Riley's curiosity. "Why don't ye carry the little 
 sowl across in yoxu- hands, me dyurr ?" said she; not unreason- 
 ably, for it was only a stone's-throw. Mrs. Tapping added 
 that this was no common kitten, but one of preternatural activity, 
 and possessed of diabolical tentacular powers of entanglement. 
 " I would not undertake," said she, " to get it across the road, 
 ma'am, only catching hold. Nor if I got it safe across, to on- 
 hook it, without tearing." Mrs. Riley was obliged to admit the 
 wisdom of the Janus basket. She knew how difficult it is to be 
 even with a kitten. 
 
 This one was destined to illustrate the resources of its kind. 
 For as Mrs. Tapping endeavoured to conduct the conversation 
 
412 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 back to her domestic difficulties, she was aware that the Janus 
 basket grew suddenly lighter. Mrs. Riley exclaimed at the same 
 moment: — " Shure, and the Uttle haste's in the middle of the 
 road \" So it was, hissing like a steam-escape, and every hair 
 on its body bristling with wrath at a large black dog, who was 
 smelling it in a puzzled, thoughtful way, sans rancune. A cart, 
 with an inscription on it that said its owner was " Horse-- 
 Slaughterer to Her Majesty," came thundering down the street, 
 shaking three drovers seriously. The dog, illuminated by some 
 new idea, started back to bark in a sudden panic-stricken way. 
 Who could tell what new scourge this was that dogdom had to 
 contend with ? 
 
 Her Majesty's Horse-Slaughterer pulled his cart up just in 
 time. It would else have run over a man who was picking the 
 kitten up. All the males concerned exchanged execrations, and 
 then the cart went on. The dog's anxiety to smell the pheno- 
 menon survived, till the man kicked him and told him to go to 
 HeU. 
 
 " Now who does this here little beggar belong to ?" said the 
 man, whom Mrs. Riley did not Uke the looks of. Mrs. Tapping 
 claimed the cat, and expressed wonder as to how it had got out 
 of the basket. Heaven only knew ! It is only superhuman 
 knowledge, divine or diabolical, that knows how cats get out of 
 baskets; or indeed steel safes, or anything. 
 
 " As I do not think, mister," said Mrs. Tapping — deciding at 
 the last moment not to say " my good man " — " it would be any 
 use to try getting of it inside of this basket out here in the street, 
 let alone its aptitude for getting out when got in, I might trouble 
 you to be so kind as to fetch it into my shop next door here, 
 by the scruff of its neck preferable. . . . Thank you, mister !" 
 She had had some idea of making it " Sir," but thought better 
 of it. 
 
 The kitten, deposited on the counter, concerned itself with a 
 blue-bottle fly. The man remarked that it was coming on to 
 rain. Mrs. Tapping had not took notice of any rain, but be- 
 Ueved the statement. Why is it that one accepts as true any 
 statement made by a visibly disreputable male ? Mrs. Tapping 
 did not even look out at the door, for confirmation or contradic- 
 tion. She was so convinced of this rain that she suggested that 
 the man should wait a few minutes to see if it didn't hold up, 
 because he had no umbrella. His reply was: — "Well, since 
 you're so obliging. Missis, I don't mind if I do. My mate I'm 
 waiting for, he'll be along directly." He declined a chair or stool. 
 
AUNT M'RIAH'S HUSBAND 413 
 
 and waited, looking out at the door into the cul de sac street that 
 led to Sapps Court, opposite. Mrs. Tapping absented herself in 
 the direction of a remote wrangle underground, explaining her 
 motive. She desired that her daughter, whose eyesight was 
 better than her own, should thread a piece of pack-thread through 
 a rip in the base of the Janus basket, which had to account for 
 the kitten's appearance in public. She did not seem appre- 
 hensive about leaving the shop imgarrisoned. 
 
 But had she been a shrewder person, she might have felt mis- 
 givings about this man's character, even if she had acquitted 
 him of such petty theft as running away with congested tallow 
 candles. For no reasonable theory could be framed of a mate 
 in abeyance, who would emerge from anywhere down opposite. 
 A mate of a man who seemed to be of no employment, to belong 
 to no recognised class, to wear description-bafiiing clothes — ^not 
 an ostler's, nor an undertaker's, certainly; but some suspicion of 
 one or other. Heaven knew why ! — and never to look straight 
 in front of him. Without some light on his vocation, imagination 
 could provide no mate. And this man looked neither up nor 
 down the street, but remained watching the cul de sac from one 
 corner of his eye. It was not coming on to rain as alleged, and 
 he might have had a better outlook nearer the door. But he 
 seemed to prefer retirement. 
 
 The wrangle underground fluctuated slightly, went into another 
 key, and then resumed the theme. A lean little girl came in, 
 who tapped on the counter with a coin. She called out 
 " 'A'p'orth o' dips !" taking a tress of her hair from between her 
 teeth to say it, and putting it back to await the result. She had 
 a Uttle brother with her, who was old enough to walk when 
 pulled, but not old enough to disciphne his own nose, being de- 
 pendent on his sister's good offices, and her pocket-handkerchief. 
 He ofEered a sucked pear drop to the kitten, who would not hear of it. 
 
 There certainly was no rain, or Mrs. Riley would never have 
 remained outside, with those bare arms and all. There 
 she was, saying good-evening to someone who had just come 
 from Sapps Court. The man in the shop Kstened, closely and 
 curiously. 
 
 " Good-avening, Mr. Moses, thin ! Whin will we see the 
 blessed chilther back ? Shure it's wakes and wakes and wakes !" 
 Which written, looks odd; but, spoken, only conveyed regretful 
 reference to the time Dave and Dolly had been away, without 
 taxing the hearer's understanding. " They tiU me your good 
 lady's been sane, down the Court." 
 
414 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Uncle Mo had just come out, on his way to a short visit to the 
 Sun. He was looking cheerful. " Ay, missis ! Their aunt's 
 bringin' of 'em back to-morrow from Ealing, /'ll be glad enough 
 to see 'em, for one." 
 
 " And the owld sowl upstairs. Not that I iver set my eyes 
 on her, and that's the thrruth." 
 
 " Old Mother Prichard ? Why — ^that's none so easy to say. 
 So soon as her swell friends get sick of her, I suppose. She's 
 being cared for, I take it, at this here country place." 
 
 " 'Tis a nobleman's sate in the Norruth, they sid. Can ye till 
 the name of it, to rimimber ?" Mrs. Riley had an impression 
 shared by many, that noblemen's seats are, broadly speaking, in 
 the North. She had no definite information. 
 
 Uncle Mo caught at the chance of warping the name, uncor- 
 rected. " It's the Towels in Rocestershire," said he with effron- 
 tery. " Some sort of a Book's, good Lard !" Then to change 
 the subject : — " She won't have no place to come back to, not 
 till Mrs. Burr's out and about again." 
 
 " The axidint, at the Hospital. No, indade ! And how's the 
 poor woman, hersilf ? It was the bHssin' of God she wasn't kilt 
 on the spot !" 
 
 " It wam't a bad bit of luck. She'll be out of hospital next 
 week, I'm told. They're taking their time about it, anyhow ! 
 Good-night to ye, missis ! The rain's holdin' off." And Uncle 
 Mo departed. Aimt M'riar had insisted on his not discontinuing 
 any of his lapses into bachelorhood proper; which impUes pub 
 or club, according to man's degree. 
 
 Just a few minutes ago — speaking abreast of the story — ^Aunt 
 M'riar, getting ready at last to do a little work after so much 
 tidying up, had to go to the door to answer a knock. Its re- 
 sponsible agent was Michael, excited. " It's him I" said he. " I 
 seen him myself. Over at Tappingses. And Mr. Moses, he's a- 
 conversing with Missis Riley next door." He went on to offer 
 to make an affidavit, as was his practice, not only on the Testa- 
 ment, but on most any book you could name. 
 
 It was not necessary: Aunt M'riar believed him. " You tell 
 him," she replied, " that Mrs. Prichard's gone away, and no time 
 fixed for coming back. Then he'U go. If he don't go, and comes 
 along, just you say to him Mr. Wardle he'll be back in a minute. 
 He'll be only a short time at the Sun." 
 
 " I'll say wotsumever you please. Missis Wardle. Only that 
 won't carry no weight, not if I says it ever so. He's a sly cus- 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 415 
 
 tomer. Here he is a-coming. Jist past the post !" That is, 
 the one Dave broke his head off. 
 
 Aunt M'riar's heart thumped, and she felt sick. " You say 
 there's no one in the house then," said she. This was panic, and 
 loss of judgment. For the interview was palpable to anyone 
 approaching down the Court. Micky must have felt this, but 
 he only said : — " I'll square him how I can, missis," and withdrew 
 from the door. Mr. Wix's lurching footstep, with the memory 
 of its fetters on it, approached at its leisure. He stopped and 
 looked round, and saw the boy, who acknowledged his stare. 
 " I see you a-coming," said Michael. 
 
 Mr. Wix said: — "Young Ikey." He appeared to consider 
 a course of action. " Now do you want another half-a- 
 buU ?" 
 
 " Ah !" Micky was clear about that. 
 
 " Then you do sentry-go outside o' this, in the street, and if 
 you see a copper turning in here, you run ahead and give the 
 word. Understand ? This is War die's, ain't it ?" 
 
 " That's Wardle's. But there ain't nobody there." 
 
 " You young Uar. I saw you talking through the door, only 
 this minute." 
 
 " That wam't anybody, only Aunt M'riar. Party you wants is 
 away — gone away for a change. Mr. Moses ain't there, but he'll 
 be back afore you can reckon him up. You may knock at that 
 door till you 'ammer in the button, and never find a soul in the 
 house, only Aimt M'riar. You try ! 'Ammer away !" There 
 was a faux air of self -justification in this, which did not bear 
 analysis. Possibly Micky thought so himself, for he vanished 
 up the Court. He would at least be able to bring a false alarm 
 if any critical juncture arose. 
 
 The ex-convict watched him out of sight, and then knocked at 
 the door, and waited. The woman inside had been listening to 
 his voice with a quaking heart — had known it for that of her 
 truant husband of twenty years ago, through all the changes time 
 had made, and in spite of such colour of its own as the prison 
 taint had left in it. And he stood there unsuspecting; not a 
 thought in his mind of who she was, this Aunt" M'riar ! Why 
 indeed should he have had any ? 
 
 She could not trust her voice yet, with a heart thumping like 
 that. She might take a moment's grace, at least, for its violence 
 to subside. She sat down, close to the door, for she felt sick 
 and the room went round. She wanted not to faint, though it 
 was not clear that s3nicope would make matters any the worse. 
 
 27 
 
416 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 But the loiiger he paused before knocking again, the better for 
 Aunt M'riar. 
 
 The knock came, a crescendo on the previous one. She had to 
 respond some time. Make an effort and get it over ! 
 
 " That * * * young guttersnipe's given me a bad character," 
 muttered Wix, as he heard the chain slipped into its sheath. 
 Then the door opened, and a tremulous voice came from within. 
 
 " What is it . . . you want ?" it said. Its trepidation was 
 out of all proportion to the needs of the case. So thought Mr. 
 Wix, and decided that this Aunt M'riar was some poor nervous 
 hysteric, perhaps an idiot outright. 
 
 " Does an old lady by the name of Prichard live here, mis- 
 tress 1" He hid his impatience with this idiot, assuming a 
 genial or conciUatory tone — a thing he perfectly well knew how 
 to do, on occasion. " An old lady by the name of Prichard. . . . 
 You've got nothing to be frightened of, you know. I'm not 
 going to do her any harm, nor yet you." He spoke as to the 
 idiot, in a reassuring tone. For the hysterical voice had tried 
 again for speech, and failed. 
 
 Aunt M'riar mustered a Uttle more strength. " Old Mrs. 
 Prichard's away in the country," she said almost firmly. " She's 
 not likely to be back yet awhile. Can I take any message ?" 
 
 " Ate you going in the country 1" 
 
 " For when she comes back, I should have said." 
 
 " Ah — but when will that be ? Next come strawberry -time, 
 perhaps ! I'll write to her." 
 
 " I can't give her address." Aunt M'riar had an impression 
 that the omission of " you " after " give " just saved her telling 
 a He here. Her words might have meant: " I am not at Uberty 
 to give her address to anyone." It was less like saying she did 
 not know it. 
 
 His next words startled her. " I know her address. Got it 
 written down here. Some swell's house in Rocestershire." He 
 made a pretence of searching among papers. 
 
 Aunt M'riar was so taken by surprise at this that she had said 
 •' Yes — Ancester Towers " before she knew it. She was not a 
 person to entrust secrets to. 
 
 " Right you are, mistress ! Ancester Towers it is." He was 
 making a pretence, entirely for his own satisfaction, of confirm- 
 ing this from a memorandum. Mr. Wix had got what he wanted, 
 but he enjoyed the success of his ruse. Of course, he had only 
 used what he had just overheard from Uncle Moses. 
 
 The thought then crossed Aunt M'riar's mind that unless she 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 417 
 
 inquired of him who he was, or why he wanted Mrs. Prichard, he 
 would guess that she knew already. It was the reaction of her 
 concealed knowledge — a sort of innocent guilty conscience. It 
 was not a reasonable thought, but a vivid one for all that — vivid 
 enough to make her say : — " Who shall I say asked for her ?" 
 
 " Any name you like. It don't matter to me. I shall write to 
 her myself." 
 
 Guilty consciences — even innocent ones — can never leave well 
 alone. The murderer who has buried his victim must needs 
 hang about the spot to be sure no one is digging him up. One 
 looks back into the room one Ut a match in, to see that it is 
 not on fire. A diseased wish to clear herself from any suspicion 
 of knowing anything about her visitor, impelled Aunt M'riar to 
 say : — " Of course I don't know the name you go by." Obviously 
 she would have done well to let it alone. 
 
 A person who had never borne an alias would have thought 
 nothing of Aunt M'riar's phrase. The convict instantly detected 
 the speaker's knowledge of himself. Another thought crossed his 
 mind : — How about that caution this woman had given to Micky ? 
 Why was she so concerned that the boy should not " split upon " 
 him ? " Who the devil are you ?" said he suddenly, half to him- 
 self. It was not the form in which he would have put the ques- 
 tion had he reflected. 
 
 The exclamation produced a new outcrop of terror or panic in 
 Aunt M'riar. She found voice to say: — " I've told you all I can, 
 master." Then she shut the door between them, and sank down 
 white and breathless on the chair close at hand, and waited, 
 longing to hear his footsteps go. She seemed to wait for 
 hoinrs. 
 
 Probably it was little over a minute when the man outside 
 knocked again — a loud, sepulchral, single knock, with determina- 
 tion in it. Its resonance in the empty house was awful to the 
 lonely hearer. 
 
 But Aunt M'riar's capacity for mere dread was full to the brim. 
 She was on the brink of the reaction of fear, which is despair — 
 or, rather, desperation. Was she to wait for another appalling 
 knock, like that, to set her heartstrings vibrating anew ? To 
 what end ? No — settle it now, imder the sting of this one. 
 
 She again opened the door as before. " I've told you all I 
 know about Mrs. Prichard, and it's true. You must just wait till 
 she comes back. I can't tell you no more." 
 
 " I don't want any more about Mrs. Prichard. I want to see 
 Bide of this door. Take that * * * chain off, and speak fair. 
 
418 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 I sent you a civil message through that young boy. He gave 
 it you ?" 
 
 " He told me what you said." 
 
 " What did he say I said ? If he told you any * * * lies, 
 111 halt murder him ! What did he say ?" 
 
 " He said you was coming to see your mother, and Mrs. 
 Prichard she must be your mother if she come from Skilhcks. 
 So I told him she come from Skillicks, three year agone. Then 
 he said you wanted money of Mrs. Prichard. . . ." 
 
 " How the devil did he know that 1" 
 
 " He said it. And I told him the old lady had no money. It's 
 little enough, if she has." 
 
 " And that was all ?" 
 
 " All about Mrs. Prichard." 
 
 " Anything else 1" 
 
 " He told me your name." 
 
 " What name ?" 
 
 " Thornton Daverill." The moment Aunt M'riar had said thia 
 she was sorry for it. For she remembered, plainly enough con- 
 sidering the tension of her mind, that Micky had only given 
 her the siurname. Her oversight had come of her own bitter 
 familiarity -with, the name. Think how easy for her tongue to trip ! 
 
 " Anything else ?" 
 
 " No — ^nothing else." 
 
 " You swear to Goard ?" 
 
 " I have told you everything." 
 
 " Then look you here, mistress ! I can tell you this one thing. 
 That young boy never told you Thornton. I've never named 
 the name to a soul since I set foot in England. How the Devil 
 come you to know it ?" 
 
 Aimt M'riar was silent. She had given herself away, and had 
 no one but herself to thank for it. 
 
 " How the devil come you to know it ?" The man raised his 
 voice harshly to repeat the question, adding, more to himself: — 
 " You're some * * * jade that knows me. Who the devil are 
 you ?" 
 
 The woman remained dumb, but on the veiy edge of despera- 
 tion. 
 
 " Open this damned door ! You hear me ? Open this door — 
 or, look you, I tell you what I'll do ! Here's that * * * young 
 boy coming. I'll twist his neck for him, by Goard, and leave 
 him on your doorstep. You put me to it, and I'll do it. I'm 
 good for my word." A change of tone, from savage anger to 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 419 
 
 sullen intent, conveyed the strength of a controlled resolve, that 
 might mean more than threat. At whatever cost. Aunt M'riar 
 could not but shield Micky. It was in her service that he had 
 provoked this man's wrath. 
 
 She wavered a Uttle, closed the door, and slipped the chain- 
 hook up to its limit. Even then she hesitated to withdraw it 
 from its socket. The man outside made with his tongue the click 
 of acceleration with which one urges a horse, saying, " Look 
 alive !" She could see no choice but to throw the door open 
 and face him. The moment that passed before she could muster 
 the resolution needed seemed a long one. 
 
 That she was helped to it by an agonizing thirst, almost, of 
 curiosity to see his face once more, there can be no doubt. But 
 could she have said, dimng that moment, whether she most 
 desired that he should have utterly forgotten her, or that he 
 should remember her and claim her as his wife ? Probably she 
 would not have hesitated to say that worse than either would' 
 be that he should recognise her only to slight her, and make a 
 jest, maybe, of the memories that were his and hers aUke. 
 
 She had not long to wait. It needed just a moment's pause — 
 no more — to be sure no sequel of recognition would foUow the 
 blank stare that met her gaze as she threw back the door, and 
 looked this husband of hers full in the face. None came, and 
 her heart throbbed slower and slower. It would be down to seK- 
 command in a few beats. Meanwhile, how about that chance 
 slip of her tongue ? " Thornton " had to be accounted for. 
 
 The man's stare was indeed blank, for any sign of recognition 
 that it showed. It was none the less as intent and curious as 
 was the scrutiny that met it, looking in vain for a false lover 
 long since fled, not a retrievable one, but a memory of a sojourn 
 in a garden and a collapse in a desert. So little was left, to 
 explain the past, in the face some violence had twisted askew, 
 close-shaved and scarred, one white scar on the temple warping 
 the grip in which its contractions held a cold green orb that 
 surely never was the eye that was a girl-f ool's ignis fatuus, twenty 
 odd years ago. So little of the flawless teeth, which surely those 
 fangs never were ! — fangs that told a tale of the place in which 
 they had been left to decay; for such was prison-life three- 
 quarters of a century since. It was strange, but Aunt M'riar, 
 though she knew that it was he, felt sick at heart that he should 
 be so unlike himself. 
 
 He was the first to speak. " You'll know me again, mistress," 
 he said. He took his eyes ofE her to look attentively round the 
 
420 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 room. Uncle Mo's sporting prints, prized records of ancient 
 battles, caught his eye. " Ho — that's it, is it ?" said he, with a 
 short nod of illumination, as though he had made a point as a 
 cross-examiner. " That's where we are — ^Figg and Broughton — 
 Corbet — Spring ? . . . That's your game, is it ? Now the 
 question is, where the devil do I come in ? How come you to 
 know my name's Thornton ? That's the point !" 
 
 Now nothing would have been easier for Aunt M'riar than to 
 say that Mrs. Prichard had told her that her only surviving son 
 bore this name. But the fact is that the old lady, quite a recent 
 experience, had for the moment utterly vanished from her 
 thoughts, and the man before her had wrenched her mind back 
 into the past. She could only think of him as the cruel betrayer 
 of her girlhood, none the less cruel that he had failed in his worst 
 plot against her, and used a legitimate means to cripple her Ufe. 
 She could scarcely have recalled anything Mrs. Prichard had said, 
 for the life of her. She was face to face with the past, yet 
 standing at bay to conceal her identity. 
 
 Think how haxd pressed she was, and forgive her for resorting 
 to an excusable fiction. It was risky, but what could she do ? 
 " I knew your wife," said she briefly. " Twenty-two years agone." 
 
 " You mean the girl I married ?" He had had to marry one 
 of them, but could only marry one. That was how he classed 
 her. " What became of that girl, I wonder ? Maybe you 
 know ? Is she aUve or dead ?" 
 
 " I couldn't say, at this len'th of time." Then she remembered 
 a servant, at the house where her child was bom, and saw safety 
 for her own fiction in assuming this girl's identity. Invention 
 was stimulated by despair. " She was confined of a girl, where 
 I was in service. She gave me letters to post to her husband. 
 R. Thornton Daverill." That was safe, anyhow. For she 
 remembered giving letters, so directed, to this girl. 
 
 The convict sat down on the table, looking at her no longer, 
 which she found a rehef. " Did that kid Uve or die ?" said he. 
 " Blest if I recollect !" 
 
 " Bom dead. She had a bad time of it. She came back to 
 London, and I never see any more of her." Aunt M'riar should 
 have commented on this oblivion of his own child. She was 
 letting her knowledge of the story influence her, and endangering 
 her version of it. 
 
 The man stopped and thought a little. Then he turned upon 
 her suddenly. " How came you to remember that name for 
 twenty-two years ?" said he. 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 421 
 
 A thing she recollected of this servant-girl helped her at a 
 pinch. " She asked me to direct a letter when she hurt her 
 hand/' she said. " When you've wrote a name, you bear it in 
 mind." 
 
 " What did she caU the child ?" 
 
 " It was bom dead." 
 
 " What did she mean to call it ?" 
 
 The answer should have been " She didn't tell me." But Aunt 
 M'riar was a poor fiction-monger after all. For what must she 
 say but " Polly, after herself "? 
 
 " Not Mary ?" 
 
 Then Aunt M'riar forgot herself completely. "No — ^Polly. 
 After the name you called her, at the Tun." She saw her mis- 
 take, too late. 
 
 Daverill turned his gaze on her again, slowly. " You seem to 
 remember a fat lot about this and that !" said he. He got down 
 off the table, and stepped between Aunt M'riar and the door, 
 saying : — " Come you here, mistress !" The harshness of his voice 
 was hideous to her. He caught her wrist, and pulled her to the 
 window. The only gas-lamp the Court possessed shone through 
 it on her white face. " Now — what's your * * * married name ?" 
 
 Aunt M'riar could not utter a word. 
 
 " I can teU you. You're that * * * young Polly, and your 
 name's Daverill. You're my lawful wife — d'ye hear ?" He 
 gave a horrible laugh. " Why, I thought you was buried years 
 ago !" 
 
 She began gasping hysterically: — "Leave me — cleave me — 
 you are nothing to me now !" and struggled to free herself. Yet, 
 inexpressibly dreadful as the fact seemed to her, she knew that 
 her struggle was not against the grasp of a stranger. Think of 
 that bygone time I The thought took all the spirit out of her 
 resistance. 
 
 He returned to his seat upon the table, drawing her down 
 beside him. " Yes, Polly Daverill," said he, " I thought you 
 dead and buried, years ago. I've had a rough time of it, since 
 then, across the water." He paused a moment; then said quite 
 clearly, almost passionlessly: — " God curse them all !" He re- 
 peated the words, even more equably the second time ; then with 
 a rough bear-hug of the arm that gripped her waist: — "What 
 have you got to say about it, hay ? Who's your * * * husband 
 now ? Who's your prizefighter ?" 
 
 The terrified woman just found voice for: — " He's not my 
 husband." She could not add a word of explanation. 
 
422 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The convict laughed unwholesomely, beneath his breath. 
 " That's what you've come to, is it ? Pretty Polly ! Mary the 
 Maid of the Inn ! The man you've got is not your husband. 
 Sounds Uke the parson — Holy Scripture, somewhere ! I've seen 
 him. He's at the lush-ken down the road. Now you tell the 
 truth. When's he due back here ?" 
 
 She had only just breath for the word seven, which was true. 
 It was past the half-hour, and he would not have beUeved her 
 had she said sooner. But it was as though she told him that 
 she knew she was helplessly in his power for twenty-five minutes. 
 Helplessly, that is, strong resolution and desperation apart ! 
 
 " Then he won't be here till half-past. Time a,nd to spare 1 
 Now you listen to me, and I'll learn you a thing or two you don't 
 know. You are my — lawful — ^wife, so just you listen to me ! 
 Ah, would you ? . . ." This was because he had supposed that 
 a look of hers askant had rested on a knife upon the table within 
 reach. It was a pointed knife, known as " the bread knife," 
 which Dolly was never allowed to touch. He pulled her away 
 from it, caught at it, and flung it away across the room. " It's 
 a narsty, dangerous thing," he said, " safest out of the way !" 
 Then he went on: — "You — are — my — ^lawful — ^wife, and what 
 St. Paul says mayhap you know ? ' Wives, submit yourselves to 
 your husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.' . . . What ! — me not 
 know my * * * Testament ! Why ! — ^it's the only * * * book you 
 get a word of when you're nursing for Botany Bay fever. God 
 curse 'em all ! Why — ^the place was Hell — Hell on earth !" 
 
 Aunt M'riar now saw too late that she should not have opened 
 that door, at any cost. But how about Micky ? Surely, how- 
 ever, that was a mere threat. What had this man to gain by 
 carrying it out ? Why had she not seen that he would never 
 run needless risk, to gain no end ? 
 
 The worst thorn in her heart was that, changed as he was from 
 the dissolute, engaging youth that she had dreamed of reforming, 
 she still knew him for himself. He was, as he said, her husband. 
 And, for all that she shrank from him and his criminality with 
 horror, she was obliged to acknowledge — oh, how bitterly ! — 
 that she wanted help against herself as much as against him. 
 She was obliged to acknowledge the grisly force of Nature, 
 that dictated the reimposition of the yoke that she had through 
 all these years conceived that she had shaken off. And she 
 knew that she might look in vain for help to Law, human or 
 theological. For each in its own way, and for its own purposes, 
 gives countenance to the only consignment of one human crea- 
 
AUNT M'RIAR'S HUSBAND 423 
 
 ture to the power of another that the slow evolution of Justice 
 has left in civilised society. Each says to the girl trapped into 
 unholy matrimony, from whom the right to look inside the trap 
 has been cunningly vdthheld : — " Back to your lord and master ! 
 Go to him, he is your husband — kiss him — ^take his hand in 
 thine I" Neither is ashamed to enforce a contract to demise the 
 self -ownership of one human being to another, when that human 
 being is a woman. And yet Nature is so inexorable that the 
 victim of a cruel marriage often needs help sorely — help against 
 herself, to enable her, on her own behalf, to shake ofE the Devil 
 some mysterious instinct impels her to cling to. Such an in- 
 stinct was stirring in Aunt M'riar's chaos of thought andieeUng, 
 even though her terror and her consciousness of the vileness of 
 the man and the vileness of his claim over her. The idea of 
 using the power that her knowledge of his position gave her never 
 crossed her mind. Say rather that the fear that a call for help 
 would consign him to a just retribution for his crimes was the 
 chief cause of her silence. 
 
 A dread that she might be compelled to do so was lessened 
 by his next speech. " You've no call to look so scared, Polly 
 Daverill. You do what I tell you, and be sharp about it. What 
 are you good for ? — ^that's the question ! Got any money in the 
 house ?" 
 
 She felt relieved. Now he would take his arm away. That 
 arm was all the worse from the fact that her shrinking from it 
 was one-sided. " A httle," she answered. " It's upstairs. Let 
 me get it." 
 
 He relaxed the arm. " Go ahead !" he said. " I'll follow 
 up." 
 
 She cried out with sudden emphasis : — " No — I will not. I 
 will not." And then with subdued earnestness: — "Indeed I 
 will bring it down. Indeed I will." 
 
 " You won't stick up there, by any chance, till your man 
 that's not your husband happens round ?" 
 
 She addressed him by name for the first time. " Thornton, 
 did I ever tell you a lie ?" 
 
 " I never caught you in one, that I know of. Cut along !" 
 
 She went like a bird released. Once in her room, and clear of 
 him, she could lock her door and cry for help. She turned the 
 key, and had actually thrown up the window -sash, when her own 
 words crossed her mind — her claim to veracity. No — she would 
 keep a clear conscience, come what might. She glanced up the 
 Court, and saw Micky coming through the arch; then closed the 
 
424 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 window, and took an old leather piirse from the drawer of the 
 looking-glass Mr. Bartlett's men had not broken. It contained 
 the whole of her small savings. 
 
 After she left the room, Daverill had glanced romid for valu- 
 ables. An old silver watch of Uncle Mo's, that always stopped 
 unless allowed to he on its back, was ticking on the dresser. 
 The convict sHpped it into his pocket, and looked roimd for 
 more, opening drawers, looking under dish-covers. Finding 
 nothing, he sat again on the table, with his hands in the pockets 
 of his velveteen corduroy coat. His face-twist grew more 
 marked as he wrinkled the setting of a calculating eye. " I 
 should have to square it with Miss Juliar," said he, in soliloquy. 
 He was evidently clear about his meaning, whatever it was. 
 
 The boy came running down the Court, and entering the front- 
 yard, whose claim to be a garden was now nil, tapped at the 
 window excitedly. Daverill went to the door and opened it. 
 
 " Mister Moses coming along. Stopping to speak to Tap- 
 pingses. You'd best step it sharp. Mister Wix !" 
 
 " Polly Daverill, look aUve !" The convict shouted at the 
 foot of the stairs, and Aunt M'riar came running down. " Where's 
 the * * * cash ?" said he. 
 
 " It's all I've got," said poor Aunt M'riar. She handed the 
 purse to him, and he caught it and slipped it in a breast-pocket, 
 and was out in the Court in a moment, running, without another 
 word. He vanished into the darkness. 
 
 Five minutes later. Uncle Mo, escaping from Mrs. Tapping, 
 came down the Court, and found the front-door open and no light 
 in the house. He nearly tumbled over Aunt M'riar, in a swoon, 
 or something very like it, in the chair by the door. 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 425 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 HOW ADBIAlir TOEEENS COTJU) SING WITHOUT WINCING. IIGAEO. 
 DICTATION OF LETTEES. HOW ADEIAN EEOKE DOWN. THE 
 LBEN^AN HYDEA's EYE-PEEPS. HOW ADEIAN COULD SEE 
 NOTHING IN ANY NUMBEE OF LOOKING-GLASSES. HOW 
 GWEN, IN SPITE OF APPEAEANCES, HELD TO THE SOLEMN 
 COMPACT. SIE MEEBIDEW'S TEEACHEEY. SEPTIMIUS SEVEEUS. 
 HOW GWEN HAD BEEN TO LOOK AT AETHUE's BEIDQB. A 
 KINKAJOU IS NOT A CAECAJOU. OF THE PECULIABITIES OF 
 FIEST-CLASS SEEVANTS. MES. PICTUEE's STOEY DIVULGED BY 
 
 GWEN. HOW Dave's eival geannies weee safest apaet 
 
 Old folk and candles bum out slowly at the end. But before 
 that end comes they flicker up, once, twice, and again. The 
 candle says: — " Think of me at my best. Remember me when 
 I shone out thus, and thus; and never guttered, nor wanted 
 snuffing. Think of me when you needed no other light than 
 mine, to look in Bradshaw and decide that you had better go 
 early and ask at the Station." Thus says the candle. 
 
 And the old man says to the old woman, and she says it back 
 to him: — " Think of me in the glorious days when we were dawn- 
 ing on each other; of that most glorious day of all when we found 
 each other out, and had a tiff in a week and a reconciliation in 
 a fortnight \" Then each is dumb for a while, and life ebbs 
 slowly, till some chance memory stirs among the embers, and a 
 bright spark flickers for a moment in the dark. The candle dies 
 at last, and smells, and mixes with the elements. And some say 
 you and I will do the very same — die and go out. Possibly ! 
 Just as you like ! Have it your own way. 
 
 It is even so with the Old Year in his last hovirs. Is ever an 
 October so chill that he may not bid you suddenly at midday 
 to come out in the garden and recall, with him, what it was 
 like in those Spring days when the first birds sang ; those Summer 
 days when the hay-scent was in Cheapside, and a great many 
 roses had not been eaten by bUghts, and it was too hot to 
 mow the lawn ? Is ever a November so self-centred as to 
 refuse to help the Old Year to a memory of the gleams of April, 
 and the nightingale's first song about the laggard ash-buds ? 
 Is icy December's self so remorseless, even when the holly-berries 
 are making a parade of their value as Christmas decorations ? 
 
426 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 — even when it's not much use pretending, because the Waits 
 came last night, and you thought, when you heard them, what 
 a long time ago it was that a little boy or girl, who must have been 
 yourself, was waked by them to wonder at the mysteries of Night ? 
 But nothing is of any use in December, because January will 
 come, and this year will be dead and risen from its tomb, and 
 the metaphorically disposed will be hoping that Resurrection is 
 not so uncomfortable as all that comes to. 
 
 That time was eight weeks ahead one morning at Pensham 
 Steynes, which has to be borne in mind as the residence of Sir 
 Hamilton Torrens, Bart., when the blind man, his son, was 
 dictating to his sister Irene one of the long missives he was 
 given to sending to his fiancee in London. It was just such a 
 late October day as the one indirectly referred to above ; in fact, 
 it would quite have done for a Spring day, if only you could have 
 walked across the lawn without getting your feet soaked. The 
 chance primroses that the mild weather had deluded into budding 
 must have felt ashamed of their stupidity, and disgusted at the 
 sight of the stripped trees, although they may have reaped some 
 encouragement from a missel-thrush that had just begun again 
 after the holiday, and been grateful to the elms and oaks that 
 had kept some decent clothing on them. Irene had found one 
 such primrose in a morning walk, and a confirmation of it in the 
 morning's Times. 
 
 " Why didn't you say the ground was covered with them, lie ? 
 I could have believed in any number on your authority. Surely, 
 a chap with his eyes out is entitled to the advantages which seeing 
 nothing confers on him. Do please perjure yourself about 
 violets and crocuses on my behalf. It is quite a mistake to 
 suppose I shall be jealous. You've no idea what a magnanimous 
 elder brother you've got." So Adrian had said when they came 
 in, and had felt his way to the piano — it was extraordinary how 
 he had learned to feel his way about — and had played the air 
 of " Sumer is ycumin in, Ihude sing cucu," with the courage 
 of a giant. Not only that, but actually sang it, and never 
 flinched from: — " Groweth seed and bloweth meed and springeth 
 wood anew." And his heart was saying to him all the while 
 that he might never again see the springing of the young com, 
 and the daisies in the grass, and the new buds waiting for the 
 bidding of the sun. 
 
 Irene, quite ahve to her brother's intrepidity, but abstaining 
 resolutely from spoken acknowledgment — for would not that 
 have been an admission of the need for courage ? — had 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 427 
 
 gone through a dramatic effort on her own behalf, a kind of 
 rehearsal of the part she had to play. She had arranged writing 
 materials for action, and affected the attitude of a patient scribe, 
 longing for dictation. She had assumed a hardened tone, to 
 say: — "When you're ready!" Then Adrian had deserted the 
 piano, and addressed himself to dictation. " Where were we ?" 
 said he. For the letter was half written, having been interrupted 
 by visitors the day before. 
 
 " When the Parysfort women came in ?" said Irene. " We 
 had got to the old woman. After the old woman — what next ?" 
 
 Adrian repeated, " After the old woman — after the old woman." 
 Then he said suddenly: — " Bother the old woman. I tell you 
 what, 'Re, we must tear this letter up, and start fair. Those 
 people coming in spoiled it." His tone was vexed and restless. 
 The weariness of his blindness galled him. This fearful inability 
 to write was one of his worst trials. He fought hard against his 
 longing to cry out — ^to lighten his heart, ever so httle, by expres- 
 sion of his misery; but then, the only one thing he could do in 
 requital of the unflagging patience of this dear amanuensis, was 
 to lighten the weight of her sorrow for him. And this he could 
 only do by showing unflinching resolution to bear his own burden. 
 One worst unkindest cut of all was that any word of exasperation 
 against the cruelty of a cancelled pen might seem an imputation 
 on her of ineffective service, almost a reproach. It was perhaps 
 because the visitors of yesterday were so evidently to blame for 
 the miscarriage of this letter, that Adrian felt, in a certain sense, 
 free to grieve aloud. It was a relief to him to say : — " The Devil 
 fly away with the Honourable Misses Parysforts I" 
 
 " Suppose we have a clean slate, darling, and I'll tear the 
 letter up, old woman and all. Or shall I read back a little, to 
 start you ?" 
 
 " Oh no — please ! On no account read anything again. . . , 
 Suppose I confess up ! Make some stars, and go on like this : — 
 ' These are not Astronomy, but to convey the idea that I have 
 forgotten where I was, and that we have to make it a rule never 
 to re-read, for fear I should tear it up. I believe I was trying 
 to find a new roundabout way of saying how much more to me 
 you were than anything in Heaven or Earth.' " The dictation 
 paused. 
 
 " Go on," said the amanuensis. " After ' Heaven and Earth ' ?" 
 She paused vidth an expectant pen, her eyes on the paper. Then 
 she looked up, to see that her brother's face was in his hands, 
 dropped down on the side-cushion of the sofa. She waited 
 
428 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 for him to speak, knowing he would only think she did not see 
 him. But she had to wait overlong for the lasting powers of 
 this excuse; so she let it lapse, and went to sit beside him, and 
 coaxed his hands from his face, kissing away something very like 
 a tear. " But why now, darhng ?" said she. " You know what 
 I mean. What was it in the letter 1" 
 
 " Why — I was going to say," replied Adrian, recovering him- 
 self, " I was going on to ' the thing that makes day of my dark- 
 ness ' or something of that sort — some poetical game, you know 
 — and then I thought what a many things I could write if I could 
 write them myself, and shut them in the envelope for Gwen 
 alone, that I can't say now, though the dearest sister ever man 
 had yet writes them for me. I can say to her, darling, that if 
 I were offered my eyesight back, by some irritating fairy god- 
 mother — that kind of thing — ^in exchange for the Gwen that is 
 mine, I would not accept her boon upon the terms. I should, 
 on the contrary, wish I were the Lernsean Hydra, that I might 
 give the balance of seven pairs of eyes rather than . . ." 
 
 " Rather than lose Gwen." Irene spoke, because he had 
 hesitated. 
 
 " Exactly. But I got stuck a moment by the reflection that 
 Gwen's sentiments might not have remained altogether un- 
 changed, in that case. In fact, she might have run away, at 
 Arthur's Bridge. It is an obscure and difficult subject, and [the 
 supply of parallel cases is not all one could wish." 
 
 " I don't see why we shouldn't put all or any of that in the 
 letter." For Irene always favoured her brother's incurable 
 whimsicality as a resource against the powers of Erebus and dark 
 Night, and humoured any approach to extravagance, to disperse 
 the cloud that had gathered. This one pleased him. 
 
 " How shall we put it ? . . . somehow like this. . . . By-the- 
 by, do you know how to spell Lernaean ? . . ." He paused 
 abruptly, and seemed to listen. " Sh — sh a minute ! What's 
 that outside ? I thought I heard somebody coming." Irene 
 listened too. 
 
 " Ply hears somebody," she said. And then she had all but 
 said " Look at him !" in an unguarded moment. 
 
 An instant later the dog had started up and scoured from the 
 room as if Ufe and death depended on his presence elsewhere. 
 Adrian heard something his sister did not, and exclaimed 
 " What's that ?" 
 
 " Nothing," said Irene. " Only someone at the front-door. 
 Ply's always like that." 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 429 
 
 " I didn't mean Ply. Listen ! Be quiet." ^j^ The room they 
 were in was remote from the front-door of the house, and the 
 voice they heard was no more than a musical modulation of 
 silence. It had a power in it, for all that, to rouse the blind man to 
 excitement. He had to put a restraint on himself to say quietly: 
 — " Suppose you go and see ! Do you mind ?" Irene left the room. 
 
 Anyone who had seen Adrian then for the first time, and 
 watched him standing motionless with his hands on a chairback 
 and the eyes that saw nothing gazing straight in front of him, 
 but not towards the door, would have wondered to see a man 
 of his type apparently so interested in his own image, repeated 
 by the mirror before him as often as eyesight could trace its 
 give-and-take with the one that faced it on the wall behind him. 
 He was the wrong man for a Narcissus. The strength of his frame- 
 work was wrong throughout. Narcissus had no bone-distances, 
 as artists say, and his hair was in crisp curls, good for the sculptor. 
 No one ever needed to get a pair of scissors to snip it. But 
 though anyone might have marvelled at Adrian Torrens's seeming 
 Narcissus-like intentness on his own manifold image, he could 
 never have surmised that cruel blindness was its apology. He 
 could never have guessed, from anything in their seeming, that 
 the long perspective of gazing orbs, vanishing into nothingness, 
 were not more sightless than their originals. 
 
 He only listened for a moment. For, distant as she was, 
 Irene's cry of surprise on meeting some new-comer was decisive 
 as to that new-comer's identity. It could be no one but Gwen. 
 Irene's welcome settled that. 
 
 The blind man was feeling his way to the door when Gwen 
 opened it. Then she was in his arms, and what cared he for 
 anything else in the heavens abo^e or the earth beneath ? His 
 exultation had to die down, like the resonant chords in the 
 music he had played an hour since, before he could come to the 
 level of speech. Then he said prosaically: — "This is very 
 irregular ! How about the solemn compact ? How are we going 
 to look our mamma in the face ?" 
 
 " Did it yesterday evening !" said Gwen. " We had an ex- 
 plosion. . . . Well, I won't say that — suppose we call it a warm 
 discussion, leading to a more reasonable attitude on the part of 
 ... of the people who were in the wrong. The other people, 
 that is to say !" 
 
 " Precisely. They always are. I vote we sit on the sofa, and 
 you take your bonnet off. I know it's on by the ribbons under 
 your chin — ^not otherwise." 
 
430 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " What a clever man he ia — drawing inferences ! However, 
 bonnets have got very much out of sight, I admit. Hands off, 
 please ! . . . There ! — ^now I can give particulars." 
 
 Irene, who — considerately, perhaps — had not followed closely, 
 here came in, saying: — " Stop a minute ! I haven't heard any- 
 thing yet. . . . There ! — ^now go on." 
 
 She found a seat, and Gwen proceeded. 
 
 " I came home yesterday, with an old woman I've picked up, 
 who certainly is the dearest old woman. . . ." 
 
 " Never mind the old woman. Why did you come ?" 
 
 " I came home because I chose. I came here because I wanted 
 to. . . . Well, I'll tell you directly. What I wish to mention 
 now is that I have not driven a coach-and-six through the solemn 
 compact. I assented to a separation for six months, but no date 
 was fixed. I assure you it wasn't. I was looking out all the 
 time, and took good care." 
 
 " Wasn't it fixed by implication ?" This was Irene. 
 
 " Maybe it was. But / wasn't. We can put the six months 
 off, and start fair presently. Papa quite agreed." 
 
 " Mamma didn't ?" This was Adrian. 
 
 " Of course not. That was the basis of the . . . warm dis- 
 cussion which followed on my declaration that I was coming to 
 see you to-day. However, we parted friends, and I slept sound, 
 with a clear conscience. I got up early, to avoid complications, 
 and made Tom Kettering drive me here in the dog-cart. It 
 took an hour and a half because the road's bad. It's like a 
 morass, all the way. I like the sound of the horse's hoofs when 
 I drive, not mud-pie thuds." 
 
 " We didn't hear any sound at all, except Ply. . . . Yes, 
 dear ! — of course you heard. I apologize." Irene said this to 
 Achilles, who, catching his name, took up a more active position 
 in the conversation, which he conceived to be about himself. 
 Some indeterminate chat went on until Gwen said suddenly: — 
 " Now I want to talk about what I came here for." 
 
 " Go it !" said Adrian. 
 
 " I want to know all about what 'Re said to Dr. Merridew in 
 her letter. . . . Well, what's the matter ?" 
 
 Amazement on Irene's face had caused this. " And that man 
 calls himself an F.R.C.S. !" said she. 
 
 Adrian, uninformed, naturally asked why not. Gwen sup- 
 plied a clue for guessing. " He said he couldn't read your hand- 
 writing, and gave me your letter to make out." 
 
 " What nonsense ! I write perfectly plainly." 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 431 
 
 " So I told him. But he maiatained he had hardly been able 
 to make out a word of it. Of course I read it. Your caution 
 to him not to tell me was a little obscure, but otherwise I found 
 it easy enough. Anyhow, I read all about it. And now I know." 
 
 " Well — I'll never trust a man with letters after his name again. 
 Of course he was pretending." 
 
 " But what for ?" 
 
 " Because he wanted to tell you, and didn't want to get in a 
 scrape for betraying my confidence." 
 
 Adrian struck in. Might he ask what the rumpus was about ? 
 Why Sir Merridew, and why letters ? 
 
 Irene supplied the explanation. " I wrote to him about you 
 and Septimius Severus. . . . Don't you recollect ? And I 
 cautioned him particularly not to tell Gwen. . . . Why not ? 
 Why — of course not ! It was sheer, inexcusable dishonesty, and 
 I shall tell him so next time I see him." 
 
 Gwen appeared uninterested in the point of honour. " I 
 wonder," she said, " whether he thought telling me of it this 
 way would prevent my building too much on it, and being dis- 
 appointed. That would be so exactly like Dr. Merridew." 
 
 " I think," said Adrian deliberately, " that I appreciate the po- 
 sition. Septimius Severus figures in it as a bust, or as an indirect 
 way of describing a circumstance ; preferably the latter, I should 
 say, for it must be most uncomfortable to be a bust. As an 
 Emperor he is inadmissible. I remember the incident — but I 
 suspect it was only a dream." His voice fell into real serious- 
 ness as he said this; then went back to mock seriousness, after 
 a pause. " However, I am bound to say that ' inexcusable 
 dishonesty ' is a strong expression. I should suggest ' pliable 
 conscience,' always keeping in view the motive of . . . Yes, 
 Pelides dear, but I have at present nothing for you in the form 
 of cake or sugar. Explain yourself somehow, to the best of your 
 ability." For Achilles had suddenly placed an outstretched 
 paw, impressively, on the speaker's knee, 
 
 " I see what it was," said Gwen. " You said ' pliable con- 
 science ' — ^just now." 
 
 " Well ?" 
 
 " He though he was the first syllable. Never mind him I I 
 want you to tell me about Septimius Severus. He's what I cam© 
 about. What was it that happened, exactly ?" Thereupon 
 Adrian gave the experience which the story knows already, in 
 greater detail. 
 
 In the middle, a casual housekeeper was fain to speak to Miss 
 
 28 
 
432 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Torrens, for a minute. Who therefore left the room and became 
 a voice, housekeeping, in the distance. 
 
 Then Gwen made Adrian tell the story again, cross-examining 
 him as one cross-examines obduracy in the hope of admissions 
 that will at least countenance a belief in the truth that we want 
 to be true. If Adrian had seen his way to a concession that 
 would have made matters pleasant, he would have jumped at 
 the chance of making it. But false hope was so much worse 
 than false despair. Better, surely, a spurious growth of the 
 latter, with disillusionment to come, than a stinted instalment 
 of the former with a chance of real despair ahead. Adrian took 
 the view that Sir Coupland was really a weak, good-natured 
 chap who had wanted Gwen to have every excuse for hope that 
 could be constructed, even with unsound materials; but who 
 also wanted the responsibilities of the jerry-builder to rest on 
 other shoulders than his own. Gwen discredited this view of 
 the great surgeon's character in her inner consciousness, but 
 hardly had courage to raise her voice against it, because of the 
 danger of fostering false hopes in her lover's mind. Nevertheless 
 she could not be off fanning a little flame of comfort to warm her 
 heart, from the conviction that so responsible an F.R.C.S. would 
 never have gone out of his way to show her the letter if he had 
 not thought there was some chance, however small, of a break 
 in the cloud. 
 
 After Sir CoupJand's letter and its subject had been allowed 
 to lapse, Gwen said: — " So now you see what I came for, and 
 that's all about it. What do you think I did, dearest, yesterday 
 as soon as I had seen my old lady comfortably settled ? She waa 
 dreadfully tired, you know. But she was very plucky and 
 wouldn't admit it." 
 
 " Who the dickens is your old lady ?" 
 
 " Don't be impatient. I'll tell you all in good time. First 
 I want to tell you where I went yesterday afternoon. I went 
 across the garden through the rose-forest . . . you know 7 — ^what 
 you said must be a rose-forest to smell Uke that. . . ." 
 
 " I know. And you went through the gate you came through," 
 — even so a Greek might have spoken to Aphrodite of " the 
 sea-foam you sprang from " — " and along the field-path to the 
 httle bridge fat men get stuck on. . . ." This was an exaggera- 
 tion of an overstatement of a disputed fact. 
 
 " Yes, my dearest, and I was there by myself. And I stood 
 and looked over to Swayne's Oak and thought to myself if only 
 it all could happen again, and a dog might come with a rush and 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 433 
 
 kiss me, and paw me with his dirty paws ! And then if you — 
 you — you were to come out of the little coppice, and come to the 
 rescue, all wet through and dripping, how I would take you 
 in my arms, and keep you, and not let you go to be shot. I 
 would. ' And I would say to you : — ' I have found you in time, 
 my darling, I have found you, in time to save you. And now that I 
 have found you, I will keep you, hke this. And you would look at 
 me, and see that it was not a forward girl, but me myself, your very 
 own, come for you. ... I wonder what you would have said." 
 
 " I wonder what I should have said. I think I know, though. 
 I should have said that although a perfect stranger, I should 
 like, please, to remain in Heaven as long — ^I am quoting Mrs. 
 Bailey — as it was no inconvenience. I might have said, while 
 in Heaven, that we were both under a misapprehension, having 
 taken for granted occurrences, to the development of which our 
 subsequent experiences were essential. But I should have 
 indulged the misapprehension. . . ." 
 
 " Of course you would. Any man in his senses would. . . ." 
 
 " I agree with you." 
 
 " Unless he was married or engaged or something." 
 
 "That might complicate matters. MoraHty is an unknown 
 quantity. . . . But, darling, let's stop talking nonsense. . . ." 
 
 " No — don't let's ! It's such sensible nonsense. Indeed, 
 dearest, I saw it all plain, as I stood there yesterday at Arthur's 
 Bridge. I saw what it had all meant. I did not know at the 
 time, but I should have done so if I had not been a fool. I did 
 not see then why I stood watching you till you were out of sight. 
 But I do see now." 
 
 Adrian answered seriously, thoughtfully, as one who would 
 fain get to the heart of a mystery. " I knew quite well then — 
 I am convinced of it — ^why I turned, when I thought I was out of 
 sight, to see if you were still there. I turned because my heart 
 was on fire — ^because my world was suddenly filled with a girl 
 I had exchanged fifty words with. I was not unhappy before 
 you dawned — only tranquil." 
 
 " What were you thinking of, just before you saw me, when 
 you were wading through the wet fern ? I think I was only 
 thinking how wet the ferns must have been. How little I 
 thought then who the man was, with the dog ! You were only 
 ' the man ' then." 
 
 " And then — ^I got shot ! I'm so glad. Just think, dearest, 
 what a difference it would have made to me if that ounce of lead 
 had gone an inch wrong. . . ." 
 
434 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " And you had been killed outright !" 
 
 " I didn't mean that. I meant the other way. Suppose it 
 had missed, and I had finished my walk with my eyes in my 
 head, and come back here and got an introduction to the girl 
 I saw in the Park, and not known what to say to her when I 
 got it !" 
 
 " I should have known you at once." 
 
 " Dearest love, some tenses of verbs are kittle-cattle to shoe 
 behind. ' Should have ' is one of the kittlest of the whole lot. 
 You would have thought me an interesting author, and I should 
 have sent you a copy of my next book. And then we should 
 have married somebody else." 
 
 " Where is the organ of nonsense in Poets' heads, I wonder. 
 It must be this big one, on the top." 
 
 " No — ^that's veneration. My strong point. It shows itself 
 in the readiness with which I recognise the Finger of Providence. 
 I discern in the nicety with which old Stephen's bullet did its 
 predestined work a special intervention on my behalf. A 
 little more and I should have been sleeping with my fathers, 
 or have joined the Choir of Angels, or anyhow been acting up 
 to my epitaph to the best of my poor ability. A little less, and 
 I should have gone my way rejoicing, ascribing my escape 
 from that bullet to the happy-go-lucky character of the Divine 
 disposition of human affairs. I should never have claimed the 
 attentions due to a slovenly, unwholesome corpse. . . ." 
 
 " You shall not talk Uke that. Blaspheme as much as you 
 like. I don't mind blasphemy." 
 
 Adrian kissed the palm of the hand that stopped his mouth, 
 and continued speech, under drawbacks. " An intelUgent analy- 
 sis will show that my remarks are reverential, not blasphemous. 
 You will at least admit that there would have been no Mrs. 
 Bailey." 
 
 Gwen removed her hand. " None whatever 1 Yes, you may 
 talk about Mrs. Bailey. There would have been no Mrs. Bailey, 
 and I should never have lain awake all night with your eyes on 
 my conscience. . . . Yes — the night after mamma and I had tea 
 with you. . . ." 
 
 " My eyes on your conscience ! Oh — my eyes be hanged ! 
 Would I have my eyes back now ? — ^to lose you ! Oh, Gwen, 
 Gwen ! — sometimes the thought comes to me that if it were not 
 for my privation, my happiness would be too great to be borne — 
 that I should scarcely dare to live for it, had the price I paid 
 for it been less. What is the loss of sight for life to set against. . ." 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 435 
 
 " Are you aware, good man, that you are talking nonsense ? 
 Be a reasonable Poet, at least !" 
 
 She was drawing her hand caressingly over his, and just as 
 she said this, lifted it suddenly, with a start. " Your ring 
 scratches," said she. 
 
 " Does it ?" said he, feeling it. " Oh yes — ^it does. I've 
 found where. I'll have it seen to. . . , I wonder now why I 
 never noticed that before." 
 
 " It's a good ring that won't scratch its wearer. I suppose 
 I was unpopular with it. It didn't hurt. Perhaps it was only 
 in fun. Or perhaps it was to call attention to the fact that 
 you have never told me about it. You haven't, and you said 
 you would." 
 
 " So I did, when we had The Scene." He meant the occasion 
 on which, according to Gwen's mamma, she had made him an 
 offer of her affections in the Jacobean drawing-room. " It's a 
 ring with magic powers — nothing to do with any young lady, as 
 you thought. It turns pale at the approach of poison." 
 
 " Let's get some poison, and try. Isn't there some poison in 
 the house ?" 
 
 " I dare say there is, in the kitchen. You might touch the 
 bell and ask." 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the sort. I mean private poison — 
 doctor's bottles — blue ones with embossed letters. , . . Tou 
 know ?" 
 
 " / know. My maternal parent has any number. But all 
 empty, I'm afraid. She always finishes them. Besides — don't 
 let's bring her in ! She has such high principles. However, 
 I've got some poison — ^what an Irish suicide would consider the 
 rale cratur — only I won't get it out even for this experiment, 
 because I may want it. . . ." 
 
 " You may want it !" 
 
 " Of course." He suddenly deserted paradox and levity, and 
 became serious. " My dearest, think of this ! Suppose I were to 
 lose you, here in the dark ! . . . Oh, I know all that about duty 
 — / know ! I would not kill myself at once, because it would 
 be unkind to Irene. But suppose I lost Irene too ?" 
 
 " I can't reason it out. But I can't believe it would ever be 
 right to destroy oneself." 
 
 " Possibly not, but once one vas effectually destroyed. . . ." 
 
 " That sounds Uke rat-paste." Gwen wanted to joke her way 
 out of this region of horrible surmise. 
 
 But Adrian was keen on his line of thought. " Exactly !" 
 
436 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 said he. " Vermin destroyer. / should be the vermin. But 
 once destroyed, what contrition should I have to endure ? 
 Remorse is a game that takes two selves to play at it — a criminal 
 and a conscientious person ! Suppose the rat-paste had destro yed 
 them both \" | 
 
 " But would it 1" 
 
 " Absolute ignorance, whether or no, means an even chance 
 of either. I would risk it, for the sake of that chance of rich, 
 full-blown Non-Entity. Oh, think of it ! — after loneliness in the 
 dark ! — loneliness that once was full of life. . . ." 
 
 " But suppose the other chance — how then ?" 
 
 " Suppose I worked out as a disembodied spirit — and I quite 
 admit it's as likely as not, neither more nor less — ^it does not 
 necessarily follow that Mahgnity against Ereethinkers is the only 
 attribute of the Creator. When one contemplates the extra- 
 ordinary variety and magnitude of His achievements, one is 
 tempted to imagine that He occasionally rises above mere 
 personal feeling. It certainly does seem to me that damning 
 inoffensive Suicides would be an unwarrantable abuse of Omni- 
 potence. The fact is, I have a much better opinion of the Most 
 High than many of His admirers." 
 
 " But, nonsense apart. . . . Yes — ^it is nonsense ! ... do you 
 mean that you would kill yourself about me ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I'm so glad, because I shan't give you the chance. But 
 dear, silly man — dearest, silliest man ! — I do wish you would 
 give me up that bottle. I'll promise to give it back if ever I want 
 to jilt you. Honour bright !" 
 
 " I dare say. With the good, efficacious poison emptied away; 
 and tea, or rum, or Rowland's Macassar instead ! I cannot 
 conceive a more equivocal position than that of a Suicide who 
 has taken the wrong poison imder the impression that he has 
 launched himself into Eternity." 
 
 " Oh no — I could never do that ! It would be such a cruel 
 hoax. Now, dearest love, do let me have that bottle to take care 
 of. Indeed, if ever I jilt you, j'ou shall have it back. Engaged 
 girls — honourable ones ! — always give presents back on jilting. 
 Do let me have it !" 
 
 Adrian laughed at her earnestness. " I'm not going to poison 
 myself," said he. " Unless you jilt me ! So it comes to exactly 
 the same thing, either way. There — ^be easy now ! I've prom- 
 ised. Besides, the Warroo or Guarano Indian who gave it me — 
 out on the Essequibo; it was when I went to Demerara — told 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 437 
 
 me it wouldn't keep. So I wouldn't trust it. Much better stick 
 to nice, wholesome, old-fashioned Prussic Acid." He had quite 
 dropped his serious tone, and resumed his incorrigible levity. 
 
 " Did you really have it from a wild Indian ? Where did he 
 get it ? Did he make it ?" 
 
 "No — that's the beauty of it. The Warroos of Guiana are 
 great dabs at making poisons. They make the celebrated 
 Wourali poison, the smallest quantity of which in a vein always 
 kills. It has never disappointed its backers. But he didn't 
 make this. He brought it from the World of Spirits, beyond 
 the grave. It is intended for internal use only, being quite 
 inoperative when injected into a vein. Irene unpacked my valise 
 when I came back, and touched the bottle. And an hour after- 
 wards she saw that her white comehan had turned red." 
 
 " Nonsense ! It was a coincidence. Stones do change." 
 
 " I grant you it was a coincidence. Sunrise and daybreak 
 are coincidences. But one is because of t'other. Irene be- 
 lieved my poison turned her stone red, or she would never have 
 refused to wear it a minute longer, from an unreasonable dislike 
 of the Evil One, whose influence she discerned in this simple, 
 natural phenomenon. I considered myself justified in boning 
 the ring for my own use, so I had it enlarged to go on my finger, 
 and there it is, on ! I shall never see it again, unless Septimius 
 Severus turns up trumps. What colour should you say it was, 
 now ?" 
 
 Gwen took the hand with the mystic ring on it, turning it this 
 way and that, to see the Hght reflected. " Pale pink," she said, 
 " Yes — certainly pale pink." She appeared amused, and uncon- 
 vinced. " I had no idea 'Re was superstitious. You are excus- 
 able, dearest, because, after all, you are only a man. One 
 expects a woman to have a Uttle commonsense. Now if. . . ." 
 She appeared to be wavering over something — disposed towards 
 concessions. 
 
 " Now if what ?" 
 
 " If the ring had had a character from its last place — ^if it had 
 distinguished itself before. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, I thought I told you about that. I forgot. It was a 
 ring with a story, that came somehow to my great-great-grand- 
 father, when he was in Paris. It had done itself great credit — 
 gained quite a reputation — ^at the Court of Louis Quatorze, on 
 the fingers I believe of the Marchioness de BrinvilherS anii 
 Louise de la VaUiere. . . . Yes, I think both, but close par- 
 ticulars have always been wanting. 'Re oflly consented to wear 
 
438 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 it on condition she should be allowed to disbelieve in it, and 
 then when this little stramash occurred through my bringing 
 home the Warroo poison, her powers of belief at choice seem to 
 have proved insufficient. . . . Isn't that her, coming back ?" 
 
 It was; and when she came into the room a moment later, 
 Gwen said : — " We've been talking about your ring, and a horrible 
 little bottle of Red Indian poison this silly obstinate man has got 
 hidden away and won't give me." 
 
 " I know," said Irene. " He's incorrigible. But don't you 
 believe him, Gwen, when he justifies suicide. It's only his 
 nonsense." Irene had- come back quite sick and tired of house- 
 keeping, and was provoked by the informal status quo of the 
 young lady and gentleman on the sofa into remarking to the 
 latter: — " Now you're happy." 
 
 " Or ought to be," said Gwen. 
 
 " Now, go on exactly where you were," said Irene. 
 
 " I will," said Adrian. " I was just expressing a hope that 
 Gwen had been regular in her attendance at church while in 
 London." He did not seem vitally interested in this, for he 
 changed almost immediately to another subject. " How about 
 your old lady, Gwen ? She's your old lady, I suppose, whose 
 house tumbled down ?" 
 
 " Yes, only not quite. We got her out safe. The woman 
 who lived with her, Mrs. Burr. . . . However, I wrote all that in 
 my letter, didn't I ?" 
 
 " Yes — you wrote about Mrs. Burr, and how she was a com- 
 monplace person. We thought you unfeeling about Mrs. Burr." 
 
 " I was, quite ! I can't teU you how it has been on our 
 consciences, Clo's and mine, that we have been unable to take an 
 interest in Mrs. Burr. We tried to make up for it, by one of us 
 going every day to see her in the hospital. I must say for her 
 that she asked about Mrs. Prichard as soon as she was able 
 to speak — asked if she was being got out, and said she supposed 
 it was the repairs. She is not an imaginative or demonstrative 
 person, you see. When I suggested to her that she should come 
 to look after Mrs. Prichard in the country, till the house was 
 rebuilt, she only said she was going to her married niece's at 
 Clapham. I don't know why, but her married niece at Clapham 
 seemed to me indisputable, like an Act of Parliament. I said 
 ' Oh yes !' in a convinced sort of way, as if I knew this niece, and 
 acknowledged Clapham." 
 
 " Then you have got the old lady at the Towers ?" 
 
 " Yes — yesterday. I don't know how it's going to answer." 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 439 
 
 Adrian said : " Why shouldn't it answer ?" 
 Irene was sharper. " Because of the servants, I suppose/' 
 said she. 
 Gwen said: — " Ye-es, because of the household." 
 " I thought," said Adrian, " that she was such a charming old 
 lady." This took plenty of omissions for granted. 
 
 " So she is," said Gwen. " At least, / think her most sweet 
 and fascinating. But really — ^the British servant !" 
 " I know," said Irene. 
 
 " Especially the women," said Gwen. " I could manage the 
 men, easily enough. 
 
 " You could," said Adrian, with expressive emphasis. And 
 all three laughed. Indeed, it is difEicult to describe the sub- 
 serviency of her male retinue to " Gwen o' the Towers." To 
 say that they were ready to kiss the hem of her garment is but 
 a feeble expression of the truth. Say, rather, that they were 
 ready to fight for the privilege of doing so ! 
 
 " I can't say," Gwen resumed, " precisely what I found my 
 
 misgivings on. Little things I can't lay hold of. I can't find 
 
 any fault with Lutwyche when she was attending on the dear 
 
 old soul in Cavendish Square. But I couldn't help thinking . . ." 
 
 " What ?" 
 
 " Well — ^I thought she showed a shghtly fiendish readiness to 
 defer to my minutest directions, and perhaps, I should say, a 
 fell determination not to presume." Telegraphies of slight per- 
 ceptive nods and raised eyebrows, in touch with shoulder shrugs 
 not insisted on, expressed mutual understanding between the 
 two young ladies. " Of course, I may be wrong," said Gwen. 
 " But when I interviewed Mrs. Masham last thing last night, it 
 was borne in upon me. Heaven knows how, that she had been 
 in collision with Lutwyche about the old lady." 
 
 " What is it you call her ?" said Irene. " Old Mrs. Picture ? 
 There's nothing against her, is there ?" 
 
 Adrian had seemed to be considering a point. " Did you not 
 say something — last letter but one, I think — about the old lady's 
 husband having been convicted and transported 1" 
 
 " Oh yes ! — ^but that's not to be talked about, you know ! 
 Besides, it was her son, not her husband, that I wrote about. I 
 only found out about the husband a day or two ago. Only you 
 must be very careful, dearest, and remember it's a dead secret. 
 I promise not to tell things, and then of course I forget, when it's 
 you. Old Mrs. Picture would quite understand, though, if I 
 told her." 
 
440 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Adrian said that he really must have some more of the secret 
 to keep, or it would not be worth keeping. 
 
 So Gwen told them then and there all that old Mrs. Picture had 
 told her of her terrible life-story. It may have contained things 
 this present narrative has missed, or vice versa, but the essential 
 points were the same in both. 
 
 " What a queer story !" said Adrian. " Did the old body cry 
 when she told it ?" 
 
 " Scarcely, if at all. She looked very beautiful — ^you've no 
 idea how lovely she is sometimes — and told it all quite quietly, 
 just as if she had been speaking of someone else." 
 
 " I have always had a theory," said Adrian, " that one gets less 
 and less identical as Time goes on. . . ." 
 
 " What do you mean by that ?" said Gwen. 
 
 " Haven't the slightest idea !" Adrian had been speaking 
 seriously, but at this point his whimsical mood seized him. He 
 went on: — " You don't mean to say, I hope, that you are going 
 to make meaning a sine qua non in theories ? It would be the 
 death-knell of speculation." 
 
 " You don't know what a goose you are engaged to Gwen," 
 said Irene parenthetically. 
 
 " Yes, I do. But he meant something this time. He does, 
 you know, now and again, in spite of appearances to the con- 
 trary. What did you mean, please ?" 
 
 " I can only conjecture," said Adrian incorrigibly. Then, 
 more in earnest : — " I think it was something like this. I know 
 that I am the same man that I was last week so long as I remem- 
 ber what happened last week. Suppose I, forget half — ^which I 
 do, in practice — I still remain the same man, according to my 
 notion of identity. But it is an academical notion, of no use in 
 everyday life. A conjurer who forgets how to lay eggs in defiance 
 of natm'al law, or how to find canaries in pocket-handkerchiefs, 
 is not the same conjurer, in practical poUtics. And yet he is the 
 same man. Dock and crop his qualities and attributes as you 
 will, he keeps the same man, academically. But not for working 
 purposes. By the time you can say nothing about him, that 
 was true of him last week, he may just as well be somebody 
 else." 
 
 " Mind you recollect all that, and it will do in a book," said 
 his sister. " But what has it to do with Gwen's old woman ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^what has it to do with my old woman ?" said Gwen. 
 
 " Didn't you say," Adrian asked, " that the old lady told all 
 about her past quite quietly, just as if she had been speaking 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 441 
 
 of someoody else ? Your very expression, ma'am ! You see* 
 she was to all intents and purposes somebody else then, or has 
 become somebody else now. I always wonder, whether, if one 
 had left oneself — one of one's selves — behind in the past, like 
 old Mrs. Picture, and some strange navigation on the sea of life 
 were to land one in a long-forgotten port, where the memory 
 still hung on, in a mind or two, of the self one had left behind — 
 would the self one had grown to be bring conviction to the mind 
 or two ? Wouldn't the chance survivors who admitted that you 
 were Jack or Jim or Polly be discouraged if they found that Jack 
 or Jim or PoUy had forgotten the old pier that was swept away, 
 or the old pub which the new hotel was, once ? Wouldn't they 
 discredit you ? Wouldn't they decide that, for all your bald, 
 uninteresting identity — mere mechanical sameness — you 
 wouldn't wash ?" 
 
 " Rip van Winkle washed," said Gwen. 
 
 " Because Washington Irving chose. I sometimes imagine 
 Rip isn't really true. Anyhow, his case doesn't apply. He 
 remembered everything as if it was yesterday. For him, it was 
 yesterday. So he was the same man, both in theory and practice. 
 Jack and Jim and Polly were to forget, by hypothesis." 
 
 " Does old Mrs. Picture ?" asked Irene. 
 
 " I should say — very little," said Gwen. " Less now than 
 when I took her first to Cavendish Square. She'll get very com- 
 municative, I've no doubt, if she's fed up, in the country air. I 
 shall see to that myself. So Mrs. Masham had better look out." 
 
 " There's mamma !" said Irene suddenly. " I'U go and see 
 that she gets her writing things. . . . No — don't you move ! 
 She won't come in here. She wants to write important letters. 
 You sit still." And Irene went oflt to intercept the Miss Aber- 
 crombie her father had married all those years ago instead of 
 Gwen's mother. She does not come much into this story, but 
 its reader may be interested to know that she was an enthusiastic 
 Abolitionist, and a friend of the Duchess of Sutherland. There 
 was only one thing in those days that called for abohtion — 
 negro slavery in America; so everyone who recollects the fifties 
 will know what an Abolitionist was. Nevertheless, though Lady 
 Torrens happens to keep outside the story, it would have been 
 quite another story without her. 
 
 Adrian was a good son, and loved his mother duly. She re- 
 turned his affection, but could not stand his poetical effusions, 
 which she thought showed an irreverent spirit. We are not quite 
 sure they did not. 
 
442 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HOW AN OLD LADY WAS TAKEN FOE A DRIVE, AND SAW JONEs'S 
 BULL, AT.T, m A DKEAM. STRIDES COTTAGE AND A STRANGE 
 CONTIGUITY. ABTER SIXTY YEARS ! HOW TOBY SMASHED A 
 PANE OF GLASS WITH A HOESE-CHESTNUT, AND NEARLY HAD 
 NO SUGAR IN HIS BEEAD-AND-MILK. HOW THE OLD BODY 
 CUETSIED AND THE OLD SOUL DIDN't GO TO SLEEP. HOW 
 GWEN NEARLY FORGOT TO INTEODUCE THEM. HOW MES. 
 PICTUEE KNOCKED UP AND BAN DOWN, — ^BUT WOULD NOT 
 HAVE MUTTON BROTH. BUT NEITHEE KNEW ! HOW MRS. 
 PICTUEE THOUGHT MES. MAERABLE A NICE PERSON. HOW 
 GWEN LUNCHED WITH HER PARENTS. " REALLY, OUR 
 DAUGHTER !" HOW LOOKING AMUSED DOES NO GOOD. WAS 
 
 GVTEN Jones's bull, or how ? norbuey as an oeacle. 
 
 HOW the EAEL went bound to see the fairy GOD- 
 MOTHER 
 
 It had all come on the old woman like a bewildering dream. 
 It began with the sudden appearance, as she dozed in her chair at 
 Sapps Court, all the memories of her past world creeping spark- 
 hke through its haH-bumed scroll, a dream of Gwen in her 
 glory, heralded by Dave; depositing Dolly, very rough-headed, 
 on the floor, and explaining her intrusion with some difficulty 
 owing to those children wanting to explain too. This was 
 dreamlike enough, but it had become more so with the then 
 inexplicable crash that followed a discomfort in the floor; more 
 so with that strange half-conscious drive through the London 
 streets in the glow of the sunset; more so yet, when, after an 
 interval of real dreams, she woke to the luxury of Sister Nora's 
 temporary arrangements, pending the organization of the Simple 
 Life; more dreamhke still when she woke again later, to wonder 
 at the leaves of the creeper that framed her lattice at the Towers, 
 ruby in the dawn of a cloudless autumn day, and jewelled with 
 its dew. She had to look, wonderingly, at her old unchanged 
 hands, to be quite sure she was not in Heaven. Then she caught 
 a confirmatory glimpse of her old white head in a mirror, and 
 that settled it. Besides, her old Umbs ached; not savagely, but 
 quite perceptibly, and that was discordant with her idea of 
 Heaven. 
 
 Her acquiescence was complete in all that had happened. 
 
HOW THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 443 
 
 Not that it was clearly what she would have chosen, even if she 
 could have foreseen all its outcomings, and pictured to herself 
 what she would have been refusing, had refusal been practicable. 
 Her actual choice, putting aside newly kindled love for this 
 mysterious and beautiful agency, halt daughter and half guardian 
 Angel, that had been sprung upon her life so near its close, 
 might easily have been to face the risks of some half-dried plaster, 
 and go back to her old chair by the fire in Sapps Court, and her 
 day-dreams of the huge cruel world she had all but seen the last 
 of; to watch through the hours for what was now the great 
 relaxation of her life, the coming of Dave and Dolly, and to listen 
 through the murmur of the traffic that grew and grew ia the 
 silence of the house, for the welcome voices of the children on 
 the stairs. But how meet Gwen's impulsive decisions with any- 
 thing but acquiescence ? It was not, with her, mere ready 
 deference to the will of a superior; she might have stickled at 
 that, and found words to express a wish for her old haunts and 
 old habits of Ufe. It was much more nearly the feeling a mother 
 might have had for a daughter, strangely restored to her, after 
 long separation that had made her a memory of a name. It 
 was mixed with the ready compliance one imputes to the for- 
 tunate owner of a Guardian Angel, who is deserving of his luck. 
 No doubt also with the fact that no Uving creature, great or small, 
 ever said nay to Gwen. But, for whatever reason, she complied, 
 and wondered. 
 
 Remember, too, the enforced associations of her previous 
 experience. Think how soon the conditions of her early youth — 
 which, if they afforded no high culture, were at least those of a 
 respected middle class in English provincial life — came to an end, 
 and what they gave place to ! Then, on her return to England, 
 how Uttle chance her antecedents and her son's vicious inherited 
 disposition gave her of resuming the position she would have 
 been entitled to had her exile, and its circumstances, not made 
 the one she had to submit to abnormal ! Aunt M'riar and Mrs. 
 Burr were good women, but those who study class-niceties would 
 surely refuse to ranger either with Granny Marrable. And even 
 that old lady is scarcely a fair illustration; for, had her sister's 
 bridegroom been what the bride believed him, the social outcome 
 of the marriage would have been all but the same as of her own, 
 had she wedded his elder brother. 
 
 It is little wonder that old Mrs. Picture, who once was Maisie, 
 should succumb to the influences of this dazzling creature with 
 all the world at her feet. And less that these influences grew 
 
444 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 upon her, when there was none to see, and hamper free speech 
 with conventions. For when they were alone, it came about that 
 either unpacked her heart to the other, and Gwen gave all the 
 tale of the shadow on her own love in exchange for that of the 
 blacker shadows of the galleys — of the convict's cheated wife, 
 and the terrible inheritance of his son. 
 
 The story is sorry to have to admit that Gwen's bad faith to 
 the old lady, in the matter of her pledge of secrecy, did not show 
 itself only in her repetition of the story to her lover and his 
 sister. She told her father, a nobleman with all sorts of old- 
 fashioned prejudices, among others that of disliking confidences 
 entrusted to him in disregard of solemn oaths of secrecy. His 
 protest intercepted his daughter's revelation at the outset. 
 " Unprincipled yoimg monkey !" he exclaimed. " You mustn't 
 tell me when you've promised not to. Didn't you, now ?" 
 
 " Of course I did ! But you don't count. Papas don't, when 
 trustworthy. Besides, the more people of the right sort know a 
 secret, the better it will be kept." Gwen had to release her lips 
 from two paternal fingers to say this. She followed it up by using 
 them — ^she was near enough — to run a trill of kisslets across the 
 paternal forehead. 
 
 " Very good !" said the Earl. " Fire away !" It has been 
 mentioned that Gwen always got her will, somehow. This hmo 
 was the one she used with her father. She told the whole tale 
 without reserves; except, perhaps, slight ones in respect of the 
 son's misdeeds. They were not things to be spoken of to a good, 
 innocent father, Hke hers. 
 
 She answered an expression on his face, when she had finished, 
 with: — " As for any chance of the story not being true, that's 
 impossible." 
 
 " Then it must be true," was the answer. Not an illogical 
 one ! 
 
 " Don't agree meekly," says Gwen. " Meek agreement is 
 contradiction. . . . What makes you think it fibs ?" 
 
 " I don't think it fibs, my darling. Because I attach a good 
 deal of weight to the impression it has produced upon you. But 
 other people might, who did not know you." 
 
 " Other people are not to be told, so they are out of it. . , . 
 Well, perhaps that has very little to do with the matter." 
 
 " Not very much. But tell me ! — does the old lady give no 
 names at all ?" 
 
 " N-no ! — I can remember none. Her real name- is not Picture, 
 of course ... I should have said Prichard." 
 
HOW THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 445 
 
 " I understand. But couldn't you get at her husband's name, 
 to verify the story ?" 
 
 " I don't want it verified. Where's the use ? . . . No, she 
 hasn't told me a single surname of any of the people. . . . Oh 
 yes — stop a minute ! Of course she told me Prichard was a 
 name in her family — some old nurse's. But it's such a common 
 name." 
 
 " Did she not say where she came from — ^where her family 
 belonged ?" 
 
 "Yes — Essex. But Essex is like Rutlandshire. Nobody 
 has ever been to either, or knows anyone that is there by 
 nature." 
 
 " I didn't know that was the case, but I have no interest in 
 proving the contrary. Suppose you try to get at her husband's 
 name — her real married name. I could tell my man in Lincoln's 
 Inn to hunt up the trial. Or even if you could get the exact 
 date it might be enough. There cannot have been so very many 
 fathers-in-laws' signatures forged in one year." 
 
 But Gwen did not like to press the old lady for information 
 she was reluctant to give, and the names of the family in Essex 
 and the delinquent remained imtold ; or, if told to Gwen, were con- 
 cealed more effectually by her than the narrative they were re- 
 quired to fill out. And as the confidants to whom she had re- 
 peated that narrative were more loyal to her than she herself 
 had been to its first narrator, it remained altogether unknown 
 to the household at the Towers; and, indeed, to anyone who 
 could by repeating it have excited suspicion of the twinship of 
 the farmer's widow at Chorlton-under-Bradbury and the old 
 lady whom her young ladyship's eccentricities had brought from 
 London. 
 
 Apart from their close contiguity, nothing occurred for some 
 time to make mutual recognition more probable than it had been 
 at any moment since Dave's visit to Chorlton had disclosed to 
 each the bare fact of the other's existence. They were within 
 five miles of one another, and neither knew it; nor had either a 
 thought of the other but as a memory of long ago ; still cherished, 
 as a sepulchral stone cherishes what Time leaves legible, while 
 his slow hand makes each letter fainter day by day. 
 
 And yet — how near they went on one occasion to what must 
 have led to recognition, had the period of their separation been 
 less cruelly long, and its strange conditions less baffling ! How 
 near, for instance, three or four days after old Maisie's arrival 
 at the Towers, when Gwen the omnipotent decided that she 
 
446 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 would take Mrs. Picture for a long drive in the best part of the 
 day — the longest drive that would not tire her to death ! 
 
 Whether the old soul that her young ladyship had taken such 
 a fancy to — that was how Blencom the coachman and Benjamin 
 the coachboy thought of her — really enjoyed the strange experi- 
 ence of gliding over smooth roads flauJsed by matchless wood- 
 lands or primeval moorland; cropless Autumn fields or pastures 
 of contented cattle ; through villages of the same mind about the 
 undesirableness of change that had been their creed for centuries, 
 with churches unconscious of judicious restoration and an un- 
 flawed record of curfews; by farms with all the usual besetting 
 sins of farms, black duck-slush and uncaptivating dung-heaps; 
 cattle no persuasion weighs with; the same hen that never stops 
 the same dissertation on the same egg, the same cock that has 
 some of the vices of his betters, our male selves to wit — ^whether 
 the said old soul really enjoyed all this, who can say ? She may 
 have been pretending to satisfy her young ladyship. K so, she 
 succeeded very well, considering her years. But it was all part 
 of a dream to her. 
 
 In that dream, she waked at intervals to small reahties. One 
 of these was Farmer Jones's Bull. Not that she had more than 
 a timid hope of seeing that celebrated quadruped himself. She 
 was, however, undisguisedly anxious to do so; inquiring after 
 him ; the chance of his proximity; the possibility of cultivating his 
 intimate acquaintance. No other bull would serve her purpose, 
 which was to take back to Dave, who filled much of her thoughts, 
 an authentic report of Farmer Jones's. 
 
 " Dave must be a very nice little boy," said Gwen. " Any- 
 how, he's pretty. And Dolly's a darling." This may have been 
 partly due to the way in which Dolly had overwhelmed the 
 young lady — the equivalent, as it were, of a kind of caimibaUsm, 
 or perhaps octopus-greed — ^which had stood in the way of a 
 maturer friendship with her brother. However, there had really 
 been very little time. 
 
 " You see, my dear," said the old lady, " if I was to see Farmer 
 Jones's Bull, I could tell the dear child about him in London. 
 Isn't that a Bull ?" But it wasn't, though possibly a relation 
 he would not have acknowledged. 
 
 " I think Blencom might make a point of Farmer Jones's 
 Bull," said Gwen. " Blencom !" 
 
 " Yes, my lady." 
 
 " I want to stop at Strides Cottage, coming back. You know 
 — Mrs. Marrable's !" 
 
HOW THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 447 
 
 " Yes, my lady." 
 
 " Well — ^isn't that Farmer Jones's farm, on the left, before wo 
 get there ? Close to the Spinney." Now Mr. Blencom knew 
 perfectly well. But he was not going to admit that he knew, 
 because farms were human affairs, and he was on the box. He 
 referred to his satellite, the coachboy, whose information enabled 
 him to say: — " Yes, my lady, on the left." Gwen then said: — 
 " Very good, then, Blencom, stop at the gate, and Benjamin can 
 go in and say we've come to see the Bull. Go on !" 
 
 " I wonder," said old Mrs. Prichard, with roused interest, " if 
 that is Davy's granny I wrote to for him. Such a lot he has to 
 say about her ! But it was Mrs. . , Mrs. Thrale Dave went to 
 stop with." 
 
 " Mrs. Marrable — Granny Marrable — ^is Mrs. Thrale's mother. 
 A nice old lady. Rather yoimger than you, and awfully strong. 
 She can walk nine miles." In Rumour's diary, the exact number 
 of a pedestrian's miles is vouched for, as well as the exact round 
 number of thousands Park-Laners have per annum. " I dare 
 say we shall see her," Gwen continued. " I hope so, because I 
 promised my cousin Clo to give her this parcel with my own 
 hands. Only she may be out. . . . Aren't you getting very 
 tired, dear Mrs. Picture ?" 
 
 Mrs. Picture was getting tired, and admitted it. " But I 
 must see the Bull," said she. She closed her eyes and leaned 
 back, and Gwen said: — "You can drive a Uttle quicker, Blen- 
 com." There had been plenty of talk through a longish drive, 
 and Gwen was getting afraid of overdoing it. 
 
 This was the gate of the farm, my lady. Should Benjamin go 
 across to the house, and express her ladyship's wishes ? Benja- 
 min was trembling for the flawless blacking of his beautiful boots, 
 and the unsoiled felt of his leggings. Yes, he might go, and get 
 somebody to come out and speak to her ladyship, or herself, as 
 convenient. But while Benjamin was away on this mission, the 
 unexpected came to pass in the form of a boy. We all know how 
 rarely human creatures occur in fields and villages, in England. 
 This sporadic example, in answer to a question ' ' Are you Farmer 
 Jones's boy ?" repKed guardedly: — " Ees, a be woon." 
 
 " Very well then," said Gwen. " Find Farmer Jones, to show 
 us his Bull.^' 
 
 The boy shook his head. " Oo'r Bull can't abide he," said he, 
 " A better tarry indowers, fa'ather had, and leave oy to ha'andle 
 un. A be a foine Bull, oo'r Bull !" 
 
 " You mean, you can manage your Bull, a?id father can't. Is 
 
 29 
 
448 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 that it ?" Assent given. " And how can you manage your 
 BuU ?" 
 
 " Oy can whistle un a tewun." 
 
 " Is he out in the field, or here in his stable or house, or what- 
 ever it's called ?" 
 
 " That's him nigh handy, a-roomblin'." It then appeared that 
 this youth was prepared, for a reasonable consideration, to lead 
 this formidable brute out into the farmyard, under the influence 
 of musical cajolery. He met a suggestion that his superiors 
 might disapprove of his doing so, by pointing out that they 
 would all keep " yower side o' th' gayut " until the Bull— whose 
 name, strange to say, seemed to be Zephyr — ^was safe in bounds, 
 chained by his nose-ring to a sufficient wall-staple. 
 
 Said old Mrs. Picture, roused from an impending nap by the 
 interest of the event : — " This must be the boy Davy told about, 
 who whistled to the Bull. Why — ^the child can never tire of 
 telling that story." It certainly was the very selfsame boy, and 
 he was as good as his word, exhibiting the Bull with pride, and 
 soothing his morose temper as he had promised, by monotonous 
 whistling. Whether he was more intoxicated with his success 
 or with a shilling Gwen gave him as recompense, it would have 
 been hard to say. 
 
 The old lady was infinitely more excited and interested about 
 this Bull, on Dave's account, than about any of the hundred-and- 
 one things Gwen had shown her during her five-mile drive. 
 When Gwen gave the direction : — " Go on to Strides Cottage, Blen- 
 com," and Blencom, who had scarcely condescended to look at 
 the Bull, answered : — " Yes, my lady," her interest on Dave's 
 account was maintained, but on a rather different line. She was, 
 however, becoming rapidly too fatigued to entertain any feehngs 
 of resentment against her rival, and none mixed with the languid 
 interest the prospect of seeing her aroused during the three- 
 minutes' drive from Farmer Jones's to Strides Cottage. 
 
 This story despairs of showing to the full the utter strangeness 
 of the position that was created by this meeting of old Maisie and 
 old Phcebe, each of whom, for nearly half a century had thought 
 the other dead. It is forced to appeal to its reader to make an 
 effort to help its feeble presentations by its own powers of 
 imagery. 
 
 Conceive that suddenly a voice that imposed beHef on its 
 hearers had said to each of them: — " This is your sister of those 
 long bygone years — slain, for you, by a cunning he; living on. 
 
HOW THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 449 
 
 and mourning for a death that never was; dreaming, as you 
 dreamed, of a slowly vanishing past, vanishing so slowly that 
 its characters might stiU be visible at the end of the longest scroll 
 of recorded life. Look upon her, and recognise in that shrunken 
 face the lips you kissed, the cheeks you pressed to yours, the 
 eye that laughed and gave back love or mockery ! Try to hear 
 in that frail old voice the music of its speech in the years gone 
 by; £isk for the song it knew so well the trick of. Try to caress 
 in those grey, thin old tresses the mass of gold from whose re- 
 dundance you cut the treasured locks you almost weep afresh to 
 see and handle, even now." Then try to imagine to yourself the 
 outward seeming of its hearers, always supposing them to under' 
 stand. It is a large supposition, but the dramatist would have 
 to accept it, with the ladies in the stalls getting up to go. 
 
 Are you prepared to accept, off the stage, a snapshot recogni- 
 tion of each other by the two old twins, and curtain ? It is hard 
 to conceive that mere eyesight, and the hearing of a changed 
 voice, could have provoked such a result. However, it is not 
 for the story to decide that in every case it would be impossible. 
 It can only record events as they happened, however much 
 interest might be gained by the interpolation of a little skilful 
 fiction. 
 
 That morning, at Strides Cottage, a regrettable event had 
 disturbed Granny Marrable's equanimity. A small convalescent, 
 named Toby, who was really old enough to know better, had 
 made a collection of beautiful, clean, new horse-chestnuts from 
 under the tree in the field behind the house. Never was the heart 
 of man more embittered by this sort being no use for cooking 
 than in the case of these flawless, glossy rotundities. Each one 
 was a handful for a convalescent, and that was why Toby so often 
 had his hands in his pockets. He was, in fact, fondling his 
 ammunition, like Mr. Dooley. For that was, according to Toby, 
 the purpose of Creation in the production of the horse-chestnut 
 tree. H© had awaited his opportunity, and here it was ! — he 
 was unwatched in the large room that was neither kitchen nor 
 living-room, but more both than neither, and he seized it to 
 show his obedience to a frequent injimction not to throw stones. 
 He was an honourable convalescent, and he proved it in the 
 choice of a missile. His first horae-chestnut only gave him the 
 range; his second smashed the glass it was aimed at. And that 
 glass was the door or lid of the automatic watermill on the 
 chimney-piece ! 
 
450 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The Granny was quite upset, and Widow Thrale was downright 
 angry, and called Toby an undeserving little piece, if ever there 
 was one. It was a harsh censure, and caused Toby to weep ; in 
 fact, to roar. Roaring, however, did nothing towards repairing 
 the mischief done, and nearly led to a well-deserved penalty for 
 Toby, to be put to his bed and very likely have no sugar in his 
 bread-and-milk — such being the exact wording of the sentence. 
 It was not carried out, as it was found that the watermill and 
 horses, the two little girls in sun-bonnets, and the miller smoking 
 at the window, were all intact; only the glass being broken. 
 There was no glazier in the village, which broke few windows, 
 and was content to wait the coming round of a peripatetic 
 plumber, who came at irregular intervals, like Easter, but 
 without astronomical checks. So, as a temporary expedient to 
 keep the dust out. Widow Thrale pasted a piece of paper over the 
 breakage, and the mill was hidden from the human eye. Toby 
 showed penitence, and had sugar in his bread-and-milk, but the 
 balance of his projectiles was confiscated. 
 
 Consequently, old Mrs. Marrable was not in her best form when 
 her young ladyship arrived, and Benjamin the coachboy came 
 up the garden pathway as her harbinger to see if she should 
 descend from the carriage to interview the old lady. She did not 
 want to do so, as she felt she ought to get Mrs. Prichard home as 
 soon as possible; but wanted, all the same, to fulfil her promise 
 of delivering Sister Nora's parcel with her own hands. She was 
 glad to remain in the carriage, on hearing from Benjamin that 
 both Granny Marrable and her daughter were on the spot; and 
 would, said he, be out in a minute. 
 
 " They'll curtsey," said Gwen. " Do, dear Mrs. Picture, keep 
 awake one minute more. I want you so much to see Dave's 
 other Granny. She's such a nice old body !" Can any student 
 of language say why these two old women should be respectively 
 classed as an old soul and an old body, and why the cap should 
 fit in either case ? 
 
 " I won't go to sleep," said Mrs. Prichard, making a great 
 effort. " That must be Dave's duck-pond, across the road." 
 The duck-pond had no alloy. She did not feel that her curiosity 
 about Dave's other Granny was quite without discomfort. 
 
 " Oh — had Dave a duck-pond ? It looks very black and 
 juicy. . . . Here come the two Goodies ! I've brought you a 
 present from Sister Nora, Granny Marrable. It's in here. I 
 know what it is because I've seen it — ^it's nice and warm for the 
 winter. Take it in and look at it inside. I mustn't stop 
 
HOW THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 451 
 
 because of Mrs. . . . There now ! — ^I was quite forgetting. . . ." 
 It shows how slightly Gwen was thinking of the whole transaction 
 that she should all but tell Blencom to drive home at this point, 
 with the scantiest farewell to the Goodies, who had curtsied duly 
 as foretold. She collected herself, and continued: — "You 
 remember the small boy, Mrs. Marrable, when I came with 
 Sister Nora, whose letter we read about the thieves and the 
 policeman ?" 
 
 " Ah, dear, indeed I do ! That dear child ! — ^why, what would 
 we not give, Ruth and me, to see him again ?" 
 
 " Well, this is Mrs. Picture, who wrote his letter for him. 
 This is Granny Marrable, that Dave told you all about. She 
 says she wants him back." 
 
 And then Madsie and Phoebe looked each other in the face again 
 after half a century of separation. Surely, if there is any truth 
 in the belief that the souls of twins are linked by some unseen 
 thread of sympathy, each should have been stirred by the pres- 
 ence of the other. If either was, she had no clue to the cause of 
 her perturbation. They looked each other in the face; and each 
 made some suitable recognition of her unknown sister. Phoebe 
 hoped the dear boy was well, and Maisie heard that he was, but 
 had not seen him now nigh a month. Phoebe had had a letter 
 from him yesterday, but could not quite make it out. Ruth 
 would go in and get it, for her ladyship to see. Granny Mar- 
 rable made little direct concession to the equivocal old woman 
 who might be anything, for all she was in her ladyship's car- 
 riage. 
 
 " I suppose," said Gwen, " the boy has tried to describe the 
 accident, and made a hash of it. Is that it ?" 
 
 " Indeed, my lady, he does tell something of an accident. 
 Only I took it for just only telling — story-book hke ! . . . Ah, 
 yes, that will be the letter. Give it to her ladyship." 
 
 Gwen took the letter from Widow Thrale, but did not unfold 
 it. " Mayn't I take it away," she said, " for me and Mrs. 
 Picture to read at home ? I want to get her back and give her 
 some food. She's knocking up." 
 
 Immediately Granny Marrable's heart and Widow Thrale's 
 overflowed. What did the douhts that hung over this old person 
 matter, whatever she was, if she was running down visibly 
 within the zone of influence of perceptible mutton-broth; which 
 was confirming, through the door, what the wood-smoke from 
 the chimney had to say about it to the Universe ? Let Ruth 
 bring out a cup of it at once for Mrs. Picture. It was quite 
 
452 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 good and strong by now. Granny Marrable could answer for 
 that. 
 
 But it was one thing to be generous to a rival, another to 
 accept a benevolence from one. Mrs. Picture quite roused herself 
 to acknowledge the generosity, but she wouldn't have the broth 
 on any terms, evidently. Gwen thought she could read the 
 history of this between the Unes. As we have seen, she was 
 aware of the sort of jealousy subsisting between these two old 
 Grannies about their adopted grandson. She thought it best 
 to favour immediate departure, and Blencorn jumped at the 
 first symptom of a word to that effect. The carriage rolled 
 away, waving farewells to the cottage, and the tenants of the 
 latter went slowly back to the mutton-broth. 
 
 And neither of the two old women had the dimmest idea 
 whose face it was that she had looked at in the broad full light 
 of a glorious autumn day; not passingly, as one glances at a 
 stranger on the road, who comes one knows not whence, to vanish 
 away one knows not whither; but inquiringly, as when a first 
 interview shows us the outward seeming of one known by hear- 
 say — one whom our mind has dwelt on curiously, making con- 
 jectural images at random, and wondering which was nearest to 
 the truth. And to neither of those who saw this meeting, for all 
 they felt interest to note what each would think of the other, did 
 the thought come of any very strong resemblance between them. 
 They were two old women — that was all ! 
 
 And yet, in the days of their girlhood, these old women had 
 been so much alike that they were not allowed to dress in the 
 same colour, for mere mercy to the puzzled bystanders. So 
 much alike that when, for a froUc, each put on the other's clothes, 
 and answered to the other's name, the fraud went on for days, 
 undetected ! 
 
 It seems strange, but gets less strange as all the facts are 
 sorted out, and weighed in the scale. First and foremost the 
 whole position was so impossible per se — one always knows what 
 is and is not possible ! — ^that any true version of the antecedents 
 of the two old women would have seemed mere madness. Had 
 either spectator noted that the bones of the two old faces were 
 the same, she would have condemned her own powers of obser- 
 vation rather than doubt the infalUbility of instinctive disbeUef , 
 which is the attitude of the vernacular mind not only to what 
 it wishes to be false, but to anything that runs counter to the 
 octave-stretch forlorn — as Ehzabeth Browning put it — of its 
 limited experience. Had either noted that the eyes of the two 
 
HOW THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 453 
 
 were the same, she would have attached no meaning to the 
 similarity. So many eyes are the same ! How many shades of 
 colour does the maker of false eyes stock, all told ? Guess them 
 at a thousand, and escape the conclusion that in a world of a 
 thousand million, a million of eyes are alike, if you can. If they 
 had compared the hair still covering the heads of both, they would 
 have found Dave's comparison of it with Pussy's various tints a 
 good and intelligent one. Maisie was silvery white, Phoebe 
 merely grey. But the greatest diSerence was in the relative up- 
 rightness and strength of the old countrywoman, helped — and 
 greatly helped — by the entire difference in dress. 
 
 No ! — ^it was not surprising that bystanders should not suspect 
 offhand that something they would have counted impossible was 
 actually there before them in the dayhght. Was it not even less 
 so that Maisie and Phoebe, who remembered Phoebe and Maisie 
 last in the glory and beauty of early womanhood, should each 
 be unsuspicious, when suspicion would have gone near to meaning 
 a thought in the mind of each that the other had risen from the 
 grave ? It is none the less strange that two souls, nourished 
 unborn by the same mother, should have all but touched, and 
 that neither should have guessed the presence of the other, 
 through the outer shell it dwelt in. 
 
 How painfully we souls are dependent on the evidence of our 
 existence — eyes and noses and things ! 
 
 To get back to the thread of the story. Mrs. Picture, on her 
 part, seemed — so far as her fatigue allowed her to narrate her 
 impressions — ^to take a more favourable view of her rival than 
 the latter of herseK. She went so far as to speak of her as " a 
 nice person." But she was in a position to be hberal; being, aa 
 it were, in possession of the bone of contention — ^unconscious 
 Dave, equally devoted to both his two Grannies ! Would she 
 not go back to him, and would not he and Dolly come up and 
 keep her company, and Dolly bring her doll ? Would not 
 Sapps Court rise, metaphorically speaking, out of its ashes, and 
 the rebuilt wall of that Troy get bone-dry, and the window be 
 stood open on summer evenings by Mrs. Burr, for to hear Miss 
 Druitt play her scales ? It was much easier for Maisip to forgive 
 Phoebe her claim on Dave's affection than vice versa. 
 
 She was, however, so thoroughly knocked up by this long drive 
 that she spoke very little to Gwen about Strides Cottage or any- 
 thing else, at the time, Gwen saw her on the way to resuscita- 
 tion, and left her rather reluctantly to Mrs. Masham and Lut- 
 wyche; who would, she knew, take very good care that her 
 
454 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 visitor wanted for nothing, however much she Buspeoted that 
 those two first-class servants were secretly in revolt against the 
 duty they were called on to execute. They would not enter 
 their protest against any whim of her young ladyship, however 
 mad they might think it, by any act of neglect that could be 
 made the basis of an indictment against them. 
 
 She herself was overdue at the rather late lunch which her 
 august parents were enjoying in solitude. They were leaving 
 for London in the course of an hour or so, having said farewell 
 in the morning to such guests as still remained at the Towers ; and 
 intended, after a short stay in town, to part company— the Earl 
 going to Bath, where it was his practice each year to go through 
 a course of bathing, by which means he contended his life might 
 be indefinitely prolonged — ^to return in time for Christmas, which 
 they would probably celebrate — or, as the Earl said, undergo — 
 at Ancestor Towers, according to their usual custom. 
 
 " What on earth have you been doing, Gwen, to make you so 
 late ?" said the Countess. " We couldn't wait." 
 
 " It doesn't matter," was her daughter's answer. " I can 
 gobble to make up for lost time. Don't bring any arrears, 
 Norbury. I can go on where they are. What's this — grouse ? 
 Not if it's grousey, thank you ! . . . Oh — ^well — perhaps I can 
 
 endure it What have I been doing ? Why, taking a drive ! 
 
 . . . Yes — hock. Only not in a tall glass. I hate tall glasses. 
 They hit one's nose. Besides, you get less. ... I took my old 
 lady out for a drive — all round by Chorlton, and showed her 
 things. We saw Farmer Jones's Bull." 
 
 " Is that the Bull that killed the man ?" This was the Earl. 
 His eyes were devouring his beautiful daughter, as they were 
 liable to do, even at lunch, or in church. 
 
 " I believe he did. It was a man that beat his wife. So it 
 was a good job. He's a dear Bull, but his eyes are red. He 
 had a Uttle boy . . . Nonsense, mamma ! — ^why don't you wait 
 till I've done ? He had a little boy to whistle to him and keep 
 his nerves quiet. The potatoes coidd have waited, Norbury." 
 The story hopes that its economies of space by omitting explana- 
 tions will not be found puzzling. 
 
 The Countess's mien indicated despair of her daughter's 
 manners or sanity, or both. Also that attempts to remedy either 
 would <)e futile. Her husband laughed slightly to her across the 
 table, with a sub-shrug — ^the word asks pardon — of his shoulders. 
 She answered it by another, and " Well !" It was as though 
 they had said: — " Really — our daughter !" 
 
HOW "THE TWINS SAW EACH OTHER 455 
 
 " And where else did you go ?" said the Earl, to re-rail the 
 conversation. " And what else did you see ?" 
 
 " Mrs. Picture was knocking up/' said Gwen. " So we didn't 
 see so much as we might have done. We left a parcel from 
 Cousin Clo at Goody Marrable's, and then came home as fast as 
 we could pelt. You know Goody Marrable, mamma ?" 
 
 " Oh dear, yes ! I went there with Clo, and she gave us her 
 strong tea." 
 
 Gwen nodded several times. " Same experience," said she. 
 " Why is it they will ?" The story fancies it referred, a long 
 time since, to this vice of Goody Marrable's. No doubt Gurth 
 the Swineherd would have made tea on the same lines, had he had 
 any to make. 
 
 The Countess lost interest in the tea question, and evidently 
 had something to say. Therefore Gwen said: — " Yes, mamma 1 
 What ?" and got for answer: — " It's only a suggestion." 
 
 " But what is a suggestion ?" said the Earl. 
 
 "No attention will be paid to it, so it's no use," said her 
 ladyship. 
 
 " But what is it ?" said the Earl. " No harm in knowing 
 what it is, that I can see !" 
 
 " My dear," said the Countess, " you are always unreasonable. 
 But Gwen may see some sense in what I say. It's no use your 
 looking amused, because that doesn't do any good." After 
 which little preliminary skirmish she came to the point, speaking 
 to Gwen in a half -aside, as to a fellow-citizen in contradistinction 
 to an outcast, her father. " Why should not yom: old woman 
 be put up at Mrs. Marrable's 7 They do this sort of thing there. 
 However, perhaps Mrs. Marrable is full up." 
 
 " I didn't see anybody there but the two Goodies. I didn't 
 go in, though. But why is Mrs. Picture not to stop where she 
 is?" 
 
 " Just as you please, my dear." Her ladyship abdicated with 
 the promptitude of a malicious monarch, who seeks to throw 
 the Constitution into disorder. " How long do you want to stop 
 here yourself 1" 
 
 " I haven't made up my mind. But why is Mrs. Picture not 
 to stop where she is?" This was put incisively. 
 
 Her ladyship deprecated truculence. " My dear Gwen ! — 
 really ! Are you Farmer Jones's Bull, or who ?" Then, during 
 a lull in the servants, for the moment out of hearing, she added 
 in an undertone: — "You can ask Norbury, and see what he 
 thinks. Only wait till Thomas is out of the room." To which 
 
456 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Gwen replied substantially -that she was still in possession of her 
 senses. 
 
 Now Norbury stood in a very peculiar relation to this noble 
 Family. Perhaps it is best described as that of an Unacknow- 
 ledged Deity, tolerating Atheism from a respect for the Aris- 
 tocracy. He was not allowed altars or incense, which might 
 have made him vain; but it is difficult to say what questions he 
 was not consulted on, by the Family. Its members had a general 
 feeUng that opinions so respectful as his must be right, even when 
 they did not bear analysis. 
 
 Gwen let the door close on Thomas before she approached the 
 Shrine of the Oracle. It must be admitted that she did so some- 
 what as Farmer Jones's Bull might have done. " You've heard 
 all about old Mrs. Pictme, Norbury ?" said she. 
 
 Why should it have been that Mr. Norbury's " Oh dear, yes, 
 my lady !" immediately caused inferences in his hearers' minds — 
 one of which, in the Countess's, caused her to say to Gwen, under 
 her voice: — " I told you so !" ? 
 
 But Gwen was consulting the Oracle; what did it matter to 
 her what forecasts of its decisions the Public had made ? " But 
 you haven't seen her ?" said she. No — Mr. Norbury had not 
 seen her; perfect candour must admit that. She was only known 
 to him by report, gathered from conversations in which he him- 
 self was not joining. How could he be induced to disclose that 
 part of them that was responsible for a peculiar emphasis in his 
 reply to her ladyship's previous question ? 
 
 Not by the CoTmtess's — " She is being well attended to, I 
 suppose ?" spoken as by one floating at a great height above 
 human affairs, but to a certain extent responsible if they mis- 
 carried. For this only produced a cordial testimonial from the 
 Oracle to the assiduity, care, and skill with which every want of 
 the old lady was being suppUed. Gwen's method was likely to 
 be much more effective, helped as it -was by her absolute licence 
 to be and to do whatever she hked, and to suffer nothing counter 
 to her wishes, though, indeed, she always gained them by 
 omnipotent persuasion. She had also, as we have seen, a happy 
 faculty of going straight to the point. So had Farmer Jones's 
 Bull, no doubt, on occasion shown. 
 
 " Which is it, Lutwyche or Mrs. Masham ?" said she. What 
 it was that was either remained indeterminate. 
 
 Mr. Norbury set himself to say which, without injustice to 
 anyone concerned. He dropped his voice to show how un- 
 reservedly he was telling the truth, yet how reluctant he was 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 457 
 
 that his words should be overheard at the other end of the Castle. 
 "No blame attaches," said he, to clear the air. "But, if I 
 might make so bold, the arrangement would work more satis- 
 factory if put upon a footing." 
 
 The Countess said: — "You see, Gwen. I told you what it 
 would be." The Earl exchanged understandings with Norbury, 
 which partly took the form of inaudible speech. The fact was 
 that Gwen had sprung the old lady on the household without 
 doing anything towards what Mr. Norbmy called putting 
 matters on a footing. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OUD MEMORIES, AGAIN. THE VOYAGE OUT, FIFTY YEAKS SINCE. 
 SAPPS COURT, AND BREAD -AND -BUTTER SPREAD ON THE LOAF. 
 HOW GWEN CAME INTO THE DREAM SUDDENLY. HOW THEY 
 
 READ Dave's letter, and muggeridgb was undecipher- 
 able. HOW IT wasn't the MIDDLE AGES, BUT JEALOUSIES 
 BRED RUCTIONS. SO GWEN DINED ALONE, BUT WENT BACK. 
 A CONTEMPTIBLE HOT-WATER BOTTLE. MISS LUTWYCHB's 
 SKETCH OF THE RUCTIONS, AND HER MAGNANIMITY. NAPOLEON 
 DE SOUCHY. HIS VANITY. BUT MAISIE AND PHCEBE RE- 
 MAINED UNCONSCIOUS, AS WHY SHOULD THEY NOT ? IN- 
 DEED, WHY NOT POSTPONE THE DISCOVERY UNTIL AFTER THE 
 GREAT INTERRUPTION, DEATH ? 
 
 The problem of where the anomalous old lady was to be lodged 
 might have been solved by what is called an accommodating 
 disposition, but not by the disposition incidental to the esprit de 
 corps of a large staff of domestic servants. To control them is 
 notoriously the deuce's own delight, and old Nick's relish for it 
 must grow in proportion as they become more and more cor- 
 porate. As Mr. Norbury said — and we do not feel that we can 
 add to the force of his words — her young ladyship had not took 
 proper account of tempers. Two of these qualities, tendencies, 
 attributes, or vices — or indeed virtues, if you like — had de- 
 veloped, or germinated, or accrued, or suppurated, as may be, in 
 the respective bosoms of Miss Lutwyche and Mrs. Masham. 
 It was not a fortunate circumstanee that the dispositions of 
 
458 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 these two ladies, so far from being accommodating, wero mvir- 
 derous. That is, they would have been so had it happened to 
 be the Middle Ages, just then. But it wasn't. Tempers had 
 ceased to find expression in the stiletto and the poison-cup, and 
 had been curbed and stunted down to taking the other party 
 up short, showing a proper spirit, and so on. 
 
 " What was that you were saying to Norbury, papa dear ?" 
 Gwen asked this question of her father in his own room, half an 
 hour later, having followed him thither for a farewell chat. 
 
 " Saying at limch ?" asked the Earl, partly to avoid dis- 
 traction from the mild Havana he was Hghting, partly to con- 
 sider his answer. 
 
 " Saying at lunch. Yes." 
 
 " Oh, Norbury ! Well ! — we were speaking of the same thing 
 as you and your mother, I believe. Only it was not so very clear 
 what that was. You didn't precisely . . . formulate." 
 
 " Dear good papa ! As if everything was an Act of Parlia- 
 ment ! What did Norbury say ?" 
 
 " I only remember the upshot. Miss Lutwyche has a rather 
 uncertain temper, and Mrs. Masham has been accustomed to be 
 consulted." 
 
 " WeU— and then ?" 
 
 " That's all I can recollect. It's a very extraordinary thing 
 that it should be so, but I have certainly somehow formed an 
 image in my mind of all my much too numerous retinue of 
 servants taking sides with Masham and Miss Lutwyche re- 
 spectively, in coimection with this old lady of yours, who must 
 be a great curiosity, and whom, by the way, I haven't seen yet." 
 He compared his watch with a clock on the chimney-piece, 
 whose slow pendulum said — so he alleged — " I, am, right, you, 
 are, wrong !" all day. 
 
 " Suppose you were to come round and see her now !" 
 
 " Should I have time ? Yes, I think I should. Just time to 
 smoke this in peace and quiet, and then we'll pay her a visit. 
 Mustn't be a long one." 
 
 The day had lost its beauty, and the wind in the trees and the 
 chimneys was inconsolable about the loss, when Gwen said to 
 the old woman: — " Here's my father, come to pay you a visit, 
 Mrs. Picture." Thereon the Earl said: — " Don't wake her up, 
 Gwennie." But to this she said : — " She isn't really asleep. 
 She goes off like this." And he said: — " Old people do." 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 459 
 
 Her soft hand roused the old lady as gently as anything 
 effectual could. And then Mrs. Picture said: — "I heard you 
 come in, my dear." And, when Gwen repeated that her father 
 had come, became alive to the necessity of acknowledging him, 
 and had to give up the effort, being told to sit still. 
 
 " You had such a long drive, you see," said Gwen. " It has 
 quite worn you out. It was my fault, and I'm sorry." Then, 
 relying on inaudibility: — " It makes her seem so old. She was 
 quite young when we started off this morning." 
 
 " Young folks," said his lordship, " never beUev© in old bones, 
 until they feel them inside, and then they are not young folks 
 any longer. Why — where did we drive to, to knock ourselves 
 up so ? What's her name — ^Picture ?" He was incredulous, 
 evidently, about such a name being possible. But there was a 
 sort of graciousness, or goodwill, about his oblique speech in 
 the first person plural, that more than outweighed abruptness in 
 his question about her. 
 
 She raUied under her visitor's geniality — or his emphasis, as 
 might be. " Maisie Prichard, my lord," said she, quite clearly. 
 Her designation for him showed she was broad awake now, and 
 took in the position. She could answer his question, repeated: — 
 " And where did we drive ?" by saying: — " A beautiful drive, 
 but I've a poor head now for names." She tried recollection, 
 failed, and gave it up. 
 
 " Chorlton-mider-Bradbury ?" said the Earl. 
 
 " We went there too. I know Chorlton quite well, of course. 
 The other one ! — ^where the clock was." Gwen supplied the 
 name, a singular one, Chemoweth; and the Earl said: — " Oh 
 yes — Chemoweth. A pretty place. But why ' Chorlton quite 
 well, of course ' ?" 
 
 Gwen explained. " Becatise of the small boy, Dave. Don't 
 you know, papa ? — ^I told you Mrs. Pictm-e has directed no end 
 of letters to Chorlton, for Dave." The Earl was not very clear. 
 " Don't you remember ? — ^to old Mrs. Marrable, at Strides 
 Cottage ?" Still not very clear, he pretended he was, to save 
 trouble. Then he weakened his pretence, by saying : — " But I 
 remember Mrs. Marrable, and Strides Cottage, near forty years 
 ago, when your Uncle George and I were two young fellows. 
 Kne, handsome woman she was — didn't look her age — she had 
 just married Farmer Marrable — ^was a widow from Sussex, Lthink. 
 Can't think what her name had been . . . knew it once, too !" 
 
 " She's a fine-looking old lady now," said Gwen. " Isn't she, 
 Mrs. Picture ?" 
 
460 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I am sure she is that too, my dear, or you would not say so. 
 Only my eyesight won't always serve me nowadays as it did, 
 not for seeing near up." The reserves about Dave's other Granny 
 were always there, however little insisted on. Old Maisie was 
 exaggerating about her eyesight. She had seen her rival quite 
 clearly enough to have an opinion about her looks. 
 
 " Did you see the inside of the cottage, and the old chimney- 
 comers ? And the well out at the back ?" Thus the Earl. 
 
 " We didn't go in. I wanted to get home. But what a lot 
 you recollect of it, papa dear !" 
 
 " I ought to recoUect something about it. It was Strides 
 Cottage where your Uncle George was taken when he broke his 
 leg, riding." 
 
 " Ohj was it there ? Yes, I've heard of that. His horse threw 
 him on a heap of stones^ and bolted, and pitched into Dunsters 
 Gap, and had to be shot." 
 
 " Yes, he shouldn't have ridden that horse. But he was 
 always at that sort of thing, George." A sound came in here 
 that had the same relation to a sigh that a sip has to a draught. 
 " Well ! — Mrs. Marrable nursed him up at Strides Cottage till 
 he was fit to move — ^they were afraid about his back at first — 
 and I used to ride over every morning. We used to chaff poor 
 Georgy about his beautiful nurse. . . . Oh yes ! — she was 
 young enough for that. Woman well under forty, I should 
 say." 
 
 Gwen made calculations and attested possibilities. Oh dear, 
 yes ! — Granny Marrable must have been under forty then. She 
 surprised his lordship, first by gently smoothing aside the silver 
 hair on the old woman's forehead, then by stooping down and 
 kissing it. " Why, how old are you now, dear ?" she said, as 
 though she were speaking to a child. He for his part was only 
 Bvu-prised, not dumbfoundered. He just felt a little glad his 
 Countess was elsewhere ; and was not sorry, on looking round, to 
 see that no domestic was present. What a wild, ungovernable 
 daughter it was, this one of his, and how he loved it ! 
 
 So did old Mrs. Picture, to judge by the illumination of the 
 eyes she turned up to the girl's young face above her. " How 
 old am I now, my dear ?" said she. " Eighty-one this Christ- 
 mas." Thereupon said Gwen: — "You see, papa! Old Mrs. 
 Marrable must have been quite a young woman in Uncle George's 
 time. She's heaps younger than Mrs. Picture." She again 
 smoothed the beautiful silver hair, adding: — " It's not unfeeling- 
 ness, because Uncle George died years before I was bom." 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 461 
 
 " Killed at Rangoon in twenty-foxir/' said the Earl, with 
 another semi-sigh. " Poor Georgy \" And then his visit was 
 cut as short as — even shorter than — ^his forecast of its duration, 
 for his next words were : — " I hear someone coming to fetch me. 
 Your mamma is sure to start an hour before the time. Good- 
 bye, Mrs. . . . Picture. I hope you are beingwell fed and properly 
 attended to." To which the old lady replied:—" I thank your 
 lordship, indeed I am," in. an old-fashioned way that went well 
 with the silver hair. And Gwen said: — "Dear old parent! 
 Do you think I shan't see to that ?" and followed hiaa out of the 
 room. 
 
 " She's a nice old soul," said he, in the passage. ** I wanted 
 to see what she was like. But I thought it best to say nothing 
 about the convict." 
 
 " Of course not. I'll follow you round before you go, to say 
 good-bye. You won't start for half an hour." And Gwen 
 returned to the old soul, who presently said to her — to account 
 to her for knowing how to say " my lord " and " your lordship " 
 ' — " When I first married, my husband's great friend was Lord 
 Pouralot. But I very soon called him Jack." This was a 
 reminiscence of her interim between her victimisation and lone- 
 liness, which of course her innocence thought of as marriage. 
 But was this early lordship's reaUy a ladyship, if such a one 
 appeared, we wonder ? Very likely she was only another dupe, 
 like Maisie. Possibly less fortunate, in one way. For, owing 
 to the high price of women, in the land of Maisie's destiny, she 
 — poor girl — ^never knew she was not a good one, until she f oimd 
 she was not a widow, although her worthless love of a lifetime 
 was dead. 
 
 Oh, the difference Law's sanctions make ! For a woman 
 shall be the same in thought and word and deed through all her 
 sojourn on Earth, yet vary as saint and sinner with the hall-mark 
 of Lincoln's Lin. 
 
 Gwen followed the Earl very shortly, and left old Maisie to 
 dream away the time until, somewhile after the final departure 
 of her parents, she was free to return. When she did so she 
 found the old woman sitting where she had left her, to all seeming 
 quite contented. The day had died a sudden death intestate, 
 and the flickering firelight meant to have its say unmolested, 
 tiU candle-time. The intrusion of artificial light was intercepted 
 by Gwen, who Hked to sit and talk to Mrs. Picture in the twilight, 
 thank you, Mrs. Masham I Take it away ! 
 
462 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Where had the old mind wandered in that two hours' interval ? 
 Had the actual meeting with her sister — ^utterly incredible even 
 had she known its claims to belief — taken any hold on it that 
 bore comparison with that of Farmer Jones's Bull, for instance, 
 or the visit of a real live Earl ? Certainly not the former, while 
 as for the latter it was at best a half-way grip between the two; 
 perhaps farther, if anything, from the supreme Bull, the great 
 enthralling interest that was to be vested in her letter to Dave, 
 to be written at the next favourable chmax of strength, nourished 
 by repose. Sometime in the morning — ^to-day she was far too 
 tired to think of it. 
 
 How she dwelt upon that appalling quadruped, and his savage 
 breast — have bulls breasts ? — soothed by the charms of music ! 
 How she phrased the various best ways of describing the mountain 
 he was pleased to call his neck, with its haU-hundredweight of 
 dewlap; the merciless strength of his horns; the blast of steam 
 from his nostrils into the chiU of the October day; the deep-seated 
 objection to everybody in his limd eyes, attesting the unclub- 
 ableness of his disposition ! How she hesitated between this 
 way and that of expressing to the full his murderousness and the 
 beautiful pliancy of his soul, if got at the right way; showing, as 
 the pesudo-Browning has it, that " we never should think good 
 impossible " ! 
 
 One thing she made up her mind to. She would not tell that 
 dear boy, that this bull — ^which was in a sense Ms bull, or Sapps 
 Court's, according as you look at it — had ever had to succumb on 
 a fair field of battle. For Gwen had told her, as they rode home, 
 and she had roused herself to hear it, how one summer morning, 
 so early that even rangers were still abed and asleep, they were 
 waked by terrific bellowings from a distant glade in the park- 
 lands, and, sallying out to find the cause, were only just in time 
 to save the valued hfe of this same bull — even Jones's. For he 
 had broken down a gate and vanished overnight, and wandered 
 into the sacred precincts of the villosi terga bisontes, the still-wild 
 denizens of the last league of the British woodlands Caesar found; 
 and Bos Taurus had risen in his wrath, and showed that an ancient 
 race was not to be trifled with, with impunity. Even Jones's 
 BuU went down in the end — though, mind you, evidence went to 
 show that he made an hour's stand ! — before the overwhelming 
 rush and the terrible horns of the forest monarch. And the 
 victor only gave back before a wall of brandished torch and 
 blazing ferns, that the unsportsmanlike spirit of the keepers did 
 not scruple to resort to. No — she would not admit that Dave's 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWEES 463 
 
 bull had ever met his match. She would say how he had killed 
 a man, which Gwen had told her aisa; but to save the boy from 
 too much commiseraticHi for this man, she would lay stress upon 
 the brutality of the latter to his wife, and even point out that 
 Farmer Jones's Bull might be honestly unconscious of the con- 
 sequences that too often result when one gores or tramples on an 
 object of one's righteous indignation. 
 
 Strides Cottage played a very small part in the memories of 
 the day. Some interest certainly attached to the older woman 
 who had emerged from it to interview the carriage, but it was an 
 interest apt to die down when once its object had been ascer- 
 tained to resemble any other handsome old village octogenarian. 
 Any pecuHarity or deformity might have intensified it, or at 
 least kept it alive; mere good looks and upright caniage, and 
 strict conformity with the part of an ancient dependant of a 
 great local potentate, neither fed nor quenched the mild firea 
 of her rival granny's jealousy. Old Mrs. Picture had looked 
 upon Granny Marrable, and was none the wiser. That Granny 
 had at least seen her way to moralising on the way appearances 
 might dupe us, and how sad it would be if, after all, such a 
 respectable-looking old person should be an associate of thieves, 
 a misleader of youth, and a fraud. But Mrs. Picture foimd 
 Uttle to say to herself, and nothing to say to anybody else, about 
 Strides Cottage. 
 
 Rather, she fell back, as soon as Jones's Bull flagged, on her 
 long record of an unforgotten past. That wind that was growing 
 with the nightfall no longer moaned for her in the chimney, five 
 centuries old, of the strange great house strange Fate had 
 brought her to, but through the shrouds of a ship on the watch for 
 what the Ught of sunrise might show at any moment. Sha 
 could hear the rush and ripple of the cloven waters under the 
 prow, just as a girl who leaned upon the gunwale, intent for the 
 first sight of land, heard it in the dawn over fifty years ago. 
 She could seem to look back at the girl — ^who was, if you please, 
 herseK — and a man who leaned on the same timber, some few 
 feet away, intent on the horizon or his neighbour, as might be; 
 for he stood aft, and her face was turned away from him. And 
 she could seem to hear his words too, for all the time that came 
 between : — " Say the word, mistress, and I'll be yours for life. 
 I would give all I have to give, and all I may Kve to get, but to 
 call you mine for an hour." And how his petition seemed empty 
 sound, that she could answer with a curt denial, so bent was her 
 heart on another man in the land she hoped to see so soon. Yot 
 
 30 
 
464 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 he was a nice fellow, too, thought old Mrs. Prichard as she sat 
 before Mrs. Masham's fire at the Towers; and she forgave him 
 the lawlessness of his impulse for its warmth, bred in the narrow 
 limits of a ship on the seas for three long months ! — how could he 
 help it ? Such a common story on shipboard, and . . . such an 
 uncommon ending ! Ask the captains of passenger ships what 
 they think, even now that ships steam twenty knots an hour ! 
 One's fellow-creatures are so human, you see. 
 
 Then a terrible dream of a second voyage, from Sydney to 
 Port Macquarie, that almost made her wish she had accepted 
 this man's ofiEer to see her safe into the arms of her lawful owner, 
 out on leave and growing prosperous in Van Diemens Land. 
 Need she have said him nay so firmly ? Could she not have 
 trusted to his chivalry ? Or was the question she asked herself 
 not rather, could she have trusted her own heart, if that chivalry 
 had stood as gold in the furnace. 
 
 Back again to the throbbing wheel, and the ceaseless flow of 
 the Uttle river at the Essex miU, and childhood ! Why should 
 her waking dream hark back to the dear old time ? The natural 
 thing would have been to dream on into the years she spent out 
 there with the man she loved, who at least, to all outward seem- 
 ing, gave her back love for love, while he played the sly devil 
 against her for his own ends. But she knew nothing of this; 
 and, till his death revealed the non-legal character of their union, 
 she could leave him on his pinnacle. So it was not because her 
 mind shrank from these memories of her married life that it con- 
 jured back again the scent of the honeysuckles on the house- 
 porch that looked on the garden with the sundial on the waU 
 above it, its welcome to that of the June roses; its dissension 
 with the flavour of the damp weeds that clung to the time-worn 
 timbers of the waterwheel, or that of the grinding flour when the 
 wind blew from the mill, and carried with it from the ventilators 
 some of the cloud that could not help forward the whitening of 
 the roof. She might almost have been breathing again the air 
 that carried all these scents; and then, with them, the old mill 
 itself was suddenly upon her; and she and Phoebe were there, 
 in the shortest waists ever frockmaker dreamed of, and the 
 deepest sunbonnets possible, with the largest possible ribbons, 
 very pale yellow to harmonize — as canons then ruled — with 
 the HIac of their dresses. They were there, they two, watching 
 the inexhaustible resource of interest to their childish lives: the 
 consignment of grain to storage in the loft above the whirling 
 stones, and the dapple-grey horse that was called Mr. Pitt, and 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 465 
 
 the dark one with the white mane that was Mr. Fox. She could 
 remember their names well; but by some chance all those years 
 of utter change had effaced that of the carman who slung the 
 sacks on the fall-rope, which by some mysterious agency bore 
 them up to a landing they vanished from into a doorway half- way 
 to Heaven. What on earth was that man's name ? Her mind 
 became obsessed with the name Tattenhall, which was entirely 
 wrong, and, moreover, stood terribly in the way of Muggeridge, 
 which — you may remember ? — ^was the name Dave had carried 
 away so clearly from his inspection of the mill on Granny Mar- 
 rable's chimney-piece. 
 
 Her memories of her old home had died away, and she was 
 back in Sapps Court again, sympathizing with Dolly over an 
 accident to Shockheaded Peter, the articulation of whose knee- 
 joint had given way, causiag his leg to come off promptly, from 
 lack of integuments and tendons. She had pointed out to Dolly 
 that it was still open to her, as The Authority, to hush Peter to 
 sleep as before, his leg being carefully replaced in position, 
 although without ligatures. Dolly had carried out this in- 
 struction in perfect good faith ; but it had not led to a satisfactory 
 result. It failed owing to the patient's restlessness. " He will 
 tit in his s'eep, and he tums undone," said the little lady, hard to 
 console. Oh dear — how soon Dolly would be four, and begin to 
 lose her early versions of consonants ! 
 
 Poor Susan Burr had then flashed across her recollection, 
 provoked by the bread-and-butter Dolly baptized with the 
 bitter tears she shed over Peter's leg. That naturally led to the 
 household loaf, which was buttered before the shce was cut; 
 sometimes the whole round, according to how many at tea. 
 This led to a controversy of long standing between Dave and 
 Dolly, as to which half should be took first; Dave having a 
 preference for the underside, with the black left on. Students 
 of the haK- quartern household loaf will appreciate the niceties 
 involved. In this connection, Susan Burr had come in naturally, 
 like the officiating priest at Mass. Poor Susan ! Suppose, 
 after all, that Europe had been mistaken in what seemed to be 
 its estimate of married nieces at Clapham ! Suppose Susan was 
 being neglected — how then ? But marriage and Clapham, 
 between them, soothed and reassured misgivings a mere un- 
 quahfied niece might easily generate. By this time the waking 
 dreamer was on the borderland of sleep, and Mrs. Burr's image 
 crossed it with her and became a real dream, and whistled the 
 
466 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 tune the boy had whistled to Farmer Jones's Bull. And into 
 that dream came, suddenly and unprovoked, her sister Phoebe of 
 old, beautiful and fresh as violets in April, and ended a tale of 
 how she would have none of Ralph Daverill, come what might, by 
 saying, " Why, you are all in the dark, and the fire's going out !" 
 
 This resuiTection of Phoebe, at this moment, may have been 
 mere coincidence — ^a reflex action of Gwen's sudden reappear- 
 ance; her first words creating, in her hearer's sleep-waking 
 mind, the readiest image of a youth and beauty to match her 
 own. As soon as the dream died, the dreamer was aware of 
 the speaker's identity. " Oh, my dear !" she said, " I've been 
 asleep almost ever since you went away." 
 
 " Mrs. Masham was quite right, for once, not to let them dis- 
 turb you. Now they'll bring tea — ^it's never too late for tea — 
 and then we can read yovir little friend's letter." Thus Gwen, 
 and the old woman brightened up under a living interest. 
 
 " There now !" said she. " The many times I've told my 
 boy that one day he would write my letters for me, instead of 
 me for him ! To think of his managing all by himself, spelling 
 and all !" 
 
 " Well, we shall see what sort of a job the young man's made 
 of it. Put the candles behind Mrs. Picture, Lupin, so as not to 
 glare her eyes." Lupin obeyed, with a studied absence of protest 
 on her face against having to wait upon an anomaly. Who 
 could be sure this venerable person — from Sapps Court, think of 
 it ! — had never waited on anyone herself ? It was the ambiguity 
 that was so disgusting. 
 
 " Please may I see it, to look at," said Mrs. Picture. " I may 
 not be able to read it, quite, but you shall have it back, to read." 
 She was eager to see the young scribe's progress, but was baffled 
 by obscurities, as she anticipated. She was equal to : — " Dear 
 Granny Marrable." No more ! 
 
 " Hand it over !" said Gwen. " ' Dear Granny Marrable.' 
 That's all plain sailing; now what's this ? 'This crorce is for 
 Dolly's love.' There's a great big black cross to show it, and 
 everything is spelt just as I say it. ' I give you my love itself !' 
 Really, he's full of the most excellent differences, as Shakespeare 
 says. I'll go on. ' Amt M'riar she's took . . ,' Oh dear ! this 
 is a word to make out ! Whatever can it be ? Let's see what 
 comes after. . . . Oh, it goes on: — 'because she is not here.' 
 Really it looks as if Aunt Maria had gone to Kingdom Come. Is 
 there anything she tvould have taken because she was ' not there,' 
 that you know of ? Is your tea all right ?" 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 467 
 
 " It's very nice indeed, my dear. I think perhaps it might 
 be the omnibus, because Aunt M'riar did take the omnibus that 
 day she came to see me. She was to come again, without the 
 children, to see all straight." 
 
 " H'm ! — ^it may be the omnibus, spelt with an H. Suppose 
 we accept honUiburst, and see how it works out ! ' . . . . because 
 she is not here. She is going ' — he's put a W in the middle of 
 going — ' to see Mrs.' — ^I know this word is Mrs., but he's put the 
 S in the middle and the R at the end — ' to see Mrs. Spicture 
 tookted away by Dolly's lady to Towel.' That wants a little 
 thinking out." Gwen stopped to think it over, and wondrous 
 lovely she looked, thinking. 
 
 " Perhaps," said the old lady difi&dently, " I can guess what 
 it means, because I know Dave. Suppose Aunt M'riar came 
 the day we came away, and found us gone ! If she came up to 
 say good-bye ? . . ." 
 
 " No, that won't do ! Because we came on Wednesday. 
 This was written on Thursday. It's dated ' On Firsday.' Did 
 he mean that Aunt Maria had come up to Sapps Court, but 
 would not come to Cavendish Square because she knew you had 
 come here ? It's quite possible. I don't wonder Mrs. Marrable 
 couldn't make it out." The old lady seemed to think the inter- 
 pretation plausible, and Gwen read on: — "'I say we had an 
 axdnt ' — ^that really is beautifully spelt — ' because the house 
 forled over, and Mrs. Ber underneath and Me and Dolly are 
 sory.' " Gwen stopped a moment to consider the first two 
 words of this sentence, and decided that " I say " was an apos- 
 trophe. " I see," said she, " that the next sentence has your 
 name in it again, only he's left out the U, and made you look 
 something between Spider and Spectre." 
 
 " The dear boy ! What does he say next about me ?" The 
 old lady was looking intensely happy; a reflex action of Dave. 
 
 " There's a dreadful hard word comes next. . . . Oh — ^I see 
 what it is 1 ' Supposing.' Only he's made it ' sorsppposing ' — 
 such a lot of P's ! I think it is only to show how (fiffidently he 
 makes the suggestion. It doesn't matter. Let's get on. ' Sup- 
 posing you was to show ' — something I really cannot make head 
 or tail of — ' to Mrs. Spictre who is my other graney ?' I wonder 
 what on earth it can be !" 
 
 "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 itseK. ' Mucerij.' But 
 
468 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 what word can he mean ? It can't be mucilage ; that's impos- 
 sible ! 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 puzzUng, 
 turning the word this way and that, looking all the loveUer for 
 the ripple of amusement on her face at the absiu-d 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 un- 
 recognisable; 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 passed 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 in- 
 credible 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 space 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 embarrassment consequent on her own 
 headstrong creation of an anomalous social position, that Gwen 
 could not decide, nominally omn potent 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. 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 469 
 
 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 embarrassed, and overweighted by too em- 
 phatic a change of circumstances ? Indeed, had Gwen known 
 it, she was only tranquil and contented with things as they were 
 in the sense in which one who passes through a dream is tranquil 
 and contented. It was the quietude of bewilderment, aUve to 
 gratitude. 
 
 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 con- 
 ciliation to the household. But, the banquet ended, she was 
 free to return and take cofEee with her protigee. 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 de- 
 licious 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 mass of roses. You and Dolly. And Mrs. 
 Burr." Mrs. Burr was thrown in to attend to the menage. 
 
 Old Mrs. Picture did not quite know what to say. She had 
 found out instinctively that perpetual gratitude had its draw- 
 backs for the receiver as well as the giver. So she said, diffi- 
 dently: — " 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. " la 
 
470 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 imdertone: — " Oh, I dare not 
 think so. He vM see ! He must see I" 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 I 
 . . . 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 reUct — ^the 
 convict's mother — from Sapps Court. 
 
 An effort against herself, to choke them back, and an igno- 
 minious failure ! A short breakdown, another effort, and a 
 success ! Gwen rose above herself, morally triumphant. The 
 beautiful young face, when it looked up, assorted 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 know- 
 ledge of Adrian's free opinions. She wanted her to thiak 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 sanctity compatible with the 
 utmost latitudes of heterodoxy; a bedrock of devout gneiss or 
 porphyry hidden under a mere alluvium of modem freethinkdng; 
 a reality — ^if the truth were known — of St. Francis of Assisi behind 
 a mask of Voltaire. Her hearer only half followed her reasoning, 
 but that mattered little as she was brimming with assent to 
 anything Gwen advanced, with such beautiful and earnest eyeg 
 to back it. 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 471 
 
 " 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 aU 
 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 faiilt, 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 con- 
 demned 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 everythiag 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 house- 
 keeper'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 
 
472 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 
 comnnuucation 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 famihar 
 with, of being too short to reach down all that way, and having 
 either to waUow under the coverhds hke a Kobold, or untuck 
 the bed, and get at the remote bottle like a paper-knife. 
 
 Probably this bottle's prominence in the impleasantness that 
 germinated among the servants who remained at the Towers 
 after the departure of the Earl and Countess was due to tbe 
 extreme impalpabiUty 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 Iq 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 towards 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 imiatentional 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 hstened to and made 
 Hght of many expressions of contrition from the old lady that 
 she should have occasioned what Miss Lutwyche afterwards 
 spoke of as just so much uncaUed-for hot water. Gwen's youth 
 and high spirits, and her supreme contempt for the petty ani- 
 mosities 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 hke 
 that. Bother Mrs. Masham and Lutwyche ! 
 
 The latter, however, when assisting her yoimg mistress to 
 retire for the night — an operation which takes two when a young 
 
MAISIE AT THE TOWERS 473 
 
 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 re- 
 dounded 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 aU but the speaker 
 were Uable, 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 fre- 
 quently avoid misunderstandings if an acute sense of duty and an 
 almost startling integrity of motive were the only things wanted 
 to procure peace with honoiu* in a disturbed household. But 
 that was where it was. You must have Authority, and a vacil- 
 lating 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 neghgible quantity of a 
 trivial ingredient ! Young persons were young persons, and 
 would always remain so — an enigmatical sajang. 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 
 in fact, gone by the same train as the Earl, travelling first-class, 
 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 
 attitude in action of Miss Lutwyche, whom she knew weU 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 dissension she was 
 the innocent cause of, and would be uncomfortable. She must 
 say or do something, consolatory or reassuring, to-morrow. 
 She fretted a little, till she fell asleei), over this matter, which was 
 
474 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 Uttle span of 
 Time still left them, in a state which is at best decay ? Would 
 it not be best that the few hours left should run their course, 
 and that the two should either pass 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 reve- 
 lation 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 pass 
 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, nominp quocunque ! 
 
MOTHERWAEDS IN THE DARK 475 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HOW MRS. PICTURE SPOIMJD OLD PHCEBE's DREAM, BUT WAS A 
 NICE OIjD soul, to LOOK AT. PARSON DUNAQE's MOTHER. 
 A CLOCK THAT STRUCK, BETWEEN TWO TWINS. HOW TOBY 
 DID NOT WAKE, AND KEZIAH SOLMBS CAME NEXT DAY FOR 
 HIM. THE WICKED MAN WHO DID IT AGAIN, AND HIS RESEM- 
 BLANCE TO TOBY. THE COATINGS OF THE LATTER's STOMACH. 
 MRS. LAMPREY. COLONEL WAREENDER AND THE PHEASANTS. 
 HOW WIDOW THRALE AND KEZIAH WENT TO SEE AN OLD SOUL 
 NEXT DAY. A RBTROSPECULATION. SUPPOSE WIDOW THRALE 
 HAD BEEN TOLD ! ON IMPROBABILITY, IMPOSSIBILITY, IN- 
 CREDIBILITY, AND MATSIE's PILGEIMAQE TO A GRAVE SHE 
 NEVER FOUND. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, JOHN, AND THEIR 
 IRRELEVANCE 
 
 " 'Tis pity she could not stop I" 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 Uttle 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 f amiUarity. 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 identity, as Dave's other Granny, had 
 made its impression on her. Otherwise, for all she had seen of 
 her, it might have passed from her mind. Also, she was grieved 
 about that mutton-broth. The poor old soul had just looked 
 
476 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 passed 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 dream- 
 ing." For she never would admit that this practice was an 
 invariable one. 
 
 " What about, mother ?" said Widow Thrale. 
 
 " That breaking of the glass set me a-dreaming over our old 
 mill, and your mother, child, that died across the seas. We was 
 both there, girls Hke, all over again. Only Dave's Mrs. Picture, 
 she come across the dream, and spoilt it." 
 
 It was not necessary for Mrs. Ruth to take her attention off 
 the pillow-lace she was at work upon. She remarked: — "I 
 thought her a nice old soul, to look at." This was not quite 
 uncoloured by the vague indictment against Mrs. Picture about 
 Dave, who had, somehow, qualified for the receipt of forgiveness. 
 Which impUes some offence to condone. 
 
 Shadowy as the offence was. Granny Marrable could not 
 ignore it altogether. " Good looks are skin-deep — so they say ! 
 But it's not for me to be setting up for judge. At her time of 
 life, and she a-looking so worn out, too !" The memory of the 
 mutton-broth rankled. Forgiveness was setting in. 
 
 " At her time of life, mother ? Why, she's none so much older 
 than you. What should you take her to be ?" The subject 
 was just worth spare attention not wanted for the lace-spools. 
 
 " Why now — ^there's Parson Dunage's mother at the Rectory. 
 She's ninety-four this Christmas. This old soul she might be 
 halt-way on, between me and Parson Dunage's mother at the 
 Rectory." 
 
 Mrs. Ruth dropped the spools, to think arithmetically, with 
 her fingers. " Eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight," she said, 
 " Eighty-seven ! . . . This one's nearer your own age than that, 
 mother." She went on with her work. 
 
 " There now, Ruth, is not that just like you, all over ? You 
 
MOTHERWARDS EST THE DARK 477 
 
 will always be making me out older than I am. I am not turned of 
 eighty-one, child ! My birthday comes the day after Christmas." 
 " I thought you and my mother were both born on Christmas 
 Day." 
 
 " Well, my dear, we always called it Christmas, for to have 
 a birthday together on the same day. But the church-clock 
 got time to strike the hour betwixt and between the two of us, 
 so Maisie was my elder sister by just that, and no more. She 
 would say . . . Ah dearie me ! — poor Maisie ! . . . she would say 
 by rights she should marry first, being the elder. And then I 
 would tell her the clock was fast, and we were both of an age. 
 'Twas a many years sooner she married, as God would have it. 
 All of three years before ever I met poor Nicholas." And then the 
 old woman, who had hitherto kept back the story of her sister's 
 marriage, made a sHp of the tongue. " Maybe I was wrong, 
 but I was a bit scared of men and marriage in those days." 
 
 It was no wonder Ruth connected this with the father she had 
 never seen. " Why did my father go to Australia ?" said she. 
 It was asked entirely as a matter of history, for did it not happen 
 before the speaker was bom ? The passive acceptance through 
 a lifetime of such a fact can only be understood by persons who 
 have experienced a similar sealed antecedent. Non-inquiry into 
 such a one may be infused into a mother's milk. 
 
 Granny Marrable could be insensible to pressure after a life- 
 time of silence. She had never thrown light on the mystery and 
 she would not, now. Her answer even suggested a false solution. 
 " He grew to be rich after your mother died. But I lost touch 
 of him then, and when and where he came by his death is more 
 than I can tell ye, child !" There was implication in this of a 
 prosperous colonist, completely impatriated in the land of his 
 wealth. 
 
 Ruth's father's vanished history was of less importance than 
 the clock's statement that it was midnight. Her " Now, mother, 
 we're later and later. It's striking to-morrow, now !" referred 
 to present Ufe and present bedtime, and her rapid adjustment of 
 the spools meant business. 
 
 The old Granny showed no sense of having escaped an em- 
 barrassment. She did not shy off to another subject. On the 
 contrary, she went back to the topic it had hinged on. " Eighty- 
 one come January !" said she, hghting her own candle. " And 
 please God I may see ninety, and only be the worse by the price 
 of a new pair of glasses to read my Testament. Parson Dunage's 
 mother at the Rectory, she's gone stone-deaf, and one may shout 
 
478 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 oneself hoarse. But everyone else than you, child, I can hear 
 plain enough. There's naught to complain of in my hearing, 
 yet a while." 
 
 Granny Marrable's conscience stung her yet again about Mrs. 
 Picture's departure unrefreshed. " I would have been the 
 happier for knowing that that old soul was none the worse," said 
 she. But all the answer she got was: — "Be quiet, mother, 
 you'll wake up Toby." 
 
 She harped on the same string next day, the immediate provo- 
 cation to the subject being a visit from Keziah Solmes, the old 
 keeper's wife — you remember her connection Keziah; she who 
 remonstrated with her husband about the use of fire-arms, and 
 nearly saved Adrian Torrens's eyesight ? — who had been driven 
 over, in a carrier's cart that kept up a daily communication 
 between the Towers and Chorlton, in pursuance of an arrange- 
 ment suggested by Gwen. Why should not Widow Thrale's 
 convalescents, when good, enjoy the coveted advantages of a 
 visit to the Towers ? Mrs. Keziah Solmes had welcomed the 
 opportunity for her grandson Seth. Seth was young, but with 
 well-marked procUvities and aspirations, one of which was a 
 desire for male companionship, preferably of boys older than 
 himself whom he could incite to acts of lawlessness and destruc- 
 tion he was still too small to commit effectually. He despised 
 little girls. He had been pleased with the account given of the 
 convalescent Toby, and had consented to receive him on stated 
 terms, having reference to the inequitable distribution of cake in 
 his own favour. Hence this visit of his grandmamma to Strides 
 Cottage, with the end in view that she should return with Toby; 
 who for his part had imdertaken to be good, with secret reserva- 
 tions in his own mind as to special opportunities to be bad, 
 created by temporary withdrawals of control. 
 
 " He can be a very bad little boy indeed," said Widow Thrale, 
 shaking her head solemnly, "when he's forgotten himself. 
 Who was it broke a pane of glass Thursday morning before his 
 breakfast, and very nearly had no sugar ?" 
 
 Toby said, " Me !" and did not show a contrite heart; seemed 
 too much Uke the wicked man that did it again. 
 
 Granny Marrable entered into undertakings for Toby's future 
 conduct. " He's going to be a wonderful good Utile boy this 
 time," said she, " and do just exactly whatever he's told, and 
 nothing else." Toby looked very doubtful, but allowed the 
 matter to drop. 
 
 " He's vary hearty to look at now. Aunt Pho3be," said Mrs. 
 
MOTHERWARDS IN THE DARK 479 
 
 Keziah — Granny Marrable was always Aunt Phoebe to her 
 husband's relations — ^when this youth had gone away to conduct 
 himself unexceptionably elsewhere, on his own recognisances. 
 " What has the little ma'an been ailing with 1" Widow Thrale 
 gave particulars of Toby's disaster, which had let him in for a 
 long convalescence, the moral of which was that no little boy 
 should drink lotions iatended for external use only, however 
 inquiring his disposition might be. Toby had nearly destroyed 
 the coatings of his stomach, and his life had only been preserved 
 by a miracle ; which, however, had happened, so it didn't 
 matter. 
 
 Mrs. Solmes was to await the return of the carrier's cart in a 
 couple of hours, hence it was possible to review and report upon 
 the Uttle local world, deliberately. Granny Marrable began near 
 home. How was the visitor's husband ? 
 
 " He doan't get any yoonger. Aunt Phoebe," said Keziah. 
 " But he has but a vary Uttle to complain of, at his time of life. 
 If and only he could just be oJBE fretting ! He's never been the 
 same in heart since he went so nigh to killing Mr. Torrens o' 
 Pensham, him that yoong Lady Gwen is ta'akia' oop with. But 
 a can't say a didn't forewarn him o' what cooms of a Iwoaded 
 gwun. And he doan't — so I'll do him fair justice." 
 
 " Young Torrens of Pensham, he can't complain," said a 
 sharp, yoimgish woman who had come into the room just soon 
 enough to catch the thread of the conversation. She was the 
 housekeeper at Dr. Nash's, who supplied what he prescribed, 
 and was always very obliging about sending. She came with a 
 bottle. 
 
 " Why can't he complain, Mrs. Lamprey 1" Widow Thrale 
 asked this first, so the others only thought it. 
 
 " Where would he have been, Mrs. Thrale, but for the acci- 
 dent ? Accident you may call it ! A rare bit o' luck some'll 
 think ! Why — ^who would the young gentleman have got for a 
 wife, it nobody had shot him ? Answer me that ! Some girl, 
 I suppose !" 
 
 Yes, indeed ! To marry Gwen o' the Towers ! But how about 
 the poor gentleman's eyesight ? This crux was conjointly pro- 
 pounded. " Think what eyesight is to a man !" said Widow 
 Thrale gravely and convincingly. 
 
 Mrs. Lamprey echoed back: — " His eyesight ?" with a poimce 
 on the first syllable. But seemed to reflect, saying with an 
 abated emphasis: — " Only of course you wouldn't know that." 
 Know what ? — said inquiry. . " Why— about his eyesight ! And 
 
 31 
 
480 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 perhaps I've no call to tell you, seeing I had it in confidence, as 
 you might say." 
 
 This was purely formal, in order to register a breach of con- 
 fidence as an allotropic form of good faith. All pointed out their 
 perfect trustworthiness; and Mrs. Lamprey, with very Uttle 
 further protest, narrated how she had been present when her 
 master. Dr. Nash — ^whom you will remember as having attended 
 Adrian after the accident — told how his colleague at Pensham 
 Steynes had written to him an account of the curious momentary 
 revival of Adrian's eyesight, or perhaps dream. But Dr. Nash 
 had thrown doubt on the dream, and had predicted to his wife 
 that other incidents of the same sort would follow would be- 
 come more frequent, and end in complete recovery. 
 
 A general expression of rejoicing — most emphatic on the part 
 of Keziah, who had a strong personal interest at stake — was 
 followed by a reaction. It was hardly possible to concede Gwen 
 o' the Towers to any consort short of a monarch on his throne, or 
 a coroneted lord of thousands of acres at least, except by virtue 
 of some great sacrifice on the part of the fortunate man, that 
 would average his lot with that of common humanity. It 
 wasn't fair. Let Fate be reasonable ! Adrian, blind for life, 
 was one thing; but to call such a peerless creature wife, and 
 have eyes to see her ! A line must be drawn, somewhere ! 
 
 " We must hope," said Granny Marrable, as soon as a working 
 eyesight was fairly installed in each one's image of Mr. Torrens, 
 " that he may prove himself worthy." 
 
 Said Widow Thrale : — " 'Tis no ways hard to guess which her 
 ladyship would choose. I would not have been happy to wed 
 with a blind husband. Nor yourself. Cousin Keziah !" 
 
 Said Mrs. Keziah : — " I'm a-looking forward to the telling of 
 my good man. But I lay he'll be for sayun' next, that he'll be 
 all to blame if the wedding turn out iU." 
 
 " How can ye put that down to him, to lay it at his door ? The 
 fault is none of his. Cousin Keziah." Thus Widow Thrale. 
 
 " Truly the fault be none of his. But thou doesna knaw 
 Ste'aphen Solmes as I do. He'll be for sayun' — ^if that g'woon 
 had a been unlwoaded. Master Torrens had gone his way, and 
 no harm done, nouther to him nor yet to Gwen. But who can 
 say for certain that 'tis not God's will all along ?" 
 
 Mrs. Lamprey interrupted. There was the child's medicine, 
 to be taken regiilar, three times a day as directed on the bottle, 
 and she had to take Farmer Jones his gout mixture. " But 
 what I told yoUj that's all correct," said she. departing. 
 
MOTHERWARDS IN THE DARK 481 
 
 " The gentleman will get his eyesight again, and Dr. Nash 
 says so." 
 
 Keziah waited for Mrs. Lamprey to depart, and then went on : — 
 " They do say marriages are made in Heaven, and 'tis not unUke 
 to be true. 'Tis all one there whether we be high or low." This 
 was a tribute to Omnipotence, acknowledging its independence 
 of County FamiUes. So august a family as the Earl's might wed 
 as it would, without suffering disparagement. Anyway, there 
 was her young ladyship driving off this very morning to Pen- 
 sham, so there was every sign at present that the decrees of Provi- 
 dence would hold good. She, Keziah, had heard from her 
 nephew, Tom Kettering, where he was to drive, the carrier's 
 cart having called at the Towers after picking her up at the 
 cottage. Moreover, she — having alighted to interchange greet- 
 ings with the household — had chanced to overhear her young 
 ladyship say where she was going and when she would be back. 
 She was talking with an old person, a stranger, in black, with 
 silver-white hair. 
 
 " That would be Dave's old Mrs. Picture, Ruth," said Granny 
 Marrable, with apparent interest. She was not at all sorry to 
 hear something of her having arrived safely at the Towers, none 
 the worse for her long drive yesterday. Mrs. Keziah, however, 
 showed a disposition to qualify her report, saying: — "Th' 
 o'ald la'ady was ma'akin' but a power show, at that. She'll be 
 a great age, shower-ly ! Only they do say, creaking dowers 
 ha'ang longest." 
 
 Said Widow Thrale then, explanatorily: — "Mother will be 
 fretting by reason that the old soul would take no refreshment. 
 But reckon you can't with Wills and Won'ts, do what you may ! 
 They just drove away, sharp, they did ! I tell mother she took 
 no harm, and if she did, t'was no fault of hers, or mine, I lay !" 
 
 Two days later. Widow Thrale went over by arrangement to 
 Mrs. Solmes's cottage to recover her convalescent, Toby. She 
 also travelled by the carrier's cart, accepting the hospitaUty of 
 her cousin for the night, and returning next day with Toby. 
 Granny Marrable was not going to be left alone at the cottage, 
 as she was bidden to spend a day or two with her granddaughter, 
 or more strictly grandniece, Maisie Costrell, to make up for her 
 inability, owing to a bad cold six weeks since, to accompany 
 Widow Thrale to the first celebration of the birthday of the 
 latter's grandchild, at whose entry into the world you may 
 remember the old lady was officiating when Dave visited Strides 
 Cottage a year ago. 
 
[482 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Said she^ parting at the door from Widow Thrale: — " You'll 
 keep it in mind what I said, Ruth." 
 
 Said Ruth, in reply, — " Touching the two yards of calico, or 
 young Davy's London Granny ?" For she had more than one 
 mission to Keziah. 
 
 "If you name her so, child." This rather stiffly. "Any- 
 wise, her yoimg ladyship's old soul that come in the carriage. 'Tis 
 small concern of mine, or none at all, to be asking. But I would 
 be the easier to be assured that all went well with her, looking 
 so dazed as she did. At her time of life too ! More like than 
 not Keziah will be for taking you over to the Castle, and maybe 
 you'll see Mrs. — ^Picture. . . ." 
 
 " Picture's not her real name, only young Davy he's made it 
 for her." 
 
 " Well, child, 'tis the same person bears it, whatever the name 
 be ! Maybe you'll see Mrs. Picture, and maybe she'll have some- 
 thing to tell of little Davy. I would have made some inquiry of 
 him from her myself, but the time was not to spare." This 
 Granny had not been at all disposed to admit that another 
 Granny could give her any information about Dave. But 
 curiosity rankled, and inquiry through an agent was another 
 matter. 
 
 " Lawsey me, mother," said Widow Thrale. " I'll get Keziah 
 to take me round, and I'll get some gossip with the old soul. 
 I'll warrant she hasn't lost her tongue, even be she old as 
 Parson Dunage's mother at the Rectory. Good-bye, mother 
 dear ! Take care of yourself on the road to Maisie's. Put on 
 Sister Nora's fur tippet in the open cart, for the wind blows 
 cold at sundown." Granny Marrable disallowed the fur tippet, 
 with some scorn for the luxury of the Age. 
 
 If Brantook the carrier, who drove away with Widow Thrale, 
 promising that she should be in time for sooper at Soalmes's, and 
 a bit thrown in, had been told whose mother she would speak 
 with next day, and when she saw her last, he would probably 
 have said nothing — for carriers don't talk; they carry — but his 
 manner would have betrayed his incredulity. And Brantock 
 was no more of a Sadducee than his betters. Who could have 
 believed that that afternoon Widow Thrale and Granny Marrable 
 went away in opposite directions, the former to her own mother, 
 the latter to Mrs. Picture's grandchild, amid the utter ignorance 
 of all concerned ? Yet the facts of the case were just as we 
 have stated them, and no one of the incidents that brought 
 them about was in itself incredible. 
 
MOTHERWARDS IN THE DARK 483 
 
 Brantock was not told anjrthing at all about anything, and 
 did not himself originate a single remark, except that the rain 
 was holding off. It may have been. His horse appeared to have 
 read the directions on all the parcels, choosing without instruction 
 the most time-saving routes to their different destinations, and 
 going on the moment they were paid for. In fact, Mr. Brantock 
 had frequently to resume his seat on a cart in motion, at the risk 
 of his hfe. When they arrived at the passenger's destination, 
 the horse looked round to make quite sure she was safe on the 
 ground, and then started promptly. His master showed his 
 superiority to the mere brute creation, at this point, by saying, 
 " Good-night, mistress !" The horse said nothing. 
 
 Widow Thrale had only expected to hear a mixed report of 
 the success of her convalescent's visit, so she was not disappointed. 
 It gradually came out that Seth and Toby had at first glared 
 suspiciously at one another; the former, as the host, refusing to 
 shake hands; the latter denying his identity, saying to him 
 explicitly: — "Tou ain't the woman's Uttle boy!" They had 
 then dissimulated their hostiUty, in order to mislead their intro- 
 ducers. They had even gone the length of affecting readiness 
 to play together, in order that they might take advantage of the 
 absence of authority to arrange a duel without seconck. This 
 was interrupted, not because the unrestrained principals could 
 injure each other — ^they were much too small and soft to do that 
 — ^but in order to do justice to civilised usage, which defines the 
 relations of host and guest; crossing fisticuffs, even pacifisticuffs, 
 off their programme altogether, and only countenancing religion 
 and poUtics with reservations. Being separated, each laid claim 
 to having licked the other. In which they followed the time- 
 honoured usage of embattled hosts, or at least of their respective 
 war correspondents. They then became fast friends till death. 
 Widow Thrale was grieved and shocked at the behaviour of a 
 little boy to whom she had ascribed superhuman goodness. A 
 fallen idol ! 
 
 However, as both were too young to be troubled with con- 
 sdences, and nothing appeared to overtax their powers of diges- 
 tion, the visit was considered a great success. In fact, it com- 
 peted with a previous visit last year, of our Dave Wardle, to the 
 disadvantage of the latter; as Dave and Seth had been too far 
 apart in age, and the only point in which Dave's visit scored was 
 that he was big enough to carry Seth on his shoulders, and even 
 this had been prohibited owing to his recent surgical experiences. 
 The making of the comparison naturally led to the connection of 
 
484 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Dave, whatever it was, with the old woman at the Towers, whom 
 Lady Gwen had nigh lost her wits about — so folks said. " But 
 tha knowas what o'or Gwen be !" said Mirs. Keziah. Gwen's 
 reputation with all the countryside was that of waywardness and 
 wilfulness carried to excess, but always with an mierring nobiUty 
 of object. 
 
 Old Stephen had something to say about this, and preferred 
 to put it as a contradiction to Keziah. " Na-ay, na-ay, wife ! 
 O'or Gwen can guess a lady, by tokens, as well as thou or I. 
 Tha-at be the story of it. Some la-ady that's coom by ill-luck 
 in her o'ald age, and no friend to hand. She'm gotten a friend 
 now, and a good one 1" The old boy did not seem nearly so 
 depressed as his wife's account of him had led Strides Cottage to 
 believe. But then, to be sure, the first thing she had told him 
 when she reached home with the boy yesterday, was Mrs. 
 Lamprey's story of Mr. Torrens's probable restoration of sight. 
 Hope was Hope, and the cloud had hfted. His speculation 
 about Mrs. Picture's possible social status was quite a talkative 
 effort, for him. 
 
 Somehow it did not seem convincing to his hearers. Keziah 
 shook her head in slow doubt. " If that were the right of it, 
 husband, the housekeeper's rooms would be no place for her. 
 Gwen would not put it on her to bide with Mrs. Masham." 
 
 Old Stephen did not acquiesce. " May happen the old soul 
 would shrink shy of the great folk at the Towers," said he. 
 
 " Ay, but there be none !" said his wife. She went on to say 
 that there was scarce a living soul now at the Castle, beyond 
 Gwen and sundry domestics, making ready for the Colonel on 
 Monday. This was a gentleman who scarcely comes into the 
 story, a much younger brother of the Countess, who was allowed 
 to bring friends down for the shooting every autumn to the 
 Towers, and took full advantage of the permission. This year 
 had been an exceptionally good year for the pheasants ; in their 
 sense, not the sportsman's. For all the Colonel's friends were 
 in the Crimea, and the October shooting had been sadly neglected 
 except by the poachers. He was now back from the Crimea, 
 but was not good for much shooting or fox-hunting, having been 
 himself shot through the lungs in September at the Battle of the 
 Alma, and invalided home. But he was already equal to the 
 duties of host to a shooting-party, and though he could kiU 
 nothing himself, he could hear others do so, and could smell the 
 nice powder. The Earl hated this sort of thing, and was glad to 
 get out of the way till the worst of it was over. 
 
MOTHERWARDS IN THE DARK 485 
 
 Widow Thrale kept modestly outside this review of the Castle's 
 econoinies, but when they were exhausted referred again to her 
 wish to get a sight of old Mrs. Picture, putting her anxiety to do 
 so entirely on the shoulders of the Granny, of whose wish to 
 know that the old woman had borne the rest of her journey she 
 made the most. She was not prepared to confess to her own 
 curiosity, so she used this device to absolve her of confession. 
 C!ousin Keziah also was really a little inquisitive, so an arrange- 
 ment was easily made that these two should walk over to the 
 Towers on the afternoon of next day, pledging old Stephen to 
 the keeping of a careful eye on the pranks of the two young 
 conspirators against the peace and well-being of maturity, 
 whose business it is to know the exact amount of licence per- 
 missible to youth, and at what point the restraint of a firm enun- 
 ciation of IJgh moral principles becomes a necessity. 
 
 If Widow Thrale had been seized with a sudden mania for the 
 improbable, and had set her wits to work their hardest on a 
 carefully chosen typical example, could she have lighted on 
 one that would have imposed a greater strain on human powers 
 of belief than the presence, a mile off, of her mother, dead fifty 
 years since ? How improbable it would have seemed to her 
 that her aunt and her kith and kin of that date should fall so 
 easily dupes to a fraud ! How improbable that folk should be 
 so content without inquiry, on either side of the globe ; that her 
 own mother should remain so for years, and should even lack 
 curiosity, when she returned to England, to seek out her sister's 
 grave; an instinctive tribute, one would have said, almost cer- 
 tain to be paid by so loving a survivor ! How improbable that 
 no two lines of life of folk concerned should ever intersect there- 
 after, through nearly fifty years ! And then, how about her 
 father ? — how about possible half-brothers and sisters of hers ? 
 — how improbable that they should remain quiescent and never 
 seek to know anything about their own flesh and blood, sur- 
 viving in England ! What a tissue of improbabilities ! 
 
 But then, supposing all facts known, would not old Maisie's 
 daughter have admitted their possibility, even made concession 
 as to probability ? Had the tale been told to her then and 
 there, at the Ranger's Lodge in the Park, the two forged letters 
 shown her, and aU the devil's cunning of their trickery, would 
 it have seemed so strange that her simple old aunt should be 
 caught in the snare, or others less concerned in the detection of 
 the fraud ? And had she then come to know this — ^that when 
 
486 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 her mother in the end, twenty years later, came back to her 
 native land, her first act was to seek out the grave where she 
 knew her father was buried, and to find his name alone upon it; 
 that she was then misled by a confused statement of a witness 
 speaking from hearsay; and that she went away thereupon, 
 having kept a strict lock on her tongue as to her own name, and 
 the marriage she now knew to have been no marriage — had 
 Ruth Thrale been told all this, would it not have gone far to 
 soften the harshness of the tale's incredibiUty? 
 
 That story was a strange one, nevertheless, of Maisie's visit 
 to the little graveyard in Essex, where she thought to find the 
 epitaph of Phoebe and of Phoebe's husband probably, and her 
 father's to a certainty. For wherever her brother-in-law and 
 his wife were interred, her father's remains must have been 
 placed beside her mother's, in the grave she had known from 
 her childhood. But nothing had been added to the inscription of 
 her early recollections, except her father's name and appropriate 
 Scriptural citations; with a date, as it chanced, near enough to 
 the one she expected, to rouse no suspicion of the deceptions her 
 husband had practised on her. 
 
 Her consciousness of her equivocal position had weighed upon 
 her so strongly that she hesitated to make herself known to any 
 of the older inhabitants of the village — ^indeed, she would have 
 been at a loss whom to choose — and least of all to any of her 
 husband's relatives, though it would have been easy to find 
 them. No doubt also it made her speech obscure to the only 
 person of whom she made any inquiry. This person, who may 
 have been the parish clerk, saw her apparently looking for a 
 particular grave, and asked if he could give any information. 
 Instead of giving her sister's name, or her own, she answered : — 
 " I am looking for my sister's grave. We were the daughters 
 of Isaac Rimciman." His reply: — "She went away. I could 
 not tell you where " was evidently a confused idea, involving a 
 recollection by a man well under forty of Maisie's own disap- 
 pearance during a period of his boyhood just too early for vital 
 interest in two young women in their twenties. He had taken 
 her for Phoebe. But he must have felt the shakiness of his 
 answer afterwards. For nothing can make it a coherent one, as 
 a speech to Phcebe. On the other hand, it did not seem inco- 
 herent to Maisie. She connected it with the false story of 
 her sister's departure to nurse her husband in Belgium, and the 
 wreck of the steamer in which they recrossed the Channel. 
 Her tentative question: — "Did you know of the shipwreck 7" 
 
MOTHERWARDS EST THE DARK 487 
 
 only confirmed this. His reply was : — " I was not here at the. 
 time, so I only knew that she was going abroad to her 
 husband." He was speaking of Maisie's own voyage to 
 Australia, and took her speech to mean that the ship she 
 sailed in was wrecked. She was thinking of the forged letter. 
 
 Have you, who read this, ever chanced to have an experience 
 of how vain it is to try to put oneself in touch with events of 
 twenty or thirty years ago? How came Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 and John to be so near of a tale if, as some fancy, they never 
 put stylus to papyrus till Paul pointed out their duty to them? 
 Did they compare notes ? But if they did, why did they leave 
 any work to be done by harmonizers ? 
 
 However, this story has nothing to do with Matthew, Mark, 
 Luke, or John. Reflections suggest themselves, for all that, 
 with unconscious Mrs. Ruth Thrale in charge of her cousin by 
 marriage, Keziah Solmes, making her way by the road — ^because 
 the short cut through the Park is too wet — ^to the great old 
 Castle, with a room in it where an old, old woman with a sweet 
 face and silver-white hair is watching the cold November sun 
 that has done its best for the day and must die, and waiting 
 patiently for the coming of a Guardian Angel with a golden head 
 and a voice that rings Like music. For that is what Gwen o' 
 the Towers is to old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps Court, who came 
 there from SkiUicks. 
 
 What is that comely countrywoman on the road to old Mrs. 
 Prichard ? What was old Mrs. Prichard to her, fifty-odd years 
 ago, before she drew breath ? What, when that strong hand, a 
 baby's then, tugged at those silver locks, then golden ? 
 
488 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HOW OLD MAISIE EBCEIVBD A VISIT FROM HEE DATTGHTEB RUTH, 
 AND REMADE HER ACQUAINT ANCE. HOW B,VTH STAYED TO 
 TEA. OF HER RESEMBLANCE TO POMONA. Of DAVB's CON- 
 FUSION, LAST YEAR, BETWEEN HIS TWO HONORARY GRANNIES. 
 OF MAGIC MUSIC, AND HOW AGGRAVATED AN ANGEL MIGHT 
 HAVE BEEN, WHO PLAYED, FOR DESTINY TO GUESS. HOW 
 OLD MAISIE didn't GO TO SLEEP, AND POMONA MADE TOAST. 
 OF A LOG, AND SOME LICHENS. HOW A LITTLE BEETLE GOT 
 BURNT ALIVE, AND POSSIBLY THE SERVANTS WERE NOT 
 QUARRELLING. HOW OLD MAISIE HEARD HERSELF CALLED " A 
 PLAGUY OLD CAT." MRS. MASHAM's DUPLICITY. HOW OLD 
 MAISIE WISHED FOR HER OWN DAUGHTER, UNAWARES 
 
 Old Maisie had a difficulty in walking, owing to rheumatism. 
 But this had improved since her promotion from the diet of 
 Sapps Coiu:t to that of Cavendish Square; and, later, of the 
 Towers. So much so, that she would often walk about the 
 room, for change ; and had even gone cautiously on the garden- 
 terrace, keeping near the house; which was possible, as Francis 
 Quarles had lodged on a ground-floor when he gave his name to 
 the room she occupied. 
 
 So, this afternoon, after wondering for some time whose voices 
 those were she heard, variously, in the several passages and 
 antechambers of the servants' quarters, and deciding that one 
 broad provincial accent was a native's, and the other, a softer 
 and sweeter one, that of one of the inhabitants of Strides Cottage, 
 she could not be sure which, she got up slowly from her chair by 
 the fire, and made her way to the wiadow, to see the better the 
 Uttle that was left of the sunlight. 
 
 Was that cold red disk, going oval in the colder grey of the mist 
 that rose from the darkening land, the selfsame remorseless sun 
 that, one Christmas Day that she remembered well, blazed so 
 over Macquaiie that the awkward well-handle, the work of a 
 convict on ticket-of -leave, who had started a forge near by, grew 
 8o hot it all but singed the sheep's wool she wrapped round it to 
 protect her hands ? So hot that her husband, even when the 
 sun was as low as this, could light his pipe with a burning-glass — 
 a telescope lens whose tube had gone astray, to lead a useless Uf e 
 elsewhere. She remembered that shoeing-smith well; a good 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 489 
 
 fellow, sentenced for life for a crime akin to Wat Tyler's, merci- 
 fully reprieved from death by King George in consideration of 
 his provocation; for was he not, like Wat Tyler, the girl's father ? 
 She remembered what she accounted that man's only weakness 
 ■ — his dwelling with joy on the sound of the hammer-stroke of 
 his swift, retributive justice — the concussion of the remorseless 
 wrought iron on the split skull of a human beast. She remem- 
 bered his words with a shudder: — " Ay, mistress, I can shut my 
 eyes and listen for it now. And many was the time it gave me 
 peace to think upon it. Ay ! — ^in the worst of my twenty years, 
 the nights in the cursed river-boat they called the hulks, I could 
 bear them I was shut up with in the dark, and the vermin that 
 crawled about us, and a'most laugh to be able to hear it again, 
 and bless God that it sent him to Hell without time for a prayer !" 
 The words came ba«k to her mind Hke the hideous incident of a 
 dream we cannot for shame repeat aloud, and made her flesh 
 creep. But then, suppose the girl had been her Dolly Wardle, 
 grown big, or her own little maid, whom she never saw again, 
 who died near fifty years ago ! Why — ^the sleeping face of 
 that baby was fresh on her lips still; had never lost its freshness 
 since she tore herself away to reach, at any cost, the man 
 she loved ! 
 
 Could not the sun have been content to set, without becoming 
 a link with a past she shrank from, so many were the evil mem- 
 ories that clung about it ? She was glad that some one should 
 come into the room, to break through this one. There was 
 nothing in this good-humoured villager — surely Pomona's self 
 in a cotton print, somewhat older than is usual with that goddess 
 — ^nothing but what served to banish these nightmares of her 
 lonely recollection. Only, mind you, Sam Kendall — that was 
 Wat Tyler's name, this time — was a good man, who deserved to 
 have had that daughter's children on his knee. She, Maisie, 
 had deserted hers. 
 
 " May happen you'U call me to mind, ma'am, me and my old 
 mother, at the door of Strides Cottage, two days agone. I 
 made bold to look in, hoping to see you better." Thus Pomona, 
 and old Maisie was grateful for the wholesome voice. Still, she 
 was puzzled, being unconscious that she had seemed so ill. 
 Pomona thought her introduction of herself had not been clear, 
 and repeated: — " Strides Cottage, just this side Chorlton, betwixt 
 Farmer Jones and the Reedcroft — ^where her young ladyship bid 
 stop the carriage. . . ." She paused to let the old lady think. 
 Perhaps she was going too fast. 
 
490 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 But no — ^it was not that at all. Old Maisie was quite clear 
 about the incident, and its whereabouts. " Oh yes !" said she. 
 " I knew it was Strides Cottage, because I had the name from 
 my little Davy, for the envelopes of his letters. And I knew 
 Farmer Jones, because of his Bull. It was only a bit of fatigue, 
 with the long ride." Then as the bald disclaimer of any need for 
 solicitude seemed a chill return for Pomona's cordiahty, old 
 Maisie hastened to add a corollary: — "I did not find the time 
 to thank your mother as I would have liked to do ; but I get old 
 and slow, and the coachman was a bit quick of his whip. I 
 should be sorry for you to think me ungrateful, or your good 
 mother." 
 
 It was as well that she added this, for there was a shade of 
 wavering in Ruth Thralo's heart as to whether the interview 
 was welcome. A trace of that jealousy about Dave just hung 
 in Maisie's manner. And she rather stood committed, by not 
 having accepted the mutton-broth. That corollary may have 
 been Heaven-sent, to keep the mother and daughter in touch, 
 in the dark — ^just for a chance of light ! 
 
 And yet it only just served its turn. For the daughter's half- 
 hesitating reply: — " But I thought I would look in," if expanded 
 to explanation-point, would have been worded: — "I came to 
 show good-will, more than from any grounded misgivings about 
 your health, ma'am ; and now, having shown it, it is time to go." 
 And she might have departed, easily. 
 
 But Fate also showed good-will, and would not permit it. 
 Old Mrs. Picture became suddenly alive to the presence of a 
 well-wisher, and to her own reluctance to drive her away. " Oh, 
 but you need not go yet," said she. " Or perhaps they want 
 you ?" 
 
 Oh dear no ! — ^nobody wanted her. Her friend she came with, 
 her Cousin Keziah, was talking to Mrs. Masham. The pleasant 
 presence would remain, its owner said, and take a seat near the 
 fire. The old lady was glad, for she had had but little talk with 
 anyone that day. Her morning interview with Gwen had been 
 a short one, for that young lady was longing to get away for a 
 second visit to her lover. 
 
 Old Maisie, to encourage possible difiSdence to believe that a 
 quiet chat would really be welcome to her, made reference to 
 the disappointment such a short allowance of her young lady- 
 ship had been, and resuming her high-backed chair, put on her 
 spectacles to get a better view of her visitor — oh, how uncon- 
 sciously 1 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 491 
 
 Think of the last kiss she gave a sleeping baby, half a century 
 ago ! 
 
 There was, of course, a topic they could speak of — ^little Dave 
 Wardle, dear to both. Widow Thrale, fond as she had been 
 of the child, had not Granny Marrable's bias towards monopo- 
 lizing him. That was the result of a grande passion, generated 
 perhaps by the encouragement the yoimg man had given to a 
 second Granny, so very equivalent to his first. Moreover, there 
 was that obscure reference in his letters to an accident — ^for 
 axdnt was a mere clerical error. She worded an inquiry after 
 Dave, tentatively. 
 
 " I have not seen the dear child for four weeks," said old 
 Maisie. " Oh dear me, yes — ^four weeks and more ! Let me see, 
 when was the accident ? . . . Oh dear ! — ^how the time does slip 
 away ! . . ." 
 
 " Was that the accident Dave speaks of in his letter ? We 
 could not quite make out Dave's letter. Sometimes 'tis a httle 
 to seek, what the child means." 
 
 Old Maisie nodded assent. " But he'll soon be quite a scholar 
 and write his own letters all through. I think her ladyship took 
 this one to send it back. I can tell you about the accident. It 
 was owing to the repairs." The old lady pursued the subject in 
 the true spirit of a narrator, beginning at a wrong end, by prefer- 
 ence one unintelligible to her hearer. In consequence, the actual 
 fall of the house-wall was postponed, in favour of a description 
 of its cause, which dealt specially with the blamelessness of Mr. 
 Bartlett, and incidentally with the dishonesty of some colleagues 
 of his, of whom he had spoken as " they," without particulars. 
 Her leniency to Mr. Bartlett was entirely f oimded on the fact that 
 she had conversed with him once on the subject, and had been 
 mysteriously impressed with his simplicity and manliness. How 
 did Mr. Bartlett manage it ? A faint percentage of beer, like 
 foreign matter in analyses, is not alone enough to establish 
 integrity. Nor a flavour of clothes. 
 
 The wall fell in the end, and Widow Thrale saw a light on the 
 story, after expressing more admiration and sympathy for Mr. 
 Bartlett than was human, under the circumstances. She was 
 much impressed. " And by the mercy of God you were all 
 saved, ma'am," said she. " Her young ladyship and little Dave, 
 and his sister, and yourself !" It really seemed quite a stroke 
 of business, this, on the part of a Superior Power, which had 
 left building materials and gravitation, after creating them, to 
 their own wayward impulses. 
 
492 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Old Maisie admitted the beneficence of Providence, but rather 
 as an act of courtesy. " For," said she, " we were never in any 
 real danger, owing to the piece of timber Mr. Bartlett had thrown 
 across to catch the floor-joists." She was of course repeating 
 Mr. Bartlett's own words, without close analysis of their actual 
 meaning. Her mind only just avoided associations of cricket. 
 But poor Susan Burr — oh dear ! — that was much worse. " She 
 has done wonderfully well, though," continued the old lady, 
 " and her case gave the greatest satisfaction to the Doctors at 
 the Hospital. She has written to me herself since leaving. And 
 she must be really better, because she has gone to her married niece 
 at Clapham." It seemed a sort of destiny that this niece's 
 wifehood should always be emphasized. It was almost impUed 
 that a less complete recovery would have resulted in a journey 
 to a single niece, at Clapham; or possibly, only at Battersea. 
 Widow Thrale was interested in the accident, but she wanted 
 to get back to Dave Wardle. " Then no one could hve in the 
 house, ma'am," she said, " after it had fallen down ?" 
 
 " Not in my rooms upstairs, nor his Aunt M'riar's imdemeath. 
 Only his uncle stopped in, to keep the place. His room was all 
 safe. It was like the front of two rooms, all down in the street 
 as if it was an earthquake. And no forewarning, above a crack 
 or two ! But the children safe, God be thanked, and her young 
 ladyship ! Also her cousin. Miss Grahame, down below with 
 Aunt M'riar." 
 
 " That lady we call Sister Nora ?" 
 
 " That lady. But I was so stunned and dazed with the start 
 it gave me, and the noise, that I had no measure of anything. 
 They took me home with them. I can just call to mind moving 
 in the carriage, and the lampUghter." Old Maisie recollected 
 seeing the lampUghter, but she had forgotten how she was got 
 into that carriage. 
 
 " Then you hardly saw the children ?" 
 
 " I was all mazed. I heard my DoUy cry, poor little soul ! 
 Her ladyship says Dave took Dolly up very short for being such 
 a coward. But he kissed her, for comfort, and to keep her in 
 heart." 
 
 " He didn't cry !" 
 
 " Davy ? — ^not he. Davy makes it a point to be afraid of 
 nothing. His uncle has taught him so. He was " — here some 
 hesitation — " he belonged to what they called the Prize Ring. 
 A professional boxer." It sounded better than " prizefighter " 
 — more restrained. 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 493 
 
 "Oh dear!" said Widow Thrale. "Yes. I had heard 
 that." 
 
 *' But he is a good man," said old Maisie, warming to the 
 defence of Uncle Mo. " He is indeed ! He won't let Dave 
 fight, only a little now and then. But Dave says he told him. 
 Uncle Mo did, that if ever he saw a boy hit a little girl, he was to 
 hit that boy at once, without stopping to think how big he was. 
 And he told him where ! Is not that a good man ?" 
 
 " Oh dear !" said Widow Thrale again, uneasily. " Won't 
 Dave hit some boy that's too strong for him, and get hurt ?" 
 
 " I think he may, ma'am. But then . . . some one may take 
 his part ! I should pray." She went on to repeat an adventure 
 of Dave's, when he behaved as directed to a young monster who 
 was stuffing some abomination into a Uttle girl's mouth. But it 
 ended with the words : — " The boy ran away." Perhaps Uncle 
 Mo had judged rightly of the class of boy that he had in mind, 
 as almost sure to run away. 
 
 The Pomona in Widow Thrale had gone behind a cloud during 
 her misgivings about Uncle Mo. The cloud passed, as the 
 image of this boy fled from Nemesis. He was a London boy, 
 evidently, and up to date. The Feudal System, as surviving 
 at Chorlton, countenanced no such boys. The voice of Pomona 
 was cheerful again as she resumed Dave: — " Where, then, is the 
 boy, till he goes back home ?" 
 
 " His aunt has got him at her mother's, at Ealing. His real 
 grandmother's." Pomona had a subconsciousness that this made 
 three; an outrageous allowance of grandmothers for any boy ! 
 But she would not say so, as this old lady might be sensitive 
 about her own claims, which might be called in question if 
 Dave's list was revised. 
 
 Ealing recalled an obscure passage in his letter, which was 
 really an insertion, in the text, of the address of his haven of 
 refuge. It read, transcribed literally: — "My grandMother is 
 hEALing," and the recollection of it reinforced the laugh with 
 which Pomona pleaded to misinterpretation. " Mother and I 
 both thought she bad cut herseK," said she. 
 
 Old Maisie, amused at Dave, made answer: — "No! — ^it's 
 where he is. Number Two, Penkover Terrace, Ealing. Penkover 
 is very hard to recollect. So do write it down. Write it now. 
 I shall very likely forget it directly; because when I get tired with 
 talking, I swim, and the room goes round. ... Oh no — I'm not 
 tired yet, and you <f^'^ me good to talk to." 
 
 But the old lady iad talked to the full extent of her tether. 
 
494 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 But even in this short conversation the impression made upon her 
 by this new acquaintance was so favourable that she felt loth 
 to let her depart; to leave her, perhaps, to some memory of the 
 past as painful as the one she had interrupted. If she had spoken 
 her exact mind she would have said: — "No, don't go yet. I 
 can't talk much, but it makes me happy to sit here in the growing 
 dusk and hear about Dave. It brings the child back to me, and 
 does my heart good." That was the upshot of her thought, but 
 she felt that their acquaintance was too short to warrant it. 
 She was bound to make an effort, if .not to entertain, at least to 
 bear her share of the conversation. 
 
 " Tell me more about Davy, when you had him at the Cottage. 
 Did he talk about me ?" This followed her declaration that she 
 was " not tired yet " in a voice that lost force audibly. Her visitor 
 chose a wiser course than to make a parade of her readiness to 
 take a hint and begone. She chatted on about Dave's stay with 
 her a year since, about little things the story knows already, 
 while the old lady vouched at intervals — quite truly — that she 
 heard every word, and that her closed eyes did not mean sleep. 
 The incident of Dave's having persisted — ^when he awaked and 
 found " mother " looking at him, the day after his first arrival — 
 that it was old Mrs. Picture upstairs, and how they thought the 
 child was still dreaming, was really worth the telling. Old Maisie 
 showed her amusement, and felt bound to rouse herself to say : — 
 " The name is not really Picture, but it doesn't matter. I like 
 Dave's name — Mrs. Picture !" It was an effort, and when she 
 added : — " The name is really Prichard," her voice lost strength, 
 and her hearer lost the name. Fate seemed against Dave's 
 pronunciation being corrected. 
 
 You know the game we used to call Magic Music — ■we oldsters, 
 when we were children ? You know how, from your seat at the 
 piano, you watched your hstener striving to take the hints yon 
 strove to give, and wandering aimlessly away from the fire-irons 
 he should have shouldered — ^the book he should have read upside 
 down — ^the little sister he should have kissed or tickled — ^what 
 not ? ®You remember the obdurate pertinacity with which he 
 missed fire, and balked the triumphant outburst that should have 
 greeted his success ? Surely, if some well-wisher among the 
 choir of Angels, harping with their harps, had been at Chorlton 
 then and there, under contract to guide Destiny, by playing loud 
 and soft — ^not giving unfair hints — ^to the reuniting of the long- 
 lost sisters, that Angel would have been hard tried to see how 
 near the spark went to fire the train, yet flickered down and died ; 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 495 
 
 how many a false scent crossed the true one, and threw the 
 tracker out ! 
 
 Old Maisie's powers of sustained attention were, of course, much 
 less than she supposed, and her visitor's pleasant voice, rij)pling 
 on in the growing dusk, was more an anodyne than a stimulant. 
 She did not go to sleep — people don't ! But something that 
 very nearly resembled sleep must have come to her. Whatever 
 it was, she got clear of it to find, with surprise, that Mrs. Thrale, 
 with her bonnet off, was making toast at the glowing wood- 
 embers ; and that candles were burning, and that somehow tea 
 had germinated. 
 
 " I thought I would make you some toast, more our sort. . . . 
 Oh yes ! What the young lady has brought is very nice, but 
 this will be hott«r." The real Pomona never looked about fifty — 
 she was a goddess, you see ! — ^but it she had, and had made toast, 
 she must have resembled Ruth Thrale. 
 
 Then old Maisie became more vividly alive to her visitor, 
 helped by the fact that she had been imconscious in her presence. 
 That was human nature. The estabhshment of a common 
 sympathy about Lupin, the tea-purveyor, was social nature. 
 Pomona had called Miss Lupin " the young lady." This had 
 placed Miss Lupin; she belonged to a superior class, and her 
 ministrations were a condescension. It was strange indeed 
 that such trivialities should have a force to span the huge gulf 
 years had dug between these two, and yet never show a rift in 
 the black cloud of their fraud-begotten ignorance. They did 
 draw them nearer together, beyond a doubt; especially that 
 recognition of Miss Lupin's position. Old Maisie had never 
 felt comfortable with the household, while always oppressed 
 with gratitude for its benevolences. She had felt that she had 
 expressed it very imperfectly to her young ladyship, to cause her 
 to say: — " They will get all you want, I dare say. But how do 
 they behave ? That's the point ! Are they giving themselves 
 airs, or being pretty to you ?" For this downright young beauty 
 never minced matters. But naturally old Maisie had felt 
 that she could do nothing but show gratitude for the atten- 
 tion of the household, especially as she could not for the 
 life of her define the sources of her discomfort in her relations 
 with it. 
 
 This saddler's widow from Chorlton, with all her village life 
 upon her, and her utter ignorance of the monstrous world of 
 Rlaises own past experience, came Uke a breath of fresh air. 
 Was it Pomona though ? — or was it the tea? Reserve gave 
 
 32 
 
496 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 way to an impulse of informal speech: — "My dear, you have 
 had babies of your own ?" 
 
 Pomona's open-eyed smile seemed to spread to her very finger- 
 tips. " Babies ? Me ?" she exclaimed. " Yes indeed ! But 
 not so very many, if you count them. Five, all told ! Two of 
 my little girls I lost — 'tis a many years agone now. My two 
 boys are aboard ship, one in the Black Sea, one in the Baltic, 
 My eldest on the Agamemnon. My second — he's but sixteen — 
 on the Tithonus. But he's seen service — he was at Bomarsund 
 in August. Please God, when the war is over, they'll come back 
 with a many tales for their mother and their granny ! I lie 
 awake and pray for them, nights." 
 
 The old lady kept her thoughts to herself — even spoke with 
 unwarranted confidence of these boys' return. She shied off 
 the subject, nevertheless. How about the other little girl, the 
 one that still remained undescribed ? 
 
 " My married daughter ? She is my youngest. She's mar- 
 ried to John Costrell's son at Denby's farm. Maisie. Her first 
 little boy is just over a year old." 
 
 Old Maisie brightened, interested, at the name. A young 
 Maisie, so near at hand ! " My own name !" she said. " To 
 think of that !" Yet, after all, the name was a common one. 
 
 " Called after her grandmother," said Ruth Thrale, equably — 
 chattily. " Mother has gone over to-day to make up for not 
 going on his birthday." Of course the " grandmother " alluded 
 to was her own proper mother, the yoimg mother on whose head 
 that old silver hair she was watching so unconsciously had been 
 golden brown, fifty years ago. For all that, Ruth spoke of her 
 aunt as " mother," automatically. What wonder that old 
 Maisie accepted Granny Marrable's Christian name as the same 
 as her own. " My name is the same as your mother's, then !" 
 seemed worth saying, on the whole, though it put nothing very 
 uncommon on record. 
 
 How near the spark was to the tinder ! — how loud that Angel 
 would have had to play ! For Ruth Thrale might easily have 
 chanced to say: — " Yes, the same that my mother's was." And 
 that past tense might have spoken a volume. 
 
 But Destiny was at fault, and the Angel would have had to 
 play pianissimo. Miss Lupin came in, bearing a log that had 
 taken twenty years to grow and one to d^. The glowing 
 embers were getting spent, and the open hearth called for reim- 
 bursement. It seemed a shame those sweet fresh lichens should 
 burn ; but then, it would never do to let the fire out ! Miss Lupin 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 497 
 
 contrived to indicate condescension in her attitude, while dealing 
 with its reconstruction. No conversation could have survived 
 such an inroad, and by the time Miss Lupin had asked if she 
 should remove the tea etceteras, the review of Pomona's family- 
 was forgotten, and Destiny was bafSed. 
 
 Another floating spark went even nearer to the tinder, when, 
 going back to Dave and Dolly, old Maisie talked of the pleasure of 
 having the little girl at homo, now that Dave was so much away 
 at school. She was getting dim in thought and irresponsible when 
 she gave Widow Thrale this chance insight into her early days. 
 It was a sort of slip of the mind that betrayed her into saying: — 
 " Ah, my dear, the Uttle one makes me think of my own Uttle 
 child I left behind me, that died — oh, such a many years ago ! . . ." 
 Her voice broke into such audible distress that her hearer could 
 not pry behind her meaning; could only murmur a sympathetic 
 nothing. The old lady's words that followed seemed to revoke 
 her lapse : — " Long and long ago, before ever you were bom, I 
 should say. But she was my only little girl, and I keep her in 
 mind, even now." Had not Widow Thrale hesitated, it might 
 have come out that her mother had fled from her at the very time, 
 and that her own name was Ruth. How coidd suspicion have 
 passed tiptoe over such a running stream of possible surmise, and 
 landed dryfoot ? 
 
 But nothing came of it. There was nothing in a child that 
 died before she was born, to provoke comparison of her own dim 
 impressions of her mother's departure — ^for old Phoebe had kept 
 much of the tale in abeyance — and her comments hung fire in a 
 sympathetic murmur. She felt, though, that the way she had 
 appeased her thirst for infancy might be told, appropriately; 
 dwelling particularly on the pleasures of nourishing convales- 
 cents up to kissing-point, as the ogress we have compared her to 
 might have done up to readiness for the table. Old Maisie was 
 quite ready to endorse all her views and experiences, enjoying 
 especially the account of Dave's rapid recovery, and his neglected 
 Ariadne. 
 
 A conclusive sound crept into the conversation of Mrs. Solmes 
 and the housekeeper, always audible without. " I think I hear 
 my Cousin Keziah going," said Mrs. Thrale. " I must not keep 
 her." 
 
 " Thank you, my dear ! I mean — ^thank you for coming to 
 see me !" It was the second time old Maisie had said " my 
 dear " to this acquaintance of an hour. But then, her face, 
 that youth's comeUness still clung to, invited it. 
 
498 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " 'Tis I should be the one to thank, ma'am, both for the 
 pleasure, and for the hearing tell of little Davy. Mother will 
 be very content to get a little news of the child. Oh, I can tell 
 you she grudges her share of Dave to anyone ! If mother 
 should take it into her head to come over and hear some more, 
 for herself, you will not take it amiss ? It will be for love of the 
 child." Then, as a correction to what might have seemed a 
 stint of courtesy: — "And for the pleasure of a visit to you, 
 ma'am." Said old Maisie absently: — " I hope she will." And 
 then Widow Thrale saw that all this talking had been quite 
 enough, and took her leave. 
 
 This was the second time these two had parted, in half a cen- 
 tury. They shook hands, this time, and there was no gUmmer 
 in the mind of either, of who or what the other was. Each 
 remained as unconscious of the other's identity as that sleeping 
 child in her crib had been, fifty years ago, of her mother's 
 heartbroken beauty as she tore herself away, with the kiss on 
 her Hps that dwelt there still. 
 
 They shook hands, with affectionate cordiality, and the old 
 lady, hoping again that the visitors " mother " would pay her a 
 visit, settled back to watching the fire creep along the lichens, 
 one by one, on that beechen log the squirrels had to themselves 
 a year ago. 
 
 Unconscious Widow Thrale had much to say of the pretty old 
 lady as she and Mrs. Solmes walked back to the Ranger's Cottage 
 through the nightfall. Fancy mother taking it into her head 
 that Dave would be the worse by such a nice old extra Granny 
 as that ! She must be very much alone in the world though, to 
 judge by what Uttle she had told of her life in Sapps Court. No 
 single hint of kith and kin ! Had Keziah not heard a word about 
 her antecedents ? Well — ^nothing to ma'ak a stowery on't ! 
 Housekeeper Masham had expressed herself ambiguously, saying 
 that her yoong la'adyship had lighted down upon the old lady 
 in stra'ange coompany; concerning which she, Masham, not 
 being called upon to deUver judgment, preferred to keep her 
 mowuth shoot. Keziah contrived to convey that this shutting 
 of Mrs. Masham's mouth had carried all the weight of speech, all 
 tending to throw doubt on Mrs. Picture, without any clue to the 
 special causes of offence against her. 
 
 Whatever misgivings about the old lady Widow Thrale allowed 
 to re-enter her mind were dispersed on arriving at the Cottage. 
 For Toby and Seth, being sought for to wash themselves and 
 have their suppers, were not forthcoming. They had vanished. 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 499 
 
 They were found in the Verderer's Hall, where they had con- 
 cealed themselves with ingenuity, unnoticed by old Stephen, 
 whom they had followed in and allowed to depart, locking the 
 door after him and so locking them in. It was sheer original 
 sin on their part — the corruption of Man's heart. The joy of 
 occasioning so much anxiety more than compensated for de- 
 layed supper; and penalties lapsed, owing to the satisfaction of 
 finding that they had not both tumbled into a well two hundred 
 feet deep. Old Stephen's remark that, had he been guilty of 
 such conduct in his early youth, he would have been all over 
 wales, had an historical interest, but nothing further. They 
 seemed flattered by his opinion that they were a promussin' 
 yoong coople. However, the turmoil they created drove the 
 previous events of the day out of Widow Thrale's head. She 
 slept very sound and — ^forgot all about her interview with the 
 old visitor at the Towers ! 
 
 Old Maisie, alone in Francis Quarles as she had been so often 
 in the garret at Sapps Court, became again the mere silver-headed 
 relic of the past, waiting patiently, one would have said, for 
 Death; content to Uve, content to die; ready to love still; not 
 strong enough to hate, and ill-provided with an object now. 
 Not for the former — ^no, indeed ! Were there not her Dave and 
 her Dolly to go back to ? She had not lost them much, for they, 
 too, were away from poor, half -ruined Sapps Court. She would 
 go back soon. But then, how about her Guardian Angel ? She 
 would lose her — must lose her, some time ! Why not now ? 
 
 What had she, old Maisie, done to deserve such a guardian- 
 ship ? — friendship was hardly the word to use. An overpre- 
 sumption in one so humble ! Who could have foreseen all this 
 bewilderment of Chance six weeks ago, when her great event of 
 the day was a visit of the two children. She resented a half- 
 thought she could not help, that called her gain in question. 
 Was not Sapps Court her proper place ? Was she not too much 
 out of keeping with her surroundings ? Could she even find 
 comfort, when she returned to her old quarters, in wearing these 
 clothes her young ladyship had had made for her; so unlike her 
 own old wardrobe, scarcely a rag of it newer than SkilUcks ? She 
 fought against the ungenerous thought — ^the malice of some 
 passing imp, surely ! — ^and welcomed another that had strength 
 to banish it, the image of her visitor of to-day. 
 
 There she was again — at least, all that memory supplied 1 
 What was her dress ? Old Maisie could not recall this. The 
 
500 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 image supplied a greeny -blue sort of plaid, but memory wavered 
 over that. Her testimony was clear about the hair; plenty of 
 it, packed close with a ripple on the suspicion of grey over the 
 forehead, that seemed to have halted there, unconfirmed. At 
 any rate, there would be no more inside those knot-twists behind, 
 that still showed an autumnal golden brown, Pomona-Uke. 
 Yes, she had had abundance in the summer of her hfe, and that 
 was not so long ago. ' How old was she ? — old Maisie asked 
 herself. Scarcely fifty yet, seemed a reasonable answer. She 
 had forgotten to ask her christened name, but she could make a 
 guess at it — could fit her with one to her Uking. Margaret — 
 Mary ? — ^No, not exactly. Try Bertha. . . . Yes — Bertha might 
 do. . . . But she could think about her so much better in the 
 half-dark. She rose and blew the candles out, then went back 
 to her chair and the line of thought that had pleased her. 
 
 How fortunate this good woman had been to hit upon the 
 convalescent idea ! She, herself, when her worst loneliness 
 clouded her horizon, might have devised some such modus 
 Vivendi — as between herself and her enemy, Sohtude; not as 
 mere means to Uve. But, indeed. Solitude had intruded upon 
 her first, disguised as a friend. The irksomeness of hfe had come 
 upon her later, when the sting of her son's wickedness began to die 
 away. Moreover, her delicacy of health had disqualified her for 
 active responsibilities. This Mrs. Marrable's antecedents had 
 made no inroads on her constitution, evidently. 
 
 See where the fire had crept over these lichens and devoured 
 them ! The log would soon be black, when once the heat got a 
 fair hold of it. Now, the pent-up steam from some secret core, 
 that had kept its moisture through the warmth of a summer, 
 hissed out in an angry jet, stung by the conquering flame. 
 There, see ! — ^from some concealment in the bark, mysteriously 
 safe till now, a six-legged beetle, panic-struck and doomed. Cos- 
 mic fires were at work upon his world — ^that world he thought 
 80 safe ! It was the end of the Universe for him — his Universe ! 
 Old Maisie would gladly have played the part of a merciful 
 Divinity, and worked a miraculous salvation. But alas ! — ^the 
 poor Kttle fugitive was too swift to his own combustion in the 
 deadly fires below. Would it be like that for us, when our world 
 comes to an end ? Old Maisie was sorry for that Httle beetle, and 
 would have Hked to save him. 
 
 She sat on, watching the tongues of flame creep up and up on 
 the log that seemed to defy ignition. The little beetle's fate had 
 taken her mind off her retrospect; off Dave and Dolly, and the 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 501 
 
 pleasant image of Pomona. She was glad of any sign of life, and 
 the voices that reached her from the kitchen or the servants-hall 
 ■were welcome; and perhaps . . . 'perhaps they were not quar- 
 relling. But appearances were against them. Nevertheless, the 
 lull that followed made her sorry for the silence. A wrangle 
 toned down by distance and intervening doors is soothingly sug- 
 gestive of company — soothingly, because it fosters the distant 
 hearer's satisfaction at not being concerned in it. Old Maisie 
 hoped they would go on again soon, because she had blown those 
 lights out rashly, without being sure she could reHght them. 
 She could tear a piece off the newspaper and light it at the fire 
 of course. But — ^the idea of tearing a newspaper ! This, you 
 see, was in fifty -four, and tearing a number of the Times was like 
 tearing a book. No spills offered themselves. She made an 
 excursion into her bedroom for the matchbox and felt her way to 
 it. But it was empty ! The futiUty of an empty matchbox is 
 as the effrontery of the celebrated misplaced milestone. Expe- 
 ditions for scraps of waste-paper in the dark, with her eyesight, 
 might end in burning somebody's will, or a cheque for pounds. 
 That was her feeling, at least. Never mind ! — she could wait. 
 She had been told always to ring the bell when she wanted any- 
 thing, but she had never presumed on the permission. A lordly 
 act, not for a denizen of Sapps Court ! Roxalana or Dejanira 
 might pull bells. Very likely the log would blaze directly, and 
 she would come on a scrap of real waste-paper. 
 
 Stop ! . . . Was not that someone coming along the passage, 
 from the kitchen ? Perhaps someone she could ask ? She would 
 not go back to her chair till she heard who it was. She set the 
 door " on the jar " timidly, and listened. Yes — she knew the 
 voices. It was Miss Lutwyche and one of the housemaids. Not 
 Lupin — ^the other one, Mary Anne, who seldom came this way, 
 and whom she hardly knew by sight. But what was it that 
 they were saying ? 
 
 Said Miss Lutwyche: — " Well, I call her a plaguy old cat. . . , 
 No, I don't care if she does hear me." However, she lowered 
 her voice to finish her speech, and much that followed was in- 
 audible to old Maisie. Who of course supposed she was the 
 plaguy old cat ! 
 
 Then Mary Anne became audible again, confirming this view: — 
 " Is that her room ?" For the subject of the conversation had 
 changed in that inaudible phase — changed from Mrs. Masham to 
 the queer old soul her young ladyship had pitchforked down in 
 the middle of the household. 
 
602 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " That's her room now. Old Mashey has been turned out. 
 She's next door. She's supposed to look after her and see she 
 wants for nothing. ... / don't know. Perhaps she does. / 
 wash my hands." At this point the poor old listener heard no 
 more. What she had heard was a great shock to her; really 
 almost as great a shock as the crash at Sapps Court. She foxmd 
 her way back to her chair and sat and cried, in the darkened 
 room. She was a plaguy old cat, and Miss Lutwyche, with 
 whom she had been on very good terms in Cavendish Square, 
 had washed her hands of her ! Then, when the servants here 
 were attentive to her — and they were all right, as far as that 
 went — it was mere deceptiousness, and they were wishing her at 
 Jericho. 
 
 She was conscious that the lady's-maid and Mary Anne came 
 back, still talking. But she had closed the door, and was glad 
 she could not hear what they were saying. A few minutes after, 
 Mrs. Masham appeared from her own room close by, having 
 apparently recovered her temper. But, said old Maisie to 
 herself, all this was sheer hypocrisy; a mere time server's 
 assumption of civihty towards a plaguy old cat ! 
 
 " You'll be feeUng ready for your bit of supper, Mrs. Pilcher," 
 said the housekeeper; who, having been snubbed by Miss Lut- 
 wyche for saying " Pilchard," had made compromise. She 
 could not be expected to accept " Picture." The bit of supper 
 was behind her on a tray, borne by Lupin. " Why — you're all 
 in the dark !" She rebuked the servant-girl because there were 
 no matches, and on production of a box from the latter's pocket, 
 magnanimously lit the candles with her own hands, continuing 
 the while to reproach her subordinate for neglect of the guest 
 entrusted to her charge. That guest's thought being, meanwhile, 
 what a shocking hypocrite this woman was. Probably Mrs. 
 Masham was no more a hypocrite than old Maisie was an old oat. 
 That is to say, if the latter designation meant a termagant or 
 scold. There must be now and again, in Nature, a person without 
 a hall-mark of either Heaven or Hell, and Mrs. Masham may have 
 had none. In that recent encounter in the kitchen which old 
 Maisie had been conscious of, she had lost her temper with Miss 
 Lutwyche; but so might anyone, if you came to that. Cook had 
 come to that, after Miss Lutwyche left the room, and her designa- 
 tion of that young lady as a provocation, and a hussy, had done 
 much to pacify Mrs. Masham. 
 
 Anyhow, Mrs. Masham was on even terms with herself, if not 
 in a treacle-jar, when she sat down by the fire to do — as she 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 503 
 
 thought — her duty by her young ladyship's protegee. She was 
 that taken up, she said, every minute of the day, that she did 
 not get the opportunities her heart longed for of cultivating the 
 acquaintance of her guest. But she was thankful to hear that 
 Mrs. Pilcher had not been any the worse for her talk with her 
 visitor an hour since. Widow Thrale, living Uke she did over 
 at Chorlton, was a sort of stranger at the Towers. But only a 
 subacute stranger, as her husband, when Uving, was frequently 
 in evidence there, in connection with the stables. 
 
 Old Maisie was interested to hear anything about her pleasant 
 visitor. What sort of aged woman did Mrs. Masham take her 
 to be ? Her voice, said the old lady, was that of a much younger 
 person than she seemed, to look at. 
 
 " How old would she be ?" said the housekeeper. " Well — 
 she might be a child of twelve or thirteen when her mother came 
 to Strides Cottage, and married Farmer Marrable there. . . ." 
 
 " Then her name was never Marrable at all," said old Maisie. 
 
 "No. Grarmy Marrable, she'd been married before, in 
 Sussex. Now what was her first husband's name ? . . . Well — 
 I ought to be able to recollect that I Ruth — Ruth — Ruth what 1" 
 She was trying to remember the name by which she had known 
 Widow Thrale in her childhood. Her effort to do so, had it suc- 
 ceeded, would have made a complete disclosure almost inevitable, 
 owing to the peculiarity of Granny Marrable's first husband's 
 name. " I ojight to be able to recollect, but there ! — ^I can't. 
 I suppose it would be because we always heard her spoken of as 
 Mrs. Marrable's Ruth. I saw but very little of her; only when 
 I was a child. . . ." She paused a moment, arrested by old 
 Maisie's expression, and then said: — " Yes. . . . why ?".... and 
 stopped, 
 
 " Because if I had known she was Ruth I would have told her 
 that my little girl that died was Ruth. Just a fanciful idea !" 
 But the speaker's supper was getting cold. The housekeeper de- 
 parted, telling Lupin to get some scrapwood to make a blaze 
 under that log, and make it show what a real capacity it had as 
 fuel, if only justice was done to its combustibihty. 
 
 This chance passage of conversation between old Maisie and 
 the housekeeper ran near to sounding the one note needed to 
 force the truth of an incredible tale on the blank imsuspicion 
 of its actors. A many other little things may have gone as near. 
 If so, none left any one of its audience, or witnesses more abso- 
 lutely in the dark about it than the solitary old woman who that 
 evening watched that log, stimulated by the scrapwood during 
 
504 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 her very perfunctory supper; first till it became a roaring flame 
 that laughed at those two candles, then till the flame died down 
 and left it all aglow; then till the fire reached its heart and broke 
 it, and it fell, and flickered up again and died, and slowly resolved 
 itself into a hillock of red ember and creeping incandescence, a 
 treasury still of memories of the woodlands and the coming of the 
 spring, and the growth of the leaves that perished. 
 
 At about nine o'clock. Lupin, acting officially, came to offer 
 her services to see the old lady to bed. No ! — ^if she might do 
 so she would rather sit up till her ladyship came in. She could 
 shift for herself ; in fact, like most old people who have never been 
 waited on, she greatly preferred it. Only, of course, she did not 
 say so. But Lupin ims sitting up for her ladyship, -with Miss 
 Lutwyche, and would purvey hot water then, in place of this, 
 which would be cold. She brought a couple of young loglets to 
 keep a little life in the fire, and went away to contribute to an 
 everlasting wrangle in the servants' hall. 
 
 The wind roared in the chimney and made old Maisie's thoughts 
 go back to the awful sea. Think of the wrecks this wind would 
 cause ! Of course she was all wrong; one always is, indoors, 
 with a huge chimney which is a treasure-house of sound. Gwen 
 was just saying at that moment, to Adrian and his sister, what 
 a delicious night it was to be out of doors ! And the grey mare, 
 in a hurry to go, was undertaking through an interpreter to be 
 back in an hour and three quarters easy. And then they were off, 
 Gwen laughing to scorn Irene's reproaches to her for not staying 
 the night. All that was part of Gwen's minimisation of her 
 guilt in this postponement of the separation test. The stars 
 seemed to flash the clearer in the heavens for such laughter as 
 hers, in such a voice. But all the while old Maisie was haunted 
 with images of a chaise blown into ditches and over bridges, and 
 colhding with blown-down elms, in league for mischief with 
 blown-out lamps. Be advised, and never fidget about the 
 absent ! 
 
 She would rather have gone on doing so than that the recol- 
 lection should come back to her of Lutwyche's odious designa- 
 tion that she had taken to herself, so warrantably to all appear- 
 ance. A plaguy old cat ! What had she ever done or said to 
 Miss Lutwyche, or any of them, to deserve such a name ? And 
 then that girl who was with her had seemed to accept it so easily 
 - — certainly without any protest. She was ready to admit, 
 though, that her vituperators had concealed their animus well, 
 the hypocrites that they were ! Look how amiable Mrs. Masham 
 
HOW MAISIE LOVED POMONA 505 
 
 had made believe to be, an hour ago ! A shade of graciousness — 
 an infinitesimal condescension — certainly nothing worse than 
 that ! But the hypocrisy of it ! She had never been quite 
 comfortable in her ill-assigned position of guest undefined — 
 dear, beautiful Gwen's fault ! Never, since the housekeeper on 
 first introduction had jumped at her reluctance to taint the 
 servants' hall with Sapps Court, interpreting it as a personal 
 desire to be alone. But she had never suspected that she was a 
 plaguy old cat, and did not feel hke her idea of one. 
 
 Conceive the position of a lonely octogenarian, injudiciously 
 thrust into a community where she was not welcome — by a 
 Guardian Angel surely, but one who had never known the mean- 
 ing of the word " obstacle." Conceive that her poverty had 
 never meant pauperisation, and that graciousness and conde- 
 scension are always tainted with benevolence, to the indigent. 
 She had done nothing to deserve having anything bestowed on 
 her, and the wing of a chicken she had supped upon would have 
 stuck in her throat with that quahfication. Understand, too, 
 that when this thought crossed her mind, she recoiled from it 
 and cried out upon her petty pride that would call anything in 
 question that had been vise and endorsed by that dear Guardian 
 Angel. Use these helps towards a glimpse into her heart as she 
 watched the new wood go the way of the old, and say if you 
 wonder that she cried silently over it. Now it only that nice 
 person that came to-day could have stayed on, to pass the time 
 with her until the welcome soimd should come of the chaise's 
 homeward wheels and the grey mare's splendid pace, bringing 
 her what she knew would come if Gwen was in it, a happy fare- 
 well interview with her idol before she went to bed. Yes — how 
 nice it would have been to have her here ! Ruth Thrale — ^yes, 
 Eiuth — ^her own httle daughter's name of long ago ! 
 
 This Ruth was her own daughter. But how to know it I 
 
506 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HOW GWEN CAME BACK, AlfD FOUND THE "OLD CAT " ASLEEP. AND 
 TOOK OFF HER SABLES. A CANDLE-LIGHT JOTJENBY THROUGH 
 AN ANCIENT HOUSE, AND A TELEGRAPHIC SUMMONS. HOW 
 GWEN RUSHED AWAY BY A NIGHT-TRAIN, BECAUSE HER 
 COUSIN CLOTILDA SAID DON't COME. HOW SHE LEFT A LETTER 
 FOR WIDOW THRALE AT THE RANGER's LODGE 
 
 Just as the watched pot never boik, so the thing one waits for 
 never comes, so long as one waits hard. The harder one waits 
 the longer it is postponed. When one sits up to open the door 
 to the latchkeyless, there is only one sure way of bringing about 
 his return, and that is to drop asleep d contre cceur, and sleep too 
 sound for ftirious knocks and rings, gravel thrown at windows, 
 and intemperate language, to arouse you. Then he will come 
 back, and be obliged to say he has only knocked once, and you will 
 say you had only just closed your eyes. 
 
 Old Maisie was quite sure she had just closed hers, when of a 
 sudden the voice she longed for filled Heaven and Earth, and 
 said: — " Oh, what a shame to come and wake you out of such a 
 beautiful sleep ! But you mustn't sleep all night in the arm-chair. 
 Poor dear old Mrs. Picture ! What would Dave say ? What 
 would Mrs. Burr say \" And then old Maisie waked from a 
 dream about unmanageable shrimps, to utter the correct formula 
 with a conviction of its truth, this time. She had only just closed 
 her eyes. Only just ! 
 
 Miss Lutwyche, in attendance, ventured on sympathetic 
 familarity. Mrs. Picture would not get any beauty-sleep 
 to-night, that was certain. For it is well known that only sleep 
 in bed deserves the name, and a clock was putting its convictions 
 about midnight on record, dogmatically. 
 
 Gwen's laugh rang out soon enough to quash its last ipse dixita. 
 " Then the mischief's done, Lutwyche, and another five minutes 
 doesn't matter. Mrs. Picture's going to tell me aU her news. 
 Here — get this thing ofi ! Then you can go till I ring." The 
 thing, or most of it, was an unanswerable challenge to the coldest 
 wind of night — ^the cast-off raiment of full fifty little sables, that 
 scoured the Russian woods in times gone by. Surely the breezes 
 had drenched it with the very soul of the night air in that ride 
 
GWEN'S NIGHT FLIGHT TO LONDON 607 
 
 beneath the stars, and the foam of them was shaken out of it as it 
 released its owner. 
 
 Then old Maisie was fully aware of her Guardian Angel, back 
 again — ^no dream, hke those shrimps ! And her voice was 
 sa3dng : — " So you had company, Mrs. Picture dear. Lutwyche 
 told me. The widow-woman from Chorlton, wasn't it ? How 
 did you find her ? Nice ?" 
 
 Yes, the widow-woman was very nice. She had stayed quite 
 a long time, and had tea. " I Uked her very much," said old 
 Maisie. " She was easy." Then — said inference — somebody is 
 difficult. Maisie did not catch this remark, made by one of the 
 most inaudible of speakers. " Yes," she said, " she stayed quite 
 a long time, and had tea. She is a very good yoimg woman " — 
 for, naturally, eighty sees fifty-odd as youth, especially when 
 fifty-odd seems ten years less — " and we could talk about Dave. 
 It was hke being home again." She used, without a trace of 
 am ere pens6e, a phrase she could not have bettered had she 
 tried to convey to Gwen her distress at hearing she was a plaguy 
 old cat. Then she suddenly saw its possible import, and would 
 have Uked to withdraw it. " Only I would not seek to be home 
 again, my dear, when I am near you." She trembled in her 
 eagerness to get this said, and not to say it wrong. 
 
 Gwen saw in an instant all she had overlooked, and indeed 
 she had overlooked many things. It was, however, much too 
 late at night to go into the subject. She could only soothe it 
 away now, but with intention to amend matters next day; or, 
 rather, next dayUght. So she said: — "The plaster will very 
 soon be dry now in Sapps Court, dear Mrs. Picture, and then you 
 shall go back to Dave and Dolly, and I wiU come and see you 
 there. You must go to bed now. So must I — I suppose? I will 
 come to you to-morrow morning, and you vrill tell me a great 
 deal more. Now good-night \" That was what she said aloud. 
 To herself she thought a thought without words, that could 
 only have been rendered, to do it justice: — " The Devil fly away 
 ■with Mrs. Masham, that she couldn't contrive to make this dear 
 old soul comfortable for a few weeks, just long enough for some 
 plaster to dry." She went near adding: — "And myself, too, 
 not to have foreseen what would happen !" But she bit this 
 into her underlip, and cancelled it. 
 
 She rang the bell for Lutwyche, now the sole survivor in 
 the kitchen region. Who appeared, bearing hot water — some 
 for the plaguy old cat. Gwen said good-night again, kissing 
 the old lady affectionately when Lutwyche was not looking. 
 
508 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Mistress and maid then, when the cat at her o'wti request was 
 left to get herself into sleeping trim, started on the long journey 
 through corridors and state-rooms through which her young 
 ladyship's own quarters had to be reached. Corridors on whose 
 floors one walked up and down hiU; great chambers full of 
 memories, and here and there indulging in a ghost. Tudor 
 rooms with Holbeins between the windows, invisible to man; 
 Jacobean rooms with Van Dycks, nearly as regrettably invisible; 
 Lelys and Knellers, much more regrettably visible. Across the 
 landing of the great staircase, where the Reynolds hangs, which 
 your cicerone of this twentieth century will tell you was the 
 famous beauty of her time, and the grandmother of another 
 famous Victorian beauty, dead not a decade since. And on this 
 staircase Gwen, half pausing to glance at her departed prototype, 
 started suddenly, and exclaimed : — " What's that ?" 
 
 For a bell had broken the silence of the night — a bell that had 
 enjoyed doing so, and was slow to stop. Now a bell after mid- 
 night in a house that stands alone in a great Park, two miles 
 from the nearest village, has to be accounted for, somehow. 
 Not by Miss Lutwyche, who merely noted that the household 
 would hear and answer the summons. 
 
 Her young ladyship was not so indifferent to human affairs as 
 her attendant. She said: — " I must know what that is. They 
 won't send to tell me. Come back !" She had said it, and 
 started, before that bell gave in and retired from public life. 
 
 Past the Knellers and Lelys, among the Van Dycks, a scared 
 figure, bearing a missive. Miss Lupin, and no ghost — as she 
 might have been — in the farther door as her ladyship passes into 
 the room. She has run quickly with it, and is out of breath. 
 " A telegraph for your ladyship !" is all she can manage. She 
 would have said " telegram " a few years later. 
 
 A rapid vision, in Gwen's mind, of her father's remains, 
 crushed by a locomotive, itself pulverised by another — for these 
 days were rich in railway accidents — ^then a hope ! It may be 
 the fall of Sebastopol; a mihtary cousin had promised she should 
 know it as soon as the Queen. Give her the paper and end the 
 doubt ! . . . It is neither. 
 
 It is serious, for all that. Who brought this ? — ^that's the first 
 question, from Gwen. Lupin gives a hurried account. It is Mr. 
 Sandys, the station-master at Grantley Thorpe, who has galloped 
 over himself to make sure of dehvery. Is he gone ? No — he has 
 taken his horse round to Archibald at the Stables to refit for a 
 quieter ride back. Very well. Gwen must see him, and Tom 
 
GWEN'S NIGHT FLIGHT TO LONDON 509 
 
 Kettering must be stopped going to bed, and must be ready to 
 drive her over to Grantley, if there is still a chance to catch the 
 up-train for Euston. Lutwyche may get things ready at once, 
 on the chance, and not lose a minute. Lupin is off, hotfoot, to 
 the Stables, to catch Mr. Sandys, and bring him round. 
 
 White and determined, after reading the message, Gwen 
 retraces her steps. Outside old Mrs. Picture's door comes a 
 moment of irresolution, but she quashes it and goes on. Old 
 Maisie is not in bed yet — has not really left that tempting fire- 
 side. She becomes conscious of a stir in the house, following on 
 a bell that she had supposed to be only a belated absentee. She 
 opens her door furtively and hstens. 
 
 That is Gwen's voice surely, beyond the servants' quarter, 
 speaking with a respectful man. The scraps of speech that 
 reach the listener's ear go to show that he assents to do something 
 out of the common, to obUge her ladyship. Something is to 
 happen at three-fifteen, which he will abet, and be responsible 
 for. Only it must be three-fifteen sharp, because something — 
 probably a train — is liable to punctuaUty. 
 
 Then a sound of an interview wound up, a completed compact. 
 And that is Gwen, returning. Old Maisie will not intrude on the 
 event, whatever it be. She must wait to hear to-morrow. So 
 she closes her door, furtively, as she opened it; and hstens still, 
 for the silences of the night to reassert themselves. No more 
 words are audible, but she is conscious that voices continue, and 
 that her Guardian Angel's is one. Then footsteps, and a hand 
 on the door. Then Gwen, white and determined still, but 
 speaking gently, to forestall alarm, and reassure misgiving. 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Picture, it's nothing — nothing to be alarmed 
 about. But I have to go up to London by the night train. 
 See ! — I will tell you what it is. I have had this telegraphic 
 message. Is it not wonderful that this should be sent from 
 London, a hundred miles off, two hours ago, and that I shoidd 
 have it here to read now ? It is from my cousin. Miss Grahame. 
 I am afraid she is dangerously ill, and I must go to her because 
 she is alone. . . . Yes — Maggie is very good, and so is Dr. Dal- 
 rymple. But some friend should be with her or near her. So I 
 must go." She did not read the message, or sh(\w it. 
 
 " But my dear — my dear — is it right for you to go* alone, in' 
 the dark. . . . Oh, if I were only young ! . . ." 
 
 " I shall be all right. I shall have Lutwyche, you know. 
 Don't trouble about me. It is you I am thinking of — leaving 
 you here. I am afraid I may be away some days, and you may 
 
510 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 not be comfortable. . , . No — I can't possibly take you with me. 
 I have to get ready to go at once. The trap will only just take 
 me and Lutwyche, and our boxes. It must be Tom Kettering 
 and the trap. The carriage could not do it in the time. The 
 Scotch express passes Grantley Thorpe at three-fifteen — ^the 
 station-master can stop it for me. . . . What ! — go beside the 
 driver ! Dear old Mrs. Picture, the boxes have to go beside the 
 driver, and Lutwyche and I have to hold tight behind. . . . No, 
 no ! — ^you must stay here a day or two — at least tiU we know the 
 plaster's dry in Sapps Court. As soon as I have been to see 
 myself, one of the maids shall bring you back, and you shall have 
 Dave and Dolly — there ! Now go to bed, that's an old dear, 
 and don't fret about me. I shall be all right. Now, go I must ! 
 Good-bye !" She was hurrying from the room, leaving the old 
 lady in a great bewilderment, when she paused a moment to 
 say: — " Stop a minute! — I've an idea. . . No, I haven't. . , Yes, 
 I have. . . All right ! — ^nothing — ^never mind 1" Then she was 
 gone, and old Maisie felt dreadfully alone. 
 
 Arrived in her own room, where Lutwyche, rather gratified 
 with her own importance in this new freak of Circumstance, was 
 endeavouring to make a portmanteau hold double its contents, 
 Gwen immediately sat down to write a letter. It required five 
 minutes for thought and eight minutes to write; so that in 
 thirteen minutes it was ready for its envelope. Gwen re-read 
 it, considered it, crossed a t and dotted an i, folded it, directed 
 it, took it out to re-re-read, said thoughtfully: — " Can't do any 
 possible harm," concluded it past recall, and added " By bearer " 
 on the outside. It ran thus: 
 
 " Widow Theaib, 
 
 " I want you to do something for me, and I know you 
 will do it. To-morrow morning go to my old Mrs. Picture whom 
 you saw to-day, and make her go back with you and your boy 
 to Strides Cottage, and keep her there and take great care of her, 
 till you hear from me. She is a dear old thing and will give no 
 trouble at all. Ask anyone for anything you want for her — 
 money or things — and I will settle all the bills. Show this letter. 
 She knows my address in London. I am going there by the 
 night express. 
 
 " Gwendolen Rivers." 
 
 She slipped this letter into her pocket, and made a descent on 
 Miss Lutwyche for her packing, which she criticized severely. 
 
GWEN'S NIGHT FLIGHT TO LONDON 511 
 
 But packing, unlike controversy, always ends; and in less than 
 half an hour, both were in their places behind Tom Kettering 
 and the grey mare, who had accepted the prospect of another 
 fifteen miles without emotion; and Mrs. Masham and Lupin were 
 watching them off, and thinking how nice it would be when they 
 could get to bed. 
 
 " Now you think the mare can do it, Tom Kettering ?" 
 
 " Twice and again, my lady, and a httle over. And never be 
 any the worse to-morrow !" Thus Tom Kettering, with im- 
 movable confidence. The mare as good as endorsed his words, 
 swinging her head round to see, and striking the crust of the earth 
 a heavy blow with her off hind-hoof. 
 
 " And we shall have time for you to get down at your Aunt 
 Solmes's to leave my letter ?" 
 
 " I count upon it, my lady, quite easy. We'll be at the 
 Thorpe by three, all told, without stepping out." And then 
 the mare is on the road again, doing her forty-first mile, quite 
 happily. 
 
 They stopped at the bridle-path to the Ranger's Cottage, and 
 Tom walked across with the letter — an unearthly hour for a 
 visit ! — and came back within ten minutes. All right ! Her 
 ladyship's wishes should be attended to ! Then on through the 
 starhght night, with the cold crisp air growing colder and crisper 
 towards morning. Then the railway-station where Feudal 
 tradition could stiU stop a train by signal, but only one or two 
 in the day ever stopped of their own accord, in the fifties. Now, 
 as you know, every train stops, and Spiers and Pond are there, 
 and you can lunch and have Bovril and Oxo. Then, the shoddy- 
 mills were undreamed of, where your old clothes are carefully 
 sterilised before they are turned into new wool; and the small- 
 arms factory, where Cain buys an outfit cheap; and the colour- 
 works, that makes aniline dyes that last, if you settle monthly, 
 until you pay for them. Nothing was there then, and the train 
 that stopped by signal came through a smokeless night, with red 
 eyes and green that gazed up or down the line to please the 
 Company; and started surHly, in protest at the stoppage, but 
 picked its spirits slowly up, and got quite exhilarated before it 
 was out of hearing, perhaps because it was carrying Gwen to 
 London. 
 
 The dejection of its first start might have persevered and made 
 its full-fledged rapidity joyless, had it known the errand of its 
 beautiful first-class passenger. For the telegram Gwen had 
 received, that had sent her off on this wild journey to London 
 
 33 
 
512 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 in the small hours of the morning, was this that follows, neither 
 more nor less: 
 
 " On no accomit come. Why run risks ? You will not be ad- 
 mitted. Never mind what Dr. Dalrymple says. — Clotilda." 
 
 Just conceive this young lady off in such a mad way when it 
 was perfectly clear what had happened ! She might at least 
 have waited until she received the letter this message had so 
 manifestly outraced; Dr. Dakymple's letter, certain to come 
 by the first post in the morning. And she would have waited, 
 no doubt, if she had not been Gwen. Being Gwen, her first 
 instinct was to get away before that letter came, enjoining 
 caution, and deprecating panic, and laying stress on this, that, 
 and the other — a parcel of nonsense all with one object, to coimsel 
 pusillanimousness, to inspire trepidation. She knew that would 
 be the upshot. She knew also that Dr. Dalrymple would play 
 double, frightening her from coming, while assuring the patient 
 that he had vouched for the entire absence of danger and the 
 mildness of the type of the disorder, whatever it was. It would 
 never do for Clotilda to know that she — Gwen — was being kept 
 away, for safety's sake. That was the sum and substance of 
 her reflections. And the inference was clear: — Push her way 
 on to Cavendish Square, and push her way in, if necessary ! 
 
 A thought crossed her mind as the train whirled away from 
 Grantley Station. Suppose it was smallpox, and she should 
 catch it and have her beauty spoiled 1 Well — ^in that case 
 an ill wind would blow somebody good ! Her darhng blind 
 man would never see it. Let us be grateful for middle-sized 
 mercies ! 
 
MAISIE AT STRIDES COTTAGE 613 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HOW THAT WIDOW GOT THE " OLD CAT " AWAY TO STRIDES COTTAGE. 
 MR. BRANTOCK's HORSE. EUZABETH-NEXT-DOOR, AND THE 
 BIT OF EIRE SHE MADE. HOW TOET THE GIPSY SPOTTED A 
 IIKENESS, AND REPAIRED THE GLASS TOBY HAD AIMED AT. 
 HOW OLD MAISIE's ACQUAINTANCE WITH HER DAUGHTER GREW 
 TO EBIENDSHIP. AND HER DAUGHTER SHOWED HER GRAND- 
 FATHER'S MILL. HOW COULD THIS MILL BE YOVR GRAND- 
 FATHER'S, WHEN IT WAS MY FATHER'S ? BUT SEE HOW SMALL 
 IT WAS ! TWO ARMS LONG, FIFTY YEARS AGO ! AND NOW ! . . . 
 A RESTLESS WAKING AND A DARING EXCURSION. ONLY THE 
 
 HOUSE-DOG ABOUT ! ON THE FENDER ! SEE THERE AN ARM 
 
 AND A HALF LONG ONLY — ^IN FACT, LESS ! 
 
 Old Maisie waked late, and no wonder ! Or, more properly, 
 she slept late, and had to be waked. Mrs. Masham did it, saying 
 at the same time to a person in her company: — " Oh no, Mrs. 
 Thrale — she's all right ! — ^we've no call to be frightened yet a 
 while." She added, as signs of life began to return : — " She'll be 
 talking directly, you'll see." 
 
 Then the sleeper became conscious, and roused herself, to the 
 point of exclaiming: — " Oh dear, what is it ?" A second effort 
 made her aware that her agreeable visitor of yesterday was at her 
 bed's foot, and that her awakener was saying at her side : — " Now 
 you tell her. She'll hear you now." Mrs. Masham seemed to 
 assume official rights as a go-between, with special powers of 
 interpretation. 
 
 Widow Thrale looked more Pomona-like than ever in the 
 bright sunshine that was just getting the better of the hoar-frost. 
 She held in her hand a letter, to which she seemed to chng as a 
 credential — a sort of letter of marque, so to speak. " 'Tis a 
 bidding from her young ladyship," said the interpreter col- 
 laterally. She herself said, in the soothing voice of yesterday: — 
 " From her young ladyship, who has gone to away London un- 
 foretold, last night. She will have me get you to my mother's, 
 to make a stay with us for a while. And my mother will make 
 you kindly welcome, for the little boy Dave's sake, and for her 
 ladyship's satisfaction." ^ She read the letter of marque, as far 
 as " take great care of her, till you hear from me." 
 
514 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I will get up and go," said the old lady. Then she appeared 
 disconcerted at her own alacrity, saying to the housekeeper: — 
 " But you have been so kind to me !" 
 
 " What her young ladyship decides/' said Mrs. Masham, " it 
 is for us to abide by." She referred to this as a sort of super- 
 seding truth, to which all personal feelings — gratitude, in- 
 gratitude, resentment, forgiveness — should be subordinated. 
 It left open a claim to magnanimity, on her part, somehow. 
 Further, she said she would tell Lupin to bring some breakfast 
 for Mrs. Pileher. 
 
 The task of getting the old lady up to take it seemed to devolve 
 naturally on Widow Thrale, who accepted it discreetly and skil- 
 fully, explaining that Mr. Brantock's cart would wait an hour to 
 oblige, and would go very easy along the road, not to shake. 
 Old Maisie did not seem alarmed, on that score. 
 
 She had lain awake in the night in some terror of the day to 
 come, alone with a household which appeared to have decided, 
 though without open declaration, that she was a plaguy old 
 cat. She had been roused from a final deep sleep to find that 
 her Guardian Angel's last benediction to her had been to make 
 the very arrangement she would have chosen for herself had 
 she been put to it to make choice. That her mind had never 
 mooted the point was a detail, which retrospect corrected. She 
 was ashamed to find she was so glad to fly from Mrs. Masham 
 and Company, and already began to be uneasy lest she had mis- 
 judged them. But then — a plaguy old cat ! 
 
 However, the decision of this at present did not arise from the 
 circumstances. What did was that, in less than the hour Mr. 
 Brantock's cart could concede, she was seated therein, comfortably 
 wrapped up, beside this really very nice and congenial saddler's 
 relict, having been somehow dressed, breakfasted, and generally 
 adjusted by hands which no doubt had acquired the sort of skill 
 a hospital nurse gets — ^without the trenchant official demeanour 
 which makes the patient shake in his shoes, if any — ^by her 
 considerable experience of convalescents of all sorts and the 
 smaller sizes. 
 
 Mr. Brantock's cart jogged steadily on by cross-cuts and by- 
 roads at the dictation of parcels whose destinations Mr. Brantock's 
 horse bore in mind, and chose the nearest way to, allowing his 
 so-called driver to deliver them on condition that the consignees 
 paid cash. His harness stood in the way of his doing so himself. 
 
 Think what it was that was concealed from old Maisie and 
 Widow Thrale respectively, as they travelled in Mr. Brantock's 
 
MAISIE AT STRIDES COTTAGE 515 
 
 cart. The intensity of this mother's and daughter's ignorance ol 
 one another outwent the powers of mere language to tell. 
 
 To the mother the daughter was the very nice yoimg — 
 relatively young — ^woman who had taken such good care of 
 Dave last year, who was now so very kind and civil as to take 
 charge of an old encumbrance at the bidding of a glorious 
 Guardian Angel, who had dawned on these last days suddenly, 
 inexplicably ! An encumbrance at least, and no doubt plaguy, 
 or she never would have been called an old cat. 
 
 To the daughter the mother was a good old soul, to be made 
 much of and fostered; nursed if iU, entertained if weU; borne 
 with if, as might be, she developed into a trial — ^tm-ned peevish, 
 irritable, what not ! Had not Gwen o' the Towers spoken, and 
 was not the taint of Feudalism still strong in Eocestershire 
 half a century back ? Gwen o' the Towers had spoken, and 
 that ended the matter. 
 
 Otherwise they were no more conscious of each other's blood 
 in their own veins than was the convalescent Toby, who en- 
 livened the dulness of the journey by dwelling on the menus 
 he preferred for breakfast, dinner, and supper respectively. 
 He elicited ioformation about Dave, and was anxious to be 
 informed which would lick. He put the question ia this un- 
 gamished form, not supplying detailed conditions. When told 
 that Dave would, certainly, being nearly two years older, he 
 threw doubt on the good faith of his informant. 
 
 But the journey came to an end, and though Widow Thrale 
 had locked up the Cottage when she came away yesterday, she 
 had left the key with Elizabeth-next-door — ^whoever she was; 
 it does not matter — asking her to look in about eleven and light 
 a bit of fire against her. Widow Thrale's, return. So next- 
 door was applied to for the key, and the bit of fire — a very large 
 bit of a small fire, or a small bit of a very large one — ^was f oimd 
 blazing on the hearth, and the cloth laid for dinner and every- 
 thing. 
 
 According to Elizabeth-next-door, absolutely nothing had 
 happened since Mrs. Marrable went away yesterday. Routine 
 does not happen; it flows in a steady current which Event, the 
 fidget, may interrupt for a while, but seldom dams outright. 
 Elizabeth's memory, however, admitted on reconsideration 
 that Toft the glazier had come to see for a job, and that she had 
 sought for broken windows in Strides Cottage and found none. 
 Toft was quite wiUing to mend any pane on his own responsi- 
 bility, neither appealing to the County Court to obtain payment. 
 
516 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 nor smashing the pane in default of a cash settlement; a practice 
 congenial to his gipsy blood, although he was the loser by the 
 price of the glass. Toft had greatly desired to repair the glass 
 front of the little case or cabinet on the mantelshelf, but Eliza- 
 beth had not dared to sanction interference with an heirloom. 
 That was quite right, said Widow Thrale. What would mother 
 have said if any harm had been done to her model ? Besides, 
 it did not matter ! Because Toft would look in again to-day 
 or to-morrow, when he had finished on the conservatories at 
 the Vicarage. 
 
 None of this conversation reached old Maisie's ears at the 
 time; only as facts referred to afterwards. As soon as the 
 key was produced by EUzabeth-next-door, the old lady, treated 
 as an invalid in the face of her own remonstrance, was inducted 
 through the big kitchen or sitting-room, which she was sorry not 
 to stop in, to a bedroom beyond, and made to lie down and rest 
 and drink fresh milk. When she got up to join Widow Thrale's 
 and Toby's midday meal, all reference to glass-mending was 
 at an end, and Toby was making such a noise about the relative 
 merits of brown potatoes in their skins, and potatoes per se 
 potatoes, that you could not hear yourself speak. 
 
 In spite of her separation from her beautiful new Guardian 
 Angel, and her uneasiness about the nature of that dangerous 
 iUness — for were not people dying of cholera every day ? — 
 she felt happier at Strides Cottage than in the ancient quarters 
 Francis Quarles had occupied, where her position had been too 
 anomalous to be endurable. Gwen's scheme had been that 
 Mrs. Masham should play the part Widow Thrale seemed to fill 
 so easily. It had failed. The fact is that nothing but sym- 
 pathy with vulgarity gives what is called tact, and in this case 
 the Guardian Angel's scorn of the stupid reservations and dis- 
 tinctions of the servantry at the Towers had quite prevented 
 her stocking the article. 
 
 Perhaps Mrs. Thrale fell so easily into the task of making 
 old Maisie happy and at ease because she was furnished with 
 a means of explaining her and accounting for her, by the popu- 
 larity Dave Wardle had achieved with the neighbours a year 
 ago. Thus she had said to Elizabeth-next-door : — " You'll call 
 to mind our little Davy Wardle, a twelvemonth back ? — he that 
 was nigh to being killed by the fire-engine ? Well — there then ! 
 — ^this old soul belongs with him. 'Tis she he called his London 
 Granny, and old Mrs. Picture. I would not speak to her exact 
 name, never having been told it — 'tis something like Picture. 
 
MAISIE AT STEIDES COTTAGE 517 
 
 Her young ladyship at the Towers has given me the charge of 
 her. She's a gentle old soul, and sweet-spoken, to my thinking." 
 So that when Elizabeth-next-door came to converse with old 
 Maisie, they had a topic in common, Dave's blue eyes and cour- 
 teous demeanour having left a strong impression on next-door, 
 and on all who came within his radius. Perhaps if such a lubri- 
 cant had existed at the Towers, the social machinery would have 
 worked easier, and heated bearings would have been avoided. 
 
 It was the same with one or two others of the neighbours, 
 who really came in to learn something of the aged person with 
 such silvery-white hair, whom Widow Thrale had brought to 
 the Cottage. Little memories of Dave were a passport to her 
 heart. What strikes us, who know the facts, as strange, is 
 that no one of these good women — all familiar with the face 
 of Granny Marrable — ^were alive to the resemblance between 
 the two sisters. And the more strange, that this hkeness was 
 actually detected even in the half-dark, by an incomer much 
 less habituated to her face than many of them. 
 
 This casual incomer was Toft, the vagrant glazier, and — 
 so said chance report, lacking confirmation — larcenous vagrant. 
 His Assyrian appearance may have been responsible for this. 
 It gave rise to the behef that he was either Hebrew or Egyptian. 
 And, of course, no jew or gipsy could be an honest man. That 
 saw itself, in a primitive English village. 
 
 Toft had made his appearance at Strides Cottage just after 
 dusk, earnestly entreating to be allowed to replace the glass 
 Toby's chestnut-shot had broken, for nothing — ^yes, for nothing ! 
 — ^if Widow Thrale was not incHned to go to fourpence for it. 
 The reply was: — " 'Tis not the matter of the money. Master 
 Toft. 'Tis because I grudge the touching of a thing my mother 
 sets store by, when she is not here herseK to overlook it." Now 
 this was just after old Maisie had quitted the room, to lie down 
 and rest again before supper, having been led into much talk 
 about Dave. Toft had seen her. Bjs answer to Widow Thrale 
 was : — " Will not the old wife come back, if I bide a bit for her 
 coming ?" His mistake being explained to him, his comment 
 was: — " Zookers ! I'm all in the wrong. But I tell ye true, 
 mistress, I did think hesr hair was gone white, against what I 
 see on her head three months agone. And I was of the mind 
 she'd fell av/ay a bit." Widow Thrale in the end consented to 
 allow the damage to be made good, she herself carefully re- 
 moving the precious treasure from its case, and locking it into 
 a cupboard while Toft replaced the broken glass. This done, 
 
618 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 under her unflagging supervision, the model was replaced; 
 fourpence changed hands, and the glazier went his way, saying, 
 as he made his exit: — " That was a chouse, mistress." 
 
 But Toft was the only person who saw the hkeness; or, at 
 any rate, who confessed to seeing it. It is, of course, not at 
 loggerheads with human nature, that others saw it too, but kept 
 the discovery to themselves. It was so out of the question 
 that the resemblance should exist, that the fact that it did stood 
 condemned on its merits. Therefore, silence ! Another possi- 
 bility is that the intensely white hair, and the seeming greater 
 age, of old Maisie, had more than their due weight in heading 
 off speculation. Old Phoebe's teeth, too, made a much better 
 show than her sister's. 
 
 One thing is certain, that the person most concerned, Ruth 
 Thrale herself, remained absolutely blind to a fact which might 
 have struck her had she not been intensely familiar with her 
 reputed mother's face. The features of every day were things 
 per se, not capable of comparison with casual extramural 
 samples. They never are, within family walls. 
 
 That this was no mere inertness of observation, but a good 
 strong opacity of vision, was clear when, after leaving the con- 
 valescent Toby to dreams of indulgence in the pleasures of the 
 table, and victorious encounters, she roused her old visitor to 
 bring her into supper. 
 
 " There now ! — it is strange that I should have company 
 to-night. I never thought to have the luck, yesterday, when 
 you were giving me my tea, Mrs. . . ." She stopped on the 
 name, and supplied a cup thereof — supper was a mixed meal at 
 Strides Cottage — ^then continued: — "That brings to mind to 
 ask you, whether little Davy is in the right of it when he writes 
 yom: name ' Picture '?.... Is he not, mayhap, calling you out 
 of your name, childHke t" 
 
 " But of course he is, bless his little heart ! My name is 
 Prichard. P-r-i-c-h — ^Prich." She spelt the first syllable, to 
 make sure no t got in. " The Lady, Gwen, has taken it of him, 
 to humour him and DoUy, just as their young mouths speak it — 
 Picture ! But it isn't Picture; it's Prichard." Old Maisie felt 
 quite mendacious. She seldom had to state so roundly that 
 her assumed name was authentic. Widow Thrale made no 
 comment, only saying: — "I thought the child had made 
 ' Picture ' out of his own head." The talk scarcely turned on 
 the name for more than a minute, as she went on to say: — " Now 
 you must eat some supper, Mrs. Prichard, because you hardly 
 
MAISIE AT STRIDES COTTAGE 519 
 
 took anything for dinner. And see what a ride you had !" 
 She went on to make appeals on behalf of bacon, eggs, bloaters, 
 cold mutton and so on, with only a very small response from the 
 old lady, who seemed to Uve on nothing. A compromise was 
 effected, the latter promising to take some gruel just before 
 going to bed. 
 
 Two influences were at work to keep the antecedents of either 
 out of the conversation. Old Maisie fought shy of inquiries, 
 which might have produced counter-inquiry she could scarcely 
 have met by silence; and Mrs. Thrale shrank, with a true in- 
 stinctive delicacy, from prying into a record which had the 
 word poverty so legible on its title-page, and signs of a former 
 well-being so visible on its subject. Besides, how about Sapps 
 Court and Dave's uncle, the prizefighter ? 
 
 She felt curiosity, all the same. However, information might 
 come, unsought, as the ground thawed. A springUke mildness 
 was in the atmosphere of their acquaintance, and it began to 
 tell on the ice, very markedly, as they sat enjoying the firelight; 
 candles blown out, and the flicker of the wood-blaze making 
 sport with visibility on the walls and dresser — on the dominant 
 willow-pattern of the latter, with its occurrences of polished 
 metal, and precious incidents of Worcester or Bristol porcelain; 
 or the pictorial wealth of the former, the portrait of Lord Nelson, 
 and the British lion, and all the flags of all the world in one 
 frame; to say nothing of some rather woebegone Bible prints, 
 doing full justice to the beards of Susannah's elders, and the 
 biceps of Samson. On all these, and prominently on the sampler 
 worked by Hephzibah Marrable, 1672, a ship-of-war in full sail, 
 with cannons firing off wool in the same direction, and defeating 
 the Dutch Fleet, presumably. Perhaps the Duke of York's 
 flagship. 
 
 The two had talked of many thiags. Of the great bull-dog 
 who was such a safeguard against thieves that they never felt 
 insecure at night, and were very careless in consequence about 
 bolts and bars; and who had investigated the visitor very care- 
 fully on her first arrival, suspiciously, but seemed now to have 
 given her his complete sanction. Of the cat on the hearth 
 and the Family at the Towers — small things and large; but with 
 a great satisfaction for old Maisie, when the statement was 
 made with absolute confidence that Mr. Torrens, who was said 
 to be the man of her young ladyship's choice, would recover his 
 eyesight. Mrs. Lamprey's version of Dr. Nash's pronoimcement 
 was conclusive, and was conscientiously repeated, without 
 
520 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 exaggeration; causing heartfelt joy to old Maisie, with a tendency 
 to consider how far Mr. Torrens deserved his good fortune, the 
 moment his image was endowed with eyesight. That, you 
 remember, was the effect of Mrs. Lamprey's first communication 
 yesterday. Then Widow Thrale had read a letter from her son 
 on the Agamemnon, in the Black Sea, cheerfully forecasting 
 an early collapse of Russia before the prowess of the Allies, and 
 an early triumphant return of the Meet with unhmited prize- 
 money. Old Maisie had to envy perforce this mother's pride 
 in this son, his daring and his chivalry, his invincibility by 
 foes, his generosity to the poor and weak. Her envy was forced 
 from her — how could it have been otherwise ? — but her love 
 came with it. All her heart went out to the sweet, proud, con- 
 tented face as the firehght played on it, and made the treasured 
 letter visible to its reader. Then she had listened to par- 
 ticulars of the other son, in the Baltic, of whom his mother was 
 temperately proud, not rising to her previous enthusiasm. He 
 had, however, been in action; that was his strong point, at 
 present. By that time Mrs. Thrale's domestic record only 
 needed a word or two about her daughter, Mrs. Costrell, to be 
 complete for its purpose, a tentative enhghtenment of its hearer, 
 which might induce counter-revelation. But the old lady did 
 not respond, clinging rather to inquiry about her informant's 
 affairs. For which the latter did not blame her, for who could 
 say what reasons she might have for her reticence ? At any 
 rate, she would not try to break through it. 
 
 All this talk, by the comfortable fireside, was nourishment 
 to the growing germ of old Maisie's affection for this chance 
 acquaintance of a day. Her faith in aU her surroundings — 
 her Guardian Angel apart — had been sadly shaken by the ex- 
 pression " plaguy old cat." This woman gould be relied upon, 
 she was sure. She could not be disappointed in her — how could 
 she doubt it ? Whether their unknown kinship was a mysterious 
 help to this confidence is a question easy to ask. The story 
 makes no attempt to answer it. 
 
 A bad disappointment was pending, however. After some 
 chance references to " mother," her great vigour in spite of 
 her eighty years, the distances she could walk, and so on — 
 and some notes about neighbours — ^Farmer Jones's Bull, men- 
 tioned as a local celebrity, naturally led back to Dave. 
 
 " The dear boy was never tired of telling about that Bull," 
 said old Maisie. " I thought perhaps he made up a Httle as 
 he went, for children will. Was it all true he told me about 
 
MAISIE AT STRIDES COTTAGE 521 
 
 how he wasn't afraid to go up close, and the Bull was good and 
 quiet ?" 
 
 " Quite true/' answered Mrs. Thrale. " Only we would 
 never have given permission, me and mother, only we knew the 
 animal by his character. He cannot abide grown men, and 
 he's not to be trusted with women and httle girls. But little 
 boys may pat him, and no offence given. It was all quite 
 true." 
 
 " Well, now ! — that is very nice to know. Was it true, too, 
 all about the horses and the wheelsacks, and the water-cart ?" 
 
 " Of course ! — oh yes, of course it was ! That was our model. 
 Only it should not have been wheelsacks. Wheat sacks ! And 
 water-cart ! — he meant water-wheel. Bless the child ! — he'd 
 got it all topsy-turned. There's the model on the mantel-shelf, 
 with the cloth over it. I'll take it off to show you. That 
 won't do any harm. I only covered it so that no one should 
 touch the glass. Because Ben Toft said the putty would be 
 soft for a few days." A small bead-worked tablecloth, thick 
 and protective, had been wrapped round the model. 
 
 Widow Thrale reUghted the candles, which had been out of 
 employment. They did not give a very good light. The old 
 lady was just beginning to feel exhausted with so much talk. 
 But she was bound to see this — Dave's model, his presentment 
 of which had been a soiirce of speculation in Sapps Court ! 
 Just fancy ! Widow Thrale Hfted it bodily from the chimney- 
 shelf, and placed it on the table. 
 
 " Mother ought to tell you about it," said she, disengaging 
 the covering, " because she knows so much more about it than 
 I do. You see, when the water is poured in at the top and the 
 clockwork is wound up, the mill works and the sacks go up and 
 down, and one has to pretend they are taking grist up into the 
 loft. It was working quite beautiful when mother put the 
 water in for Dave to see. And it doesn't go out of order by 
 standing; for, the last time before that, when mother set it 
 going, was for the sake of Uttle Robert that we lost when he was 
 little older than Dave. Such a many years it seems since 
 then ! . . . . What ?" 
 
 For as she chatted on about what she conceived would be 
 her visitor's interest in the model — Dave's interest, to wit — 
 she had failed to hear her question, asked in a tremulous and 
 almost inaudible voice: — "Where was it, the miU? .... Whose 
 mill ?" A repetition of it, made with an effort, caused her to 
 look round. 
 
522 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 And then she saw that old Maisie's breath was coming fast, 
 and that her words caught in it and became gasps. Her con- 
 clusion was immediate, disconnecting this agitation entirely 
 from the subject of her speech. The old lady had got upset 
 with so much excitement, that was all. Just think of all that 
 perturbation last night, and the journey to-day ! At her time 
 of life ! Besides, she had eaten nothing. 
 
 Evidently the proper course now was to induce her to go to 
 bed, and get her that gruel, which she had promised to take. 
 " I am sure you would be better in bed, Mrs. Prichard," said 
 Mrs. Thrale. " Suppose you was to go now, and I'U get you 
 your gruel." 
 
 X)ld Maisie gave way at once to the guidance of a persuasive 
 hand, but held to her question. " Whose mill was it V 
 
 " My grandfather's. Take care of the Httle step .... you 
 shall see it again to-morrow by daylight. Bed's the place for 
 you, dear Mrs. Prichard. Why — see ! — ^you are shaking all 
 over." 
 
 So she was, but not to such an extent as to retard operations. 
 The old white head was soon on its pillow, but the old white 
 face was unusually flushed. And the voice was quite tremulous 
 that said, iuexpHcably: — "How came your grandfather to be 
 the owner of that mill ?" 
 
 Even a younger and stronger person than old Maisie might 
 have lost head to the extent of not seeing that the best thing 
 to say was : — " I have seen this model before. I knew it ia my 
 childhood." But so dumbfoundered was she by what had been 
 so suddenly sprung upon her that she could not have thought of 
 any right thing to say, to save her Ufe. 
 
 And how could Widow Thrale discern anything in what she 
 did say but the efEect of fatigue, excitement, and underfeeding 
 on an octogenarian; probably older, and certainly weaker, than 
 her mother ? How came her grandfather to be the owner of 
 Darenth Mill, indeed ! Well ! — she could get Dr. Nash round 
 at half an hour's notice; that was one consolation. Meanwhile, 
 could she seriously answer such an inquiry ? Indeed, she scarcely 
 recognised that it was an inquiry. It was a symptom. 
 
 She spoke to the old head on the pillow, with eyes closed now. 
 " Would you dislike it very much, ma'am, if I was to put one 
 spoonful of brandy ia the gruel ? There is brandy without 
 sending for it, because of invalids." 
 
 " Thank you, I thiak no brandy. It isn't good for me. . . . 
 But I Uke to have the gruel, you know." She would not unsay 
 
MAISIE AT STRIDES COTTAGE 523 
 
 the gruel, because she was sure this kind-hearted woman would 
 take pleasure in getting it for her. Not that she wanted it. 
 
 Widow Thrale went back to the kitchen to see to the gruel. 
 She was absolutely free from any thought of the model, in relation 
 to the old lady's indisposition, or collapse, whichever it was. 
 Lord Nelson himself, on the wall, was not more completely 
 detached from it. While the gruel was arriving at maturity, 
 she wrapped the covering again carefully over the mill and the 
 wheelsacks and the water-cart, and Muggeridge, and replaced it 
 on the chimney-shelf. 
 
 Left alone, old Maisie, no longer seeing the model before her, 
 began to waver about the reality of the whole occurrence. Might 
 it not have been a dream, a delusion; at least, an exaggeration ? 
 There was a model, with horses, and a waggon — ^yes ! But 
 was she quite sure it was her old mill — her father's ? How could 
 she be sure of anything, when it was all so long ago ? Especially 
 when her pulse was thumping, like this. Besides, there was 
 a distinct fact that told against the identity of this model and 
 the one it was so bewilderingly hke; to wit — ^the size of it. That 
 old model of sixty years ago was twice the size of this. She 
 knew that, because she could remember her own hand on it, 
 flat at the top. Her hand and Phoebe's together ! — she 
 remembered the incident plainly. 
 
 Here was Mrs. Thrale back with the gruel. How dear and 
 kind she was ! But a horrible thought kept creeping into old 
 Maisie's mind. Was she — a liar ? Had she not said that it 
 was her grandfather's mill ? Now that could not be true. H 
 she had said great-uncle. . . . Well ! — ^would that have made 
 it any better ? On reflection, certainly not ! For her father 
 had had neither brother nor sister. It was a rehef to put 
 speculation aside and accept the gruel. 
 
 She made one or two slight attempts to recur to the mill. 
 But her hostess made no response; merely discotu-aged con- 
 versation on every topic. Mrs. Prichard had better not talk 
 any more. The thing for her to do was to take her gruel and go 
 to sleep. Perhaps it was. A reaction of fatigue added powerful 
 arguments on the same side, and she was faia to surrender at 
 discretion. 
 
 She must have slept for over six hours, for when the sudden 
 sound of an early bird awakened her the dawn was creeping into 
 the house. The window of her own room was shuttered and 
 curtained, but she saw a line of daylight under the door. No 
 one was moving yet. She instantly remembered all the events 
 
524 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 she had gone to sleep upon; the recollection of the mill-model 
 in particular rushing at her aggressively, almost producing 
 physical pain, like a blow. She knew there was another pain 
 to come behind it, as soon as her ideas became collected. Yes 
 — ^there it was ! This dear lovable woman whom she had been 
 so glad of, after the duplicity of those servants at the Towers, 
 was as untrustworthy as they, and the whole world was a cheat ! 
 How else could it be, when she had heard her with her own ears 
 say that that mill had belonged to her grandfather ? 
 
 She lay and chafed, a helpless nervous system dominated by 
 a cruel idea. Was there no way out ? Only one — that she 
 herself had been duped by her own imagination. But then, 
 how was that possible ? Unless, indeed, she was taking leave 
 of her senses. Because, even supposing that she could fancy 
 that another model of another mill could deceive her by a chance 
 hkeness, how about those two tiny figures of little girls in white 
 bonnets and Ulac frocks ? Oh, that she could but prove them 
 phantoms of an imagination stimulated by the first seeming 
 identity of the building and the water-wheel ! After all, all 
 water-mills were much ahke. Yes, the chances were large that 
 she had cheated herself. But certainty — certainty — that was 
 what she wanted. She felt sick with the intensity of her longing 
 for firm ground. 
 
 Was it absolutely impossible that she should see for herself 
 now — now ? She sat up in bed, looking longingly at the 
 growing Ught of the doorslip. After all, the model was but six 
 paces beyond it, at the very most. She would be back in bed 
 in three minutes, and no harm done. No need for a candle, 
 with the Ught. 
 
 The bird outside said again the thing he had said before, 
 and it seemed to her like : " Yes — do it." She got out of bed 
 and found her slippers easily; then a warm overall of Gwen's 
 providing. Never since her impoverishment had she worn such 
 good clothes. 
 
 Her feet might fail her — ^they had done so before now. But 
 she would soon find out, and would keep near the bed till she 
 felt confidence. ... Oh yes — they would be all right ! 
 
 The door-hasp shrieked Hke a mandrake — as door-hasps do, 
 in silence — but waked no one, apparently. There was the 
 kitchen-door at the end of the brick-paved lobby, letting through 
 dawn's first decision about the beginning of the day. Old 
 Maisie went cautiously over the herring-boned pavement, with 
 a hand against the wall for steadiness. This door before her 
 
MAISIE AT STRIDES COTTAGE 525 
 
 had an old-fashioned latch. It would not shriek, but it might 
 clicket. 
 
 Only a very Httle more, and then she was in the kitchen ! 
 
 There was more light than she had expected, for one of the 
 windows was not only shutterless, but without either blind or 
 curtain. She was not surprised, for she remembered what her 
 hostess had said about the housedog, and security from thieves. 
 That was a source of alarm, for one short moment. Might he 
 not hear her, and bark ? Then a touch of a cold nose, exploring 
 her feet, answered the question. He had heard her, and he 
 would not bark. He seemed to decide that there was no cause 
 for active intervention, and returned to his quarters, wherever 
 they were. 
 
 But where was the sought-for model ? Not on the table 
 where she saw it yesterday; the table was blank, but for the 
 chrysanthemums in a pot of water in the middle. On the 
 chimney-piece then, back in its place, rather high up — there 
 it was, to be sure ! But such a disappointment ! She could 
 have seen it there, though it was rather out of reach for 
 her eyesight. But alas ! — ^it was wrapped up again in that 
 cloth. It was a grievous disappointment. 
 
 Perhaps she might contrive to see a little behind it, by pulling 
 it aside. Yes — ^there ! — she could reach it, at any rate. But 
 to pull it aside was quite another matter. Its texture was pro- 
 hibitive. Fancy a strip of cocoanut matting, with an uncom- 
 promising selvage, wrapped round a box of its own width, with 
 its free end under the box ! Then compare the rigidity of bead- 
 work and cocoanut matting. The position was hopeless. It 
 was quite beyond her strength to reach it down, and she would 
 have been afraid to do so in the most favourable circumstances 
 imaginable. 
 
 Quite hopeless ! But there was one thing she might satisfy 
 herself of — ^the relative sizes of her own hand and the case. 
 Yes — ^by just standing on the secure steel fender to gain the 
 requisite four inches, she could lay her two hands over the top, 
 length for length, and the finger-tips would not meet, any more 
 than hers met Phoebe's when their frock-cuffs were flush 
 with the edge of her father's old model, all those years and 
 years ago. Because her mind was striving to discredit the 
 authenticity of this one. 
 
 Slowly and cautiously, for rheumatism had its say in the 
 matter, she got a safe foothold on the fender and her hands up 
 to the top, measuring. See there ! Exactly as she had fore- 
 
526 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 told — half the size ! She knew she could not be mistaken about 
 the frock-cuffs, and so far from the finger-tips meeting, with 
 the two middle fingers bickering a little about their rights, there 
 was an overlap as far as the second joint. The hands had grown 
 a Uttle since those days, no doubt, but not to that extent. She 
 tried them both ways to make sure, left on right, and right on 
 left, lest she should be deceiving herself. She was quite un- 
 nerved with self -mistrust, but so taken up with avoiding a mis- 
 measurement now, that she could not sift that question of the 
 hands' growth. 
 
 Probably everyone has detected outrageous errors in his own 
 answers to his own question: — How old was I when this, that, 
 or the other happened ? — errors always in the direction of 
 exaggeration of age. The idea in old Maisie's mind, that she 
 and Phoebe were at least grown girls, was an utter delusion. 
 Mere six-year-olds at the best ! The two hands, that she 
 remembered, were the hands of babies, and the incident had 
 happened over seventy years ago. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 A QUIET RAILWAY-STATION. ONE PASSENGER, AND A SHAKE- 
 DOWN AT MOOEE's. the convict DAVEBIIi's SEARCH FOR 
 HIS MOTHER. GRANNY MAERABLB's READING OF "pILGKIm's 
 PROGRESS." A MAN ON A STILE. SOME MEMORIES OF NORFOLK 
 ISLAND. A FINGER-JOINT. AN OATH ADMINISTEEED BY AN 
 AMATEUR, WITHOUT A TESTAMENT. HOW DAVEEILL SPOKE 
 HIS NAME TWICE, AND THE FIRST TIME UNDID THE SECOND. 
 OFF THROUGH A HEDGE, FOLLOWED BY A RESPECTABLE MAN. 
 HOW OLD PHCEBE FOUND AN ENIGMA IN HER POCKET. 
 
 In those days the great main Unes of railway were hable to long 
 silences in the night. At the smaller stations particularly, after 
 the last train up and the last train down had passed without 
 killing somebody at a level crossing, or leaving you behind 
 because you thought it was sure to be late, and presumed upon 
 that certainty, an almost holy calm would reign for hours, and 
 those really ill-used things, the sleepers, seemed to have a chance 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 527 
 
 at last. For after being baffled all day by intermittent rushing 
 fiends, and unwarrantable shuntings to and fro, and droppings 
 of sudden red-hot clinkers on their counterpanes, an inexplicable 
 cHck or two — apparently due to fidgety bull's-eyes desirous 
 of change — could scarcely be accounted a disturbance. 
 
 No station in the world was more primevally still than Grantley 
 Thorpe, after the down three-thirty express — ^the train that 
 crossed the three-fifteen that carried Gwen to London — had 
 stopped, that the word of Bradshaw should be fulfilled; had 
 deposited the smallest conceivable number of passengers, and 
 wondered, perhaps, why remaindermen in the carriages always 
 put their heads out to ask what station this was. On this 
 particular occasion, Bradshaw scored, for the down train 
 entered the station three minutes after the up train departed, 
 twelve minutes behind. Then the Kttle station turned off lights, 
 locked up doors of offices and lids of boxes, and went to bed. 
 All but a signalman, in a box on a pole. 
 
 There was one passenger, not a prepossessing one, who seemed 
 morose. His only luggage was a small handbag, and that was 
 against him. It is not an indictable offence to have no luggage, 
 but if a referendum were taken from railway-porters, it would 
 be. However, this man was, after all, a third-class passenger, 
 so perhaps he was excusable for carrying that bag. 
 
 " I suppose," said he, surrendering his ticket, " it's no part 
 of your duty to tell a cove where he can get a sleep for half a night. 
 You ain't paid for it." Whether this was churlishness, or a 
 sort of humour, was not clear, from the tone. 
 
 Sandys, the station-master, one of the most good-humoured 
 of mortals, preferred the latter interpretation. " It don't add 
 to our salary, but it ought to. Very obliging we are, in these 
 parts ! How much do you look to pay ?" 
 
 The man drew from his pocket, presumably, the fimd he had 
 to rely upon, and appeared to coimt it, with dissatisfaction. 
 " Two and a kick !" said he. " I'll go to the tizzy, for sheets." 
 This meant he would lay out the tizzy, or kick, provided that 
 his bed was furnished with sheets. He added, with a growl, 
 that he was not going to be put off with a horserug, this time. 
 The adjective he used to qualify the previous rug showed that 
 his experiences had been peculiar, and disagreeable. 
 
 " You might ask at Moore's, along on your left where you 
 see yonder light. Show your money first, and offer to pay in 
 advance. Cash first, sleep afterwards. There's someone sitting 
 up, or they wouldn't show a light. . . . Here, Tommy, you're 
 
 U 
 
528 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 going that way. You p'int him out Moore's." Thus the 
 station-master, who then departed along a gravel path, through 
 a wicket-gate. It led to his private residence, which was keeping 
 up its spirits behind a small grove of sunflowers which were not 
 keeping up theirs. They had been once the admiration of 
 passing trains, with a bank of greensward below them with 
 " Grantley Thorpe " on it in flints, in very large caps.; and now 
 they were on the brink of their graves in the earth so chilly, 
 and didn't seem resigned. 
 
 Tommy the porter did not relish his companion, evidently, 
 as he walked on, a pace ahead, along the road that led to the 
 village. He never said a word, and seemed justified in out- 
 stripping that slow, lurching, indescribable pace, which was not 
 lameness, in order to stimulate it by example. 
 
 " Yamder's Mower's," said Tommy, nodding towards a small 
 pothouse down a blind alley. " You wo'ant find nowat to 
 steal there, at Mower's." 
 
 " What the Hell do you mean by that ?" 
 
 " What do I me'an — ^is that what you're asking ?" Raised 
 voice. 
 
 " Ah — ^what do you mean by ' steal '?" 
 
 " Just what a sa'ay ! What do they me'an in London ?" 
 
 " London's a large place — ^too large for this time o' night. 
 You come along there one o' these days, and you'll find out 
 what they mean." He sketched the behaviour of Londoners 
 towards rustic visitors untrathfuUy — ^if our experience can be 
 reUed on — and in terms open to censure; ending up: — "You'll 
 find what they'll do, fast enough ! Just you show up there, one 
 o' these fine days." He had only warped the subject thus in 
 order to introduce the idea of a humiHating and degrading 
 chastisement, as an insult to his hearer. 
 
 He vanishes from the story at this point, in a discharge of 
 Parthian shafts by Tommy the young railwayman, not very 
 energetically returned, as if he thought the contest not worth 
 prolonging. Vanishes, that is to say, unless he was the same 
 man who spoke with Mrs. Keziah Solmes at about eleven o'clock 
 the next morning, in the road close by the Ranger's Cottage, 
 close to where the grey mare started on her forty-first mile, 
 yesterday. If this person spoke truth when he said he had 
 come from a station much farther o£E than Grantley Thorpe, he 
 was wof the same man. Otherwise, the witnesses agreed in their 
 description of him. 
 
 Mis. Solmes's testimony was that a man in rough grey suit 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 529 
 
 — ^frieze or homespun — addressed her while she was looking out 
 for the mail-cart, with possible letters, and asked to be directed 
 to Ancester Towers; which is, at this point, invisible from the 
 road. She suspected him at first of being a vagrant of some 
 new sort — ^then of mere eccentricity. For plenty of eccentrics 
 came to get a sight of the Towers. She had surmised that his 
 object was to do so, and had told him, that as the family were 
 away, strangers could be admitted by orders obtainable of 
 Kiffin and Clewby, his lordship the Earl's agents at Grantley. 
 He then told her that he had walked over from Bridgport, where 
 the Earl had no agent. He did not wish to go over the Towers, 
 but to inquire for a party he was anxious to see; an old party 
 by the name of Prichard. That was, he said, his own name, 
 and she was a relation of his — ^in fact, his mother. He had 
 not seen her for many a long year, and his coming would be 
 a bit of a surprise. He had been away ia the Colonies, and 
 had not been able to play the part of a dutiful son, but by no 
 choice of his own. Coming back to England, his first thought 
 had been to seek out the old lady, " at the old address." But 
 there he found the house had fallen down, and she was gone 
 away temporary, only she could be heard of at Ancestor Towers 
 in Rocestershire. 
 
 Mrs. Keziah was so touched by this tale of filial affection, 
 that she nipped in the bud a sprouting conviction that the 
 man was no better than he — and others — should be. She 
 interested herself at once. " You wo'ant need to ask at the 
 Towers, master," said she. " I can tell you all they can, up 
 there. And very hke a bit more. The old dame she's gone 
 away with my cousin, maybe an hour ago — maybe more. She'll 
 ta'ak she to her mother's at Chorlton, and if ye keep along the 
 straight road for Grantley till ye come to sign-po'ast, sayun' 
 ' To Dessington and Chorlton,' then another three-qua'arters 
 of an 'oor '11 ta'ak ye there, easy." 
 
 The dutitid son looked disappointed, but did not lose his 
 equable and not vmpleasant manner. " I thought I was nigher 
 my joTUTiey's end than that, marm," said he "I was looking 
 forward to the old lady giving me a snack of breakfast. . . . 
 But don't you mind me ! I'U do all right. I got a bit of bread 
 coming along from Gridgport. . . . Ah ! — Bridgport I should 
 have said." For he had begim to say Grantley. 
 
 Even if Mrs. Solmes had not been on the point of offering 
 rest and refreshment, this disclaimer of the need of it would 
 have suggested that she should do so. After all, was he not the 
 
530 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 son of that nice old soul her cousin Ruth Thrale had taken such 
 a fancy to. If she came across the old lady herself, how should 
 she look her in the face, after letting her toil-worn son add five 
 miles to seven, on an all but empty stomach. Of course, she 
 immediately asked him in, going on ahead of him to explain 
 him to her husband, who looked rather narrowly at the new- 
 comer, but could not interpose upon a slice of cold beef and a 
 glass of ale, especially as it seemed to be unasked for, however 
 welcome. 
 
 " 'Tis a tidy step afoot from Bridgport Ra'aby, afower break- 
 fast," said old Stephen, keeping his eye, nevertheless, on the 
 man's face, with only a half-welcome on his own. " But come 
 ye in, and the missus '11 cast an eye round the larder for ye. 
 You be a stra-anger in these parts, I take it." 
 
 The beef and ale seemed very welcome, and the man was 
 talkative. Did his hosts know Mrs. Prichard personally ? 
 Only just seen her— was that it ? She must be gone very grey 
 by now; why — she was going that way when he saw her last, 
 years ago. He never said how many years. He couldn't say 
 her age to a nicety, but she must be well on towards eighty. 
 However did she come to be at the country seat of the great 
 Earl of Ancestor ? — that was what puzzled him. 
 
 Mrs. Solmes could not tell him everything, but she had a good 
 deal to tell. The old lady she had seen was very grey certainly, 
 but had seemed to her cousin Ruth Thrale, who had tea with 
 her yesterday, quite in possession of her faculties, and — oh 
 dear yes ! — able to get about, but suffering from rheumatism. 
 But then just think— nearly eighty ! As for how she came 
 to be at the Towers, all that Mrs. Solmes knew was that it was 
 through a sort of fancy of her young ladyship. Lady Gwen Rivers, 
 reputed one of the most beautiful young ladies in England, who 
 had brought her from London after the accident already referred 
 to, and who had gone away by the night-train, leaving a request 
 to her cousin Ruth to take charge of her till her return. She 
 could have repeated all she had heard from Mrs. Thrale, but 
 scarcely felt authorised to do so. 
 
 One untoward incident happened. The infant Seth, sum- 
 moned to show himself, stood in a comer and pouted, turned 
 red, and became intransigeant ; finally, when peremptorily told 
 to go and speak to the gentleman, shrank from and glared at 
 him; only allowed his hand to be taken under compulsion, and 
 rushed away when released, roaring with anger or terror, or 
 both, and wiping the touch of the stranger o£E his offended 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 531 
 
 hand. This was entirely unlike Seth, whose defects of character, 
 disobedience to Law and Order, and love of destruction for its 
 own sake, were qualified by an impassioned affection for the 
 human race, causing him to attach himself to that race, as a 
 sort of rock-Umpet, and even to supersede kisses by Ucks. His 
 aversion to this man was a new departure. 
 
 He, for his part, expressed his surprise at Seth's attitude. 
 He was noted in his part of the world for his tenderness towards 
 young children. His circle of acquaintances suffered the little 
 ones to come unto him contrary to what you might have thought, 
 he being but an ugly customer to look at. But his heart was 
 good — a rough diamond ! When he had expressed his gratitude 
 and tramped away down the road, after carefully writing down 
 the address " Strides Cottage, Chorlton " and the names of its 
 occupants, old Stephen and Keziah looked each at the other, 
 as though seeking help towards a good opinion of this man, and 
 seemed to get none. 
 
 Old Granny Marrable always found a difl&culty in getting 
 away from her granddaughter Maisie's, because her presence 
 there was so very much appreciated. Her great-grandson also, 
 whose charms were developing more rapidly than is ever the 
 case in after-hfe, was becoming a strong attraction to her. 
 Moreover, a very old friend of hers, Mrs. Naunton, residing a 
 short mile away, at Dessington, had just pulled through rheu- 
 matic fever, and was getting well enough to be read to out of 
 " Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 This afternoon, however, Mrs. Naunton did not prove well 
 enough to keep awake when read to, even for Mr. Greatheart 
 to slay Giant Despair. In fact, Mrs. Marrable caught her snoring, 
 and read the rest to herself. It was too good to lose. When 
 the Giant was disposed of past all recrudescence, she departed 
 for her return journey instead of waiting for her granddaughter's 
 brother-in-law, a schoolboy with a holiday, to come and see 
 her home. She knew he would come by the short cut, across 
 the fields, so she took that way to intercept him, in spite of the 
 stiles. As a rule she preferred the highroad. 
 
 The fields were very lonely, but what did that matter ? How 
 little one feels the loneliness of an old familiar pathway ! No 
 one ever had befn murdered in these fields, and no one ever 
 would be. Grarmy Marrable walked on with confidence. 
 Nevertheless, had she had her choice, she would have preferred 
 the loneliness unalloyed by the presence of the man on the stile. 
 
532 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 at the end of Farmer Naunton's twelve-acre pasture, if only 
 because she anticipated having to ask him to let her pass. For 
 he seemed to have made up his mind to wait to be asked; if 
 approached from behind, at any rate. She could not see his 
 face or hands, only his outHne against the cold, purple distance, 
 with a red ball that had been the sun all day. " Might I trouble 
 you, master 1" she said. 
 
 The man turned his head just as far as was necessary for his 
 eyes, under tension, to see the speaker; then got down, more 
 deUberately than courteously, on his own side of the stile. 
 " Come along, missus," he said. " Never mind legs. Yours 
 ain't my sort. Over you go !" 
 
 Safe in the next field. Granny Marrable turned to thank him. 
 But not before she had put three or four yards between them. 
 Not that she anticipated violence, but from mere dislike of 
 what she would have called sauciness in a boy, but which was, 
 in a man of his time of hfe, sheer brutal rudeness. " Thank 
 you very kindly, master \" said she. " Sorry to disturb you !" 
 
 He ought to have said that she was kindly welcome, or that 
 he was very happy, but he said neither, only looking steadily 
 at her. So she simply turned to go away. 
 
 She walked as far as the middle of the next field, not sorry 
 to be out of this man's reach; and rather glad that, when she 
 was within it, she was not a young girl, unprotected. That 
 shows the impression he had given her. Also that his steady 
 look was concentrating to a glare as she lost sight of his face, 
 and that she would be glad when she was sure she had seen the 
 last of it. She walked a little quicker as soon as she thought 
 her doing so would attract no notice. 
 
 " Hi — missus !" She quickened her pace as the words — 
 a hoarse call — caught her up. She even hoped she might be 
 mistaken — had made a false interpretation of some entirely 
 different sound; not the cawing of one of those rooks — ^that was 
 against reason. But it might have been a dog's bark at a 
 distance, warped by imagination. She had known that to 
 happen. If so, it would come again. She stood and waited 
 quietly. 
 
 It came again, distinctly. " Hi — missus !" No dog's bark 
 that, but that man's voice, to a certainty, nearer. Then again 
 " Hi — missus !" nearer still — almost close — agid the sound of 
 his feet. A halting, dot-and-go-one pace; not lame, but 
 irregular. 
 
 She was a courageous old woman, was old Granny Marrable. 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 533 
 
 But the place was a very lonely one, and .... Well — she did 
 not mind about her money ! It was her treasured old gold 
 watch, that her first husband gave her, that she was thinking 
 of 
 
 There ! — ^what a fool she was, to get into such a taking when, 
 ten to one, she had only dropped something, and he was running 
 after her to restore it. She faced about, and looked full at 
 him. 
 
 " Ah !" said he. " Take a good look ! You've seen me 
 afore. No hurry — easy does it \" His voice showed such 
 entire conviction, and at the same time such a complete freedom 
 from anything threatening or aggressive, that all her fear left 
 her at once. It was a mistake — ^nothing worse ! 
 
 But was she absolutely sure, without her glasses ? All she 
 could see was that the face was that of a hard man, close-cropped 
 and close-shaved, square and firm in the jaw. Not an ugly 
 face, but certainly not an attractive one. " I think, sir," she 
 eaid conciliatorily, "you have mistook me for someone else. 
 I am sure." 
 
 " Maybe, mother," said he, " you'll know me through your 
 glasses. Got 'em on you ? . . . . Ah — ^that's, right ! Fish 'em 
 out of your pocket ! Now !" As the old lady fitted on her 
 spectacles, which she only used for near objects and reading, 
 the man removed his hat and stood facing her, and repeated 
 the word " Now !" 
 
 So absolutely convinced was she that he was merely under 
 a misconception, that she was really only putting on her glasses 
 to humour him, and give him time to find out his mistake. 
 The fact that he had addressed her as " mother " counted for 
 absolutely nothing. Any man in the village would address her 
 as " mother," as often as not. It was a£Eectionate, respectful, 
 conciliatory, but by no means a claim of kinship. The word, 
 moreover, had a distinct tendency .to remove her disUke of the 
 speaker, which had not vanished with her fear of him, now quite 
 in abeyance. 
 
 "Indeed, sir," said she, after looking carefully at his face, 
 " I cannot call you to mind. I cannot doubt but you have 
 taken me for some other person." Then she fancied that some- 
 thing the man said, half to himself, was : — " That cock won't 
 fight." 
 
 But he seemed, she thought, to waver a little, too. And his 
 voice had not its first confidence, as it said: — " Do you mean to 
 say, mother, that you've forgotten my face ? My face !" 
 
534 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The familiar word " mother " still meant nothing to her — 
 a mere epithet ! Just consider the discrepancies whose recon- 
 ciUation alone would have made it applicable ! When she 
 answered, some renewal of trepidation in her voice was due to 
 the man's earnestness, not to any apprehension of his claim. 
 " I am telling God's own truth, master," she said. " I have 
 never set eyes upon ye in my life, and if I had, I would have 
 known it. There be some mistake, indeed." Then timorously: 
 — " Whom — ^whom — might ye take me for ?" 
 
 The man raised his voice, more excitably than angrily. 
 " What did I say just now ? — mother ! — that's EngUsh, ain't 
 it 1" But his words had no meaning to her; there was nothing 
 in their structure to change her acceptation of the word 
 " mother," as an apostrophe. Then, in response to the blank 
 unrecognition of her face, he continued : — " What — still ? I'm 
 not kidding myself, by God, am I ? . . . No — don't you try 
 it on ! I ain't going to have you r unn ing away. Not yet 
 a wliile. . . . Ah — ^would you !" 
 
 He caught her by the wrist to check her half-shown tendency 
 to turn and run; not, as she thought, from a malefactor, but a 
 madman. A cry for help was stopped by a change in his tone — 
 possibly even by the way his hand caught her wrist ; for, though 
 strong, it was not rough or ungentle. Little enough force was 
 needed to detain her, and no more was used. He was mad, 
 clearly, but not ferocious. " I'm not going to hurt ye, mother," 
 said he. " But you leave your eyes on me a minute, and see 
 if I'm a Uar." He remained with his own fixed on hers, as 
 one who waits impatiently for what he knows must come. 
 
 But no recognition followed. In vain did the old lady 
 attempt — and perfectly honestly — ^to detect some reminder of 
 some face seen and hitherto forgotten, in the hard cold eyes 
 and thick-set jaw, the mouth-disfiguring twist which fiawed 
 features, which, handsome enough in themselves, would have 
 otherwise gone near to compensate a repellent countenance. 
 The effort was the more hopeless from the fact that it was a 
 face that, once seen, might have been hard to forget. After 
 complying to the full with his suggestion of a thorough examina- 
 tion, she was forced to acknowledge failure. "Indeed and 
 indeed, sir," she said, " my memory is all at fault. If ever I 
 saw ye in my life, 'tis so long ago I've forgotten it." 
 
 " Ah — you may say long ago !" The madman — ^for to her 
 he was one; some lunatic at large — seemed to choke a moment 
 over what he had to say, and then it came. " Twenty years 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 635 
 
 and more — ay ! — twenty years, and five over — and most of the 
 time in Hell ! Ah — ^run away, if you like — ^run away from your 
 own son [" He released her arm; but though the terror had 
 come back twofold, she would not run; for the most terrible 
 maniac is pitiful as well as terrible, and her pity for him put 
 her thoughts on calming and conciliating him. He went on, 
 his speech breaking through something that choked it back 
 and made it half a cry in the end. " Fourteen years of quod — 
 fourteen years of prison-food — ^fourteen years of such a Ufe 
 that * * * prayers, Sundays, and the * * * parson that read 
 'em was as good as a holiday ! Why — I tell you ! It was so 
 bad the lifers would try it on again and again, to Mil themselves, 
 and were only kept off of doing it by the cat, if they missed their 
 tip." This was all the jargon of delirium to the terror-stricken 
 old woman; it may be clear enough to the ordinary reader, with 
 what followed. " I tell you I saw the man that got away over 
 the cliff, and shattered every bone in his body. I saw him 
 carried out o' hospital and tied up and flogged, for a caution, 
 till the blood run down and the doctor gave the word stop." 
 He went on in a voluble and disjointed way to teU how this man 
 was " still there ! There where your son, mother, spent four- 
 teen out of these twenty-five long years past !" 
 
 But the more he said, the more clear was it to Granny 
 Marrable that he was an escaped lunatic. There was, however, 
 in all this sheer raving — as she counted it — an entire absence 
 of any note of personal danger to herself. Her horror of him, 
 and the condition of mind that his words made plain, remained; 
 her apprehension of violence, or intimidation to make her 
 surrender valuables, had given place to pity for his miserable 
 condition. His repeated use of the word " mother " had a re- 
 assuring effect almost, while she accounted that of the word 
 " son " as sheer distemperature of the brain. But why should 
 she not make use of it to divert his mind from the terrible 
 current of thought, whether delusion or memory, into which 
 he had fallen ? "I never had but one son, sir," she said, " and 
 he has been dead twenty-three years this Christmas, and lies 
 buried beside his father in Chorlton church." 
 
 The fugitive convict — ^for the story need not see him any 
 longer from old Phoebe's point of view only — ^face to face with 
 such a quiet and forcible disclaimer of identity, could not but 
 be staggered, for all that this old woman's face was his mother's; 
 or rather, was the face he had imaged to himself as hers, all 
 due allowance being made — so he thought — ^for change from 
 
536 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sixty-five to eighty. Probably, had he seen the two old sisters 
 side by side, he would have chosen this one as his mother. Her 
 eighty was much nearer to her sixty than old Maisie's. She 
 was no beautiful old shadow, with that strange plenty of per- 
 fectly white hair. Time's hand had left hers merely grey, as 
 a set off against the lesser quantity he had spared her. As Dave 
 Wardle had noticed, her teeth had suffered much less than his 
 London Granny's. Altogether, she was marvellously close to 
 what the convict's preconception of " Mrs. Prichard " had 
 been. 
 
 It is easy to see how this meeting came about. After he 
 left the hospitable cottage of the Solmes's, he had walked on 
 in a leisurely way, stopping at " The Old Truepenny, J. Han- 
 cock," to add another halt-pint to the rather short allowance 
 he had consumed at the cottage. This was a long half -pint, and 
 took an hour; so that it was well on towards the early November 
 sunset before he started again for Chorlton. J. Hancock had 
 warned him not to go rowund by t' roo'ad, but to avail himself 
 of the cross-cut over the fields to Dessington. When old Phoebe 
 overtook him, he was beginning to wonder, as he sat on the stile, 
 how he should introduce himself at Strides Cottage. There 
 might be men there. Then, of a sudden, he had seen that the 
 old woman who had disturbed his cogitations, must be his 
 mother ! How could there be another old woman so like her, 
 so close at hand ? 
 
 Her placid, resolute, convincing denial checkmated his powers 
 of thought. As is often the case, details achieved what mere 
 bald asseveration of fact would have failed in. The circum- 
 stantial statement that her son lay buried beside his father in 
 Chorlton Churchyard corroborated the denial past reasonable 
 dispute. But nothing could convince his eyesight, while his 
 reason stood aghast at the way it was deceiving him. 
 
 " Give me hold of your fin, missus," he said. " I won't call 
 you ' mother.' Left-hand. . . . No — I'm not going for to hurt 
 you. Don't you be frightened !" He took the hand that, not 
 without renewed trepidation and misgiving, was stretched out 
 to him, and did not do with it what its owner expected. For her 
 mind, following his action, was assigning it to some craze of 
 Cheiromancy — ^what she would have called Fortune-telling. It 
 was no such thing. 
 
 He did not take his eyes from her face, but holding her hand 
 in his, without roughness, felt over the fingers one by one, 
 resting chiefly on the middle finger. He took his time, saying 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 637 
 
 nothing. At last he relinquished the hand abruptly, and spoke. 
 " No, missus — you're about right. You're not my mother." 
 Then he said: — " You'll excuse me — half a minute more ! Same 
 hand, please !" Then went again through the same operation 
 of feeling, and dropped it. He seemed bewildered, and saner in 
 bewilderment than in assurance. 
 
 Old Phoebe was greatly relieved at his recognition of his 
 mistake. " Was it something in the hand ye knew by, master ?" 
 she said timidly. For she did not feel quite safe yet. She 
 began walking on, tentatively. 
 
 He followed, but a pace beldnd — ^not close at her side. " Some- 
 thing in the hand," said he. " That was it. Belike you may 
 have seen, one time or other, a finger cut through to the bone ?" 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said she, " and the more's the pity for it ! 
 My yoimg grandson shut his finger into his new knife. But 
 he's in the Crimea now." 
 
 " Did the finger heal up linable, or a crotch in it ?" 
 
 " It's a bit crooked stiU. Only they say it won't last on to 
 old age, being so young a boy at the time." 
 
 " Ah ! — that's where it was. My mother was well on to fifty 
 when I gave her that chop, and she got her hooky finger for life. 
 All the ten years I knew it, it never gave out." Old Phoebe 
 said nothing. Why the man should be so satisfied with this 
 finger evidence she did not see. But she was not going to revive 
 his doubts. She kept moving on, gradually to reach the road, 
 but not to nm from him. He kept near her, but always hanging 
 in the rear; so that she could not go quick without seeming to 
 do so. 
 
 If she showed willingness to talk with him, he might follow 
 quicker, and they would reach the road sooner. " I'm rarely 
 puzzled, master," she said, " to think how you should take me 
 for another person. But I would not be prying to know. . . .'' 
 
 " You would Uke to know who I mistook ye for, mayhap ? 
 Well — I'll tell you as soon as not. I took you for my mother — 
 just what I told you ! She's somewhere down in these parts — 
 goes by the name of Prichard." Old Phoebe wanted to know 
 why she " went by " the name — ^was it not hers ? — ^but she 
 checked a mere curiosity. " Maybe you can tell me where 
 ' Strides Cottage ' is ? That's where she got took in. So I 
 understand." 
 
 " Oh no ! — ^you have the name wrong, for certain. My house 
 where I live is called Strides Cottage. There be no Mrs. Prichard 
 there, to my knowledge." 
 
538 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " That's the name told to me, anyhow. Mrs. Prich-ard, of 
 Sapps Court, London." 
 
 " Now who ever told ye such a tale as that ? I know now who 
 ye mean, master. But she's not at Strides Cottage. She's up 
 at the Towers " — ^rather a hushed voice here — " by the wish and 
 permission of her young ladyship. Lady Gwendolen, and well 
 cared for. Ye vnll only be losing your time, master, to be looking 
 for her at Strides." 
 
 The convict looked at her fixedly. "Now which on ye is 
 telling the truth ? — you or t'other old goody ? That's the 
 point." He spoke half to himself, but then raised his voice, 
 speaking direct to her. " I was there a few hours back, nigh 
 midday, afore I come on here. She ain't there — so they told 
 me." 
 
 " At the Towers— the Castle ?" 
 
 " I saw no Castle. My sort ain't welcome in Castles. The party 
 at the house off the road — ^name of Keziah — she said Mrs. 
 Prichard had been took off to Chorlton by her cousin. Widow 
 
 Widow Thrale." 
 
 " Yes, that is my daughter. Then Keziah Solmes knew ?" 
 
 " She talked Uke it. She said her cousin and Mrs. Prichard 
 had gone away better than two hours, in the carrier's cart. 
 So it was no use me inquiring for her at the Towers." He then 
 produced the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled the 
 address. A Uttle more talk showed Granny Marrable all the 
 story knows — that this sudden translation of her old rival in the 
 affections of Dave Wardle, from the Towers to her own home, 
 had been prompted by the sudden departure of her young lady- 
 ship for London. The fact that the whole thing had come about 
 at the bidding of " Gwen o' the Towers " was absolute, final, 
 decisive as to its entire rectitude and expediency. But she could 
 see that this strange son who had not seeni his mother for so long 
 had identified her in the first plausible octogenarian whom he 
 chanced upon as soon as he was sure he was getting close to the 
 object of his search, and that he was not known to her ladyship 
 at all, while his proximity was probably unsuspected by " old 
 Mrs. Picture " herself. Besides, her faith in her daughter's judg- 
 ment was all-sufficient. She was quite satisfied about what she 
 would find on her return home. Nevertheless, this man was of 
 unsomid mind. But he might be harmless. They often were, 
 in spite of a terrifying manner. 
 
 His manner, however, had ceased to be terrifying by the time 
 a short interchange of explanations and inquiries had made 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 539 
 
 Granny Marrable cognisant of the facts. She was not the least 
 alarmed that she should have that curious rolMng gait alongside 
 of her. She was uneasy, for all that, as to how a sudden visit 
 of this man to Strides Cottage would work, and cast about in her 
 mind how she should best dissuade him from making his presence 
 known to his mother before she herself had had an opportunity 
 of sounding a note of preparation. She had not intended to go 
 home for a day or two, but she could get her son-in-law to drive 
 her over, and return the same day. His insanity, or what she had 
 taken for insanity, had given her such a shock that she was 
 anxious to spare her daughter a like experience. 
 
 " I think, sir," she began diffidently, " that if I might make so 
 bold as to say so. . . ." 
 
 " Cut along, missis ! If you was to make so bold as to say 
 what ?" 
 
 " It did come across my mind that your good mother — ^not 
 being hearty like myself, but a bit frail and delicate — might easy 
 feel your coming as an upset. Now a word beforehand. . . ." 
 
 " What sort of a word ?" said he, taking her meaning at once. 
 " What'll you say ? No palavering won't make it any better. 
 She'll do best to see me first, and square me up after. What'll 
 you make of the job ?" 
 
 Now the fact was that the offer to prepare the way for his 
 proposed visit which she had beeii on the point of making had 
 been quite as much in her daughter's interest as in his mother's. 
 She foimd his question difficult. All she could answer was : — 
 " I could try." 
 
 He shook his head doubtfully, walking beside her in silence. 
 Then an idea seemed to occur to him, and he said : — " Hold hard a 
 minute !" causing her to stop, as she took him literally. He also 
 paused. " Strike a bargain !" said he. " You do me a good 
 turn, and I'll say yes. You give me your word — ^your word 
 afore God and the Bible — ^not to split upon me to one other 
 soul but the old woman herself, and I'll give you a free ticket to 
 say whatever you please to her when no one else is eavesdropping. 
 Afore God and the Bible !" 
 
 Granny Marrable's fear of him began to revive. He might 
 be mad after all, with that manner on him, although his tale 
 about Mrs. Prichard might be correct. But there could be no 
 reason for withholding a promise to keep silence about things 
 said to her imder a false impression that she was his mother. 
 Her doubt would rather have been as to whether she had any 
 right to repeat them imder any circumstances. " I will promise 
 
540 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 you, sir, as you wish it, to say nothing of this only to Mrs. 
 Prichard herself. I promise." 
 
 " Afore God and the Bible ? The same as if there was a 
 Bible handy ?" 
 
 " Surely, indeed 1 I would not tell a falsehood." 
 
 " Atop of a Testament, like enough ! But how when there's 
 none, and no Parson ?" He looked at her with ugly suspicion 
 on his face. And then an idea seemed to strike him. " Look ye 
 here, missus !" said he. " You say Jesus Christ !" 
 
 " Say what ? — Oh why ?" For blind obedience seemed to her 
 irreverent. 
 
 " No — you don't get out that way, by God ! I hold you 
 to that. You say Jesus Christ !" He seemed to congratulate 
 himself on his idea. 
 
 Old Phoebe could not refuse. " Before Jesus Christ," she said 
 reverently, at the same time bending sUghtly, as she would have 
 done in Chorlton Church. 
 
 The convict seemed gratified. He had got his security. 
 " That wam't bad !" said he. " The bob in partic'Iar. Now I 
 reckon you're made safe." 
 
 " Indeed, you may rely on me. But would you kindly do one 
 thing — ^just this one ! Give me your name and address, and 
 wait to hear from me before you come to the Cottage. 'Tis only 
 for a short time — a- day or two at most." 
 
 " Supposin' you don't write — how then ? . . . Ah, well ! — you 
 look sharp about it, and I'll be good for a day or two. Give you 
 three days, it you want 'em." 
 
 " I want your mother's leave. . . ." 
 
 " Leave for me to come ? If she don't send it, it'll be took. 
 Just you tell her that ! Now here's my name di-rected on this 
 envelope. You can tell me of a quiet pub where I can find a gaff, 
 and you send me word there. See ? Quiet pub, a bit outside 
 the village ! Or stop a bit ! — ^I'll go to J. Hancock — ^the Old 
 Truepenny, on the road I come here by. Rather better than a 
 mile along." Of course the old lady knew the Old Truepeimy. 
 Everyone did, in those parts. She took the envelope with the 
 name, and as the twihght was now closing in to darkness, made 
 no attempt to read it, but slipped it carefully in her pocket. 
 Then a thought occurred to her, and she hesitated visibly on 
 an inquiry. He anticipated it, saying impatiently: — "Hay ? — 
 V hat's that ?" 
 
 " If Mrs. Prichard should seem not to know — ^not to recog- 
 nise. . . ." She meant, suppose that Mrs. Prichard denies your 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 541 
 
 claim to be her son, what proof shall I produce ? For any man 
 could assume any name. 
 
 The convict probably saw the need for some clear token of his 
 identity. " If the old woman kicks," said he, " just you remem- 
 ber this one or two little things from me to tell her, to fetch her 
 round. Tell her, I'm her son Ralph, got away from Australia, 
 where he's been on a visit these twenty-five years past. Tell 
 her. . . . Yes, you may tell her the girl's name was Drax — Emma 
 Drax. Got it ?" 
 
 " I can remember Emma Drax." 
 
 " She'll remember Emma Drax, and something to spare. She 
 was a httle devil we had some words about. She'll remember her, 
 and she'll know me by her. Then you can tell her, just to top 
 up — only she won't want any more — ^that her name ain't 
 Prichard at all, but Daverill. . . . What ! — ^Well, of course I 
 meant making allowance for marrying again. Right you are, 
 missus ! How the Hell should I have known, out there ?" For 
 he had mistaken Granny Marrable's natural start at the too well- 
 remembered name she had scarcely heard for fifty years, for a 
 prompt recognition of his own rashness in assuming it had been 
 intentionally discarded. 
 
 She, for her part, although her hearing was good considering 
 her age, could not have been sure she had heard the name right, 
 and was on the edge of asking him to repeat it when his unfor- 
 tunate allusion to Hell-^the merest colloquialism with him — 
 struck her recovered equanimity amidships, and made her hesi- 
 tate. Only, however, for a moment; for her curiosity about that 
 name was uncontrollable. She found voice against a beating 
 heart to say: — " Would you, sir, say the name again for me ? 
 My hearing is a bit old." 
 
 " Her name, same as mine, Daver-hill." He made the mistake, 
 fatal to clear speech, of overdoing articulation. All the more 
 that it caused a false aspirate ; not a frequent error with him, in 
 spite of his long association with defective speakers. It reUeved 
 her mind. Clearly a surname and a prefix:. She had not got 
 it right yet, though. She forgot she had it written down, 
 already. 
 
 " I did not hear the first name clear, sir. Would you mind 
 saying it again ?" 
 
 He did not answer at once. He was looking fixedly ahead, 
 as though something had caught his attention in the coppice 
 they were approaching. A moment later, without looking round, 
 he answered rapidly: — "Same name as mine — ^you've got it 
 
642 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 written down, on the paper I gave you." And then, without 
 another word, he turned and ran. He was so quick afoot, in 
 spite of the halting gait he had shown in walking, that he was 
 through the hedge he made for, across the grassland, and half-way 
 over the stubble-field that lay between it and a plantation, before 
 she knew the cause of his sudden scare. Then voices came from 
 the coppice ahead — a godsend to the poor old lady, whose 
 courage had been sorely tried by the interview — and she quick- 
 ened her pace to meet them. She did not see the fugitive vanish, 
 but pressed on. 
 
 Yes — ^just as she thought ! One of the voices was that of 
 Harry Costrell, her grandson-in-law; another that of a stranger 
 to her, a respectable-looking man she was too upset to receive 
 any other impression of, at the moment; and the third that of 
 her granddaughter. Such a relief it was, to hear the cheerful 
 ring of her greeting. 
 
 " Why, Granny, we thought you strayed and we would have 
 to look for ye in Chorlton Pound. . . . Why, Granny darling, 
 whatever is the matter ? There — I declare you're shaking all 
 over !" 
 
 Old Phoebe showed splendid discipline. It was impossible 
 to conceal her agitation, but she could make light of it. She 
 had a motive. Remember that that great grandchild of hers had 
 been bom over a twelvemonth ago ! " My dear," she said, 
 " I've been just fritted out of my five wits by a man with a limp, 
 that took me for his mother and I never saw him in my life." 
 It did not seem to her that this was " splitting upon " the man. 
 After all, she would have to account for him somehow, and it was 
 safest to ascribe insanity to him. 
 
 But the respectable-looking man had suddenly become an 
 energy with a purpose. " Which way's the man with the limp 
 gone 1" said he; adding to himself, in the moment required for 
 indicating accurately the fugitive's vanishing-point in the plan- 
 tation: — " He's my man !" Granny Marrable's pointing finger 
 sent him off in pursuit before either of the others could ask a 
 question or say a word. Harry, the grandson, wavered a 
 moment between grandfilial duty and the pleasures of the chase, 
 and chose the latter, utilising public spirit as an excuse for • 
 doing so. 
 
 Maisie junior was not going to allow her grandmother to stay 
 to see the matter out, nor indeed did the old lady feel that her 
 own strength could bear any further trial. On the way home 
 to the cottage at Dessington she gave a reserved version of her 
 
THE DUTIFUL SON 643 
 
 strange interview, always laying stress on the insanity she con- 
 fidently ascribed to her terrifying companion. As soon as he 
 had died out of the immediate present, she began to find com- 
 miseration for him. 
 
 But then, how about the mission of the respectable man, who 
 had, it appeared, represented himself as a police-officer on the 
 track of an atrocious criminal, about the charges against whom 
 he had almost kept silence, merely saying that he was a returned 
 convict, and liable to arrest on that ground alone, but that he 
 was " wanted " on several accounts ? He had followed his 
 quarry to Grantley Thorpe, arriving by an early train, to find 
 that a man answering to his description had started on foot a 
 couple of hours previously, having asked his way to Ancestor 
 Towers. He had followed him there in a hired gig; and, of 
 course, found the connecting clue at Solmes's cottage, and 
 followed him on to Dessington, calling at " T. Hancock's Old 
 Truepenny " by the way, and being guided by T. Hancock's 
 information to run the gig round by the road and intercept his 
 man at the end of the short cut. The younger Maisie and her 
 young brother-in-law, coming by in search of her overdue grand- 
 mother, had entered into conversation with him; and he had 
 accompanied them as far as the other side of the coppice wood, 
 and given them the particulars of his errand above stated. 
 
 It was all very exciting, and rather horrible. But old Phoebe 
 kept back all her horrors, and even the man's claim to be the 
 son of an old person who had gone to Strides Cottage. Mrs. 
 Prichard she said never a word of, much as she longed to tell 
 the whole story. But she was greatly consoled for this by the 
 Buccidence of her year-old great-grandson, whose grip, even 
 during sleep, was so powerful as to elicit a forecast of a distin- 
 guished futmre for him, as a thieftaker. 
 
 She never got that envelope out of her pocket, conceiving it 
 to be included in her pledge of secrecy. She would look at it 
 before she went to bed. But was it any wonder that she did not, 
 and that her granddaughter had to undress her and put her to 
 bed like a tired child ? The last sound of which she was conscious 
 was the voice of Harry Costrell, returning after a long and futile 
 chase, immensely excited and pleased, and quite ready to submit 
 to any sort of fragmentary supper. 
 
 Then deep, deep sleep. Then an awakening to daylight, and 
 all the memories of yestereven crowding in upon her — among 
 them an address and a name in the pocket of the gown by the 
 bedside. She could reach it easily, 
 
 36 
 
544 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 There it was. She lay back in bed uixcrumpling it, expecting 
 nothing 
 
 This was the fag-end of a dream, surely ! But no — ^there the 
 words were, staring her in the face : — " Ralph Thornton Daverill 1" 
 And her mind staggered back fifty years. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A WORD FOE TYPHTTS. DR. DAIRYMPLE's PECULTAB INTEREST 
 IN THE CASE. THE NURSE's FRONT TOOTH. AN INVALID 
 WHO MEANT BUSINESS. SAPPS COURT AGAIN. HOW DAVE 
 AND DOLLY LEFT THINGS BE IN MRS. PBICHARd's ROOM. 
 DOLLY junior's LEGS. QUEEN VICTORIA AND PRINCE ALBERT. 
 MRS. burr's RETURN. BUT SHE COULD GIVE AUNT m'rIAR A 
 LIFT, IN SPITE OF HER INSTEP. HOW THE WRITING-TABLE 
 HAD LOST A LEG. WHAT IT WOULD COME TO TO MAKE A 
 SOUND JOB OF IT. BUT ONLY BY EMPTYING OUT THE THINGS 
 INSIDE OF THE DRAWER. WHO WOULD ACT AS BAILEE ? HOW 
 A VISION VOLUNTEERED. HOW THE LOCK CAME OPEN QUITE 
 EASY, AND MRS. BURR MADE A NEAT PACKET OF WHAT IT 
 RELEASED, TO BE TOOK CHARGE OF BY THE VISION. 
 
 It had got wind in Cavendish Square that Typhus had broken 
 out at Number Two-hundred-and-two. That was the first form 
 rumour gave to the result of a challenge to gaol-fever, recklessly 
 delivered by Miss Grahame in a top-attic in Drury Lane. It was 
 unfair to Typhus, who, if not disquahfied from saying a word on 
 his own behalf, might have repUed : — " I am within my rights. I 
 know my place, I hope. I never break out in the homes of the 
 Well-to-do. But if the Well-to-do come fussing round in the 
 homes of the Ill-to-be, they must just take their chance of 
 catching me. I wash my hands of all responsibility." 
 
 And no doubt the excuse would have been allowed by all fair- 
 minded Nosologists. For although Typhus — many years before 
 this — had laid sacrilegious hands on a High Court of Justice, 
 giving rise to what came to be known as the " Black Assizes," 
 all that had happened on that occasion was in a fair way of busi- 
 ness ; good, straightforward, old-fashioned contagion. If prison- 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 545 
 
 warders did not sterilise persons who had been awaiting their 
 trial for weeks in Houses of Detention — ^Pest-houses of Deten- 
 tion — ^you could not expect a putrid fever to adopt new rules 
 merely to accommodate legal prejudice. And in the same way 
 if Cavendish Square came sniffing up pestilential effluvia in 
 Drury Lane, it was The Square's look out, not Typhus's. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Lares and Penates of The Square, who varied 
 as individuals but remained the same as inherent principles — 
 its PoUceman, its Milk, its Wash, its Crossing-Sweeper — even 
 after the germ of contagion had been identified beyond a doubt 
 as a resident in Drury Lane, held fast to a belief that Typhus had 
 been dormant at the comer house since the days of the Regency, 
 and had seized an opportunity when nothing antiseptic was look- 
 ing, to break out and send temperatures up to 106° F. For, said 
 they, when was the windows of that house opened last ? Just 
 you keep your house shut up — said they — ^the best part of a 
 century, and see if something don't happen ! But the person 
 addressed always admitted everything, and never entered on 
 the suggested experiment. 
 
 Persons of Condition — all the real Residents, that is — did not 
 allow themselves to be needlessly alarmed, and refused to rush 
 away into the country. There was no occasion for panic, but 
 they would take every reasonable precaution, and give the 
 children a little citrate of magnesia, as it was just as well to be on 
 the safe side. And they had the drains properly seen to. Also 
 they would be very careful not to let themselves down. That 
 was most important. They felt quite reassured when Sir Polgey 
 Bobson, for instance, told them that there was no risk whatever 
 three feet from the bedside of the patient. " And upwards, I 
 presume ?" said a Wag. But Sir Polgey did not see the Wag's 
 point. He was one of your — and other people's — solemn 
 men. 
 
 Said Dr. Dalrymple — he whose name Dave Wardle had mis- 
 remembered as Damned Tinker — ^to Lady Gwen, arriving at 
 Cavendish Square in the early hours of the morning — still early, 
 though she had been nearly four hours on the road: — "I wish 
 now I had told you positively not to come. . . . But stop a 
 minute ! — ^you can't have got my letter ?" 
 
 " Never mind that now. How is she ?" 
 
 " Impossible to say anything yet, except that it is unmis- 
 takable tjrphus, and that there is nothing specially unfavour- 
 able. The fever won't be at its height for the best part of a week. 
 We can say nothing about a case of this sort till the fever sub- 
 
546 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sides. But you can't have got my letter — ^there has been no 
 time." 
 
 " Exactly. It may have arrived by now. Sometimes the 
 post comes at eight. I came because she telegraphed. Here's 
 the paper." 
 
 The doctor read it. " I see," said he. " She said don't 
 come, so you came. Creditable to your ladyship, but — excuse 
 me ! — quite mad. You are better out of the way." 
 
 " She has no friend with her." 
 
 " Well — ^no — she hasn't ! At least — yes — she has ! I shall 
 not leave her except for special cases. They can do very well 
 without me at the Hospital. There are plenty of yoimg fellows 
 at the Hospital." 
 
 Gwen appeared to apprehend something suddenly. " I see," 
 she said. " I quite understand. I had never guessed." 
 
 He replied: — " How did you guess ? I said nothing. How- 
 ever, I won't contradict you. Only understand right. This is 
 all on my side. Miss Grahame knows nothing about it — ^isn't 
 in it." 
 
 " Oh !" said Gwen incredulously. " Now suppose you tell 
 me what your letter said !" 
 
 " You are sure you understand ?" 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! It doesn't want much imderstanding. What 
 did your letter say ?" 
 
 Dr. Dalrymple's reply was substantially that it said what 
 Gwen had anticipated. The patient was in no danger whatever, 
 at present, and with reasonable precautions would infect nobody. 
 He knew that her ladyship's impulse to come to her friend would 
 be very strong, but she could do no good by coming. The 
 wisest course would be for her to keep away, and rely on his 
 seeing to it that the patient received the utmost care that skill 
 and experience could provide. " I knew that if I said I should 
 not allow you to see her, you would come by the next train. 
 Excuse my having taken the Uberty to interpret your character 
 on a very sUght acquaintance." 
 
 " Quite correct. Your interpretation did you credit. I 
 should have come immediately. The letter you did write might 
 have made me hesitate. Now I want to see her." 
 
 The doctor acquiesced in the inevitable. " It's rash," he said, 
 " and unnecessary. But I suppose it's no use remonstrating ?" 
 
 " Not the slightest !" said Gwen. And, indeed, the supposi- 
 tion was a forlorn hope, and a very spiritless one. Also, other 
 agencies were at work. A tap at the door, that was told to come 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 547 
 
 in, revealed itself as an obliging nurse whose upper front tooth 
 was lifting her lip to look out under it at the pubUo. Her mission 
 was to say that Miss Grahame had heard the visitor's voice and 
 she might speak to her through the door, but on no account 
 come into the room. A little more nonsense of this sort, and 
 Gwen was talking with her cousin at a respectful distance, to 
 comply with existing prejudices ; but without the slightest belief 
 that her doing so would make any difference, one way or the other. 
 The dreadful flavour of fever was in everything, and lemons and 
 hot-house grapes were making believe they were cooling, and 
 bottles that they contained sedatives, and disinfectants that they 
 were purifying the atmosphere. It was all their gammon, and 
 the fiend Typhus, invisible, was chuckling over their preposterous 
 claims, and looking forward to a happy fortnight, with a favour- 
 able outcome from his point of view; or, at least, the consolation 
 of sequelcB, and a retarded convalescence. 
 
 There is a stage of fever when lassitude and imcertainty of 
 movement and eyesight have prostrated the patient and com- 
 pelled him to surrender at discretion to his nurses and medical 
 advisers, but before the Valkyrie of Delirium are scouring the 
 fields of his understanding, to pounce on the corpses of ideas 
 their Odin has slain. That time was not due for many homrs yet, 
 when Gwen got speech of her cousin. She immediately appre- 
 ciated that the patient was anxious to impress bystanders that 
 this illness was all in the way of business. Also, that she was 
 watching the development of her own symptoms as from a 
 height apart, in the interest of Science. 
 
 " I knew I should catch it. But somebody had to, and 
 I thought it might as well be me. I caught it from a child. A 
 mild case. That would not make much difference. Being a 
 woman is good. More men die than women. It's only within 
 the last few years that typhus has been distinguished from 
 
 ty3)hoid " After a few more useful particulars, she said : — 
 
 " It was very bad of you to come. I telegraphed to you not to 
 
 come, last week Wasn't it last week ? . . . . Well then — 
 
 yesterday They ought never to have let you in There ! 
 
 — I get muddled when I talk " She did, but it did not 
 
 amount to wandering. 
 
 Gwen made very fair essays towards the correct thing to say; 
 the usual exhortations to the patient to rely upon everything; 
 acquiesce in periodical doses; absorb nourishment, however dis- 
 tasteful it might be on the palate, and place blind faith in every- 
 one else, especially nurses. It was very good for a beginner; 
 
648 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 indeed, her experience of this sort of thing was almost nil. But 
 all she got for it was: — " Don't be irritating, Gwen dear ! Sit 
 down there, where you are. Yes, that far off, because I've some- 
 thing to say I want to say No — more in front, so that I 
 
 needn't move my head to see you Oh no — my head's all 
 
 right in itself; only, when I move it, the pain won't move with 
 it, and it drags. . . . Suppose I shuffle off this mortal coil ?" 
 
 Gwen immediately felt it her duty to point out the improba- 
 biUty of anyone dying, but was a little handicapped by the cir- 
 cumstances attendant on Typhus Fever. She had to be concise in 
 unreason. " Don't talk nonsense, Glo dear." The patient ignored 
 the interruption. " Oh dear ! — give me another grape to suck 
 without having to open my eyes. ... Ta ! — ^now I can talk a 
 little more." The obKging nurse headed Gwen ofE to a proper 
 distance, and herself supphed the grape. In doing ttds she 
 smiled so hard that the tooth got a good long look at Gwen, who 
 looked another way. The patient resumed, speaking very much 
 from her lofty position of lectxu:er by her own bedside. 
 
 " You see, a percentage of cases recovers, but this one may 
 
 not be in it However, the constitution is good No, Gwen 
 
 dear, you know perfectly well I may die, so where is the use of 
 pretending ?" Whereupon Gwen conceded the possibility of 
 Death, and the patient seemed to be easier in her mind; saying, as 
 one who leaves triviahties, to settle down to matters of business : — 
 " I want to talk to you about my small boy, Dave Wardle." 
 
 " Shall I go and see him at Sapps Court ?" 
 
 " Yes — that's what I want. And then come back here and 
 tell me .... promise !" She was getting very indeterminate in 
 speech, and the nurse was signalUng for the interview to close. 
 So Gwen cut it short. But she felt she had made a binding 
 promise. She must go to Sapps Court. 
 
 Said Gwen to Dr. Dalrymple, a few minutes later, in the 
 sitting-room: — "I hope she hasn't talked too much." The 
 doctor appeared to have taken temporary possession, and to 
 have several letters to write. 
 
 " It makes very little difference," he said. " At present the 
 decks are only being cleared for action. In a few days we shall 
 be in the thick of it — pulse over a hundred — ^temperature a hun- 
 dred and four — ^then a crisis. When it's all over, we shall be 
 able to see how many ships are sunk." 
 
 Sapps Court had resumed its tranquil routine of everyday 
 life, and the accident had nearly become a thing of the past. Not 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 549 
 
 entirely, for Mrs. Priohard's portion of No. 7 still remained 
 unoccupied, even Susan Burr remaining absent at her married 
 niece's at Clapham. Aunt M'riar had charge, and kept a bit of 
 fire going in the front-room, so the plaster should get a chance to 
 dry out. Also she stood the front and back windows wide to let 
 through a good draught of air, except, of course, it was pouring 
 rain, and then it was no good. The front-room was a gi'eat 
 convenience to Aunt M'riar, who now and then was embarrassed 
 with linen to dry, relieving her from the necessity of rendering 
 the kitchen impassable with it in the morning till she came down 
 and took it off of the lines ready for ironing, and removed the 
 cords on which she had hung it overnight. 
 
 Dave and Dolly were allowed upstairs during operations, on 
 stringent conditions; or, rather, it should be said, on a stringent 
 condition. They were to leave things be. This was honourably 
 observed, especially by Dave, who was the soul of honour when 
 once he gave his word. As for Dolly, she was still young, and if 
 she did claw hold of a chemise and bring down the whole line 
 why, it was only that once, and we was children once ourselves. 
 This was Uncle Mo, of course; he was that easy-going. 
 
 But whenever Aunt M'riar was not handicapping the desic- 
 cation of the walls by overcharging the atmosphere with moisture 
 of the very wettest possible sort, Dolly and Dave could have the 
 room to themselves, so long as they kep' their hands off the clean 
 wallpaper; which was included in leaving be, obviously — not an 
 intrusion of a new stipulation. They woiild then, being alone, 
 go great lengths in picturing to themselves and each other the 
 pending reappearance of Mrs. Picture and Mrs. Burr, and the 
 delights of resuming halcyon days of old. For this strangely 
 compounded clay, Man, scarcely waits to be quite sure he is 
 landed in esdstence, before he inaugurates a glorious fiction, the 
 golden Past, which never has been; between which and its resur- 
 rection into an equally golden Future — ^which never will be — he 
 sandwiches the pewter Present, which always is, and which it is 
 idle to pretend is worth twopence, by comparison. 
 
 " When old Mrs. Spicture comes back " — ^thus Dolly — " she 
 shall set in her own chair wiv scushions, and she shall set in her 
 own chair wiv a 'igh hup bact, and she shall set in her own chair 
 wiv . . . ." Here came a pause, due to inanition of distinctive 
 features. Dolly's style was disfigured by vain repetitions, 
 beyond a doubt. 
 
 " When old Mrs. Spicture comes back " — thus Dave, accepting 
 the offered formula, somewhat in the spirit of the true ballad 
 
650 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 writer — " she's a-going to Set in her own chair with cushions, 
 just here I" He sat down with violence on a spot immediately 
 below the proposed centre of gravity of the chair. " And then 
 oy shall bring her her tea." 
 
 " No, you a'arn't I Mrs. Spicture shall set in her chair wiv 
 Bcushions, and me and dolly shall tite her her tea." 
 
 Dave sat on the floor fixing two intelligent blue eyes on dolly 
 junior's unintelligent violet ones, and holding his toes. " Dorly 
 cam't !" said he contemptuously. " Her legs gives. Besides, 
 she's no inside, only brand." This was a new dolly, who had 
 replaced Struvvel Peter, who perished in the accident. His legs 
 had been wooden, and swung several ways. This one's calves 
 were wax, and one had come off, like a shoe. But the legs only 
 bent one way. 
 
 Dolly the mother did not reply to Dave's insinuations against 
 his niece, preferring the refrain of her thesis : — " When Mrs. 
 Spicture comes back and sets in her chair wiv scushions and an 
 Aunt-Emma-Care-Saw, Mrs. Burr she'll paw out the tea with 
 only one lump of shoogy, and me and dolly shall cally it acrost 
 wivout a jop spilt, and me and dolly shall stand it down on the 
 little mognytoyble, and Mrs. Spicture she'll set in her chair wiv 
 scushions, and dolly hand her up the stoast." 
 
 "Let me kitch her at it!" said Dave, with offensive 'male 
 assumption. " Oy shall see to Mrs. Spicture's toast, and see she 
 gets it hot. And Mrs. Burr she'll give leave to butter it, and say 
 how much, and the soyde edge trimmed round toydywith a 
 knoyf." All these details, safely based on items of past ex- 
 perience, were practically historical. 
 
 Dolly always accepted Dave's masculine airisomeness with 
 meek equanimity, but invariably took no notice of it. This is 
 nearly common form in well-organized households. She went on 
 to refer to other gratifying revivals that would come about on 
 Mrs. Picture's return. The sofy should be stood back against the 
 wall, for dolly to be put to sleep on. And Queen Victoria she 
 should go up on one nail, and Prince Halbert on the other. These 
 were beautiful coloured prints, smihng fixedly across a full 
 complement of stars and garters. The red piece of carpet would 
 go down against the fender, and the blue piece near the window, 
 as of yore. Dave looked forward with interest to the resurrection 
 of Mrs. Picture's wroyting toyble with a ployce for her Boyble 
 to lie on, and to the letters to his Granny Marrowbone in the 
 country which would certainly be wrote at it, directly or by dic- 
 tation, in the blessed revival of the past which was to come. 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 551 
 
 Mrs. Burr's cat, who had travelled by request in a hamper to her 
 married niece's at Clapham, in charge of Michael Ragstroar, 
 would return and would then promptly have kittens in spite of 
 doubtful sex-quahfications suggested by the name of Tommy; 
 which kittens would belong to Dave and Dolly respectively, 
 choice being made as soon as ever it was seen what colour they 
 meant to be. 
 
 These speculations, which had made pleasant material for 
 castles-in-the-air in the undisturbed hours when the children were 
 in sole possession of the apartment, seemed to be within a 
 measurable distance of realisation when Aunt M'riar, acting on 
 a communication from Mrs. Burr at Clapham, proceeded to 
 unearth the hidden furniture from the bedroom where Mr. 
 Bartlett's careful men had interred it, and where it hadn't been 
 getting any good, you might be sure. At least, so said Mrs. 
 Ragstroar, who was so obliging as to lend a hand getting the 
 things back in their places, and giving them a dust over to get 
 the worst of the mess off. And Uncle Mo he was able to make 
 himself useful, with a screw here and a tack there, and a glue- 
 pot with quite a professional smell to it, so that you might easy 
 have took him for a carpenter and joiner. For Mr. Bartlett's 
 men, while doubtless justifying their reputation for handling 
 everything with care due to casualties with compound fractures, 
 had stultified their own efforts by shoving the heavy goods right 
 atop of the Hght ones, and lying things down on their sides that 
 should have been stood upright, and committing other errors of 
 judgment. It was a singular and unaccountable thing that these 
 men seemed to share the mantle of their employer and somehow 
 to claim forgiveness, and get it, on the score of the inner excel- 
 lence of their hearts and purity of their motives. 
 
 So that within a day or two after her young ladyship's sudden 
 appearance at the fever-stricken mansion in Cavendish Square, 
 Mrs. Burr put in her first appearance at Sapps Court since she 
 went away to the Hospital. She was able to walk upon her foot, 
 while convinced that a more rapid recovery would have taken 
 place but for the backward state of surgical knowledge. She was 
 confident they might have given her something at the Hospital 
 to bring it forward, and make some local application — " put 
 something on " was the expression. She seemed to have based 
 an imreasonable faith in bread poultices on their successful 
 employment in entirely different cases. 
 
 " Now what, you, got, to, lay out for, the way I look at it, 
 ma'am," — thus Mrs. Ragstroar, departing and bearing away 
 
552 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the hand she had lent, to get supper ready for her own inmates — 
 " is to do no more than you can 'elp, and eat as much as you can 
 get." The good woman then vanished, leaving the united 
 company's chorus to her remarks still unfinished when she 
 reached her own door at the top of the Court. For Uncle Mo; 
 Mr. Ahbone, Aunt M'riar, and Dolly and Dave as claqueurs, 
 were unanimous that Mrs. Burr should he still for six months or so, 
 relying on her capital, if any; if none, on manna from Heaven. 
 
 However, there was Httle likehhood of Mrs. Burr being in 
 want of a crust, which is the theoretical minimum needed to 
 sustain Ufe, so long as Sapps Court recognised its liabilities 
 when any component portion of it, considered as a residential 
 district, fell on and crushed one of its residents' insteps. If 
 Mr. Bartlett's repairs had come down on Mrs. Burr in the 
 fullest sense of the expression, she would certainly — ^unless 
 she outlived the impact of two hundred new stocks and 
 three thousand old bats and closures, deceptively arranged to 
 seem hke a wall — have had the advantage, whatever it is, of 
 decent burial, even if she had not had a married niece at Clapham, 
 or any other relative elsewhere. So she was able to abstain 
 without imprudence from immediate efforts to reinstate her 
 dressmaking connection; and was able, without overtaxing her 
 instep, to give substantial assistance to Aunt M'riar, who would 
 have had to refuse a good deal of work just at that time except 
 for her opportune assistance. 
 
 It was a natural corollary of this that Mrs. Prichard's tenancy 
 should be utilised as a workshop, as Mrs. Burr was now its only 
 occupant; and that she herself should take her meals below, with 
 Aunt M'riar and the family. So the red and the blue carpet 
 were not put down just yet a while, and Uncle Mo he did what he 
 could with the screw here and the tack there, while Aunt M'riar 
 and Mrs. Burr exercised mysterious functions, with tucks and 
 frills and gimpings and pinkings and gaufferings, which it is 
 beyond the powers of this story to describe accurately. 
 
 One mishap had occurred with the furniture which did not 
 come within the scope of Uncle Mo's skill to remedy. The 
 treasured mahogany writing-table that had so faithfully accom- 
 panied old Mrs. Picture through all her misfortunes had lost a leg. 
 A leg, but not a foot. For the brass foot, which belonged, was 
 found shoved away in the chest of drawers, which was enough, 
 and more than enough, to contain the whole of the owner's 
 scanty wardrobe. It was a cabinet-maker's job, and rather a 
 nice one at that, to provide a new and suitable leg and attach it 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 553 
 
 securely in the place of the old one. And it would come to 
 nineteen-and-sixpence to make a job of it. The exactness of this 
 sum vdll suggest the facts, that a young man in the trade, an 
 acquaintance of Uncle Mo at The Sun, he come round to oblige, 
 and undertook to give in a price as soon as he had the oppor-' 
 tunity to mention it to his governor. The opportunity occurred 
 immediately he went back to the shop. The sum was for a new 
 leg, involving superhuman ingenuity in connecting it firmly with 
 the pelvis ; but a reg'lar sound job. Of course, there was another 
 way of doing it, by tonguing on a new limb below the knee, and 
 inserting a dowel for to stiffen it up. But that would come to 
 every penny of fifteen shillings, and would be a reg'lar poor job, 
 and would show. Nothing Hke doing a thing while you were 
 about it ! It saved expense in the end, and it was a fine old bit 
 of furniture. Bit of old Gillow's ! 
 
 But there was a point to be considered. The things must be 
 took out of the drawers and the attached desk, or the governor 
 he'd never have it at the shop. He was a person of the most 
 delicate sensibiHty, who shrank from making himself responsible 
 for an3rtliing whatever. Them drawers must be emptied out, or 
 nothing could be done. Why — you'd only got to shake the table 
 to hear there was papers inside ! 
 
 This was a serious difficulty. It would, of course, be easy 
 enough to write to Mrs. Prichard for the key; which, said testi- 
 mony, was very small and always lived in her purse. But then 
 all the milk would be out of the cocoanut^ that metaphorical 
 fruit being, in this case, the pleasure of surprising Mrs. Prichard 
 with a writing-table as good as new. Open it, of course, you 
 could ! It was a locksmith's job, but the governor would send 
 the shop's locksmith, who would do that for you while you 
 counted half-a-dozen. The counting was optional, and in no 
 sense necessary, nor even contributory, to the operation. 
 
 The real crux of the difficulty was not one of mechanism, but of 
 responsibility. Who was quahfied to decide on opening the 
 desk and drawers ? Who would be answerable for the safety of 
 those papers ? The only person who volunteered was Dolly, and 
 Dolly's idea of taking care of things was to carry them about 
 with her everywhere, and if they were in a parcel, to unpack it 
 frequently at short intervals to make sure the contents were still 
 in evidence. Her offer was declined. 
 
 The young man in the trade had numerous and absorbing 
 engagements to plead as a reason for his inabiUty to 'ang about 
 all day for parties to make up their minds — the usurper's plea, 
 
554 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 by-the-by, for a coup d'etat — so perhaps some emissary might 
 be found, to drop round to the shop to leave word. This young 
 man was anxious to oblige, but altruism had its limits. Just 
 then a knock at the door below led to Dave receiving instructions 
 ■ to sift it and make sure it wasn't a mistake, before a senior should 
 descend to take it up seriously. It was not a mistake, but a 
 lady, reported by Dave, returning out of breath, to be " one of 
 Our Ladies," — making the Church of Rome seem ill-ofE by com- 
 parison. He was seeking for an intelligent distinction between 
 Sister Nora and Gwen, in reply to the question " Which ?", when 
 the dazzUng appearance of the latter answered it for him. 
 
 " I thought I might come up without waiting to ask," said the 
 vision — ^which is what she seemed, for a moment, to Sapps 
 Court. " So I didn't ask. Is that Mrs. Picture's writing-table 
 where Dave gets his letters written ?" 
 
 Never was a more unhesitating plunge made in medias res. 
 It had a magical effect in setting Sapps Comrt at its ease, and 
 everyone saw a way to contribute to an answer, the substance 
 of which was that the table was Mrs. Prichaxrd's, but had lost its 
 leg. The exact force of the but was not so clear as it might have 
 been; this, however, was unimportant. Gwen was immediately 
 interested in the repair of the table. Why shouldn't it be done 
 while Mrs. Picture was away, before she came back ? 
 
 A momentary frenzy of irrelevance seized Sapps Court, and a 
 feverish desire to fix the exact date when the table-leg was dis- 
 integrated. " It wasn't broke, when it came from Skillick's," 
 said Mrs. Burr. " That's all I know ! And if you was to promise 
 me a guinea I could say no more." Said Aunt M'riar: — "It's 
 been stood up against the wall ever since I remember it, and 
 Mr. Bartlett's men assured me every care was took in moving." 
 A murmur of testimony to Mr. Bartlett's imvarying sobriety and 
 that of his men threatened to undermine the coherency of the 
 conversation, but the position was saved by Uncle Mo, who 
 seemed less infatuated than others about them. " Bartlett's 
 ain't neither here or there," said he. " What I look at's Uke 
 this, — ^the leg's off, and we've got to clap on a new un. Here's 
 a young man'U see to that, and it'll come to nineteen-and-six- 
 pence. Only who's going to take care of the letters and odd 
 belongings of the old lady the whilst ? That's a point to con- 
 sider. I'd rather not, myself, if you ask me. Not without she 
 sends the key, and that won't work, as I see it." 
 
 " I see," said Gwen. " You want to make Mrs. Picture a new 
 table-leg, and you can't do it without opening her desk. And 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 555 
 
 you can't get the key from her without saying why you want 
 it. Isn't that it ?" Universal assent. " Very well, then ! 
 You get the look opened, and I'll take everything out with my 
 own hands, and keep it safe for Mrs. Picture when she comes 
 back." 
 
 This proposal was welcomed with only one reservation. None 
 but a real live locksmith could open a lock, any more than one 
 who is not bom a turncock can release the waters that are under 
 the earth through an unexplained hole in the road. It was, 
 however, all within the province of the young man in the trade, 
 who had not vanished when the vision appeared, in spite of those 
 pressing appointments. He would go back to the shop, and 
 send, or bring, a properly qualified operative. 
 
 Pending which, an adjournment to the little parlour below, 
 out of all this mess, seemed desirable. Dave and Dolly were, of 
 course, part of this, but Mrs. Burr remained upstairs after 
 answering inquiries about her own health, and Mr. Alibone went 
 away with the young man in search of the locksmith. 
 
 Gwen had to accoimt for her sudden appearance. " I'm sorry 
 to have bad news to tell you about my cousin Miss Grahame," 
 said she, so seriously that both her grown-up hearers spoke under 
 their breaths to begin asking : — " She's not .... ?" — the rest 
 being easily understood. Gwen replied : — " Oh no, she's not 
 dead. But she's in the doctor's hands." Uncle Mo looked as 
 though he thought this was nearly as bad, and Aunt M'riar was 
 so expressive in sympathy without words that both the children 
 became appalled, and Dolly looked inclined to cry. Gwen con- 
 tinued: — " She has caught a horrible fever in a dreadful place 
 where she went to see poor people, and nobody can say yet a 
 while what will happen. It is Typhus Fever, I'm afraid." 
 
 As Gwen uttered the deadly syllables. Uncle Mo jtumed away 
 to the window, leaving some exclamation truncated. Aunt 
 M'riar's voice became tremulous on the beginning of an un- 
 finished sentence, and Dolly concealed a disposition to weep, 
 because she was afraid of what Dave would say after. That 
 young man remained stoical, but did not speak. 
 
 Presently Uncle Mo turned from the window, and said, some- 
 what huskily: — " I wish some of these here poor people, as they 
 call themselves, would either go away to Aymericay, or keep their 
 premises a bit cleaner; nobody wants 'em here that ever I've 
 heard tell of, only Phlamthropists." 
 
 Aunt M'riar's imfinished sentence had begun with " Gracious 
 mercy !...." Its sequel: — " Well now — to think of a lady like 
 
556 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 that ! My word ! And Typhus Fever, too !" — was dependent 
 on it, and contained an element of resignation to Destiny. 
 
 Dave struck in with irrelevant matter; as he frequently did, 
 to throw side-Ughts on obscurities. " The boy at the School had 
 fever, and came out sported all over with sports he was. You 
 couldn't have told him from any other boy." That the other boy 
 would be similarly spotted was, of course, understood. 
 
 Having broken the news, Gwen went on to minimise its 
 seriousness; a time-honoured method, perhaps the best one. 
 " Dr. Dalrymple is cheerful enough about her at present, so we 
 mustn't be frightened. He says only very old persons never 
 recover, and that a young woman like my cousin is quite as 
 likely to live as to die " 
 
 Uncle Mo caught her up with sudden shrewdness. " Then 
 she's quite as Ukely to die as to live ?" said he. 
 
 " Oh, Mo — Mo — don't ye say the word ! Please God, Sister 
 Nora may hve for many a long day yet !" Thus Aunt M'riar, 
 true to the traditional attitude of Life towards Death — denial 
 of the Arch-fear to the very threshold of the tomb. 
 
 " So she may, M'riar, and many another on to that. But 
 there's a good plenty o' things would please us that don't please 
 God, and He's got it all his own way." 
 
 Uncle Mo, after moving about the room in an unsettled fashion, 
 as though weighed upon by the news he had just heard, had 
 come to an anchor at the table opposite Gwen — obsessed by 
 Dolly, but acquiescent. As he sat there, she saw in his grizzled 
 head against the light; in the strong hand resting on the table, 
 moving now and then as though keeping time to some slow 
 tune; in the other, motionless upon his knee, an image that made 
 her ask herself the question: — "What would Samuel Johnson 
 have been as a prizefighter ?" She was not properly shocked, 
 but perhaps that was because she was quick-witted enough to 
 perceive that Uncle Mo had only said, in the blunt tongue of the 
 secular world, what woidd have sounded an impressive utter- 
 ance, in another form, from the lips of the sage of whom he had 
 reminded her. She felt she ought to say that the Lord would 
 assuredly — a solemn word that ! — do what He liked with His 
 own, supplying capitals. She gave it up as out of her line, and 
 went on to business. 
 
 " Any of us may die, at any minute, Mr. Wardle," said she. 
 " But my cousin is twenty times as likely to die as you or I, 
 because she's got Typhus Fever, and half the cases are fatal, 
 more or less They told me how many; I've forgotten. . . . 
 
GWEN'S SECOND VISIT TO SAPPS COURT 557 
 
 What's that ? — ^is it the locksmith man ?" For a knock had 
 come at the street-door, and the sound was as the sound of an 
 operative who had to be back in half an hour or his Governor 
 would cut up rough. He was therefore directed to go upstairs 
 and cast his eye on the job, and the lady would come up in five 
 minutes to see the things took out of the drawer. 
 
 " Stop a minute. Aunt M'riar," said the lady. " He mustn't 
 make a mistake and open it, tiU I come. Please tell him, to 
 make sure !" And Aunt M'riar would have started on her errand 
 if she had not been stopped by what followed. " Or — ^look here ! 
 Let Dave go. You go up, Dave, and say he mustn't touch the 
 lock till I come. Run along, and stop there to see that he does 
 as you tell him." Whereupon, off went Dave, shouting his 
 instructions as soon as he got to the second landing. He felt 
 like a Pohce-Inspector, or a Warden of the Marches. 
 
 As soon as Dave had left tranquillity behind, Gwen set herself 
 to anticipate an amdety she saw Aunt M'riar wanted to express, 
 but was hanging fire over. " You needn't be afraid about this 
 chick, Aimt M'riar," she said. " It isn't really infectious, only 
 contagious. You can only get it from the patient. Dr. Dakymple 
 says so. like the thing you can only buy of the maker. Be- 
 sides, I've hardly been in the room; they make such a fuss, and 
 won't allow me. And I'm not living in the house at all, but at 
 my father's in Park Lane. And I've been there to-day since 
 Cavendish Square, so anyhow, if I give it to Dolly, my father 
 
 and mother wUl have it too Oh no — she's not rumpling me 
 
 at all ! I like it." It was satisfactory to know that an Earl 
 and Cormtess were pledged to have Typhus if Dolly caught it. 
 Dolly evidently thought the combination of circumstances as good 
 as a play, and a sprightly one. 
 
 Gwen was not sorry when the young ambassador came rushing 
 back, shouting: — " The Man says — ^the Man says — ^the Man says 
 It wouldn't take above half a minute to do, and is the loydy 
 a-coming up ? Because — because — because if the loydy oyn't 
 a-coming up Jie — has — to — ^get back to the shop." This last was 
 so draconically delivered that Gwen exclaimed: — " Come along, 
 Dolly, we've got our orders !" And she actually carried that 
 great child up all those stairs, and she going to be four next 
 birthday ! 
 
 Upstairs, the lock-expert was apologetic. " Ye see, miss," he 
 explained, " our governor he's the sort of man it don't do to 
 disappynt him, not however small the job may be. I don't 
 reckon he can wait above a half an hour for anything, 'cos it gets 
 
558 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 on his narves. So we studies not puttin' of him out, at our 
 shop." At which Gwen interrupted him, sacrificing her own 
 interest in the well-marked character of this governor, to the 
 business in hand; and the prospect, for him, of an early release 
 from his anxiety. 
 
 As for the achievement which had been postponed, it really 
 seemed a'most ridiculous when you come to think of it. Such a 
 fuss, and those two men standing about the best part of an hour ! 
 At least, so Mrs. Burr said afterwards. 
 
 For the operation, all told, was merely this — ^that the young 
 man inserted a bent wire into the lock, thereby becoming aware 
 of its vitals. Withdrawing it, he slightly modified the prejudices 
 of its tip; after which its reinsertion caused the lock to spring 
 open as by magic. He wished to know, on receipt of a con- 
 sideration from Gwen, whether she hadn't anything smaller, 
 because it only came to eighteenpence for his time and his mate's, 
 and he had no change in his pocket. Gwen explained that none 
 was needed owing to the proximity of Christmas, and obtained 
 thereby the good opinion of both. They expressed their feelings 
 and departed. 
 
 And then — there was old Mrs. Picture's writing-table drawer, 
 stood open ! But only a little way, to show. For the lady's 
 hands alone were to open it clear out, to remove the contents. 
 Gwen felt that perhaps she had undertaken this responsibihty 
 rashly. It is rather a ticklish matter to tamper unbidden with 
 locks. 
 
 So confident was she that old Mrs. Picture would forgive her 
 anything, that she made no scruple of examining and reading 
 whatever was visible. There was little beyond pens and writing- 
 paper in the drawer, but in a desk which formed part of the table 
 were some warrants held by the old lady as a Ufe-annuitant, and 
 two or three packets of letters, one carefully tied and apparently 
 of considerable age. There was also a packet marked " Hair," 
 and a small cardboard box. Little enough to take charge of, and 
 soon made into a neat parcel by Mrs. Burr for Gwen to carry 
 away in her reticule, a receptacle which in those days was almost 
 invariably a portion of every lady's paraphernalia, high and low, 
 rich and poor. 
 
 The desk opened with the drawer — or rather unroUed itseK — 
 a flexible wood flap running back when it was opened, and 
 releasing a lid that made one-half of the writing-pad when turned 
 back. The letters were under the other half, the old packet being 
 in a small drawer with the parcel marked " Hair." These wer 
 
IN PARK LANE 559 
 
 evidently precious. Never mind ! Gwen would keep them 
 safe. 
 
 Dave and Dolly were so delighted with the performance of 
 opening and shutting the drawer, and seeing the cylindrical 
 sheath slip backwards and forwards in its grooves, that they 
 could scarcely drag themselves away to accompany their Lady to 
 the carriage that, it appeared, was waiting for her in the beyond, 
 outside Sapps Court. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AN INTERVIEW AT THE TOP OF A HOUSE IN PARK LANE. THE 
 COLOSSEUM. PACTOLUS. KENSINGTON, AS NINEVEH. DERBY's. 
 TOMS'S. HELEN OE TROY. THE PBLLEWS. BECONSIDBBA- 
 TION, AND JILTING. GWBn's LOVE OE METHOD, AND HOW SHE 
 WOULD GO TO VIENNA. A STARTLING LETTER. HOW HER 
 FATHER READ IT ALOUD. MRS. THRALE's REPORT OP A BRAIN 
 CASE. HER DOG. HOW REASON REELED BEFORE THE OLD 
 lady's accuracies. GWEN's great-aunt EILEEN AND THE 
 LORD CHANCELLOR. HOW THE EARL STRUCK THE SCENT. 
 mS BIG EBONY CABINET. MB. NORBURY's STORY. HOW AN 
 EARL CAN DO A MEAN ACTION, WITH A GOOD MOTIVE. THE 
 FORGED LETTER SEES THE LIGHT. HOW THE COUNTESS WOKE 
 UP, AND THE EARL GOT TO BED AT LAST 
 
 When the Earl and Countess came to Park Lane, especially if 
 their visit was a short one, and unless it was supposed to be 
 known to themselves and their Maker only, they were on their 
 P's and Q's. Why the new identity that came over them on 
 those occasions was so described by her ladyship remained a 
 secret; and, so far as we know, remains a secret still. But that 
 was the expression she made use of more than once in conversa- 
 tion with her daughter. 
 
 If her statements about herself were worthy of credence, her 
 tastes were Arcadian, and the satisfactions incidental to her 
 position as a Countess — ^wealth and position, with all the world 
 at her feet, and a most docile husband, ready to make any reason- 
 able, and many unreasonable, sacrifices to idols of her selection-^- 
 were the merest drops on the surface of Life's crucible. Whai 
 
 36 
 
660 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 her soul really longed for was a modest competence of two or 
 three thousand a year, with a not too ostentatious house in town, 
 say in Portland Place ; or even in one of those terraces near the 
 Colosseum in Regents Park, with a sweet little place in Devon- 
 shire to go to and get away from the noise, concocted from 
 specifications from the poets, with a special clause about clotted 
 cream and new-laid eggs. Something of that sort ! Then she 
 would be able to turn her mind to some elevating employment 
 which it would be premature to dwell on m detail to furnish a 
 mere castle-in-the-air, but of which particulars would be forth- 
 coming in due course. Or rather, would have been forthcoming. 
 For now the die was cast, and a soul that could have been pas- 
 torally satisfied with a lot of the humble type indicated, had been 
 caught in a whirl, or entangled in a mesh, or involved in a com- 
 plication — ^whichever you like — of Extravagance, or Worldhness, 
 or Society, or Mammon-worship, or Plutocracy, or Pactolus — 
 or all the lot — and there was an end of the matter ! 
 
 " All I can say is that I wonder you do it. I do indeed, 
 mamma !" Thus Gwen, a week later in the story, in her bed- 
 room at the very top of the house, which had once been a smoking- 
 room and which it was her young ladyship's caprice to inhabit, 
 because it looked straight over the Park towards the Palace, 
 which still in those days was close to Kensington, its godmother. 
 The Palace is there still, but Kensington is gone. Look about 
 for it in the neighbourhood, if you have the heart to do so, and 
 see if this is a he. You will find residential flats, and you will 
 find Barker's, and you will find Berry's, and you will find Toms's. 
 But you will not find Kensington. 
 
 " You may wonder, Gwen ! But if ever you are a married 
 woman with an unmarried grown-up daughter in England and a 
 married one at Vienna, and a position to keep up — ^I suppose 
 that is the right expression — you will find how impossible every- 
 thing is, and you will find something else to wonder about. Why 
 —only look at that dress you are trying on !" The grown-up 
 daughter was Gwen's elder sister. Lady Philippa, the wife of 
 Sir Theseus Brandon, the English Ambassador at the Court of 
 Austria. Otherwise, her ladyship was rather enigmatical. 
 
 Gwen seemed to attach a meaning to her words. " I don't 
 think we shall ever have a daughter married to an Ambassador at 
 Vienna. It would be too odd a coincidence for anjrthing." 
 This was said in the most unconcerned way, as a natural chat- 
 sequel. What a mirror was saying about the dress, a wonderful 
 Oriental fabric that gleamed Uke green diamonds, was absorbing 
 
IN PARK LANE 561 
 
 the speaker's attention. The modiste who was fitting it had left 
 the room to seek for pins, of which she had run dry. A low- 
 class dressmaker would have been able to produce them from her 
 mouth. 
 
 The Countess assumed a freezing import. It appeared to 
 await explanation of something that had shocked and surprised 
 her. " We J" said her ladyship, picking out the gravamen of this 
 something. " Who are ' We ' in this case ? . . . . Perhaps I did 
 not understand what you said ?...." And went on awaiting 
 explanation, which any correct-minded British Matron wiU see 
 was imperatively called for. Yoxmg ladies are expected not to 
 refer too freely to Human Nature at any time, and to talk of 
 " having a daughter " was sailing near the wind. 
 
 " Who are the ' We ' ? Why — me and Adrian, of course ! 
 At least, Adrian and I ! — ^because of grammar. Whom did you 
 suppose ?" 
 
 The Countess underwent a sort of well-bred collapse. Her 
 daughter did not observe it, as she was glancing at what she 
 mentioned to herself as " The usual tight arrahole, I suppose !" 
 beneath an outstretched arm Helen might have stabbed her for 
 in Troy. Neither did she notice the shoulder-shrug that came 
 with the rally from this collapse, conveying an intimation to 
 Space that one could be surprised at nothing nowadays. But 
 the thing she ought not to have been surprised at was past dis- 
 cussion. Decent interment was the only course. " Who ? I ? 
 / supposed nothing. No doubt it's aU right !" 
 
 Gwen turned a puzzled face to her mother; then, after a 
 moment came illumination. " Oh — ^I see-ee !" said she. " It's 
 the children — our children ! Dear me — one has such innocent 
 parents, it's really quite embarrassing ! Of coiu'se I shouldn't 
 talk about them to papa, because he's supposed to know nothing 
 about such things. But really — one's own mother !" 
 
 " Well — at least don't talk so before the person .... She's 
 coming back — Sh /" 
 
 " My dear mamma, she's got six children of her own, so how 
 could it matter ? Besides, she's French." That is to say, an 
 Anglo-Grundy would have no jurisdiction. 
 
 The dazzling ball-dress, which the Countess had professedly 
 climbed all those stairs to see tried on, having been disposed of 
 satisfactorily, and carried away for finishing touches, her lady- 
 ship showed a disposition to remain and talk to her daughter. 
 These two were on very good terms, in spite of the occasional 
 strain which was put upon their relations by the audacity of the 
 
562 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 daughter's flights in the face of her old-fashioned mother's code 
 of proprieties. 
 
 As soon as normal conditions had been re-established, and 
 Miss Lutwyche, an essential to the trying on, had died respectfully 
 away, her ladjrship settled down to a chat. 
 
 " I've really hardly seen you, child, since you came tearing 
 up from Rocester in that frantic way in the middle of the night. 
 It's always the same in town, an absolute rush. And the way 
 one has to mind one's P's and Q's is trying to the last degree. If 
 it was only Society, one could see one's way. One can deal with 
 Society, because there are rules. But People are quite another 
 
 thing Well, my dear, you may say they are not, but look 
 
 at Clotilda — there's a case in point ! I assure you, hardly a 
 minute of the day passes but I feel I ought to do something. 
 But what ? One may say it's her own fault, and so it no doubt 
 is, in a sense. No one is under any sort of obligation to go into 
 these horrible places, which the Authorities ought not to allow 
 to exist. There ought to be proper people to do this kind of 
 
 thing, inoculated or something, to be safe from infection 
 
 But she is going on all right ?" 
 
 " They wouldn't let me see her this morning. But Dr. Dal- 
 rymple said there was no complication, so far , . . ." 
 
 " Oh, well, so long as there's no complication, that's all we 
 can expect." The Countess jumped at an excuse to breathe 
 freely. But there were other formidable contingencies. How 
 about Constance and Cousin Percy ? " Yes — ^they've got to be 
 got married, somehow," said her ladyship. " It's impossible 
 to shut one's eyes to it. I've been talking to Constance about 
 it, and what she says is certainly true. When one's father has 
 chronic gout, and one's stepmother severe nervous depression, 
 one knows without further particulars how difficult it would be 
 to be married from home. She says she simply won't be married 
 from her Porchhammer sister's, because she gushes, and it isn't 
 fair to Percy. Her other sister — the one with a name Uke Rat- 
 trap — doesn't gush, but her husband's going to stand for Stock- 
 port." 
 
 " I suppose," said Gwen, " those are both good reasons. 
 Anyhow, you'll have to accommodate the happy couple. I see 
 that. I suppose papa will have to give her away. If she allows 
 Madame Pontet to groom her, she'll look eighteen. I wonder 
 whether they couldn't manage to . . . ," 
 
 " Couldn't manage to .... ?" 
 
 " Oh no, I see it would be out of the question, because of th© 
 
IN PAEK LANE 563 
 
 time. I was going to say — ^wait for us. And then we could all 
 have been married together." Gwen had remembered the Self- 
 denying Ordinance, which was to last six months, and was not 
 even inaugurated. She looked up at her mother. " Come, dear 
 mother of mine, there's nothing to be shocked at in that \" 
 
 The Countess had risen from her seat, as though to depart. 
 She stood looking across the wintry expanse of Hyde Park, seen 
 through a bow-window across a balcony, with shrubs in boxes 
 getting the full benefit of a seasonable nor'easter; and when 
 at length she spoke, gave no direct reply, " I came up here to 
 talk to you about it," she said. " But I see it would not be of 
 any use. I may as well go. Did Br. Dalrymple say when 
 Clotilda would be out of danger ? Supposing that all goes wellj 
 I mean." 
 
 " How can he tell ? I'm glad I'm not a doctor with a critical 
 case, and everyone trying to make me prophesy favourable 
 results. It's worse for him than it is for us, anyhow, poor 
 man !" 
 
 " Why ? He's not a relation, is he t" 
 
 " No. Oh no ! Perhaps if he were one WeU — perhaps if 
 
 he were, he wouldn't look so miserable No — they are only 
 
 very old friends." The Countess had not asked; this was all 
 brain-wave, helped by shades of expression. " I'm not supposed 
 to Irnmi} anjrthing, you know," added Gwen, to adjust matters. 
 
 " Well — ^I suppose we must hope for the best," said her mother, 
 with an implied recognition of Providence in the background; a 
 mere civility ! " Now I'm going." 
 
 " Very well then — go !" was what Gwen did not say in reply. 
 She only thought that, if she had said it, it would have served 
 mamma right. What she did say was : — " I know what you 
 meant to say when you came upstairs, and you had better say it. 
 Only I shall do nothing of the sort." 
 
 " I wish, my dear, you would be less positive. How can you 
 know what I meant to say ? Of what sort ?" 
 
 " Eeconsidering Adrian. Jilting him, in fact 1" 
 
 " How can you know that ?" 
 
 " Because you said it would not be any use talking to me 
 about it. Just before you stopped looking out of the window, 
 and said you might as well go." 
 
 Driven to bay, the Coimtess had a sudden accis of argumenta- 
 tive power. " Is there nothiag it would be no use to talk to you 
 about except this mad love-affair of yours ?" 
 
 "Nothiag so big. This is the big one. Besides, you know 
 
564 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 you did mean Adrian." As her ladyship did, she held her 
 tongue. 
 
 Presently, having in the meantime resumed her seat, thereby 
 admitting that her daughter was substantially right, she went on 
 to what might be considered official pubUcation. 
 
 " Your father and I, my dear, have had a good deal of talk 
 about this unfortunate affair " 
 
 " What xmfortunate affair ?" 
 
 " This unfortunate .... love-affair." 
 
 " Cousin Percy and Aunt Constance ?" 
 
 " My dear I How can you be so ridiculous ? Of course I am 
 referring to you and Mr. Torrens." 
 
 " To me and Adrian. Precisely what I said, mamma dear ! 
 So now we can go on." The young lady managed somehow to 
 express, by seating herself negligently on a chair with its back to 
 her mother, that she meant to pay no attention whatever to any 
 maternal precept. She could look at her over it, to comply 
 with her duties as a respectful listener. But not to overdo 
 them, she could play the treble of Haydn's Gipsy Rondo on the 
 chair back with fiagers that would have put a finishing touch on 
 the exasperation of Helen of Troy. 
 
 Her ladyship continued: — " We are speaking of the same 
 thing. Your father and I have had several conversations about 
 it. As I was saying when you interrupted me — ^pray do not do 
 so again ! — he agrees with me entirely. In fact, he told me of his 
 own accord that he wished you to come away with me for six 
 
 months Yes — six ! Three's ridiculous .... And that it 
 
 should be quite distinctly understood that no binding engage- 
 ment exists between Mr. Torrens and yourself." 
 
 " All right. I've no objection to anything being distinctly 
 understood, so long as it is also distinctly understood that it 
 
 doesn't make a particle of difference to either of us Yes — 
 
 come in ! Put them on the writing-table." This was to Miss 
 Lutwyche, who came in, bearing letters. 
 
 " To either of you ! You answer for Mr. Torrens, my dear, 
 with a good deal of confidence. Now, do consideir that the 
 circumstances are peculiar. Suppose he were to recover his 
 eyesight 1" 
 
 " You mean he wouldn't be able to bear the shock of finding 
 
 out what he'd got to marry " She was interrupted by her 
 
 mother exhibiting consciousness of the presence of Lutwyche, 
 whose exit was overdue. A very trustworthy young woman, 
 no doubt; but a line bad to be drawn. " What are you fiddling 
 
m PARK LANE 565 
 
 with my letters for, Lutwyche ?" said Gwen. " Do please get 
 done and go \" 
 
 " Yes, my lady." Discreet retirement of Miss Lutwyche. 
 
 " She didn't hear, mamma. You needn't fuss." 
 
 " I was not fussing, my dear, but it's as well to Yes, go 
 
 on with what you were saying." Because Lutwyche, being 
 extinct, might be forgotten. 
 
 Gwen was looking round at the mirror. If Helen of Troy had 
 seen herself in a mirror, all else being alike, what would her 
 verdict have been ? Gwen seemed fairly satisfied. " You 
 meant Adrian might be disgusted ?" said she. 
 
 The mother could not resist the pleasure of a satisfied glance 
 at her daughter's reflection, which was not looking at her. " I 
 meant nothing of the sort," she said. " But your father agreed 
 with me — ^indeed, I am repeating his own words — ^that Mr. 
 Torrens may have a false impression, having only really seen 
 you once, under very peculiar circumstances. It is only human 
 nature, and one has to make allowance for human nature. Now 
 all that I am saying, and all that your father is saying, is that 
 the circumstances are peculiar. Without some sort of reasonable 
 guarantee that Mr. Torrens cannot recover his eyesight, I do 
 contend that it would be in the highest degree rash to take an 
 irrevocable step, and to condemn one — perhaps both, for I assure 
 you I am thinking of Mr. Torrens's welfare as well as your own — 
 to a lifetime of repentance." 
 
 " Mamma dear, don't be a humbug ! You are only putting in 
 Adrian's welfare for the sake of appearances. Much better let 
 it alone !" 
 
 " My dear, it is not the point. If you choose to think me 
 inhumane, you must do so. Only I must say this, that apart 
 from the fact that I have nothing whatever against Mr. Torrens 
 personally — except his religious views, which are lamentable — • 
 that his parents . . . ." 
 
 " I thought you said you never knew his mother." 
 
 " No — ^perhaps not his mother." Her ladyship intensified 
 the parenthetical character of this lady by putting her into 
 smaller type and omitting punctuation: — "I can't say I ever 
 really knew his mother and indeed hardly anything about her 
 except that she was a Miss Abercrombie and goes plaguing on 
 about negroes. But " — here she became normal again — " as for 
 his father . . . ." 
 
 " As for his father ?" 
 
 " He was a constant visitor at my mother's, and I remember 
 
566 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 him very well. So there is no feeling on my part against him 
 or his family." Her ladyship felt she had come very cleverly 
 out of a bramble-bush she had got entangled in imawares, but 
 she wanted to leave it behind on the road, and pushed on, 
 speaking more earnestly: — "Indeed, my dearest child, it is of 
 you and your happiness that I am thinking — although I know 
 you won't believe me, and it's no use my saying anything. . . . ." 
 At this point feelings were threatened; and Gwen, between whom 
 and her mother there was plenty of affection, of a sort, hastened 
 to allay — or perhaps avert — ^them. She shifted her seat to the 
 sofa beside her mother, which made daughterUness more possible. 
 A short episode of mutual extenuations followed; for had not a 
 flavour of battle — ^not tigerish, but contentious — ^pervaded the 
 interview ? 
 
 " Very well, then, dear mother of mine," said Gwen, when this 
 episode had come to an end. " Suppose we consider it settled 
 that way ! I'm to be tractability itself, on the distinct under- 
 standing that it commits me to nothing whatever. As for the 
 six months' penal servitude, you and papa shall have it your own 
 way. Only play fair — make a fair start, I mean ! I Uke method. 
 You have only to say when — any time after Christmas — and 
 Adrian and I will tear ourselves asunder for six months. And 
 then I'll accompany my mamma to Vienna, because I know 
 that's what she wants. Only mind — honour bright ! — as soon 
 as I have dutifully forgotten Adrian for six whole months, there's 
 to be an end of the nonsense, and I'm to marry Adrian .... and 
 vice versa, of course ! Oh no — he shan't be a cipher — I won't 
 allow it " 
 
 " My dear Gwendolen, I wish I could persuade you to be more 
 serious." But her ladyship, as she rose to depart, was con- 
 gratulating herself on having scored. The idea of any young 
 lady's love-fancies surviving six months of Viennese life ! She 
 knew that fascinating capital well, and she knew also what a 
 powerful ally she would find in her elder daughter, the Ambassa- 
 dress, who was guttering there all this while as a distinct con- 
 stellation. 
 
 She might just as well have retired satisfied with this briUiant 
 prospect; only that she had, like so many of us, the postscript 
 vice. This is the one that never wiU allow a conversation to be 
 at an end. She turned to Gwen, who was already opening a 
 letter to read, to say: — " You used the expressions ' reconsider- 
 ing ' and ' jilting ' just now, my dear, as if they were synony- 
 mous. I think you were forgetting that it is impossible to ' jilt ' 
 
IN PARK LANE 567 
 
 — ^if I understand that term rightly — any man until after you 
 have become formally engaged to him, and therefore How- 
 ever, if your letter is so very important, I can go. We can talk 
 another time." This rather stiffly, Gwen having opened the 
 letter, and been caught and held, apparently, by something in 
 a legible handwriting. Whatever it was, Gwen put it down 
 with reluctance, that she might show her sense of the importance 
 of her mother's departure, whom she kissed and olive-branched, 
 beyond what she accounted her lawful claims, in order to wind 
 her up. She went with her as far as the landing, where cramped 
 stairs ended and gradients became indulgent, and then got back 
 as fast as she could to the reading of that letter. 
 
 It was an important letter, there could be no doubt of that, 
 as a thick one from Irene — practically from Adrian — ^lay un- 
 opened on the table while she read through something on many 
 pages that made her face go paler at each new paragraph. On 
 its late envelope, lying opened by Irene's, was the postmark 
 " Ghorlton-under-Bradbury." But it was in a handwriting 
 Gwen was imfamihar with. It was wo* old Mrs. Picture's, which 
 she knew quite well. For which reasons the thought had 
 crossed her mind, when she first saw the envelope, that the old 
 lady was seriously ill — perhaps suddenly dead. It was so very 
 possible. Think of those delicate transparent hands, that frame 
 whose old tenant had outstayed so many a notice to quit. Gwen's 
 cousin, Percy Pellew, had said to her when he carried it upstairs 
 in Cavendish Square, that it weighed absolutely nothing. 
 
 But this letter said nothing of death, nor of illness with danger 
 of death. And yet Gwen was so disturbed by it that there was 
 scarcely a brilliant visitor to her mother's that afternoon but 
 said to some other briUiant visitor: — " What can be the matter 
 with Gwen ? She's not herself !" And then each corrected 
 the other's false impression that it was the dangerous condition 
 of her most intimate cousin and friend. Miss Clotilda Grahame; 
 or screws loose and jammed bearings in the machinery of her love- 
 affair, already the property of Rumour. And as each brilliant 
 visitor was fain to seem better informed than his or her neigh- 
 bour, a very large allowance of inaccuracy and misapprehension 
 was added to the usual stock-in-trade of tittle-tattle on both 
 these points. 
 
 There was only a short interregnum between the last de- 
 partiu-es of this brilliant throng, and the arrival of a quiet 
 half-dozen to dinner; not a party, only a soothing half-dozen 
 after all that noise and turmoil. So that Gwen got no chance of 
 
568 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 a talk with her father, which was what she felt very much in 
 need of. That interregnum was only just enough to allow of 
 a few minutes' rest before dressing for dinner. But the quiet 
 half-dozen came, dined, and went away early; perhaps the earher 
 that their hostess's confessions of fatigue amounted to an appeal 
 ad misericordiam ; and Gwen was reserved and silent. When 
 the last of the half-dozen had departed, Gwen got her oppor- 
 tunity. " Don't keep your father up too long, child," said 
 the Countess, over the stair-rail. " It makes him sleep in the 
 day, and it's bad for him." And vanished, with a well-bred 
 yawn-noise, a trochee, the short syllable being the apology for 
 the long one. 
 
 The Earl had allowed the quiet three, who remained with him 
 at the dinner-table after their three quiet better-halves had 
 retired with his wife and daughter, to do all the smoking, and 
 had saved up for his own cigar by himself. It was his way. So 
 Gwen knew she need not hurry through preUminaries. Of 
 course he wanted to know about the Typhus patient, and she gave 
 a good report, without stint. " That's all right," said he, in the 
 tone of rejoicing which implies a double satisfaction, one for the 
 patient's sake, one for one's own, as it is no longer a duty to be 
 anxious. 
 
 " Why are you glaring at me so, papa darUng ?" said his 
 daughter. It was a most placid glare. She should have said 
 " looking." 
 
 " Your mamma tells me," said he, without modifying the glare, 
 " that she has persuaded you to go with her to Vienna for six 
 months." 
 
 " She said you wished me to go." 
 
 " She wishes you to go herself, and I wish what she wishes." 
 This was not mere submissiveness. It was just as much loyalty 
 and chivalry. "Is it a very terrible trial, the Self-denying 
 Ordinance ?" 
 
 Gwen answered rather stonily. " It isn't pleasant, but if 
 you and my mother think it necessary — ^why, what must be, 
 must ! I'm ready to go any time. Only I must go and wind up 
 with Adrian first .... just to console him a httle ! It's worse for 
 him than for me ! Just fancy him left alone for six months and 
 never seeing me ! . . . . Oh dear ! — ^you know what I mean." 
 For she had made the slip that was so usual. She brushed it aside 
 as a thing that could not be helped, and would even be sure to 
 happen again, and continued: — " Irene has just written to me, 
 T got her letter to-day." 
 
m PARK LANE 569 
 
 " Well ?" 
 
 " She makes what I think a very good, suggestion — ^for me to 
 go to Pensham to stay a week after Christmas, and then go in 
 for .... What do you call it ? . . . the Self-denying Ordinance 
 in earnest afterwards. You don't mind ?" 
 
 " Not in the least, as long as your mother agrees. Is that 
 Miss Torrens's — ^Irene's — letter ?" 
 
 " No. It's another one I want to speak to you about. Wait 
 with patience ! , . . . I was going to say what exasperating 
 parents I have inherited .... from somewhere !" 
 
 " From your grandparents, I suppose ! But why ?" 
 
 " Because when I say, may I this or may I say that, you always 
 say, ' Yes if your mother,' etcetera, and then mamma quotes you 
 to squash me. I don't think it's playing the game." 
 
 " I think I gather from your statement, which is a little 
 obscure, that your mamma and I are like the two proctors in 
 Dickens's novel. Well ! — it's a time-honoured arrangement as 
 between parents, though I admit it may be exasperating to their 
 young. What's the other letter ?" 
 
 " I want to tell you about it first," said Gwen. She then 
 told, without obscurity this time, the events which had followed 
 the Earl's departure from the Towers a week since. " And then 
 comes this letter," she concluded. " Isn't it terrible ?" 
 
 " Let's see the letter," said the Earl. She handed it to him; 
 
 and then, going behind his high chair, looked over him as he 
 
 read. No one ever waits really patiently for another to read 
 
 what he or she has already read. So Gwen did not. She changed 
 
 the elbow she leaned on, restlessly; bit her lips, turn and turn 
 
 about; pulled her bracelets round and round, and watehed keenly 
 
 for any chance of interposiag an abbreviated pricis of the text, 
 
 to expedite the reading. Her father preferred to understand 
 
 the letter, rather than to get through it in a hurry and try back; 
 
 so he went deliberately on with it, reading it halt aloud, with 
 
 comments: 
 
 " At Strides Cottage, 
 
 " Choelton-undee-Beadbuet, 
 
 „„ ^ "November 22, 1864. 
 
 • Mt Ladt, 
 
 " I have followed your instructions, and brought the 
 
 old Mrs. Prichard here to stay until you may please to make 
 
 another arrangement. My mother will gladly remain at my 
 
 daughter's at her husband's farm, near Dessington, till such 
 
 time as may be suitable for Mrs. Prichard to return. This 
 
 I do not wish to say because I want to lose this old lady, for if 
 
570 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take in saying so, 
 she is a dear old person, and I do in truth love her, and am 
 glad to have charge of her." 
 
 " She seems always to make conquests," said the Earl. " I 
 acknowledge to having been epris myself." 
 
 " Yes, she really is an old darling. But go on and don't talk. 
 It's what comes next." She pointed out the place over his 
 shoulder, and he took the opportunity to rub his cheek against 
 her arm, which she requited by kissing the top of his head. He 
 read on: 
 
 " Nor yet would my mother's return make any difference, 
 for we could accommodate, and I would take no other children 
 just yet a while. Toby goes home to-morrow. But I will 
 tell you there is something, and it is this, only your ladyship 
 may be aware of it, that the old lady has delusions and a 
 strange turn to them, in which Dr. Nash agrees with me it 
 is more than old age, and recommends my mother, being 
 old too, not to come back till she goes, for it would not be 
 good for her, for anything of this sort is most trying to the 
 nerves, and my mother is eighty-one this Christmas, just old 
 Mrs. Prichard's own age." 
 
 " I think that's the end of the sentence," said the Earl. " I 
 take it that Nash, who's a very sharp fellow in his own line, is 
 quite aUve to the influence of insanity on some temperaments, 
 and knows old Mrs. Marrable well enough to say she ought not 
 to be in the way of a lunatic. . . . What's that ?" 
 
 " A lunatic !" For Gwen had started and shuddered at the 
 word. 
 
 " I see no use in mincing matters. That's what the good 
 woman is driving at. What comes next ?" He read on : 
 
 " I will tell all what happened, my lady, from when she first 
 entered the house, asking pardon for my length. It began 
 when I was showing the toy water-mill on our mantel-shelf, 
 which your ladyship saw with Miss Grahame. I noticed she 
 was very agitated, but did not put it down to the sight of this 
 toy till she said how ever could it have been my grandfather's 
 mill, and then I only took it for so many words, and got her 
 away to bed, and would have thought it only an upset, but 
 for next morning, when I found her out of bed before six, 
 no one else being up but me, measuring over the toy with her 
 hands where it stood on the shelf, and I should not have 
 seen her only for our dog calling attention, though a dumb 
 animal, being as I was in the yard outside." 
 
IN PAEK LANE 571 
 
 *' I think I follow that/' said the Earl. " The dog pulled her 
 skirts, and had a lot to say and couldn't say it." 
 
 " That was it/' said Gwen. " Just Uke Adrian's Achilles. I 
 don't mean he's Uke Achilles personally. The most awful bull- 
 dog, to look at, with turn-up tusks and a nose like a cup. But 
 go on and you'll see. ' Yard outside.' " 
 
 " I would have thought her sleep-walking, but she saw me 
 and spoke clear, saying she could not sleep for thinking of a 
 model of her father's miU in Essex as Uke this as two peas, 
 and thought it must be the same model, only now she had 
 laid her hands on it again she could see how email it was. 
 She seemed so reasonable that I was in a fright directly, par- 
 ticularly it frightened me she should say Essex, because my 
 grandfather's miU was in Essex, showing it was all an idea 
 of her own. . . . :" 
 
 " I can't exactly follow that," said the Earl, and re-read the 
 words deliberately. 
 
 " Oh, can't you see ?" said Gwen. " / see. If she had said 
 the other mill was in Lancashire, it would have seemed possible. 
 But — ^both in Essex !" 
 
 " I suppose that's it. Two models of mills exactly alike, and 
 both in Essex, is too great a tax on human credulity. On we go 
 again ! Where are we ? Oh — ' idea of her own.' " 
 
 " But I got her back to bed, and got her some breakfast 
 an hour later, begging she would not talk, and she was very 
 good and said no more. After this I moved the model out 
 of the way, that nothing might remind her, and she was quiet 
 and happy. So I did not send for Dr. Nash then. But 
 when it came to afternoon, I saw it coming back. She got 
 restless to see the model I had put by out of sight, saying she 
 could not make out this and that, particular the two little 
 girls. And then it was she gave me a great fright, for when 
 I told her the two little girls was my mother and my aunt, 
 being children under ten, over seventy years ago, and twins, 
 she had quite a bad attack, such as I have never seen, shaking 
 all over, and crying out, 'What is itt — What is itt' So then I 
 sent Elizabeth next door for Dr. Nash, who came and was 
 most kind, and Mrs. Nash after. He gave her a sedative, and 
 «aid not to let her talk. He said, too, not to write to you just 
 yet, for she might get quite right in a little wMle, and then he 
 would tell you himself." 
 
 " Poor darling old Mrs. Picture !" said Gwen. " Fancy her 
 going off like this I But I think I can see what has done it. You 
 
572 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 know, she has told me how she was one of twins, and how her 
 father had a flour-mill in Essex." 
 
 " Did she say the name ?" 
 
 " No — she's very odd about that. She never tells any names, 
 
 except that her sister was Phcebe. She told me that Oh 
 
 yes — she told me her little girl's name was Ruth." Gwen did 
 not know the christened name of either Granny Marrable or 
 Widow Thrale, when she said this. 
 
 " Phcebe and Ruth," said the Earl. " Pretty names ! But 
 what has done it ? What can you see ? . . . . You said just 
 now ? " 
 
 " Oh, I understand. Of course, it's the twins and the flour- 
 mill in Essex. Such a coincidence ! Enough to upset any- 
 body's reason, let alone an old woman of eighty ! Poor dear 
 old Mrs. Picture ! — she's as sane as you or I." 
 
 " Suppose we finish the letter. Where were we ? ' Tell you 
 himself '—is that it ? All right !" 
 
 " Then she was quiet again, quite a long time. But when 
 we was sitting together in the firelight after supper, she had it 
 come on again, and I fear by my own fault, for Dr. Nash says 
 I was in the wrong to say a word to her of any bygones. And 
 yet it was but to clear her mind of the mixing together of 
 Daren th MUl and this miU she remembers. For I had but 
 just said the name of ours, and that my grandfather's name 
 was Isaac Runciman when I saw it was coming on, she shaking 
 and trembling and crying out like before, " Oh, what is it % 
 Only tell me what it is .'' And then ' Our mUl was Darenth 
 MUl,' and ' Isaac Runciman was my father.' And other 
 things she could not have known that had been no word of 
 mine, only Dr. Nash found out why, aU these things having 
 been told to little Dave Wardle last year, and doubtless 
 repeated childlike. And yet, my lady, though I know well 
 where the dear old soul has gotten aU these histories, seeing 
 there is no other way possible, it is I do assure you enough 
 to turn my own reason to hear her go on telling and telling 
 of one thing and another all what our little boy we had here 
 has made into tales for his amusement, suchlike as Mr. 
 Pitt and Mr. Fox our horses, and she had just remembered 
 the foreman's name Muggeridge when she saw the model ; 
 it makes my head fairly spin to hear. Only I take this for 
 my comfort, that I can see behind her words to know the 
 tale is not of her making, but only Dave, like when she said 
 Dave must have meant Muggeridge in his last letter, and 
 would I find it to show her, only I could not. And like when 
 
IN PARK LANE 573 
 
 she talked of her old piano at her father's, there I could see 
 was our old piano my mother bought at a sale, now stood in a 
 corner here where I had talked of it the evening I had the old 
 lady here first. I am naming aU these things that your lady- 
 ship may see I do right to keep my mother away from Strides 
 tUl Mrs. Prichard goes. But I do wish to say again that that 
 day when it comes will be a sad one for me, for I do love her 
 dearly and that is the truths though it is but a week and a 
 day, and Dr. Nash does not wonder at this." 
 
 "HI remember right," said the Earl, stopping, " Nash has 
 made some study of Insanity — ^written about it. He knows how 
 very charming Imiatics can be. You know your Great-Aunt 
 Eileen fairly bewitched the Lord Chancellor when he interviewed 
 her " 
 
 " Did he see the Imiatics himself ?...." 
 
 " When they were fascinating and female — ^yes ! . . . . Well, 
 what happened was that she waited to be sure he had refused to 
 issue the Commission, and theii went straight for Lady Lost- 
 withiel's throat — her sister-in-law, you know " 
 
 " Did that show she was mad ?" 
 
 " Let us keep to the point. What does ' Muggeridge ' 
 mean ?" 
 
 " I was thinking. ' Muggeridge ' ! 'But I've got Dave's last 
 letter. I'll get it." And she was off before the Earl could say 
 that to-morrow would do as well. 
 
 He went on smoking the bitter — and bitten — end of his cigar, 
 which had gone slowly, ovnng to the reading. Instead of finishing 
 up the letter, he went back, carefully re-reading the whole with 
 absorbed attention. So absorbed, that Gwen, coming in quietly 
 with a fresh handful of letters, was behind his chair unobserved, 
 and had said: — " Well, and what do you make of it ?" before he 
 looked up at her. 
 
 " Verdict in accordance with the medical opinion, I think. 
 But let's see Dave's letter." He took and read to himself 
 " I see," said he. " The cross stood for Dolly's love. A mere 
 proxy. But Ae sends the real article. I like the ' homliburst; 
 too. Why did Dolly's lady want to towd Mrs. Spicture ? . . . 
 Oh, I see, it's the name of our house. . . , h'm — h'm — h'm ! . . . 
 Now where do we come to Muggeridge ? . . . Oh, here we are 
 I've got it. Well — ^that's plain enough. Muggeridge. M, U 
 one G, E, R, I, J for D, G, E. That's quite plain. Can't 
 see what you want more." 
 
 " Oh yes, it's all very easy for you, now you've been told. / 
 
674 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 couldn't make head or tail of it. And I don't wonder dear old 
 Mrs. Picture couldn't " 
 
 The Earl looked up suddenly. " Stop a bit !" said he. " Now 
 where was it in Mrs. Thrale's letter. I had it just now .... 
 here it is ! ' The old lady had just remembered the foreman's 
 name when she saw the model.' Got that ?" 
 
 " Yes— but I don't see " 
 
 " No — ^but hsten ! Dr. Nash found out that all these par- 
 ticulars were of Dave's communicating. Got that ?" 
 
 " Yes— but still I don't see " 
 
 " Don't chatterbox ! Listen to your father. Keep those two 
 points in mind, and then consider that when you read her 
 Dave's letter she could not identify his misspelt name, which 
 seems perfectly obvious and easy to me, now I know it. How 
 could she forget it so as not to be reminded of it by a misspelt 
 version ? Can you conceive that she should fail, if she had 
 heard the name from the child so clearly as to have it on the tip 
 of her tongue the moment she saw the mill she only knew from 
 Dave's description ?" 
 
 " No — it certainly does seem very funny !" 
 
 " Very funny. Now let's see what the rest of the letter says." 
 He went on reading: 
 
 " I know your ladyship will pardon the liberty I take to 
 write at such length, seeing the cause of it, and also if I may 
 suggest that your ladyship might send for Mrs. Bird, who 
 lives with Mrs. Prichard, or for the parents of the little Dave 
 Wardle, to inquire of them has she been subject to attacks 
 or is this new. I should teU you that she has now been free 
 from any aberration of mind, so Dr. Nash says, for nearly 
 two days, mostly knitting quietly to herself, without talk, 
 and sometimes laying down the needles like to think. Dr. 
 Nash says to talk to her when she talks, but to keep her off 
 of bygones, and the like. She has asked for things to write 
 you a letter herself, and I have promised as soon as this is 
 done. But I will not wait for hers to post this, as Dr. Nash 
 says the sooner you know the better. I will now stop, again 
 asking pardon for so long a letter, and remain, my lady, your 
 obedient and faithful servant. 
 
 "R. Theale." 
 
 " How very hke what everyone else does !" said the Earl. 
 " This good woman writes so close to economize paper that she 
 leaves no room for her signature and goes in for her initial. I 
 
IN PARK LANE 575 
 
 was wanting to know her Christian name. Do you know it ? And 
 see — she has to take more paper after all ! Here's a postscript." 
 
 " P.S. — There la another reason why it is better not to 
 have my mother baek till Mrs. Prichard goes, she herself 
 having been much upset by a man who said he was Mrs. 
 Prichard's son, and was looking for his mother. My Bon-in- 
 law, John Costrell, came over to tell me. This man had 
 startled my mother very mMch. I should be sorry he should 
 come here to make Mrs. Prichard worse, but my mother is no 
 doubt best away. I am not afraid of him myself, because of 
 our dog." 
 
 " That dog is a treasure," said the Earl, re-enveloping the 
 letter. " What are those other lettersl Irene's? . . . And what?" 
 
 " I was trying to think of Mrs. Thrale's Christian name. I 
 
 don't think I know it Yes — Irene's, and some papers I 
 
 want you to lock up, for me." Gwen went on to tell of the 
 inroad on Mrs. Prichard's secretaire, and explained that she was 
 absolutely certain of forgiveness. " Only you will keep them 
 safer than I shall, in your big ebony cabinet. I think I can 
 trust you to give them back." She laid them on the table, gave 
 her father an affectionate double-barrelled kiss, and went away 
 to bed. It was very late indeed. 
 
 Mr. Norbury, in London, always outlived everyone else at 
 night. The Earl rather found a satisfaction, at the Towers, in 
 being the last to leave port, on a voyage over the Ocean of Sleep. 
 In London it was otherwise, but not explicably. The genesis 
 of usage in households is a very interesting subject, but the 
 mere chronicler can only accept facts, not inquire into causes. 
 Mr. Norbury always did give the Earl a send-off towards Dream- 
 land, and saw the house deserted, before he vanished to a secret 
 den in the basement. 
 
 " Norbury," said the Earl, sending the pilot off, metaphorically. 
 " You know the two widows, mother and daughter, at Chorlton- 
 under-Bradbury ? Strides Cottage." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, my lord ! All my life. I knew the old lady 
 when she came from Darenth, in Essex, to marry her second 
 husband, Marrable." Norbury gave other particulars which the 
 story knows. 
 
 " Then Widow Thrale is not Granny Marrable's daughter, 
 though she calls her mother ?" 
 
 " That is the case, my lord. She was a pretty little girl — 
 
 37 
 
576 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 maybe eleven years old — and was her mother's bridesmaid 
 
 I should say her aunt's." 
 
 " Who was her mother ?" 
 
 " I have understood it was a twin sister." 
 
 " Who was her father ?" 
 
 Mr. Norbury hesitated. "If your lordship would excuse, 1 
 would prefer not to say. The story came to me through two 
 persons. My own informant had it from Thrale. But it's near 
 twenty years ago, and I could not charge my memory, to a 
 certainty." 
 
 " Something you don't like to tell ?" 
 
 " Not except I could speak to a certainty." Mr. Norbury, 
 evidently embarrassed, wavered respectfully. 
 
 " Was there a convict in it, certain or uncertain ?" 
 
 " There was, my lord. Certain, I fear. But I am uncertain 
 about his name. Peverell, or Deverell." 
 
 " What was he convicted of ? What offence T" 
 
 " I rather think it was forgery, my lord, but 1 may be wrong 
 about that. The story said his wife followed him to Van 
 Diemens Land, and died there ?" 
 
 " That was Thrale's story ?" 
 
 " Thrale's story." 
 
 " He must have known." 
 
 " Oh, he knew !" 
 
 " What is old Mrs. Marrable's Christian name ?" 
 
 " I beUeve she was always called Phoebe. Her first married 
 name was a very unusual one, Cropredy." 
 
 " And Widow Thrale's ?" 
 
 " Ruth Keziah Solmes calls her, I think." 
 
 His lordship made no reply; and, indeed, said never a word 
 until he released Mr. Norbury in his dressing-room ten minutes 
 later, being then as it were wound up for a good night's rest, 
 and safe to go till morning. Even then the current of serious 
 thought into which he seemed to have plunged seemed too 
 engrossing to allow of his making a start. He remained sitting 
 in the easy-chair before the fire, with intently knitted brows and 
 a gaze divided between the vigorous flare to which Mr. Norbury's 
 final benediction had incited it, and the packet of letters Gwen 
 had given him, which he had placed on the table beside him. 
 Behind him was what Gwen had spoken of as his big ebony 
 cabinet. If a ghost that could not speak was then and there 
 haunting that chamber, its tongue must have itched to remind 
 his lordship what a satisfaction it would be to a disembodied 
 
IN PARK LANE 577 
 
 bystander to get a peep into the cinqiiecento recesses of that 
 complicated storehouse of ancient documents, which was never 
 opened in the presence of anyone but its owner. 
 
 Gradually Gwen's packet absorbed more than its fair share of 
 the Earl's attention; finally, seemed to engross it completely. 
 He ended by cutting the outer string, taking the contents out, 
 and placing them before him on the table, assorting them in 
 groups, like with like. 
 
 There were the printed formal warrants, variously signed and 
 attested, of some assignments or transfers — ^things of no interest 
 or moment. Put them by ! There were one or two new sheets 
 covered with a child's printed efforts towards a handwriting 
 manifestly the same as the one recently under discussion, even 
 without the signature, " dAve wARdLe." There was a sub- 
 stantial accumulation of folded missives in an educated man's 
 hand, and another in a woman's; of which last the outermost — 
 being a folded sheet that made its own envelope — showed a 
 receipt postmark " Macquarie. June 24, 1807," and a less 
 visible despatch-stamp " Darenth. Nov. 30, 1806," telling its 
 tale of over six months on the road. Then one, directed in 
 another hand, a man's, but with the same postmarks, both of 
 1808, with the months undecipherable. This last seemed the 
 most important, being tied with tape. It was the elder Daverill's 
 successful forgery, treasured by old Maisie as the last letter from 
 her family in England, telling of her sister Phoebe's death. All 
 the letters were addressed to " Mrs. Thornton Daverill," 
 the directions being only partly visible, owing to the 
 folding. 
 
 Lest the reader should be inclined to blame the accidental 
 possessor of these letters for doing what this story must perforce 
 put on record, and to say that his action disgraced the Earldom 
 of Ancestor, let it remind him what the facts were that were 
 already in his lordship's possession, and ask him whether he 
 himself, so circumstanced, might not have felt as the Earl did — 
 that the case was one for a sacrifice of punctilios in the face of 
 the issues that turned upon their maintenance. Had he any 
 right to connive at the procrastination of some wicked secret— 
 for he had the clue — ^when a trivial sacrifice of self-respect might 
 bring it to light ? He could see that Mrs. Prichard must be the 
 twin sister, somehow. But he did not see how, as yet; and he 
 wanted confirmation and elucidation. These letters would 
 contain both, or correction and guidance. Was he to bewilder 
 Gwen with his own partial insights, or take on himself to sift 
 
578 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the grist clean before he milled it for her consumption ? He 
 was not long in deciding. 
 
 Two or three slippered turns up and down the room, very 
 cautious lest they should wake her ladyship in the adjoining one, 
 were all the case required. Then he resumed his seat, and, 
 deliberately taking up the taped letter, opened it and read: 
 
 " Mt deak daughter Maisie, 
 
 "It is with great pain that I take up my pen to 
 acquaint you of the fatal calamity which has befallen your 
 sister Phcebe and her husband, as well as I grieve to say of 
 your own child Ruth, my granddaughter, all three of whom 
 there is every reason to fear have lost their lives at sea on the 
 sailing-packet Scheldt, from Antwerp to London, which is 
 believed to have gone down with every soul on board in the 
 great gale of September 30, now nearly two months since. 
 
 " You will be surprised that your sister and little girl 
 should be on the seas, but that this should be so was doubtless 
 the Will of God, and in compliance with His ordinances, 
 though directly contrary to my own advice. Had due atten- 
 tion been paid to my wishes this might have been avoided. 
 Here is the account of how it happened, from which you 
 may judge for yourself: 
 
 " Your brother-in-law Cropredy's imprudence is no doubt 
 to answer for it, he having run the risk of travelling abroad 
 to put himself in personal communication with a house of 
 business at Malines, a most unwholesome place for an 
 Englishman, though no doubt healthy for foreigners. As I 
 had forewarned him, he contracted fever in the heat of 
 August, when ill-fed on a foreign diet, which, however suit- 
 able to them, is fatal to an English stomach, and little better 
 than in Prance. The news of this illness coming to your 
 sister, she would not be resigned to the Will of Providence, to 
 which we should all bow rather than rashly endanger our lives, 
 but took upon herself to decide, contrary to my remonstrance, 
 to cross the Channel with the Uttle girl, of whom I could have 
 taken charge here at my own home. Merciful to say, the 
 fever left him, having a good constitution from English living, 
 and all was promise of a safe return, seeing the weather was 
 favourable when the ship left the quay, and a fair wind. 
 But of that ship no further is known, only she has not been 
 heard of since, and doubtless is gone to the bottom in the 
 great gale which sprimg up in mid-channel, for so many 
 have done the like. Even as the ships of Jehosaphat were 
 broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish (Chron. 
 II. XX. 37). 
 
IN PARK LANE 579 
 
 " There is, I fear, no room for hope that, short of a miracle, 
 for the sea will not give up its dead (Kev. xx. 13), any remains 
 should be recovered, but you may rest assured that if any 
 come to the surface and are identified they shall be interred 
 in the family grave where your sainted mother was laid, and 
 reposes in the Lord, in a sure and certain hope of a joyful 
 resurrection (Acts iiiii. 6). 
 
 " Believe me, my dear daughter, to remain your affectionate 
 father 
 
 " Isaac Kunciman. 
 
 " I have no message for my son-in-law, nor do I retain any 
 resentment towards him, forgiving him as I wish to be 
 forgiven (Luke vi. 37). 
 
 " Dabbnth MiJJj, 
 •'Oct. 16, 1807."! 
 
 The Earl read this letter through twice — ^three times — and 
 apparently his bewilderment only increased as he re-read it. Ab 
 last he refolded it, as though no more hght could come from more 
 reading, and sat a moment still, thinking intently. Then he 
 suddenly exclaimed aloud: — " Amazing," adding under his 
 voice: — "But perfectly inexplicable!" Then, going on even 
 
 less audibly: — " I must see what Hawtrey can make of this " 
 
 At which point he was taken aback by a voice through the door 
 from the next room : — " What are you talking to yourself so for ? 
 Can't you get to bed ?" Palpably the voice of an awakened 
 Countess ! He replied in a conciliatory spirit, and accepted the 
 suggestion, first putting the letters safely away in the ebony 
 cabinet. 
 
 Anyone who reads this forged letter with a full knowledge of 
 all the circumstances will see that it was at best, from the hterary 
 and dramatic point of view, a bimgling composition. But style 
 was not cabled for so long as the statements were coherent. For 
 what did the forger's wife know of what her father's style would 
 be under these or any abnormal circumstances ? Had she ever 
 had a letter at all from him before ? Even that is doubtful. 
 The shock, moreover, was enough to unbalance the most critical 
 judgment. 
 
 Two things are very noticeable in the letter. One that it 
 fights shy of strong expressions of feeling, as though its fabricator 
 had felt that danger lay that way; the other that he manifestly 
 
580 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 enjoyed his Scripture references, familiar to him by his long 
 experience of gaol-chaplains, and warranted by his knowledge of 
 his father-in-law. We — who write this — have referred to the 
 passages indicated, and fomid the connection of ideas to be about 
 an average sample, as coherency goes when quotation from 
 Scripture is afoot. No doubt Maisie's husband found their 
 selection entertaining. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE LEGAL ACUMEN OF THOTHMES. OF COUESE IT WAS ISAAC 
 EUNCIMAN's SIGNATUBE. the ANTIPODEAN INK. HOW 
 
 Lincoln's inn fields was made of wood, how gwen 
 and her father came off their p's and o's. the riddle 
 as good as solved. how gwen got a lift to cavendish 
 square and her mother went on to help to abolish 
 south carolina. another lift, in a pill-box. sapps 
 
 court's views of the war. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR's HALF- 
 SISTER's BROTHER-IN-LAW. LIVE EELS. BALL's POND. MRS. 
 
 Riley's eleven relatives, mes. tapping's naval con- 
 nections. OLD BILLY. RUM SHRUB. LOUIS NAPOLEON AND 
 KING SOLOMON. A PARTY IN THE BAR. WHICH WAY DID HE 
 GO? 
 
 Said his lordship next morning to Mr. Norbury, bringing him 
 preUminary tea at eight o'clock : — " I want to catch Mr. Hawtrey 
 
 before he goes to Lincoln's Inn. Send round to say No — 
 
 give me one of my cards and a pencil There ! — send that 
 
 roimd at once, because he goes early." 
 
 The result was that Mr. Hawtrey was announced while the 
 Earl was having real breakfast with Gwen and her mother at 
 ten, and was shown into the Hbrary. Also that the real breakfast 
 was hurried and frustrated, that Mr. Hawtrey should not be kept 
 waiting. For the Earl counter-ordered his last cup of tea, and 
 went away with his fast half broken. So her ladyship sent the 
 cup after him to the library. He sent a message back to Gwen. 
 Would her ladyship be sure not to go out without seeing him ? 
 She would. 
 
 Mr. Hawtrey was known to Gwen as the Earl's solicitor, a man 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 581 
 
 of perfectly incredible weight and importance. He was deep in 
 the Lord Chancellor's confidence, and had boxes ia tiers in his 
 office, to read the names on which was a Whig and Tory educa- 
 tion. If all the acres of land that had made Mr. Hawtrey's 
 acquaintance, somehow or other, had been totalled on condition 
 that it was fair to count twice over, the total total would have 
 been as large as Asia, at a rough guess. His clerks — or his firm's, 
 Humphrey and Hawtrey's — had witnessed leases, wills, transfers, 
 and powers of attorney, numerous enough to fill the Rolls Office, 
 but so far as was known none of them had ever been called on to 
 attest his own signature. Personally, Mr. Hawtrey had always 
 seemed to Gwen very Hke an Egyptian God or King, and she 
 would speak of him as Thothmes and Bameses freely. Her father 
 admitted the likeness, but protested against her levity, as this 
 gentleman was his most trusted adviser, inherited with his title 
 and estates. The Earldom of Aacester had always been in the 
 habit of consulting Mr. Hawtrey about all sorts of things, not 
 necessarily legal. 
 
 So when Gwen was sent for to her father's sanctum, and went, 
 she was not surprised to hear that he had given Mr. Hawtrey all 
 the particulars she had told him of Mrs. Prichard's history, and 
 a clear outline of the incidents up to that date, ending with the 
 seeming insanity of the old lady. " But," said the Earl, who 
 appeared very serious, " I have given no names. I have sent 
 for you now, Gwen, to get your consent to my making no reserves 
 with Mr. Hawtrey, in whose advice I have great confidence." 
 Mr. Hawtrey acknowledged this testimony, and Gwen acknow- 
 ledged that gentleman's desert; each by a bow, but Gwen's was 
 the more flexible performance. 
 
 She just hung back perceptibly over giving the carte 
 blanche asked for. " I suppose no harm can come of it — to 
 anybody ?" said she. None whatever, apparently; so she 
 assented. 
 
 " Very good," said the Earl. " And now, my dear, I want 
 you, before I show it to Mr. Hawtrey, to read this letter, which I 
 have opened on my own responsibiHty — ^nobody to blame but 
 me ! I found it among yoiu: old lady's letters you gave me to 
 take care of." 
 
 " Oh dear !" said Gwen. 
 
 " I shall not show it to Mr. Hawtrey, unless you Hke. Take it 
 and read it. No hurry." Gwen was conscious that the sohcitor 
 sat as still as his prototype Thothmes at the British Museum, and 
 with as immovable a coimtenance. 
 
582 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 She took the letter, glancing at the cover. " Who is Mrs, 
 Thornton Daverill ?" said she, quite in the dark. 
 
 " Go on and read," said the Earl. 
 
 Gwen read half to herself : — " ' My dear daughter Maisie,' " 
 and then said aloud : — " But that is Mrs. Prichard's name \" 
 
 " Read through to the end," said the Earl. And Gwen, with 
 a painful feeling of bewilderment, obeyed orders, puzzling over 
 phrases and sentences to find the thing she was to read for, and 
 staggered a moment by the name " Cropredy," which she 
 thought she must have misread. There was no clue in the 
 letter itself, as she did not know who " Phoebe " and " Ruth " 
 were. 
 
 Her father's observation of her face quickened as she visibly 
 neared the end. She was quite taken aback by the signature, the 
 moment it caught her eye. " Isaac Runciman !" she exclaimed, 
 " Why— that's— that's. . . ." 
 
 "That's the name of Mrs. Marrable's father that old Mrs. 
 Prichard lays claim to for hers," said the Earl quietly. " And 
 this letter is written to his daughter, Mrs. Thornton Daverill, 
 
 whose name is Maisie And old Mrs. Prichard's name is 
 
 Maisie And this letter is in the keeping of old Mrs. 
 
 Prichard." He left gaps, for his hearer to understand. 
 
 " Good God !" exclaimed Gwen. " Then old Mrs. Prichard is 
 not mad." She could only see that much for the moment — no 
 details. " Oh, be quiet a moment and let me think." She 
 dropped the letter, and sat with her face in her hands, as though 
 to shut thought in and work the puzzle out. Her father remained 
 silent, watching her. 
 
 Presently he said, quietly still, as though to help her: — 
 " Nor bury told me last night what we did not know, that old 
 Mrs. Marrable's name is Phoebe, and that Widow Thrale's is 
 Ruth " 
 
 " That old Mrs. Marrable is Phoebe and her daughter is Ruth." 
 Gwen repeated his words, as though learning a lesson, still with 
 her fingers crushing her eyes. 
 
 " And that Ruth is not really Phoebe's daughter but her niece. 
 And, according to Norbury, she is the daughter of a twin sister, 
 whose husband was transported for forgery, and who followed 
 him to Van Diemens Land, and died there." He raised his 
 voice slightly to say this. 
 
 A more amazed face than Gwen's when she withdrew her 
 fingers to fix her startled eyes upon her father, would have 
 been almost as hard to find as a more beautiful one 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 683 
 
 " But that is Mrs. Prichard, papa dear," she gasped. " Don't 
 you know ? The story I told you !" 
 
 " Exactly !" said the Earl. 
 
 " But the letter — ^the letter ! Phoebe and Ruth in the letter 
 canruit be drowned, if they are Granny Marrable and Widow 
 Thrale." A rapid phantasmagoria of possibihties and impossi- 
 bilities shot through her mind. How could order come of such 
 a chaos ? 
 
 " Excuse me/' said Thothmes, speaking for the first time. 
 " Do I understand — ^I assume I am admitted to confidence — do 1 
 understand that the letter states that these two women were 
 drowned ?" 
 
 " Crossing from Antwerp. Yes !" 
 
 " Then the letter is a falsehood, probably written with a bad 
 motive." 
 
 " But by their father — ^their father ! Impossible !" 
 
 " How does your ladyship know it was written by their 
 father ?" 
 
 " It is signed by their father — at Darenth Mill in Essex. Both 
 say Isaac Runciman was their father." 
 
 " It is signed with Isaac Runciman's name — so I understand. 
 Is it certaiQ that it was signed by Isaac Runciman ? May I now 
 see the letter ? And the envelope, please ! — oh, the direction 
 is on the back, of course." He held the letter in front of him, 
 but apparently took very Uttle notice of it. " As if," thought 
 Gwen to herself, " he was thinking about his Dynasty." 
 
 " What do you make of it, Hawtrey ?" said the Earl, but, 
 getting no answer, waited. Silence ensued. 
 
 " Yea," said the lawyer, breaking it suddenly. He seemed to 
 have seen his way. "Now may I ask whether we have any 
 means of knowing what the forgery was for which this man was 
 transported ?" 
 
 " Oh yes !" said Gwen. " Old Mrs. Prichard told me what he 
 was accused of, at least. Forging an acceptance — ^if that's right ? 
 I think that was it." 
 
 " But whose signature ? Did she say ?" 
 
 " Oh yes — ^I made her tell me, her father's." Then Gwen 
 fitted the name, just heard, into its place in old Mrs. Priohard's 
 tale, and was illuminated. " I see what you think, Mr. Hawtrey," 
 said she, interrupting herself. The lawyer was examining the 
 direction on the letter-sheet. 
 
 " I think I did right to pry into the letter, Gwennie," said her 
 father ; seeking, nevertheless, a salve for conscience. 
 
584 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Of course you did, you darling old thing ! . . . . What, Mr. 
 Hawtrey ? You were going to say ?...." 
 
 " I was going to say had you seen an odd thing in the direction. 
 Have you noticed that the word Hobart has kept black, and all 
 the rest has faded to the colour of the writing inside V So it 
 had, without a doubt, inexplicably. Mr. Hawtrey's impression 
 was that the word was written in a different hand, perhaps filled 
 in by someone who had been able to supply the name correctly, 
 having been entrusted the letter to forward. 
 
 " But," said he, " the person who wrote Hobart must have 
 been in England, and the forger of the letter was certainly in Van 
 Diemens Land." 
 
 " Why ' must have been in England V " 
 
 " Bless the girl !" said the girl's father. " Why — / can see 
 that ! Of course, an Australian convict, who could do such a 
 fine piece of forgery, would never ask another person to spell the 
 name of an Austrahan town. Do you suppose he sent it to 
 England to get an accomplice to spell ' Hobart ' right for him ? 
 No — ^no, Hawtrey, your theory won't hold water." 
 
 " That is the case," said Thothmes, more immovably than 
 ever. " I see I was mistaken. That poiat must wait. Or ... . 
 stop one minute ! . . . . may we examine the other letters ?" 
 
 " I had thought," said the Earl, " of leaving them unopened. 
 We have got what we want." 
 
 " Very proper. But I only wish to read the directions." No 
 harm in this, anyhow. A second packet was opened. It was 
 the one in the woman's hand, aU postmarked " Darenth Mill " 
 and " Macquarie." Then it was that Thothmes, with impassive 
 shrewdness, made up for his blunder, with interest. He saw 
 why the ink of one word of the forged direction was black. It 
 was the same ink as the English directions, and, on close examina- 
 tion, the same hand. This had not been clear at first, as the 
 word was mixed with the EngUsh postmark, " Darenth Mill " — 
 so much so as not to clash with the pale hand of the forgery. 
 " That word," said Thothmes, " was never written in Van 
 Diemens Land. The Enghsh stamp is on the top of it." 
 
 Gwen took it from him, and saw that this was true. " But 
 then the rest of the direction was written in Australia," said she, 
 " if this man wrote it at all ! Oh dear, I am so puzzled." And 
 indeed she was at her wit's end. 
 
 " I won't say another word," said Mr. Hawtrey. " I have 
 made one blunder, and won't run any further risks. I must 
 think about this. If you will trust me with the letter, you shall 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 585 
 
 have it back to-morrow moming. I dare say your lordship will 
 now excuse me. I have an appointment at the High Court at 
 
 eleven, and it's now a quarter paat Oh no — ^it's not a 
 
 hanging matter I shall make my man drive fast 
 
 So I will wish your ladyship a very good moming. I wish those 
 two old ladies could have known this earlier. But better late 
 than never !" 
 
 The Earl accompanied his legal adviser to the head of the 
 stairs to give him a civil send off, while his daughter, white with 
 tension of excitement and impatience, awaited his return. 
 Coming back, he was not the least surprised that she should fall 
 into his arms with a tempest of tears, crying out: — " Oh, papa 
 dearest — fifty years ! — ^think of it ! All their lives ! Oh, my 
 darling old Mrs. Prichard ! and Granny Marrable too — ^it's the 
 same for both ! Oh, think, that they were girls — ^yes, nearly 
 girls, only a few years older than me, when they parted ! And 
 the horrible wickedness of the trick — ^the horrible, horrible 
 wickedness ! And then the dear old darhng's own daughter, who 
 has almost never seen her, thinks her mad ! . . . No, papa dear, 
 don't shish me down, because cry I imist ! Let me have a good 
 cry over it, and I shall be better. Sit down by me, and don't let 
 
 go — ^there ! — here on the sofa, Uke that Oh dear, I wish I 
 
 was made of wood, Uke some people, and could say better late 
 than never !" This was the wind-up of a good deal more, and 
 similar, expression of feeling. For tears and speech come easily 
 to a generous impulsive nature like Gwen's, when strong sympathy 
 and sorrow for others bid them come, though its own affliction 
 might have made it stupefied and dumb. 
 
 Her father soothed and calmed her as he would a child; for 
 was she not a child to him — ^in the nursery only the other day ? 
 " I'm not made of wood, darling, am I ?" said he. And Gwen 
 replied, refitting spars in calmer water: — "No, dear, that you 
 are not, but Lincoln's Inn Fields is. Sitting there like an Egyptian 
 God, with his hands on his knees !" She repacked a stray flood 
 of gold that had escaped from its restraints — ^the most con- 
 spicuous record of the recent gale — and reassured her father with a 
 Hberal kiss. Then she thawed towards the legal mind. " I'm 
 sure he's very good and kind and aU that — ^Lincoln's Inn Fields, I 
 mean, is — because people are. Only it's at heart they are, and I 
 want it to come out like a rash." No doubt an interview with 
 Dr. Dalrymple yesterday was answerable for this, having refer- 
 ence to the Typhus Fever patient. The eruption, he said, was 
 subsiding favourably, and he was hourly expecting a fall in the 
 
586 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 temperature. But he had made a stand against her seeing the 
 patient. 
 
 " If Hawtrey came out in a rash over all his clients' bothera- 
 tions," said the Earl, " he would very soon be in a state of con- 
 fluent smallpox. What he's wanted for now is his brains. 
 You'll see we shall have a letter from him, clearing it all up " 
 
 " And you know what he'll say, I suppose ? That is, if he's 
 as clever as you think him !" 
 
 " I can't say that I feel absolutely certain. What do you 
 suppose ?" 
 
 Then Gwen gave a very fair conjectural review of the facts as 
 this story knows them; saying, whenever she felt the ground 
 insecure beneath her feet, that of course it was this way and not 
 the other. A blessed expression that, to reinforce one's 
 convictions ! 
 
 However, she was not far wrong an any point, if the letter 
 her father received next day from " Lincoln's Inn Fields " was 
 right. It came by messenger, just as the family were sitting 
 down to lunch with two or three friends, and his lordship said, 
 " Will you excuse me ?" without waiting for an answer, though 
 one of his guests was a Rajah. Then he read the letter through, 
 intently, while his Countess looked thimderclouds at him. 
 " 'Fore God, they are both of a tale !" said he, quoting. Then 
 he sent it to Gwen by Norbury, who was embarrassed by her 
 ladyship the Countess saying stiffly: — " Surely afterwards wotdd 
 do." But Gwen cut in with: — " No — ^I can't wait. Give it to 
 me, Norbury !" And took it and read it as intently as her father 
 had done. Having finished, she telegraphed to him, all the 
 length of the table :-^" Isn't that just what I said ?" And then 
 things went on as before. Only the Earl and his daughter had 
 come off their P's and Q% most lawlessly. 
 
 Here is the letter each had read, when off them: 
 
 " Mt dbak Lord Ancestee, 
 
 " I have thoroughly considered the letter, and return 
 it herewith. I am satisfied that it is a forgery by the hand 
 of the convict DaverUl, but it is difficult to see what his object 
 can have been, malice apart. It is clear, however, that it 
 was to influence his wife, to what end it is impossible to say. 
 
 "The only theory I can have about the black ink is far- 
 fetched. It is that a letter from England of that date was 
 erased to make way for the forgery, these few black letters 
 having been allowed to remain, not to disturb the English 
 postmark, which partly obscures them. You may notice 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 587 
 
 some compromise or accommodation in the handwriting of 
 the direction, evidently to slur over the difference. I suggest 
 that the letter should be referred to some specialist in 
 palimpsests, who may be able to detect some of the under- 
 lying original, which is absolutely invisible to me. 
 
 " If you meet with any other letter written by this ingenious 
 penman, I suspect it will be in the pale ink of the forgery, 
 which no doubt was as black as the English ink, when new. 
 
 " Believe me, my lord, your very faithful and obedient 
 servant, 
 
 " James Hawtket." 
 
 " There can't be another letter of the ingenious penman's in 
 the lot we left tied up, because he and his wife were living 
 together, and not writing each other letters." So said Gwen 
 afterwards, deprecating a suggestion of her father's that the 
 packet should be opened and examined. But he replied: — " It 
 is only to look at the colour of the ink. We won't read old Mrs. 
 Prichard's love-letters." However, nothing was found, all these 
 letters having been written in England except the one from 
 Sydney inviting her to come out, which was referred to early in 
 this story. The Sydney ink had been different — ^that was all. 
 
 So all the letters were tied up again and placed •pro tern, in the 
 cinquecento cabinet, to be quite safe. :They had been just 
 about to vanish therein when the Earl made his suggestion. 
 Nothing having come of it,, the documents were put away, 
 honourably unread, and Gwen hurried off to be given a lift to 
 Cavendish Square by her mother. Her father exacted a promise 
 from her that she would not force her way past Dr. Dahymple 
 into the patient's presence, come what might ! She accompanied 
 her mother in the carriage as far as her own destination. The 
 Countess was on a card-leaving mission in Harley Street, and 
 devoutly hoped that Lady Blank would not be at home. In 
 that case she might take advantage of her liberty to go to a 
 meeting at the Duchess of Sutherland's to abolish this horrible 
 negro slavery in America, so as not to be exceptional, which was 
 odious; and your father — Gwen's to wit — ^never would exert 
 himself about anything, and was simply wrapped up in old 
 violins and majolica. Of course it was right to put an end to 
 slavery, and people ought to exert themselves. Her ladyship 
 waited in the carriage at the door till Gwen could supply an 
 intensely authentic report — ^not what the servants were told to 
 say to everybody; that was no use — of the precise condition 
 of the patient, including the figures of the pulse and temperature. 
 
588 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 and whether she had had a good night. Gwen came back with 
 a report from the nurse, to find Dr. Dakymple conversing with 
 her mother at the carriage door, and to be exhorted by him to 
 follow her maternal example in matters of prudence. For the 
 good lady had furnished herself with a smelling-bottle and waa 
 inhaUng it religiously, as a prophylactic. 
 
 When she had departed, leaving Gwen wondering why on 
 earth she was seized with such a desire just now to abolish negro 
 slavery, Gwen retxtrhed into the house to await the doctor's last 
 word about her friend. Waiting for him in the sitting-room, 
 she read the Times, and naturally turned to the news from the 
 Seat of War — ^it was then at its height — and became engrossed in 
 the details of the Balaklava charge, a month since. The tragedy 
 of the Crimea — every war is a tragedy — ^was at this time the aU- 
 engrossing topic in London and Paris, and men hung eagerly on 
 every word that passed current as news. The reason it has so 
 little place in this story is obvious — ^none of the essential events 
 intersect. All our narrative has to teU relates to occurrences 
 predetermined by a past that was forgotten long before Sebastopol 
 was anticipated. 
 
 Gwen read the story of the great historical charge with a 
 breathless interest certainly, but only as part of the playbill of a 
 terrible drama, where the curtain was to fall on fireworks and a 
 triumph for her own nationality; and, of course, its ally — fa se 
 vit. Dr. Dakymple reappeared, looking hopeful, with a good 
 report, but too engrossed in his case to be moved even by the 
 Charge of the Light Brigade, or the state of the hospitals at 
 Scutari. Where was Gwen going ? To Sapps Court — ^where 
 was that ? Oh yes, just beyond his own destination, so he 
 could give her a hft. And the carriage could take her on to hers 
 and wait for her, just as easily as go home and come back for him. 
 He might be detained a long time at the Hospital. Gwen ac- 
 cepted his offer gratefully, as a private brougham and a coach- 
 man made a sort of convoy. In those days young ladies were 
 not so much at their ease without an escort, as they have been of 
 late years. According to some authorities, the new regime is 
 entirely due to the bicycle. 
 
 Sapps Qovect had not been itself since the exciting event of the 
 accident; at least, so said Aunt M'riar, referring to the disap- 
 pearance of Mrs. Prichard chiefly. For the identity of Sapps 
 depended a good deal on the identity of its inhabitants, and its 
 interests penetrated very Uttle into the great world without. It 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 589 
 
 was very little affected even by the news of the War, favourable 
 or the reverse: its patriotism was too great for that. This must 
 be taken to mean that its confidence in its country's power of 
 routing its foes was so deep-seated that an equally firm belief 
 that its armies were starving and stricken with epidemics, and 
 armed with guns that would not go off, and commanded by the 
 lame, halt, and blind in their second childhood, did not in the 
 least interfere with its stabiUty. Whatever happened, the 
 indomitable courage of Tommy Atkins and Jack would triumph 
 over foes, who, when all was said and done, were only foreigners. 
 Sapps Court's faith in Jack was so great that his position was even 
 above Tommy's. When Jack was reported to have gone ashore 
 at Balaklava to help Tommy to get his effete and useless artillery 
 to bear on the walls of Sebastopol, Sapps CJourt drew a long breath 
 of relief. Misgivings were germinating in its bosom as to whether 
 cholera patients could take fortresses on an empty stomach. But 
 it would be all right now ! 
 
 No doubt the Court's philosophical endurance of its share of 
 the anxiety about the War was partly due to the fact that it 
 hadn't got no relations there ; or, at least, none to speak of. 
 Michael Ragstroar's 'arf-sister's brother-in-law had certainly 
 took the shilUng, but Michael's father had expressed the opinion 
 that this young man wouldn't do no good soldiering, and would 
 only be in the way. Which had led Michael to say that this 
 connection of his by marriage would ultimately get himself 
 cashiered by Court Martial, for 'inderin'. Much better have 
 stuck to chopping up Uve heels and makin' of 'em into pies at 
 Ball's Pond, than go seeking glory at the cannon's mouth ! 
 Michael had not reflected on the comparative freedom of his own 
 life, contrasted with the monotonous lot of this ill-starred young 
 man; if, indeed, we may safely accept Micky's description of it as 
 accurate. Sapps Court did so, and went on in the belief that 
 the Balls Pond recruit would prove a gene upon the movements 
 of the allied troops in the Crimea. 
 
 The interest of the Court, therefore, in the contemporary 
 events which were thrilling the remainder of Europe, was ethical 
 or strategical, and one had to go outside its limits to be brought 
 into touch with personal connecting links. But they were to be 
 met with near at hand, for Mrs. Riley had ilivin relatives at the 
 Sate of War, sivin of her own name, thray Donnigans, and one 
 O'Rourke, a swate boy, though indade only a fosther-brother of 
 her nayce Kathleen McDermott. Mrs. Tapping was unable to 
 enumerate any near relations serving Her Majesty, but laid 
 
590 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 claim to consanguinity with distinguished officers. Generals of 
 Division and Captains of three-deckers, all of whom had an 
 exalted opinion of her own branch of the Family. 
 
 In the main, Sapps regarded the War as a mere Thing in the 
 Newspapers, of which Uncle Mo heard more accurate details, at 
 The Sun. There is nothing more unaccountable than the alacrity 
 with which the human mind receives any statement in print, 
 unless it is its readiness to surrender its behef on hearing a 
 positive contradiction from a person who cannot possibly know 
 anjrthing about the matter. One sometimes feels forced to the 
 conclusion that an absolute disquaUfication to speak on any 
 subject is a condition precedent of procuring behef. Certainly 
 a claim to inspiration enUsts disciples quicker than the most 
 subtle argument ; acts, so to speak, as an aperient to the mind — 
 a sort of intellectual Epsom Salts. Uncle Mo, in the simpUcity 
 of his heart, went every day for an hour to the Sun parlour, 
 taking with him a profound belief in the latest news from the 
 Seat of War, to have it shattered for him by the positive state- 
 ments of persons who had probably not read the papers at all, 
 and sometimes couldn't. For in those happy days there were 
 stiU people who were unable to read or write. 
 
 Perhaps the only other customer in the parlour at The Sun, 
 when Uncle Mo was smoking his pipe there, on the afternoon 
 which saw the Countess interest herself in negro slavery, was 
 able to read and write, unknown to his friends, who had never 
 seen him do either. They, however, knew, or professed to feel 
 assured, that old Billy — ^for that was his only ascertainable name 
 — knew everything. This may have been their vulgar fun; 
 but if it was, old Billy's own convictions of his omniscience were 
 not shaken by it, any more than a creed he professed, that 
 small doses of rum shrub, took reg'lar, kept off old age. In a 
 certain sense he took them regularly, counting the same number 
 in every bar, with nearly the same pauses between each dose. 
 Whether they were really helping him against Time and Decay 
 or not, they were making him pink and dropsical, and had not 
 prevented, if they had not helped to produce, a baldness as of an 
 eggshell. This he would cover in, to counteract the draughty 
 character which he ascribed to all bar parlours aUke, with a 
 cloth cap having ear-flaps, as soon as ever he had hung up a 
 beaver hat which he might have inherited from a coaching 
 ancestor. 
 
 This afternoon he was eloquent on foreign policy. Closing 
 one eye to accentuate the shrewd vision of the other, and shaking 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 591 
 
 his head continuously to express the steadiness and persistency 
 of his convictions, he indicted Louis Napoleon as the bete noire 
 of European politics. " Don't you let yourself be took in, Mr. 
 Moses," he said, " by any of these here noospapers. They're a 
 bad lot. This here Nicholas, he's a Booshian — so him I say 
 nothin' about. Nor yet these here Turkeys — them and their 
 Constant Eye No Pulls !" — ^this with great scorn. " None of 'em 
 no better, I lay, than Goard A'mighty see fit to make 'em, so it 
 ain't, so as you might say, their o-wn fault, not in a manner of 
 speaking. But this Louis Sneapoleum, he's your sly customer. 
 He's as bad as the whole lot, all boiled up together in a stoo ! 
 Don't you be took in by him, Mr. Moses. Calls hisself a 
 Coodytar ! / call him. ..." etcetera de rigueur, as some of old 
 Billy's comparisons were unsavoury. 
 
 " Can't foller you all the way down the lane, Willy-um," 
 said Uncle Mo, who could hardly be expected to identify Billy's 
 variant of Coup d'Etat. " Ain't he our ally ?" 
 
 " That's the p'int, Mr. Moses, the very p'int to not lose sight 
 on, or where are we ? He's got hisself made our ally for to get 
 between him and the Rooshians. What he's a-drivin' at is to 
 get us to fight his battles for him, and him to sit snug and 
 accoomulate cucumbers like King Solomons." 
 
 Uncle Moses felt he ought to interpose on this revision of 
 the Authorised Version of Scripture. " You haven't hit the word 
 in the middle, mate," said he, and supplied it, correctly enough. 
 " You can keep it in mind by thinking of them spiky beggars at 
 the So-logical Gardens — porky pines — ^them as get their backs 
 up when wexed, and bristle." 
 
 " Well — corkupijies, then ! Have it your own way, old Mo ! 
 My back'd get up and bristle, if I was some of them ! Only 
 when it's womankind, the hkes of us can't jedge, especially when 
 French. All I can say is, him and them's got to settle it between 
 'em, and if they can stand his blooming moostarsh, why it's no 
 affair of mine." Which was so obviously true that old Billy 
 need not have gone on muttering to himself to the same effect. 
 One would have thought that the Tuileries had applied to him to 
 accept an appointment as Censor Morum. 
 
 " What's old Billy grizzlin' on about ?" said Mr. Jeffcoat, the 
 host of The Sun, bringing in another go of the shrub, and a 
 modest small pewter of mild for Uncle Mo, who was welcome at 
 this hostelry even when, as sometimes happened, he drank 
 nothing; so powerful was his moral influence on its status. In 
 fact, the Sporting World, which drank freely, frequented its 
 
 38 
 
692 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 parlour merely to touch the hand of the great heavyweight of 
 other days, however much he was faded and all his glories past. 
 Then would Uncle Mo give a sketch of his celebrated scrap with 
 Bob Brettle, which ended in neither coming to Time, simul- 
 taneously. Mo would complain of an absurd newspaper report 
 of the fight, which said the Umpires stopped the fight. " No 
 such a thing I" said Uncle Mo. " I stopped Bob and he stopped 
 me, fair and square. And there we was, come to grass, and 
 stopping there." Perhaps the old boy was dreaming back on 
 something of this sort, rather than listening to boozy old Billy's 
 reflections on Imperial Morahty, that Mr. Jeffcoat should have 
 repeated again : — " What's old Billy grizzling about ? You pay 
 for both, Mr. Moses ? Fourpence halfpenny, thank you !" 
 
 " He's letting out at the Emperor of the French, is Billy. 
 He'd do his dags for him, Billy would, if he could get at him. 
 Wouldn't you, Billy ? I say, Tim, whose voice was that I 
 heard in the Bar just now, naming me by name ?" 
 
 " Ah, I was just on teUing you. He walks in and he says to 
 me, when does Moses Wardle come in here, he says, and how 
 long does he stop, mostly ? And I says to him . . . ." 
 
 " What sort of a feller to look at ?" said Uncle Mo, inter- 
 rupting. " Old or young ? Long ? Short ? Anything about 
 him to go by ?" 
 
 This called for consideration. " Not what you would call an 
 average party. His giUs was too much slewed to one side." 
 This was illustrated by a finger hooking down the comer of the 
 mouth. " Looked as if his best clothes was being took care of 
 for him." 
 
 " What did he want o' me ?" Uncle Mo's interest seemed 
 roused. 
 
 " I was telling of you. When did you come and how long did 
 you stop ? Best part of an hour, I says, and you was here now. 
 You'll find him in the parlour, I says. Go in and see, I says. 
 And I though^ to find him in here, having took my eyes off 
 him for the moment." 
 
 " He's not been in here," said Uncle Mo, emptying his pipe 
 prematurely, and apparently hurrying off without taking his 
 half of mild. " Which way did he go ?" 
 
 " Which way did the party go, Soozann ?" said the host to 
 his wife in the bar. Who replied: — "Couldn't say. Said he'd 
 be back in half an hour, and went. Fancy he went to the 
 right, but couldn't say." 
 
 " He won't be back in half an hour." said Uncle Mo. " Not 
 
AN ENLIGHTENMENT 593 
 
 if he's the man I takp him for. You see, he's one of these here 
 chaps that tells lies. You've heard o' them ; seen one, p'r'aps ?" 
 Mr. Jefifcoat testified that he had, in his youth, and that rumours 
 of their existence stiU reached him at odd times. Those who 
 hsten about in the byways of London will hear endless conversa- 
 tion on this model, always conducted with the most solemn 
 gravity, with a perfect understanding of its inversions and per- 
 versions. 
 
 Uncle Mo htirried away, leaving instructions that his halt- 
 pint should be bestowed on any person whose tastes lay in that 
 direction. Mr. Jeffcoat might meet with such a one. You 
 never could tell. He hastened home as fast as his enemy Gout 
 permitted, and saw when he turned into the short street at the 
 end of which Sapps lay hidden, that something abnormal was 
 afoot. There stood Dr. Dalrymple's pill-box, wondering, no 
 doubt, why it had carried a segment of an upper circle to such a 
 Court as this. If it had been the Doctor himself, it would not 
 have given a thought to the matter, for it used to bear its owner 
 to all sorts of places, from St. James's Palace to Seven Dials. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HOW tTNCLB MO WAS JUST TOO LATE. THE SHINY LADY. THE 
 TUKN THE MAN TTATI GIVEN AUNT m'EIAE, AND HEE APOLOGIES. 
 dolly's INTENDED HOSPITALITY TO MRS. PEICHAED ON HEE 
 EETUEN. dolly's DOLLY's NEW NAME. AN AEEANGEMENT, 
 COMMITTING NEITHEE PAETY. GmNEVEEE, LANCELOT, AND 
 THE CAKE. MES. PEICHAED INSANE ? — THE IDEA ! HOW 
 GVraN EEAD THE LETTEE ATT, BUT THE POSTSCEIPT. NOTHING 
 FOE IT BUT TO TELL ! BUT HOW ? FUN, TELLING THE CHIL- 
 DEEN. ANOTHEE EECHEISTENING OF DOLLY. GWEN's LAST 
 EXIT FEOM MES. PBICHAED's APAETMBNTS. JOAN OF AEO's 
 SWOED'S soul, the POSTSCEIPT. WIDOW THEALE's DOG. 
 WHAT THE CONVICT HAD SAID. HOW LONG DOES BONA-FIDB 
 OMNIPOTENCE TAKE OVEE A JOB ? 
 
 GwEN, leaving her convoy to wait for her in the antechamber 
 of Sapps Court, and approach No. 7 alone, heard as she knocked 
 at the door an altercation within; Aunt M'riar's voice and a 
 strange one, with terror in the former and threat in the latter. 
 
594 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Had all sounded peaceful, she might have held back, to allow 
 the interview to terminate. But catching the sound of fear in 
 the woman's voice, and having none in her own composition, 
 she immediately delivered a double-knock of the most un- 
 flinching sort, and followed it by pushing open the door. 
 
 She could hear Dave above, at the top window, recognising 
 her as " The Lady." As she entered, a man who was coming 
 out flinched before her meanly for a moment, then brushed 
 past brutally. Aunt M'riar's face was visible where she stood 
 back near the staircase; it was white with terror. She gasped 
 out: — "Let him go; I'll come directly!" and ran upstairs. 
 Gwen heard her call to the children, more collectedly, to come 
 down, as the lady was there, and then apparently retreat into 
 her room, shutting the door. Thereon the children came rushing 
 down, and before she could get attention to her inquiry as to 
 who that hideous man was, Uncle Mo had pushed the door open. 
 He had not asked that pill-box to explain itself, but had gone 
 straight on to No. 7. Dave met him on the threshold, in a tempest 
 of excitement, exclaiming: — " Oy say. Uncle Mo ! — ^the lady's 
 here. The shoyny one. And oy say. Uncle Mo, the Man's 
 been." The last words were in a tone to themselves, quite un- 
 Uke what came before. It was as though Dave had said: — 
 " The millennium has come, but the crops are spoiled." He 
 added: — " Oy saw the Man, out of the top window, going 
 away." 
 
 Uncle Mo let the millennium stand over. " Which man, old 
 Peppermint Drops ?" said he, improvising a name to express an 
 aroma he had detected in his nephew, when he stooped to make 
 sure he was getting his last words right. 
 
 " Whoy, the Man," Dave continued, in an undertone that 
 might have related to the Man with the Iron Mask, " the Man 
 me and Micky we sore in Hoyde Park, and said he was a-going 
 to rip Micky up, and Mcky he said he should call the PoUce- 
 Orficers, and the gentleman said . . . ." 
 
 " That'll do prime !" said Uncle Mo. For Dave's torrent of 
 identification was superfluous. " I would have laid a guinea 
 I knew his game," added he to himself. Then to Gwen, inside 
 the house with Dolly on her knee: — "You'll excuse mo, miss, 
 my lady, these young customers they do insert theirselves — . 
 it's none so easy to find a way round 'em, as I say to M'riar. . . , 
 M'riar gone out ?" For it was a surprise to find the children 
 alone entertaining company — and such company ! 
 
 " There, Dolly, you hear ?" said Gwen. " You're not to 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 595 
 
 insert yourself between me and your uncle. Suppose we sit 
 quiet for five minutes \" Dolly subsided. " How do you do, 
 Mr. Wardle! .... No, Aunt Maria isn't here, and I'm afraid 
 
 that man coming worried her. Dave's man Oh yes — ^I 
 
 saw him. He came out as I came in, three minutes ago. What 
 is the man ? Didn't I hear Dave telling how Micky said 
 he should give him to the Police ? I wish Micky had, and the 
 Police had found out who he's murdered. Because he's mmr- 
 dered somebody, that man ! I saw it in his eyes." 
 
 " He's a bad character," said Mo. " If he don't get locked up, 
 it won't be any fault of mine. On'y that'll be after I've squared 
 a httle account I have against him — private affair of my own. 
 If you'll excuse me half a minute, I'll go up and see what's got 
 M'riar." But Uncle Mo was stopped at the stair-foot by the 
 reappearance of Aunt M'riar at the stair-top. As they met 
 halfway up, both paused, and Gwen heard what it was easy to 
 guess was Aunt M'riar's tale of " the Man's " visit, and Uncle 
 Mo's indignation. They must have conversed thus in earnest 
 undertones for full five minutes, before Aimt M'riar said 
 audibly: — "Now we mustn't keep the lady waiting no longer. 
 Mo "; and both returned, making profuse apologies. The 
 interval of their absence had been successfully and profitably 
 filled in by an account of how Mrs. Picture had been taken to sea 
 Jones's BuU, with a rough sketch of the Bull's demeanour in her 
 company. 
 
 Aunt M'riar made amends to the best of her abilities for her 
 desertion. Perhaps the young lady knew what she meant when 
 she said she had been giv' rather a turn ? The young lady did 
 indeed. Aunt M'riar hoped she had not been alarmed by her 
 exit. Nor by the person who had gone out? No — Gwen's 
 nerves had survived both, though certainly the person wasn't a 
 beauty. She went on to hope that the effects of the turn he had 
 given Aunt M'riar would not be permanent. These being 
 pooh-poohed by both Uncle Mo and Aimt M'riar, became 
 negligible and lapsed. 
 
 " The children came running down directly after you went, 
 Atmt Maria," said Gwen. " So I can assure you I didn't lose 
 my temper at being left alone. I wasn't alone two minutes !" 
 Then she gave, in reply to a general inquiry after the fever 
 patient, inaugurated by Dave with: — " Oy say, how's Sister 
 Nora ?" — ^the very favourable report she had just received from 
 Dr. Dalrymple. 
 
 Then Mrs. Prichard was rushed into the conversation by a 
 
596 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sudden inexplicable statement of Dolly's. "When Mrs. Spic- 
 ture conies back," said she, " Granny Marrowbone is to pour 
 out Mrs. Spicture's tea. And real Cake. And stoast cut in 
 sloyces wiv real butter." 
 
 " Don't get excited, Dolly dear," said Gwen, protesting 
 against the amount of leg-action that accompanied this ukase. 
 " Tell us again 1 Why is Granny Marrable to make tea ? 
 Granny Marrable's at her house in the coimtry. She's not coming 
 here with Mrs. Spicture." 
 
 " There, now, Dolly !" said Aunt M'riar. " Why don't you 
 tell clear, a bit at a time, and get yourself understood ? Granny 
 Marrowbone's the new name, my lady, she's christened her doll, 
 Dolly. So she should be known apart, Dolly being, as you might 
 say, Dolly herself. Because her uncle he pointed out to her, 
 ' Dolly,' he said, ' you're in for thinkin' out some new name for 
 this here baby of yours, to say which is which. Or 'us you'll 
 get that mixed up, nobody'U know !' " 
 
 " I put my oar in," said Uncle Mo, " for to avoid what they 
 call coarmplications nowadays." He never lost an opportunity 
 of hinting at the f aUings off of the Age. " So she and Dave they 
 turns to and thinks one out. I should have felt more like Sally 
 or Sooky or Martilda myself. Or Queen Wictoria." The last 
 was a gracious concession to Her Majesty; who, in the eyes of 
 Uncle Mo, had recently come to the throne. 
 
 " No !" said Dolly firmly. " Gwanny Mawwowbone !" This 
 was very articulately dehvered, the previous, or slipshod, pro- 
 nunciation having been more nearly Ganny Mallowbone. 
 
 " Certainly !" said Gwen, assenting. " Dolly's dolly Dolly 
 shall be Granny Marrowbone. Only it makes Dolly out rather 
 old." 
 
 Dolly seemed to take exception to this. " I was four on my 
 birf day," said she. " I shan't be five not till my neocl birfday, 
 such a long, long, long, long time." 
 
 " And you'll stop four till you're five," said Gwen. " Won't 
 you, Dolly dear ? What very blue eyes the little person has !" 
 They were fixed on the speaker with all the solemnity the con- 
 templation of a geological period of Time inspires. The little 
 person nodded gravely — ^about the Time, not about her eyes — 
 and said: — " Ass !" 
 
 Dave thrust himself forward as an interpreter of Dolly's secret 
 wishes, saying, to the astonishment of his aunt and uncle: — 
 " Dorly wants to take her upstairs to show her where the tea's 
 to be set out when Mrs. Spicture comes back." 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 597 
 
 Remonstrance was absolutely necessary, but what form could 
 it take ? Aunt M'riar was forced back on her usual resource, 
 her lack of previous experience of a similar enormity: — " WeU, 
 I'm sure, a big boy like you to call a lady her I I never did, in 
 all my bom days \" Uncle Mo meanly threw the responsibility 
 of the terms of an absolutely necessary amendment on the culprit 
 himself, saying: — "You're a nice yoimg monkey! Where's 
 your manners ? Is that what they lam you to say at school ? 
 What's a lady's name when you speak to her ?" He had no 
 one but himself to thank for the consequences. Dave, who, 
 jointly with Dolly, was just then on the most intimate footing 
 with the young lady, responded point-blank: — "Well — Owen, 
 then ! She said so. Sister Gwen." 
 
 Her young ladyship's laugh rang out with such musical 
 cordiality that the two horror-stricken faces relaxed, and Uncle 
 Mo's got so far as the beginning of a smile. " It's aU quite right," 
 said Gwen. " I told Dave I was Gwen just this minute when 
 you were upstairs. He's made it ' sister ' — so we shan't be 
 compromised, either of us." Whereupon Dave, quite in the dark, 
 assented from sheer courtesy. 
 
 Aunt M'riar seemed to think it a reasonable arrangement, 
 and Uncle Mo, with a twinkle in his eye, said: — "It's better 
 than hollerin' out ' she ' and ' her,' like a porter at a railway- 
 station." 
 
 But her ladyship had not come solely to have a symposium 
 with Dave and DoUy. So she suggested that both should go 
 upstairs and rehearse the slaughter of the fatted calf; that is 
 to say, distribute the apparatus of the banquet that was to 
 welcome Mrs. Picture back. Dave demurred at first, on the 
 score of his maturity, but gave way when an appeal was made 
 to some equivalent of patriotism whose existence was taken for 
 granted; and consented, as it were, to act on the Committee. 
 
 " Now, don't you come running down to say it's ready, not 
 till I give leave," said Aunt M'riar, having misgivings that 
 the apparatus might not be sufficiently — suppose we affect a 
 knowledge of Horace, and say " Persian " — to keep the Com- 
 mittee employed. 
 
 " They'll be quiet enough for a bit," said Uncle Mo. Who 
 showed insight by adding: — " They won't agree about where the 
 things are to be put, nor what's to be the cake." For a proxy 
 had to be found, to represent the cake. Even so Lancelot stood 
 at the altar with Guinevere, as Arthur's understudy for the part 
 of bridegroom. 
 
598 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Do please now all sit down and be comfortable/' said Gwen, 
 as soon as tranquillity reigned. " Because I want to talk a great 
 
 deal Yes — about Mrs. Prichard. I really should be 
 
 comfortabler if you sat down Well — Mr. Wardle can sit 
 
 on the table if he likes." So that compromise was made, and 
 Gwen got to business. " I really hardly know how to begin tell- 
 ing you," she said. " What has happened is so very odd 
 
 Oh no — I have seen to that. The woman she is with will take 
 
 every care of her You know — ^Widow Thrale, Dave's 
 
 Granny's daughter, who had charge of Dave — Strides Cottage, of 
 course ! I'm sure she's all right as far as that goes. But the 
 
 whole thing is so odd Stop a minute ! — perhaps the best 
 
 way would be for me to read you Mrs. Thrale's letter that she 
 has written me. She must be very nice." This throwing of 
 the burden of disclosure on her correspondent seemed to Gwen to 
 be on the line of least resistance. She was feeling bewildered 
 already as to how on earth the two old sisters could be revealed 
 to one another, and her mind was casting about for any and 
 every guidance from any quarter that could lead her to the 
 revelation naturally. There was no quarter but Sapps Court. 
 So try it, at least ! 
 
 She read straight on without interruption, except for expres- 
 sions of approval or concurrence from her hearers when they 
 heard the writer's declaration of how impressionnee she had been 
 by the old lady, until she came to the first reference to the gist 
 of the letter, her mental soundness. Then both broke into pro- 
 test. " Delusions !" they exclaimed at once. Old Mrs. Prichard 
 subject to delusions ? Not she ! Never was a saner woman, of 
 her years, than old Mrs. Prichard ! 
 
 " I only wish," said Uncle Mo, " that I may never be no 
 madder than Goody Prichard. Why, it's enough to convince 
 you she's in her senses only to hear her say good-artemoon !" 
 This meant that Uncle Mo's visits upstairs had always been late 
 in the day, and that her greeting to him would have impressed 
 him with her sanity, had it ever been called in question. 
 
 " O'ny fancy !" said Aunt M'riar indignantly. " To say Mrs. 
 Prichard's deluded, and her Uving upstairs with Mrs. Bmr this 
 three years past, and SkilUck's for more than that, afore ever 
 she come here !" This only wanted the addition that Mrs. 
 BiuT had seen no sign of insanity in all these years, to be logical 
 and intelligible. 
 
 Gwen found no fault, because she saw what was meant. But 
 there was need for a caution. " You won't say anything of this 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 599 
 
 till I tell you/' said she. " Not even to Mrs. Burr. It would 
 only make her uncomiortable." For why should all the old 
 lady's belongings be put on the alert to discover flaws in her 
 understanding ? Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar gave the pledge 
 asked for, and Gwen went on reading. They just recognised 
 the water-mill as an acquaintance of last year — ^not as a subject 
 of frequent conversation with Dave. Aunt M'riar seemed greatly 
 impressed with the old lady's excursion out of bed to get at the 
 mill-model, specially at its having occurred before six in the 
 moming.^ Also by the dog. 
 
 Uncle Mo was more practically observant. When the read- 
 ing came to the two mills in Essex, he turned to Aunt M'riar, 
 saying: — " She said summat about Essex — ^you told me." Aunt 
 M'riar said: — " Well, now, I couldn't say !" in the true manner 
 of a disappointing witness. But when, some sentences later, the 
 reference came to the two little girl twins. Uncle Mo suddenly 
 broke in with: — "Hullo! .... Never mind! — go on"; as 
 apologizing for his interruption. Later still, unable to constrain 
 himself any longer: — " Didn't — ^you — ^teU — ^me, M'riar, that Mrs. 
 P. she told you her father Uved at Darenth in Essex ?" 
 
 " No, Mo, that's not the name. Durrani was the name she 
 said." Aunt M'riar was straining at a gnat. However, solemn 
 bigwigs have done that before now. 
 
 " Nigh enough for most folks," said Uncle Mo. " Just you 
 think a bit and see what she said her father's name was." 
 
 " She never said his name. Mo. She never said a single name 
 to me, not that I can call to mind, not except it was Durrant." 
 
 " Very well, then, M'riar ! Now I come to my point. Didn't 
 — ^you — ^tell — me — a'most the very first time you did anything — 
 didn't you tell me Mrs. P. she said she was a tvrin. And Dave 
 he made enquiries." 
 
 " She was a twin." 
 
 " I'm stumped," said Uncle Mo. " I was always groggy over 
 the guessing of co-nundrums. Now, miss — my lady — ^what does 
 yomr ladyship make of it ?" 
 
 " Let me read to the end," said Gwen. " It's not very long 
 now. Then I'll tell you." She read on and finished the letter, 
 ail but the postscript. She was saying to herself : — " If I stick 
 so over telling these good people now, what will it be when the 
 crisis comes ?" It would be good practice, anyhow, to drive it 
 home to Aunt M'riar. When she had quite finished what she 
 meant to read, she went straight on, as she had promised, 
 ignoring obstacles: — "The explanation is that Mrs. Marrable 
 
600 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 and Mrs. Prichard are twin sisters, who parted fifty years ago. 
 About five years later Mrs. Prichard was deceived by a forged 
 letter, telling her that her sister was drowned^ My father and 
 I found it among her papers, and read it. This Mrs. Thrale 
 who writes to me is her own daughter, whom she left in England 
 nearly fifty years since — a baby ! . . . . And now she thinks her 
 mother mad — her own mother ! . . . . Oh dear ! — how will they 
 ever know ? Who will tell them ?" 
 
 A low whistle and a gasp respectively were all that Uncle Mo 
 and Aunt M'riar were good for. A reissue of the gasp might 
 have become " Merciful Gracious \" or some equivalent, if Uncle 
 Mo had not nipped it in the bud, thereby to provide a fulcrum 
 for his own speech. " 'Arf a minute, M'riar ! Your turn next. 
 I want to be clear, miss — my lady — that I've got the record 
 ack'rate. These here two ladies have been twins all their lives, 
 
 unbeknown " Uncle Mo was so bewildered that this 
 
 amount of confusion was excusable. 
 
 Gwen took his meaning, instead of criticizing his form. " Not 
 all their lives," she said. " Fifty years ago they were thirty, 
 and it's all happened since then." She went over the ground 
 again, not letting her hearers off even the most incredible of 
 the facts. She was surprised and reHeved to find that they 
 seemed able to receive them, only noticing that they appeared 
 to lean on her superior judgment. They were dumbfoundered, 
 of course; but they could beheve, with such a helper for their un- 
 belief. Were not the deep-rooted faiths of maturity, once, the 
 child's readiness to believe its parents infallible, and would not 
 any other indoctrination have held as firmly ? Even so the 
 rather childish miads of Dave's guardians made no question of 
 the credibility of the tale, coming as it did from such an in- 
 formant — one without a shadow of interest in the fabrication 
 of it. 
 
 Aunt M'riar made no attempt at anything beyond mere 
 exclamation; until, after the second detailed review of the facts, 
 Gwen was taken aback by her saying suddenly: — " Won't it be 
 a'most cruel, when you come to think of it ? . . . ." 
 
 " Won't what be cruel. Aunt M'riar ?" 
 
 " For to tell 'em. Two such very elderly parties, and all 
 the time gone by ! / say, let the rest go ! I should think twice 
 about it. But it ain't for me to say." She seemed to have a 
 sudden inspiration towards decision of opinion, a thing rare 
 with her. It was due, no doubt, to her own recent experience 
 of an unwelcome resurrection from the Past. 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 601 
 
 " 'Tain't any consam of ours to choose, M'riar. Just you go 
 over to their side o' the hedge for a minute. Suppose you was 
 Goody Prichard, and Goody Prichard was you !" 
 
 "Well! Suppose!" 
 
 " Which would you hke ? Her to bottle up, or tell ?" Aunt 
 M'riar wavered. A momentary hope of Gwen's, that perhaps 
 Aunt M'riar's way out of the diflDiculty might hold good, died at 
 its birth, killed by Uncle's Mo's question. 
 
 Which would Gwen have liked, herself, in Mrs. Prichard's 
 place ? Aunt M'riar was evidently looking to her for an answer. 
 
 " I'm afraid there's no help for it. Aunt Maria," said she. 
 " She must be told. But don't be afraid I shall leave the telling 
 to you. I shall go back and tell her myself in a day or two." 
 
 " Will she come back here ?" This question raised a new 
 doubt. Would either of the two old twins care to leave the 
 other, after that formidable disclosure had been achieved ? It 
 was looking too far ahead. Gwen felt that the evil of the hour 
 was sufficient for the day, or indeed the next three weeks for 
 that matter, and evaded the question with an answer to that 
 effect. 
 
 Then, as no more was to be gained by talking, seeing that she 
 could not give all her proofs in detail, she suggested that she 
 should go up to Mrs. Prichard's room to say good-bye to Dave 
 and Dolly. Promises could not be ignored between honourable 
 people. Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar quite concurred. " But," 
 said they, almost in the same breath, " are the children to know ?" 
 
 Gwen had not considered the point. " No — ^yes — no I" she 
 said, and then revoked. " Really, though, I don't know, after 
 all, why they shouldn't ! What harm can it do ?" 
 
 What harm indeed ? Mo and M'riar looked the question at 
 each other, and neither looked a negative reply. Very good, 
 then ! Dave and Dolly were to know, but who was to tell ? 
 
 Gwen considered again. Then it flashed across her mind that 
 the disclosure of the relationship of his two Grannies could have 
 no distressing effect on Dave. Time and Change and Death 
 are only names, to a chick not eight years old, and nothing need 
 be told of the means by which the sisters' hves had been cut 
 apart. As for Dolly, she would either weep or laugh at a piece 
 of news, according to the suggestions of her informant. Passion- 
 less narrative would leave her unaffected either way. Told as 
 good news, this would be accepted as good, and it would be a 
 pleasme to tell it to those babies. 
 
 " I'll tell them myself," said she. " Don't you come up. la 
 
602 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Mrs. Burr there ?" No — Mrs. Burr was at Mrs. Ragstroar's, 
 attending to a little job for her. Gwen vanished up the stairs, 
 and her welcome was audible below. 
 
 She did not mince matters, and the two young folks were soon 
 crowing with delight at her statement, made with equanimity, that 
 she knew that Granny Marrowbone was really old Mrs. Picture's 
 sister. She saw no reason for making the annoimcement thrill- 
 ing. It was enough to say that each of them had been told 
 wicked lies about the other, and been deceived by bad people, 
 such as there was every reason to hope were not to be found in 
 Sapps Court, or the neighbourhood. " And each of them," she 
 added, " thought the other was dead and buried, a long time 
 ago \" Inexphcably, she felt it easier to say dead and buried, 
 than merely dead. 
 
 Dolly, having been recently in collision with Time, saw her way 
 to profitable comparison. " A long, long, long time, like my 
 birfday !" she said, suggestively but unstructurally. 
 
 " Heaps longer," said Gwen. " Heaps and heaps !" Dolly 
 was impressed, almost cowed. She could not be even with 
 these seons and eras and epochs, at her time of life. 
 
 Dave burst into a shout of unrestrained glee at the discovery 
 that his London and country Grannies were sisters. " Oy shall 
 wroyte to say me and Dolly are glad. Ever such long letters to 
 bofe." A moment later his face had clouded over. " Oy say !" 
 said he, " will they be glad or sorry ?" 
 
 " Glad," said Gwen venturesomely. " Why should they be 
 sorry ? You must write them very, very long letters." The 
 mine would be sprung, she thought, before even a short letter 
 was finished. But it was as well to be on the safe side. 
 
 Dave was feeling the germination in his miad of hitherto un- 
 experienced thoughts about Death and Time, and he remained 
 speechless. He shook his head with closed Ups and puzzled 
 blue eyes fixed on his questioner. She saw a httle way into his 
 mind as he looked up at her, and pinched his cheek shghtly, for 
 sympathy, with the hand that was round his neck, but said 
 nothing. Children are so funny ! 
 
 " I fink," said Dolly, " old Mrs. Spicture shall bring old 
 Granny Marrowbone back wiv her when she comes back and 
 «ets ia her harm-chair wiv scushions, and Mrs. Burr cuts the 
 reel cake, wiv splums, in sloyces, in big sloyces and httle sloyces, 
 and Mrs. Burr pawses milluck in my httle jug, and Mrs. Burr 
 pawses tea in my little pot — ass, hot tea ! — and ven Doyvy shall 
 cally round the scups and sources, but me to paw it out " — this 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 603 
 
 clause was merely to assert the supremacy of Woman in house- 
 hold matters — " and ven all ve persons to help veirseK to 
 shoogy . . . ." etc., etc. Which might have run on musically for 
 ever, but that a difficulty arose about the names of the guests 
 and their entertainer. It was most imfortunate that the latter 
 should have been rechristened lately after one of the former. 
 Her owner interpreted her to express readiness to accept another 
 name, and that of Gweng was selected, as a compliment to the 
 visitor. 
 
 Then it really became time for that young lady to depart. 
 Think of that doctor's pill-box waiting all this while round the 
 comer ! So she ended what she did not suspect was her last 
 look at old Mrs. Picture's apartment, with the fire's last spasmodic 
 flicker helping the gas-lamp below in the Court to show Dolly, 
 unable to tear herself away from the glorious array of preparation 
 on the floor. There it stood, just under the empty chair with 
 cushions, still waiting — waiting for its occupant to come again; 
 and meanwhile a Godsend to the cat, who resumed her place the 
 moment the intruder rose from it, with an impMcation that her 
 forbearance had been great indeed to endure exclusion for so 
 long. There was no more misgiving on the face of that little 
 maid, putting thfe fiftieth touch on the perfection of her tea- 
 cup arrangements, that her ideal entertainment would never 
 compass reahsation, than there was on the faces of the Royal 
 Pair in their robes and decorations, gazing firmly across at Joan 
 of Arc and St. George, in plaster, but done over bronze so you 
 couldn't teU; precious possessions of Mrs. Burr, who was always 
 inquiring what it would cost to repair Joan's sword — ^which had 
 disintegrated and laid bare the wire in its soul — and never getting 
 an estimate. Nor on the face of Mrs. Burr herself, coming up- 
 stairs from her job out at Mrs. Ragstroar's, and beaming — 
 prosaically, but still beaming — on the young lady that had come 
 to see her at the Hospital. 
 
 " Oh, I remember, by-the-by," said that young lady, three 
 minutes later, having really said adieu all round to the family; 
 including Dolly, who had suddenly awakened to the position, 
 and overtaken her at the foot of the stairs. " I remember there 
 was something else I wanted to ask you, Aimt Maria. Did Mrs. 
 Prichard ever talk to you about her son ?" 
 
 Was it wonderful that Aunt M'riar should start and flinch 
 from speech, and that Uncle Mo should look preoccupied about 
 everything outside the conversation ? Can you imagine the 
 
604 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 sort of feeling an intensely truthful person like Aunt M'riar would 
 have under such circumstances ? How could she, without feel- 
 ing like duplicity itself, talk about this son as though he were 
 unknown to her, when his foul presence still hung about the 
 room he had quitted less than an hour since ? That fact, and 
 that she had seen him, then and there, face to face with her ' 
 beautiful questioner, weighed heavier on her at that moment 
 than her own terrible relation to him, a discarded wife oppressed 
 by an uncancelled marriage. 
 
 She had got to answer that question. " Mrs. Prichard Jias 
 a son," she said. " But he's no good." This came with a jerk — 
 perhaps with a weak hope that it might eject him from the 
 conversation. 
 
 " She hasn't set eyes on him, didn't she say, for years past 1" 
 said old Mo, seeing that M'riar wanted help. Also with a hope 
 of eliminating the convict. " Didn't even know whether he was 
 living or dead, did she ?" 
 
 The reply, after consideration, was : — " No-o ! She said that." 
 
 And then Gwen looked from one to the other, " Oh-h !" said 
 
 she. " Then probably the man was her son Look here ! 
 
 I must read you the postscript I left out." She reopened Mrs. 
 Thrale's letter, and read that the writer's mother had been much 
 upset by a man who laid claim to being Mrs. Prichard's son. As 
 her eyes were on the letter, she did not see the glance of reci- 
 procal intelligence that passed between her two listeners. But 
 she looked up after the last word of the postscript, in time to 
 see the efEect of the dog at Strides Cottage. Even as her father 
 had been influenced, so was Uncle Mo. He appeared to breathe 
 freer for that dog. It struck Gwen that Aunt M'riar seemed a 
 little unenquiring and uncommunicative about this son of Mrs. 
 Prichard's, considering all the circumstances. 
 
 When Gwen had departed. Aunt M'riar, seeing perhaps in- 
 terrogation in Mo's eyes, stopped it by saying: — "Don't you 
 ask me no more questions, not till these children are clear off to 
 bed. I'll tell after supper." And then, just that moment, 
 Mr. Ahbone looked in, and was greatly impressed by Dave and 
 Dolly's dramatic account of their visitor. " I've seen her, 
 don't you know ?" he said. " When you was put about to get 
 that lock open t'other day. She's one among a miUion. If I 
 was a blooming young Marquish, I should just knock at her 
 door till she had me moved on. That's what. Mo. So might 
 you, old man." To which Uncle Mo rephed: — " They've stood 
 us over too long, Jerry. If they don't look alive, they won't 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 605 
 
 get a chance to make either of us a Marquish. I expect they're 
 just marking time." Which Dave listened to with silent, 
 large-eyed gravity. Some time after he expressed curiosity 
 about the prospects of these Marquisates, and made inquiry 
 touching the relation " marking time " had to them. Uncle Mo 
 responded that it wouldn't be so very long now, and described 
 the ceremonies that would accompany it — something Uke Lord 
 Mayor's Show, with a flavour of Guy Fawkes Day. 
 
 However, Dave and Dolly went to bed this evening without 
 even that inaccurate enlightenment. And presently Mr. Ah- 
 bone, detecting his friend's meaning when he said he was deadly 
 sleepy somehow to-night, took his leave and went away to 
 finish his last pipe at The Sun. 
 
 And then Mo and M'riar were left to resume the day, and 
 make out its meaning. " How long had the feller been here ?" 
 he asked, in order to begin somewhere. 
 
 Aimt M'riar took the question too much to heart, and em- 
 barked on an intensely accurate answer. " I couldn't say not 
 to a minute," she said. " But if you was to put it at ten 
 minutes, I'd have felt it safer at seven. The nearer seven the 
 better, / should say." 
 
 " Anyhow — ^not a twelvemonth !" said Mo. " And there he 
 was skearing you out of your wits, when the lady came in and 
 di-verted of him off. Where was the two young scaramouches 
 all the while ?" 
 
 " Them I'd sent upstairs when I see who it was outside. 
 Dave he never see him, not to look at !" 
 
 " He see him out of the top window, and knew him again. 
 What had the beggar got to say for hisself ?" This was the gist 
 of the matter, and Uncle Mo settled down to hear it. 
 
 " He'd been to look after his mother in the country, at the 
 place I told him — and the more fool me for telling — and he 
 thought he spotted her, but it was some other old woman, and 
 while he was talking to her, there to be sure and if he didn't 
 see a police-officer after him !" 
 
 " What did he do on that ?" 
 
 " Oh, he run for it, and was all but took. But he got away 
 to the railway, and the officer followed him. And when he 
 saw him coming up, he jumped in the wrong train, that was just 
 starting, and got carried to Manchester. And he got back to 
 London by the night train." 
 
 " And then he come on here, and found I was in the parlour — 
 round at Joe JefEcoat's. He thought he see his way to another 
 
606 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 half-a-sovereign out of you, M'riar, and that's what he come for. 
 He thought I was safe for just the du-ration of a pipe or two." 
 
 " What brought you back. Mo ?" 
 
 " Well, ye see, I heard his ugly voice out in the front bar, 
 askin' for me. And I only thought he was a sporting c'rackter 
 come to see what the old scrapper looked like in his old age. 
 Then I couldn't think for a minute or two because of old Billy's 
 clapper going, but when I did, his face came back to me 
 atop of his voice. More by token when he never showed up I 
 Ye see ?" Aunt M'riar nodded an exact understanding of 
 what had happened. " And then I take it he come sneaking 
 down here to see for some cash, if he could get it. He'll come 
 again, old girl, he'll come again ! And Simeon Rowe shall 
 put on a man in plain clothes, to watch for him when I'm 
 away." 
 
 " Oh, Mo, don'tee say that ! It was only his make-believe 
 to frighten me. Anyone could tell that only to see him flourishin' 
 out his knife." 
 
 " Hay — what's that ? — his knife ? You never told me o' 
 that." 
 
 " Why, Mo, don't ye see, I only took it for bounce." 
 
 " What was it about his knife ?" 
 
 " Just this. Mo dear ! Now, don't you be excited. He says 
 to me again : — ' What are you good for, Polly Daverill ?' And 
 then I see he was handhng a big knife with a buckhom handle." 
 M'riar was tremulous and tearful. " Oh, Mo !" she said. 
 " Do consider ! He wasn't that earnest, to be took at a chance 
 word. He ain't so bad as you think of him He was only 
 showin' ofiE Uke, to get the most he could." 
 
 " That's a queer way of showin' ofE — ^with a knife ! P'r'aps 
 it wam't open, though ?" But it was, by M'riar's silence. 
 " Anyways," Mo continued, " he won't come back so long as 
 he thinks I'm here. To-morrow morning first thing I shall just 
 drop round to the Station, and tip 'em a wink. Can't have 
 this sort o' thing goin' on !" 
 
 M'riar's hghting of a candle seemed to hang fire. Said she: — 
 " You'd think it a queer thing to say, if I was to say it. Mo !" 
 And then, in reply to the natural question : — " Think what ?" 
 she continued : — " A woman's husband ain't like any other man. 
 She's never quite done with him, as if he was nobody. It don't 
 make any odds how bad he's been, nor yet how long ago it 
 
 was .... It makes one creep to think " She stopped 
 
 abruptly, and shuddered. 
 
HOW GWEN TOLD SAPPS COURT 607 
 
 " What he'll catch if he gets his deserts." Mo supplied an 
 end for the sentence, gravely. 
 
 " Ah ! — he might be What would it be. Mo, if he was 
 
 iried and found guilty ?" 
 
 " Without a recommendation to mercy ? It was a capital 
 offence. I never told it ye. Shall I tell it ?" 
 
 " No — ^for God's sake !" Aunt M'riar stopped her ears tight 
 as she had done before. " Don't you tell me nothing. Mo, more 
 than I know already. That's plenty." Uncle Mo nodded, 
 pointed to tightly closed Ups to express assent, and she resumed 
 speech with hearing. " Capital offence means .... means ?...." 
 
 " Means he would go to the scragging-post, arter breakfast 
 one morning. There's no steering out o' that fix, M'riar. He's 
 just got to, one day, and there's an end of it !" 
 
 " And how ever could I be off knowing it at the time ? Oh, 
 but it makes me sick to think of ! The night before — ^the night 
 before. Mo ! Supposin' I wake in the night, and think of him, 
 and hear the clocks strike ! He'U hear them too. Mo." 
 
 " Can't be off it, M'riar ! But what of that ? He won't be 
 a penny the worse, and he'll know what o'clock it is." Remember 
 that Uncle Mo had some particulars of Daverill's career that 
 Aunt M'riar had not. For all she knew, the criminal's capital 
 offence might have been an innocent murder — a miscarriage in 
 the redistribution of some property — a too zealous garrotting of 
 some fat old stockjobber. " I'm thinkin' a bit of the other 
 party, M'riar," said Mo. He might have said more, but he was 
 brought up short by his pledge to say nothing of the convict's 
 last atrocity. How could he speak the thought in his mind, of 
 the mother of the victim in a madhouse ? For that had made 
 part of the tale, as it had reached him through the poUce-ser- 
 geant. So he ended his speech by saying: — "What I do lies 
 at my own door, M'riar. You're out of it. So I shan't say 
 another word of what I wiU do or won't do. Only I teU you 
 this, that if I could get a quiet haff an hour with the gentleman, 
 
 I'd What would I do ? Well ! — I'd save him from the 
 
 gallows — ^I would ! Ah ! — and old as I am, I'd let him keep 
 
 a hold on his knife There — ^there, old lass ! I do wrong 
 
 to frighten ye, givin' way to bad temper. Easy does it !" 
 
 For a double terror of the woman's position was bred of taat 
 mysterious, inextinguishable love that never turns to hate, 
 however hateful its object may become; and her dread that if 
 this good, unwieldy giant — ^that was what Mo seemed — crossed 
 his path, that jack-knife might add another to her husband's 
 
 39 
 
608 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 many crimes. This dread and counter-dread had sent all Aunt 
 M'riar's blood to her heart, and she might have fallen, but that 
 Mo's strong hand caught her in time, and landed her in a chair. 
 " I was wrong — I was wrong \" said he gently. All the fires 
 had died down before the pallor of her face, and his only thought 
 was how coidd she be spared if the destroyer of her life was 
 brought to justice. 
 
 They said no more; what more was there to be said ? Aunt 
 M'riar came roimd, refusing restoratives. Oh no, she would be 
 all right ! It was only a turn she got— that common event ! 
 They adjourned, respectively, to where Dolly and Dave were 
 sleeping balmily, profoundly. 
 
 But Uncle Mo was discontented with the handiwork of 
 Creation. Why should a cruel, two-edged torture be invented 
 for, and inflicted on, an inoffensive person Uke M'riar ? There 
 didn't seem any sense in it. "If only," said he to his inner 
 soul, " they'd a-let me be God A'mighty for five minutes at 
 the first go-off, I'd a seen to it no such a thing shouldn't happen." 
 Less than five minutes would have been necessary, if a fuU and 
 unreserved concession of omnipotence had been made. 
 
 Dave was a man of his word, though a very young one. He 
 seized the earhest opportunity to indite two letters of congratu- 
 lation to his honorary grandmothers, including Dolly in his 
 rejoicing at the discovery of their relationship. He wrote as 
 though such discoveries were an everyday occurrence. 
 
 His mistakes in spelling were few, the principal one arising 
 from an old habit of thought connecting the words sister and 
 cistern, which had survived Aunt M'riar's frequent attempts at 
 correction. When he exhibited his Identical Notes to the Powers 
 for their sanction and approval, this was pointed out to him, 
 and an allegation that he was acting up to previous instructions 
 disallowed nem. con. He endeavoured to lay to heart that for. 
 the future cistern was to be spelt sister, except out on the leads. 
 A holographic adjustment of the c, and erasure of the n, was 
 scarcely a great success, but the Powers supposed it would do. 
 Uncle Mo opposed Aunt M'riar's suggestion that the two letters 
 should go in one cover to Strides Cottage, for economy, as mean- 
 spirited and parsimonious, although he had quite understood 
 that the two Grannies were under one roof; otherwise Dave 
 would have directed to Mrs. Picture at the Towers. So to 
 Strides Cottage they went, some three days later. 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 609 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTEE WENT BACK TO THE 
 TOWERS, AND GWEN READ HER LETTERS IN THE TRAIN. THE 
 TORPEYS, THE RECTOR, AND THE BISHOP. HOW THE COUNTESS 
 SHUT HER BYES, AND GWEN HARANGUED. WHO WAS MNCOLN' 
 INN ElELDS ? THE UP-EXPRESS, AND ITS VIRUS. HOW GWEN 
 RESOLVED TO RUSH THE POSITION. AT STRIDES COTTAGE. 
 HOW GWEN BECAME MORE AND MORE AUVE TO HER DIFIT- 
 CULTIES. HOW SHE WENT TO SEE DR. NASH. HIS INCREDU- 
 LITY. AND HIS CONVEPvSION. HOW HE WOULD SEE GRANNY 
 MARRABLE, BY AT.T, MEANS. BUT ! HOWEVER, BY GOOD 
 LUCK, MUGGERIDGE TTAB FORGOTTEN HIS MARRIAGE VOWS, 
 HALF A CENTURY AGO AND MORE 
 
 It was written in the Book of Fate, and printed in the Morning 
 Post, that the Countess of Ancestor was leaving for Rocester- 
 shire, and would remain over Christinas. After which she would 
 probably pay a visit to her daughter. Lady Philippa Brandon, 
 at Vienna. The Earl would join her at the Towers after a short 
 stay at Bath, according to his lordship's annual custom. The 
 Post did not commit itself as to his lordship's future movements, 
 because Fate had not allowed the Editor to look in her Book. 
 
 And the Countess herself seemed to know no more than the 
 Post. For when her daughter, in the railway-carriage on the 
 way to the Towers, looked up from a letter she was reading 
 over and over again, to say: — " I suppose it's no use trying to 
 persuade papa to come to Vienna, after aU ?" her mother's 
 answer was : — " You can try, my dear. You may have some 
 influence with him. I have none. I suppose when we're gone, 
 he'll just get wrapped up in his fiddles and books and old gim- 
 cracks, as he always does the minute my eyes are off him." 
 Gwen made no comment upon inconsistencies, becoming re- 
 absorbed in her letter. But surely a Countess whose eyes 
 prevent an Earl getting wrapped up in fiddles is not absolutely 
 without influence over him. 
 
 Gwen's absorbing letter was from Irene, incorporating dicta- 
 tion from Adrian. The writer had found the accepted Official 
 form : — " I am to say," convenient in practice. Thus, for instance, 
 " I am to say that he is not counting the hours till your return, as 
 it seems to him that the total, when reached, will be of no use to 
 
610 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 him or anyone else. He prefers to accept our estimate of the 
 interval as authentic, and to deduct each hour as it passes. He 
 is at eighty-six now, and expects to be at sixty-two at this time 
 to-morrow, assuming that he can trust the clock while he's 
 asleep." Gwen inferred that the amanuraisis had protested, to 
 go on to a more interesting point, as the letter continued: — 
 " Adrian and I have been talking over what do you think, Gwen 
 dear ? Try and guess before you turn over this page I'm just 
 
 at the end of " Dots ended the page, and the next began: — 
 
 " Give it up ? Well — only, if I tell you, you must throw this 
 letter in the fire when you have read it — ^I'm more than half- 
 convinced that there was once a tendresse, to put it mildly, be- 
 tween our respective papa and mamma — ^that is, our respective 
 papa and your respective mamma — ^not the other way, that's 
 ridiculous ! And Adrian is coming to my way of thinking, after 
 what happened yesterday. It was at dessert, and papa was quite 
 loquacious, for him — in his best form, saying : — ' Niggers, niggers, 
 niggers ! What does that blessed Duchess of Sutherland want to 
 liberate niggers for ? Much better woUop 'em !' The Duchess 
 was, he said, an hysterical female. Mamma was unmoved and 
 superior. Perhaps papa would call Lady Ancester hysterical, 
 too. SJie was at Stafford House, and was most enthusiastic. She 
 had promised to drive over as soon as she came back, to talk 
 about Negro slavery, and see if something could not be done 
 in the neighbourhood. Mamma hoped she would interest the 
 Torpeys and the Eector and the Bishop. Only the point was 
 that the moment our mamma mentioned yours, papa shut up 
 with a snap, and never said another word. It struck me exactly 
 as it struck Adrian. And when we came to talk it over we 
 agreed that, if it were, it would account for our having been such 
 strangers till last year." 
 
 Gwen was roused from weighing the possibilities of the truth 
 of this surmise by the voice of one of its subjects. " How very 
 engrossing our letters seem to be this morning !" said the Coun- 
 tess, with a certain air of courteous toleration, as of seniority on 
 Olympus. " But perhaps I have no right to inquire." This 
 with empressement. 
 
 " Don't be so civil, mamma dear, please !" said Gwen. " I 
 
 do hate civlUty No, there's nothing of interest. Yes — 
 
 there is. Lady Torrens says she hopes you won't forget your 
 promise to come and talk about abohshing negroes. I didn't 
 know you were going to." 
 
 The Countess skipped details. " Let me see the letter," said 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 611 
 
 she, forsaking her detached superiority. She begap to polish a 
 double eyeglass prematurely. 
 
 " Can't show the letter," said Gwen equably, as one secure in 
 her rights. " That's all — ^what I've told you ! Says you 
 promised to drive over and talk, and she hoped to interest 
 you — oh no ! — ^it's not you, it's the Torpeys are to be inter- 
 ested." 
 
 " Oh — ^the Torpeys," said the Countess freezingly. Because 
 it was humiliating to have to put away those double eyeglasses. 
 " Perhaps if there is anything else of interest you will tell me. 
 Do not trouble to read the whole." 
 
 " But did you promise to drive over to Pensham ? Because, 
 it you did, we may just as well go together. With all those 
 men at the Towers, I shall have to bespeak Tom Kettering and 
 the mare." 
 
 " I think something was said about my going over. But I 
 certainly made no promise." Her ladyship reflected a moment, 
 and then said: — " I think we had better be free lances. I am 
 most uncertain. It's a long drive. If I do go, I shall lunch at 
 the Parysforts, which is more than halt-way, and go on in the 
 afternoon to your aunt at Poynders. Then I need not come 
 back till the day after. I could call at Pensham by the way." 
 
 " I won't go to old Goody Parysforts — so that settles the 
 matter ! When shall I tell Adrian's mamma you are coming ?" 
 
 " Are you going there at once ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^to-morrow. I must see Adrian to talk to him about 
 my old ladies, before I talk to either of them." Thereupon the 
 Countess became prodigiously interested in the story of the 
 twins, a subject about which she had been languid hitherto, and 
 her daughter was not sorry, because she did not want to be 
 asked again what Irene had said, which might have involved 
 her in reading that young lady's text aloud, with extemporised 
 emendations, possibly complex. She put that letter away, to 
 re-read another time, and took out another one. " I've had 
 this," she said, " from old Mrs. Prichard. But there's nothing 
 in it !" 
 
 " Nothing in it ?" 
 
 " Nothing about what Widow Thrale told us in hers. Nothing 
 about Mrs. Thrale thinking she had gone dotty." 
 
 The Countess, with a passiag rebuke of her daughter's phrase- 
 ology, asked to be reminded of the story. Gwpn, embarking on 
 a resume, was interrupted by a tunnel, and then had hardly 
 begun again when the train rushed into a second section of it. 
 
612 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 which had slipped or been blowp further along the line. How- 
 ever, Peace ensued, in a land where, to all appearance, notice- 
 boards were dictating slow speeds from interested motives, as 
 there was no reason in life against quick ones. Gwen took 
 advantage of it to read Mrs. Prichard's letter aloud, with com- 
 ments. This was the letter: — 
 
 " ' Mt deak Ladt, 
 " ' I am looking forward to your return, and longing 
 for it, for I have much to tell you. I cannot tell of it all 
 now, but I can tell you what is such a happiness to tell, 
 of the sweet kindness of this dear young woman who takes 
 such care of me. A many have been very very kind to me, 
 and what return have I to make, since my dear husband 
 died r ... 
 
 " Her dear husband, don't you see, mamma, was the infamous 
 
 monster that wrote the forged letter that did it all Papa 
 
 read it to you, didn't he ?" 
 
 " My dear, it's no use asking me what your father read or did 
 not read to me, for reaUy the last few days have been such a 
 whirl. It always is, in London. However, go on ! I know 
 the letter you mean — ^what you were telling me about. Only I 
 can't say I made head or tail of it at the time. Go on 1" Her 
 ladyship composed herself to Usten with her eyes shut, and Gwen 
 read on: — 
 
 " ' But never, no never, was such patient kindness to a 
 tiresome old woman, because that is what I am, and I know, 
 my dear. I know, my dear, that I owe this to you, and it 
 is for your sake, but it ought to be, and that is right. I do 
 not say things always like I want to. She says her own 
 mother is no use to her, because she is so strong and never 
 iU, and I am good to nurse. But she is coming back very 
 soon, and I shall see her. She is my Davy's other Granny, 
 you know, and I am sure she must be good. I cannot write 
 more, but oh, how good you have been to me ! 
 
 " ' Your loving and dutiful 
 
 " ' Maisie Peichard. 
 
 " ' I must say this to you, that she lets me call her her name 
 Ruth. That was my child's I left at our DoUy's age, who 
 was drowned.' 
 
 " Now are you sxire, mamma," said Gwen, not without severity, 
 " that you quite understand that it's the same Buth ? That this 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 613 
 
 Widow Thrale is the little girl that old Mrs. Prichard has gone 
 on believing drowned, all these years ? Are you quite clear that 
 old Granny Marrable actually is the twin sister she has not seen 
 for fifty years ? Are you certain ....?" 
 
 " My dear Gwen, I beg you won't harangue. Besides, I can't 
 hear you because the train's going quick again. It always does, 
 
 just here No — ^I understand perfectly. These two old 
 
 persons have not seen each other for fifty years, and it's very 
 interesting. Only I don't see what they have to complain of. 
 They have only got to be told, and made to understand how 
 the mistake came about. I think they ought to be told, you 
 know." 
 
 " Oh dear, what fimny things maternal parents are ! Mamma 
 dear, you are just like Thothmes, who said ; — ' Better late than 
 never ' !" 
 
 " Who is ' Thothmes ' ?" Her ladyship knew perfectly well. 
 
 " Well — ^Lincoln's Inn Fields — ^if you prefer it ! Mr. Hawtrey. 
 He's like a cork that won't come out. I cannot understand 
 people hke you and Mr. Hawtrey. I suppose you will say that 
 you and he are not in it, and I am ?" 
 
 " I shall say nothing, my dear. I never do." The Countess 
 retired to the Zenith, meekly. The train was picking up its 
 spirits, audibly, but cautiously. The flank fire of hints about 
 speed had subsided, and it had all the world before it, subject to 
 keeping on the Une and screeching when called on to do so by 
 the Company. 
 
 " I wonder," said Gwen, " whether you have realised that that 
 dear old soul is calling her own daughter Ruth ' Ruth,' without 
 knowing who she is." 
 
 " Oh dear yes — ^perfectly 1 But suppose she is — what does 
 it matter ?" The conversation was' cut short by the more than 
 hysterical violence of the up-express, which was probably the 
 thing that passed, invisible owing to its speed, before its victims 
 could do more than quail and shiver. When it had shrieked and 
 rattled itself out of hearing, it was evident that it had bitten 
 Gwen's engine and poisoned its disposition, for madness set in, 
 and it dragged her train over oily lines and chcketty lines alike 
 at a speed that made conversation impossible. 
 
 Gwen was panting to start upon the bewildering task she had 
 before her, but only to put it to the proof, and end the tension. 
 It was impossible to keep the two old twins in the dark, and 
 it seemed to her that delay might make matters worse. As 
 
614 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 for ingenious schemes to reveal the strange story gradually, 
 some did occur to her, but none bore reconsideration. Probably 
 disaster lay in ambush behind over-ingenuity. Go gently but 
 firmly to the point — that seemed to her a safe rule for guidance. 
 If she could only anchor her dear old fairy godmother in a haven 
 of calm knowledge of the facts, she was less distressingly con- 
 cerned about the sister and daughter. The former of these was 
 the more prickly thorn of anxiety. Still, she was a wonderfully 
 strong old lady — ^not hke old Mrs. Picture, a semi-invahd. As 
 for the latter, she scarcely deserved to be thought a thorn at all. 
 She might even be relied on to put her feelings in her pocket pi'd 
 help. ^K 
 
 Yes — that was an idea ! How would it be to make Widow 
 Thrale know the truth first, and then simply tell her that help 
 she must, and there an end ! Gwen acted on the impulse pro- 
 duced in her mind during the last twenty minutes of her journey, 
 in which conversation with her mother continued a discomfort, 
 owing to the strong effect which the poisoned tooth or bad 
 example of the down-train express had produced on her own 
 hitherto temperate and reasonable engine. On arriving at 
 Grantley Thorpe she changed her mind about seeing Adrian 
 before visiting Strides Cottage, and petitioned Mr. Sandys, the 
 Station-master, for writing materials, and asked him to send the 
 letter she then and there wrote, by bearer, to Widow Thrale at 
 Chorlton; not because the distance of Strides Cottage from the 
 main road was a serious obstacle to its personal deUvery on the 
 way home, but because she wished to avoid seeing any of its 
 occupants until a full interview was possible. Also, she wanted 
 Widow Thrale to be prepared for something unusual. Her letter 
 was: — "I am coming to you to-morrow. I want to talk about 
 dear old Mrs. Prichard, but io not show her this or say anything 
 till I see you. And do not be uneasy or alarmed." She half 
 fancied when she had written it that the last words were too 
 soothing. But this was a mistake. Nothing rouses alarm alike 
 reassurance. 
 
 It was a reUef to her, between this and an early start for 
 Chorlton next day, to be dragged forcibly away from her domi- 
 nant anxiety. The Colonel's shooting-party was still in posses- 
 sion at the Towers, though its numbers were dwindling daily. 
 It had never had its full complement, as so many who might 
 have gone to swell it were fighting in the ranks before Sebastopol, 
 or in hospital at Balaklava, cholera-stricken perhaps; or, nomin- 
 ally, waiting till resurrection-time in the cemetery there, or by 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 615 
 
 the Alma, for the grass of a new year to cover them in; but 
 maybe actually — and hkelier too — ^in some strange incon- 
 ceivable Hades; poor cold ghosts in the dark, marvelling at the 
 crass stupidity of Cain, and even throwing doubts on " glory." 
 
 The Colonel's party, belonging to the class that is ready to send 
 all its sons that can bag game or ride to hounds, to be food for 
 powder themselves in any dispute made and provided, was sadly 
 denuded of the young man element, and he himself was fretting 
 with impatience at the medical verdict that had disquaUfied 
 him for rejoining his regiment with a half-healed lung. But the 
 middle-aged majority, and the civilian juniors — ^including a 
 shooting parson — could talk of nothing but the War. 
 
 Some of us who are old enough will recall easily their own con- 
 sciousness of the universal war-cloud at this time, when reminded 
 that the details of Inkerman were only lately to hand, and that 
 Florence Nightingale had not long begun to work in the hospital 
 at Scutari. But the immediate excitement of the moment, when 
 the two ladies joined the dinner-party that evening at the Towers, 
 was the frightful storm of which Gwen had already had the first 
 news, which had strewn the coast of the Chersonese with over 
 thirty Enghsh wrecks, and sent stores and war material costing 
 millions to the bottom of the Black Sea. She was glad, how- 
 ever, to hear that it was certain that the Agamemnon had been 
 got off the rocks at Balaklava, as she had understood that Granny 
 Marrable had a grandson on the ship. 
 
 The time was close at hand, within an hoTir, when Gwen 
 would have to find words to tell her strange impossible story, 
 if not to that dear old silver hair — to those grave peaceful eyes, 
 — at least to one whose measure of her whole Ufe must perforce 
 be changed by it. What would it mean, to Widow Thrale, to 
 have such a subversive fact suddenly sprung upon her ? 
 
 More than once in her ride to Chorlton it needed all her courage 
 to crush the impulse to tell Tom Kettering to turn the mare 
 round and drive back to the Towers. It would have been so 
 easy to forge some excuse to save her face, and postpone the 
 embarrassing hour till to-morrow. But to what end ? It would 
 be absolutely out of the question to leave the sisters in ignorance 
 of each other, even supposing the circumstances made continued 
 ignorance possible. The risks to the health or brain-power of 
 either would surely be greater if the eclaircissement were left to 
 haphazard, than if she were controlling it with a previous know- 
 ledge of all the facts. Perhaps Gwen was not aware how much 
 
616 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 her inborn temperament had to do with her conclusions. Had 
 she been a soldier, she would have volunteered to go on every 
 forlorn hope, on principle. No doubt an " hysterical " tempera- 
 ment, as it is so common among women ! But it is a form of 
 hysteria that exists also among men. 
 
 Whether or no, here she was at the gate of Strides Cottage, 
 and it M^as now too late to think of going back. Tom Kettering 
 was requesting the mare, in stable language, not to kick terra 
 firma, or otherwise object to standing, till he had assisted the 
 lady down. She was down without assistance before the mare 
 was convinced of sin, so Tom touched his hat vaguely, but com- 
 mitted himself to nothing. He appeared to understand — as he 
 didn't say he didn't, when instructed — that he was to wait five 
 minutes; and then, if nothing appeared to the contrary, employ 
 himself and the mare in any way they could agree upon, for an 
 hour; and then return to pick her up. 
 
 The cat, the only inmate visible at Strides, rose from the 
 threshold to welcome the visitor, with explanations perfectly 
 clear to Gwen — ^who understood cats — ^that if it had been within 
 her power to reach the door-latch, she would have opened the 
 door, entirely to accommodate her ladyship. She had no mix- 
 ture of motives, arising from having been shut out. Gwen threw 
 doubt on this; as, having rung the bell, she waited. She might 
 have rung again but for EUzabeth-next-door ; who, coming out 
 with advisory powers, said that Mrs. Thrale was probably en- 
 gaged with the old lady, but that she herself would go straight 
 in if she was her ladyship. Not being able to reach the latch 
 herself over the privet-hedge between them, the good woman 
 was coming round to open the door, but went back when Gwen 
 anticipated her, and entering the empty front-room, heard the 
 voices in the bedroom behind. How strange it seemed to her, 
 to wait there, overhearing them, and knowing that the old voice 
 was that of a mother speaking to her unknown daughter, and 
 that each was unsuspicious of the other. 
 
 The dog who trotted in from the passage between the rooms 
 or beyond it, was no doubt the one Gwen had heard of. He 
 examined her shghtly, seemed satisfied, and disappeared as he 
 had come. The cat chose the most comfortable comer by the 
 fire, and went to sleep in it without hesitation. The fire crackled 
 with new dry wood, and exploded a chance wet billet into jets 
 of steam, under a kettle whose lid was tremulous from inter- 
 mittent stress below. 
 
 Otherwise, nothing interfered with the two voices in the room 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 617 
 
 beyond; the mother's, weak with age, but cheerful enough, no 
 unhappy sound about it; the daughter's, cheerful, robust, and 
 musical, rallying and encouraging her as a child, peshaps about 
 some dress obstacle or mystery. The effect on Gwen of listening 
 to them was painful. To hear them, knowing the truth, made 
 that knowledge almost unendurable. Could she possess her soul 
 in peace until what she supposed to be the old lady's toilette 
 was complete ? 
 
 The question was decided by the dog, who was applying for 
 admission at the door beyond the passage, somewhat diffidently 
 and cautiously. Gwen could just see him, exploring along the 
 door-crack with his nose. Presently, remaining unnoticed from 
 within, he made his voice audible — barely audible, not to create 
 alarm needlessly. It was only to oblige; he had no misgivings 
 about the visitor. 
 
 Then Gwen, conceiving that a change in the voices implied 
 that his application had been heard, helped the applicant, by a 
 word or two to identify herself; adding that she was in no 
 hurry, and would wait. Then followed more change in the 
 voices; the mother's exclamation of pleasure; the daughter's 
 recognition of her visitor's dues of courtesy and deference, and 
 their claim for a prompt discharge. Then an opened door, and 
 Widow Thrale herself, not too much overpowered by her obUga- 
 tions to leave the dog's explanations and apologies unacknow- 
 ledged. The utter unconsciousness this showed of the thing that 
 was to come almost made Gwen feel that the strain on her powers 
 of self-control might become greater than she could bear, and 
 that she might break out with some premature disclosure which 
 would only seem sheer madness to her unprepared hearer. 
 
 She could hold out a httle yet, though Well ! — she had 
 
 got to manage it, by hook or by crook. So — courage ! Five 
 minutes of normal causeries, mere currencies of speech, and then 
 the match to the train ! 
 
 She evolved, with some difficulty, the manner which would 
 be correct in their relative positions ; accepted the curtsey before 
 stretching out a hand, guaranteed Olympian, to the plains below. 
 " My dear Mrs. Thrale," said she, choking back excitement to 
 chat-point, " I really am more grateful to you than I can say 
 for taking charge of this dear old lady. I was quite at my wits' 
 end what to do with her. You see, I had to go up to London, 
 because of my cousin's illness — Sister Nora, you know — and it 
 was in the middle of the night, and I was afraid the dear old 
 soul would be uncomfortable at the Towers." She made some 
 
618 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 pretence of languid indifference to conventional precisions, and 
 of complete superiority to scruples about confessing an error, by 
 adding: — " Most likely I was wrong. One is, usually. But it 
 
 never seems to matter Let's see — ^what was I saying? 
 
 Oh — ^how very kind it was of you to solve the difficulty for me. 
 .... Well— to help me out of the^crape !" For Mrs. Thrale had 
 looked the doubt in her mind — could Gurth the Swineherd " solve 
 a difficulty " for Cceur de Lion ? She could only do Anglo- 
 Saxon things, legitimately. The point was, however, covered 
 by Gwen's amendment. 
 
 Mrs. Thrale had begun a smile of approbation at the phrase 
 " dear old lady," and had felt bound to suspend it for Sister 
 Nora's illness. That was a parenthesis, soon disposed of. The 
 revival of the smile was easy, on the words " dear old soul." 
 She was that, there was no doubt of it, said Mrs. Thrale, adding : — 
 " 'Tis for. me to be grateful to your ladyship for allowing me the 
 charge of her. I hope your ladyship may not be thinking of 
 taking her away, just yet-a-while ?" 
 
 " I think not, just at present We shall be able to talk 
 
 of that Tell me — how has she been ? Because of your 
 
 letter." 
 
 " There now ! — when I got your ladyship's note last night 
 I felt a'most ashamed of writing that I had been uneasy or 
 alarmed." Gwen saw that her yesterday's attempt at pre- 
 monition had missed fire, and Mrs. Thrale added: — " Because — 
 not a word !" 
 
 " How do you mean ? I don't quite understand." 
 
 " She's never said a word since. Not that sort of word ! 
 She's just never spoke of the mill, nor Muggeridge, nor my 
 grandfather. And I have said nothing to her, by reason of Dr. 
 Nash's advice. ' Never you talk to a mental patient about their 
 delusions !' — that's what Dr. Nash says. So I never said one 
 word." 
 
 Gwen felt sorry she had not made her note of alarm more 
 definite. For the absolute faith of the speaker in her own beUef 
 and Dr. Nash's professional infallibility, that a dropped voice 
 and confidential manner seemed to erect as a barrier to enlighten- 
 ment, made her feel more at a loss than ever how to act. Would 
 it not, after all, be easiest to risk the whole, and speak at once 
 to the old lady herself ? She prefigured in her mind the greater 
 ease of telling her story when she could make her own love a 
 palliative to the shock of the revelation, could take on her 
 bosom the old head, stxmned and dumbfoundered; could soothe 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 619 
 
 the weakness of the poor old hand with the strength and youth 
 of her own. But into that image came a disturbing whim — call 
 it so !— a question from without, not bred of her own mind: — 
 " Is not this the daughter's right ? — the prerogative of the flesh 
 and blood that stands before you ?" Perhaps Gwen was whim- 
 sical sometimes. 
 
 If Widow Thrale had said one word to pave the way — had 
 spoken, for instance, of the imaccountableness of the old lady's 
 memories — Gwen might have seen daylight through the wood. 
 But this placid immovable ascription of the whole of them to 
 brain-disorder was an Ituri forest of preconceptions, shutting 
 out every gleam of suggested truth. 
 
 A sudden idea occurred to her. Her father had spoken well 
 of Dr. Nash — of his abilities, at least — and he seemed very much 
 in Mrs. Thrale's good books. Could she not get Mm to help, or 
 at least to take his measure as a confidant in her difficulty 
 before condemning him as impossible ? 
 
 So quickly did aU this pass through her mind that the words 
 " I think I should like to see Dr. Nash " seemed to follow 
 naturally. Mrs. Thrale welcomed the idea. 
 
 " But he'll be gone," said she. " He goes to see his patient 
 at Dessington Manor at eleven. And if he was sent for it is very 
 hke he could not come, even for your ladyship. Because his 
 sick folk he sees at the surgery they will have their money's 
 worth. Indeed, I think the poor man's worked off his legs." 
 
 " I see," said Gwen. " I shall go and see him myself, at 
 once." She breathed freer for the respite, and the prospect of 
 help. " But there's plenty of time if I look sharp. Would you 
 tell Tom outside that he's not to run away. I shall want him ? 
 May I go through to see her ? Is she getting up ?" 
 
 She was up, apparently, in the accepted sense of the word; 
 though she had collapsed with the effort of becoming so; and 
 was now down, in the literal sense, lying on the bed under con- 
 tract not to move till Mrs. Thrale returned with a cup of supple- 
 mentary arrowroot. She had had a very poor breakfast. Cer- 
 tainly, her ladyship might go in. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, my dear, I am so glad you are come !" It was 
 the voice of a great relief that came from the figure on the bed; 
 the voice of one who had waited long, of a traveller who sees his 
 haven, a castaway adrift who spies a sail. 
 
 " Now, dear Mrs. Picture, you are not to get up, but lie still 
 till I come back. I'm going to try to catch Dr. Nash, and must 
 hurry off. But I am coming back." 
 
620 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Oh — all right !" There was disappointment in her tone, 
 but it was docility itself. She added, however, with the barest 
 trace of remonstrance : — " I'm quite well, you know. I don't 
 want the doctor." 
 
 Gwen laughed. " Oil no — ^it's not for you ! I've .... I've a 
 message for him. I shall soon be back." An excusable fiction, 
 she thought, under the circumstances. 
 
 She was only just in time to catch Dr. Nash, whose gig was 
 already in possession of him at his garden-gate with a palpably 
 medical lamp over it, and a " surgery bell " whose poUsh seemed 
 to guarantee its owner's prescriptions. " Get down and talk to 
 me in the house," said her young ladyship. " Who is it you 
 were going to ? Anyone serious ?" 
 
 " Only Sir Cropton Fuller." 
 
 " He can wait Can't he ?" 
 
 " He'll have to. No hurry !" The doctor found time to add, 
 between the gate and the house: — " I go to see him every day 
 to prevent his taking medicine. He's extremely well. J don't 
 get many cases of illness, among my patients." He turned 
 round to look at Gwen, on the doorstep. " Your ladyship 
 doesn't look very bad," said he. 
 
 Gwen shook her head. " It's nothing to do with me," she 
 said. " Nor with illness ! It's old Mrs. Prichard at Strides 
 Cottage." 
 
 The doctor stood a moment, latchkey in hand. " The old lady 
 whose mind is giving way ?" said he. He had knitted his brows 
 a httle; and, having spoken, he knitted his lips a httle. 
 
 " We are speaking of the same person," said Gwen. She 
 followed the doctor into his parlour, and accepted the seat he 
 offered. He stood facing her, not relaxing his expression, which 
 worked out as a sort of mild grimness, tempered by a tune which 
 his thumbs in the armpits of his waistcoat enabled him to play 
 on its top-pockets. It was a slow tune. Gwen continued: — 
 " But her mind is not giving way." 
 
 The doctor let that expression subside into mere seriousness. 
 He took a chair, to say: — " Your ladyship has, perhaps, not heard 
 all particulars of the case." 
 
 " Every word." 
 
 " You surprise me. Are you aware that this poor old person 
 is under a delusion about her own parentage ? She fancies 
 herself the daughter of Isaac Runciman, the father of old Mrs. 
 Marrable, the mother of Widow Thrale." 
 
 " She is his daughter." 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 621 
 
 The doctor nearly sprang out of his chair vdth surprise, but 
 an insecure foothold made the chair jump instead. 
 
 " But it's impossible — ^it's impossible !" he cried. " How could 
 Mrs. Marrable have a sister alive and not know it V 
 
 " That is what I am going to explain to you. Dr. Nash. And 
 Sir Cropton Fuller will have to wait, as you said." 
 
 " But tlie thing's impossible in itself. Only look at this !...." 
 
 " Please consider Sir Cropton Fuller. You won't think it so 
 impossible when you know it has happened." The doctor Ust- 
 ened for the symptoms with perceptibly less than his normal 
 appearance of knowing it all beforehand. Gwen proceeded, and 
 told with creditable brevity and clearness, the succession of 
 events the story has given, for its own reasons, by fits and 
 starts. 
 
 It could not be accepted as it stood, consistently with male 
 dignity. The superior judicial powers of that estimable sex 
 called for assertion. First, suspension of opinion — ^no hasty 
 judgments ! "A most extraordinary story ! A most extra- 
 ordinary story! But scarcely to be accepted You'll 
 
 excuse my plain speech ?...." 
 
 " Please don't use any other ! The matter's too serious." 
 
 " Scarcely to be accepted without a close examination of the 
 evidence." 
 
 " Unquestionably. Does any point occur to you ?" 
 
 Now Dr. Nash had nothing ready. " Well," he said, dubi- 
 ously, " in such a very difficult matter it might be rash " 
 
 Then he thought of something to say, suddenly. " Well — yes I 
 It certainly does occur to me that .... No — perhaps not — 
 perhaps not !...." 
 
 " What were you going to say ?" 
 
 " That there is no direct proof that the forged letter was ever 
 sent to AustraUa." This sounded well, and appeared Uke a 
 tribute to correctness and caution. It meant nothing whatever. 
 
 " Only the Austrahan postmark," said Gwen. " I have got 
 it here, but it's rather alarming — the responsibility." 
 
 " If it was written, as you say, over an effaced original, it 
 might have been done just as easily in England." The doctor 
 was reading the direction, not opening the letter. 
 
 " Not by a forger at the Antipodes !" said Gwen. 
 
 " I meant afterwards — ^when — ^when Mrs. Prichard was in 
 England ?" 
 
 " She brought the letter with her when she came. It couldn't 
 have been forged afterwards." 
 
622 -WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The doctor gave it up. Masculine superiority would have to 
 stand over. But he couldn't see his way, on human grounds, 
 profundity apart, " What is so horribly staggering," said he, 
 " is that after fifty ytiars these two should actually see each 
 other and still be in the dark. And the way it came about ! 
 The amazing coincidences !" The doctor spoke as if such un- 
 blushing coincidences ought to be ashamed of themselves. 
 
 Gwen took this to be his meaning, apparently. " / can't 
 help it. Dr. Nash," she said. " If they had told me they were 
 going to happen, I might have been able to do something. 
 Besides, there was only one, if you come to think of it — ^the 
 little boy being sent to Widow Thrale's to convalesce. It was 
 
 my cousin. Miss Grahame, who did it Yes, thank you ! 
 
 — she is going on very well, and Dr. Dahymple hopes she wiU 
 make a very good recovery. He fussed a good deal about her 
 lungs, but they seem all right " The conversation fluc- 
 tuated to Typhus Fever for a moment, but was soon recalled by 
 the young lady, whose visit had a definite purpose. " Now, 
 Dr. Nash, I have a favour to ask of you, which is what I came 
 for. It occurred to me when I heard that you would be going 
 to Dessington Manor this morning." The doctor professed his 
 readiness, or eagerness, to do anything in his power to obhge 
 Lady Gwendolen Rivers, but evidently had no idea what it 
 could possibly be. " You will be close to Costrell's farm, where 
 the other old lady is staying with her granddaughter ?" 
 
 " I shall. But what can I do ?" 
 
 " You can, perhaps, help me in the very difficult job of making 
 the truth known to her and her sister. I say perhaps, because 
 you may find you can do nothing. I shall not blame you if you 
 fail. But you can at least try." 
 
 It would have been difficult to refuse anything to the animated 
 beauty of his petitioner, even if she had been the humblest of 
 his village patients. The doctor pledged himself to make the 
 attempt, without hesitation, saying to himself as he did so that 
 this would be a wonderful woman some day, with a httle more 
 experience and maturity. " But," said he, " I never promised 
 to do anything with a vaguer idea of what I was to do, nor how 
 I was to set about it." 
 
 Gwen's earnestness had no pause for a smile. " It is easier 
 than you think," she said, " if you only make up your mind to 
 it. It is easy for you, because your medical interest in old Mrs. 
 Prichard's case makes it possible for you to entamer the con- 
 versation. You see what I mean ?" 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 623 
 
 " Perfectly — ^I think. But I don't see how that will eniamer 
 old Mrs. Marrable. Won't the conversation end where it began ?" 
 
 " I think not — ^not necessarily. I will forgive you if it does. 
 Consider that the apparent proof of delusion in my old lady's 
 mind is that she has told things about her childhood which 
 are either bona-fide recollections, or have been derived from the 
 httle boy " 
 
 " Dave Wardle. So I understood from Widow Thrale. She 
 has told me all the things as they happened. In fact, I have 
 been able to call in every day. The case seemed very interesting 
 as a case of delusion, because some of the common character- 
 istics were wanting. It loses that interest now, certainly, 
 but However, you were saying, when I interrupted ?...." 
 
 " I was saying that unless these ideas could be traced to Dave 
 Wardle, they must have come out of Mrs. Prichard's own head. 
 Is it not natural that you should want to hear from Granny 
 Marrable what she recollects having said to the child ?" 
 
 The doctor cogitated a moment, then gave a short staccato 
 nod. " I see," said he, in a short staccato manner. " Yes. 
 
 That might do something for us. At any rate, I can try it 
 
 I beg your pardon." 
 
 Gwen had just begun again, but paused as the doctor looked 
 at his watch. She continued: — "I cannot find anything that 
 she might not have easily said to a small boy. I wish I could. 
 Her recollection of not having said anything won't be certainty. 
 But even inquiring about what she doesn't recollect would give 
 an opening. Did Mrs. Prichard say nothing to you about her 
 early life at the mill ?" 
 
 " She said a good deal, because I encouraged her to talk, to 
 
 convince myseK of her delusion Could I recollect some 
 
 of it ? I think so. Or stay — I have my notes of the case." 
 He produced a book. " Here we are. ' Mrs. Maisie Prichard. 
 eighty-one. Has delusions. Thinks mill was her father's. It 
 was Widow Thrale's grandfather's. Knows horses Pitt and Fox. 
 Knows Muggeridge waggoner. Has names correct. Qy. : — ^from 
 child Wardle last year ? M. was dismissed soon after. Asked 
 try recollect what for.' I am giving your ladyship the abbrevia- 
 tions as written." 
 
 " Quite right. Is there more ?" For evidently there was. 
 Gwen could see the page. 
 
 " She remembered that he was dismissed for ... . irregu- 
 larity." 
 Gwen suspected suppression. " What sort ? Did he drink ? 
 
 40 
 
624 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Let me see the book. I won't read the other cases." And so 
 all-powerful was beauty, or the traces of Feudalism, that this 
 middle-aged M.R.C.S. actually surrendered his private notes of 
 cases into these most improfessional hands. Gwen pointed to 
 the unread sequel, triumphantly. " There \" she exclaimed. 
 " The very thing we want ! You may be sure that neither 
 Granny Marrable nor her daughter ever told a chick of seven 
 years old of that defect in IVb. Muggeridge's character." For 
 what Gwen had not read aloud was : — " Miig. broke lih : Gomm :" 
 
 The doctor was perhaps feeling that masculine profundity 
 had not shone, and that he ought to do something to redeem its 
 credit. For his comment, rather judicial in tone, was : — " Yes — 
 but Widow Thrale was not able to confirm this .... blemish 
 on Mr. Muggeridge's reputation." 
 
 " Now, my dear Dr. Nash, why should she be able to confirm 
 a thing that happened when her mother was ten years old ?" 
 
 The doctor surrendered at discretion — perhaps resolved not 
 to repeat the attempt to reinstate the male intellect. " Of 
 course not !" said he. " Perfectly correct. Very good ! I'll try, 
 then, to make use of that. I understand your object to be that 
 old Granny Marrable shall come to know that she and Mrs. 
 Prichard are sisters, as gradually as possible. I may not suc- 
 ceed, but I'll do my best. Ticklish job, rather ! Now I sup- 
 pose I ought to look after Sir Cropton Fuller." 
 
 Five minutes after saying which the doctor's gig was doing 
 its best to arrive in time to prevent that valetudinarian swal- 
 lowing five grains of calomel, or something of the sort, on his 
 own responsibility. 
 
 Gwen had felt a misgiving that her expedition to Dr. Nash 
 had really been a cowardly undertaking, because she had flinched 
 from her task at the critical moment. Well — suppose she had ! 
 It might turn out a fortunate piece of poltroonery, if Dr. Nash 
 contrived to break the ice for her with the other old sister. But 
 the cowardice was beginning again, now that every stride of the 
 mare was taking her nearer to her formidable task. Despera- 
 tion was taking the place of mere Resolve, thrusting her aside 
 as too weak for service in the field, useless outside the ramparts. 
 Oh, but if only some happy accident would pave the way for 
 speech, would enable her to say to herself: — " I have said the 
 first word ! I cannot go back now, if I would !" 
 
 On the way to Strides Cottage again ! Nearer and nearer 
 now, that moment that must come, and put an end to all this 
 
GWEN'S RETURN, AND THE TASK BEFORE HER 625 
 
 puling hesitation. She could not help the thought that rose in 
 her mind: — "This that I do — ^this reuniting of two souls long 
 parted by a living death — may it not be what Death does every 
 day for many a world-worn survivor of a half-forgotten parting 
 in a remote past ?" For, indeed, it seemed to her that these 
 two had risen from the dead, and that for all she knew each 
 might say of the other: — " It is not she." For what is Death 
 but the withdrawal from sight and touch and hearing of the 
 evidence of Some One Else ? What less had come to pass for 
 old Maisie and Phoebe, fifty years ago ? How is it vdth us all 
 in that mysterious Beyond, that for the want of a better name 
 we call a Hereafter, when ghost meets ghost, and either lacks 
 the means of recognition ? 
 
 She knew the trick of that latch now, and went in. 
 
 The room was empty of all but the cat, who seemed self- 
 absorbed; silent but for a singing kettle and a chirping cricket. 
 Probably Widow Thxale was in the bedroom. Gwen crossed the 
 passage, and gently opening the door, looked ia. Only the old 
 lady herself was there, upon the bed, so still that Gwen half- 
 feared at first she had died ia her sleep. No — all was well ! 
 She wondered a moment at the silver hair, the motionless hands, 
 alabaster but for the blue veins, the frailty of the whole, and 
 its long past of eighty years, those years of strange vicissitude. 
 And through them all no one thing so strange as what she was 
 to know on waking ! 
 
626 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 HOW OWEN HEARD V?IDOW THRALE's REPORT. AND HOW SHE 
 ROSE TO THE OCCASION. HOW WIDOW THRALE WAS IN FAVOUR 
 OF SILENCE. HOW GWEN HAD TO SHOW THE FORGED LETTER. 
 THE LINSTOCK AT THE BREECH. BUT MY NAME WAS RUTH 
 DAVERILL ! THE GUN GOES OFF. GWEN's COOLNESS IN 
 ACTION. BUT WHY IN MRS. PRICHARD's LETTER ? A CRISIS 
 AND AN AWAKENING. WHO WILL TELL MOTHER ? HOW 
 GWEN GOT FIRST SPEECH OF MRS. PEICHARD. THE DELUSION 
 case's report of itself. another impenetrable FORT- 
 RESS. THE STAGE METHOD, AS A LAST RESOURCE. AN 
 IMPASSE. " BAS AN AIR EACHIN." HOW MRS. PRICHARD 
 WANTED TO TELL MRS. MARRABLE ABOUT HER DEAD SISTER, 
 STILL ALIVE. GWEN's FORCES SCATTERED, AND A RALLY. 
 ANOTHER CRISIS, AND SUCCESS. WHO FORGED THAT LETTER ? 
 
 That had been a quick interview with Dr. Nash in spite of its 
 importance.' For the church clock had been striking eleven 
 when the mare, four minutes after leaving Dr. Nash, reached 
 Strides Cottage. A great deal of talk may be got through in a 
 very little time, as the playwright knows to his cost. 
 
 Widow Thrale had been talking with Elizabeth-next-door 
 when the mare stopped, disappointed at the short run. She heard 
 the arrival, and came out to find that her ladyship had preceded 
 her into the house. Tom Kettering, having communicated this, 
 stooped down from his elevation to add in confidence: — "Her 
 ladyship's not looking her best, this short while past. You have 
 an eye to her, mistress. Asking pardon !" It was a concession 
 to speech, on Tom's part, and he seemed determined it should go 
 no farther, for he made a whip-flick tell the mare to walk up and 
 down, and forget the grass rim she had noticed on the footpath. 
 Mrs. Thrale hurried into the house. She, too, had seen how 
 white Gwen was looking, before she started to go to Dr. Nash. 
 
 She met her coming from the bedroom, whiter still this time. 
 Her exclamation: — "Dearie me, my lady, how! . . . ." was 
 stopped by : — " It is not illness, Mrs. Thrale. I am perfectly well," 
 said with self-command, though with a visible effort to achieve 
 it. But it was clear that the thing that was not iUness was a 
 serious thing. 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 627 
 
 " I was afraid for your ladyship/' said Mrs. Thrale. And she 
 remained uneasy visibly. 
 
 " I see she is very sound asleep. Will she remain so for 
 awhile ? . . . . Has not been sleeping at night, did you say ? 
 
 That explains it No, I won't take anything, thank you ! 
 
 .... Yes, I wUl. I'll have some water. I see it on the dresser. 
 That's plenty — ^thanks !" Thus Gwen's part of what followed. 
 She moistened her lips, and speech was easier to her. They had 
 been so dry and hot. She continued, feeling that title moment 
 had come : — " I want your help, Mrs. Thrale. I have something 
 I must tell you about Mrs. Prichard." 
 
 The convict, nearly forgotten siace last year, and of course 
 never revived for Widow Thrale, suddenly leaped into her mind 
 out of the past, and menaced evil to her ideal of Mrs. Prichard. 
 She was on her defence directly. " Nay, then — ^if it is bad, 'tis 
 no fault of the dear old soxil's. That I be mortal sure of !" 
 
 " Fault of hers. No, indeed ! It is something I have to tell 
 her. And to tell you." This was the first real attempt to hint 
 at her hearer's personal concern in the something. Would it 
 reach her mind ? 
 
 Scarcely. To judge by her puzzled eyes fixed on Gwen, and 
 the grave concern of her face, her heart was rich with ready 
 sympathy for whoever should suffer by this imknown thing, but 
 without a clue to its near connection with herself. " Will it be 
 a great sorrow to her to be told it ?" said she uneasily. But all 
 on her old guest's account — ^none on her own. 
 
 Gwen felt that her first attempt to breach the fortress of 
 imconsciousness had failed. She must lay a new sap, at another 
 angle; a slower approach, but a surer. 
 
 " Not a great sorrow so much as a great shock. You can help 
 me to tell it her so as to spare her." Gwen felt at this point the 
 advantages of the Feudal System. This good woman would 
 never presume to hurry disclosure. " You can help me, Mrs. 
 Thrale, and I will tell you the whole. But I want to know one 
 or two things about what she said." Gwen produced Mrs. 
 Thrale's own letter from a dainty gilded wallet, and opened it. 
 " I understand that the very first appearance of these delusions 
 — or whatever they were — ^was when she saw the mill-model. 
 Quite the very first ?" 
 
 " That was, like, the beginning of it," said Mrs. Thrale, recol- 
 lecting. " She asks me, was little Dave in the right about the 
 wheel-sacks and the water-cart, and I say to her the child is right, 
 but should have said wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then 
 
628 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 I get it down. . . . Yes, I get it down and show it to her " — ^this 
 slowly and reminiscently. " And then, my lady, I look round, 
 and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter 1" This was accele- 
 rated, for dramatic force. 
 
 " You did not put it down to her seeing the mill ?" 
 " No, my lady; I took it she was upset and tired, at her age. 
 I've seen the like before. Not my mother, but old Mrs. Dunage 
 at the Rectory. 'Twas when the news came her mother was 
 killed on the railway. She went quite unconscious, and I helped 
 to nurse her round. She was gone of seventy-seven at the 
 time." 
 
 " That was a shook, then ?" Gwen felt, although Widow 
 Thrale did not seem to have connected the two things together, 
 that the miU had been the agency that upset Mrs. Prichard. 
 
 But she had underestimated the strength of the fortress 
 again. Mrs. Thrale took it as a discrimination between the two 
 cases. " Yes, my lady," said she quietly. " That was a shock. 
 But so you might say, this was a shock, too. By reason of an 
 idea, got on the mind. Dr. Nash said, next day, certainly 1" 
 " Very Ukely," said Gwen. " But what came next ?" 
 " Well, now — how was it ? I was seeing her to bed, un- 
 conscious like, and she says to me, on the sudden: — ' Whose mill 
 was it ?' And then, of course, I say grandfather's. For indeed, 
 my lady, that is so ! Mother has had this model all her life, 
 from when grandfather died, and it could be no one else's mill.'* 
 The irresistible amusement at the absurdity that spread over 
 Ruth's face, and the undercurrent of laughter in her voice, were 
 secret miseries to Gwen, so explicit were they in their tale of 
 the unconsciousness that allowed them. She was relieved when 
 the speaker's voice went back to its tone of serious concern. 
 " And there, now — ^it the dear old soul didn't say to me, ' How 
 came this mill to be your grandfather's mill ?' !" 
 " And after that ?" 
 
 " Oh — then I saw plain ! But I thought — ^best say nothing I 
 So I got her off to bed, and she went nicely to sleep, and no more 
 trouble. But next morning early there she was out of bed, 
 hunting for the mill, and feeling round it on the mantelshelf." 
 
 " And you still thought it was a delusion ?" Gwen said this 
 behoving that it must excite suspicion of her object. But again 
 unconsciousness, perfectly placid and immovable, had the best 
 of it, where scepticism would have been alert in its defence. 
 
 " Well, I did hope next day, talking it over with Dr. Nash, 
 that it was just some confusion of hers with another mill, a bit 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 629 
 
 like ours ; and at her age, no wonder ! Because of what she said 
 herself." 
 
 " Said herself ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^touching the size of her mill being double. That is, 
 the model. But ah — dear me ! It was all gone next day, and 
 she talking quite wild like !" A note of fresh distress in her 
 voipe ended in a sigh. Then came a resinrection of hopefulness. 
 " But she has not gone back to it now for some while, and Dr. 
 Nash is hopeful it may pass ofE." 
 
 Gwen began to fear for her own sanity if this was to go on 
 long. To sit there, facing this calm, sweet assiu:ance of that 
 dear old woman's flesh and blood, her own daughter, thick- 
 panopUed in impenetrable ignorance; to hear her unfaltering 
 condemnation of what she must soon inevitably know to be true; 
 to note above all the tender solicitude and afiection her every 
 word was showing for this unknown mother — all this made 
 Gwen's brain reel. Unless some natural resolution of the discord 
 came. Heaven help her, and keep her from some sudden cruel open 
 operation on the heart of Truth, some unconvincing vivisection 
 of a soul ! For beUef in the incredible, however true, flies from 
 forced nurture in the hothouse of impatience. 
 
 Gwen felt for a new opportunity. " When you say that next 
 day she began to talk wildly. .... What sort of wildly ? Are 
 you sure it was so wild ?" 
 
 Mrs. Thrale lowered her voice to an intense assurance, a heart- 
 felt certainty. " Oh yes, my lady — yes indeed I There was no 
 doubt possible. When she was looMng at the mill model she 
 had got sight of two httle figures — ^just dolUes — ^that were meant 
 for mother, and her sister who died in Australia — ^my real mother, 
 you know, only I was but four years old — and the dear old soul 
 went quite mazed about it, saying that was herself and her sister 
 that died in England, and they were twins the same as mother 
 and Tier sister. And it was not till she said names Dr. Nash 
 found out how it was all made up of what we told little Davy 
 last year " 
 
 " And you made sure," said Gwen, interrupting, " that you 
 remembered telling little Davy all these things last year ?" It 
 took all Gwen's self-command to say this. She waa glad to 
 reach the last word. 
 
 Widow Thrale looked hurt, almost indignant. " Why, my 
 lady," said she, " we must have ! Else how could she have 
 known them ?" Do not censure her line of argument. Prob- 
 ably at this very hour it is being uttered by a hundred mouths. 
 
630 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 even, as — so says a claimant to knowledge — ^thirteen earthquakes 
 are always busy, somewhere in the world, at every moment of 
 the day. 
 
 Gwen could never give up the attempt, having got thus far. 
 But she could see that hints were useless. " I think I can teU 
 you," said she. And then she pitied the dawn of bewilderment 
 on the unconscious face before her, even while she tried to fortify 
 herself with the thought that what she had to tell was not bad 
 
 in itself — only a revelation of a lost past Well — ^why not 
 
 let it go? Dust and ashes, dead and done with ! . . . . But this 
 vacillation was short-lived. 
 
 Mrs. Thrale's bewilderment foimd words. " You can .... 
 tell me !" she said, not much above a whisper. How could she 
 hint at calling her ladyship's words in question, above her 
 breath ? 
 
 Gwen, very pale but collected, rose to the occasion. " I can 
 tell you what has come to my knowledge about Mrs. Prichard's 
 history. I cannot doubt its correctness." It crossed her mind 
 then that the telling of it would come easier if she ignored what 
 knowledge she had of the other twin sister. So far as Widow 
 Thrale knew, there was nothing outside what had come to light 
 through this incident. She went steadily on, not daring to look 
 at her hearer. " Mrs. Prichard was one of two sisters, whose 
 father owned a flour-mill near London. She married, and her 
 husband committed forgery and was transported. He was sent 
 to Van Diemens Land — ^the penal settlement." Gwen looked 
 up furtively. No sign on the unconscious face yet of anything 
 beyond mere perplexity ! She resumed after the slightest 
 pause: — " His young wife followed him out there " — she wanted 
 to say that a child of f ovu: was left behind, but her courage failed 
 her — " and lived with him. He was out of prison on what is 
 called ticket-of-leave." 
 
 She looked up again. Still no sign ! But then — consider ! 
 Ruth Thrale had always been kept in the dark about the convict. 
 Gwen could not know this, and was puzzled. Was there, after 
 all, some other solution to the problem ? Anyhow, there was 
 nothing for it now but to get on. " She hved with him many 
 years, and then, for some reason or other, we can't teU what, 
 he forged a letter from her father in England, saying that her 
 sister and her husband and her own child that she had left behind 
 were all drowned at sea." 
 
 At this point Gwen was quite taken aback by Mrs. Thrale 
 saying: — " But they were not drowned ?" It stirred up a wasps' 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 631 
 
 nest of perplexities. A moment later, she saw that it was a 
 question, not a statement. She herself had only said the letter 
 was forged, not that it contained a lie. How could she vouch 
 for the falsehood of the letter without claiming knowledge pre- 
 maturely, and rushing into her disclosure too quickly ? An 
 additional embarrassment was that, when again she looked up 
 at her hearer, she saw no sign of a clue caught — ^not even addi- 
 tional bewilderment; rather the reverse. 
 
 She could, however, reply to a question: — "Mrs. Prichard 
 believed that they were, and continued to believe it. My father, 
 whom I have told all about it — all that I know — is of opinion 
 that her husband managed to prevent her receiving letters from 
 her sister, and destroyed those that came, which would have 
 shown that she was still aUve." 
 
 " Oh, God be good to us I" cried Widow Thrale. "That such 
 wickedness should be \" 
 
 " He was a monster — a human devil ! And why he did it 
 Heaven only knows. My father can think of nothing but that 
 his wife wanted to return to her family, and he wanted her to 
 stay. Now, Widow Thrale, you will see why I want you to help 
 me. I think you will agree with me that it would be right that 
 the dear old lady should be imdeceived." 
 
 Mrs. Thrale fidgeted uneasily. " Your ladyship knows best," 
 she said. 
 
 " You think, perhaps," said Gwen, " that it would only give 
 her needless pain to Imow it now, when she has nothing to gain 
 by it ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^that is right." This was said as though Gwen's 
 question had worded a thought the speaker herself had found 
 hard to express. 
 
 " Has she nothing to gain by it ? I do so want you to think 
 
 over this quietly I wish you would sit down " Mrs. 
 
 Thrale did so. " Thank you ! — ^that is comfortabler. Now. 
 just consider this ! There is no evidence at all that the young 
 daughter whom she left behind with her sister is not still Uving, 
 though of course the chances are that the sister herself is dead. 
 This daughter may be What's that ?" 
 
 " I thought I heard her waking up. Will your ladyship 
 excuse me one moment ?...." She rose and went to the bed- 
 room. But the old lady was, it seemed, still sleeping soundly, 
 and she came back and resumed her seat. 
 
 Of all the clues Gwen had thrown out to arouse suspicion of 
 the truth,, and n^k? full announcement possible, not one had 
 
632 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 entered the unreceptive mind. Was this to go on until the 
 sleeper really waked ? Gwen felt, during that one moment 
 alone, how painfully this would add to the embarrassment, and 
 resolved on an act of desperation. 
 
 " I think," said she, speaking very slowly, and fighting hard 
 to hide the effort speech cost her. " I think I should Uke you 
 
 to see this horrible forged letter. I brought it on purpose 
 
 Oh — here it is ! . . . . By-the-by, I ought to have told you, 
 Prichard is not her real name." A look like disappointment 
 came on Widow Thrale's face. An alias is always an uncom- 
 fortable thing. Gwen interpreted this look rightly. " It's no 
 blame to her, you know," she said hastily. " Remember that her 
 proper name — ^that on the direction there — belonged to a convict 1 
 You or I might have done the same." 
 
 And then, as the eyes of the daughter turned unsuspicious to 
 her mother's name — forged by her father, to imitate the 
 handwriting of her grandfather — Gwen sat and waited as he 
 who has fired a train that leads to a mine awaits the crash 
 of the rifted rock and its pillar of dust and smoke against the 
 heavens. 
 
 " But my name was Daverill — Ruth Daverill !" Was the train 
 ill-laid then, that this woman should be able to sit quite still, 
 content to fix a puzzled look upon the wicked penmanship of 
 fifty years ago ?" 
 
 " And your mother's, Ruth Daverill ? What was hers ?" 
 
 " Maisie Daverill." She answered mechanically, with an 
 implication of " And why not ?" imspoken. She was still 
 dwelling on the direction, the first name in which was not over- 
 legible, no doubt owing to the accommodation due to the non- 
 erasure of the first syllable by the falsifier. Gwen saw this, and 
 said, quietly but distinctly: — " Thornton." 
 
 The end was gained, for better, for worse. Ruth Thrale gave 
 a sudden start and cry, uttering almost her mother's words at 
 first sight of the mill : — " What can this be ? What can this be ? 
 Tell me, oh, tell me !" 
 
 Gwen, hard put to it during suspense, now cool and self- 
 possessed at the first gunshot, rose and stood by the panic 
 stricken woman. Nothing could soften the shock of her amaze- 
 ment now. Pull her through ! — that was the only chance. And 
 the sooner she knew the whole now, the better ! 
 
 It might have been cruelty to a bad end that made such 
 beauty so pale and resolute as Gwen's, as she said without 
 faltering: — "The name is your mother's name — Mrs. Thornton 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 633 
 
 Daverill. Your father's name was Thornton. Now open the 
 letter and read !" 
 
 " Oh — my lady — ^it makes me afraid ! . . . . What can it 
 be?" 
 
 " Open the letter and read !" But Ruth Thrale could not; her 
 hand was too tremulous; her heart was beating too fast. Gwen 
 took the letter from her, quietly, firmly ; opened it before her eyes ; 
 stood by her, pointing to the words. " Now read \" — she said. 
 
 And then Ruth Thrale read as a child reads a lesson: — " My 
 .... dear .... daughter .... Maisie . . . ." and a few words 
 more, her voice shaking badly, then suddenly stopped. " But 
 my mother's name was Maisie," she said. She had wavered on 
 some false scent caused by the married name. 
 
 " Read on !" said Gwen remorselessly. Social relation said 
 that her ladyship miist be obeyed first; madness fought against 
 after. Ruth Thrale read on, for the moment quite mechanically. 
 The story of the shipwreck did not seem to assume its meaning. 
 She read on, trembling, clinging to the hand that Gwen had given 
 her to hold. 
 
 Suddenly came an exclamation — ^a cry. " But what is this 
 about Mrs. Prichard ? This is not Mrs. Prichard. Why is 
 mother's old name in this letter ?" She was pointing to the 
 word Cropredy, Phoebe's first married name ; a name staggering 
 in the force of its identity. She had not yet seen the signature. 
 
 Gwen tmned the page and pointed to it: — " Isaac Runciman," 
 clear and unmistakable. Incisiveness was a duty now. Said 
 she, deliberately: — " Why is this forged letter signed with your 
 grandfather's name ?" A pause, with only a sort of puzzled 
 moan in answer. " I will tell you, and you will have to hear it. 
 Because it was forged by your father, fifty years ago." Again 
 a pause ; not so much as a moan to break the silence ! Gwen made 
 her voice even clearer, even more deliberate, to say: — " Because 
 he forged it to deceive your mother, and it deceived her, and she 
 believed you dead. For years she believed you and her sister 
 d«ad. And when she returned to England . . . ." 
 
 She was interrupted by a poor dumbf oundered effort at speech, 
 more seen in the face she was intently watching than heard. 
 She waited for it, and it came at last, in gasps : — " But it is to 
 Mrs. Prichard — ^the letter — Mrs. Prichard's letter — oh, why ? — 
 oh, why ?...." And Ruth Thrale caught at her head with her 
 hands, as though she felt it near to bmrsting. 
 
 The surgeon's knife is most merciful when most resolutely used. 
 " Because old Mrs. Prichard is your mother," said Gwen, all 
 
634 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 her heart so given to the task before her that she quite forgot, 
 in a sense, her ovm existence. " Because she is your mother, 
 whom you have always thought dead, and who has always thought 
 you dead. Because she is your mother, who has been living 
 here in England — oh, for so many years past ! — and never found 
 you out !" 
 
 Ruth Thrale's hands fell helpless in her lap, and she sat on, 
 dumb, looking straight in front of her. Gwen would have been 
 frightened at her look, but she caught sight of a tear running 
 down her face, and felt that this was, for the moment, the best 
 that might be. That tear reassured her. She might safely leave 
 the convulsion that had caused it to subside. If only the sleeper 
 in the next room would remain asleep a little longer ! 
 
 She did right to be silent and wait. Presently the two motion- 
 less hands began moving uneasily; and, surely, those were sighs, 
 long drawn out ? That had the sound of tension relieved. 
 Then Ruth Thrale turned her eyes fuU on the beautiful face 
 that was watching hers so anxiously, and spoke suddenly. 
 
 " I must go to her at once." 
 
 " But think ! — ^is it well to do so ? She knows nothing." 
 
 " My lady — ^is there need she should ? Nor I cannot tell her 
 now, for I barely know, myself. But I want her — oh, I want 
 her ! Oh, all these cruel years ! Poor Mrs. Prichard ! But 
 who will tell mother ?" She was stopped by a new bewilder- 
 ment, perhaps a worse one. 
 
 " / will tell mother." Gwen took the task upon herself, reck- 
 lessly. Well ! — ^it had to be gone through with, by someone. 
 And she would do anything to spare this poor mother and 
 daughter. She would tell Granny Marrable ! She did, however, 
 hope that Dr. Nash had broken the ice for her. 
 
 A sound came from the other room. The old lady had 
 awaked and was moving. Mrs. Thrale said in a frightened 
 whisper: — " She will come in here. She always does. She likes 
 to move about a little by herself. But she is soon tired." 
 
 Said Gwen: — "Will she come in here? Let me see her 
 alone ! Do ! It will only be for a few minutes. Run in next 
 door, and leave me to talk to her. I have a reason for asking 
 you." She heard the bedroom door open, beyond the passage. 
 
 " When shall I come back, my lady ?" This reluctance to go 
 seemed passing strange to Gwen. But it yielded to persuasion, 
 or to feudal inheritance. Gwen watched her vanish slowly into 
 EUzabeth-next-door's; and then, perceiving that the mare had 
 sighted the transaction, and was bearing down towards her, she 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 635 
 
 delayed a moment to say: — "Not yet, Tom! Wait !"— and 
 returned into the house. 
 
 " My dear, God has been good to let you come. Oh, how I 
 have prayed to see your face again, and hear your dear voice !" 
 Thus old Mrs. Picture, crying with joy. She could not cling dose 
 enough to that beautiful hand, nor kiss it quite to her heart's 
 content. 
 
 Gwen left her in possession of it. " But, dear Mrs. Picture/' 
 she said, " I thought your letter said you were so comfortable, 
 and that Mrs. Thrale was so kind ?" 
 
 " What, my Ruth ! — ^that is how I've got to call her — my Ruth 
 is more than kind. No daughter could be kinder to a mother. 
 You know — I told you — my child was Ruth. Long ago — ^long, 
 long ago ! She was asleep when I kissed her. I can feel it still." 
 Gwen fancied her speech sounded wandering, as she sat down in 
 Granny Marrable's vacant chair. 
 
 This story often feels that the pen that writes it must resent 
 the improbabilities it is called on to chronicle. That old Maisie 
 should call her own child by the name she gave her, and think 
 her someone else ! 
 
 " Tell me, dear, what it was — all about it !" Thus Gwen, 
 getting the old lady comfortably settled, and finding a footstool 
 for herself, as in Francis Quarles at The Towers. She had made 
 up her mind to tell all if she possibly could. But it had to be all 
 or nothing. It would be better not to speak tUl she saw her way. 
 Let Mrs. Picture tell her own tale first ! 
 
 " I want to tell you." She possessed herself again of the 
 precious hand, surrendered to assist in resettling a strayed head- 
 cushion. " Only, tell me first — did you know .... ?" — She 
 paused and dropped her voice — " .... Did you know that they 
 thought me ....?" 
 
 " Thought you what ?" 
 
 " Did you know that they thought me mad ?" 
 
 " They were wrong if they did. But Mrs. Thrale does not think 
 you mad now. I know she does not." 
 
 " Oh, I am glad." Gwen's white and strained look then caught 
 her attention, and she paused for reassurance. It was nothing, 
 Gwen was tired. It was the jolting of a quick drive, and so on. 
 Mrs. Prichard got back to her topic. " They did think me mad, 
 though. Do you know, my dear " — she dropped her voice almost 
 to a whisper — " I went near to thinking myself mad. It was so 
 strange ! It was the mill-model. I wish she had let me see it 
 
636 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 again. That might have set it all to rights. But thinking like 
 she did, maybe she was in the right. For see what it is when the 
 head goes wrong ! I was caUing to mind, all next day, when I 
 fomid out what they thought . . . ." 
 
 " But they did not tell you they thought you mad. How did 
 you know ?" 
 
 " It came out by little things — odd talk at times It 
 
 got in the air, and then I saw the word on their Hps I 
 
 never heard it, you know What was I saying ?" 
 
 " You were calling something to mind, all next day, you said. 
 What was that ?" 
 
 " A man my husband would talk about, in Macquarie Gaol, 
 whose head would be aU right so long as no cat came anigh him. 
 So the others would find a cat to start him off. Only my Ruth 
 thought to take away what upset me. 'Tis the same thing, turned 
 about like." 
 
 Gwen allowed the illustration. " But why did Mrs. Thrale 
 think you mad, over the mill-model ?" 
 
 " My dear, because to her I must have seemed mad, to say that 
 was my father's mill, and not her grandfather's." 
 
 Gwen kept a lock on her tongue. How easy to have said: — 
 " Your father was her grandfather \" She said nothing. 
 
 " And yet, you know, how could I be off the thought it was so, 
 with it there before me, seeming like it did ? I do assure you, 
 there it seemed to be — ^the very mill ! There was my father, 
 only small, and not much to know him by, smoking. And there 
 was our man, Muggeridge, that saw to the waggon. And there 
 was Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, our horses. And there was the great 
 wheel the water shot below, to turn it, and the still water above 
 where Phoebe saw the heron, and called me — ^but it was gone !" 
 Tears were filling the old eyes, as the old lips recalled that long- 
 forgotten past. Then, as she went on, her voice broke to a sob, 
 and failed of utterance. But it came. " And there — and there — 
 were I and my darling, my Phcebe, that died in the cruel sea ! 
 Oh, my dear — ^that I might have seen her once again ! But once 
 again !...." She stopped to recover calm speech ; and did it, 
 bravely. " It was all in the seeming of it, my dear, but all the 
 same hard for me to imderstand. Very hke, my dear Ruth hera 
 was right and wise to keep it away from me. It might have set 
 me off again. I'm not what I was, and things get on my mind. 
 .... There now — my dear. See how I've made you cry !" 
 
 Gwen felt that this could not go on much longer without pro- 
 ducing some premature outbreak of her overtaxed patience; 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 637 
 
 but she could sit still and say nothing; ior a little time yet, 
 certainly. " I'm not crying, dear Mrs. Picture," said she. " It 
 was riding against the cold wind. Go on and tell me more." 
 Then a thought occurred to her — a means to an end. " Tell me 
 about your father. You have never told me about him. When 
 did he die ?" 
 
 " My father ? That I could not tell you, my dear, for certain. 
 For no letter reached me when he died, nor yet any letter since 
 his own, that told me of Phoebe's death. Oh, but it is a place 
 for letters to go astray ! Why, before they gave my husband 
 charge over the posts, and made him responsible, the carrier 
 would leave letters for the farm on a tree-stump two miles away, 
 and we were bound to send for them there — ^no other way ! 
 And there was none I knew to write to, for news, when Phoebe 
 was gone, and our Uttle Ruth, and Uncle Nick. Such an odd 
 name he had. I never told it you. Nicholas Cropredy." 
 
 " I knew it," said Gwen heedlessly. Then, to recover her 
 foothold: — "Somehow or other! You must have told it me. 
 Else how could I have known." 
 
 " I must have No, I never knew when my father died. 
 
 But I should have known. For I stood by his grave when I 
 came back. Such a many years ago now — even that ! But I 
 
 read it wrong. 'May, 1808 ' How did I know it was 
 
 wrong, what I read ? Because I looked at his own letter, telling 
 me of the wreck, and it was that very year — ^but June, not May. 
 And my son was with me then, and he looked at the letter, too, 
 and said it must have been 1818 — eighteen, not eight." 
 
 Gwen saw the way of this. Phoebe's letter, effaced to make 
 way for the forgery, was to announce Isaac Rimciman's death, 
 and was probably written during the first week of June, and 
 posted even later. The English postmark showed two figures 
 for the date; indistinct, as a postmark usually is. Could she 
 utilise this date in any way to sow the seeds of doubt of the 
 authenticity of the letter ? She saw no way open. The letter 
 was a thing familiar to Mrs. Prichard, but a sudden thimderbolt 
 to Ruth Thrale. Had Gwen been in possession of Daverill's 
 letter announcing Maisie's own death, she might have shown it 
 to her. But could such old eyes have read it, or would she have 
 understood it ? 
 
 No — ^it was impossible to do anything but speak. The next 
 opportunity must be seized, for talk seemed only to erect new 
 obstacles to action. The perplexities close at hand, there in 
 Strides Cottage, were the things to dwell on. Better go back 
 
638 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to them ! " But Mrs. Thrale did not think you mad only because 
 you thought that about the mill," Gwen said this to coax the 
 conversation back. 
 
 " No, my dear ! I think, for all I found to say that night, 
 she might have thought it no more than a touch of fever. And 
 little wonder, too, for her to hear me doubt her grandfather's 
 mill being his own. But what put me past was to see how the 
 bare truth I told of my father's name, and my sister's, and the 
 name of the mill my father would say was older than the church- 
 tower itseK — ^just that and no more — to make her" — here 
 the old lady lowered her voice, and glanced round as though to 
 be sure they were alone — " to make her turn and run from 
 me, quite in a maze, as though I was a ghost to frighten her, 
 that was what unsettled me !" She fixed her eyes on Gwen, 
 and her hands were restless with her distressing eagerness to get 
 some clue to a solution of her perplexity. 
 
 Gwen could say nothing, short of everything. She simply 
 dared not try to tell the whole truth, with a rush, to a hearer 
 so frail and delicate. It seemed that any shock must kiU. The 
 musical voice went on, its appealing tone becoming harder and 
 harder for her hearer to bear. " Why — oh why — ^when I was 
 telling just the truth, that my father's name was Isaac Rtmci- 
 man, and my sister was Phoebe, and our mill was Darenth Mill, 
 why should she not have heard me through to the end, to make 
 it all clear ? Indeed, my dear, she put me on thinkiag I was 
 not sa3dng the words I thought, and I was aU awake and clear 
 the whole time. Was I not ?" 
 
 Gwen's response : — " I will ask her what it was," contained, 
 as a temporary palliative, as much falsehood as she dared to 
 use ; just to soothe back the tears that were beginning to get the 
 better of speech. She felt vaguely about for a straw to catch 
 at — something that might soften the revelation that had to come. 
 " Did you tell her yoiu? sister was Phoebe ?" 
 
 " I told her Phoebe — only Phoebe. I never said her married 
 name." 
 
 " Did you tell her you and your sister were twins ?" 
 
 " Oh yes — ^I told her that. And I think she understood. But 
 she did not say." 
 
 " I think, dear Mrs. Picture, I can tell you why she was 
 astonished. It was because her mother had a twin 
 sister." 
 
 The old lady's pathetic look of perplexity remained vmchanged. 
 " Was that enough ?" she said. The mere coincidence of the 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 639 
 
 twinship did not seem to her to have warranted the effect it 
 produced. 
 
 " I am not sure that it was not. There are other things. 
 Did she ever tell you her mother's story ? I suppose she told 
 you she is only her mother by adoption ? You know what I 
 mean ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, perfectly ! No — Ruth has not told me that. We 
 have not talked much of old Mrs. Marrable, but I shall see her 
 before I go back to Sapps Court. Shall I not ? My Davy's 
 other Granny in the country \" It did her good to think and 
 speak of Dave. 
 
 " You shall go back to Davy," said Gwen. " Or Davy shall 
 come to you. You may like to stay on longer with Mrs. Thrale." 
 
 " Oh, indeed I should .... if only .... if only . . . ." 
 
 " If only she hadn't thought you had delusions ! — ^isn't that 
 it ? . . . . Well, let me go on and tell you some more about her 
 mother — or aunt, really. It is quite true that she was one of 
 twin sisters, and the sister married and went abroad." 
 
 Mrs. Prichard was immensely relieved — almost laughed. 
 " There now ! — if she had told me that, instead of running away 
 with ideas ! We would have found it aU out, by now." 
 
 Gwen felt quite despairing. She had actually lost ground. 
 Was it conceivable that the whole tale should become known to 
 Mrs. Prichard — or to both sisters, for that matter — and be dis- 
 credited on its merits, with applause for its achievements in 
 coincidence ? It looked like it ! Despair bred an idea in her 
 mind; a mad one, perhaps, a stagey one certainly. How would 
 it be to tell Maisie Phoebe's story, seen from Phoebe's point of 
 view ? 
 
 Whenever an exciting time comes back to us in after-life, the 
 incident most vividly revived is usually one of its lesser ones. 
 Years after, when Gwen's thoughts went back to this trying 
 hour at Strides Cottage, this moment would outstep its impor- 
 tance by reminding her how, in spite of the pressure and com- 
 plexity of her embarrassment, an absurd memory would intrude 
 itself of an operatic tenor singing to the soprano the story of 
 how she was changed at birth, and so forth, the diva Ustening 
 operatically the while. It went so far with her now, for all this 
 tension, as to make a comment waver about her innermost 
 thought, concerning the strange susceptibiUty of that soprano 
 to conAaction on insufficient evidence. Then she felt a fear that 
 her own power of serious effort might be waning, and she con- 
 centrated again on her problem. But no solution presented 
 
 41 
 
640 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 itself better than the stagey one. Is the stage right, after 
 aU? 
 
 " The sister married and went abroad. Her husband was a 
 bad man, whom she had married against the consent of her 
 family." Gwen looked to see i£ these words had had any effect. 
 But nothing came of them. She continued: — "Poor girl ! her 
 head was turned, I suppose." 
 
 " My dear — 'twas the like case with me ! 'Tis not for me, at 
 least, to sit in judgment." 
 
 " No, dear Mrs. Picture, nor any of us. But if she had been 
 as bad as the worst, she could hardly have deserved what came 
 about. I told you she had married a bad man, and I am going 
 to tell you how bad he was." It was as well that Gwen should 
 rouse her hearer's attention by a sure and effective expedient, 
 for it was flagging slightly. Dave's other Granny's sister's mis- 
 adventures seemed to have so little to do with the recent mystery 
 of the null-model. But a genuine bad man enthrals us all. 
 
 " What did he do ?" said his unconscious widow. 
 
 " He forged a letter to his own wife, saying that her sister was 
 dead, and she beUeved it." 
 
 " But did her sister never write, to say she was aUve ?" 
 
 " Old Mrs. Marrable ? No — ^because she received a letter at 
 the same time saying that her sister .... You see which I 
 mean ?...." 
 
 " Oh yes — the bad man's wife, who was abroad." 
 
 " . . . . Was also dead. Do you think you see how it was ? 
 He told each sister the other was dead." 
 
 " Oh, I see that ! But did they both believe it ?" 
 
 " Both believed it." 
 
 " Then, did Mrs. Marrable's sister die without knowing ?" 
 
 Gwen had it on her lips to say: — " She is not dead," before 
 she had had time to foresee the consequences. She had almost 
 said it when an apprehension struck across her speech and cut 
 it short. How could she account to Mrs. Prichard for this 
 knowledge of Mrs. Marrable's sister without narrowing the issue 
 to the simple question: — "Who and where is she?" And if 
 those grave old eyes, at rest now that the topic had become so 
 impersonal to them, were fixed upon her waiting for the answer, 
 how could she find it in her heart to make the only answer pos- 
 sible, futile fiction apart : — " It is you I am speaking of — you 
 are Mrs. Marrable's sister, and each has falsely thought the other 
 dead for a lifetime "? All her elaborate preparation had ended 
 in an impasse, blocked by a dead wall whose removal was only 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 641 
 
 possible to the bluntest declaration of the truth, almost more 
 cruel now than it would have been before this factitious abate- 
 ment of the agitation in which Gwen had fovmd her. 
 
 And then the long tension that had kept Gwen on the rack, 
 more or less, since the revelation of the letter, keenly in this last 
 hour or so, began to tell upon her, and her soul came through 
 into her words. " Oh no — oh no ! Mrs. Marrable's sister did not 
 die without knowing — at least, I mean .... I mean she has not 
 
 died She may . . . ." She was stopped by the danger of 
 
 inexplicable tears, in time as she thought. 
 
 But old Mrs. Prichard, always on the alert for her Guardian 
 Angel, caught the sUght modulation of her voice, and was alive 
 with ready sympathy. " Why — oh why — ^why this ?...." she 
 began, wanting to say: — " Why such concern on Mrs. Marrable's 
 account ?" and finding herself at fault for words, came to a dead 
 stop. 
 
 " You mean, why should / fret because of Mrs. Marrable's 
 sister ? Is it not that 1" 
 
 " Ye-es. I think ... I think that is what I meant to say." 
 
 Gwen nerved herself for a great effort She took both the 
 old hands in hers, and all her beauty was in the eyes that looked 
 up at the old face, as she said: — " I will tell you. It is because 
 I — / — have to tell her to-day . . . that she is . . . that she is . . . 
 Mrs. Marrable's sister !" The last words might have been a cry 
 for pity. 
 
 Could old Maisie fail to catch a gleam of the truth ? She did. 
 She only saw that her sweet Guardian Angel was in trouble, and 
 thought to herself: — " Can I not help her ?" She immediately 
 said, quite quietly and clearly: — " My dear-^my dear ! But it 
 will give you such pain. Why not let me tell her ? I am old, 
 and my time is at hand. It would be nothing to me. Eor 
 see what trouble I have had myself. And I could say to 
 her " 
 
 " What could you say to her 2" Desperation was in Gwen's 
 voice. How could this awful barrier be passed ? Could it be 
 past at all — ever ? 
 
 " I could tell her of all the trouble of my own life, long ago. 
 I do think, if I told her and said, ' See — ^it might have been me,' 
 that might make it easy." The suggestion was based on a per- 
 fectly reasonable idea. Gwen felt that her own task would have 
 been more achievable had her own record been one of sorrow and 
 defeat. Old Maisie took her silence — which was helplessness 
 against new difficulties — ^for an encouragement to her proposal, 
 
642 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 and continued: — " Why, my dear, look at it this way 1 If my 
 dear sister Phoebe had Uved, anyone bad enough out there in 
 the Colony, might have -written a lie that I was dead, and who 
 would have known ? . . . . But, my dear, you are ill ? You are 
 shaking." 
 
 It was a climax. The perfect serenity, the absolute uncon- 
 sciousness, of the speaker had told the tale of Gwen's failure 
 more plainly than any previous rebuff. And here was the old 
 lady trying to get up from her chair to summon Widow Thrale ! 
 Gwen detained her gently; as, having risen from the stool at her 
 feet, she kneeled beside her. 
 
 " No, no — I am not ill I will tell you directly." 
 
 Moments passed that, to Gwen's impatience for speech she 
 could neither frame nor utter, might have been hours. Old 
 Maisie's growing wonderment was bringing back the look she 
 had had over that mill-model. But she said nothing. 
 
 Gwen's voice came at last, audibly to herself, scarcely more. 
 " I want you — I want you to tell me something " 
 
 " What, my dear ? . , . , Oh — to tell you something ! Yes 
 —what is it ?" 
 
 Was the moment at hand, at last ? Gwen managed to raise 
 her voice. " I want you to tell me this: — ^Has Mrs. Thrale ever 
 told you her mother's name — ^I mean her aunt's — Granny Mar- 
 rable's ?" 
 
 " Her christened name ? — her own name ?" 
 
 " Yes !" 
 
 " No !" 
 
 " ShaU I tell it you ?" 
 
 " Why not ? . . . . Oh, I am frightened to see you so white. 
 My dear !" 
 
 " Listen, dear Mrs. Picture, and try to understand. Mrs. 
 Thrale's aunt's name is Phoebe." 
 
 " Is Phoebe I" 
 
 " Is Phoebe." Gwen repeated it again, looking fixedly at the 
 old face, now rapidly resuming its former utter bewilderment. 
 
 "Is ... . Phoebe !" Old Maisie sat on, after echoing back 
 the word, and Gwen left her to the mercy of its suggestion. She 
 had done her best, and could do no more. 
 
 She saw that some new thought was at work. But it had to 
 plough its way through stony ground. Give it time ! 
 
 Watching her intently, she could see the critical moment 
 when the new light broke. A moment later the hand she held 
 clutched at hers beyond its strength, and its owner's voice was 
 
GWEN FACES THE MUSIC 643 
 
 forcing its way through gasps. " But . . . but . . . but . . . Widow 
 Thrale's name is Ruih I" 
 
 " Is Ruth." Yes — leave the fact there, and wait ! That was 
 Gwen's decision. 
 
 A moment later what she waited for had come. Old Maisie 
 started, crying out aloud: — " Oh, what is this — ^what is it ?" as 
 she had done when she first saw the mill-model. Then on a 
 sudden a paroxysm seized on the frail body, so terrifying to 
 Gwen that her heart fairly stood still to see it. 
 
 It did not kill. It seemed to pass, and leave a chance for speech. 
 But not just yet. Only a long-drawn breath or two, ending 
 always in a moan ! 
 
 Then, with a sudden vehemence: — " Who was it — ^who was it 
 — ^that forged the letter that came — that came, to my hvsband and 
 me ?" Her voice rose to a shriek under the sting of that terrible 
 new knowledge. But she had missed a main point in Gwen's 
 tale. Her mind had received the forgery, but not its authorship. 
 
 Gwen saw nothing to wonder at in this. The thing was done, 
 and that was enough. " It was your husband himself," said 
 she, and would have gone on to ask forgiveness for her own 
 half -distortion of the facts, and told how she came to the know- 
 ledge. But the look on her hearer's face showed her that this 
 must be told later, if indeed it were ever told at all. She was 
 but just in time to prevent old Maisie falling forward from her 
 chair in a dead swoon. She could not leave her, and called 
 aloud for help. 
 
 She did not need to call twice. For Widow Thrale, unable to 
 keep out of hearing through an interview so much longer than 
 her anticipation of it, had come into the house from the back, 
 and was already in the passage; had, indeed, been waiting in 
 feverish anxiety for leave to enter. 
 
 " Take her — ^take her !" cried Gwen. " No — ^never mind 
 me !" And then she saw, almost as in a dream, how the 
 daughter's strong arms clasped her mother, and raising the 
 slight unconscious figure, that lay as if dead, bore it away 
 towards the door. " Yes," said she, " that is right ! Lay her 
 on the bed !" 
 
 What followed she scarcely knew, except that she caught at 
 a chair to save herself from falling. For a reaction came upon 
 her with the knowledge that her task was done, and she felt 
 dizzy and sick. Probably she was, for a minute or more, prac- 
 ticaUy unconscious; then recovered herself; and, though feeling 
 very insecure on her feet, followed those two strange victims of 
 
644 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 a sin half a century old. Not quite without a sense of self- 
 reproach for weakness; for see how bravely the daughter was 
 bearing herself, and how immeasurably worse it was for her ! 
 
 She could not but falter between the doors, still standing 
 open. How could she dare to enter the room where she might 
 find the mother dead ? That was her fear. And a more skilful, 
 a gentler revelation, might have left her a few years with the 
 other little twin of the iniil-model, still perhaps with a decade of 
 life to come. 
 
 She heard the undertones of the daughter's voice, using the 
 name of mother. What was she saying ? 
 
 " My mother — my mother — ^my mother !" And then, with a 
 strange acceptance of the name in another sense: — " But when 
 will mother know ?" 
 
 Gwen entered noiselessly, and stood by the bedside. She 
 began to speak, but shrank from her last word: — " She is 
 not . . . ?" 
 
 Widow Thrale looked up from the inanimate form she was 
 clasping so closely in her arms, to say, quite firmly: — " No, she 
 is not dead." Then back again, repeating the words : — " My 
 mother \" as though they were to be the first the unconscious 
 ears should hear on their revival. Then once more to Gwen, 
 as in discharge of a duty omitted: — " God bless you, my lady, 
 for your goodness to us I" 
 
 Gwen's irresistible vice of anticlimax nearly made her say: — 
 " Oh bother \" It was stopped by a sound she thought she 
 heard. " Is she not speaking ?" she said. 
 
 Both listened, and Widow Thrale heard, being the nearer. 
 " Who called you her mother ?" she repeated. " / did." And 
 then Gwen said, clearly and fearlessly: — "Your daughter 
 Ruth !" 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 645 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 SIB CROPTON FCTLLER's LUNCH. LAZAEtTs's FAMILY. HOW HIS 
 GEEAT-GEAiraY CATECHIZED A TOOTHLESS HUMAN' PUPPY 
 THTRTEBN MONTHS OLD. HOW DE. NASH DEAGGED MES. 
 PBICHARD IN. A VEEY TAKING OLD PEESON, BUT QUITE 
 CRACKED. god's MEECY IN LEAVING US OUR NATURAL 
 FACULTIES. THAT WAS A SEVERE CASE AMONG THE TOMBS. 
 HOW DE. NASH HAD ALL THE MODEL STORY OUT AGAIN, AND 
 ABOUT MUGGERIDGE's DON GIOVANITIES. MRS. PRICHARD 
 HAD KNOWN MAISIB, CLEARLY. EVERYTHING EXPLAINED. 
 THE FUTILITY OF HYPOTHESES. HOW A MEMORY OF HER 
 MADMAN-CONVICT MADE OLD PHCEBE FEEL BEWITCHED. OBSTI- 
 NATE PATERNITY. THE MEASUREMENT OF THAT MODEL. 
 WHY ARM-MEASUREMENT ? KID's JARGON. MR. BARLOW. 
 
 Dave's letter delivered, a sort of faint, vinegar. 
 
 DR. NASH pursued AND BROUGHT BACK. HOW OLD PHCEBE 
 CAME TO KNOW THE TEUTH THEOUGH A CHILD 's DIRECT SPEECH. 
 HER PRESENCE OF MIND. AND HOW SHE WENT STEAIGHT 
 HOME, TO LOOK BACK ON FIFTY LOST YEAE8 
 
 The madman who had claimed as his mother the old woman at 
 Strides Cottage, whom Granny Marrable had not yet seen, had 
 certainly no statutory powers to impose an oath. But this did 
 not stand in the way of her keeping hers, reHgiously. That is to 
 say, she kept her tongue silent on every point that she could 
 reasonably suppose to call for secrecy, whether from his point 
 of view or this old Mrs. Prichard's. 
 
 She felt at liberty to repeat what she remembered of his 
 shocking ravings about his prison life, and to dwell on the fact 
 that he appeared to have mistaken her for his mother. But 
 this could be told without connecting him with any person in 
 or near the village. He was a returned convict who had not 
 seen his mother for twenty years, and meeting an old woman 
 who closely resembled her, or his idea of what she must have 
 become, had made a decisive mistake in identity. 
 
 As to the name he had written down for her, she simply 
 shrank from it; and destroyed it promptly, as soon as she col- 
 lected her faculties after the shock it gave her. She framed a 
 satisfactory theory to account for it, out of materials collected 
 by foraging among her memories of fifty years ago. It turned 
 
646 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 on these facts: — ^That the name Ralph Thornton Daverill was 
 the baptismal name of her sister's little boy that died in Eng- 
 land, and that Maisie had repeated to her what her husband 
 had said after the child's death, that the name would do over 
 again if ever she had another son; but had added that she herself 
 would never consent to its adoption. Granny Marrable was sure 
 on both these points, but so imcertain about what she had heard 
 of the christenings of her nephews bom in Van Diemen's Land, 
 that she had no scruple in deciding that her sister had dissuaded 
 her brother-in-law from his intention. For this madman was 
 clearly not Maisie's son, if Mrs. Prichard was his mother. But 
 what would be more natural and probable than that if Daverill 
 married again, he should make use of the name a second time ? 
 He might have married again more than once, for anything 
 Granny Marrable knew. So might his widow — might have 
 married a man named Prichard. Why not ? Those were con- 
 siderations she need not weigh or speculate about. 
 
 Nevertheless, though she had destroyed the signed name, it 
 was a cobweb in her memory she would have gladly brushed 
 away altogether. How she would have liked to tell the whole 
 to Ruth, when — as once or twice happened — she walked over from 
 Chorlton to get a report of progress, leaving old Mrs. Prichard 
 in charge of that loyal dog, supported by Elizabeth-next-door, 
 if need were. But she was sworn to silence on matters she dared 
 not provoke inquiry about. So her tale of her meeting with 
 the convict was minimised. 
 
 On the other hand, Ruth was scrupulously uncommunicative 
 of everything connected with Mrs. Prichard's supposed delusions. 
 So was Dr. Nash, on the one or two occasions when he looked in 
 at Costrell's Farm, prophylactically. Where was the use of up- 
 setting Juno Lucina by telling her that her daughter had taken 
 a lunatic inmate ? All the circumstances considered, he would 
 have much preferred that Mrs. Maisie's mother should take 
 charge of her. But this young woman liked to have her own 
 way. 
 
 The doctor was almost sorry, after Gwen drove away, that 
 he had not pointed out what an unpropitious moment it was for 
 an upsetting revelation, and suggested postponement. It was 
 too late to do anything, by the time he thought of it. He 
 shrugged his shoulders about it, and perceived that what was 
 done couldn't be undone. Then he drove as fast as he could 
 to Sir Cropton Fuller, who asked him to stay to lunch. This 
 meant a long imemployed delay, but be compromised. He 
 
DE. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 647 
 
 would see another patient, and return to lunch, after which he 
 would go to Costrell's Farm. It was only a short drive from the 
 Manor House, but if he had gone there direct, he knew the mid- 
 day meal at the Farm would cut across what might prove a long 
 conversation with Granny Marrable. Suppose circumstances 
 should favour a full communication of the extraordinary dis- 
 closure he had it in his power to make to her, he would 
 not feel any hesitation about making it In fact, he hoped 
 that might prove the natural order of events, although 
 he waa quite prepared to act on Lady Gwendolen's suggestion 
 that he should merely lay the train, not fire it, it that should 
 prove possible. But, said he to himself, that will be neither 
 fish nor flesh. Mysterious hints — so ran his reflections — ^will 
 only terrify the old body out of her seven senses and gain no 
 end. Get the job overl — ^that was the sacramental word. It 
 took him all the period of his drive to Sir Cropton's, and aU the 
 blank bars betwixt prescription and prescription, to get — as it 
 were — ^to this phrase in the music. 
 
 But by the time Sir Cropton had given him lunch, it had 
 become the dominant theme of his reflections. Get the job 
 done — ^if possible ! More especially because he did not want 
 Juno Lucina's nerves to be upset at a critical moment, and that 
 was exactly what might happen if the revelation were delayed 
 too long. If she were told now, and disabled by the shock, there 
 would at least be time to make sure of a capable substitute. 
 
 However, he must be guided by his prognosis on arriving at 
 Costrell's. It is just possible, too, that the doctor was alive to 
 the interest of the case on its own account, and not being him- 
 seK personally involved, felt a sort of scientific curiosity in the 
 issue — ^What would the old lady say or do, in face of such an 
 extraordinary revelation ? What were the feelings of the family 
 of Lazarus when he was raised from the tomb ? Or rather, what 
 would they have been, had he been dead half a century ? 
 
 The males at the Farm would be away at this time of day; 
 that was satisfactory He wanted to talk to Granny Marrable 
 alone, if possible. He could easily get his patient out of the 
 way — ^that was a trifle. But it would be a bore to have that 
 young brother hanging round. In that case he would have to 
 negotiate a private conversation with Juno Lucina, as such, and 
 to use the opportunity professional mystery would give. 
 
 However, events smiled upon his purpose. Only Mrs. Maisie, 
 a perfect image of roseate health, was there alone with Granny; 
 the two of them appreciating last year's output, unconscious in 
 
648 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 his cradle, enjoying the fourteenth month of his career in this 
 world, having postponed teething almost beyond precedent. 
 His young mother derided her doctor's advice to go and lie 
 down and rest, but ultimately gave way to it, backed as it was 
 by public opinion. 
 
 " We seem to be going on very well, Mrs. Marrable," said the 
 doctor, when this end was achieved. The doctor shared a first 
 person plural with each of his patients. " And yourself ? 
 You're not looking amiss." 
 
 " No, thank God ! And for all that I be eighty-one this 
 Christmas, if I live to see the New Year in, I might be twenty- 
 eight." She then very absurdly referred to the baby, who had 
 waked up and made his presence felt, as to whether this was, 
 or was not, an exaggeration, suggesting that he had roused 
 himself to confirm it. Did he, she asked, want to say his great- 
 Granny was as young as the best, and was he a blessed little 
 cherub ? She accommodated her pronunciation to the powers 
 of imderstanding she imputed to him, calling him, e.g., a bessed 
 ickle chezub. He seemed impatient of personalities; but ac- 
 cepted, as a pipe of peace, an elastic tube that yielded milk. 
 Whereupon Granny Marrable made no more attempts to father 
 opinions on him. " Indeed, doctor," said she, speaking English 
 again, " I wish every soul over fifty felt as young as I do. We 
 shouldn't hear such a many complaints." 
 
 " Very bad for the profession, Mrs. Marrable ! This isn't a good 
 part of the world for my trade, as it is, and if everyone was like 
 you, I should have to put the shutters up. Well ! — ^you see how 
 it is ? Look at Miss Grahame — Sister Nora ! Goes up to 
 London the picture of health, and gets fever ! Old lady from 
 some nasty unwholesome comer by Tottenham Court Road 
 comes down to Chorlton, and gets younger every day !" 
 
 "I was going to ask about Sister Nora, doctor — ^what the 
 latest news was saying." 
 
 " She'll make a good recovery, as things go. But that means 
 she won't be herself again for a twelvemonth, if then !" Granny 
 Marrable looked so unhappy over this, that the doctor took in 
 a reef. " Less if we're lucky — ^less if we're lucky !" said he. 
 " She's being very well looked after. Dalrymple's a good man." 
 
 "I'm glad you should know him to speak well of, for the 
 lady's sake. She's a good lady, and kind. It was through her 
 the little boy Davy came to the Cottage. My little Davy, I 
 always call him." 
 
 " So does t'other old lady — she your daughter's got there now. 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 649 
 
 You'll scratch each other's eyes out over that young monkey 
 when you come to meet, Mrs. Marrable." 
 
 " There now, doctor, you will always have your joke. Ruth 
 — ^my daughter — ^is quite beside her judgment about the old soul. 
 What like is she, doctor, to your thinking ?" 
 
 "Well — ^your daughter's right about her." He paused a 
 moment, and then added, meaningly: — " So far as being a very 
 — very taking sort of old person goes." 
 
 Graimy Marrable, rather absorbed in her descendant's rela- 
 tions with his bottle, found in due course an opportunity to 
 answer, looking up at the doctor: — " A very taking old person ? 
 But what, then, is to seek in her ? Unless she be bad of heart 
 or dishonest." Her old misgivings about Dave's home influ- 
 ences, revived, had more share in the earnestness of her tone 
 than any misgivings about her daughter. And was not there 
 the awful background of the convict ? 
 
 " Not a bit of it — ^not a bit of it ! Right as a trivet, I should 
 say, as far as that goes ! But . . . ." He stopped and touched 
 his forehead, portentously. 
 
 " Ah — ^the poor soul ! Now is that true ?" 
 
 " I think you may take it of me that is so." The doctor threw 
 his professional manner into this. After a moment he added, 
 as a mere human creature: — " OfE her chump ! Loose in the 
 top story !" A moment after, for professional reassurance : — 
 " But quite harmless — quite harmless !" 
 
 Granny Marrable was grave and oppressed by this news. 
 " The poor old soul !— think of it !" said she. " Oh, but how 
 many's the time I've thanked God in His mercy for sparing me 
 my senses ! To think we might any of us be no better off, but 
 for Him, than the man our Lord found naked in the tombs, in 
 the country of the Gadarenes ! But she is not bad hke that, 
 this Mrs. Prichard ?" 
 
 " Oh no ! — that was a severe case, with complications. Not 
 a legion of devils, this time ! One or two little ones. Just 
 simple delusions. Might have yielded to Treatment, taken 
 younger. Too late, now, altogether. Wastage of the brain, no 
 doubt ! She's quite happy, you know." 
 
 Although Dr. Nash had not shone as a reasoner forming square 
 to resist evidence, he had shrewd compartments in his mind, and 
 in one of them a clear idea that he would do ill to thrust forward 
 the details of the supposed simple delusions. This old lady must 
 not be led to infer that he was interested in tliem — mere scientific 
 curiosities ! She was sure to ask for them in time; he knew that. 
 
650 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 And it was much better that he should seem to attach no weight 
 whatever to them. 
 
 Granny Marrable seemed to entertain doubts of the patient's 
 happiness. " I could never be happy," she said, " if I had been 
 in a delusion." 
 
 "Not if you came to know it was a delusion. Very likely 
 not !" 
 
 " But does not — does not — poor old Mrs. Prichard ever come 
 to know she has been in a delusion ?" 
 
 " Not she ! What she fancies she just goes on fancying. 
 Sticks to it hke grim death." 
 
 " What sort of things now, doctor ?" 
 
 This was a bite. But the doctor would play his fish. No 
 hurry. " Perfectly crazy things 1 Oh — crack-brained ! Has 
 not your daughter told you ? . . . . Oh, by-the-by ! — ^yes ! — ^I 
 
 did tell her she had better not I don't think it matters, 
 
 though." 
 
 " But not if you would rather not, doctor \" This cleariy 
 meant the reverse. 
 
 " Well now — ^there was the first thing that happened, about 
 that little model thing that stands on your mantelshelf at the 
 Cottage," 
 
 " What — my father's mill ? Davy's mill, we call it now, 
 because the child took to it so, and would have me tell him again 
 and again about Muggeridge and the horses " 
 
 " Ah — you told him about Muggeridge and the horses !" 
 
 " Yes, sure ! And I lay, now, he'd told Mrs. Prichard all 
 about that I" 
 
 " Trust him ! Anyhow, he did. And she knew all about it 
 before ever she came to Chorlton. But her mind got a queer 
 twist over it, and she forgot it was all Master Dave's telUng, and 
 thought it had happened to herself." 
 
 " Thought what had ?" 
 
 " I mean, thought she had been one of those two little kiddies 
 in violet frocks " 
 
 " Ah, dear me — my dear sister that died out in Australia — 
 my darling Maisie !" 
 
 " Hay — what's that ? Your darling what ? What name did 
 you say 1" 
 " Maisie." 
 
 " There we have it — Maisie !" The doctor threw his fore- 
 finger to Granny Marrable, in theory; it remained attached to 
 his hand, in practice. " That's her name. That's what it was 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANJSTY MARRABLE 651 
 
 all cooked up out of. Maisie !" He was so satisfied with this 
 little piece of shrewd detective insight that he forgot for the 
 moment how thoroughly he knew the contrary. 
 
 Granny Marrable seemed to demur a little, but was brought 
 to order by the drastic argument that it must have been that, 
 becatise it could not have been anjdihing else. By this time the 
 doctor had recollected that he was not in a position to indulge 
 in the luxury of increduhty. 
 
 " At least/' said he, " I should have said so, only it doesn't 
 do to be rash. One has to look at a thing of this sort all roimd." 
 He paused a moment with his eyes on the ceiling, while his 
 fingers played on the arm of his chair the time, possibly, of 
 a Hynm to Circumspection. Then he looked suddenly at the 
 old lady. " You must have told the small boy a great deal 
 about the null-model. Tou told him about Muggeridge, didn't 
 you say, and the horses ? Not yoiu: daughter, I mean ?" 
 
 " Sure ! Mr. Pitt and Mr. Pox." 
 
 " Tell him anything else about Muggeridge ?" 
 
 " Well, now — did I ? . . . . No — ^I should say not I 
 
 was trying to think what I would have remembered to tell. 
 For you must bear in mird, doctor, we were but young children 
 
 when Muggeridge went away, and Axtell came, after that 
 
 No ; I could not speak to having said a word about Muggeridge, 
 beyond his bare name. That I could not." 
 
 The doctor did not interrupt his witness's browsings in the 
 pastures of memory; but when she deserted them, saying she 
 had found nothing to crop, said suddenly: — " Didn't tell him 
 about Muggeridge and the other lady, who wasn't Mrs. Mug- 
 geridge ?" 
 
 " Now Lard a mercy, doctor, whatever do ye take me for ? 
 And all these years you've known me ! Only the idea of it ! — 
 to tell a young child that story ! Why — ^what would the baby 
 have thought I meant ? Fie for shame of yourself, that's what 
 I say !" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good 
 deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke im- 
 mensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a 
 tale of nuptial infidelity ! She took her great-grandson into her 
 confidence about it, asking him: — " Did they say his great- 
 grandmother told shocking stories to iimocent httle boys ?" 
 — and so forth. 
 
 The doctor had to interpose upon this utter imconsciousness, 
 and the task was not altogether an easy one; indeed, its diffi- 
 culties seemed to hira to e^-ow. He let her have her laugh out, 
 
652 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 and then said quietly: — " But where did Mrs. Prichard get th(3 
 story ?" 
 
 Granny Marrable had lost sight of this, and was disconcerted. 
 " What— why— yes— where did she get it ? Mrs. Prichard, of 
 course ! Now, wherever could Mrs. Prichard have got it ? . . . ." 
 It called for thought. 
 
 Dr. Nash's idea was to give facts gradually, and let them work 
 their own way. " Perhaps she knew Mr. Muggeridge herself," 
 said he. " When did he die ?" 
 
 " Mercy me, doctor, where's the use of asking me ? Before 
 ymi were born, anyhow ! That's him, a man of forty, with the 
 horses, and me a child under ten ! Seventy years ago, and a 
 little to spare 1" 
 
 " That cock won't fight, then. As I make out, old Mrs. 
 Prichard didn't come from Van Diemen's Land above five-and- 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 " Where did Mrs. Prichard come from 1" 
 
 " Prom Van Diemen's Land. In Australia. Where the con- 
 victs go." 
 
 " There now ! Only to think of that ! Why— I see it all 1" 
 Granny Marrable seemed pleased. 
 
 " What do you see, Mrs. Marrable ?" The doctor was puzzled. 
 He had quite expected that at this point suspicion of the facts 
 must dawn, however dimly. 
 
 " Because that is where my dear sister was, that died. Oh, 
 so many long years ago !" Whenever old Phoebe mentioned 
 Maisie, the same note of pathos came in her voice. The doctor 
 felt he was operating for the patient's sake ; but it would be the 
 knife, without an ansesthetic. He had not indefinite time to 
 spare for this operation. 
 
 " I am going to ask what will seem a very absurd question," 
 said he, in the dry, professional manner in which he was wont to 
 intrude upon his patient's private internal affairs. " But you 
 must remember I am an outsider — quite in the dark." 
 
 A slight puzzled look on the strong old face before him, with 
 • — yes — a faint suspicion of alarm ! But oh, how faint '• Per- 
 haps he was mistaken, though. For Granny Marrable let no 
 sign of alarm come in her voice, if she felt any. " What were 
 ye wishing to be told, doctor ?" she cheerfully said. " If it's 
 a secret, I won't tell it ye. You may take my word for that." 
 
 He fixed his eyes attentively on her face. "You are abso- 
 lutely certain," said he, " that the news of your sister's death 
 was . . , ." He was going to say " authentic," but was arrested 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 653 
 
 by an ebullition of unparalleled fury in the baby, who became 
 fairly crumpled up with indignation, presumably at being un- 
 able to hold more than a definite amount of milk. It was a case 
 that called for the promptest and humblest apologies from the 
 human race, represented by his great-grandmother. She had 
 assuaged the natural exasperation of two previous generations, 
 and had the trick of it. He subsided, acceptiag as his birthright 
 a heavenly sleep, with dreams of fiu:ther milk. 
 
 Then Granny Marrable, released, looked the doctor in the face, 
 saying: — " ' That the news of my sister's death was ?....'" 
 and stopped for him to finish the sentence. 
 
 " Authentic," said he. He did not know whether her look 
 meant that she did not understand the word, and added: — 
 " Trustworthy." 
 
 " I know what you mean," she said. " Go on and say why." 
 
 The doctor was fairly frightened at his own temerity. Prob- 
 ably the difficulties of his task had never fully dawned upon 
 him. Would it not be safer to back out of it now, leaving what 
 he had suggested to fructify ? He would have fulfilled his 
 promise to Lady Gwendolen, and made it easier for her to word 
 the actual disclosure of the facts. "I was merely trying to 
 think what anyone would say who wanted to make out that 
 this old Mrs. Prichard was not under a delusion." 
 
 " The poor old soul ! What would they say, indeed ?" This 
 was no help. Commiseration of Mrs. Prichard was not the 
 doctor's object. But the position was improved when she 
 added: — " But there's ne'er a one wants to make it out." 
 
 He thought of saying: — " But suppose there were !" and gave 
 it up, knowing that his hearer, though fairly educated, would 
 regard hypotheses as intense intellectual luxuries, prized aca- 
 demically, but without a place in the sane world vnthout. He 
 decided on saying: — " Of course, you would have documentary 
 evidence." Then he felt that his tone had been ill-chosen — a 
 curfew of the day's discussions, a last will and testament of the 
 one in hand. 
 
 So it was, for the moment. Granny Marrable wanted the 
 subject to drop. On whatever pretext it was revived, the story 
 of her sister's hfe and death was still painful to her. But " docu- 
 mentary evidence " was too sesquipedalian to submit to without 
 a protest. " I should have her husband's letter," said she, 
 •' teUing of her death." 
 
 " Yes, you would have his letters." 
 
 "There was but two." Her intense truthfulness could not 
 
654 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 let that plural pass. " He was a strange man — and a bad one, 
 doctor, if ye want to know — and he never wrote to me again, 
 not after answering my letter I wrote to tell him of my father's 
 death. But I've a long letter from him, saying how Maisie died, 
 and her message to me, giving me — like you might say — ^her girl 
 for my own. That is my Ruth, you know, at Strides Cottage, 
 this little man's own granny. But I've never heard his name 
 since . . . not till . . . not till . . . ." 
 
 " What's the matter ? Anything wrong ?" For Granny Mar- 
 rable had stopped with a jerk, and her look was one of the greatest 
 bewilderment. The memory of the name the madman who said 
 he was Mrs. Prichard's son had given her as his own had come 
 upon her with a sudden shock, having — ^strangely enough — ^been 
 dormant throughout this interview. She was confronted 
 with a host of perplexities, which — mark you ! — had no possible 
 solution except the one her mind could not receive, and which 
 therefore never presented itself at all. 
 
 " Indeed, doctor, I think I be bewitched outright," said she. 
 
 " I never was so put to it, all the days of my life No, 
 
 don't ye ask me no questions ! I haven't the liberty to tell 
 above half of it, and maybe better say nothing at all." 
 
 " I see — matter of confidence ! Well — ^I mustn't ask ques- 
 tions." This was really because he was certain the answer 
 would come without asking. Granny Marrable would never let 
 the matter drop, with that look on her face. 
 
 So it turned out. In a moment she looked up from the baby, 
 whom she had been redistributing, to his advantage. " I'll tell 
 ye this much, doctor," she said. " There was a crazy man in 
 yonder field near by, when I was coming back from Jane Naun- 
 ton's — ^just a few days since " 
 
 " I've heard of him." 
 
 " What do they say of him ?" 
 
 " I only heard the pohce were after him. Go on." 
 
 " Well — ^the name he called himself by was my sister's hus- 
 band's, and he said he came from Australia." 
 
 " That might be, and no witchcraft. When did your sister 
 die?" 
 
 " Five-and-forty — six-and-forty — ^years ago !" 
 
 " Any children left ? Boys ?" 
 
 " Boys ?— Lord, no ! At least, yes— two boys ! What I 
 mean is, not by this name ." 
 
 " What were the boys' names ?" 
 
 " One, I call to mindi was Isaac. For Maisie wrote me what 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 655 
 
 work she had to persuade her husband to the name " She 
 
 had meant to say more, giving reasons why, but changed her 
 speech abruptly. " The yovmgest boy's name I let slip. But 
 I know it was never this name that man gave me," 
 
 " You remember it near enough for that ?" 
 
 Oranny Marrable's iatense truthfulness would not allow 
 margins. " No — ^it's clean slipped my memory, and I could not 
 make oath I never knew it. It was all out of reach, beyond the 
 seas." 
 
 " That seems reasonable. Five-and-forty years ! Now, can 
 I remember anything as long back as that ? . . . . However, I was 
 two, so that doesn't count." 
 
 " Maisie's son never bore this name. That's out of doubt !" 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " Because her first was christened by it, and died at Darenth 
 Mill, after . . . after his father went away." 
 
 " Roger Trufitt's son is Roger. But both his brothers who 
 died before he was bom were named Roger. There's no law 
 against it. You know old Trufitt, the landlord at the Five Bells ? 
 He says that if this son died, he would marry again to have 
 another and call him Roger. He's a very obstinate man, old 
 Trufitt." 
 
 Granny Marrable sat silent while the doctor chatted, watching 
 her changes of countenance. Her conscience was vacillating. 
 Could she interpret her oath of silence as leaving her free to 
 speak of the convict's claim to Mrs. Prichard as a parent ? The 
 extenuation of bad faith would lie in the purely exceptional nature 
 of the depository of her secret. Could a disclosure to a pro- 
 iessional ear, which secrets entered every day, be accounted 
 '" spUtting " ? She thought she saw her way to a Hmited revela- 
 tion, which would meet the case without breach of confidence. 
 
 " Maybe !" said she, putting old Trufitt out of court. " But 
 I can tell ye another reason why he's no son of my sister's. 
 Though he might be, mind you, a son of her husband. My 
 ibrother-in-law, most like, married again. How should I know ?" 
 
 " 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 
 
 42 
 
656 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 
 hkeness 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. 
 " Aie 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 V 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 hfe. 
 But we know nothing about Mrs. Prichard. Who the dickens 
 is Mrs. Prichard ?" 
 
 Granny Marrable had looked reaUy pleased at the reductio ad 
 absurdum — always exhilarating when one knows what's impos- 
 sible — ^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 con- 
 tentedly. 
 
 " 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 
 galhvantings. You're sure you never told the child ?" 
 
 " Sure ? . . . Merciful gracious me ! That baby ?" 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 657 
 
 " And how you and she measured the mill-model ? That must 
 have come from yom: 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 joxa 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 
 
658 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 deter- 
 mined to make the most of this incident, for his impression was 
 that her mind was already in revolt against the gross improb- 
 abiUty 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 yoxmg 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 click — 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 fimny 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 ... . spvd-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 beHeve any- 
 thing. 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRAIirNY MARRABLE 659 
 
 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 yoimg 
 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 1 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 !" 
 
660 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " 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 
 yowem. Granny, all but th' neam. Th' neam on't was Mrs. 
 Picture, and on yowem 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 Graimies 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 betters. '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 yowem 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 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 661 
 
 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 
 deUvery. 
 
 " They're asking for ye ba'ack at t' hoose — ba'ack to Costrell's 
 Varm .... Noa, noa, doctor — 'tis the old Granny, not the 
 yoong wench. She's gone ofE 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, stimu- 
 lating his pony's concept of a maximum velocity. " But I never 
 thought of this. The Devil fly away with the AustraUan 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 imconvincingly 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 grand- 
 daughter told her tale — ^the occurrence as she had seen it. Hear- 
 ing 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 
 
662 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 every- 
 thing 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 impres- 
 sion from Mr. Barlow's reference to her likeness to Mrs. Prichard, 
 which otherwise would have sUpped 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 hving 
 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 I — 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 nm riot in her 
 heart, and break it, but that the very thing that provoked them 
 was also their profanation — ^Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage t 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 663 
 
 WTio 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 Uving 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 thimder-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 Geaney Maeobonb — Me and 
 Dolly are so Glad because Gweng has been here To say Mrs. 
 Picture is reely Your Qstem." 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 Mxs. 
 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 Ides heaps longer ago than dolly's birf day, so you bofe 
 thort you was dead and buried." Straight to the heart of the 
 subject, £18 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 teU her nothing 
 of all this, how to pretend nothiag 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 1" 
 
 " 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 firinly. " 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. 
 
664 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 wiU need all your strength to 
 help her. For she is not strong, Uke 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. Mar- 
 rable," said he, " or using them, which is the same thing , in trying 
 to tell you this. You will forgive that, I know 1" 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 suppress- 
 ing 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 
 
DR. NASH TELLS GRANNY MARRABLE 665 
 
 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 sus- 
 picions " 
 
 " 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." Mis. 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 Kke 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 obUged to confess 
 to himself that this was a wonderful stroke of poHcy 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 himseH:— " Well, now, should I ?" 
 
666 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HOW LADY ANCESTER CALLED ON LADT TOERBNS, WHO WAS 
 KEEPING HEE EOOM. BUT SHE SAW THE BAKT. A QTJEEE 
 AND TICKLISH LNTEEVIEW. MAUEICE AND KATHLEEN TYB- 
 AWLEY. NO NEED FOE HUMBUG BETWEEN VS ! THE COUN- 
 TESS'S GEOUNDS EOE OPPOSING THE MAEEIAGE. HOW ADRIAN, 
 WITH EYES IN HIS HEAD, WOULD HAVE BEEN MOST ACCEPT- 
 ABLE. BUT HOW ABOUT JEPHTHA's DAUGHTER ? OUGHT WE, 
 THOUGH, TO MEDDLE BETWEEN YOUNG LOVEES ? AN AWK- 
 WAED TOPIC. HOW EOMEO DIDN'T FEEL, ABOUT BIS 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 SIB HAMILTON INDULGED IN A FIEESIDE EBVEEIE OVEE 
 HIS PAST, AND HIS SON AND DAUGHTEE CAME BACK. HOW 
 MISS SCATCHBRD HAD BEEN SEEN BY BOTB. 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 
 
 SiE 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 Pojmders iq the 
 afternoon, and could manage a previous visit at Pensham by 
 coming an hour earher, 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 indis- 
 posed, 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 pos- 
 sible; and now she had caught at the opportunity afforded by 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 667 
 
 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 indiffer- 
 ence 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 groimdless 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 pubhc spirit, whose enthusiasm about the Aboli- 
 tion of Slavery had stirred her sympathetic soul to the quick. 
 
 Endless speculation is possible over the feeUngs of a man and 
 woman so related, coming together vmder such changed circum- 
 stances, without the lubricant to easy intercourse of the presence 
 of others. The Countess woidd 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 aU contingencies. 
 
 Sir Hamilton had very few demeanours open to him. The 
 most obvious one was that of the courteous host, flattered to 
 receive such a visitor on any terms, especially proud and cordial 
 in view of the prospect of a connection between the families. 
 He maintained a penitential attitude under the depressing 
 shadow of the absence of his better half, which certainly was 
 made the most of by both; somewhat artificially, a perceptive 
 visitor might have said, if one had been there to see. The 
 jeremiads over this unfortunate misadventure must have lasted 
 fully ten minutes before a lull came; for the gentleman could 
 catch no other wind in his sails, and had to let out every reef to 
 move at aU. 
 
668 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Lady Ancester was not inclined to lose time. " I am particu- 
 larly sorry not to see Lady Torrens," she said, " because I really 
 wanted to have a serious talk with her, .... Yes, about the 
 boy and girl — your boy and my girl." A curious consciousness 
 almost made her wince. Think how easily either of the young 
 lovers might have been a joint possession ! If one, then both, 
 surely, minus their identities and the status quo ? It was like 
 sudden unexpected lemon in a made dish. 
 
 The worst of it was — ^not that each thought the same thing at 
 the same moment ; that was inevitable — ^but that each knew the 
 other's thought. The Baronet fell back on mere self-subordina- 
 tion. Automatically non-existent, he would be safe. " Same 
 thing — same thing — ^Lady Torrens and myself ! Comes to the 
 same thing whether you say it to me or to her. Repeat every 
 word ! . . . . Of course — easier to talk to her ! But comes to 
 the same thing." He abated himself to a go-between, and was 
 entrenched. 
 
 The Countess affected an easy languor to say: — "I really 
 don't feel able to say what I want straight off. You know I 
 never used to be able " — she laughed a deprecatory laugh — " in 
 the old Clarges Street days. Besides, your man is coming in 
 and out with tea and things. When he's done, I'll go on." 
 
 The sudden reference to the time-when of that old passionate 
 relation contained an implication that it was not unspeakable 
 per se — although its threat had been that it would do its worst 
 as a cupboard-skeleton — but only owing to the childish silliness 
 of a mere calf-love, a reciprocal misapprehension soon forgotten. 
 Treated with contempt, its pretensions to skeletonhood fell 
 through. Moreover, that pending tea had helped to a pause; 
 showing the speaker to be quite collected, and mistress of the 
 situation. 
 
 The little episode had put the Baronet more at his ease. He 
 thought he might endeavour to contribute to general lubrication 
 on the same lines. By-the-by, he had met Maurice Tyrawley 
 last week in London — just back from India — been away much 
 longer than om: men usually — ^Lady Ancester would remember 
 Maurice Tyrawley — man with a slight stammer — sister ran away 
 with her father's groom ? Her ladyship remembered Maurice 
 very well. And was that really true about Kathleen Tyrawley ? 
 Well — that was interesting 1 Was she alive ? Oh dear yes — 
 living in Tavistock Square — ^fellah made money, somehow. 
 That was very interesting. If the Countess had Kathleen's 
 address, she would try to call on her, some time. What was her 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 669 
 
 name ? Hopkins. Oh — ^Hopkins ! She felt discouraged, and 
 not at all sure she should call on her, any time. But she did not 
 say so. An entry of Mrs. Hopkins's address and fuU name fol- 
 lowed, on some painfully minute ivory tablets. The Countess 
 was sure to find the place, owing to her coachman's phenomenal 
 bump of locality. Was Colonel Tyrawley married ? . . . . Oh — 
 Major Tyrawley ! Yes, he was married, and had some rumpus 
 with his wife. Etcetera etcetera. 
 
 This sort of thing served its turn, as did the tea. But both 
 became things of the past, and left the course clear. Provided 
 always that the servant did not recrudesce ! " Is he gone ?" 
 said the Countess. " If he isn't, I can wait." 
 
 " He won't come back now." 
 
 " Very well. Then I can go on. I want to talk about our 
 
 girl and boy I don't think there need be any nonsense 
 
 between Us, Sir Hamilton ?" 
 
 " About our boy and girl ? Why should there ?" Best not 
 to add: — " Or anything else," on the whole ! 
 
 " I am speaking of his eyesight only. Please understand that 
 I should not oppose my daughter's wishes on any other ground." 
 
 " But I am to understand that you do oppose them ?" 
 
 The Coimtess held back her answer a few seconds, to take a 
 last look at it before sending it to press. Then she said de- 
 cisively: — "Yes." She made no softening reservation. She 
 had already said why. 
 
 He considered it his duty to soften it for her. " On the 
 
 ground of his eyesight This is a sad business I 
 
 gather that you empower me to repeat to my wife that you are — 
 quite naturally, I admit — are unreconciled. . . . Or, at least, only 
 partly reconciled to " 
 
 " Unreconciled. I won't make any pretences. Sir Hamilton. 
 I do not think there need be any nonsense between us. I am the 
 girl's mother, and it is my duty to speak plain, for her sake." 
 
 " My wife will entirely agree with you." 
 
 " I hope so. But I am not sorry that I should have an oppor- 
 tunity of speaking freely to you. This is the first I have had. I 
 wish you to know without disguise exactly how this marriage of 
 Gwen and your Adrian — ^if it ever comes off — ^will present itself 
 to me, as the girl's mother." 
 
 Sir Hamilton inclined his head slightly, which may have 
 meant: — "I am prepared to hsten to you as the boy's father, 
 and his mother's proxy." 
 
 " As the girl's mother," repeated the lady. " I shall continue 
 
670 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to think, as I think now, that there is an unreal element in my 
 daughter's . . . a . . . regard for your son." 
 
 " An unreal element ! Very often is, in young ladies' pre- 
 dilections for young gentlemen." 
 
 The Countess rushed on to avoid a complex abstract subject, 
 with pitfalls galore. " Which may very well endanger her 
 
 future Well ! — may endanger the happiness of both " 
 
 I don't mean that she isn't in love with him — ^whatever the word 
 means, and sometimes one hardly knows. I mean now that she 
 is under an influence which may last, or may not, but which might 
 never have existed but for ... . but for the accident." 
 
 " My wife has said the same thing, more than once." Her 
 ladyship could have dispensed with this constant reference to 
 the late Miss Abercrombie. She felt that it put her at a dis- 
 advantage. 
 
 " And the Earl entirely agrees with me," said she. For why 
 should her ladyship not play a card of the same suit ? " There 
 is something I want to say, and I don't know how to say it. But 
 he said it the other day, and I felt exactly as he did. He said, 
 as near as I recollect: — 'If I had twenty daughters to give 
 away, I would not grudge one to poor A<Lian, if I thought it 
 would do something to make up for the wrong I have done 
 him '" 
 
 Sir Hamilton interrupted warmly. " No, Lady Ancester, no ! 
 I cannot allow that to be said ! We have never thought of it 
 that way. We do not think of it that way. We never shall 
 think of it that way. It was an accident, pure and simple. It 
 might have happened to his son, on my bit of preserved land. 
 All the owners about shoot stray dogs." 
 
 " But if it had, and you had had a mad daughter — ^because 
 Gwen is a mad girl, if ever there was one — ^who got a Quixotic 
 idea like this in her head, you would have felt exactly as my 
 husband does." 
 
 " Should I ? Well— I suppose I should. No, I don't think I 
 should WeU— at least !" 
 
 " At least, what ?" 
 
 " At least, if I had supposed that .... that Irene, for in- 
 stance " — Sir Hamilton's mind required a tangible reality to 
 rest upon — " that Irene was head over ears in love with some 
 m.an " He did not seem to have his conclusion ready. 
 
 " And you are convinced that my daughter is head over ears 
 in love with your son ? Is that it ?" The Coimtess spoke rather 
 coldly, and Sir Hamilton felt imcomfortable. " It seems to me 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 671 
 
 that the whole thing turns on that. Are you certain that you 
 have not allowed yourself to be convinced ?" 
 
 " Allowed myself — I'm not sure I understand." 
 
 " With less proof, I mean, than her parents have a right to 
 ask for — ^less than you would have asked yourself in the reverse 
 case ?" 
 
 Sir Hamilton felt more uncomfortable. He ought to have 
 answered that he was very far from certain. But an EngUshman 
 is nothing if not a prevaricator; he calls it being scrupulously 
 truthful. " I have no right to catechize Lady Gwendolen," 
 said he. 
 
 " And her parents have, of course. I see. But it her parents 
 are convinced — as I certainly am in this case, and I think my 
 husband is, almost — that there is an unreal element on Gwen's 
 side, it ought to .... to carry weight with you." 
 
 " It would carry weight. It does carry weight. But .... 
 However, I must talk to Lady Torrens about this." He ap- 
 peared very uncomfortable iadeed, and was visibly flushed. 
 But that may have been the red glow of a dying fire in the half- 
 light, or half-darkness, striking his face as he rested his elbow on 
 the chimney-piece, while its hand wandered from his brow to 
 his chin, expressing irresolute perplexity. Until, as she sat silent, 
 as though satisfied that he could have now no doubt about her 
 wishes, he spoke again, abruptly. " I wish you would tell me 
 exactly what you suppose to be the case." 
 
 She addressed herself to explicit statement. " I beKeve Gwen 
 is acting under an unselfish impulse, and I do not beHeve in 
 imselfish impulses. If a girl is to run counter to the wishes of 
 her parents, and to obvious common sense, at least let her im- 
 pulse be a selfish one. Let her act entirely for her own sake. 
 Gwen made your son's acquaintance under peculiar circum- 
 stances — ^romantic circumstances — and, as I know, instantly 
 saw that his eyesight might be destroyed and that the blame 
 would rest with her family " 
 
 " No, L-Lady Ancestor " — ^he stumbled somehow over the 
 name, for no apparent reason — " I deny that. I protest against 
 it " 
 
 " We need not settle that point. Your feeling is a generous 
 one. But do let us keep to Gwen and Adrian." Her ladyship 
 went on to develop her view of the case, not at all illogicaUy. 
 Her objection to the marriage turned entirely on Adrian's blind- 
 ness — had not a particle of personal feehng in it. On the con- 
 trary, she and her husband saw every reason to believe that ths 
 
 43 
 
672 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 young man, with eyes in his head, would have met with a most 
 affectionate welcome as a son-in-law. This applied especially 
 to the Earl, who, of course, had seen more of Adrian than her- 
 self. He had, in fact, conceived an extraordinary entichement 
 for him; so much so that he would sooner, for his own sake 
 purely, that the marriage should come off, as the blindness 
 would affect him very little. But his duty to his daughter 
 remained exactly the same. If there was the slightest reason to 
 suppose that Gwen was immolating herself as a sacrifice — some- 
 thing was impUed of an analogy in the case of Jephtha's 
 daughter, but not pressed home owing to obvious weak points — 
 he had no choice, and she had no choice, but to protect the 
 victim from herself. If they did not do so, what was there to 
 prevent an irrevocable step being taken which might easily lead 
 to disastrous consequences for both. " You must see," said 
 Gwen's mother very earnestly, " that if my daughter is acting, 
 as my husband and I suppose, from a Quixotic desire to make 
 up to your son for the terrible injury we have done him .... 
 No protests, please ! .... it is our business to protect her from 
 the consequences of her own rashness — ^to stand between her 
 and a possible lifelong unhappiness \" 
 
 " But what," said the perplexed Baronet, " can / do ?" A 
 reasonable question ! 
 
 " If you can do nothing, no one can. The Earl and myself are 
 so handicapped by our sense of the fearful injury that we have 
 — however unintentionally — ^inflicted on your son, that we are 
 really tied hand and foot. But you can at least place the case 
 before Adrian as I have placed it before you, and I appeal to you 
 to do so. I am sure you will see that it is impossible for my 
 husband or myself to say the same thing to him." 
 
 " But to what end ? What do you suppose will come of it ? 
 What . . a . . what difference will it make ?" 
 
 " It will make a difference. It must make a difference, if 
 your son is made fully aware — he is not, now — of the motives 
 that may be influencing Gwen." The Countess was not at all 
 confident of her case, in respect of any definite change it would 
 produce in the bearing of Adrian towards his fiancee, and still less 
 of any effect such change would produce upon that headstrong 
 young lady, if once she suspected its cause. But she had con- 
 fidence in her memories of the rather stupid middle-aged gentle- 
 man of whom, as a yoimg dragoon, she had had such very inti- 
 mate experience. He was stiU sensitively honourable, as in those 
 old days — she was sure of that. Unless, indeed, he had changed 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 673 
 
 very mnch morally, as he had certainly done physically. He 
 would shrink from the idea of his son profiting by an heroic 
 self-devotion of the daughter of a man who was no more to 
 blame for his son's mishap than he himself would have been in 
 the counter-case he had supposed. And he would impress her 
 view of the position on his son. It would have no visible and 
 immediate result now, but how about the six months at Vienna ? 
 Might it not be utilised to undermine that position during those 
 six months of fascinating change ? She pictured to herself an 
 abatement of what her mind thought of as " the heroics " in 
 the first six weeks. 
 
 At least, she could see, at this moment, that she had gained 
 her immediate end. The uneasiness of the Baronet was visible 
 in all that can show uneasiness in a not very expressive exterior 
 — ^restlessness of hand and hps, and the fixed brow of perplexity. 
 " Very good — very good \" he was saying, " I will talk to my 
 wife about it. You may depend on me to do what I can. 
 Only — ^Lf you are mistaken . . . ." 
 
 " About Gwen ? If I am, things must take their own course. 
 But I think it will turn out that I am right. . . . That is all, 
 is it not ? I am truly sorry not to have seen Lady Torrens. I 
 
 hope she will be better Oh yes — ^it's all right about the 
 
 time. They know I am coming, at Poynders. And I should 
 have time to dress for dinner, anyhow. Good-bye !" Her lady- 
 ship held out a decisive hand, that said: — " Curtain." 
 
 But Sir Hamilton did not seem so sure the performance was 
 over. " Half a minute more, L-Lady Ancestor," said he; and 
 he again half -stumbled over her name. " I am rather slow in 
 expressing myself, but I have something I want to say." 
 
 " I am not in a hurry." 
 
 " I can only do exactly what you have asked me to do — 
 place the case before my son as you have placed it before me." 
 
 " I have not asked for anything else." 
 
 " Well, then, I can do that, after I have taUted it over with 
 his mother. But I can't ... I can't undertake to influence 
 him." 
 
 " Is he so intractable ? . . . However, young men are." 
 
 " I did not mean that. I .... I don't exactly know how to 
 say it . . . ." 
 
 " Why should you hesitate to say what you were going to 
 say ? . . . Do you suppose I don't know what it was ?" For 
 he had begun to anticipate it with some weakening reservation. 
 " I could tell you exactly. You were going to say was it right 
 
674 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to influence yoimg people's futures and so on, and wasn't it 
 taking a great responsibility, and so on 1 Now, were you not ?" 
 
 " I had some such thought." 
 
 " Exactly. You mean you thought what I said you thought." 
 
 " And you think me mistaken ?" 
 
 " Not always. In the present case, yes — ^if yon consider that 
 it would be influencing. I don't. It would only be refraining 
 from keeping silence about — about something it may never occur 
 to your son to think possible." It may have struck her hearer 
 that to call shouting a fact on the house-tops " refraining from 
 keeping silence " about it was straining phraseology ; but it 
 was not easy to formulate the idea, off-hand. It was easier to 
 hold his tongue. The Countess might have done better to hold 
 hers, at this point. But she must needs be discriminating, to 
 show how clear-sighted she was. " Of course, it is quite a 
 different thing to try to bring about a marriage. That is cer- 
 tainly taking a grave responsibiUty." She stopped with a jerk, 
 for she caught herself denouncing the very course of action which 
 weU-meaning friends had adopted successfully in the case of 
 herself and her husband. If it had not been for the jerk. Sir 
 Hamilton would not have known the comparison that was passing 
 in her mind. She recovered herself to continue: — "Of course, 
 trying to bring about a marriage is a grave responsibility, but 
 mere testing of the strength of links that bind may be no more 
 than bare prudence. A breaking strain on lovers' vows may be 
 acknowledged by them as an untold blessing in after-years." 
 Here she began to feel she was not improving matters, and con- 
 tinued, with misgivings : — " I am scarcely asking you to do 
 even that. I am only appealing to you to suggest to your son a 
 fact that is obvious to myself and my husband, because it is 
 almost impossible for us, under the circumstances, to make such 
 an appeal to him ourselves." 
 
 " Are you so confident of the grounds of your suspicions .... 
 about .... about the motives that are influencing your 
 daughter ?" 
 
 " They are not suspicions. They are certainties. At least, 
 I am convinced — and I am her mother — ^that her chief motive 
 in accepting your son was vitiated — yes, vitiated ! — by a mistaken 
 zeal for — suppose we call it poetical justice. - 1 am not going to 
 say the girl does not fancy herself in love." She laughed a 
 maternal sort of laugh — ^the laugh that seniority, undeceived by 
 life's realities, laughs at the crazy dawn of passion in infatuated 
 children. " Of course she does. But knowing what I do, am 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 675 
 
 I not right to marke an attempt at least to protect her from her- 
 self 1" She lowered her voice to an increase of earnestness, as 
 though she had found a way to go nearer to the heart of her sub- 
 ject. " Does any woman know — can any woman know — 
 better than I do, the value of a girl's first love ?" 
 
 It was a daring recognition of their old relation, and the veil 
 of the thin pretence that it could be successfully ignored had 
 fallen from between them. 
 
 The Baronet was only half a Man of the World. "Women 
 do not take these things to heart as men do," said he. 
 And then, the moment after, was in a cold perspiration to think 
 in what a delicate position it would have landed him. Just 
 think ! — ^with the Mss Abercrombie he had married cherishing 
 her nervous system upstairs, and the pending reappearance of a 
 son and daughter who were very liable to amusement with a 
 parent whom they scarcely took seriously — ^f or him to be hinting 
 at the remains of an undying passion for this lady ! He could 
 only accept her estimate of girls by stammering : — " P-possibly ! 
 Young people — yes \" 
 
 But his embarrassment and hesitation were so visible that 
 the Countess had little choice between flinching or charging 
 bravely up to the guns. 
 
 She chose the courageous course, influenced perhaps by the 
 thought that if the marriage came off, there would be a long per- 
 spective of reciprocal consciousnesses in the future for herself and 
 this man, who had an unfortunate knack of transparency. 
 Could not she nip the flrst in the bud, and sterilise the rest ? 
 It was worth the attempt. 
 
 " Listen to me, Hamilton," said she; and she was perfectly 
 cool and collected. " Did I not say to you that there need be 
 no nonsense between U8? . . . . How funny men are ! Why 
 should you jump because I called you by name ? Do you know 
 that twice since we have been talking here you have all but called 
 me the name you used to me as a girl ? . , . . Yes — ^you began 
 saying ' Lip,' and made it Lady Ancestor. Please say it all 
 
 another time. I shall not bite you Look here ! — ^I want 
 
 you to help me to laugh at the mistake we made when we were 
 
 young folks; not to look solemn at it. We were ridiculous 
 
 You were going to say, ' Why V Well — ^I don't exactly know. 
 Yoimg folks always are." The fact is, the Countess was begin- 
 ning to feel comfortably detached, and could treat the subject 
 in a free and easy manner. 
 The Baronet could not bring himself to allow that he had ever 
 
676 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 been ridiculous, without protest. The Man within him rose in 
 rebellion against such an admission. He felt a little indignant 
 at her unceremonious pooh-poohing of their early infatuation. 
 He would have accorded it respectful obsequies at least. But 
 what protest could he enter that would not lay him open to 
 suspicions of that undying passion ? It appeared to him abso- 
 lutely impossible to say anything, either way. So he looked as 
 dignified as he could, consistently with being glad the room was 
 haU dark, because he knew he was red. 
 
 His uncomfortable silence, instead of the response in kind 
 her ladyship had hoped for, interfered a Uttle with the develop- 
 ment of her detachment. She judged it better to wind up the 
 interview, and did it with spirit. " There, now, Hamilton, don't 
 talk — because I know exactly what you are going to say. Shake 
 hands upon it — a good shake, you know ! — don't throw it 
 away \" 
 
 How very different are those two ways of offering a hand, 
 the tender one and the graspy one ! The Countess's stopped 
 out of its glove to emphasize the latter, and did it so frankly 
 and effectually that it cleared the air, in which the smell of fire 
 had been perceptible, as in a room where a match has gone out. 
 
 He had, as she said, twice very nearly called her by her old 
 familiar name of the Romeo and Juliet days. Nevertheless, when 
 he gave her his hand, saying: — " Perfectly right — perfectly right. 
 Lip ! That's the way to look at it," he threw in the name 
 stiffly. It was under tutelage, not spontaneously uttered. Let- 
 ting it come before would have given him a better position. 
 But then, how if she had disallowed it 1 There was no end to 
 the ticklishness of their relation. 
 
 A modus Vivendi was, however, established. She could recapit- 
 ulate without endangering it. " You will try to make Adrian 
 see Gwen's motives as I see them. It is quite possible that it 
 will make no difference in the end. If so, we must bow to the 
 decrees of Providence, I suppose. But I am sure you agree with 
 me that he ought not to remain in the dark. As I dare say you 
 know, I am taking Gwen to Vienna for a time. If they are 
 both of a mind at the end of that time — ^well, I suppose it can't 
 be helped ! But you must not be — I see you are not — surprised 
 at my view of the case." 
 
 Sir Hamilton assented to everything, promised everything, 
 saw the lady into her carriage, and returned, uncomfortable, to 
 review his position before the drawing-room fire in solitude. He 
 did not go upstairs to the nerve case. He would let his visitor 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 677 
 
 die down before he discharged that hability. He broke a 
 large coal, and made a flare, and rang the bell for lights, to 
 see how little the late interview had thrown him out of gear. 
 But it had done so. In spite of the fact that Lady Ancestor 
 was well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five 
 years older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of 
 him would have disillusioned her if the Earl had not — for thaft 
 was what he read between her Unes — she had left something 
 indefinable behind, which he was pleased to condemn as senti- 
 mental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it was there, for all 
 that! 
 
 Just one little tender squeeze of that beautiful hand, instead of 
 that candid, overwhelming wrestler's grip and double-knock 
 handshake, would have been so deUghtful. 
 
 He caught himself thinking more of his handsome visitor and 
 her easy self-mastery, compared with his own awkwardness and 
 embarrassment, than of her errand and the troublesome task 
 she had devolved on him of illuminating his son's mind about 
 the possible self-sacrificial motives of her daughter. His 
 thoughts would wander back to their Romeo and Juliet period, 
 and make comparisons between this now of worldly-wise 
 maturities and the days when he would have been the glove 
 upon that hand, that he might touch that cheek. He recalled 
 his first meeting with the fascinating young beauty in her first 
 season, at a moonlight dance on a lawn dangerously flanked 
 with lonely sheltered avenues and whispering trees; and the soft 
 rose-laden air of a dawn that broke on tired musicians and un- 
 exhausted dissipation, and his headlong reckless surrender to 
 her irresistible intoxication; and, to say the truth, the Julietr 
 like acknowledgment it met with. He would have been better 
 pleased, with the world as it was now, if less of that Juliet had 
 been recognisable in this mature dame. The thought made him 
 bite his lip. He exclaimed against his recognition perforce, and 
 compelled himself to think of the question before the house. 
 
 Yes — ^he could quite understand why the girl's parents should 
 find it difficult to say to his son: — "We know that Gwen is 
 giving her love to make amends for a wrong, as she thinks, done 
 by ourselves; and whatever personal sacrifice we should be glad 
 to make as compensation for it, we have no right to allow our 
 daughter to imperil her happiness." But he had a hazy recollec- 
 tion of Adrian's telling him something of the Earl himseM having 
 mooted this view of the subject at the outset of the engage- 
 ment; and, hearing no more of it, had supposed the point to b© 
 
678 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 disposed of. Why did Lady Ancester wish to impress it on 
 him now ? 
 
 Then it gradually became clearer, as he thought it out, that 
 it would have been impossible to form conclusions at once. The 
 Earl had no doubt expressed a suspicion at first. But his 
 daughter would never have confessed her motives to him. 
 What more hkely than that her mother should gradually com- 
 mand her confidence, and see that Adrian could not arrive at a 
 full appreciation of them without an ungracious persistence on the 
 part of herself and her husband, unless it were impressed on him by 
 some member of the young man's family ? His father, naturally. 
 
 He felt perceptibly gratified that Gwen's mother should take 
 it for granted that he would feel as she did about the injustice 
 to her daughter of allowing her to sacrifice herself to make 
 amends for a fault of her parents. It was a question of sensitive 
 honour, and she had credited him rightly with possessing it. 
 At least, he hoped so. And though he was certainly not a clever 
 man, the Squire of Pensham was the very soul of fair play. His 
 division of the Coimty knew both facts. Now, it seemed to him 
 that it would be fairer play on his part to throw his influence into 
 the scale on the side of the Countess, and protest against the 
 marriage unless some guarantee could be found that there was 
 no heroic taint in the bride's motives. In this he was consciously 
 influenced by the thought that his side would suffer by his own 
 action, so his own motives were tainted. A chivaWc instinct, 
 vmbalanced by reasoning power, is so very apt to decide — on 
 principle — against its owner's interests. Behind this there may 
 have been a saving clause, to the effect that the young people 
 might be relied on to pay no attention to their seniors' wishes, or 
 anything else. Gwen was on her way to twenty-one, and then 
 parental authority would expire. Meanwhile a little delay 
 would do no harm. For the present, he could only rub the 
 facts into his son, and leave them to do their worst. He would 
 speak to him at the next opportunity. 
 
 Home came Adrian and Irene, and filled the silence of the 
 house with voices. Something was afoot, clearly; something 
 not unpleasant, to judge by the laugh of the latter. The room- 
 door, whose hasp never bit properly — causing Adrian to per- 
 petrate an atrocious joke about a disappointed Cleopatra — ■ 
 swung wide with an unseen cause, which was revealed by a soft 
 nose, a dog's, in contact with Sir Hamilton's hand. He ac- 
 knowledged Achilles, who trotted away satisfied, to complete 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 679 
 
 an examination of all the other inmates of the house, his in- 
 variable custom after an outing. He would ratify or sanction 
 them, and drop asleep with a clear conscience. 
 
 " Hay ? What's all that ? What's all the rumpus ?" says 
 the Baronet, outside at the stair-top. The sounds of the voices 
 are pleasant and welcome to him, and he courts their banishment 
 of the past his old fiancee, had dragged from its sepulchre. Bury 
 it again and forget it ! " What's all the noise about ? What's 
 all the chatterboxing ?" For the good gentleman always im- 
 putes to his offspring a volubihty and a plethora of language 
 far in excess of any meaning it conveys. His own attitude, 
 he implies, is one of weighty consideration and temperate but 
 forcible judgment. 
 
 " What's the chatterboxing ?" says the beautiful daughter, 
 who kisses him on both sides — and she and her skirts and her 
 voice fill the discreet coimtry-house to the brim, and make its 
 owner insignificant. " What's the chatterboxing, indeed ? Why, 
 — ^it's good news for a silly old daddy ! That's what it is. Now 
 come in and I'll sit on his knee and tell him." And by the time 
 Adrian has felt his way to the drawing-room, the good news 
 has been sprung upon his father by a Moenad who has dragged 
 off her headgear — so as not to scratch — and flung it on the sofa. 
 And a tide of released black hair has burst loose about him. 
 And — oh dear ! — how that garden of auld lang syne has vanished ! 
 
 It behoves a Baronet and a J.P., however, to bring all this 
 excitement down to the level of mature consideration. " Well — 
 well — ^well — well !" says he. " Now let's have it all over again. 
 Begin at the beginning. You and your brother were walking up 
 Pratchet's Lane. What were you doing in Pratchet's Lane 1" 
 
 "Walking up it. You can only walk up it or down it. Very 
 well. We were just by the big holly-tree . . . ." 
 
 " Which big hoUy-tree ? One — ^thing — at — a time !" 
 
 " Don't interrupt ! There is only one big holly-tree. Now 
 you know ! Well ! Ply ran on in front because he caught sight 
 of Miss Scatcherd . . . ." 
 
 " Easy — easy — easy ! Where was Miss Scatcherd ?" 
 
 " In front, of course ! Ply dotes on Miss Scatcherd, although 
 she's forty-seven." 
 
 " I don't know about the ' of course,' " says Adrian, leaning 
 on his father's arm-chair. " Because I don't dote on Miss 
 Scatcherd. Miss Scatcherd might have been coming up behind. 
 In which case, if I had been Ply, I should have run on in front." 
 
 " Don't be spiteful ! However, I know she's bony. Well — 
 
680 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 am I to get on vdth my story, or not ? . . . . Very good ! Where 
 did I leave off ? Oh — at Miss Scatoherd ! Now, papa dear, 
 be good, and don't be solemn." 
 
 " Well— fire away \" 
 
 " Indeed, it really happened just as I told you : as we were 
 going to the Eectory, Ply ran on in front, and I went on to 
 rescue Miss Scatoherd, because she doesn't like being knocked 
 down by a dog, however affectionate. And it was just then 
 that I heard Adrian speak. . . ." 
 
 " Did I speak ?" 
 
 " Perhaps I ought to say gasp. I heard Adrian gasp. And 
 when I turned round to see why, he was rubbing his eyes. 
 Because he had seen Miss Scatoherd." 
 
 " How did you know ?" The interest of this has made Sir 
 Hamilton lapse his disciplines for the moment. He takes 
 advantage of a pause, due to his son and daughter beginning to 
 answer both at once, and each stopping for the other, to say: — 
 " This would be the second time — the second time ! Some- 
 thing might come of this." 
 
 " You go on !" says Irene, nodding to her brother. " Say 
 what you said." 
 
 Adrian accepts the prolocutorship. " To the best of my 
 recollection I said: — 'Stop Ply knocking Miss Scatoherd down 
 again !' Because he did it before, you know. . . . Oh yes, 
 entirely from love, no doubt ! Then I heard you say: — ' How 
 do you know it's Miss Scatoherd V And I told you." 
 
 " Yes — yes — ^yes — ^yes ! But how did you ? . . . . How much 
 did you see ?" The Baronet is excited and roused. 
 
 " Quite as much as I wished. I think I mentioned that I 
 did not dote on Miss Scatoherd." For, the moment a piece of 
 perversity is possible, this young man jumps at it. 
 
 " Oh, Adrian dear, don't be paradoxical and capricious when 
 papa's so anxious. Do say what you saw !" Thus urged by his 
 sister, the blind man describes the occurrence from his point of 
 view, carefully and conscientiously. The care and conscience 
 are chiefly needed to limit and circumscribe a sudden image of 
 a lady of irreproachable demeanour besieged by an unexpected 
 dog. So sudden that it merely appeared as a fact in space, 
 without a background or a foothold. It came and went in a 
 flash, Adrian said, leaving him far more puzzled to account 
 for its disappearance than its sudden reasonless intrusion on his 
 darkness. 
 
 As soon as the narrative ended, perversity set in. It was 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 681 
 
 gratifying, said Adrian, to listen while Hope told flattering tales, 
 but was it not as well to be on our guard against rash conclusions ? 
 Even a partial restoration of eyesight was a thing to look forward 
 to, but would not the extent of the benefits it conferred vary accord- 
 ing to the nature of its own hmitations ? ' For instance, it might 
 enable him to see everything in a mist, without outlines; or, 
 for that matter, upside down. That, however, would not signify, 
 so long as everything else was upside down. Lideed, who could 
 say for certain that anything ever was, or ever had been, right side 
 up ? It all turned on which side " up " was, and on whether 
 there was a wrong side at all. 
 
 " All nonsense !" said Irene. 
 
 "Shut up, 'Re !" said Adrian. "These things want thinking out. 
 A limited vision might be restricted in other ways than by mere 
 stupid opaque fog, and bald, insipid position in Space. Con- 
 sider how much more aggravating it would be — ^from the point of 
 view of Providence — ^to Umit the vision to the selection of 
 peculiar objects which would give offence to the Taste or Religious 
 Convictions of its owner ! Suppose that Miss Scatcherd's eyes, 
 for instance, could only distinguish gentlemen of Unsound 
 opinions, and couldn't see a Curate if it was ever so ! And, 
 per contra, suppose that it should only prove possible to me to 
 receive an image of Miss Scatcherd, or her congeners . . . ." 
 
 " Is that eels 1" said Irene, who wasn't listening, but getting 
 out writing-materials. " You may go on talking, but don't 
 expect me to answer, because I shan't. I'm going to write to 
 Gwen all about it." 
 
 Her brother started, and became suddenly serious. " No, 
 'Re !" he exclaimed. " At least, not yet. I don't want Gwen 
 to know anjrthing about it. Don't let's have any more false hopes 
 than we can help. Ten to one it's only a flash in the pan ! . . . . 
 Don't cry about it, ducky darling ! If it was real, it won't 
 stop there, and we shall have something worth telling." 
 
 So Irene did not write her letter. 
 
 That evening the Squire was very silent, saying nothing about 
 the long conversation he had had with Gwen's mother. His good 
 lady did not come down to dinner, and if she asked him any 
 questions about it, it was when he went up to dress; not in the 
 hearing of his son or daughter. They only knew that their 
 mother had not seen Lady Ancester when she called, and 
 curiosity about the visitor had merged in the absorbing interest 
 of Miss Scatcherd's sudden visibility. 
 
682 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 But no sooner had Irene — ^who was the ladies, this time- 
 departed to alleviate the lot of her excellent mamma, who may 
 have been very ill, for anything the story knows, than Sir 
 Hamilton told the pervading attendant-in-chief to look alive 
 vidth the coffee, and get that door shut, and keep it shut, con- 
 veying his desire for undisturbed seclusion. Then he was ob- 
 served by his son to be humming and hawing, somewhat in the 
 manner of ourselves when asked to say a few words at a pubUc 
 dinner. This was Adrian's report to Irene later. 
 
 " Had a visitor to-day — s'pose they told you — Lady Ancester. 
 Sorry your mother wasn't up to seeing her." 
 
 " I know. We passed her coming away. Said how-d'ye-do 
 in a hurry. What had her ladyship got to say for herself ?" 
 Thus far was mere recognition of a self-assertion of the Baronet's, 
 as against female triviality. He always treated any topic mooted 
 in the presence of womankind as mere froth, and resumed it as a 
 male interest, as though it had never been mentioned, as soon 
 as the opposite sex had died down. 
 
 " We had some talk. Did you know she was coming ?" 
 
 " WeU — yes — after a fashion. Gwen's last letter said we might 
 expect a descent from her mamma. But I had no idea she was 
 going to be so prompt." 
 
 " She sent over to tell us, this morning. They took the letter 
 up to your mother. I had gone over to the Hanger, to prevent 
 Akers cutting down a tree. Man's a fool ! I rather got let in 
 for seeing her ladyship. Your mother arranged it." 
 
 " I didn't hear of it. I should have stopped. So woidd 'Re." 
 
 " Yes — ^it rather let me in for a . . . . tete-d-tete." Why did 
 Sir Hamilton feel that this expression was an edged tool, that 
 might cut his fingers ? He did. 
 
 " I should have been in the way." 
 
 Another time this might have procured a rebuke for levity. 
 Sir Hamilton perceived in it a stepping-stone to his text. 
 " Perhaps you might," he said. But he wavered, lest that stone 
 should not bear; addiag, indecisively: — " Well — we had some 
 taUi !" 
 
 " About ?" said his son. But he knew perfectly well what 
 about. 
 
 " About Gwen and yourself. That conversation of yours with 
 the Earl. You remember it ? You told me." 
 
 " I remember it, certainly. He was perfectly right — ^the Earl. 
 He's the sort of man that is right. I was horribly ashamed of 
 myself. But Gwen set me up in my own conceit again." 
 
THE COUNTESS CALLS AT PENSHAM 683 
 
 His father persevered. " I understood his view to be that 
 Gwen was under the influence of ... . was influenced by ... . 
 a distorted view .... a mistaken imagination " 
 
 " Not a doubt of it, I should think. My amour propre keeps 
 on suggesting to me that Gwen may be of sound mind. My 
 strong common sense replies that my amour propre may be 
 blowed \" 
 
 " Adrian, I wish to talk to you seriously. What did you sup- 
 pose I was referring to 1" 
 
 " To Gwen's distorted view of your humble servant — a clear 
 case of mistaken imagination. That, however, is a condition 
 precedent of the position. Dan Cupid would be hard up, other- 
 wise." 
 
 " Dan Who ?" 
 
 " The httle God of Love . . . not Daniel Anybody ! Wasn't that 
 what the Earl meant ?" 
 
 " Not at all ! I was referring to his view of .... a .... his 
 daughter's view .... of the accident .... some idea of her 
 making up to you for . . . ." No wonder he hesitated. It was 
 diflBcult to talk to his son about it. 
 
 Adrian cleared the air with a ringing laugh. " I know ! 
 What Gwen calls the Self-Denying Ordnance ! — her daddy's 
 expression, I beHeve." He settled down to a more restrained 
 and serious tone. " The subject has not been mentioned, since 
 Lord Ancestor's first conversation with me — ^in the consulship of 
 Mrs. Bailey, at the Towers — ^not mentioned by anyone. And 
 though the thought of it won't accept any suggestions towards 
 its extinction, from myself, I don't see my way to .... to 
 making it a subject of general conversation, in fact, I cannot do 
 anything but hold my tongue. I am sure you would not wish 
 me to say to Gwen: — 'Hence! Begone! I forbid you to 
 sacrifice yourself at My Shrine.' Now, would you ?" 
 
 The Squire was at Uberty to ignore poetry. He took no 
 notice of the question, but proceeded to his second head. " Lady 
 Ancester has a strong opinion on the subject." He never said 
 much at a time, and this being difficult conversation, his part of it 
 came in short lengths. 
 
 " To the effect that her daughter is throwing herself away. 
 Quite right ! It is so. She is throwing herself away." 
 
 " Lady Ancester expressed no opinion to that efi'ect. She 
 considers that Gwen is not acting under the influence of ... . 
 under the usual motives. That's all she said. Spoke very well 
 of you, my boy ! — ^I must say that." 
 
684 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 "But ?" 
 
 " But thought Gwen ought to act only for her own sake." 
 
 " Of course she ought. Of course she ought. I see the whole 
 turn out. Her mother considers, quite rightly, that Jephtha, 
 Judge of Israel, ought to have been jolly well ashamed of him- 
 self. Perhaps he was. But that's neither here nor there. What 
 does Gwen's mammy think I ought to do — ought to say — ought 
 to pretend ? That's what it comes to. Am I to refuse to accom- 
 pany Gwen to the altar till she can give sureties that she is really 
 in love, and plead the highest Spartan principles to justify my 
 conduct ? Am I to make believe that I cannot, cannot love a 
 woman unless she produces certificates of affection based solely 
 on the desirability of my inestimable self ? I should never make 
 anyone believe that. Why — ^if I thought Gwen hated me worse 
 than poison, but was marrying me on high moral grounds to 
 square accounts, I don't think I could humbug successfully, to 
 that extent." 
 
 " Well, my dear boy, I am bound to confess that I do not see 
 what you can do. I can only repeat to you her ladyship's 
 conviction, and tell you that I believe it to be — ^what she says 
 it is. I mean that she speaks because she is certain Gwen is 
 under the influence of this — of this Quixotic motive. I can 
 only tell you so, at her wish, and — and leave it to you. I tell 
 you frankly that if I were in her place, I should oppose the mar- 
 riage, under the circumstances." 
 
 " Why doesn't she tackle me about it herself 1" 
 
 " H'm — ^well — ^h'm ! I think if you look at it from her point 
 of view .... from her point of view, you'll see there would be 
 many diflSculties .... many difficulties. Done your cigar ? I 
 suppose we ought to go and pay your mother a visit." 
 
 Yes — ^Adrian saw the difficulties ! On his way upstairs a 
 vivid scene passed through his head, in which an image of the 
 Countess addressed him thus: — "My dear Mr. Torrens, Gwen 
 does not really love you. She is only pretending, because she 
 considers her family are responsible for your blindness. All her 
 assurances of affection for you are untrustworthy — ^just her 
 fibs ! She could not play her part without them. I appeal to 
 you as an honourable man to disbelieve every word she says, 
 and to respect the true instinct of a maternal parent. No one 
 grieves more sincerely than I do for your great misfortime, or is 
 more contrite than my husband and myself because it was our 
 keeper that shot you, but there are limits ! We must draw the 
 line at our daughter marrying a scribbler with his eyes out, on 
 
WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 685 
 
 high principles." At this point the image may be said to have 
 got the bit in its teeth, for it added: — " If Gwen squinted and 
 had a wooden leg, nothing would please us better. But ....!" 
 How did the growing hope of a revival of sight bear on the 
 question ? Well — ^both ways ! May not Gwen's pity for his 
 calamity have had something to do with her feelings towards him, 
 without any motive that the most stodgy prose could call 
 Quixotic ? 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A DABBLER IN IMMOETALITY. ALL THEIR LIVES ! WILL PHCEBE 
 KNOW ME ? STAY TO TELL HBE THIS IS ME. THAT POOE OLD 
 PERSON. HOW QWBN MET GRANNY MARRABLB ON HER WAY 
 HOME. HER DREAD OF MORE DISCLOSINGS, AND A GREAT 
 RELIEF. MACTE VIRTVTE, DR. NASH ! GRANNY MARRABLE's 
 FORTITUDE. HOW GWEN NOTICED THE LIKENESS TOO, FOR 
 THE FIRST TIME ! A SHORT CHAT THE COUNTESS TTAD HAD 
 WITH SIR HAMH/rON. HOW SHE WAS UNFEELING ABOUT THE 
 OLD TWINS. WHY NOT SETTLE DOWN AND TALK IT OVER ? 
 NO AUTHENTICATED GHOST APPEARS TO A PERFECT STRANGER. 
 A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT. SIR SPENCER DERRICK AND 
 THE OPBNSHAWS. GWEN's LETTER TO HER FATHER. HOW 
 SHE DID NOT GO TO PENSHAM, BUT BACK TO STRIDES COTTAGE 
 
 When Gwen's task came to an end, she had to think of herself. 
 The day had been more trying even than her worst anticipations 
 of it. But now at last she had stormed that citadel of Impossible 
 BeUef in the mind of both mother and daughter, and nothing 
 she could do could bring them, strained and distracted by the 
 incredible revelation, nearer to a haven of repose. She had 
 spoken the word: the rest lay with the powers of Nature. Prob- 
 ably she felt what far different circumstances have caused many 
 of us to feel, on whom the unwelcome task has devolved of bring- 
 ing the news of a death. How consciously helpless we were — 
 was it not so ? — ^when the tale was told, and we had to leave the 
 heart of our hearer to its lonely struggle in the dark ! 
 
 This that Gwen had told was not news of death, but news of 
 life; nevertheless, it might kill. She had Uttle fear for the 
 
686 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 daughter or the sister; much for this new-found object of hei 
 affection who had survived- so many troubles. For Gwen had to 
 acknowledge that " old Mrs. Picture " had acquired a mysteri- 
 ously strong hold upon her — ^its strangeness lying in its sudden 
 development. She could, however, do nothing now to help the 
 old tempest-tossed bark into smooth water, that would not be 
 done as well or better by her equally storm-beaten consort, 
 whose rigging and spars had been in such much better trim than 
 hers when the gale struck both aUke. Gwen felt, too, a great 
 faith that the daughter's love would be, as it were, the beacon 
 of the mother's salvation; the pilot to a sheltered haven where 
 the seas would bo at rest. She herself could do no more. 
 
 After the old lady's consciousness retmned, it was long before 
 she spoke, and Gwen had felt halt afraid her speech might be 
 gone. But then — could she herself speak ? Scarcely ! And Ruth 
 Thrale, the daughter, seemed in Uke plight, sitting beside her 
 mother on the bed, her usually rosy cheeks gone ashy white, her 
 eyes fixed on the old face before her with a look that seemed to 
 Gwen one of wonder even more than love. The stress of the hour, 
 surely ! For aU the tenderness of her heart was in the hand 
 that wandered caressingly about the mass of silver hair on the 
 pillow, and smoothed it away from the eyes that turned from 
 the one to the other half questioningly, but content without 
 reply. The mother seemed physically overwhelmed by the 
 shock, and ready to accept absolute collapse, it not indeed in- 
 capable of movement. She made no attempt to speak till later. 
 
 During the hour or half-hour that followed, Gwen and Ruth 
 Thrale spoke but once or twice, beneath their breath. Neither 
 coidd have said why. Who can say why the dwellers in a house 
 where Death is pending speak in undertones ? Not from fear 
 of disturbance to the dying man, whose sight and hearing are 
 waning fast. This was a silence of a like sort, though it was 
 rather resurrection than death that imposed it. 
 
 The great clock in the kitchen, which had struck twelve when 
 Gwen was showing the forged letter to Widow Thrale, had 
 followed on to one and two, mmoticed. And now, when it 
 struck three, she doubted it, and looked at her watch. " Yes," 
 said she, bewildered. " It's right ! It's actually three o'clock. 
 I must go. I wish I could stay." She stooped over the old face 
 on the pillow, and kissed it lovingly. " You know, dear, what 
 has happened. Phoebe is coming — ^your sister Phcebe." She 
 had a strange feeling, as she said this, of dabbling in immortality 
 — of tampering with the gfrave. 
 
WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 687 
 
 Then old Maisie spoke for the first time ; slowly, but clearly 
 enough, though softly. " I think — I know— what has hap- 
 pened All our lives ? . . . . But Phoebe will come. My 
 
 Ruth will fetch her. Will you not, dear ?" 
 
 " Mother will come, very soon." 
 
 " That is it. She is mother — my Ruth's mother ! . . . . But 
 I am your mother, too, dear !" 
 
 " Indeed yes — ^my mother — my mother — my mother \" 
 
 " I kissed you in your crib, asleep, and was not ashamed to 
 go and leave you. I went away in the moonlight, with the little 
 red bag that was my mother's — ^Phoebe's and mine ! I was not 
 ashamed to go, for the love of your father, on the cruel sea. 
 Fifty years agone, my darling !" Gwen saw that she was speak- 
 ing of her husband, and her heart stirred with anger that such 
 undying love should still be his, the miscreant's, the cause of 
 all. She afterwards thought that old Maisie's mind had some- 
 how refused to receive the story of the forgery. Could she, else, 
 have spoken thus, and gone on, as she did, to say to Gwen: — 
 " Come here, my dear ! God bless you !"? She held her hand, 
 pressing it close to her. " I want to say to you what it is that 
 is frettiug me. Will Phcebe know me, for the girl that went 
 away ? Oh, see how I am changed !" 
 
 The last thing Gwen had expected was that the old woman 
 should master the facts. It made her hesitate to accept this 
 seeming ability to look them in the face as genuine. It would 
 break down, she was convinced, and the coming of a working 
 recognition of them would be a slow afEair. But she could not 
 say so. She could only make beUeve. " Why should she not 
 know you ?" she said. " She has changed, herself." 
 
 " WTien will she come ?" said old Maisie restlessly. " She 
 will come when you are gone. Oh, how I wish you could stay, 
 to tell her that this is me !" 
 
 " Do you think she wiU doubt it. She will not, when she 
 hears you talk of the — of your old time. I am sorry I must go, 
 but I must." And indeed she thought so, for she did not know 
 that her own mother had gone away from the Towers, and 
 fancied that that good lady would resent her desertion. This 
 afEair had lasted longer than her anticipation of it. 
 
 Then old Maisie showed how partial the illumination of her 
 mind had been. " Oh yes, my dear," she said, " I know. You 
 have to go, of course, because of that poor old person. The old 
 person you told me of — ^whom you have to tell — to tell of her 
 sister she thought dead — ^what was it ?" She had recovered 
 
 44 
 
688 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 consciousness so far as to know that Phoebe was somehow to 
 reappear risen from the dead; and that this Ruth whom she had 
 taken so much to heart was somehow entitled to call her mother ; 
 but what that how was, and why, was becoming a mystery as 
 her vigour fell away and an inevitable reaction began to teU 
 upon her. 
 
 Gwen heard it in the dazed sound of her voice; and, to her 
 thought, assent was best to whatever the dumbfoundered mind 
 dwelt upon most readily. " Yes," said she, " I must go and 
 tell her. She must know." Then she beckoned Widow Thrale 
 away from the bedside. " It was her own sister I told her of," 
 said she in an undertone. " I thought she would see quickest 
 
 that way Do you quite understand 1" A quick nod 
 
 showed that her hearer had quite understood. Gwen thanked 
 Heaven that at least she had no lack of faculties to deal with 
 there. " Listen \" said she. " You must get her food now. 
 You must make her eat, whether she Ukes it or no." She saw 
 that for Ruth herself the kindest thing was the immediate im- 
 position of duties, and was glad to find her so alive to the needs 
 of the case. 
 
 Two voices of women in the kitchen without. One, EUzabeth- 
 next-door; the other, surely, Keziah Solmes from the Towers. 
 So much the better ! " I may tell it them, my lady ?" said Widow 
 Thrale. Gwen had to think a moment, before saying : — "Yes — 
 but they ust not talk of it in the village — ^not yet ! Go out 
 and tell them. I will remain with your mother." It was the 
 first time Ruth Thrale had had the fact she had succeeded in 
 knowing in theory forced roughly upon her in practice. She 
 started, but recovered herself to do her ladyship's bidding. 
 
 The utter amazement of Keziah and Elizabeth-next-door, as 
 Gwen heard it, was a thing to be remembered. But she paid 
 httle attention to it. She was bidding farewell to old Mrs. 
 Picture. The last speech she heard from her seemed to be: — 
 " Tell my little boy and Dolly. Say I will come back to them." 
 Then she appeared to fall asleep. 
 
 " You must get some food down her throat, somehow, Mrs. 
 Thrale, or we shall have her sinking from exhaustion. You will 
 stop to help, Keziah ? Stop till to-morrow. I will look in at 
 the Lodge to tell your husband. I must go now. Is Tom 
 Kettering there ?" Gwen felt she would like an affectionate 
 farewell of Ruth Thrale, but a sUght recrudescence of the Norman 
 Conquest came in the way, due to the presence of Keziah and 
 EHzabeth-next-door; so she had to give it up. 
 
WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 689 
 
 Tom Kettering was not there, but was reproducible at pleasure 
 by whistles, evolved from some agent close at hand and willing 
 to assist. Tom and the mare appeared unchanged by their long 
 vigil, and showed neither joy nor sorrow at its coming to an end. 
 A violent shake the latter indulged in was a mere report of 
 progress, and Tom only touched his hat as a convention from 
 time immemorial. There was not a trace of irony in his " Home, 
 my lady 1" though a sarcastic Jehu might have seemed to be 
 expressing a doubt whether her ladyship meant ever to go home 
 at all. 
 
 The road to Costrell's turned off Gwen's line of route, the main 
 road to the Towers. A cart was just coming in sight, at the 
 comer. Farmer Costrell's cart, driven by himself. An old 
 woman by his side — Granny Marrable, surely ? 
 
 Gwen was simply frightened. She felt absolutely unfit for 
 another high-tension interview. Her head might give way and 
 she might do something foolish. But it was impossible to turn 
 and run. It was, however, easy enough to go quickly by, with 
 ordiaary salutations. Still, it was repugnant to her to do so. 
 But, then, what else could she do ? It was settled for her. 
 
 Said Granny Marrable to her grandson-in-law : — " 'Tis Gwen 
 o' th' Towers, John, in Tom Kettering's gig. Bide here till they 
 come up, that I may get speech of her ladyship." 
 
 " WiU she stand still on th' high roo-ad, to talk to we ?" 
 
 " She'll never pass me by if she sees me wishfid to speak with 
 her. Her ladyship has too good a heart." 
 
 " Vairy well, Gra-anny." John Costrell reined in his horse, 
 and the cart and gig came abreast. 
 
 Granny Marrable spoke at once. Her voice was firm, but her 
 face was pale and hard set. " I have been told strange news, 
 my lady, but it mtist be true. It cannot be else." 
 
 " It is true. Dr. Nash told you." 
 
 " That is so. Our Dr. Nash." 
 
 " But how much ? Has he told you all ?" 
 
 " I will tell your ladyship." The old woman's firmness and 
 strength were marvellous to Gwen. " He has told me that my 
 sister that was dead is risen from the grave . . . ." 
 
 " God's my life. Granny, what will ye be for saying next to 
 her ladyship ?" John Costrell had heard none of the story. 
 
 " It's all quite right, Mr. Costrell," said Gwen. " Granny 
 Marrable doesn't mean really dead. She thought her dead — her 
 
 sister Go on. Granny ! That is quite right. And has 
 
 Dr. Nash told you where your sister is now ?" 
 
690 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " At my own home at Chorlton^ my lady. And I am on my 
 way there now, and will see her once more, God willing, before 
 we die." 
 
 " Go to her — go to her ! The sooner the better ! . . . . I 
 must tell you one thing, though. She is not strong — ^not like 
 you and your daughter Ruth. But you will see.^' The old 
 lady began with something about her gratitude to Gwen and 
 to her father, but Gwen cut her short. What did that matter, 
 now ? Then she assured her that old Maisie had been told 
 everything, and was only uneasy lest her sister should not know 
 her again, and would even doubt her identity. " But that is 
 impossible," said Gwen. " Because she is your sister, and 
 remembers all your childhood together." 
 
 After they had parted company, and Gwen was on her way 
 again, relieved beyond measure to find that Dr. Nash had con- 
 trived to carry out his mission so well — ^though how he had done 
 it was a mystery to her as yet — she had a misgiving that she 
 ought to have produced the forged letter to show to Granny 
 Marrable. Perhaps, however, she had done no harm by keep- 
 ing it; as if the conviction of the two sisters of each other's 
 identity was to turn on what is called " evidence," what would 
 be its value to either ? They would either know each other, or 
 not; and if they did not, enough "evidence" to hang a dozen 
 men would not stand against the deep-rooted belief in each other's 
 death through those long years. 
 
 Besides, Uke Dr. Nash, she had just been quite taken aback 
 to see — now that she came to look for it, mind you ! — the 
 amazing likeness between the old twin sisters. How came it 
 that she had not seen it before ? — ^for instance, when they were 
 face to face in her presence at the door of Strides Cottage, but 
 two or three weeks since. She dismissed the forged letter, to 
 dwell on the enormous relief of not having another disclosure 
 problem before her; and also on the satisfaction she would have 
 in telling her father what a successful outcome had followed his 
 venial transgression of opening and reading it. Altogether, her 
 feehngs were those of triumph, trampling underfoot the recol- 
 lection that she had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and 
 making a good stand against brain-whirl caused by the almost 
 unbearable strangeness of the story. 
 
 On arriving at the Towers, she was disconcerted to find that 
 all her solicitude about her mother's loneliness in her absence 
 had been thrown away. She whispered to herself that it served 
 her right for fidgeting about other people. Adrian had been 
 
WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 691 
 
 perfectly justified when he said that interest in one's relations 
 was the worst investment possible for opulent Altruism. 
 
 WeU — she was better off now than she had been in the early 
 morning, when there was all that terrible disclosiire ahead. It 
 was done — ended; for better, for worse ! She might indulge now 
 in a cowardice that shrank from seeing the two old sisters again 
 until they were f amihaiised with the position. If only she might 
 find them, on her next visit, habituated to a new modus vivendi, 
 with the possibiHty of peaceful years together, to live down the 
 long separation into nothingness 1 If only that might be ! But 
 was it possible ? Was it conceivable even ? 
 
 Anyhow, she deserved a well-earned rest from tension. And 
 presently she would tell the whole strange story to Adrian, and 
 
 show him that clever forgery No ! — ^thought stopped 
 
 with a cruel jerk, and her heart said: — " Shall I ever show him 
 anything ? Never I Never \" 
 
 " You went to Pensham, mamma 1" said Gwen to her mother, 
 the next day, as soon as an opportunity came for quiet talk. 
 
 " On my way to Poynders," said the Countess yawnfuUy. 
 " But it was unlucky. Lady Torrens was keeping her room. 
 Some sort of nervous attack. I didn't get any particulars." 
 
 Gwen suspected reticence. " You didn't see her, then ?" 
 
 " Oh dear no ! How should I ? She was in bed, I believe." 
 
 " You saw somebody ?" 
 
 " Only Sir Hamilton, for a few minutes. He doesn't seem 
 uneasy. I don't suppose it's anything serious." 
 
 " Did you see 'Re ?" 
 
 " Miss Torrens and her brother were out. Didn't come back." 
 Her ladyship here perceived that reticence, overdone, would 
 excite suspicion, and provoke exhaustive inquiry. " I had a 
 short chat with Sir Hamilton. Who gave me a very good cup 
 of tea." The excellence of the tea was, so to speak, a red 
 herring. 
 
 Gwen refused to be throvra off the scent. " He's an old 
 friend of yours, isn't he ?" said she suggestively. 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! Ages ago. He told me about some people 
 I haven't heard of for years. I must try and call on that Mrs. 
 What's her-name. Do you know where Tavistock Square is ?" 
 
 " Of course I do. Everybody does. Who is it lives 
 there ?" 
 
 The Countess had consulted the imdersized tablets, and was 
 repocketing them. " Mrs. Enniscorthy Hopkins," said she, in 
 
692 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the most collateral way possible to humanity. " Tou wouldn't 
 know anything about her." 
 
 "This tea has been standing/' said Gwen, She refused to 
 rise to Mrs. Enniscorthy Hopkins, whom she suspected of red- 
 herringhood. 
 
 The Countess was compelled to be less collateral. " She was 
 Kathleen Tyrawley," said she. " But I quite lost sight of her. 
 One does." 
 
 " Was she interesting ?" 
 
 " Ye-es N-no .... not very. Pretty — of that sort !" 
 
 " What sort ?" 
 
 " Well — very fond of horses." 
 
 " So am I — ^the darlings !" 
 
 "Yes — ^but a girl may be very fond of horses, and yet not 
 marry a . . . . Don't put milk in — only cream " 
 
 " Marry a what ?" 
 
 " Marry her riding-master." Her ladyship softened down Miss 
 Tyrawley's groom to presentabihty. " But it was before you 
 were bom, child. However, no doubt it is the same, in principle." 
 
 " Hope so ! Is that tea right ?" 
 
 " The tea ? Oh yes, the tea .... will do. No, I only saw 
 Sir Hamilton. The son and daughter were away." 
 
 "Now, mamma, that is being unkind, and you know it. 
 ' The son and daughter !' As if they were people !" 
 
 " Well — and what are they ?" 
 
 " You know perfectly well what I mean." 
 
 As the Countess did, she averted discussion. " We won't 
 rake the subject up, my dear Gwendolen," she said, in a manner 
 which embodied moderation, while asserting dignity. " You 
 know my feelings on the matter, which would, I am sure, be 
 those of any parent — of any mother, certainly. And I may 
 mention to you — only, please no discussion ! — ^that Sir Hamilton 
 entirely shares my views. He expressed himself quite clearly 
 on the subject yesterday." 
 
 " You must have seen him for more than a few minutes to get 
 as far as that." This was a shell in the enemy's powder-maga- 
 zine. 
 
 The Countess had to adopt retrooessive strategy. " I think, 
 my dear," she said, with dignity at a maximum, " that I have 
 made it su£B.ciently clear that I do not wish to rediscuss your 
 engagement, as your father persists in calling it. We must 
 retain our opinions. If at the end of six months — i/Z-r-it turns 
 out that I am entirely mistaken, why, then you and your father 
 
WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 693 
 
 must just settle it your ovra way. Now let us talk no more 
 about it." 
 
 This conversation took place in the late afternoon of the day 
 following Gwen's visit to Strides Cottage, and the Countess's 
 to Pensham. All through the morning of that day her young 
 ladyship had been feeling the effects of the strain of the previous 
 one, followed by a night of despairing sleeplessness due to ex- 
 citement. An afternoon nap, a most imusual thing with her, 
 had raUied her to the point of sending a special invitation to 
 her mother to join her at tea in her own private apartment; 
 which was reasonable, as all the guests were away killing inno- 
 cent birds, or hares. The Countess was aware of her daughter's 
 fatigue and upset, but persisted in regarding its cause as over- 
 estimated — a great deal too much made of a very simple matter. 
 " Then that is satisfactorily settled, and there need be no 
 further fuss." These were her words of comment on her daugh- 
 ter's detailed accoimt of her day's adventures, which made 
 themselves of use to keep hostilities in abeyance. 
 
 " I think you are unfeeling, mamma; that's flat !" was Gwen's 
 unceremonious rejoinder. 
 
 The Countess repeated the last word impassively. It was 
 rather as though she said to Space: — "Here is an expression. 
 If you are by way of containing any Intelligences capable of 
 supplying an explanation, I will hear them impartially." Re- 
 ceiving no reply from any Point of the Compass, she continued: — 
 "I really cannot see what these two old .... persons have to 
 complain of. They have every reason to be thankful that they 
 have been spared so long. The death of either would have made 
 all your exertions on their behalf useless. Why they cannot 
 settle down on each side of that big fireplace at Strides Cottage, 
 and talk it all over, I cannot imagine. It has been engraved in 
 the Illustrated London News." This was marginal, not in the 
 text. " They will have plenty to tell each other after such a 
 long time." 
 
 " Mamma dear, you are hopeless !" 
 
 " Well, my dear, ask any sensible person. They have had 
 the narrowest escape of finding it aU out after each other's death, 
 and then I suppose we shoidd never have heard the end of 
 
 it Yes, perhaps the way I put it was a httle confused. 
 
 But really the subject is so complex." Gwen complicated it still 
 more by introducing its relations to Immortality; to which her 
 mother took exception: — " If they were both ghosts, we should 
 probably know nothing of them. JNo ghost appears to a perfect 
 
694 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 stranger — ^no authenticated ghost ! Besides, one hopes they 
 would be at peace in their graves." 
 
 " Oh, ah, yes, by-the-by !" said Gwen, " there wasn't to be 
 anything till the Day of Judgment." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't drag in Religion," said her mother, 
 " You pick up these dreadful Freethinking ways of speech 
 from " 
 
 " From Adrian ? Of course I do. But you began it, by 
 talking about Death and Ghosts." 
 
 " My dear, neither Death nor Ghosts are Religion, but the 
 Day of Judgment is. Ask anybody !" 
 
 " Very well, then ! Cut the Day of Judgment out, and go on 
 with Death and Ghosts." 
 
 " We will talk," said the Countess coldly, " of something else. 
 I do not hke the tone of the conversation. What are your plans 
 for to-morrow ?" 
 
 " I don't think I shall go to Chorlton to-morrow. I shall leave 
 the old ladies alone for a while. I think it's the best way. 
 Don't you ?" 
 
 " I don't think it can matter much, either way." The Countess 
 was not going to come down from Olympus, for trifles. " But 
 what are you going to do to-morrow ? Go to church, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Is it necessary to settle ?" 
 
 " By no means. Perhaps I was wrong in taking it for granted. 
 No doubt I should have done well — ^in your case — ^to ask for 
 information. Are you going to church ?" 
 
 " Possibly. I can settle when the time comes." Her mother 
 made no reply, but she made it so ostentatiously that to skip 
 off to another subject would have been to accept a wager of 
 battle. Gwen was prepared to be conciliatory. " Is anything 
 coming off ?" she asked irreverently. " Any Bishop or any- 
 thing ?" 
 
 Her mother replied, with a Pacific Ocean of endurance in her 
 voice: — "Dr. Tuxford Somers is preaching at the Abbey. If 
 you come, pray do not be late. The carriage will be ready at a 
 quarter to ten." 
 
 " Well — ^I shall have to go once or twice, so I suppose now will 
 do for once. There's Christmas Day, of course — ^I don't mind 
 that. I shall go to Chorlton, and look at the two old ladies in 
 church. I hope Mrs. Picture wiU be well enough by then." 
 
 " I am sure I hope so. A whole week !" The Countess's 
 parti pris, that the experience of the old twins was nothing to 
 make such a fuss over, showed itself plainly in this. She passed 
 
WHAT FOLLOWED AT CHORLTON 695 
 
 on to a more important subject. " I understand," said she, 
 " that you intend to go to Pensham on Monday — and stay !" 
 
 " I do," said Gwen uncompromisingly. But her mother's 
 expression became so stony that Gwen anticipated her spoken 
 protest, saying: — "Now, mamma dear, you know I've agreed, 
 and we are to go abroad for six whole months. So don't look 
 like a martyr \" 
 
 " When will you be back ?" said the martyr. The fact is, she 
 was well aware that this was a case of quid pro quo ; and that 
 Gwen was entitled, by treaty, to a perfect Saturnalia of sweet- 
 hearting till after Christmas, in exchange for the six months of 
 penal servitude to follow. But she preferred to indicate that 
 the terms of the treaty had disappointed her. 
 
 " Quite uncertain," said Gwen. " I shall stop till Thursday, 
 anyhow. And Adrian and bene are to come here on Christinaa 
 Eve. I suppose they'll have to share the paternal plum- 
 pudding on Christmas Day. That can't be helped. And I shall 
 have to be here. That can't be helped either. / think it a pity 
 the whole clanjamfray shouldn't come here for Christmas." 
 
 " That is out of the question. Sir Hamilton has his own 
 social obligations. Besides, it would look as if you and Mr. 
 Torrens were definitely engaged. Which you are not." 
 
 " Suppose we talk of something else." 
 
 " Suppose we do." Her ladyship could only assent; for had 
 she not, Shylockwise, taught her daughter that word ? 
 
 The agreement that another topic should be resorted to was 
 sufficiently complied with by a short pause before resuming the 
 antecedent one. Gwen did this by saying: — "You will be all 
 right without me for a few days, because Sir Spencer Derrick 
 and his wife are due to-night, and the Openshaws, and the 
 Pellews will be here on Monday." 
 
 " Gwendolen !" In a shocked tone of voice. 
 
 " Well — ^Aunt C. and Cousin Percy, then. If they are not the 
 Pellews, they very soon will be. They are coming on Monday, 
 anyhow." 
 
 " But not by the same train !" 
 
 " / should come by the same train, if I were they. And in 
 the same carriage. And tip the guard to keep everybody else 
 out. Much better do it candidly than pretend they've met by 
 accident. / should." 
 
 The Countess thought she really had better change to another 
 subject. She dropped this one as far o£P as possible. " When 
 do you expect to see your two old interesting twins again 1" 
 
696 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 said she conoiliatorily. For she felt that reasoning with her 
 beautiful but irregular daughter was hopeless. The young lady 
 explained that her next visit to Chorlton would be by way of an 
 expedition from Pensham. Adrian and Irene would drive her 
 over. It was not morally much farther from Pensham than 
 from the Towers, although some arithmetical appearances were 
 against it. And she particularly wanted Adrian to see old Mrs. 
 Picture. And then, Uke a sudden sad cadence in music, came the 
 thought: — " But he cannot see old Mrs. Picture." 
 
 Keziah Solmes did not come back till quite late in the evening. 
 Her report of the state of things at Strides Cottage was mani- 
 festly vitiated by an unrestrained optimism. If she was to be 
 believed, the sudden revelation to each other of the old twin 
 sisters had had no specially perturbing efEect on either. Gwen 
 spent much of the evening writing a long letter to her father at 
 Bath, giving a full account of her day's work, and ending: — 
 " I do hope the dear old soul will bear it. Mrs. Solmes has 
 just given me a most promising report of her. I cannot sup- 
 pose her constant references to the Benevolence of Providence 
 to be altogether euphemisms in the interest of the Almighty. I 
 am borrowing Adrian's language — you will see that. I think 
 Keziah is convinced that Mrs. Prichard wUl rally, and that the 
 twins may live to be nonagenarians together. I must confess 
 to being very anxious about her myseM. She looked to me as if 
 a breath of air might blow her away. I shall not see her again 
 for a day or two, but I know they will send for me if I am wanted. 
 Dr. Nash is to see to that. What a serviceable man he is !" 
 She went on to say, after a few more particulars of Keziah's 
 report, that she was going to Pensham on Monday, and should 
 not come back before the Earl's own return to the Towers. 
 Mamma would do perfectly well without her, and it was only 
 fair, considering her own concessions. 
 
 But Gwen did not go to church next day. 
 
 Dr. Nash had been sent for to Strides Cottage at a very early 
 hour, having been prevented from fulfilling a promise to go 
 overnight. He must have seen some new cause for uneasiness, 
 although he disclaimed any grounds of alarm. For he wrote ofi 
 at once to her young ladyship, after a careful examination of his 
 patient : — " Mrs. Prichard certainly is very feeble. I think it 
 only right that you should know this at once. But you need 
 not be frightened. Probably it is no more than was to be ex- 
 pected." That was the wording of his letter, received by Gwen 
 
THE MEETING 697 
 
 as she sat at breakfast with some new arrivals and the Colonel, 
 and the dregs of the shooting-party. She was not at ail sorry 
 to get a complete change of ideas and associations, although the 
 subjects of conversation were painful enough, turning on the 
 reports of mixed disaster and success in the Crimea that were 
 making the close of '54 lurid and memorable for future 
 history. Gwen glanced at Dr. Nash's letter, gave hurried direc- 
 tions to the servant to tell Tom Kettering to be in readiness to 
 drive her at once to Chorlton, and made short work of breakfast 
 and her adieux to the assembled company. 
 
 If events would only pay attention to the convenience of 
 story-tellers, they would never happen at the same time. It 
 would make consecutive narrative much more practicable. It 
 would have been better — some may say — ^for this story to follow 
 Granny Marrable to Strides Cottage, and to leave Gwen to come 
 to Dr. Nash's summons next day. It might then have harked 
 back to the foregoing chat between her and her mother, or 
 omitted it altogether. Its author prefers the course it has 
 taken. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WHAT DID GRANNY MAREABLE THINK ON THE ROAD ? HEB 
 ARRIVAL, AND HOW KEZIAH TOLD JOHN COSTRELL, WHO 
 WHISTLED. THE MEETING, WHICH NONE SAW. HOW COXTLD 
 THIS BE MATS rm ? GRANNY MARBABLB's SHAKEN FAITH. 
 ETTTh's mixed EtUAUTIBS. HOW OLD MATSIE AWOKE AND 
 FELT CHILLY. HOW SHE SLEPT TEN SECONDS MORE AND 
 DREAMED FOR HOURS. HOW OLD PHCBBE HAD DRAWN A VERY 
 SMALL TOOTH OF MAISIB's, OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO 
 
 Keziah Solmes was literal, not imaginative. She was able 
 to describe any outward seeming of old Phoebe, or of Ruth. 
 But what could she know, or guess, of the stunned bewilderment 
 of their minds ? When asked by Gwen what each of the old 
 twins had said at sight of the other — ^for she had been present, 
 if not at their meeting, a few moments later — she seemed at a 
 loss for a report of definite speech. But, oh yes !^in reply to a 
 
698 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 suggestion from Gwen — ^they had called each other by name, 
 that for sure they did ! " But 'twas a wonderment to me, my 
 lady, that neither one should cry out loud, for the sorrow of all 
 that long time ago." So said old Keziah, sounding a true note 
 in this reference to the sadness inherent in mere lapse of years. 
 Gwen could and did endorse Keziah, on that score; but there 
 was no wonderment in her mind at their silence. Rather, she 
 was at a loss to conceive or invent a single phrase that either 
 could or would have spoken. 
 
 Least of all could independent thought imagine the anticipa- 
 tions of old Phoebe during that strange ride through the falling 
 twilight of the short winter's day. Did she articulate to herself 
 that each minute on the road was bringing her nearer to a strange 
 mystery that was in truth — that must be — the very selfsame 
 sister that her eyes last saw now fifty years ago, even the very 
 same that had called her, a mere baby, to see the heron that 
 flew away ? Yes — ^the same Maisie as much as she herself was 
 the same Phoebe ! Did her brain reel to think of the days when 
 she took her own image in an unexpected mirror for her sister — 
 kissed the cold glass with a shudder of horror before she found 
 her mistake ? Did she wonder now if this Mrs. Prichard could 
 seem to her another self, as Maisie had wondered would she 
 seem to her ? Would all be changed and chiU, and the old music 
 of their past be silence, or at best the jangle of a broken chord ? 
 Would this latter end of life, for both, be nothing but a joint 
 anticipation of the grave ? Gwen tried to sound the plummet 
 of thought in an inconceivable surrounding, to guess at some- 
 thing she herself might think were she impossibly conditioned 
 thus, and failed. 
 
 The story, too, must be content to fail. All it can guarantee 
 is facts; and speculation recoils from the attempt to see into old 
 Phoebe's soul as she dismounts from the farmer's cart, at the 
 door beyond which was the thing to baffle all belief; to stultify 
 all those bygone years, and stamp them as delusions. 
 
 Whatever she thought, her words were clear and free from 
 trepidation, and John Costrell repeated them after her, making 
 them the equivalent of printed instructions. " If yow are ba-adly 
 wanted, Graimy, I'm to coom for ye with ne'er a minute's loss 
 o' time. That wull I. And for what I be to tell the missus, I 
 bean't to say owt." 
 
 No — ^that would not do ! The early return of the cart, without 
 the Granny, had to be somehow accoimted for. Nothing had 
 been said to Maisie junior, by her, of not returning to supper. 
 
THE MEETING 699 
 
 " Bide there a minute till I tell ye, John/' said she, and went 
 towards the door. 
 
 Keziah Solmes was coming out, having heard the cart. She 
 started, with the exclamation: — "Why, God-a-mercy, 'tis the 
 Granny herself !" and made as though to beat a retreat into the 
 house, no doubt thinking to warn Widow Thrale within. Old 
 Phoebe stopped her, saying, quite firmly: — " / know. Cousin 
 Keziah. Tell me, how is Mrs. Prichard ?" 
 
 Keziah, taken aback, lost presence of mind. " What can ye 
 know o' Mrs. Prichard, Granny ?" said she sillily. She said this 
 because she could not see how the information had travelled. 
 
 " How is she ?" old Phoebe repeated. And something in her 
 voice said : — " Answer straight !" At least, so Keziah thought, 
 and replied: — " The worser by the bad shake she's had, I lay." 
 Neither made any reference to Mrs. Prichard's newly discovered 
 identity. For though, as we have seen, Keziah knew all about 
 it, she felt that the time had not yet come for free speech. 
 Granny Marrable turned to John CostreU, saying in the same clear, 
 unhesitating way: — " You may say to Maisie that her mother 
 wants a helping hand with old Mrs. Prichard, but I'll come in 
 the morning. You'll say no further than that, John;" — and 
 passed on into the house. 
 
 John replied: — "I'll see to it. Granny," and grasped the 
 situation, evidently. Keziah remained^ and as soon as the old 
 lady was out of hearing, said to him :—" This be a stra-ange 
 stary coom to light. Master Costrell. Only to think of it ! 
 The Gra-anny's twin, thought dead now, fowerty years 
 agone !" 
 
 " Thou'lt be knowing mower o' the stary than I, belike, Mrs. 
 Solmes," said John. " I'm only the better by a bare word or so, 
 80 far, from speech o' the Gra-anny with her yoong la-adyship o' 
 the Towers, but now, on the roo-ad. The Gra-anny she was 
 main silent, coom'n' along." 
 
 "There's nowt to wonder at in that. Master Gostrell. For 
 there's th' stary, as I tell it ye. Fowerty years agone and more, 
 she was dead by all accoimts, out in the Colonies, and counted 
 her sister dead as well. And twenty years past she's been living 
 in London town, and ne'er a one knovm it. And now she's 
 come by a chance to this very house !" 
 
 " She'd never coom anigh to this place ?" 
 
 " Sakes alive, no ! 'Twas all afower Gra-anny Marrable come 
 here to marry Farmer Marrable— he was her second, ye know. 
 I was a bit of a chit then. And Ruth Thrale was fower or five 
 
700 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 years yoonger. She was all one as if she was the Gra-anny's own 
 child. But she was noa such a thing." 
 
 Then it hecame clear that the word or so had been very bare 
 indeed. " She was an orphan, I ta-ak it," said John indiffer- 
 ently. 
 
 " There, now !" said Keziah. " I was ma-akin' a'most sure 
 you didn't see the right of it. Master Costrell. And I wasn't far 
 wrong, that once !" 
 
 " Maybe I'm out, but I do-an't see rightly where. A girl's 
 an orphan, with ne'er a fa-ather nor a moother. Maybe one 
 o' them was living ? Will that square it ?" 
 
 " One o' them's living still. And none so vairy far from where 
 we stand. Can ye ma-ak nowt o' that. Master Costrell ?" 
 
 John was a Uttle slow; it was his bucolic mind. "None so 
 vairy far from where we stand ?" he repeated, in the dark. 
 
 " Hearken to me tell ye, man alive ! She's in yander cottage, 
 in the bedroom out across th' pa-assage. And the two o' them 
 they've met by now. Are ye any nearer. Master Costrell ?" 
 
 For a moment no idea fructified. Then astonishment caught 
 and held him. " Not unless," he exclaimed, " not unless you 
 are meaning that this old la-ady is Widow Thrale'a mother !" 
 
 " You've gotten hold of it now. Master Costrell." 
 
 " But 'tis impossible — 'tis impossible I If she were she would 
 be my wife's grandmother ! — her grandmother that died in 
 
 AustraKa Well, Keziah Solmes, ye may nod and look 
 
 wise — ^but . . . ." 
 
 " But that is th' vairy thing she is, safe and sure, John Costrell. 
 I told ye — ^Australia. Australia be the Colonies." 
 
 John gave the longest whistle a single breath woidd support. 
 Why he was ready to accept the relation of old Phoebe and 
 Maisie, and revolt against Ids wife's inevitable granddaughter- 
 ship. Heaven only knows ! " But I'm not to say a word of it 
 to the mistress," said he, meaning his wife. 
 
 " The Gra-anny said so, and she'll be right Was that her 
 
 voice ?...." A sound had come from the cottage. Keziah 
 might be wanted. She wished the farmer good-night; and he 
 drove off, no longer mystified, but dumbfoundered with what had 
 removed his mystification. 
 
 Old Phoebe had passed on into the house. She was satisfied 
 that her message would accoimt quite reasonably for the vacant 
 seat in the returning cart. Besides, medical sanction — ^Dr, 
 Nash's — ^had been given for her absence. 
 
THE MEETING TOl 
 
 Now that the moment was close, a great terror came upon her, 
 and she trembled. She knew that Ruth, her daughter for so 
 long, was beyond that closed door across the passage, with .... 
 With whom ? With what ? 
 
 Who can say, except he be a twin that has lost a twin, what 
 more of soul-stress had to be borne by these two than would 
 have been his lot, or ours, in their place ? And the severance of 
 Death itself could not have been more complete than theirs for 
 forty-odd years past; nor the reunion beyond the grave, that 
 Gwen had likened theirs to, be stranger. Indeed, one is tempted 
 to imagine that inconceivable palliations may attend conditions 
 of which our ignorance can form no image. On this side one 
 only knows that such a meeting is all the sadder for the shadow 
 of Decay. 
 
 She coTild hardly believe herself the same as when, so few days 
 since, she quitted this old room, that still remained unchanged; 
 so intensely the same as when she, and her memories in it, were 
 left alone with a Past that seemed unchangeable, but for the 
 ever-growing cloud of Time. There was the old clock, ticking 
 by the dresser, not missing its record of the short life of every 
 second that would never come again. There on the hearth was 
 the log that might seem cold, but always treasured a spark to be 
 rekindled; and the indomitable bellows, time-defying, that never 
 failed to find it out and make it grow to flame. There was the 
 old iron kettle, all blackness without and crystal piuity within, 
 singing the same song that it began a long lifetime since, and 
 showing the same impatience under neglect. There on the 
 dresser was the same dinner-service that had survived till 
 breakage and neglect of its brethren had made it a rarity; and 
 on the wall that persevering naval battle her husband's great- 
 grandmother's needle had immortaUsed a century and a half ago. 
 The only change she saw was the beadwork tablecloth wrapped 
 over the mill-model, in its place above the hearth. Otherwise 
 there was no change. 
 
 And here was she, face to face with resurrection — that was 
 how she thought of it — all her brain in a whirl, unfit to allot its 
 proper place to the most insignificant fact; all her heart stunned 
 by a cataclysm she had no wits to give a name to. She had 
 come with a rare courage and endurance to be at close quarters 
 with this mystery, whatever it was, at once. On the very 
 verge of full knowledge of it, this terror had come upon her, and 
 she stood trembling, sick -with dread undeiined, glad she need 
 not speak or call out. It would pass, and then she would call 
 
702 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to Ruth, whose voice she could hear in the room beyond. There 
 was another voice, too, a musical one, and low. Whose could 
 it be ? Not her lost sister's — ^not Maisie's ! Her voice was never 
 like that. 
 
 The cat came purring round her to welcome her back. The 
 great buUdog trotted in from the yard behind, considered her a 
 moment, and passed out to the front, attracted by the voices 
 of Keziah and John Costrell. Having weighed them, duly and 
 carefully, he trotted bg,ck past Granny Marrable, to give one 
 short bark at the bedroom door, and return to the yard behind, 
 his usual headquarters. Then Ruth came from the bedroom, 
 hearing the movement and speech without. 
 
 She was terribly taken aback. " Oh, mother dearest," she 
 said, betrayed into speaking her inner thought, " you have 
 come too soon. You cannot know." 
 
 " 1 know," said Granny Marrable. " I will tell you presently. 
 Now take me to her." 
 
 Ruth saw she meant that she could not trust her feet. What 
 wonder at that ? If she really knew the truth, what wonder at 
 anything ? She gave the support of her arm to the door, across 
 the passage. Then the need for it seemed to cease, and the 
 Granny, becoming her strong old self again, said with her own 
 voice: — " That will do, dear child ! Leave me to go on." She 
 seemed to mean : — " Go on alone." That was what Ruth 
 took her speech for. She herself held back; so none saw the 
 first meeting between the twins. 
 
 Presently, as she stood there in suspense, she heard the 
 words: — "Who is it outside, Ruth t" in Mrs. Prichard's voice, 
 weak but controlled. Then the reply, through a breath that 
 caught : — " Ruth is outside." Then the weaker voice, question- 
 ing: — " Then who ? . . . . then who ?...." But no answer was 
 given. 
 
 For, to Ruth's great wonderment. Granny Marrable came 
 back in extreme trepidation, crying out through sobs: — "Oh, 
 how can this be Maisie ? Oh, how can this be Maisie ?" To 
 which Ruth's reply was : — " Oh, mother dear, who can she be 
 if she is not my mother ?" And though the wording was at 
 fault, it is hard to see how she could have framed her question 
 otherwise. 
 
 But old Phoebe had cried out loud enough to be heard by 
 Keziah, speaking with John Costrell out in front, and it was 
 quite audible in the room she had just left. That was easy to 
 understand. But it was less so that old Maisie should have 
 
THE MEETING 703 
 
 risen unassisted from the bed where she had lain since morning, 
 and followed her. 
 
 " Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe darling, do not say that ! Do not 
 look at me to deny me, dearest. I know that this is you, and 
 that we are here, together. Wait — ^wait and it will come I" 
 This was what Keziah remembered hearing as she came back into 
 the house. She crossed the kitchen, and saw, beyond Widow 
 Thrale in the passage, that the two old sisters were in each 
 other's arms. 
 
 Old Phoebe, strong in self-command and moral fortitude, and 
 at the same time unable to stand against the overwhelming 
 evidence of an almost incredible fact, had nevertheless been un- 
 prepared, by any distinct image of what the beautiful young 
 creature of fifty years ago had become, to accept the reality 
 that encountered her when at last she met it face to face. 
 
 Old Maisie's position was different. She had already fought 
 and won her battle against the changes Time had brought about, 
 and her mind no longer recoiled from the ruinous discolorations of 
 decay. She had been helped in this battle by a strong ally, the 
 love engendered for her own daughter while she was still ignorant 
 of her identity. She had found her outward seeming a stepping- 
 stone to a true conception of the octogenarian, last seen 
 in the early summer of a glorious womanhood. Ruth Thrale's 
 autumn, however much she still retained of a comely maturity, 
 had been in those days the budding springtime of a child of 
 four. C!ome what come might of the ravages of Time and Change, 
 old Maisie was prepared for it, after accepting such a change as 
 that. Did she know, and acknowledge to herself the advantage 
 this had been to her, that time when she had said to Gwen: — 
 " How I wish you could stay, to tell her that this is me !" ? 
 
 But the momentary unexpected strength that had enabled old 
 Maisie to rise from the bed could not last. She had only just 
 power left to say: — " I am Maisie ! I am Maisie \" before speech 
 failed; and her daughter had to be prompt, close at hand though 
 she was, to prevent her falling. They got her back to the bed, 
 frightened by what seemed unconsciousness, but relieved a 
 moment after by her saying: — "I was only dizzy. Is this 
 Phoebe's hand ?" They were not seriously alarmed about her 
 then. 
 
 She remained very still, a hand of her sister and daughter in 
 each of hers, and the twilight grew, but none spoke a word. 
 Keziah, at a hint from Ruth, attended to the preparation of 
 supper in the front-room. This living unfed through hours of 
 
 45 
 
704 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 tension had to come to an end sometime. They knew that her 
 silence was by choice, from a pressure of the hand of either from 
 time to time. It seemed to repeat her last words: — "I am 
 Maisie. I am Maisie." 
 
 That silence was welcome to them, for neither would have said 
 a word by choice. They could but sit speechless, stunned by the 
 Past. Would they ever be able to talk of it at all ? A short 
 parting gives those who travel together on the road through Life 
 a good spell of cheerful chat, and each is overbrimming with the 
 tale of adventure, grave or gay, of the folk they have chanced 
 upon, the inns they have slept at, a many trifles with a leaven 
 of seriousness not too weighty for speech. How is it when the 
 ways divided half a century ago, and no tidings came to hand 
 of either for the most part of a lifetime ? How when either has 
 believed the other dead, through all those years ? Neither old 
 Phoebe nor Ruth could possibly have felt the thing otherwise. 
 But, that apart, silence was easiest. 
 
 Presently, it was evident that she was sleeping, peacefully 
 enough, still holding her sister and daughter by the hand. As 
 soon as Ruth felt the fingers slacken, she spoke, imder her breath. 
 
 " How came you to know of it ?" 
 
 " Dr. Nash. I spoke with her ladyship on the way, and she 
 said it was true." 
 
 " What did she say was true ?" 
 
 Granny Marrable had to think. What was it Gwen had said ? 
 She continued, feeling for her memories: — "I said to Gwen o' 
 the Towers 'twas my dead sister come from the grave, and Dr. 
 Nash had spoken to it. And John Costrell would have me unsay 
 my word, but her ladyship bore me out, though 'twas but a way 
 of speech." She paused a moment; then, before Ruth could 
 frame an inquiry as to how much she knew of the story from 
 either Dr. Nash or Gwen, went on, her eyes fixed, with a look 
 that had terror in it, on the figure on the bed: — "If this be 
 Maisie, was she not dead to me — my sister ? Oh, how can this 
 be Maisie 1" Her mind was still in a turmoil of bewilderment 
 and doubt. 
 
 Then Ruth's speech was again at fault, and yet she saw nothing 
 strange in it. " Oh, mother dearest, this must be my mother. 
 How else could she know ? Had you but heard her talk as I 
 did, of the old mill ! — and there she was a-knowing of it all, and 
 I could think her mad ! Oh, mother dear, the fool that I was 
 not to see she must be my mother !" 
 
 " It comes and goes, child," said Granny Marrable tremu- 
 
THE MEETING 705 
 
 loTisly, " that she is your mother, not dead as I have known 
 her. But it is all your Ufe. I mind how the letter came that 
 told it. ' After your grandfather's death. And all a he !" 
 
 " Her ladyship will tell you that, mother, as she told it to me. 
 I have not the heart to think it, but it was my father's work. 
 God have mercy on him !" 
 
 " God have mercy on him, for his sin ! But how had he the 
 cruelty ? What wrong had I done him ?" 
 
 " Mother, I pray that I may one day see the light upon it. 
 God spare us a while, just for to know the meaning of it all." 
 It was a confession of the hopelessness of any attempt to grapple 
 with it then. 
 
 Keziah Solmes, while preparing some supper, looked in once, 
 twice, at the watchers beside the still sleeping figure on the bed. 
 They were not speaking, and never took their eyes from the 
 placid, colourless face and snow-white hair loose on the pillow; 
 but they gave her the idea of dazed bewilderment, waiting for 
 the mists to clear and let them dare to move again. The fog- 
 bound steamer on the ocean stands still, or barely cuts the 
 water. It is known, on board, that the path will reopen — but 
 when ? 
 
 The third time Keziah looked in at them, the room being all 
 dark but for a wood-flicker from an unreplenished grate, she 
 gathered courage to say that supper was ready. Ruth Thrale 
 started up from where she half sat, half lay, beside the sleeper, ex- 
 claiming: — "She's eaten nothing since the morning. Mother, 
 she'll sink for want of food." 
 
 " Now, the Lord forgive me !" said Granny Marrable. " To 
 think I've had my dinner to-day, and she's been starving !" 
 For, of course, the midday meal was all over at Costrells', in 
 normal peace, when Dr. Nash came in laden with the strange 
 news, and at a loss to tell it. 
 
 The withdrawal of her daughter's hand waked the sleeper 
 with a start. " I was dreaming so nicely," said she. " But 
 I'm cold. Oh dear — what is it ? ... . I thought I was in Sapps 
 
 Court, with my little Dave and Dolly " She seemed slow 
 
 to catch again the thread of the life she had fallen asleep on. 
 Vitahty was very low, evidently, and she met an admonition 
 that she must eat something with: — " Nothing but milk, please !" 
 It refreshed her, for though she fell back on the pillow with her 
 eyes closed, she spoke again a moment after. 
 
 The thing happened thus. Keziah, authoritatively, insistent, 
 would have Ruth eat, or try to eat, some supper. Old Phoebe 
 
706 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 was in no need of it, and sat on beside old Maisie, who must hare 
 dreamed again — one of those sudden long experiences a few 
 seconds will give to a momentary sleep. For she opened her 
 eyes to say, with a much greater strength in her voice: — "I 
 was dreaming of Dolly again, but Dolly wasn't Dolly this time 
 .... only, she was Dolly, somehow !...." Then it was clear 
 that she was quite in the dark, for the time being, about the 
 events of the past few hours. For she continued: — " She was 
 Dolly and my sister Phoebe — ^both at once — ^when Phoebe was 
 a Uttle girl — my Phoebe that was drowned. But Phoebe was 
 older than that when she drew my tooth, as Dolly did in my 
 dream." 
 
 Old Phoebe, it must be borne in mind, although intellectually 
 convinced that this could be none other than her sister, had 
 never experienced the conviction that only the revival of joint 
 memories could bring. This reference to an incident only known 
 to themselves, long forgotten by her and now flashed suddenly 
 on her out of the past, made her faith that this was Maisie, in 
 very truth, a reaUty. But she could not speak. 
 
 The dream-gods kept their hold on the half-awakened mind, 
 too old for any alacrity in shaking them off. The old voice 
 wandered on, every word telling on its hearer and rousing a 
 memory. " We must have been eight then. Phoebe tied a 
 thread of silk round the tooth, and the other end to the drawer- 
 knob .... it was such a little tooth .... long and long before 
 
 you were bom, my dear " Her knowledge of the present 
 
 was on its way back, and she thought the hand that held hers 
 was her new-found daughter's. " It was the drawer where the 
 knitting-wool was kept." 
 
 If you who read this are old, can you not remember among the 
 surroundings of your childhood things too trivial for the maturi- 
 ties of that date to give a passing thought to, that nevertheless 
 bulked large to you then, and have never quite lost their im- 
 pressiveness since ? Such a one, to old Phoebe, was " the drawer 
 where the knitting-wool was kept." Some trifle of the sort was 
 sure to strike home its proof of her sister's identity. Chance 
 lighted on this one, and it served its turn. 
 
 Euth heard her cry out — a cry cut short by her mother's: — 
 " Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, I know it all now, and you know me." 
 She started up from a hurried comphance with her Cousin 
 Keziah's wish that she should eat, and went back quickly to the 
 bedroom, to see the two old sisters again locked in each other's 
 arms. 
 
THE NIGHT AFTER THEY KNEW IT 707 
 
 They may have been but dimly alive to how it all had come 
 about, but they knew themselves and each other — ^twins wrenched 
 asimder half a century since, each of whom had thought the 
 other dead for over forty years. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 how granny maeeable thought she ought not to cio to 
 sleep, but did. how a ckicket was still at it, when she 
 waked. howmaisie waked too. how they bemembeked 
 things together, in the night. a skull twenty-seven 
 inches bound. how phcebb could not foegive her 
 beothee-in-law, god oe no ! how it had att. been 
 majbie's fault, the othee lettee, in the WOEKBOX, 
 behind the scissoes. the stoey of the scorpion. att. 
 
 TEUE ! ONLY IT WAS MES. STENNIS, WHO DIED IN AGONY. 
 
 buzabeth-next-dooe's immovable husband. HOWGEANNY 
 maeeable was believed about that scorpion. how 
 
 MAISIB's husband had EEALLY had a devil — ^A BLACK 
 man's — ^WHICH MAISIE's SON TTAD INHERITED. A NEW IN- 
 FECTION IN THINE EYE. HOW RUTH WENT FOR THE DOCTOR. 
 HOW HE RECOMMENDED GWEN, AS WELL AS THE MIXTURE 
 
 The two old twins knew it aU now, so far as it would ever be a 
 matter of knowledge. They had got at the heart of each other's 
 identity, before either really understood the cruel machination 
 that had cancelled the life of either for the other. 
 
 Ruth Thrale left them alone together, and went back to force 
 herself to eat. Keziah wanted to get back to her old man, and 
 how could she go, unless Ruth kept in trim to attend to her two 
 charges ? Who could say that old Phoebe, at eighty, would not 
 give in under the strain ? Ruth had always a happy faculty of 
 self-forgetfulness; and now, badly as she had felt the shock, she 
 so completely lost sight of herseK in the thought of the greater 
 trouble of the principal actors, as to be fuUy alive to the one great 
 need ahead, that of guarding and preserving what was left of 
 the old life, the tendhig of which had come so strangely upon 
 her. She refused Keziah's offer to remain on. Elizabeth-next- 
 door, she said, was always at hand for emergencies. 
 
708 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Keziah stayed late enough to see all arranged for the night, 
 ending with a more or less successful effort to get old Maisie to 
 swallow arrowroot. She helped Ruth to establish the Granny in 
 her own high-backed chair beside her sister — ^for neither would 
 relinquish the other's hand — and took advantage of a very late 
 return of Brantock, the carrier, to convey her home, where she 
 arrived after midnight. 
 
 All know the feeling that surely must have been that of at 
 least one of the old sisters, that sleep ought to be for some 
 mysterious reason combated, or nonsuited rather, when the mind 
 is at odds with grave events. One rises rebellious against its 
 power, when it steals a march on wakefulness, catching the 
 keenest vigilance unawares. There was no reason why Granny 
 Marrable should not sleep in her own arm-chair — ^which she 
 would say was every bit as good as bed, and used accordingly — 
 except that yielding meant surrender of the faculties to uncon- 
 sciousness of a problem not yet understood, with the sickening 
 prospect of finding it imanswered on awakening. That seemed 
 to be reason enough for many resentful recoils from the very 
 portals of sleep; serving no end, as Maisie had been overcome 
 without a contest, and lay still as an efBgy on a tomb. A vague 
 fear that she might die unwatched, looking so like Death already, 
 may have touched Phoebe's mind. But fears and unsolved 
 riddles alike melted away and vanished in the end; and when 
 Ruth Thrale, an hour later, starting restless from her own 
 couch near by, looked in to satisfy herself that all was well, 
 both might have been leagues away in a dream-world, for any 
 consciousness they showed of her presence. 
 
 That was on the stroke of one ; and for two full hours after all 
 was silence, but for the records of the clock at its intervals, and 
 the cricket dwelling on the same theme our forefathers heard and 
 gave no heed to, a thousand years ago. Then old Phoebe woke 
 to wonder, for a blank moment, what had happened that she 
 should be sitting there alone, with the lazy flicker of a charred 
 faggot helping out a dim, industrious rushlight in a shade. But 
 only till she saw that she was not alone. It all came back then. 
 The figure on the bed ! — ^not dead, surely ? 
 
 No — for the hand she held was warm enough to reassure her. It 
 had been the terror of a moment, that this changed creature, with 
 memories that none but Maisie could have known, had flashed 
 into her life to vanish from it, and leave her bewildered, almost 
 without a word of that inexplicable past. Only of a moment, for 
 the hand she held tightened on hers, and the still face that was. 
 
THE NIGHT ATTER THEY KNEW IT 709 
 
 and was not, her dead sister's turned to her, looked at her open- 
 eyed, and spoke. 
 
 " I think I am not dreaming now, but I was .... I was dream- 
 ing of Phcebe, years ago But you are Phcebe. Say that I 
 
 am Maisie, that I may hear you. Say it !" 
 
 Oh, my darling ! — I know you are Maisie. But it is so 
 hard to know." 
 
 " Yes— it is all so hard to know— so hard to think ! But I 
 
 know it is true Oh, Phoebe, where do you think I was but 
 
 now, m my dream ? Yes, where ?— What place ? 
 
 Guess \" 
 
 " I cannot tell ... . back in the old time ?" 
 
 " Back in the old time — ^back in the old place. I was shelling 
 peas to help old Keturah — old Keturah that had had three 
 husbands, and her old husband then was the sexton, and he had 
 
 buried them all three ! We were there, under her porch 
 
 with the honeysuckle all in flower — and, oh, the smell of it in 
 the heat ! — ^it was all there in my dream ! And you were there. 
 Oh, Phoebe darling, how beautifid you were ! We were seven- 
 teen." 
 
 " Ah, my dear, I know when that was. 'Twas the day they 
 came — came first. Oh, God be good to us !" 
 
 " Oh, Phoebe dear, why be so heartbroken ? It was a merry 
 time. Thank God for it with me, darling ! . . . . Ay, I know — 
 aU over now !...." 
 
 " I mind it well, dear. They came up on their horses." 
 
 " Thornton and Ralph. And made a pretext they would like 
 to see inside the Church. Because old Keturah had the 
 key." 
 
 " But 'twas an untruth ! Little care they had for inside the 
 Church ! 'Twas ourselves, and they knew it." 
 
 " Oh, Phoebe ! — but we knew it too ! I had no chance to 
 dream how we showed them the Church and the crypt, for I 
 woke up. Ah, but 'tis long ago now ! — sixty-two — sixty -three 
 years ! I wonder, is the stack of bones in the crypt now that 
 was then ? There was a big skull that measured twenty-seven 
 inches." 
 
 " That it was ! Twenty-seven. Now, to think of us young 
 creatures handling those old bones !" 
 
 " Then it was not long but they came again on their horses, 
 and this time it was that their father the Squire would see father 
 righted in his lawsuit about the upper waters of the millstream- 
 That was how Thornton made a friend of father. And then it 
 
710 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 was we played them our trick, to say which was which. We 
 changed our frocks, and they were none the wiser." 
 
 A recollection stirred in old Phoebe's mind, that could almost 
 bring a smile to her lips, even now. " Ralph never was any the 
 
 wiser. He went away to the Indies, and died there But 
 
 not afore he told to my husband how Thornton came to tell us 
 
 apart How did he ? Why, darling, 'twas the way you 
 
 would give him all your hand, and I stinted him of mine." 
 
 " You never loved him, Phoebe." 
 
 " Was I not in the right of it, Maisie ?" She then felt the 
 words were hasty, and would have been glad to recall them. 
 She waited for an answer, but none came. The fire was all but 
 out, and the morning chill was in the air. She rose from the 
 bedside and crossed the room to help it from extraction. But 
 she felt very shaky on her feet. 
 
 A little rearrangement convinced the fire that it had been 
 premature; and an outlying faggot, brought into hotchpot, 
 decided as an after-thought that it could flare. " I am coming 
 back," said Granny Marrable. She was afraid her sister would 
 think she was going to be left alone. But there was no need, for 
 when she reached her chair again — and she was glad to do so — 
 old Maisie was just as she had left her, quite tranquil and seeming 
 collected, but with her eyes open, watching the welcome light 
 of the new flicker. One strange thing in this interview was that 
 her weakness seemed better able to endure the strain of the 
 position than her sister's strength. 
 
 She picked up the thread of the conversation where that inter- 
 lude of the fire had left it. " You never loved Thornton, Phoebe 
 dearest. But he was mine, for my love. He was kind and good 
 to me, all those days out there in the bush, till I lost him. He 
 was a lawbreaker, I know, but he paid his penalty. And was I 
 not to forgive, when I loved him 1 God forgives, Phoebe." 
 Half of what she had come to know had slipped away from her 
 already; and, though she was accepting her sister as a Hving 
 reahty, the forged letter, the cause of all, was forgotten. 
 
 Granny Marrable, on the contrary, kept in all her bewilder- 
 ment a firm hold on the wickedness of Daverill the father. It 
 was he that had done it all, and no other. Conceivably, her 
 having set eyes on Daverill the son had made this hold the 
 firmer. To her the name meant treachery and cruelty. Even in 
 this worst pUght of a mind in Chaos, she could not bear to see 
 the rugged edgeis of a truth trimmed off, to soften judgment of a 
 wicked deed. But had she been at her best, she might have 
 
THE NIGHT ATTER THEY KNEW IT 711 
 
 borne it this time to spare her sister the pain of sharing her 
 knowledge, if such ignorance was possible. As it was, she could 
 not help saying : — " God forgi\ 63, Maisie, and I would have 
 forgiven, if I could have had you back when he was past the 
 need of you. Oh, to think of the long years we might stiU have 
 had, but for his deception I" 
 
 " My dear, it may be you are right. But all my head is gone 
 for thinking. You are there, and that is all I know. How could 
 I ? What ia it all 1" 
 
 The despair in her voice did not unnerve her sister more. 
 Rather, if anything, it strengthened her, as did anything that 
 drew her own mind out of itself to think only of her fellow- 
 sufferer. She could but answer, hesitatingly: — "My dear, was 
 I not here all the while you thought me dead ? . . . . If you had 
 known .... oh, if you had known ! . . . . you might have come." 
 She could not keep back the sound of her despair in her own 
 voice. 
 
 Maisie started spasmodically from her pillow. 
 
 " Oh, God have mercy on me ! Save me, Phoebe, save me !" 
 she cried. She clung with both hands to her sister, and gasped 
 for breath. Then the paroxysm of her excitement passed, and 
 she sank back, whispering aloud in broken speech: — "I mean 
 
 .... it came back to me ... . the tale .... the letter 
 
 Oh, but it cannot be true ! . . . . Tell it me again — ^tell me what 
 you know." 
 
 Phoebe's response flagged. What could her old brain be 
 said to know, yet, in such a whirl ? " I'll try, my dear, to say 
 it out right, for you to hear. But 'tis a hard thing to know, 
 and 'tis hard to have to know it. Dr. Nash said it to me, that 
 it was Thornton, your husband. And our yoimg lady of the 
 Towers — she, my dear, you know, that is Lady Gwendolen 
 Rivers — said it to me again." Old Maisie clung closer to the 
 hand she held, and trembled so that Phoebe stopped, saying: — 
 " Ought I to tell ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^go on ! You know, dear, I know it all — half know it 
 — but I cannot hold it for long— it goes. Go on !" 
 
 " He wrote to me — ^he wrote to you — saying, we were dead. 
 God, forgive him for his cruelty ! Why, oh why ?" She 
 fixed her eyes on her sister, and seemed to wait for an answer to 
 the question. 
 
 And yet she wondered in her heart when the answer came. 
 It came with a light that broke through the speaker's face, a 
 soimd of relief in her words: — " It was his love for me, Phoebe 
 
712 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 dearest — ^it was his love for me ! He would not have me go 
 from him to my sister in England, even for the time I would have 
 wanted, to see her again. The fault waa mine, dear, the fault 
 was mine ! I was ever on at him — ^plaguing — plaguing him to 
 spare me for the time. Oh — 'twas I that did it 1" 
 
 Let her believe it ! Let her see a merit in it for the man she 
 loved ! That was Phoebe's thought. 
 
 " He was always good to me," Maisie continued. " He never 
 thought of what might come of it. All his desire was I should 
 not leave him. Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, if only I might have died 
 there and then, out in the Colony !" 
 
 " To see me no more ? Not this once ? I thank God that 
 has spared ye to me, Maisie, just but to hear your voice and hold 
 your hand and kiss your face. If I be dreaming, I be dreaming. 
 Only I would not wake, not I. But I can scarce bear myself 
 for the wonderment of it all. How could you come back alone 
 — my Maisie, alone and old ! — ^back again to England — ^in a 
 ship — ^through the storms ?" For all the mind that Granny 
 Marrable had left after the bewildering shock was aching to 
 know more. 
 
 Old Maisie was almost too weak for anything like curiosity 
 about the past; she simply submitted — ^acquiesced. This was 
 her sister, not dead by some miracle. When in dreams we see 
 again the departed, do we speak of the interim ? Surely never ? 
 Neither did Maisie. She could not even look forward to know- 
 ing more. She could talk on, with no difficulty of speech — 
 indeed, seemed talkative. She could reply now to Phoebe's 
 question : — " But, my dear, I was not alone, nor old. I was not 
 
 much older than my Ruth that I have found Where is 
 
 she ? — she is not gone ?" She looked round, frightened, trying 
 to raise herself. 
 
 " She is gone away to sleep. It is night, you know. There 
 
 goes the clock. Eour. She will come again But, oh, 
 
 Maisie, was it as long ago as that ? 'Tis but a very little while 
 back Ruth turned fifty." 
 
 " Is my girl turned of fifty, then ? — yes ! it must be so. Fifty 
 years past I landed ashore in Hobart Town, and it was a babe 
 of four I had to leave behind. Well — ^I was a bit older. I was 
 fifty-seven when I lost my son." This seemed to mean the death 
 of some son unknown to Granny Marrable. The convict was 
 never farther from her mind. " 'Tis twenty-five years I have 
 been in England — all of twenty-five years, Phoebe." 
 
 " Oh, God have pity on us all ! Twenty-five years 1" It was 
 
THE NIGHT APTER THEY KNEW IT 713 
 
 a cry of pain turned into words. Had she had to say what stung 
 her most, she would probably have said the thought that Maisie 
 might have seen her daughter's wedding, or at least the babyhood 
 of her children. So much there was to tell ! — ^would she live 
 to hear it ? And so much to hear ! — ^would she hve to tell it ? 
 She could not understand her sister's words that followed: — 
 " All of twenty years alone," referring to the period since her 
 son's transportation. It was really longer. But memory of 
 figures is insecure in hours of trial. 
 
 Maisie continued: — "When I came back, I went straight to 
 our old home, long ago — to Darenth Mill, to hear what I might, 
 and old Keturah was dead, and her husband was dead, and ne'er a 
 soul knew aught to tell me. And there was father's grave in 
 the churchyard, and no other. So what could I think but what 
 the letter said, that aU were drowned in the cruel sea, your 
 husband Nicholas, and my little one, aU three ?" 
 
 " And the letter said that — ^the letter he made up ?" 
 
 " The letter said that, and I read it. It had black seals, and 
 I broke them and read it. And it was from father, and said you 
 were drowned .... drowned .... Yes ! — Phoebe drowned ! . . . . 
 and my little Ruth, and .... Oh, Phoebe, how can this be 
 you ?" The panic came again in her voice, and again she clutched 
 spasmodically at the hand she held. But it passed, leaving her 
 only able to speak faintly. " I kept it in my table-drawer. . . . 
 It must be there still." She had only half got the truth. 
 
 Granny Marrable tried to make it clear, so far as she could. 
 " You forget, dear. Her ladyship has the letter, and Dr. Nash 
 knows. Lady Gwendolen who brought you here " 
 
 It was a happy reference. A light broke over the old face on 
 the pillow, and there was ease in the voice that said: — " She is 
 one of God's Angels. I knew it by her golden hair. When will 
 she come ?" 
 
 " Very soon. To-morrow, perhaps. 'Twas her ladyship told 
 you — ^was it not ? Oh, you remember ?" 
 
 " My dear, she told it me like a story, and her face was white. 
 But it was all clear to me then, for I could not know who the 
 bad man was — the bad man who made two sisters each think 
 the other dead. And I was for helping her to teU them. Oh, 
 may God bless her for her beautiful face — so pale it was ! And 
 then she told me 'twas written by my husband." Some new 
 puzzle confronted her, and she repeated, haltingly: — " By ... . 
 my .... husband !" Then quite suddenly, struck by a new 
 idea: — " But was it ? How could she know ?" 
 
714 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " My dear, she showed it to her father, the Earl, and they 
 were of one mind. His lordship read the letter. Dr. Nash 
 told me. But it was Thornton's own letter to me that said you 
 were dead. I have got it still." She was stopped by the return 
 of Ruth Thrale, who had been half waked by her mother's 
 raised voice five minutes since, and had struggled to complete 
 consciousness under the sense of some burden of duty awaiting 
 her outside the happy oblivion of her stinted sleep. " How has 
 she been 1" was her question on entering. 
 
 Granny Marrable could not give any clear account of the past 
 hour of talk ; it was growing hazy to her, as reaction after excite- 
 ment told, more and more. Buth asked no further questions, 
 and urged her to go and lie down — was ready to force her to do 
 it, but she conceded the point, and was just going, when her sister 
 stopped her, speaking clearly, without moving on the piUow. 
 
 " What was the letter ?" 
 
 " What letter is she speaking of ?" said Ruth. 
 
 Graimy Marrable said with an effort: — " The letter that said 
 she was dead." 
 
 " Show it to me — show it me now, with the light ! You 
 have got it." 
 
 " Yes. I said to her that I had got it. But it is put away." 
 This was under Granny Marrable's breath, that old Maisie 
 should not hear. 
 
 But she heard, and turned her head. " Oh, Phcebe, let me 
 see it ! Can it not be got ? Cannot Ruth get it ?" She seemed 
 feverishly alive, for the moment, to all that was passing. 
 
 Ruth, thinking it would be better to satisfy her if possible, 
 said:—" Is it hard to find ? Could I not get it ?" To which 
 old Phoebe replied : — " I know where it is to lay hands on at once. 
 But I grudge setting eyes on it now, and that's the truth." 
 Ruth wondered at this — it made her mother's eagerness to see 
 it seem the stranger. The story is always on the edge of calling 
 old Maisie Ruth's " new mother." Her mind was reeling under 
 the consciousness of two mothers with a like claim — a bewilder- 
 ing thought ! She wavered between them, and was reUeved 
 when the speaker continued: — " You may unlock my old work- 
 box over yonder. The letter be inside the lid, behind the scissors. 
 I'll begone to lie down a bit on your bed, child !" Was old 
 Phoebe running away from that letter ? 
 
 Ruth knew the trick of that workbox of old. It brought 
 back her early childhood to find the key concealed in a Kttle 
 slot beneath it, hidden behind a comer of green cloth beyond 
 
THE NIGHT AFTER THEY KNEW IT 715 
 
 suspicion; that opened, for all that, when the edge was coaxed 
 with a finger-nail. It had been her first experience of a secret, 
 and a fascination himg about it still. That confused image of 
 a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a 
 perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence 
 of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had 
 clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, 
 even into these later years. It crossed Ruth's mind as she found 
 the key, how, a year ago, when the interior of this box was shown 
 to Dave Wardle by his country Granny, his delight in it, and 
 its smell of otto of roses that never failed, had stirred forgotten 
 memories; and this recollection, with the mystery of that 
 vanished mother still on earth — close at hand, there in the 
 room ! — made her almost dread to raise the box-lid. But she 
 dared it, and found the letter, though her brain whirled at the 
 entanglements of life and time, and she winced at the past as 
 though scorched by a spiritual flame. It took her breath away 
 to think what she had sought and foimd; the hideous instrument 
 of a wickedness almost inconceivable — ^her own father's ! 
 
 " Oh, how I hope it is that ! Bring it — bring it, my dear, 
 my Ruth — my Ruth for me, now ! Yes — show it me with the 
 light, like that." Thus old Maisie, struggling to raise herself 
 on the bed, but with a dangerous spot of colour on her cheek, 
 lately so pale, that said fever. Ruth trembled to admit the 
 word to her mind; for, think of her mother's age, and the strain 
 upon her, worse than her own ! 
 
 Nevertheless, it was best to indulge this strong wish; might, 
 indeed, be dangerous to oppose it. Ruth bolstered up the weak 
 old frame with pillows, and Ut two candles to give the letter its 
 best chance to be read. She found her mother's spectacles, 
 though in doubt whether they could enable her to read the dim 
 writing, written with a vanishing ink, even paler than the forged 
 letter Gwen and her father had unearthed. Possibly the ink 
 had run short, and was diluted. 
 
 Old Maisie strove to read the writing, gasping with an eager- 
 ness her daughter found it hard to understand; but failed to 
 decipher anything beyond, " My dear Sister-in-law." She 
 dropped the letter, saying feebly: — " Read — ^you read !" 
 
 Then Ruth read: — 
 
 " ' I take up my pen to write you fuller particulars of the 
 great calamity that has befallen me. For I am, as my 
 previous letter will have told you, if it has reached you 
 
716 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 ere this, a widower. I am endeavouring to bear with resig- 
 nation the lot it has pleased God to visit upon me, but in 
 the first agonies of my grief at the loss of my beloved help- 
 meet I was so overwhelmed as to be scarce able to put pen 
 to paper. I am now more calm and resigned to His will, 
 and will endeavour to supply the omission. 
 
 " ' My dear Maisie was in perfect health and spirits when she 
 went to visit a friend, Mary Ann Stennis, the wife of a sheep- 
 farmer, less than thirty miles from where I now write, on the 
 Upper Derwent, one of the few women in this wild country 
 that was a fit associate for her. She was to have started 
 home in a few days' time, but the horse that should have 
 carried her, the only one she could ride, being a timid horse- 
 woman, went lame and made a delay, but for which delay 
 it may be God would have spared her to me. But His will 
 be done ! It seems she was playing with the baby of a 
 native black, there being a camp or tribe of them near at 
 hand, she being greatly diverted with the little monster, 
 when its sister, but little older than itself, found a scorpion 
 beneath a stone, and set it to bite its little brother. There- 
 upon Maisie, always courageous and kindhearted, must needs 
 snatch at this most dangerous vermin, to throw it at a 
 distance from the children. . . .' " 
 
 Old Maisie interrupted the reader. Her face was intent, and 
 her eyea gleamed with an unhealthy, feverish light. " Stop, 
 my dear," said she. " This is all true." 
 
 " AU true !" Surely her mind was giving way. So thought 
 Ruth, and shuddered at the gruesome thought. " Mother^ 
 mother — how can it be true ?" 
 
 " All quite true, my dear, but for one thing ! AU true but 
 for who it was ! It was not I — ^it was Mary Ann was at play 
 with little Saku. And the scorpion bit her hand, and she died 
 
 of the bite Yes — go on ! Read it all !" For Ruth had 
 
 begun: — "Shall I — wims/ I?" as though the reading it was 
 unendurable. 
 
 She resumed, with an efEort: — 
 
 " ' But got bitten in the arm. At first she made light of 
 the wound, for the reptile was so small. But it became badly 
 inflamed, and no doctor was at hand. The black mother of 
 Saku, the baby, prayed to be allowed to summon the con- 
 jurer doctor of the tribe, who would suck the wound. But 
 Maisie would not have this, so only external applications 
 were made ....'" 
 
THE NIGHT APTER THEY KNEW IT 717 
 
 Old Maisie interrapted: — " That is not so/' she said. " Roo- 
 moro, the doctor, sucked hard at the bite, and spat out the poison 
 in a hole in the ground, to bury the evil spirit. But it was no 
 good. Poor Mary Ann Stennis died a week after. I mind it well." 
 
 Ruth thought to herself: — "Is this a feverish dream ?" and 
 wavered on the answer. The tale her mother told of the black 
 medicine-man was nightmare-like. All this, fifty years ago ! 
 Her head swam too much for speech, reading apart. She could 
 continue, mechanically: — 
 
 "'.... only external applications were made, which 
 proved useless, as is almost invariably the case with poisonous 
 bites. Next day it became evident that the poison was 
 spreading up the arm, and a black runner was despatched to 
 summon me, but he could not cover the ground in less than 
 three hours, and when he arrived I was on my way to Both- 
 well, some twenty miles in another direction, so he did not 
 overtake me until the evening. I was then detained a day, 
 so that it was over forty-eight hours before I arrived at 
 Stennis's. It was then too late for effectual remedy, and my 
 dear wife died in my arms within a week of the scorpion- 
 bite ' " 
 
 " That is not true — ^it was over a week." Was Maisie really 
 ahve to the facts, to be caught by so small a point ? She had 
 seen a simple thing that could be said. That is all the story can 
 think. 
 
 Ruth said: — " Here is more — only a little !" and continued: — 
 
 " <: 
 
 'I am thankful to say that, considering the nature of 
 the case, her sufEeruigs were slight, and she passed away 
 peacefully, desiring with her last breath that I should convey 
 to you the assurance of her unchanged affection.' " 
 
 " It is untrue — ^it is untrue !" moaned Maisie. " Mary Ann 
 died in great pain, from the poison of the bite working in the 
 blood." She seemed to grasp very little of the facts, for she 
 added: — "But was he not good, to hide the pain for Phoebe's 
 sake ?" Her mind was catching at fragments, to understand, 
 and failed. 
 
 There was another letter, which Ruth opened, of an earUer date. 
 It was a merely formal announcement of the death. She put 
 back the letters in the workbox-Ud, behind the scissors ; replaced 
 the workbox on its table as before, and returned to her mother. 
 
718 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 She was glad to find her still, with her eyes closed; but with that 
 red spot on her cheek, unchanged. It was best to favour every 
 approach of sleep, and this might be one. Ruth sat silent, aU 
 her faculties crippled, and every feeUng stunned, by what she 
 had gone through since Gwen's first arrival yesterday. 
 
 This terrible night had worn itself out, and she knew that 
 that clock-warning meant six, when the stroke should come. But 
 there was no daylight yet. Those movements in the kitchen must 
 be Ehzabeth-next-door, come according to promise. That was 
 what the guardian-dog from without meant, pushing his way 
 through the bedroom-door, reporting an incomer whom he knew, 
 and had sanctioned. He communicated the fact to his satis- 
 faction, and returned to his post, leaving his mistress the better 
 for his human sympathy, which seemed to claim knowledge of 
 passing event. It comforted her to feel that the day was in 
 hand, and that its light would come. Who could say but its 
 ending might find her convinced that this was all true ? Blank, 
 sickening doubts of the meaning of everything flitted across her 
 mind, and she longed to settle down to reaHties, to be able to 
 love this new mother without flinching. For that was what she 
 felt, that the mystery of this resurrection seared or burnt her 
 One thing only soothed her — ^that this was dear old Mrs. Prichard- 
 whom she had learned to love before its bewilderments were 
 sprung upon her. That made it easier to bear. 
 
 Presently she roused herself; for, was not this morning ? A 
 grey twilight, not over-misty for the time of year, was what a 
 raised window-curtain showed her, and she let it fall to deal 
 with it in earnest, and reUeve the blind from duty. Then she 
 made sure, by the new Ught, that all was well with old Maisie — 
 mere silence, no insensibility — and went out to speak with Eliza- 
 beth-next-door, and get more wood for the fire. But first she 
 blew out the candles and the rushlight, already dying spas- 
 modically. 
 
 Elizabeth-next-door was a strengthening influence, able to 
 look facts in the face. She almost elided forewords and in- 
 quiries, to come to her strong point, the way she had used the 
 strange story to produce surprise in her husband; a worthy man, 
 but imperturbable by anything short of earthquakes or thunder- 
 bolts. " Ye may sa-ay your vairy worst to Sam," said Eliza- 
 beth, " and he'll just sa-ay back, ' Think a doan't knaw that,' 
 he'll say, ' afower ever yow were bom V and just gwam with his 
 sooper. And I give ye my word, Widow Thrale, I no swooner 
 told it him than there he sat ! An' if he come down on our 
 
THE NIGHT APTER THEY KNEW IT 719 
 
 ta-able -wi' th' fla-at of his ha-and once, that he did thrice and 
 mower, afower he could sa-ay one word. He did, and went nigh 
 to break it, but it be o-ak two-inch thick a'mo-ast. Then a said, 
 'twas enough to wa-aken oop a ma-an all through the night, he 
 did \" He seemed, however, not to have suffered in this way, 
 for his wife added:— "Wa-aken him oop? Not Sam, I lay! 
 Ta-akes a souse o' cold pig to wa-aken up Sam afower t' mamin \" 
 Ruth felt bra<;ed by this bringing of the event within human 
 possibilities. Improbable possibilities surprise. Impossible 
 events stim. 
 
 She co-operated in domesticities with her useful neighbour, 
 glancing once or twice at the figure on the bed, and reinforced in 
 the behef that all was safe there, for the time. For she saw what 
 seemed slight natural movement, for ease. Presently she went 
 to hear how it fared with her other mother, her normal one. 
 The cross purposes of her relations to the two old sisters were 
 an entanglement of perplexities. 
 
 Granny Marrable, asleep when Ruth looked stealthily in at 
 her, was waked by a creak with which the door just contrived 
 to disappoint hopes of a noiseless escape. She called after her: — 
 " Yes, who's that ?" Whereupon Ruth returned. It was their 
 first real word alone since the disclosiu-e. 
 
 " Oh, mother, have you slept ?" She kissed the old worn-out 
 face tenderly; feeling somehow the reserve of strength behind 
 the resptmse she met. " Oh, can you — can you — make it out ? 
 .... Yes, she is lying stUl. She has seen that letter." She 
 dropped her voice, and shuddered to name it. 
 
 " My dear," said Granny Marrable, answering her question, 
 " I cannot say truly yet that I can make it out. But I thank 
 God for letting me be able to know that this must be Maisie. 
 For I know her for Maisie, when she talks of the bygone time. 
 And that letter — God is good, for that ! For it was that told 
 of how she died — ^that wicked poison-bite ! My child, it has 
 never gone qmte out of my heart to think your mother died so 
 far away in such pain — ^never in all these years ! And now I 
 know it for an untruth. I thank God for that, at least \" 
 
 " She says," said Ruth, checkmated in an attempt to use any 
 name she could call her real mother by, without some self- 
 blame for the utterance, " she says the story is one-half true, but 
 'twas her best friend died of the bite — ^not she ! But she died 
 in great sufEering." 
 
 " Ah. — ^the poor thing ! Mary Ann Stennis." 
 
 " That was the name." 
 
 46 
 
720 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Will she be able to tell more ? Will she tell us who her 
 husband was ?" 
 
 " Her husband !" Ruth thought this was new trouble — ^that 
 the Granny's head had given way under the strain. " Her 
 husband was my father, mother," said she. " Think !" 
 
 But old Phoebe was quite clear. " I am all right, child," 
 said she reassuringly. " Her seccmd husband. Marrable was 
 my second, you know, else I would still have been Cropredy, 
 Why is she not Daverill ?" 
 
 Ruth was really the less clear of the two. " Oh yes \" said 
 she wonderingly. " She is Mrs. Prichard, still." 
 
 " Please Go«^ we shall know all ! ... . What was that ?" 
 
 " I must go to her Come !" For old Maisie had called 
 
 out. Her daughter went back to her quickly, and Granny 
 Marrable followed, not far behind. 
 
 " Come, dear, come .... I called for you to know 
 
 Come, Phoebe, come near, and let me tell you He was not 
 
 so wicked Oh no, oh no — ^it was none of his own doing — I 
 
 shall be able .... directly " Thus old Maisie, gasping 
 
 for breath, and faUing back on the pillow from which she had 
 part risen. The hectic flush in her face was greater, and her 
 eyes were wild under her tangle of beautiful silver hair. Both 
 were afraid for her, for each knew what fever might mean. 
 They might lose her, almost without a renewal of life together. 
 
 Still, it might be no more than the agitation of a moment, a 
 passing phase. They tried to pacify her. How could the letter 
 be none of Daverill's own doing ? But she would not be soothed 
 T— would say the thing she had set her mind to say, but failed 
 to find the words or breath for. What was it she was trying to 
 say ? Was it about the letter ? 
 
 Elizabeth-next-door came into the room, tentatively. Osten- 
 sible reason, inquiry about breakfast; actual reason, curiosity. 
 Sounds of speech under stress had aroused, and a glance at old 
 Maisie intensified it. Widow Thrale would come directly, but 
 for the moment was intent on hearing what Mrs. Prichard was 
 saying. To Elizabeth, Maisie continued Mrs. Prichard. 
 
 She would not leave unsaid this thing she was bent on: — 
 " No, dear ! No, dear ! It does not hurt me to talk, but I 
 
 want time I will teU you .... I must tell you I 
 
 know it It was not his own doing He was set on to 
 
 do it by a devil that possessed him There are devils loose 
 
 among the blacks " 
 
 The pulse in the hand Ruth held was easy to find. Yes, that 
 
THE NIGHT AFTER THEY KNEW IT 721 
 
 was fever ! Ruth left her to speak with Elizabeth, and the hand 
 went over to its fellow, in Granny Marrable's. 
 
 " Phoebe, dearest, that is so — and in those days there were a 
 many blacks. But they were fewer and fewer after that, and 
 
 none in our part when we came away, my son and I 
 
 Phoebe \" 
 
 " What, dearest ?" 
 
 "You must say nothing of him to Ruth. He was her 
 brother." 
 
 " Say nothing of him to Ruth — ^why not ?" She had lost 
 sight of her adventure with the convict, and did not identify 
 him. She may have fancied some other son accompanied her 
 sister home. 
 
 " Yes — ^yes — nothing to Tier 1 He is not fit to speak of — ^not 
 
 fit to think of Do not ask about him. Forget him ! I 
 
 do not know if he be ahve or dead." 
 
 Then an image of the convict, or madman, flashed across 
 Phoebe's mind. She dared not talk of him now, with that wild 
 light and hectic flush in her sister's face; it would only make 
 bad worse. But a recollection of her first association of him 
 with the maniac in the Gadarene tombs was quick on the heels 
 of this image, and prompted her to say: — " Had no evil spirit 
 power over him, then, as well as his father ?" 
 
 The wild expression on old Maisie's face died down, and gave 
 place to one that was peace itself by comparison. " I see it 
 all now," said she. " Yes — ^you are right ! It was after his 
 father's death he became so wicked." It was the devil that 
 possessed his father, driven out to seek a home, and finding it 
 in the son. That was apparently what her words implied, but 
 there was too much of delirium in her speech and seeming to 
 justify their being taken as expressing a serious thought. 
 
 Old Phoebe sat beside her, trying now and again with quiet 
 voice and manner to soothe and hush away the t«rrible memories 
 of the audacious deception to which each owed a lifelong loss of 
 the other. But when fever seizes on the blood, it will not relax 
 its hold for words. 
 
 One effect of this was good, in a sense It is true, as the poet 
 said, that one fire bums out another's burning — or at any rate 
 that one pain is deadened by another anguish — and it was a 
 Godsend to Granny Marrable and Ruth Thrale that an acupres- 
 sion of immediate anxiety should come to counteract their 
 bewilderment, and to extinguish for the time the conflagration of 
 B, thousand questions — ^whys, whens, and wherefores innumer- 
 
722 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 able— in their overburdened minds. Visible fever in the deli- 
 cate frame, to which it seemed the slightest shock might mean 
 death, was a summons to them to put aside every possible 
 thought but that of preserving what Time had spared so long, 
 though Chance had been so cruel an oppressor. It would be the 
 cruellest stroke of all that she should be thus strangely restored 
 to them, only to be snatched away in an hour. 
 
 Presently she seemed quieter; the fever came in gusts, and 
 rose and fell. She had once or twice seemed almost incoherent, 
 but it passed away. Meanwhile Granny Marrable's memory of 
 that madman or criminal, who had at least known the woman he 
 claimed as his mother well enough to be mystified by her twin 
 sister, rankled in her mind, and made it harder and harder for 
 her to postpone speech about him. She would not tell, the 
 incident — she was clear of that — ^but would it harm Maisie to 
 talk of him ? She asked herself the question the next time her 
 sister referred to him, and could not refrain from letting her 
 speech about him finish. 
 
 It came of her mind drifting back to that crazy notion of an 
 evil spirit wandering to seek a home; as the hermit-crab, dis- 
 possessed of one shell, goes in search of another. After a lull 
 which had looked for a moment like coming sleep, she said 
 with an astonishing calmness : — " But do you not see, Phoebe 
 dear, do you not see how good his father must have been, to do 
 no worse than he did ? See what the devil that possessed him 
 could do with Ralph — my youngest, he was; Isaac died — & 
 good boy, quite a good boy, till I lost his father ! Oh — see 
 what he came to do !" 
 
 " He .... he was sent to prison, was he not ?" After saying 
 it, old Phoebe was afraid she might have to teU the whole tale 
 of how she knew it. But she need not have feared. Old Maisie 
 was in a kind of dreamland, only half-cognisant of what was 
 going on about her. 
 
 Her faint voice wandered on. " I was not thinking of that. 
 That was nothing ! He stole some money, and it cost him 
 
 dear No ! — ^it was worse than that-— a bad thing ! . . . . 
 
 It was not the girl's fault .... Emma was a good girl " 
 
 Granny Marrable was injudicious. But it was an automatic 
 want of judgment, bred of mind-strain. She could not help 
 saying: — " Was that Emma Drax V For the name, which she 
 had heard from the convict, had hung on her mind, always setting: 
 her to work to fashion some horrible story for its owner. 
 
 " Yes — Emma Drax They found her guilty I do 
 
THE NIGHT AFTER THEY KNEW IT 723 
 
 not mean that What is it I mean ? . . . . I mean they laid 
 
 it all at her door Men do !" This seemed haH wandering, 
 
 and Granny Marrable hoped it meant a return of sleep. She 
 was disappointed. For old Maisie became more restless and 
 hot, starting convulsively, catching at her hand, and exclaim- 
 ing; — " But how came you to know ? — how came you to know ? 
 You were not there then. Oh, Phoebe dearest, you were not 
 there then." She kept on saying this, and Granny Marrable 
 despaired of finding words to explain, under such circumstances. 
 The tale of her meeting with the convict was too complex. She 
 thought to herself that she might say that Maisie had spoken 
 the name as a dreamword, waking. But that would have been 
 a fib, and fibs were not her line. 
 
 " I went myself to get him," said Ruth, reappearing after a 
 longer absence than old Phoebe had anticipated. She was 
 removing an out-of-door cloak, and an extempore headwrap, 
 when she entered the room. " How is she 1" she asked. 
 
 Old Phoebe shook her head doubtfully. " Whom did you 
 go for, child ? The doctor ? I'm glad." 
 
 " I thought it better Mother darling ! — how are you ?" 
 
 She knelt by the bed, held the burning hands, looked into the 
 wild eyes. " Yes — ^I did quite right," she said. 
 
 Dr. Nash came, not many minutes later. Whether the mixture, 
 to be taken every two hours, fifty years ago, was the same as 
 would have been given now, does not concern the story. It, or 
 the reassurance of the doctor's visit, had a sedative effect; and 
 old Maisie seemed to sleep, to the great satisfaction of her nurses. 
 What really did credit to his professional skill was that he per- 
 ceived that a visit from Lady Gwendolen would be beneficial. 
 A message was sent at once to John Costrell, saying that an 
 accompanying letter was to be taken promptly to the Towers, 
 to catch her ladyship before she went out. We have seen that 
 it reached her in time. 
 
 " You found that all I told you was true. Granny Marrable," 
 said the doctor, after promising to return in time to catch her 
 ladyship. 
 
 " I shall live to believe it true, doctor, please God 1" 
 
 " Tut tut ! You see that it ia true." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, and I know that yonder is Maisie, come back 
 to life. I know it by thinking; but 'tis all I can do, not to think 
 her still dead." 
 
724 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " She can talk, I suppose — ^recollects things 1 Things when 
 you were kids ?" 
 
 " God 'a mercy, yes, doctor ! Why — hasn't she told me 
 how she drew my tooth, with a bit of silk and a candle, and knew 
 which drawer-knob it was, and the days she saw her husband 
 first, a-horseback ? . . . . Oh, merciful Heavens, how had he the 
 heart 1" 
 
 " Some chaps have the Devil in 'em, and that's the truth !" 
 
 " That's what she says. She just made my flesh creep, a-tell- 
 ing how the devils come out of the black savages, to seize on 
 Christians !" 
 
 But the doctor was not prepared to be taken at his word, in 
 this way. Devils are good toys for speech, but they are not 
 to be real. " Lot of rum superstitions in those parts !" said he. 
 " Now look you here, ma'am ! When I come back, I shall 
 expect to hear that you and your daughter .... Oh ah ! — 
 she's not your daughter ! What the deuce is she ?" 
 
 " Ruth has always been my niece, but we have gone near to 
 forget it, times and again. 'Tis so many a long year !" 
 
 " Well — I shall expect to hear that you and your niece have 
 had a substantial breakfast. You understand — substantial/ 
 And you must make her take milk, or gruel. You'll find she 
 won't eat." 
 
 " Beef-tea ?" 
 
 " No — at least, have some ready, in case. But her tempera- 
 ture is too high. Especially at her time of life !" The doctor 
 walked briskly away. He had not had the gig out, for such a 
 short distance. 
 
SAPPS COUET AGAIN 725 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 CHKISTMAS AND THE GREEK KAUINDS. O NOBIS PB^TBEITOS ! 
 THE WRITING-TABLE BACK. AN INFLEXIBLE GOVERNOR. 
 HOW MB. JERRY DID NOT GO TO THE WORKHOUSE. BUT HOW 
 CAME m'bIAR to BE SO SHORT ? THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA. 
 UNCLE MO'S COLDBATH FIELDS FRIEND, AND HIS ALLOWANCE. 
 UNCLE MO ON KEEPING ONE's WORD. AND KEEPING ITS 
 MEANING, jerry's CONSCIENTIOUS TREACHERY, AND HIS 
 INTEBVTEW WITH MR. ROWE. HOW m'RIAR HAD PROMISED 
 LOVE, HONOUR, AND OBEDIENCE TO A THING A DEVIL HAD 
 TAKEN A LONG LEASE OF. HOW SHE SENT A NOTE TO IT, 
 BY MICHAEL RAGSTROAR. WHO REALISED THREE-HALFPENCE. 
 HOW MISS HAWKINS, JEALOUSY MAD, TINKERED AUNT m'RIAR's 
 NOTE. eve's CIVHilTy TO THE SERPENT. MUCH ABOUT 
 NORFOLK ISLAND. DAVBKILL's SECOND VISIT TO ENGLAND, 
 AND ITS CAUSES 
 
 Sapps Court was lookuig forward to Christmas with mixed 
 feelings, considered as a Court. The feelings of each resident 
 were in some cases quite defined or definable; as for instance 
 Dave's and Dolly's. The children had required fror their 
 seniors a trustworthy assurance of the date of Mrs. Prichard's 
 return, and had only succeeded in obtaining from Aimt M'riar 
 a vague statement. Mrs. Prichard was a-coming some day, and 
 that was plenty for children to know at their time of life. They 
 might have remained humbly contented with their ignorance, if 
 Uncle Mo had not added: — " So's Christmas !" meaning thereby 
 the metaphorical Christmas used as an equivalent of the Greek 
 Kalends. He overlooked, for rhetorical purposes, the near 
 approach of the actual festival; and Dave and Dolly accepted 
 this as fixing the date of Mrs. Prichard's return, to a nicety. 
 The event was looked forward to as millennial; as a restoration 
 of a golden age before her departure. For no child is so young 
 as not to laudare a tempus actum ; indeed, it is a fiction that almost 
 begins with speech, that the restoration of the Past is the first 
 duty of the Future. 
 
 Dolly never tired of recasting the arrangement of the tea* 
 festivity that was to celebrate the event, discovering in each 
 new disposition of the insufficient cups and unstable teapot a 
 fresh satisfaction to gloat over, and imputing feelings in sym- 
 
726 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 pathy with her own to her offspring Gweng. It was fortunate 
 for Gweng that her mamma understood her so thoroughly, as 
 otherwise her fixed expression of a maximum of joy at all things in 
 Heaven and Earth gave no clue to any emotions due to events 
 of the moment. Even when her eyes were closed by manipula- 
 tion of her spinal cord, and opened suddenly on a new and 
 brilliant combination, any candid spectator must have admitted 
 her stoicism — rapturous perhaps, but still stoicism. It was 
 alleged — ^by her mamma^— that she shed tears when Dave selfishly 
 obstructed her line of sight. This was disputed by Dave, whom 
 contact with an imfeeling World was hardening to a cruel 
 Uterahsm. 
 
 Dave, when he was not scheming a display of recent Academical 
 acquirements to Mrs. Prichard, dwelt a good deal on the bad 
 faith of the postman, who had not brought him the two letters 
 he certainly had a right to expect, one from each of his Grannies. 
 He had treasured the anticipation of reading their respective 
 expressions of joyful gratitude at their discovery of their relation- 
 ship, and no letter had come! Small blame to Dave that he 
 laid this at the door of the postman; others have done the self- 
 same thing, on the other side of their teens ! The only adverse 
 possibility that crossed his infant mind was that his Grannies 
 were sorry, not glad; because really grown-up people were so 
 queer, you never could be even with them. The laceration of a 
 lost half -century was a thing that could iiot enter into the calcu- 
 lations of a septennarian. He had not tried Time, and Time had 
 not tried him. He had odd misgivings, now and again, that 
 there might be in this matter something outside his experience. 
 But he did not indulge in useless speculation. The proximity of 
 Christmas made it unnecessary. 
 
 Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar accepted the season as one beneficial 
 to trade; production taking the form of a profusion of httle 
 muslin dresses for small girls at Christmas Trees and parties with 
 a Conjurer; — dresses in which the fullest possibihties of the 
 human floimce became accomplished facts, and the last word 
 was said about bows of coloured ribbons. To look at them was 
 to breathe an involuntary prayer for eiderdown enclosures that 
 would keep the poppet inside warm without disparagement to 
 her glorious finery. Sapps Court under their influence became 
 eloquent of quadrilles; " Lea Rats " and the Lancers, jangled by 
 four hands eternally on pianos no powers of sleep could outwit, 
 and no execration do justice to. They murmured tales of crackers 
 with mottoes; also of too much rich cake and trifle and lemonade, 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 727 
 
 and consequences. So much space was needed to preserve them 
 unsoiled and uncrushed until consigned to their purchasers, that 
 Mrs. Burr and Aunt M'riar felt grateful for the unrestricted run 
 of Mrs. Prichard's apartment, although both also felt anxious 
 to see her at home again. 
 
 Mrs. Prichard's writing-table came back, done beautiful. 
 Only the young man he refused to leave it without the money. 
 He was compelled to this course by the idiosyncrasies of his 
 employer. " You see," said he to Uncle Mo, with an appearance 
 of concentrating accuracy by a shrewd insight, " it's like this it 
 is, just Uke I tell you. Our Governor he's as good a feller — ^in 
 hisself mind you ! — as you'll come across this side o' White- 
 chapel. Only he's just got this one pecooHarity — ^Kke a bee has 
 in his bonnet, as the sajrin' is — he won't give no credit, not so 
 much as to his own wife; or his medical adwiser, if you come to 
 that. ' Cash across invoice ' — ^that's his motter. And as for 
 moving of him, you might just as easy move Mongblong." It 
 is not impossible that this young man's familiarity with Mont 
 Blanc was more apparent than real; perhaps founded on Albert 
 Smith's entertainment of that name, which was popular at that 
 time in London. The young man went on to say that he himself 
 was trustful to a fault, and that if it depended on him, a'most 
 any arrangement could be come to. But you had to take a party 
 as you found him, and there it was ! 
 
 Uncle Mo said : — " If you'd said you was a-ooming with it, 
 mate, I'd have made a p'int of having the cash ready. My 
 salary's doo to-morrow." He was looking rather ruefully at an 
 insufficient sum in the palm of his hand, the scrapings of more 
 than one pocket. 
 
 The yoimg man said: — " It's the Governor, Mr. Moses. But 
 it you'll square the 'ire of the trolley, I'll run it back to the shop, 
 and you can say when you're ready for it." 
 
 Uncle Mo seemed very reluctant to allow the bird to go back 
 into the bush. He went to the stairioot, and called to Aunt 
 M'riar, upstairs, making ribbons into rosettes, and giving 
 DoUy the snippings. He never took his eye off the colas in 
 his palm, as though to maintain them as integral factors 
 of the business in hand. " Got any small change, M'riar ?" 
 said he. 
 
 " How much do you want. Mo ?" 
 
 " Six. Avid three. Can you do six-and-three ?" 
 
 " Stop till I see. Mo." Aunt M'riar descended from above, 
 and went into her bedroom. But she did not find six-and-three. 
 
728 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 For she came out saying: — " I can't only do five-and-nine. Mo. 
 Can't you make out with that ?" 
 
 Uncle Mo still looked at the twelve-and-nine he already had 
 in hand, as though it was a peculiar twelve-and-nine, that might 
 consent for once to make nineteen shillings, the sum required, 
 when added to Aunt M'riar's contribution; but he was obliged 
 to yield to the inflexible nature of Arithmetic. " Sixpence 
 short, I make it," said he. Then to the young man whose em- 
 ployer was Uke Mont Blanc: — "You'll have to fetch it round 
 again to-morrow, any time after two o'clock." This was, however, 
 rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Jerry, who was 
 able to contribute the six-and-three, without, as he said, going to 
 the workhouse. So Mrs. Prichard's old table, with a new leg so 
 nobody could ever have told, and a touch of fresh polish as good 
 as new, was restored to its old place, to join in the general antici- 
 pation of its owner's return. 
 
 But however M'riar came to be so short of cash Uncle Mo, 
 smoking an afternoon pipe as of old with Mr. Jerry, could not 
 say, not if the Emperor of Roosher was to ask him. Not that 
 shortness of cash was imusual in Sapps Court, but that he had 
 supposed that M'riar was rather better off than usual, owing to 
 recent liquidations by the firm for whom she and Mrs. Burr 
 were at work upstairs. Mr. Jerry urged him on no accoimt to 
 fret his kidneys about mundane trifles of this sort. Everything, 
 without exception, came to the same thing in the end, and weak 
 concessions to monetaryanxietyonly pro videdfoodfor Repentance. 
 
 Uncle Mo explained that his imeasiness was not due to ways 
 and means, or the want of them, but to a misgiving that Aunt 
 M'riar's money was " got from her." 
 
 Now in his frequent confabs with Mr. Jerry, Uncle Mo had let 
 fall many suggestions of the sinister influence at work on Aunt 
 M'riar; and Mr. Jerry, being a shrewd observer, and collating 
 these suggestions with what had come to him otherwise, had 
 formed his own opinions about the nature of this influence. So 
 it was no wonder that in answer to Uncle Mo he nodded his 
 head very frequently, as one who not only assents to a fact, but 
 rather lays claim to having been its first discoverer. " What did 
 I tell you. Mo ?" said he. 
 
 " Concemuating ? Of 1 What ?" said Uncle Mo in three 
 separate sentences, each one accompanied by a tap of his pipe- 
 bowl on the wooden table at the Sun parlour. The third qualified 
 it for refilling. You will see, if you are attentive and observant, 
 that this was Mo's first pipe that afternoon; as, if the ashes had 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 729 
 
 been hot, he would not have emptied them on that table, but 
 rather on the hob, or in the brazen spittoon. 
 
 " Him," said Mr. Jerry, too briefly. For he felt bound to 
 add: — " Coldbath Fields. Anyone giving information that will 
 lead to apprehension of, will receive the above reward. Your 
 friend, you know !" 
 
 " My friend's the man, Jerry. Supposin' — ^just for argewment 
 — ^I fist that friend o' mine Monday morning, I'll make him an 
 allowance'U last him over Sunday. You wouldn't think it of 
 me, Jerry, but I'm a bad-tempered man, underneath the skin. 
 And when I see our old girl M'riar ran away with like by an 
 
 infernal scoundrel Well, Jerry, I lose my temper ! That 
 
 I do." And Uncle Mo seemed to need the pipe he was lighting, 
 to calm him. 
 
 " He's where her money goes. Mo — that's it, ain't it ?" 
 " That's about it, sir. So p'rhaps when I say I don't know 
 how M'riar come to be so short of cash, I ought to say I do 
 know. Because I do know, as flat as ever so much Gospel." 
 So the Emperor of Russia might not have remained un- 
 enlightened. 
 
 Mr. Jerry reflected. " You say he hasn't been near the Court 
 again. Mo ?" 
 
 " Not since that last time I told you about. What M'riar told 
 me of. When he showed his knife to frighten her. I couldn't be 
 ofE telling Sim Rowe, at the Station, about it, because of the 
 children; and he's keeping an eye. But the beggar's not been 
 anigh the Court since. Nor I don't suppose he'll come." 
 
 " But when ever does he see M'riar, to get at her savings ? — 
 that's what I'd like to know. Eh, Mo ?" 
 
 " M'riar ain't tied to the house. She's free to come and go. 
 I don't take kindly to prying and spying on her." 
 
 A long chat which followed evolved a clear view of the position. 
 After Mo's interview with Aunt M'riar just before Gwen's visit, 
 he had applied to his friend the Pohce-Inspector, with the result 
 that the Court had been the subject of a continuous veiled Adgi- 
 lance. He had, however, been so far swayed by the distress of 
 Aunt M'riar at the possibility that she might actually vsdtness 
 the capture of her criminal husband, that he never revealed to 
 Simeon Rowe that she had an interest in defeating his enter- 
 prise. The consequence was that every plain-clothes emissary 
 put himself into direct personal communication \vith her, thereby 
 ensiiring the absence of Daverill from Sapps Court. She was of 
 course guilty of a certain amount of duphcity in all this, and it 
 
730 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 weighed heavily on her conscience. But there was something 
 to be said by way of excuse. He was — or had been — her hus- 
 band, and she did not know the worst of his crimes. Had she done 
 so, she might possibly have been ready to give him up to justice. 
 But as Mo had told her this much, that his last achievement 
 might lead him to the condemned ceU, and its sequel, and she 
 nevertheless shrank from betraying him, probably nothing short 
 of the knowledge of the age and sex of his last victim would 
 have caused her to do so. She had in her mind an image of a 
 good, honest, old-fashioned murder; a strained episode in some 
 burglary; perhaps not premeditated, but brought about by an 
 indiscreet interruption of a fussy householder. There are felonies 
 and felonies. 
 
 Mr. Jerry's conversation with Uncle Mo in the Sun parlour 
 gave him an insight into this. " Look'ee here. Mo," said he. 
 " So long as the Court's watched, so long this here gentleman 
 won't come anigh it. He's dodged the London police long 
 enough to be too clever for that. But so long as he keeps touch 
 with M'riar, you've got touch of him." 
 
 Uncle Mo seemed to consider this profoundly, "Not if I 
 keep square with M'riar," said he at last. 
 
 " How do you make that out. Mo ?" 
 
 " I've as good as promised the old girl that she shan't have 
 any hand in it. She's out of it." 
 
 " Then keep her out of it. But only you give the tip to Sim 
 Rowe that M'riar's in with him, and that he's putting the screw 
 on her, and Sim he'll do the rest. Twig ?" Conscious casuistry 
 always closes one eye, and Mr. Jerry closed his. 
 
 " That's one idea of keeping square, Jerry, but it ain't mine." 
 
 " What's wrong with it. Mo ?" Mr. Jerry's confidence in his 
 suggestion had flagged, and his eye had reopened slowly. 
 
 " M'riar's not to have any hand in it — that's her stipulation, 
 According-ly to my ideas, Jerry, either you take advantage, or 
 you don't. Don't's the word, this time. If I bring M'riar in 
 at all, it's aU one which of two ways I do it. She's out of it." 
 
 Mr. Jerry began, feebly: — "You can't do more than keep 
 your word. Mo . . . ." 
 
 " Yes, you can, Jerry. You can keep your meanin'. And 
 you can do more than that. You can keep to what the other 
 party thought you meant, when you know. I know, this time. 
 I ain't in a Court o' Justice, Jerry, dodgin' about, and I know 
 when I'm square, by the feel. M'riar's out of it, and she shall 
 stop out." Uncle Mo was not referring only to the evasions of. 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 731 
 
 witnesses on oath, which he regarded as nattiral, but to a general 
 habit of untruth, and subtle perversion of obvious meanings, 
 which he ascribed not only to counsel learned in the Law, but to 
 the Bench itself. 
 
 " Don't you want this chap to dance the Newgate hornpipe. 
 Mo?" 
 
 " Don't I, neither ?" Uncle Mo smoked peacefully, gazing 
 on the fixe. The silhouette of a hanged man, kicking, floated 
 before his mind's eye, and soothed him. But he made a reserva- 
 tion. " After him and me have had a quiet half-an-hour to- 
 gether !" 
 
 Mr. Jerry was suddenly conscious of a new danger. " I say. 
 Mo," said he. " None of that, if ycm please !" 
 
 " None o' what ?" 
 
 " This customer's not your sort. He's a bad kind. Bad 
 before he was first lagged, and none the better for the company 
 he's kept since ! You're an elderly man now. Mo, and I'll go bail 
 you haven't so much as put on the gloves for ten years past. 
 And suppose you had, ever so ! Who's to know he hasn't got a 
 Colt in his pocket, or a bowie-knife ?" Those of us who remem- 
 ber the fifties will recall how tightly revolvers clung to the name 
 of their patentee, and the sort of moral turpitude that attached 
 to their use. They were regarded as giving a mean advantage to 
 murderers; who otherwise, if they murdered fair, and were 
 respectably hanged, merely filled roles necessary to History and 
 the Drama. 
 
 " Couldn't say about the barking-iron," said Uncle Mo. " He's 
 got a nasty sort of a knife, because he was flourishing of it out 
 once to frighten M'riar. I'll give him that." Meaning — the 
 advantage of the weapon. A trivial concession from a survivor 
 of the best days of the Fancy ! " Ye see, Jerry," he continued, 
 " he'll have to come within arm's length, to use it. I'll see to 
 hxxQ. ! Him and his carving-knives !" 
 
 But Mr. Jerry was far from easy about his friend, who seemed 
 to him over-confident. He had passed his life in sporting 
 •circles, and though he himself had seen more of jockeys than 
 prizefighters, their respective circumferences intersected; and 
 more than one case had come to his knowledge of a veteran of 
 "the Ring unconscious of his decadence, who had boastfully defied 
 a junior, and made the painful discovery of the degree to which 
 youth can outclass age. This was scarcely a case of youth or 
 extreme age, but the twenty years that parted them were all- 
 sufficient. 
 
732 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 He began to seek in his inner conscience excuses for a course 
 of action which would — he was quite candid with himself — have 
 a close resemblance to treachery. But would not a little straight- 
 forward tieachery be not only very expedient, but rather moral ? 
 Were high principles a sine qua non to such a humble individual 
 as himself, a " bookmaker " on race-courses, a billiard-marker 
 elsewhere in their breathing-times ? Though indeed Mr. Jerry 
 in his chequered Ufe had seen many other phases of employment 
 — chiefly, whenever he had the choice, within the zone of horsi- 
 ness. For he had a mysterious sympathetic knowledge of the 
 horse. H pressed to give an account of himself, he was often 
 compelled to admit that he was doing nothing particular, but was 
 on the lookout. He might indicate that he was getting sick of 
 this sort of thing, and would take the next chance that turned 
 up ; would, as it were, close with Fate. There had never been a 
 moment in his sixty odd years of life — ^for he was very little Uncle 
 Mo's junior — ^when he had not been on the eve of a lucrative 
 permanency. It had never come; and never could, in the nature 
 of things. Nevertheless, the evanescencies that came and went 
 and chequered his career were not quite unremunerative, though 
 they were hardly lucrative. If he was ever hard up, he certainly 
 never confessed to it. 
 
 He, however, looking back on his own antecedents to deter- 
 mine from them how straitlaced a moraUty conscience called 
 for, decided, in view of the possibiUty of a coUision between his 
 friend and this ex-convict, that he would be quite justified in 
 treating Aunt M'riar's feelings as negligible, set against the risk 
 incurred by deferring to them as his friend had done. No doubt 
 Mo's confidence had been reposed in him under the seal of an 
 honourable secrecy, but to honour it under the circumstances 
 seemed to him to be " cutting it rather fine." He resolved to 
 sacrifice his integrity on the altar of friendship, and sought out 
 Mr. Simeon Rowe, who will be remembered as the Thames 
 Policeman who was rowing stroke at Hammersmith that day 
 when his chief, Ibbetson, lost his life in the attempt to capture 
 Daverill; and who had more recently been identified by Mo as, 
 the son of an old friend. Jerry made a full communication of the 
 case as known to him; giving as his own motive for doing so, the 
 wish to shield Mo from the possible consequences of his own rash 
 over-confidence. 
 
 " I collect from what you tell me," said the Police-Inspector, 
 " that my men have been going on the wrong tack. That's about 
 it, Mr. AUbone, isn't it ?" 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 733 
 
 "That's one way of putting it, Mr. Rowe. Anyhow, they 
 were bound to be let in. Why, who was to guess Aunt M'riar ? 
 And the reason !" 
 
 " They'll have to look a little sharper, that's all." It suited 
 the Inspector to lay the blame of failure on his subordinates. 
 This is a prerogative of seniors in office. Successes are officially 
 credited to the foresight of headquarters — ^failiu^s debited to the 
 incompetence of subordinates. Mr. Rowe's attitude was merely 
 human. He expressed as much acknowledgment of indebted- 
 ness to Mr. Jerry as was consistent with official dignity, adding 
 without emotion: — "I've been suspecting some game of the 
 kind." However, he unbent so far as to admit that this culprit 
 had given a sight of trouble; and, as Mr. Jerry was an old ac- 
 quaintance, resulted some incidents of the convict's career, not 
 without admiration. But it was admiration of a purely profes- 
 sional sort, consistent with strong moral loathing of ite object. 
 " He's a bom devil, if ever there was one," said he. " I must 
 say I like him. Why — ^look how he slipped through their fingers 
 at Clerkenwell 1 That was after we caught him at Hammer- 
 smith. That was genius, sir, nothing short of genius ! ' 
 
 " Dressed himself in his own warder's clothes, didn't he, and 
 just walked over the course ? What's become of your man he 
 knocked on the head with his leg-iron ?" 
 
 " Oh — him ? He's got his pension, you knovtr. But he's not 
 good for any sort of work. He's aUve — ^that's all ! Yes — ^when 
 Mr. Wix pays his next visit at the Old Bailey, there'll be several 
 charges against him. He'll make a good show. I'll give him 
 three months." By which he meant that, with all allowances 
 made for detention and trial, Mr. Wix would end his career at 
 the time stated. He went on to refer to other incidents of which 
 the story has cognisance. He had been inclined to be down on 
 his old chief, Ibbetson, who was drowned in his attempt to 
 capture Wix, because he had availed himself of a helping hand 
 held out to him to drag its owner into custody. We'.l — he would 
 think so still if it had not been for some delicate shades of char- 
 acter Mr. Wix had revealed since. How did he, Simeon Rowe, 
 know what Ibbetson knew against the ex-convict ? Some 
 Walthamstow business, as Uke as not ! It was wonderful what 
 a faculty this man had for slipping through your fingers. He 
 had been all but caught by one of our men, in the country, only 
 the "other day. He was at the railway-station waiting for the 
 up-train, due in a quarter of an hour, and he saw our man driving 
 up in a gig. At this point Mr. Rowe stopped, looking amused. 
 
734 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Did he run ?" said Mr. Jerry. 
 
 " Not he ! He made a mistake in his train. Jumped into 
 the Manchester express that was just leaving, and got carried 
 off be 'ore our man reached the station. At Manchester he 
 explained his mistake, and used his return ticket without extra 
 charge to come back to London. Our man knew he would do 
 that, and waited for him at Euston. But Jie knew one better. 
 Missed his tra'n again at Harrow — ^just got out for a minute, you 
 know, when it stopped — and walked the rest of the way !" 
 
 Ralph Daverill must have had a curious insight into human 
 nature, to know by the amount of his inspection of that police- 
 officer — the one who had ridden after him from Grantley Thorpe 
 — ^whether he would pittsue him to Manchester or try to captiu^e 
 him at Euston. How could he teU that the officer was not 
 clever enough to know exactly how clever his quarry would decide 
 he was ? 
 
 Aunt M'riar, haunted alwa3rs by a nightmare — by the terrible 
 dream of a scaffold, and on it the man who had been her husband, 
 with all the attendant horrors familiar to an age when public 
 executions still gratified its human, or inhuman interest—was 
 unable to get rehef by confiding her trouble to others. She 
 dared to say no more than what she had already said to Uncle 
 Mo, as she knew he was in commimication with his friend the 
 police-officer, and she wanted only just as much to be disclosed 
 about the convict as would safeguard Sapps Court from another 
 of his visits, but at the same time would not lead to his capture. 
 If she had thought his suggestions of intimidation serious, no doubt 
 she would have put aside her scruples, and made it her first object 
 that he should be brought to justice. But she regarded them as 
 empty threats, uttered solely to extort money. 
 
 She knew she could rely on Mo's kindness of heart to stretch 
 many points to meet her feelings, but she felt very uncertain 
 whether even his kind-heartedness would go the length of her 
 demand for it. He might consider that a wife's feehngs for a 
 husband — and smcA a husband ! — might be carried too far, might 
 even be classified as superstition, that last infirmity of incorrect 
 minds. If she could only make sure that the convict should 
 never show his face again in Sapps Court, she would sacrifice 
 her small remainders of money, earned in runs of luck, to keep 
 him at a distance. An attitude of compromise between com- 
 plete repudiation of him, and misleading his pursuers, was at 
 least possible. But it involved a slight amount of dupUcity in 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 735 
 
 dealing with Mo, and this made Aunt M'riar supremely uncom- 
 fortable. She was perfectly miserable about it. But there ! — • 
 had she not committed herself to an impracticable constancy, 
 with a real altar and a real parson ? That was it. She had 
 promised, five-and-twenty years ago, to love, honoiu", and obey 
 a self-engrossed pleasure-seeker, and time and crime and the 
 canker of a gaol had developed a devil in him, who was by now 
 a fine representative sample — a " record devil " our modem 
 advanced speech might have called him — ^who had fairly stamped 
 out whatever uncongenial trace of good may have existed origin- 
 ally in the premises he had secured on an indefinite lease. It 
 was superstition on Aunt M'riar's part, but of a sort that is aided 
 and abetted by a system that has served the purposes of the 
 priesthoods all the world over since the world began, and means 
 to last your time and mine — ^the more's the pity ! 
 
 It was the day after her conversation with Mo about the 
 convict — ^the day, that is, after Gwen's last visit to Sapps Court — 
 that Aunt M'riar said to Dave, just departing to absorb erudition 
 at his School, that if he should see Michael Ragstroar he might 
 tell him she had a note for his, Machael's, aunt at Hammersmith; 
 and if he was a-going there Sunday, he might just every bit as 
 well make himself useful, and carry it and save the postage, 
 Dave said: — " Whoy shouldn't oy carry it ?" An aspiration 
 crushed by Aunt M'riar with: — "Because you're seven!" So 
 Dave, whose nature was as docile as his eyes were blue, undertook 
 to deliver the message; and Michael presented himself inconse- 
 quence, just after Uncle Mo had took a turn out to see for a 
 newspaper, for to know some more of what was goiag on in the 
 Crimaera. It was just as well Uncle Mo had, because when it's 
 two, you don't have to consider. If this is obscure. Aunt M'riar, 
 who used the phrase, is responsible, not the story. Its opinion 
 is, that she meant that the absence of a third person left her 
 freer to speak. Perhaps if Mo had been present she would 
 merely have handed Micky the letter directed to his aunt, which 
 would have been palpably no concern of Uncle Mo's, inquirin' 
 and askin' questions. 
 
 As it was, she accompanied it with verbal instructions: — 
 " Now you know what you've got to do, young Micky. You've 
 just got to give this letter to yovir great-aunt Treadwell. And 
 when she sees inside of it, she'll find it ain't for her, but a party." 
 
 " What sort of a party, that's the p'int ? Don't b'leeve my 
 great-aunt knows no parties. Them she knows is inside of her 
 farmily. Nevoos, sim'lar to myself as you might say. Or 
 
 47 
 
736 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 hequal value." An Academical degree -would have qualified 
 Micky to say " or its equivalent." The expression he used 
 had its source in exchange transactions of turnips and carrots 
 and greens, anticipating varied calls for each in different markets. 
 " She may know the address of the lady she'll find in this 
 envelope. And if she don't, all y<m got to do is to bring the 
 letter back." 
 
 " Suppose she don't know the address and I do, am I to tell 
 her, or 'old my tongue ?" 
 
 " Now which do you think ? I do declare you boys I never ! 
 Nor yet anyone else ! Why, if she don't know the address and 
 you do, all you got to do then is take the letter and leave it." 
 
 " Without ajiy address wrote ? Wery good ! 'Ave it your 
 own way, missis. 'And it over." 
 
 Aunt M'riar handed it over. But before Micky was halt- 
 way up the Court, she called him back. " Maybe you know the 
 party's name ? Miss Julia Hawkins — on the waterside. Ham- 
 mersmith." 
 
 " Her ! Not know her ! Juliarawkins. Why, she's next 
 door !" 
 " But do you know her — ^to speak to ?" 
 
 " Rarther ! We're on torkin' terms, me and Juliar. Werry 
 often stop I do, to pass the time of day with JooUar." An 
 intensification in the accent on the name seemed to add to his 
 claim to familiarity with its owner. " Keeps the Httle tiddley- 
 wink next door. Licensed 'ouse. That's where they took Wix 
 — him as got out of quod — him as come down the Coiu^; to look 
 up a widder." 
 
 Aimt M'riar considered a moment whether it would not be 
 better to instruct Micky to find out Daverill and deliver her 
 letter to him in person. She decided on adhering to the convict's 
 instructions. If she had understood his past relations with Miss 
 Hawkins she might have decided otherwise. She affected not 
 to hear Micky's allusion to him, merely enjoining the boy to 
 hand her letter in over the bar to its Egeria. " You won't have 
 any call for to trouble your aimt," said she. For she felt that 
 the fewer the cooks, the better the broth. Questioned as to 
 when he would dehver the letter, Micky appeared to turn over 
 in his mind a voluminous register of appointments. But he 
 could stand them all over, to oblige, and would see if he couldn't 
 make it convenient to go over Sunday morning. Nothing was 
 impossible to a good business head. 
 As the appointments had absolutely no existence except in his 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 737 
 
 imagination — though perhaps costermonging, at ita lowest ebb, 
 still claimed his services — he was able to make it very con- 
 venient indeed to visit his Aunt Elizabeth. History repeats 
 itself, and the incident of the half-and-half happened again, point 
 for point, until settlement-time came, and 1 hen a variation crept in. 
 
 " I got a letter for you, missis," said Mickj'. 
 
 " Sxire it ain't for somebody else ? Let's have a look at it." 
 
 " No 'urry ! Tork it over first — that's my marxim ! Look 
 ye here. Miss JuUar, this is my way of putting of it. Here's 
 three-halfpence, over the beer. Here's the corner of the letter, 
 stickin' out of my porket. Now which'U you have, the letter or 
 the three-haKpence ? Make your ch'ice. All square and no 
 deception !" 
 
 " Well — the impidence of the child ! Who's to know the 
 letter's for me onlest I see the direction ? Who gave it you to 
 give me ?" 
 
 " Miss Wardle down our Court. Same I told you of — ^where 
 the old widder-woman hangs out. Him the police are after's 
 mother !" Micky was so confident of the success of this com- 
 munication that he began picking up the three-halfpence to 
 restore them to his pocket, and stood holding the comer of the 
 letter to draw it out as soon as his terms were accepted. The 
 acceptance came unconditionally, with a nod; and Micky 
 departed with his jug. 
 
 What were the contents of this letter to Mr. Wix, care of 
 Miss Julia Hawkins, at The Pigeons ? That was all the direction 
 on the envelope, originally covered by another, addressed to 
 Micky's great-aunt. It was worded as Daverill had worded it 
 in a hurried parting word to Aunt M'riar, given when Gwen's 
 knock had cut his visit short. This letter, in an uneducated 
 woman's hand, excited Miss Hawkins's curiosity. Of course it 
 might only be from the old woman he supposed to be his mother. 
 If so, there did not seem to be any reasonable objection to her 
 reading it. If otherwise, she felt that there were many reasonable 
 objections to leaving it unread. Anyhow there was a kettle 
 steaming on the fire in the bar, and if she held the letter over 
 the spout to see if it would open easy, she would be still in a 
 position to shut it up again and deliver it with a guiltless con- 
 science. Eve, no doubt, felt that she could handle the apple 
 and go on resisting temptation, so as not to seem rude to the 
 Serpent. The steam was not wanted for long, the envelope 
 flap curling up in a most obliging manner, and leaving all clear 
 for investigation. Miss Hawkins laid the letter down to dry 
 
738 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 quite dry, before fingering it. Remember to bear this in mind 
 in opening other people's letters this way. The slightest touch 
 on paper moistened by steam may remain as a tell-tale. 
 
 This woman was so cautious that she left the paper untouched 
 where she had laid it on the table while she conferred with a 
 recently installed potboy on points of commercial economy. 
 When she returned it was dry beyond suspicion, and she drew the 
 letter out to see if it contained anything she need hesitate to 
 read. She felt that she was keeping in view what is due to the 
 sensitive conscience of an honourable person. 
 
 The note she read was short, written so that the lines fell 
 thus: — 
 
 " Ralph Daveeill — ^The police are 
 
 on the look out for you and it is now not 
 
 safe to come to the Court — This is Written 
 
 by your wife to say you will run 
 
 great risk of being took if you come — 
 
 For you to know who I am I write my name — 
 
 POLLT DAVEKILL. 
 
 Sapps Court Dec 9 1854." 
 
 The lines were ill-spaced, so that blanks were left as shown. 
 At the end of the second, a crowded line, the word not was 
 blurred on the paper-edge, and looked like a repetition of the 
 previous word. 
 
 One does not see, without thought, why this letter sent its 
 reader's heart beating furiously. Why should she turn scarlet with 
 anger and all but draw blood from a bitten lip ? She knew perfectly 
 well that this gutter Don Juan's depravity could boast as many 
 victims as his enforced prison life had left possible to him. But 
 no particular one had ever become concrete to her, and jealousy 
 of a multitude, no one better off than herself, had never rankled. 
 Jealousy of Heaven-knows-who is a wishy-washy passion. 
 Supply a definite object, and it may become vitriolic. Polly 
 Daverill, whoever she was, was definite, and might be the wife 
 the convict had acknowledged — or rather claimed — ^when he first 
 made Miss Julia's acquaintance, over twenty years ago. 
 
 The lip was perhaps saved from bloodletting by an idea which 
 crossed the mind of the biter. A look of satisfaction grew and 
 grew as she contemplated the letter; not for its meaning — ^that 
 was soon clear. It was something in the handwriting; something 
 that made her hide half-words with a finger-point, and vary her 
 angle of inspection. Then she said, aloud to herself: — " Yes !" as 
 though she had come to a decision. 
 
SAPPS COURT AGAIN 739 
 
 She examined an inkstand that the dried ink of ages had 
 encrusted, beyond redemption, in a sunken cavity of restraint 
 in an inktray overstocked with extinct and senile pens. Its 
 residuum of black fluid had been glutinous ever since Miss Juha 
 had known it; ever since she had written, as a student, that 
 Bounty Commanded Esteem all down one page of a copybook. 
 The pens were quill pens past mending, or overwhelmed by too 
 heartfelt nibs; or magnum bonums whose upstrokes were morally 
 as wide as Portland Place, or paxvum malums that perforated 
 syllables and spluttered. The penwiper was non-absorbent, and 
 generally contrived to return the drop it refused to partake of 
 on the hands of incautious scribes, who rarely obtained soap 
 and hot water time enough to do any good. 
 
 Miss Julia first remedied the ink. A memory of breakfast 
 unremoved still hung about the parlour table — a teapot and a 
 slop basin. The former supplied a diluent, the latter a haven 
 for the indisputably used-up quill whose feather served to in- 
 corporate it with the black coagulum. With the resultant fluid 
 you could make a mark about the same blackness as what the 
 letter was, using by preference the newest magnum bonum pen, 
 which was all right in itself, only stuck on an old wooden handle 
 that scribes of recent years had gnawed. 
 
 What this woman's jealous violence was prompting her to do 
 was to alter this letter so as to encourage its recipient to put 
 himself in danger of captuie. It was an easy task, as the only 
 words she had to insert could be copies from what was already 
 written. The first line required the word not at the end, the 
 fomrth the word no. The only other change needed was the 
 erasure of the word not, in the second Une, which already looked 
 Hke an accidental repetition of now. Was an erasure advisable ? 
 She decided against it, cleverly. She merely drew her pen 
 through the not, leaving the first two letters intentionally visible, 
 and blurring the last. She then re-enveloped the letter, much 
 pleased with the result, and wrote a short note in pencil to 
 accompany it; then hunted up an envelope large enough to take 
 both, and directed it to W. at the Post Office, East Croydon. 
 This was the last address the convict had given. Where he 
 was actually living she did not know. 
 
 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 
 
740 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 attitude was more im- 
 portant than the bald, unquaUfied 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 beUeved. She had saved Daverill 
 from the pohce, 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 repeti- 
 tion of those hideous interviews with a creature that neither was 
 nor was not her husband; a thing with a spurious identity; a 
 horrible outgrowth from a stem on which her own life had once 
 been grafted. CJould woman think a worse thought of man than 
 hers of him, when she thanked God 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 passing friend, quite 
 short of any speU akin to love. How could this monstrous 
 personality have grown upon him, yet left him indisputably the 
 same man ? The dreadful change in the identity 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 identity 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 bom aUve. 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 
 
SAPPS COUBT AGAIN 741 
 
 by that time practically damned beyond redemption, and his 
 briUiant career as a bushranger followed as a matter of course. 
 
 Those who have read anything of the story of the penal settle- 
 ments 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 per- 
 mission now to live on as denizens of a hell on earth. As it 
 turned out, the only message of mercy he had to give was the 
 one contained or implied in an ofScial 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 possibiUties beyond, from 
 which Hell had been officially excluded. It is but right to add 
 that the Reverend Father did not ascribe the exultant satisfaction 
 of his clients — ^it that is the word — to anything but the anticipa- 
 tion of escape from torture. He was too truthful. 
 
 If the nearest dates the story has obtained are trustworthy, 
 DaverUrs 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 Inten- 
 tions 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 possibiUties 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 
 
742 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 — ^we, who only know of their modem substitutes. For the last 
 traces of torture, such as was common long after the moyen dge, 
 as generally understood, have vanished from the administration 
 of our gaols before a vivified spirit of Christianity, and the en- 
 Ughtenment consequent on the Advance of Science.* After 
 fourteen years of such a hfe, how glorious must have been the 
 opportunities the freedom of the Bush afforded to an instinctive 
 miscreant, still in the prime of hfe, and artificially debarred for 
 so long from the indulgence of a natural bent for wickedness; 
 not yet ennuy& 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 lusts of his father he did do, to the very last' 
 never disgracing himself by the slightest wavering towards 
 repentance. 
 
 Probably his return from Sydney to England was as much an 
 escape from his own associates in crime, with whom some dis- 
 honourable transactions had made him impopular, 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 aUbis, 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 poUce-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 suppKed the defence 
 with a perfectly fictitious accovmt 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 proba- 
 bility is that he never gave her a thought imtil 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, 
 
 ♦ This appears to have been written about 1910. 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 743 
 
 but he had to be content with hundreds. He had drawn it 
 o£E 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 elaim 
 upon her was his gratification at her expense. She had been 
 instructed that marriage was God's ordLiance, and so forth; 
 and was 'ptr se reciprocal. She had sacrificed herself to him; 
 therefore he had sacrificed himself to her. A halo of mysterious 
 sanctity hung about her obligations to him, and seemed to 
 forbid too close an analysis 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 GWBN STAYED AWAY MIOM CHURCH, BUT SENT HEB LOVE TO 
 LADY MILLICBNT AKSTIE-DUNCOMBE. HOW TOM MIGHT COME 
 AGAIN AT ETVE, AND GAVE MES. LAMPREY A LIFT. NOT EXACTLY 
 DEUKIUM. 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 COM- 
 PARISON OF THE TWINS. MIGHT QWEN SEE THE AUSTRALIAN 
 LETTER ? OLD KETUBAH's HUSBAND THE SEXTON. HOW 
 GRANNY MARBABLE 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 passant. It was a compliance with a rule of 
 
744 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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 fright- 
 ened ?" 
 
 " 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 Open- 
 shaws !" 
 
 " 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^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 button up the seats under their oilskin 
 passenger-cases, in anticipation 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 re- 
 turned, telling him she was going to be late, and should not 
 want him. He might drive back to the Towers, and — stop a 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 745 
 
 minute ! — might give this card to hor mother. She scribbled 
 on one of her own cards that she would not be back to lunch, 
 and to'.d 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 overpassed 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 Bran- 
 tock. 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 Grarmy 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 Euphe- 
 mia. 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 
 
746 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 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, abat- 
 ing 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 Aus- 
 tralia 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 con- 
 troversial attitude which would render you an obstructive to 
 Uberal 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. 
 
 Ruth Thrale had a bad report to give as she and her young 
 ladyship recrossed the kitchen. It was summed up in the word 
 Fever, restrained by " Not exactly delirium." Granny Marrable 
 came out to meet them, and threw in a word or two of additional 
 restraint. What they had at first thought delirium had turned 
 out quite temperate and sane on closer examination. 
 
 " A deal about Australia, and the black witch-doctor," said 
 Granny Marrable. " Now, if one could turn her mind off that, 
 it might be best for her, and she would drop off, quiet." Perhaps 
 her ladyship coming would do her good. The old lady ended 
 with concession about the fever — was not quite sure Maisie had 
 known her just now when she spoke to her. 
 
 " Poor old darling !" said Gwen. " You know. Granny, we 
 must expect a little of this sort of thing. We couldn't hope to 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 747 
 
 get off scot-free. Have you had some sleep, yourself ? Has she 
 slept, Ruth ?" 
 
 " Oh yes. Mother got some sleep in the chair beside — ^beside 
 her, tiU four o'clock. Then she lay down, and had a good sleep, 
 lying dovm. Didn't you, mother ?" 
 
 " You may be easy about me, child. I've done very well." 
 
 " And yourself, Ruth 1" By now, Gwen always called Widow 
 Thrale " Ruth." 
 
 " Who — ^I ? I had quite a long sleep, while mother sat by 
 — ^by her." This dreadful difficvdty of what to call old Maisie ! 
 Her daughter was always at odds with it. 
 
 Gwen passed on into the bedroom. Just at the door she 
 paused. "You wait outside, and hear," said she. They held 
 back, in the passage, silent. 
 
 Old Maisie's voice, on the pillow; audible, not articulate. 
 Two frail hands stretched out in welcome. Two grave eyes, 
 made wild by the smrounding tangle of loose white hair. Those 
 were Gwen's impressions as she approached the bed. 
 
 The voice grew articiilate. " Oh, my darling, I knew you 
 would come. I want you close, to tell me . . , ." 
 
 " Yes, dear ! — ^to tell you what ?" 
 
 " I want you to tell me whether one of the things is a dream." 
 
 " One of which things, dear ?" One has to be a hard old stager 
 not to feel his flesh creep at delirium. Gwen had to fight against 
 a shudder. 
 
 " There are so many, you know, now that they all come back 
 at once. Tell me, darling, were my little boy and girl real, who 
 came up into my room and played and gave me tea out of small 
 cups ? I called them Dave and Dolly. Dolly was very small. 
 Oh, Dolly!" Dolly's size, and her tenderness on one's knee, 
 were, so to speak, audible in the voice that became tender to 
 apostrophise her. 
 
 " Dave and Dolly Wardle ? Of course they are real ! As 
 real as you or me ! There they are in Sapps Court, with Uncle 
 Mo and Aunt M'riar. And Susan Burr." Then such a nice 
 scheme crossed Gwen's mind. 
 
 But old Maisie seemed adrift, not able to be sure of any 
 memory; past and present at war in her mind, either intolerant 
 of the other. " Then tell me, dear," said she. " Is the other 
 real too ? Is it not a thing I have dreamed, a thing I have 
 dreamed in the night, here in Widow Thrale's cottage .... where 
 I came in the cart .... where I came from the great house 
 where the sweet old gentleman was, that was your father .... 
 
V4:8 WIlJliiN UnUiST mJiJiTH UUOST 
 
 where I could see out over the tree lands .... where my Ruth 
 came to me ? . . . ." The affection for her daughter, that had 
 struck root firmly in her heart, remained a soUd fact, whether 
 she was thinking of her as before or after the revelation of her 
 identity. 
 
 Gwen sat beside her on the bed-edge, her arm round her head 
 on its pillow, her free hand soothing the restless fingers that 
 would not be still. " What is it you think you have dreamed, 
 Mrs. Picture dear ?" said she. 
 
 " It was all a dream, I think. Just a mad dream — but then — 
 
 but then — did not my Ruth think I was mad ?...." 
 
 " But what was it ? Tell it to me, now, quietly." 
 
 " It was that my Phoebe — my sister — oh, my dear sister ! — 
 
 dead so many years ago — sat by me here, as you sit now — and 
 
 we talked and talked of the old time — and our young Squire, so 
 
 beautiful, upon his horse Oh, but then — ^but then !...." 
 
 She checked herself suddenly, and a look of horror came in her 
 face; then went on: — "No, listen ! There was an awful thing 
 
 in the dream — a bad thing — ^about a letter Oh, how can I 
 
 tell it ? " 
 
 Gwen caught at the pause to speak, saying gently but firmly: — 
 " Dear Mrs. Picture, it was no dream, but all true. Believe me, 
 / know. When you are quite well and strong, I will tell you all 
 over again about the letter, and how my dear old father found 
 it all out for you. And I tell you what ! You shall come and 
 live here with your sister and daughter, instead of Sapps 
 
 Court Oh no — ^you shall have Dave and DoUy. They 
 
 shall come too." This was Gwen's scheme, but it was no older 
 than the mention just made of it. " I can do these things," she 
 added. " Papa lets me do what I choose." 
 
 Old Maisie lay back, looldng at the beautiful face in a kind 
 of wonderment. The feeling it gave her that she was in the 
 hands of some superior power was the most favourable one 
 possible iu a case where fever was the result of mental disquiet. 
 Presently the strain on the face abated, and the wild look in the 
 eyes. The lids drooped, then closed over them. Something 
 Uke sleep followed, leaving Gwen free to rejoin old Phoebe and 
 Ruth, outside. They were still close at hand. 
 
 " Did you hear all that ?" said Gwen. It appeared that they 
 had, or the greater part. The account of how the night had 
 passed was postponed, owing to the arrival of Dr. Nash. 
 
 " I would sooner give her no drugs of any sort," said he, when 
 he had taken a good look at the patient. " I will leave some- 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 749 
 
 thing for her to take if she doesn't get sleep naturally. Otherwise 
 the choice is between giving her something harmless to make her 
 believe she is taking medicine, and telling her she has nothing 
 whatever the matter with her. I incline to the last. Get her 
 to take food whenever you can. Always have something ready 
 for her whenever's there a chance. I expect you to see to that. 
 Widow Thrale. And, Lady Gwendolen, you are good for her — 
 remember that ! You've got to pretend you're God Almighty — 
 do you understand ?" It goes without saying that by this time 
 no one else was within hearing. 
 
 " I understand perfectly," said Gwen. " That little doze she 
 had just now was because I pledged myself and my father to the 
 reality of the whole thing. She had got to think it was all a 
 dream." 
 
 She suppressed, as the sort of thing for London, a thought that 
 came into her head at this moment, that it was the first time 
 the family coronet had been of the slightest use to any living 
 creature ! Not here, with the hush of the Feudal System still 
 on the land, and the old church at Chorlton's monotonous belfry 
 calling its flock to celebrate the Third Sunday ia Advent. For 
 next Sunday was Christmas Eve, and old Maisie's eighty-first 
 birthday. Next Monday was old Phoebe's, with just the stroke 
 of midnight between them. 
 
 Gwen seized the opportunity to get from Dr. Nash a fuller 
 account of his disclosure to old Phoebe. He told her what we 
 know already. 
 
 " Only I'm due at the other end of the village," said he, ending 
 
 up. He looked at his watch. " I've got five minutes 
 
 Yes — ^it was the small boy's letter that did the job. I had been 
 hammering away at the old lady to get the thin end of the wedge 
 in, and I assure you it was useless. Worse than useless ! So I 
 gave it up. But I suspect that some shot of mine hit the mark, 
 without my seeing it. Something had made her susceptible. 
 And when the kid's letter came, that did it. I wasn't there." 
 
 " Oh — ^then you only heard . . . ." 
 
 " I was called back. I found the old body gone off in a faint, 
 and the letter on the floor — at least, on the baby. I've got it 
 in my pocket, I do believe No, I haven't !" 
 
 " What's this on the vrindow-ledge ? This is Dave's hand." 
 But Gwen saw that it was directed to " Old Mrs. Picture Strides 
 Cotage Chorlton under bradBury." She opened it without 
 remorse, and the doctor said: — "Of course! He wrote two. 
 That one's to t'other old lady. Just the same, I expect." 
 
750 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 It was, word for word. But it had a short postscript: — 
 " When you come bacK me and Dolly shall give you tea it is 
 stood ready and grany maroBone too." 
 
 " Poor little people !" said Gwen. " How they will feel it I 
 But I mustn't keep you, doctor." 
 
 And then, after a word or two to Widow Thrale, Dr. Nash 
 drove ofE through th® snow, now thickening. 
 
 Gwen, you see, was quite alive to the situation; perhaps indeed 
 she was ready to put a worse construction on it than the doctor. 
 He had seen so many a spark of Ufe, far nearer extinction than 
 old Maisie's, flicker up and grow and grow, and end by steady 
 burning through its appointed time, that no amount of mere 
 attenuation frightened him. Gwen, on the other hand, could 
 not bring herself to believe that any creature so frail would stand 
 the strain of such an earthquake of sensibilities. Unless indeed 
 some change for the better showed itself in a few hours, she must 
 succumb. Probably she was only relieving the tension of her 
 own feelings by looking facts fiercely in the face. It is a common 
 attitude of inexperience, under Uke circumstances. Dr. Nash 
 certainly had said to her that " the strength was well main- 
 tained." But do we not all of us accept that phrase as an ill- 
 omen — a vulture in the desert ? No — ^no ! Look the facts in 
 the face ! Glare at them ! 
 
 Returning to the bedside, where Granny Marrable was sitting 
 in her arm-chair beside her sister, who was quiet — ^possibly 
 sleeping — she took the opportunity to note the changes that 
 Time had wrought in each twin. The moment she came to look 
 for them, she began to marvel that she had never seen the 
 similarities; for instance, scarcely a month since, when the two 
 were face to face outside this house, and each looked at the 
 other, and neither said or thought : — " How like myself !" Was 
 it possible that they were really more imlike then ? — ^that the 
 storm which had passed over both had told more, relatively, on 
 the healthy village dame, kept blooming by a life whose cares 
 were little more than healthy excitements, than on the mere 
 derelict of so many storms, any one enough to send it to the 
 bottom ? There was little work left for Time or Calamity to 
 do on that old face on the pillow; while even this four-and- 
 twenty hours of overwrought excitement had left its mark upon 
 old Phcebe. Gwen saw that the faces were the same, past 
 dispute, as soon as she compared them point by point. 
 
 Once seen, the thing grew, and became strange and unearthly, 
 almost a discomfort. Gwen went back into the kitchen, where 
 
STEIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 751 
 
 she found Ruth, affecting some housework but without much 
 heart in it. She too was showing the effects of the night and day 
 just passed, her heavy eyelids fighting with their weight, not 
 successfully; her restless hands protesting against yawns; trying 
 to curb rebellious lips, in vain. 
 
 " I can see the likeness now," said Gwen, thinking it best to 
 talk. 
 
 " Between mother and — my mother ?" was Ruth's reply. 
 How else cotdd she have said it, without beginning to call old 
 Phoebe her aunt ? 
 
 Gwen saw the embarrassment, and skipped explanation. 
 " Why not call her Mrs. Picture — ^Uttle Dave's name ?" Then she 
 felt this was a mistake, and added: — "No, I suppose that 
 wouldn't do !" 
 
 " Something will come, to say, in time. One's head goes, 
 now." Ruth went on to speak of her childish recollection 
 of the news of her mother's death — quite a vivid memory — 
 when she was nearly nine years old. " I was quite a big little 
 maid when the letter came. We got it out, you know, just now. 
 And, oh, how sick it made me !" 
 
 " I should like so much to see it," said Gwen. Her young 
 ladyship's Ughtest wish was law, and Ruth nearly went to seek 
 the letter. Gwen had to be very emphatic that another time 
 would do, to stop her. 
 
 " Then I wiU get it out presently, and give it to your ladyship 
 to take away and read," said Ruth, and went back to what she 
 was saying. " That is how I came to be able to call her my 
 mother, at once. I mean the moment 1 knew she was not Mrs. 
 Prichard. Now that I know it, I keep looking at her dear old 
 face to make it out the same face that I kept on thinking my 
 mother in Australia had, all the time I thought she was living 
 there away from us. And if I had never Imown she died — I 
 mean had we never thought her dead — ^I would have gone on 
 thinking the same face. Oh, such a beautiful young face ! 
 Exactly Hke what mother's was then ! — ^the same face for her 
 that it was when I last saw it " 
 
 " I see. And when you look at your — ^your aunt's face, you 
 naturally do not look for what she was forty years ago." 
 
 " That is it, your ladyship. Because I have had mother to 
 go by, all the time. She has always been the same she was last 
 ^eek — ^last month — ^last year — any time. What must it be to 
 her, to see me what I am !" 
 
 " I don't believe it is harder for her to think about than it 
 
 48 
 
752 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 is for you. She is feverish now, and that makes her wander. 
 People are always worse in the morning. Dr. Nash says so. 
 I thought yesterday she seemed so clear — almost understood it 
 all. Thus Gwen, not over-sure of her facts. 
 
 " She was worse," said Ruth, thinking back into the recent 
 events, " that evening I showed her the mill. That was her bad 
 time. Who knows but that has made it easier for her now ? 
 
 I shouldn't wonder And to think that I thought her mad, 
 
 and never guessed who I was, myself, all that time." 
 
 " Was that the model ?" said Gwen, thinking that anjrthing 
 the mind could rest on might make the thing more real for 
 Ruth. " Do you know I h^ve only half seen it ? I should so 
 like to see it again. Why have you covered it up ?" A few 
 words explained this, and the mill was again put on the table. 
 If the Uttle dolly figures had only possessed faculties, they would 
 have wondered why, after all these years, they were awakening 
 such an interest among the big movable creatures outside the 
 glass. How they would have wondered at Gwen's next words: — 
 " And those two have lived to be eighty years old and are in 
 the next room !" 
 
 Then she was not sure she had not made matters worse. " Oh 
 dear !" said Widow Thrale, " it is all impossible — impossible f 
 This was old when I was a child." 
 
 Gwen was not prepared to submit to Time's tyranny. " What 
 does it matter ?" said she intrepidly. " There is no need for 
 possibility, that I can see. She is here, and the thing to think 
 of now is — how can we keep her ? It wiU all seem natural in 
 three weeks. See now, how they know one another, and talk 
 of old times already. She may live another five — ^ten — fifteen 
 years. Who can say ?" 
 
 " She is talking to mother now, I think," said Widow Thrale, 
 listening. For the voices of the twins came from the bedroom. 
 " Suppose we go back !" 
 
 "Yes — and you look at the two faces together, this 
 time." 
 
 " I will look," was the reply, with a shade of doubt in it that 
 added: — " I may not see the resemblance." 
 
 Gwen went first. The two old faces were close together as 
 they entered, and she could see, more plainly than she had ever 
 seen it yet, their amazing similarity. She could see how much 
 thinner old Maisie was of the two. It was very visible in the 
 hand that touched her sister's, which was strong and substantial 
 by comparison. 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 753 
 
 The monotonous bells at Chorlton Church had said all they 
 could to convince its congregation that the time had come for 
 praise and prayer; and had broken into impatient thrills and jerks 
 that seemed to say: — " If you don't come for this, nothing will 
 fetch you !" The wicked man who had been waiting to go for 
 a brisk walk as soon as the others had turned away from th«r 
 wickedness, and were safe in their pews making the responses, 
 was getting on his thickest overcoat and choosing which stick 
 he would have, or had already decided that the coast was clear, 
 and had started. Old Maisie's face on the pillow was attentive 
 to the bells. She looked less feverish, and they were giving her 
 pleasure. 
 
 What was that she was saying, about some bells ? " Old Ketu- 
 rah's husband the sexton used to ring them. You remember him, 
 Phoebe darling ? — him and his wart. We thought it would slice 
 off with a knife, Hke the topnoddy on a new loaf if one was 
 
 greedy And you remember how we went up his ladder 
 
 into the belfry, and I was frightened because it jumped ?" 
 
 Old Phoebe remembered. " Yes, indeed ! And old Jacob 
 saying if he could clamber up at ninety-four, we could at 
 fourteen. Then we pulled the bells. After that he would let 
 us ring the ciu:few." 
 
 Just at that moment the last jerk cut off the last thrill of the 
 chimes at Chorlton, and the big bell started thoughtfully to say 
 it was eleven o'clock. Old Maisie seemed suddenly disquieted. 
 " Phoebe darling !" she said. And then, touching her sister's 
 hand, with a frightened voice: — " This is Phoebe, is it not ? . . . . 
 No, it is not my eyes — ^it is my head goes !" For Gwen had 
 said: — "Yes, tlus is your sister. Do you not see her ?" She 
 then went on: — " My dear — my dear ! — ^I am keeping you from 
 church. I want not to. I want not to." 
 
 "Never mind church for one day, dear," said Granny Mar- 
 rable. " Parson he won't blame me, stopping away this once. 
 More by token, if he does miss seeing me, he'll just think I'm at 
 Denby's." 
 
 " But, Phoebe — ^Phoebe ! — ^think of long ago, how I would try 
 to persuade you to stop away just once, to please me — ^just only 
 once ! And now . . . ." She seemed to have set her heart on 
 her sister's going; a sort of not very expUcable tribute to "auld 
 lang syne." 
 
 Gwen caught what seemed a clue to her meaning. " I see," 
 said she. " You want to make up for it now. Isn't that it ?" 
 
 " Yes — yes — yes ! And Ruth must go with her to take care 
 
754 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 of her Oh, Phoebe, why should you be so much stronger 
 
 than me ?" She meant perhaps, why should her sister's strength 
 be taken for granted ? 
 
 Gwen looked at Granny Marrable, who was hesitating. Her 
 look meant: — "Yes — go! Why not?" A nod thrown in 
 meant: — " Better go !" She looked round for Ruth, to get her 
 sanction or support, but Ruth was no longer in the room. " What 
 has become of Mrs. Thrale ?" said Gwen. 
 
 Ruth had vanished into the front-room, and there Gwen found 
 her, looking white. " I saw it," said she. " And it frightened 
 me. I am a fool — why have I not seen it before ?" 
 
 Gwen said: — " Oh, I see ! You mean the likeness ? Yes — 
 it's — ^it's startling !" Then she told of old Maisie's sudden 
 whim about the service at Chorlton Church. " As your lady- 
 ship thinks best !" said Ruth. Her ladyship did think it best, 
 on the whole. It would be best to comply with every whim- 
 could only have a sedative effect. She herself would remain 
 beside " your mother " while the two were away. Would they 
 not be very late ? Oh, that didn't matter ! Besides, everyone 
 was late. Granny Marrable and Ruth were soon in trim for a 
 hasty departure. But as they went away Ruth slipped into 
 Lady Gwen's hand the accursed letter, as promised. She had 
 brought it out into the daylight again, unwilUngly enough. 
 
 That was how it came about that Gwen found herself alone 
 with old Maisie that morning. 
 
 " My dear — ^my dear !" said the old lady, as soon as Gwen 
 was settled down beside her, " if it had not been for you, I should 
 
 have died and never seen them — my sister and my Ruth I 
 
 think I am sure that it is they, come back It is — oh, it is 
 
 — ^my Phoebe and my httle girl Oh, say it is. I hke you 
 
 to say it." She caught Gwen by the arm, speaking low and 
 quickly, almost whispering. 
 
 " Of course it is. And they have gone to church. They 
 will be back to dinner at one. Perhaps you will be strong enough 
 
 to sit- up at table Oh no ! — ^that certainly is not them 
 
 back again. I think it is Elizabeth — ^from next door; I don't 
 
 know her name — putting the meat down to roast Yes — 
 
 she has her own Sunday dinner to attend to, but she says she 
 can be in both houses at once. I heard her say so to your 
 sister." Gwen felt it desirable to dwell on the relationship, when 
 chances occurred. 
 
 " Elizabeth-next-door. I remember her when Ruth was 
 Widow Thrale— it seems so long ago now ! . . . . Yes — I wished 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 755 
 
 Phoebe to go to church, because she always wished to go. Be- 
 sides, it made it hke then." 
 
 " ' Made it hke then ' ? " Gwen was not sure she followed this. 
 
 " Yes — like then, when the mill was, and our father. Only 
 before I married and went away he made us go with him, always. 
 He was very strict. It was after that I would persuade Phoebe 
 to leave me behind when she went on Sunday. It was when 
 she was married to Uncle Nicholas who was drowned. We 
 always called him Uncle Nicholas, because of my little Ruth." 
 
 Gwen thought a moment whether anything would be gained 
 by clearing up this confusion. Old Maisie's behef in " Uncle 
 Nicholas's " death by drowning, fifty years ago, clung to her 
 mind, as a portion of a chaotic past no visible surrounding 
 challenged. It was quite negligible — ^that was Gwen's decision. 
 She held her tongue. 
 
 But nothing of the Chaos was neghgible. Every memory was 
 entangled with another. A sort of affright seemed to seize upon 
 old Maisie, making her hand tighten suddenly on Gwen's arm. 
 " Oh, how was that — how was that ?" she cried. " They were 
 together — all together !" 
 
 " It was only what the letter said," answered Gwen. " It 
 was all a made-up story. Uncle Nicholas was not drowned, 
 any more than your sister, or your child." 
 
 " Oh dear !" Old Maisie's hand went to her forehead, as 
 though it stunned her to think. 
 
 " They will tell you when he died, soon, when you have got 
 more settled. / don't know." 
 
 " He must be dead, because Phoebe is a widow." 
 
 " She is the widow of the husband she married after his 
 death. That is why her name is Marrable, not .... Cropworthy 
 —was it ?" 
 
 " Not Cropworthy — Cropredy. Such a funny name we 
 thought it. ... . But then — Phoebe must think . . . ," 
 
 " Think what ?" 
 
 " Must think / married again. Because I am Mrs. Prichard." 
 
 " Perhaps she does think so. Why are you Mrs. Prichard ? 
 Don't tell me now if it tires you to talk." 
 
 " It does not tire me. It is easier to talk than to think. I 
 took the name of Prichard because I wanted it all forgotten." 
 
 " About your husband having been — ^in prison ?" 
 
 " Oh no, no ! I was not ashamed about that. He was 
 wrong, but it was only money. It was my son. .... Oh yes — 
 he was transported too — but that was after. ... It was only a 
 
756 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 theft. I cannot talk about my son." Gwen felt that she shud- 
 dered, and that danger lay that way. The fever might return. 
 She cast about for anything that would divert the conversation 
 from that terrible son. Dave and Dolly, naturally. 
 
 " Stop a minute," said she. " You have never seen Dave's 
 letter that he wrote to say he knew all about it." And she wen'i 
 away to the front room to get it. 
 
 A peaceful joint was turning both ways at the right speed 
 by itself. The cat, uninterested, was consulting her own com- 
 fort, and the cricket was persevering for ever in his original 
 statement. Saucepans were simmering in confoimity, with 
 perfect faith in the reappearance of the human disposer of their 
 events, in due course. Dave's letter lay where Gwen had left it, 
 between the flower-pots on the window-shelf. She picked it up 
 and went back with it to the bedside. 
 
 " You must have your spectacles and read it yourself. Can 
 you ? Where shall I find them ?" 
 
 " I think my Ruth has put them in the watch-pocket with 
 my watch, over my head here." She could make no effort to 
 reach them, but Gwen drew out both watch and glasses. " What 
 a pretty old watch !" said she. 
 
 It pleased the old lady to hear her watch admired. " I had 
 it when I went out to my husband." She added iaexplicably: — 
 " The man brought it back to me for the reward. He had not 
 sold it." Then she told, clearly enough, the tale you may 
 remember her telling to Aunt M'riar; about the convict at 
 Chatham, who brought her a letter from her husband on the 
 river hulk. " Over fifty years ago now, and it still goes. Only 
 
 it loses — and gains But show me my boy's letter." She 
 
 got her glasses on, with Gwen's help, and read. The word 
 " cistern " was obscure. She quite understood what followed, 
 saying: — " Oh, yes — ^so much longer ago than Dolly's birthday ! 
 And we did — ^we did — ^think we were dead and buried. The 
 darling boy !" 
 
 " He means each thought the other was. I told him." Gwen 
 saw that the old face looked happy, and was pleased. She 
 began to think she would be easy in her mind at Pensham, to- 
 morrow, about old Mrs. Picture, and able to tell the story to her 
 bhnd lover with a light heart. 
 
 Old Maisie had come to the postscript. " What is this at the 
 end ?" said she. " ' The tea is stood ready ' for me. And for 
 Granny Marrowbone too." Gwen saw the old face looking 
 happier than she had seen it yet, and was glad to answer : — " Yea 
 
STRIDES COTTAGE AGAIN 757 
 
 — I saw the tea ' stood ready ' by your chair. All but the real 
 sugar and milk. Dolly sits beside it on the floor — all her leisure 
 time I believe — and dreams of bliss to come. Dave sympathizes 
 at heart, but affects superiority. It's his manhood." Old 
 Maisie said again: — " The darling children I" and kept on looking 
 at the letter. 
 
 Gwen's satisfaction at this was to be dashed shghtly. For 
 she found herself asked, to her surprise, " Who is Granny 
 Marrowbone ?" She replied: — " Of course Dave wants his 
 other Granny, from the country," She waited for an assent, 
 but none came. 
 
 Instead, old Maisie said reflectively, as though recalling an 
 incident of some interest: — "Oh yes! — Granny Marrowbone 
 was his other Granny in the country, where he went to stay, and 
 saw Jones's BuU. I think she must be a nice old lady." Gwen 
 said nothing. Better pass this by; it would be forgotten. 
 
 But the strong individuality of that Bull came in the way. 
 Had not they visited him together only the other day ? He 
 struck confusion into memory and oblivion alike. The face 
 Gwen saw, when the letter that hid it fell on the coverUd, was 
 almost terrified. " Oh, see the things I say !" cried old Maisie, 
 in great distress of mind. " How am I ever to know it right ?" 
 She clung to Gwen's hand in a sort of panic. In a few moments 
 she said, in an awed sort of voice : — " Was that Phoebe, then, 
 that I saw when we stopped at the Cottage, in the carriage, after 
 the BuU ?" 
 
 " Yes, dear ! And you are in the Cottage now. And Phoebe 
 is coming back soon. And Ruth." 
 
758 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 OATHEEINE WHEELS. CENTIPEDES. OENTENAEIANS. BACK- 
 
 GAMMON. IT. HEREATTEB COKNEB. LADY KATHEBINE 
 
 ST0AETLAVEROCK. BISEOP BERKELEY. THE COTTNTESS'S 
 VISIT REVIEWED. A CODEX OF HUMAN WEAKNESS. AN EX- 
 POSITION OE SELEISHNESS. HOW ADRIAN WOULD HOLD ON 
 LIKE GRIM DEATH. A BELDAM, CRONE, HAG, OB DOWDY. 
 SUICIDE. THE LITTLE BOTTLE OF INDIAN POISON. MORE 
 SEPTIMIUS SEVEEUS. GWEN's DAILY BULLETINS. ONESIMUS. 
 TURTLE SOUP AND CHAMPAGNE. FOXBOURNE. HOW THEY 
 WENT TO CHOELTON, AND ANOTHER DOG SMELT ACHILLES 
 
 As he who has godfathered a Catherine Wheel stands at a re- 
 spectful distance while it spits and fizzes, so may the story that 
 reunites lovers who have been more than a week apart. The 
 parallel, however, does not hold good throughout, for the Cath- 
 erine Wheel usually gets stuck after ignition, and has to be 
 stimulated judiciously, while lovers — ^if worth the name — ^go off 
 at sight. In many cases — oh, so many ! — the behaviour of the 
 Catherine Wheel is painfully true to life. Its fire-spin flags and 
 dies and perishes, and nothing is left of it but a pitiful black core 
 that gives a last spasmodic jump and is for ever still ! 
 
 Fireworks are only referred to here in connection with the 
 former property. When Gwen reappeared at Pensham, Miss 
 Torrens — this is her own expression — " cleared out " until her 
 brother and her visitor "came to their senses." The Catherine 
 Wheel, in their case, had by that time settled down from a tempest 
 of fiame-spray to a steady lamplight, endurable by bystanders. 
 The story need not wait quite so long, but may avail itself of the 
 first return of sanity. 
 
 " Dearest — are you really going to stop till Saturday ?" 
 
 " If you think we shan't quarrel. Four whole days and a bit 
 at each end ! I think it's tempting Providence." 
 
 " Why not stop over Sunday, and make an honourable week 
 of it and no stinting ?" 
 
 " Because I have a papa coming back to his ancestral home, 
 on Saturday evening, and he will come back boiled and low 
 from Bath waters, inside and out, and he'll want a daughter to 
 give him tone. He gets rid of the gout, but . . . ." 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 759 
 
 " But. Exactly ! It's the insoluble residuum that comes 
 back. However, you zvill be here till Friday night." 
 
 " Can't even promise that ! I may be sent for." 
 
 " Why ? Oh, I know— the old lady. How is she ? Tell 
 
 me more about her. Tell me lots about her." 
 
 Whereupon Gwen, who had been looking forward to doing so, 
 started on an exhaustive narrative of her visit to Strides Cottage. 
 She had not got far when Irene thought it safe to return — ^hearing 
 probably the narrative tone of voice — ^and then she had to tell it 
 all over again. 
 
 " When I left the Cottage yesterday at about three o'clock," 
 said Gwen, in conclusion, " she was so much better that I felt 
 quite hopeful about her." 
 
 " Quite hopeful about her ?" Irene repeated. " But if she 
 has nothing the matter with her, except old age, why be any- 
 thing but hopeful ?" 
 
 " You would see it you saw her. She looks as if a puff of 
 wind would blow her away Uke thistledown." 
 
 " That," Adrian said, " is a good sign. There is no guarantee 
 of a long life like attenuation. Bloated people die shortly after 
 you make their acquaintance. No, no — ^for true vitality, give 
 me your skeleton ! A healthy old age really sets in as soon as 
 one is spoken of as still hving." 
 
 " Oh dear, yes !" said Irene. " I'm sure Gwen's description 
 sounds exactly Uke this old lady becoming a . . . . There ! — 
 I've forgotten the word ! Something between a centipede and 
 a Unitarian " 
 
 " Centenarian ?" 
 
 " Exactly. See what a good thing it is to have a brother 
 that knows things. A person a hundred years old. I tell you, 
 Gwen dear, my own behef is these two old ladies mean to be 
 centenarians, and if we live long enough we shall read about 
 them in the newspapers. And they will have a letter from 
 Royalty !" 
 
 In the eveniag Gwen got Adrian, whose sanguine expressions 
 were not serious, on a more sane and responsible Une of thought. 
 His lady-mother, with whom this story is destined never to 
 become acquainted, retired early, after shedding a lurid radiance 
 of symptoms on the family circle; and it, as a dutiful circle, 
 had given her its blessing and dropped a tear by implication 
 over her early departure from it. Sir Hamilton had involved 
 his daughter in a vortex of backgammon, a game draught-players 
 detest, and vice versa, because the two games are even as Box 
 
760 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 and CoXj in homes possessing only one board. So Gwen and 
 Adrian had themselves to themselves, and -wanted nothing 
 more. Her eyes rested now and then with a new curiosity on 
 the Baronet, deep in his game at the far end of the room. She 
 was looking at him by the light of his handsome daughter's 
 saucy speculation about that romantic passage in the Uves of 
 himself and her mamma. Suppose — she was saying to herself, 
 with monstrous logic — he had been my papa, and I had had to 
 play backgammon with him ! 
 
 She was recalled from one such excursion of fancy by Adrian 
 saying: — " Are you sure it would not have been better for the 
 old twins — or one of them — ^to die and the other never be any 
 the wiser ?" 
 
 Said Gwen: — " I am not sure. How can I be ? But it was 
 absolutely impossible to leave them there, knowing it, uncon- 
 scious of each other's existence." 
 
 Adrian repHed: — " It was impossible. I see that. But sup- 
 pose they had remained in ignorance — ^in the natural order of 
 events I mean — and the London one had died unknown to her 
 sister, would it not have been better than this reunion, with all 
 its tempest of pain and raking up of old memories, and quite 
 possibly an early separation by death ?" 
 
 " I think not, on the whole. Because, suppose one had died, 
 and the other had come to know of her death afterwards !" 
 
 " I am supposing the contrary. Suppose both had continued 
 in ignorance ! How then 1" 
 
 It was not a question to answer off-hand. Gwen pondered; 
 then said abruptly: — " It depends on whether we go on or stop. 
 Now doesn't it ?" 
 
 " As bogeys t That question always crops up. If we stop I 
 don't see how there can be any doubt on the matter. Much 
 better they should have died in ignorance. The old Austrahan 
 goody was quite contented, as I understand, at Scraps Court, 
 with her Uttle boy and girl to make tea for her. And the old 
 body at Chorlton and her daughter would have gone on quite 
 happily. They didn't want to be excoriated by a discovery." 
 
 " Yes — that is what it has been. Excoriation by a discovery. 
 I'm not at all sure you're right — ^but I'll make you a present of 
 it. Let's consider it settled that death in ignorance would have 
 been the best thing for them." 
 
 " Very well I— what next ?" 
 
 " What next ? Why, of course, suppose we don't stop, but 
 go on ! You often say it is ten to one against it:" 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 761 
 
 " So it is. I can't say I'm sorry, on the whole." 
 
 " That's neither here nor there. Ten to one against is one to 
 ten for. Any man on the turf will tell you that." 
 
 " And any Senior Wrangler will confirm it." 
 
 " Very well, then ! There we are. Suppose my dear old 
 Mrs. Picture and Granny Marrable had turned up as ghosts, on 
 the other side " 
 
 " I see. You've got me in Hereafter Comer, and you don't 
 intend to let me out." 
 
 " Not tiU you tell me whether they would have been happy 
 or miserable about it, those two ghosts. In yoiir opinion, of 
 course ! Don't run away with the idea that I think you in- 
 fallible." 
 
 " There are occasions on which I do not think myself infaUible, 
 For instance, when I have to decide an apparently insoluble 
 problem without data of any sort. Your expression ' turned up 
 as ghosts, on the other side,' immediately suggests one." 
 
 " You can say whether you think they would have been happy 
 or miserable about having been in England together over twenty 
 years, and never known it. That's simple enough !" 
 
 " Don't be in a hurry ! There are comphcations. If they 
 knew they were ghosts, they might become interested in the 
 novelty of their position, and be inclined to accept accomplished 
 facts. Recrimination would be waste of time. If they didn't 
 know . . . ." 
 
 " Goose ! — ^they would be sure to know." 
 
 " The only information I have goes to prove the contrary. 
 When Voltaire's ghost came and spirit-rapped, or whatever you 
 call it " 
 
 " I know. One turns tables, and it's very silly." 
 
 " . . . . they said triumphantly that they supposed, now he 
 was dead, he was convinced of another existence. And he — 
 or it — trapped out : — ' There is only one existence. I am not 
 dead.' So he didn't know he was a ghost." 
 
 Gwen seemed tolerant of Voltaire, as a pourparler. " Perhaps," 
 she said thoughtfully, " he found he jammed up against the 
 
 other ghosts instead of coinciding with them You know 
 
 Lady Katherine Stuartlaverock tried to kiss her lover's ghost, 
 and he gave, and she went through." 
 
 " A very interesting incident," said Adrian. " If she had 
 been a ghost, too, she would, as you say, have jammed. If 
 Dr. Johnson had known that story, he would have been more 
 reasonable about Bishop Berkeley What did he say about 
 
762 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 . ? Why, he kicked a cask, and said if the Bishop could do 
 that, and not be convinced of the reality of matter, he would be 
 a fool. Sir. I wonder if one said ' Sir,' as often as Dr. Johnson, 
 one would be allowed to talk as much nonsense." 
 
 " Boswell must have made that story." 
 
 " Very likely. But Boswell made Sam Johnson. Just as we 
 only know of the existence of Matter through our senses, so wo 
 only know of Sam's existence through Bozzy. I am conscious 
 that I am becoming prosy. Let's get back to the old ladies." 
 
 "Well — ^it was you that doddered away from them, to talk 
 about Voltaire's bogy. If they didn't know they were ghosts, 
 what then 1" 
 
 " If they didn't know they were ghosts, the discovery would 
 have been just as excoriating as it has been here. Possibly 
 worse, because — what does one know ? Now your full-blown 
 disembodied spirit .... Mind you, this is only my idea, and 
 may be quite groundless !...." 
 
 " Now you've apologized, go on ! ' Your full-blown dis- 
 embodied spirit '...." 
 
 " . . . . may be so absorbed in the sudden and strange sur- 
 prise of the change — ^Browning — as to be quite unable to partake 
 of excruciation, even with a twin sister It is very dis- 
 agreeable to think of, I admit. But so is nearly every concrete 
 form in which one clothes an imaginary other- worldliness." 
 
 " Why is it disagreeable to think of being able to shake off 
 one's troubles, and forget all about them ? / Uke it." 
 
 " Well, I admit that I was beginning to say that I thought 
 these two venerable ladies, meeting as ghosts — ^not spectres you 
 know, in which case each would frighten t'other and both would 
 run away — ^would probably be as superior to painful memories 
 on this side as the emancipated butterfly is to its forgotten 
 wiggles as a chrysahs. But it has dawned upon me that Perfect 
 Beings won't wash, and that the Blessed have drawbacks, and 
 that their Choir would pall. I am inclined to back out, and 
 decide that the two of them would have been more miserable if 
 the discovery had come upon them post mortem than they will 
 be now — ^in a Uttle time at least. At first of course it must be 
 maddening to think of the twenty odd years they have been 
 cheated out of. Really the Divine Disposer of Events might 
 have had a little consideration for the Dramatis Persons." He 
 jumped to another topic. " You know your mamma paid our 
 papa a visit last — ^last Thursday, wasn't it ? — ^yes, Thursday !" 
 
 " Oh yes — I heard all about it. She had a short chat with 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 763 
 
 him, and he gave her a very good cup of tea. He told her about 
 some very old acquaintances whom she hadn't heard of for years 
 who live in Tavistock Square." 
 
 " Was that all ?" 
 
 " No. The lady very-old-acquaintance had been a Miss 
 Tyrawley, and had married her riding-master." 
 
 " Was that all 1" 
 
 "No. She called you and 'Re 'the son and daughter.' 
 Then she talked of our ' engagement as your father persists in 
 calling it.' My blood boiled for quite five minutes." 
 
 " All that sounds — very usual ! Was there nothing else ? 
 That was very little for such a long visit." 
 
 " How long was the visit ?" 
 
 " Much too long for what you've told me. Think of some- 
 thing else !" 
 
 Now Gwen had been keeping something back. Under pressure 
 she let it out. " Well — ^mamma thought fit to say that your 
 father entirely shared her views ! Was that true ?" 
 
 " Which of her views ? . . . . I suppose I know, though ! I 
 should say it was half-true — ^truish, suppose we call it !" Then 
 Adrian began to feel he had been rash. How was he to explain 
 to Gwen that his father thought she was perhaps — ^to borrow his 
 own phrase — " sacrificing herself on his shrine " ? It would be 
 like calling on her to attest her passion for him. Now a young 
 lady is at liberty to make any quantity of ardent protestations 
 off her own hat, as the cricketers say; but a lover cannot solicit 
 testimonials, to be produced it called for by parents or guar- 
 dians. However, Gwen had no intention of leaving explanation 
 to him. She continued: — 
 
 " When my mother said that your father entirely shared her 
 views, I know which she meant, perfectly well. She has got a 
 fooHsh idea into her head — and so has my dear old papa, so 
 she's not alone — ^that I am marrying you to make up to you 
 for ... . for the accident." She found it harder and harder to 
 speak of the nature of the accident. This once, she must do it, 
 cxyute que coute. She went on, speaking low that nothing should 
 reach the backgammon-players. " They say it was our fault 
 that old Stephen shot you Well ! — ^it was " 
 
 " My darling, I have frequently pointed out the large share 
 the Primum Mobile had in the matter, to say nothing of the 
 undoubted influence of Destiny " 
 
 " Silly man — ^I am talking seriously. I don't know that it 
 really matters whether it was or wasn't — ^wasn't our fault, I 
 
764 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 mean — so long as they think I think it was. That's the point. 
 Now, the question is, did or did not my superior mamma descend 
 on your comme-il-faut parent to drum this idea into him, and get 
 him on her side ?" 
 
 " Am I supposed to know ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then I will be frank with you. Always be frank with mad 
 bulls who butt you into comers and won't let you out. Your 
 mamma's communications with my papa had the effect you 
 indicate, and he took me into his confidence the same evening. 
 He too questions the purity of your motives in marrying me, 
 alleging that they are vitiated by a spirit of self-sacrifice, tainted 
 by the baneful influence of unselfishness. He is alive to the 
 possibility that you hate me cordially, but are pretending." 
 
 " Oh, my dearest, I wish I did hate you Why ? — why 
 
 of course then it would really be a sacrifice, and something to 
 boast of. As it is ... . Well — ^I'm consulting my own con- 
 venience, and I .... I am the best judge of my own affairs. 
 It suits me to .... to lead you to the altar, and I shall do it. 
 As for what other people think, all I can say is, I will thank 
 Europe to mind its own business." 
 
 Then Adrian said: — " I am conscious of the purity of my own 
 motives. I believe it would be impossible to discover a case 
 of a Selfishness more unalloyed than mine, it all the records of 
 Human Weakness were carefully re-read by experts at the British 
 Museum. I am assuming the existence of some Digest or Codex 
 of the rather extensive material . . . ." 
 
 " Don't go off to that. I always have such difficulty in keeping 
 you to the point. How selfish are you, and why ?" 
 
 " I doubt if I can succeed in teUiig you how selfish I am, but 
 there's no harm in trying." Speech hung fire for a moment, to 
 seek for words; then found them. "I am a thing in the dark, 
 with an object, and I call it Gwen. I am an atom adrift in a 
 huge black silence, and it crushes my soul, and I am misery 
 itself. Then I hear the voice that I call Gwen's, and forthwith 
 I am happy beyond the wildest dreams of the Poets — ^though 
 really that isn't saying much, because their wildest dreams are 
 usually unintelligible, and frequently ungrammatical " 
 
 " Never mind them ! Go on with how selfish you are." 
 
 " Can't you let a poor beggar get to the end of his parenthesis ? 
 I was endeavouring to sketch the situation, as a preliminary to 
 going on with how selfish I am. I was remarking that however 
 dissatisfied I feel with the Most High, however sulky I am with 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 765 
 
 the want of foresight in the Primum Mobile — or his indifference 
 to my interests; it comes to the same thing — however inclined 
 to cry out against the darkness, the darkness that once was 
 light, I no sooner hear that voice that I call Gwen's than I am 
 at least in the seven-hundredth heaven of happiness. When I 
 hear that voice, I am all Christian forgiveness towards my Maker. 
 When it goes, my heart is dumb and the darkness gains upon 
 me. That, I beg to state, is a simple prosaic statement of an 
 everyday fact. When I have added, that the powers that I 
 ascribe to the voice that I know to be Gwen's are also inherent 
 in the hand that I believe to be Gwen's .... Don't pull it 
 away !" 
 
 " I only wanted to look at it. Just to see why you shouldn't 
 know it was mine, as well as the voice." 
 
 " I hnow I couldn't be mistaken about the voice. I don't 
 think I could be wrong about the hand, but I don't know that I 
 couldn't." 
 
 " Well — ^now you've got it again ! Now go on. Go on to how 
 selfish you are — that's what I want !" 
 
 " I will endeavour to do so. I hope my imperfect indication 
 of my view of my own position . . . ." 
 
 " Don't be prosy. It is not fair to expect any girl to keep a 
 popular lecturer's head in her lap " 
 
 " I agree — I agree. It was my desire to be strictly practical. 
 I will come to the point. I want to make it perfectly clear that 
 you are my Ufe " 
 
 " Don't get too loud !" 
 
 " All right ! . . . . that you are my Ufe— my lite — my glorious 
 life ! I want you to see and know that but for you I am nothing 
 — a wisp of straw blown about by all the winds of Heaven — a 
 mere unit of consciousness in a blank, black void. See what 
 comes of it ! Here was I, before this unfortunate result of what 
 is from my point of view a lamentable miscarriage of Destiny, 
 a tolerably well-informed . . . English male ! . . , Well — ^what else 
 am I ? . . . Sonneteer suppose we say " 
 
 " Goose — suppose we say — or gander !" 
 
 " All right ! Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap 
 more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else 
 than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and now look at me !" 
 
 " Well— I'm looking at you !" 
 
 " Am I shonoiig the slightest consideration for you ? Am I 
 not showing the most cynical disregard of your welfare in life ?" 
 
 " How ?" 
 
766 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " By allowing you to throw yourself away upon me." 
 
 " It is no concern of yours what I do with myself. I do not 
 intend you to have any voice in the matter. Besides — ^just be 
 good enough to tell me, please ! — suppose you made up your 
 mind not to allow me, how would you set about it ?" 
 
 This was a poser, and the gentleman was practically obliged 
 to acknowledge it. " I couldn't say off-hand," said he. " I 
 should have to consult materfamiliases in Good Society, and 
 look up precedents. Several will occur at once to the student 
 of Lempri^re, some of which might be more to the point than 
 anything Holy Writ offers in illustration. But all the cases I 
 can recall at a moment's notice are vitiated by the motives of 
 their male actors. These motives were pure — they were pure 
 self-indulgence. In fact, their attitude towards their would-be 
 charmers had the character of a sauve-qui-peut. It was founded 
 on strong personal dislike, and has lent itself to Composition in 
 the hands of the Old Masters " 
 
 "Now I don't know what you are talking about. Answer 
 my question and don't prevaricate. How would you set about 
 it?" 
 
 " How indeed ?" There was a note of seriousness in Adrian's 
 voice, and Gwen welcomed it, saying: — "That's right! — stop 
 talking nonsense and tell me." It became more audible as he 
 continued : — " You are only asking me because you know I cannot 
 answer. Was ever a case known of a man who cried off because 
 the lady's relatives thought she didn't care about him ? What 
 did he do ? Did he write her a letter, asking her to consider 
 everything at an end between them until she could produce 
 satisfactory evidence of an unequivocal sehnsucht of the exactly 
 right quality — premier crU — ^when her restatement of the case 
 would receive careful consideration? Rubbish !" 
 
 " Not rubbish at all ! He wrote her that letter and she wrote 
 back requesting him to look out for another young woman at 
 his earliest convenience, because she wasn't his sort. She did, 
 indeed ! But she certainly was rather an imfortunate young 
 woman, to be trothplight to such a very good and conscientious 
 young man." 
 
 " Rem tetigisti acu," said Adrian. " Never mind what that 
 
 means. It's Latin Well then ! — ^it means you've hit it. 
 
 The whole gist of the matter lies in my being neither good nor 
 conscientious. I am a mass of double-dyed selfishness. I 
 would not give you up — ^it's very sad, but it's true ! — even for 
 your own sake. I would not lose a word from your Ups, a touch 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 767 
 
 of your hand, an hour of your presence, to have back my eyesight 
 and with it all else the world has to give, all else than this dear 
 self that I may never see " 
 
 " I'm glad you said may." 
 
 " Yes, of course it's may. We mustn't forget that. But, 
 dearest, I tell you this, that if I were to get my sight again, 
 and your august mammy's impression were to turn out true 
 after all, and you came to be aware that, pity apart, your humble 
 servant was not such a very . . . ." 
 
 " What should you do if I did ?" 
 
 " Shall I tell you ? I should show the cloven foot. I should 
 betray the vmreasoning greed of my soul. I should never let 
 you go, even if I had to resort to the brutality of keeping you to 
 your word. I should simply hold on Uke grim death. Would 
 you hate me for it ?" 
 
 " N-no ! I'm not sure that I should. We should see." 
 Certainly the beautiful face that looked down at the eyes that 
 could not see it showed no visible displeasure — quite the reverse. 
 " But suppose I did ! Suppose is a game that two can play 
 at." 
 
 " Very proper, and shows you understand the nature of an 
 hypothesis. What should I do ? . . . What shmld I do ?" 
 
 Gwen offered help to his perplexity. " And suppose that when 
 you came to see your bargain you had found out your mistake ! 
 Suppose that Arthurs Bridge turned out all an Arabian Night ! 
 Suppose that the .... well — satisfactoryjjersonwcZ your imagina- 
 tion has concocted turned out to be that of a beldam, crone, hag, 
 or dowdy ! How then ?" 
 
 Instead of repljring, Adrian drew his hands gently over the 
 face above him, caressingly over the glorious mass of golden hair 
 and round the columnar throat Bronzino would have left re- 
 luctantly alone. Said Irene, from the other end of the room : — ■ 
 " Are you trying Mesmeric experiments, you two ?" 
 
 " He's only doing it to make sure I'm not a beldam," said 
 Gwen innocently. But to Adrian she added under her breath: — 
 " It's only Irene, so it doesn't matter. Only it shows how 
 cautious one has to be." The Baronet, attracted for one moment 
 from his fascinating dice, contributed a fragment to the con- 
 versation, and died away into backgammon. " Hey — eh ! — 
 what's that ?" said he. " Mesmerism — Mesmerism — ^why you 
 don't mean to say you believe in thai nonsense !" After which 
 Gwen and Adrian were free to go on wherever they left off, if they 
 could find the place. 
 
768 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 She found it first. " Yes — I know. ' Beldam, crone, hag, or 
 dowdy !' Of course. What I mean is — ^if it dawned on you 
 that you were mistaken about my identity .... I want you to 
 be serious, because the thing is possible . . what would you do ?" 
 
 " There are so many supposes. Suppose you hated me and I 
 thought you a beldam ! Practice would seem to suggest fresh 
 
 fields and pastures new But oh, the muddy, damp fields 
 
 and the desolate, barren pastures I know one thing I 
 
 should do. I should wish myself back here in the dark, with 
 my feet spoiling the sofa cushion, and my head in the lap of my 
 dear delusion — ^my heavenly deltision. God avert my disillu- 
 sionment ! I would not have my eyesight back at the price." 
 
 " Don't get excited ! Remember we are only pretending." 
 
 " Not at all ! I am being serious, because the thing is pos- 
 sible. Do you know I can imagine nothing worse than waking 
 from a dream such as I have dreamt. It would be really the 
 worst — ^worse than if you were to die, or change " 
 
 " I can't see that." 
 
 " Clearly. I should not have the one great resource." 
 
 " What resource ? . . . . Oh, I see ! — ^you are working round 
 to suicide. I thought we should come to that." 
 
 " Naturally, one who is not alive to the purely imaginary evil 
 of non-existence turns to his felo de se as his sheet-anchor. 
 Persons who conceive that the large number of non-existent 
 persons have a legitimate grievance, on the score of never having 
 been created at all, will think otherwise. We must agree to 
 differ." 
 
 " But how very unreasonable of you not to kill yourself ! — ^I 
 mean in the case of my not — ^not visualising well " 
 
 " Quite the reverse. Most reasonable. We are supposing 
 three courses open to Destiny. One, to kill you, lawlessly — 
 Destiny being notoriously lawless. Another to make you change 
 your mind. A third to make me change mine. The reasonable- 
 ness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if Death is not aimihila- 
 tion. I should catch you up. In the second, all the Hereafters 
 in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the dark, 
 without you, here and now. In the third case I should have no 
 one but myself to thank for a weak concession to Destiny, and 
 it would be most unfair to kiU myself without your consent, 
 freely given. And I am by no means sure that by giving that 
 consent you would not be legally an accomplice in my felo de se. 
 Themis is a colossal Meddlesome Matty with her fingers in every 
 pie< 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 769 
 
 " Bother Themis 1 What a lot of nonsense ! However, there 
 was one gleam of reason. You are alive to the fact that I should 
 not consent to your suicide. Or anyone else's. I think it's 
 wrong to kill oneself." 
 
 " So do I. But it might be a luxury I should not deny myself 
 under some circumstances, I don't know that Hamlet would 
 influence me. A certain amount of nervousness about Etemty 
 is inseparable from our want of authentic information. I should 
 hope for a healthy and effectual extinction. Failing that, I 
 should disclaim all responsibility. I should point out that it 
 lay, not with me, but my Maker. I should dwell on the fact 
 that Creators that make Hereafters are alone answerable for the 
 consequences ; that I had never been consulted as to my own wishes 
 about birth and parentage; and that I should be equally con- 
 tented to be annulled, and, as Mrs. Bailey would have said, in- 
 convenience nobody " 
 
 " Do you know why I am letting you go on 1" 
 
 " Because of my ReUgious Tone ? Because of my Good 
 Taste ? Or why ?" 
 
 " Because I sometimes suspect you of being in earnest about 
 suicide." 
 
 " I am quite in earnest." 
 
 " Very well, then. Now attend to me. I'm going to insist 
 on your making me a promise." 
 
 " Then I shall have to make it. But I don't know till I hear 
 it whether I shall promise to keep it." 
 
 " That's included." 
 
 " But no promise to keep my promise to keep it's 
 included." 
 
 " Yes it is. If you keep on, I shall keep on. So you had 
 better stop. What you've got to promise is not to commit 
 suicide under any circumstances whatever." 
 
 " Not under any circumstances whatever ? That seems to 
 me rather harsh and arbitrary." 
 
 " Not at all. Give me your promise." 
 
 " H'm — ^weU ! — ^I'm an amiable, tractable sort of cove 
 
 But I think I am entitled to one little reservation." 
 
 " It must be a very httle one." 
 
 " An3^hing one gives one's fiancie is returned when she breaks 
 one off. When you break me off I shall consider the promise 
 given back — cancelled." 
 
 " Ye-es ! Perhaps that is fair, on the whole. Only I think 
 I deserve a small consideration for allowing it." 
 
770 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I can't refuse to hear what it is." 
 
 " Give me that little bottle of Indian poison. To take care 
 of for you, you know. I'll give it back if I break you o£E. Honour 
 bright !" 
 
 " I shouldn't want it till then, probably. And if I did, I could 
 afford sixpence for Prussic acid. Fancy being able to kill one- 
 self, or one's friends, for sixpence ! It must have come to a lot 
 more than that in the Middle Ages. We have every reason to 
 
 be thankful we are Modem " 
 
 " Don't go from the point. Will you give up the little bottle 
 of Indian poison, or not ?" 
 
 " Not. At least, not now 1 If I hand it to you at the altar, 
 when you have led me there, won't that do ?" 
 
 Gwen considered, judicially, and appeared to be in favour of 
 accepting the compromise. " Only remember !" said she, " if 
 you don't produce that bottle at the altar — ^with the poison in 
 it still; no cheating ! — ^I shall cry off, in the very jaws of matri- 
 mony." She paused a moment, lest she should have left a flaw 
 in the contract, then added: — "Whether I have led you there 
 or not, you know ! Very likely you will walk up the aisle by 
 yourself." 
 
 If Adrian had really determined to conceal the Miss Scatcherd 
 incident from Gwen, so as not to foster false hopes, he should 
 have worded his reply differently. For no sooner had he said: — 
 "Well — ^we are all hoping so," than Gwen exclaimed: — " Then 
 there has been more Septimius Severus." Adrian accepted this 
 without protest, as ordinary human speech; and the story feels 
 confident that if its reader will be on the watch, he will very 
 soon chance across something quite as unhke book-talk in Nature. 
 Adrian merely said: — "How on earth did you guess that?" 
 Gwen replied: — " Because you said, ' We are all hoping so ' — ^not 
 ' We hope so.' Can't you see the difference ?" 
 
 Anyway, Gwen's guess was an accomplished fact, and it was 
 no use pretending it was wrong. Said Adrian therefore: — " Yes 
 — ^there was a little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made 
 up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much 
 of it.' He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd incident, checked 
 and corrected by Irene from afar. The narrator minimised the 
 points in favour of his flash of vision, while his commentator's 
 corrections showed an opposite bias. 
 
 Gwen was, strange to say, really uneasy about that little bottle 
 of Indian poison. Whether there was anything prophetic in 
 this uneasiness, it is difficult to determine. The decision of 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 771 
 
 common sense will probably be that she knew that Poets were 
 not to be trusted, and she wished to be on the safe side. By 
 " common sense " we mean the faculty which instinctively 
 selects the common prejudices of its age as oriflammes to follow 
 on Lite's battlefield. Hopkins the witch-finder's common sense 
 suggested pricking all over to find an insensible flesh-patch, in 
 which case the prickee was a witch. We prefer to keep an open 
 mind about Lady Gwendolen Rivers' foreboding anent that little 
 bottle of Indian poison, until vivisection has shown us, more 
 plainly than at present, how brain secretes Man's soul. We are 
 aware that this language is Browning's. 
 
 Gwen remained at Pensham until the end of the week. Events 
 occurred, no doubt, but, with one exception, they are outside 
 the story. That exception was a visit to Chorlton, in order 
 that Adrian should not remain a stranger to the interesting old 
 twins. His interest would have been stronger no doubt could 
 he have really seen them. Even as it was he was keenly alive 
 to the way in which old Mrs. Prichard seemed to have fascinated 
 Gwen, and was eager to make as much acquaintance with her as 
 his limitations left possible to him. 
 
 Gwen contrived to arrange that she should receive every day 
 from Chorlton not only a Ime from Ruth Thxale, but an official 
 bulletin from Dr. Nash. 
 
 The first of these despatches arrived on the Tuesday afternoon, 
 she having told her correspondents that that would be soon 
 enough. It disappointed her. She had left the old lady so 
 much revived by the small quantity of provisions that did duty 
 for a Sunday dinner, that she had jumped to the conclusion that 
 another day would see her sitting up before the fire as she had 
 seen her in the celebrated chair with cushions at Sapps Court. 
 It was therefore rather a damper to be told by Dr. Nash that he 
 had felt that absolute rest continued necessary, and that he 
 had not been able to sanction any attempt to get Mrs. Prichard 
 up for any length of time. 
 
 Gwen turned for consolation to Widow Thrale's letter. It 
 was a model of reserve — would not say too much. " My mother " 
 had talked a good deal vnth herself and " mother " till late, but 
 had slept fairly well, and if she was tired this morning it was no 
 more than Dr. Nash said we were to expect. She had had a 
 " peaceful day " yesterday, talking constantly with " mother " 
 of their childhood, but never referring to " my father " nor 
 Australia. Dr. Nash had said the improvement would be slow. 
 
772 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 No reference was made to any possibility of getting her into her 
 clothes and a return to normal life. 
 
 Gwen recognised the bearer of the letters, a yomig native of 
 Chorlton, when she gave him the reply she had written, with a 
 special letter she had ready for " dear old Mrs. Picture." " I 
 know you," said she. " How's your Bull ? I hope he won't 
 kill Farmer Jones or anyone while you're not there to whistle 
 to him." To which the youth answered: — " Who-ap not ! 
 Sarve they roi-ut, if they dwoan't let un bide in a's stall. A 
 penned un in afower a coomed away." Gwen thought to herself 
 that life at Jones's farm must be painfully volcanic, and des- 
 patched the Bull's guardian genius on his cob with the largest 
 sum of money in his pocket that he had ever possessed in his 
 Ufe, after learning his name, which was Onesimus. 
 
 When Onesimus reappeared with a second despatch on the 
 afternoon of the next day, Wednesday, Gwen opened it with a 
 beating heart in a hurry for its contents. She did as one does 
 with letters containing news, reading persistently through to the 
 end and taking no notice at all of Irene's interrogatory " Well ?" 
 which of course was uttered long before the quickest reader 
 could master the shortest letter's contents. When the end came, 
 she said with evident reUef : — " Oh yes, that's all right I Now if 
 we drive over to-morrow, she will probably be up." 
 
 " Is that what the letter says ?" Adrian spoke, and Gwen, 
 saying: — " He won't believe my report, you see ! You read it !" 
 — ^threw the letter over to L:ene, who read it aloud to her 
 brother, while Gwen looked at the other letter, from Widow 
 Thrale. 
 
 What Irene read did not seem so very conclusive. Mrs. 
 Prichard had had a better night, having slept six hours without 
 a break. But the great weakness continued. If she could take 
 a very little stimulant it would be an assistance, as it might 
 enable her to eat more. But she had an imconquerable aversion 
 to wine and spirits in any form, and Dr. Nash was very reluctant 
 to force her against her will. 
 
 So said Ac&ian: — "What she wants is real turtle soup and 
 champagne. / know." Whereupon his father, who was behind 
 the Times — meaning, not the Age, but the " Jupiter " of our boy- 
 hood, looked over its title, and said: — "Champagne — cham- 
 pagne ? There's plenty in the bin — end of the cellar — ^Tweedie 
 knows. You'll find my keys on the desk there " — ^and went 
 back to an absorbing leader, denouncing the defective Com* 
 missariat in the Crimea A moment later, he remembered a 
 
GWEN'S VISIT TO PENSHAM 773 
 
 thing he had forgotten — ^his son's blindness. " Stop a minute/' 
 he said. " I have to go, myself, later, and I may as well go 
 now." And presently was heard discussing cellar-economics, 
 afar, with Tweedie the butler. 
 
 The lady of the house wanted the carriage and pair next day 
 to drive over to Foxboume in the afternoon and wait to bring 
 her back after the meeting. The story merely gives the bald 
 wording used to notify the fact: it does not know what Fox- 
 boume was, nor why there was a meeting. Its only reason for 
 referring to them is that the party for Chorlton had to change 
 its plans and go by the up-train from St. Everall's to Grantley 
 Thorpe, and make it stop there specially. St. Everall's, you may 
 remember, is the horrible new place about two miles from 
 Pensham. The carriage could take them there and be back in 
 plenty of time, and there was always a groggy old concern to be 
 had at the Crown at Grantley that would run them over to 
 Strides Cottage in half an hour. If it had been favourable 
 weather, no doubt the long drive would have been much 
 pleasanter; but with the chance of a heavy downfall of snow 
 making the roads difficult, the short drives and short railway 
 journey had advantages. 
 
 Therefore when the groggy old concern, which had seen better 
 days — early Georgian days, probably — ^pulled up at Strides 
 Cottage in the afternoon, with a black paU of cloud, whose white 
 heralds were already coming thick and fast ahead of it, hanging 
 over Chorlton Down, two at least of the travellers who alighted 
 from it had misgivings that if their visit was a prolonged one, 
 its groggrness and antiquity might stand in its way on a thick- 
 snowed track in the dark, and might end in their being late for 
 the down-train at six. The third of their number saw nothing, 
 and only said: — " Hullo — snowing !" when on getting free of 
 the concern one of the heralds aforesaid perished to convince 
 him of its veracity; gave up the ghost between his shirt-collar 
 and his epidermis. " Yes," he continued, addressing the first 
 inhabitant of the cottage who greeted him. "You are quite 
 right. I am the owner of a dog, and you do perfectly right to 
 inquire about him. His nose is singularly unhke yours. He will 
 detect your flavour when I return, and I shall have to allay his 
 jealousy. It is his fault. We are none of us perfect." The 
 dog gave a short bark which might have meant that Adrian 
 had better hold his tongue, as anything he said might be used 
 against him. 
 
 "Nowj^ou are in the kitchen and sitting-room I've told you 
 
774 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 of, because it's both," said Gwen. " And here is Granny Marrable 
 herseH." 
 
 " Give me hold of your hand. Granny. Because I can't see 
 you, mere's the pity ! I shall hope to see you some day — like 
 people when they want you not to call. At present my looks 
 don't flatter me. People think I'm humbugging when I say I 
 can't see them. I can't I" 
 
 " 'Tis a small wonder, six," said Granny Marrable, " people 
 should be hard of belief. I would not have thought you could 
 not, myself. But being your eyes are spared, by God's mercy, 
 they be ready for the sight to return, when His will is." 
 
 " That's all. Granny. It's only the sight that's wanting. 
 The eyes are as good as any in the kingdom, in themselves." 
 This made Gwen feel dreadfully afraid Granny Marrable would 
 think the gentleman was laughing at her. But Adrian had taken 
 a better measure of the Granny's childlike simpUcity and direct- 
 ness than hers. He ran on, as though it was all quite right. 
 " Anyhow, don't run away from us to Kingdom Come just yet 
 a while. Granny, and see if I don't come to see you and your 
 sister — real eyesight, you know; not this make-beheve ! I hope 
 she's picking up." 
 
 " She's better — ^because Dr. Nash says she's better. Only I 
 wish it would come out so we might see it. But it may be I'm 
 a bit impatient. 'Tis the time of life does it, no doubt." 
 
 Ruth Thrale returned from the inner room. " She would like her 
 ladyship to go to her," said she. Gwen could not help noticing 
 that somehow — Heaven knows how, but quite perceptibly — ^the 
 next room seemed to claim for itself the status of an invalid 
 chamber. She accompanied Widow Thrale, who closed the room- 
 door behind her, apparently to secure unheard speech in the 
 passage. " She isn't any vxtrst, you know," said Ruth, in a 
 reassuring manner, which made her hearer look scared, and 
 start. " Oidy when she gets away to thinking of beyond the 
 seas — ^that place where she was — that is bad for her, say how 
 we may ! Not that she minds talking of my father, nor my 
 brother that died, nor any tale of the land and the people; but 
 'tis the coming back to make it aU fit." 
 
 Gwen quite understood this, and re-worded it, for elucidation. 
 " Of course everything clashes, and the poor old dear can't make 
 head or tail of it ! Has there been any particular thing, lately ?" 
 The reply was : — " Yes — early this morning. She woke up 
 talking about Mrs. Skillick, the name sounded like, and how kind 
 phe was to bring her the fresh lettuces. And then she found me 
 
PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 775 
 
 by her and knew I was Ruth, but was all in a maze why ! Then 
 it all seemed to come on her again, and she was in a bad upset 
 for a while. But I did not -tell mother of that. I am glad you 
 have come, my lady. It will make her better." 
 
 " SkilUck wasn't Australia," said Gwen. " It was some 
 person she lived with here in England — ^not so long ago. Some- 
 where near London. What did you do to quiet her V 
 
 " I talked to her about Dave and Dolly. That is always good 
 for her — ^it seems to steady her. Shall we go in, my lady ? I 
 think she heard you." Again Gwen had an impression that 
 concession had been made to the inexorable, and that whereas 
 four days ago it was taken for granted that old Mrs. Picture's 
 collapse was only to be temporary, a permanency of invalidism 
 was now accepted as a working hypothesis. Only a temporary 
 permanency, of course, to last till further notice ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HOW GWEN INTEODUCED ME. TOEEENS, AND MES. PICTFEE TOOK 
 HOLD OF HIS HAUD. OF ME. TOEEENS'S ITEM FAITH IN DEVILS, 
 AND OLD MAISIE's HAPPINESS THEEEAT. THE DOOTOE's 
 MEMOEY OF ADKIAJT's FIEST APPBAEANCE AS A COEPSE. THE 
 LAXITY OF GENEEAL PEACTITIONEES . HIS WISH TO INTOXI- 
 CATE MES. PEICHAED. HOW GWEN SANG GLTJCK TO ADEIAN, 
 AND ONESIMUS BEOUGHT HEE A LETTBE. QUITE A GOOD 
 EEPOET. HOW GWEN WASN't ANXIOTTS. OF ADEIAN's IN- 
 VISIBLE MOTHBE. HEE SELEOTNESS, AND HIGH BEEEDING. 
 ADEIAn'S VIEWS ABOUT SUICIDES. SUEVIVOEs' SELFISHNESS 
 TOWAEDS THEM. HOW HE TALKED ABOUT THAT DEVIL, AND 
 LET OUT THAT THE OLD LADY HAD FLASHED ACEOSS HIS 
 BETTNA. HOW HE HAD CLOTHED EACH TWIN's HEAD WITH 
 THE OTHBE's HAIB 
 
 Has it not been the experience of all of us, many a time, that a 
 few days' clear absence from an invaUd has been needed, to 
 distinguish a slow change, invisible to the watchers by the 
 bedside ? And all the while, have not the daily bulletins made 
 out a case for indefinable slight improvements, negligible gains 
 
776 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 scarcely worth naming, whose total some mysterious flaw of 
 calculation persistently calls loss ? 
 
 There may have been very little actual change ; there was room 
 for so little. But Gwen had been building up hopes of an im- 
 provement. And now she had to see her house of cards tremble 
 and portend collapse. She saved the structure — as one has done 
 in real card-life — by gingerly removing a top storey, in terror 
 of a cataclysm. She would not hope so much — ^indeed, indeed ! 
 — ^if Fate would only leave some of her structure standing. But 
 she was at fault for a greeting, all but a disjointed word or 
 two, when Ruth, falling back, left her to enter the bedroom alone. 
 It was a consolation to hear the old lady's voice. " My dear 
 — my dear — ^I knew you would come. I woke in the night, and 
 thought to myself — she will come, my lady. Then I rang, and 
 my Ruth came. She comes so quick." 
 
 "And then that was just as good as me," said Gwen, 
 " Wasn't it ?" 
 
 " She is my child — my Ruth. And Phoebe is my Phoebe — 
 years ago ! But I have to think so much, to make it all fit. 
 You are not Uke that." 
 " What am I like ?" 
 
 "You are the same all through. You came upstairs to me 
 in my room — did you not ? — ^where my Uttle Dave and Dolly 
 
 were " 
 
 " Yes— I fetched Dolly." 
 
 " And then you put Dolly down ? And I said ' For shame ! — 
 what a big girl to be carried !' " 
 
 " Yes — and Dolly was carrying Httle doUy, with her eyes wide 
 open. And when I put her down on the floor, she repeated what 
 you said all over again, to httle dolly: — ' For same, what a bid 
 dirl to be taUied !' " 
 
 A gleam came on old Maisie's face as she lay there letting 
 the idea of Dolly soak into her heart. Presently she said, 
 without opening her eyes: — "I wonder, if DoUy Uves to be 
 eighty, will she remember old Mrs. Picture. I should hke her 
 to. Only she is small." 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Picture, you are talking as if you were not to have 
 Dolly again. Don't you remember what I told you on Sunday ? 
 I'm going to get both the children down here, and Aunt M'riaf . 
 Unless, when you are better, you like to go back to Sapps Court. 
 You shall, you know !" 
 
 Another memory attacked old Maisie. " Oh dear," said she, 
 " I thought our Court was all tumbled down. Was it not ?" 
 
PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 777 
 
 " Yes — ^the day I came. And then I carried you o£f to Caven- 
 dish Square. Don't you remember ? — where Miss Grahame was 
 — Sister Nora." She went on to tell of the promptitude and 
 efficiency with which the repairs had been carried out. For, 
 strange to say, the power Mr. Bartlett possessed of im- 
 pressing Europe with his integrity and professional ability had 
 extended itself to Gwen, a perfect stranger, during that short 
 visit to the Court, and she was mysteriously ready to vouch for 
 his sobriety and good faith. Presently old Maisie grew curious 
 about the voices in the next room. 
 
 " Is that a gentleman's voice, through the door, talking ? It 
 isn't Dr. Nash. Dr. Nash doesn't laugh Uke that." 
 
 " No — that is my blind man I have brought to see you. I 
 told you about him, you know. But he must not tire you too 
 much." 
 
 " But can he see me ?" 
 
 " I didn't mean see, that way. I meant see to talk to. 
 Some day he will really see you — ^with his eyes. We are sure of 
 it, now. He shall come and sit by you, and talk." 
 
 " Yes — and I may hold his hand. And may I speak to him 
 about .... about . . . ." 
 
 " About his blindness and the accident ? Oh dear yes ! You 
 won't see that he's blind, you know." 
 
 " His eyes look like eyes ?" 
 
 " Like beautiful eyes. I shall go and fetch him." She knew 
 she was straining facts in her prediction of their recovery of 
 sight, but she liked the sound of her own voice as she said it, 
 though she knew she would not have gone so far except to give 
 her hearer pleasure. 
 
 Said old Maisie to Adrian, whom Gwen brought back to sit 
 by her, giving him the chair she had occupied beside the bed: — 
 " You, sir, are very happy ! But oh, how I grieve for your 
 eyes !" 
 
 " Is Lady Gwendolen here in the room still ?" said Adrian. 
 
 " She has just gone away, to the other room," said old Maisie. 
 For Gwen had withdrawn. One at a time was the rule. 
 
 "Very well, dear Mrs. Picture. Then I'll tell you. There 
 never was a better bargain driven than mine. I would not have 
 my eyesight back, to lose what I have got. No — ^not for fifty 
 pairs of eyes." And he evidently meant it. 
 
 " May I hold your hand ?" 
 
 " Do. Here it is. I am sure you are a dear old lady, and 
 
778 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 can see what she is. When I had eyes, I never saw anything 
 worth looking at, till I saw Gwen." 
 " But is it a rule ?" 
 
 Adrian was perplexed for a moment. " Oh, I see what you 
 mean," said he. " No — of course not 1 I may have my eyesight 
 back." Then he seemed to speak more to himself than to her. 
 " Men have been as fortunate, even as that, before now." 
 
 " But tell me — ^is that what the doctor says ? Or only guess- 
 ing ?" 
 
 " It's what the doctor says, and guessing too. Doctors only 
 guess. He's guessing." 
 
 " But don't they guess right, oftener than people ?" 
 
 " A little oftener. If they didn't, what use would they be ?" 
 
 " But you have seen her ?" 
 
 " Yes — once ! Only once. And now I know she is there, as 
 
 I saw her But I want to know about you, Mrs. Picture 
 
 dear. Because I'm so sorry for you." 
 
 " There is no need for sorrow for me, I am so happy to know 
 my sister was not drowned. And my little girl I left behind 
 when I went away over the great sea, and the wind blew, and I 
 saw the stars change each night, till they were all new. And 
 then I found my dear husband, and lived with him many, many 
 happy years. God has been good to me, for I have had much 
 happiness." There was nothing but contentment and rest in 
 her voice; but then some of the tranquillity may have been due 
 to exhaustion. 
 
 Adrian made the mistake of saying: — " And all the while you 
 thought your sister dead." 
 
 He felt a thrill in her hand as it tightened on his, and heard 
 it in her voice. " Oh, covdd it have been ?" she said. " But I 
 was told so — ^in a letter." 
 
 It was useless for Adrian to affect ignorance of the story ; and, 
 indeed, that would have made matters worse, for it would have 
 put it on her to attempt the retelling of it. 
 
 Perhaps he did his best to say: — " Lady Gwendolen has told 
 me the whole story. So I know. Don't think about it ! . . . . 
 Well — that's nonsense ! One can't help thinking. I mean — 
 think as little as possible !" It did not mend matters much. 
 ' Her mind had got back to the letter, and could not leave it. 
 " I have to think of it," she said, " because it was my husband 
 that wrote that letter. I know why he wrote it. It was not 
 himself. It was a devil. It came out of Roomoro the black 
 witch-doctor and got a place inside my husband. He did not 
 
PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 779 
 
 write that letter to Phoebe. It wrote it. For see how it had 
 learned all the story when Roomoro sucked the little scorpion's 
 poison out of Mary Ann Stennis's arm \" 
 
 To Adrian all this was half -feverish wandering; the limited 
 delirium of extreme weakness. No doubt these were real persons 
 ■ — Roomoro and Mary Ann Steimis. It was their drama that was 
 fictitious. He saw one thing plainly. It was to be humoured, 
 not reasoned with. So whatever was the cause of a slight 
 start and disconcertment of his manner when she stopped to ask 
 suddenly: — " But you do not beheve in devils, perhaps t" — ^it 
 was not the one she had ascribed it to. In fact he was quite 
 ready with a semi-conscientious afBrmative. " Indeed I do. 
 Tell me exactly how you suppose it happened, again. Roomoro 
 was a native conjurer or medicine-man, I suppose ?" 
 
 Then old Maisie recapitulated the tale her imagination had 
 constructed to whitewash the husband who had ruined her whole 
 life, adding some details, not without an interest for students 
 of folklore, about the devil that had come from Roomoro. She 
 connected it with the fact that Roomoro had eaten the flesh of 
 the httle black Dasyurus, christened the " Native Devil " by the 
 first Tasmardan colonists, from the excessive shortness of its 
 temper. The soul of this devil had been driven from the vdtch- 
 doctor by the poison of the scorpion, and had made for the 
 nearest human organisation. Adrian listened with as courteous 
 a gravity as either of us would show to a Reincamationist's 
 extremest doctrines. 
 
 It was an immense consolation to old Maisie, evidently, to 
 be taken in such good faith. Having made up his mind that his 
 conscience should not stand between him and any fiction that 
 would benefit this dear old lady, Adrian was not going to do the 
 thing by halves. He launched out into reminiscences of his own 
 experiences on the Essequibo and elsewhere, and was able without 
 straining points to dwell on the remarkable similarities of the 
 Magians of all primitive races. As he afterwards told Gwen, he 
 was surprised at the way in which the actual facts smoothed the 
 way for misrepresentation. He stuck at nothing in professions 
 of behef in unseen agencies, good and bad ; apologizing afterwards 
 to Gwen for doing so by representing the ease of believing in 
 them just for a short time, to square matters. Optional belief 
 was no invention of his own, he said, but an ancient and honour- 
 able resource of priesthoods all the world over. 
 
 It was the only little contribution he was able to make towards 
 the peace of mind without which it seemed almost impossible 
 
780 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 so old a constitution could rally against such a shock. And it 
 was of real value, for old Maisie sorely needed help against her 
 most awful discovery of all, the hideous guilt of the man whom 
 she had loved ungrudgingly throughout. Nor was it only this. 
 It palliated her son's crimes. But then there was a difference 
 hetween the son and the father. The latter had apparently 
 done nothing to arouse his wife's detestation. Forgery is a 
 delinquency — not a diabolism 1 
 
 They talked more — talked a good deal in fact — ^but only of 
 what we know. Then Gwen came back, bringing Irene to make 
 acquaintance. This young lady behaved very nicely, but ad- 
 mitted afterwards that she had once or twice been a httle at a 
 loss what to say. 
 
 As when for instance the old lady, with her tender, sad, grey 
 eyes fixed on Miss Torrens, said: — " Come near, my dear, that I 
 may see you close." And drew her old hand, tremulously, over 
 the mass of rich black hair which the almost nominal bonnet of 
 that day left uncovered, with the reticular arrangement that 
 confined it, and went on speaking, dreamily: — "It is very 
 beautiful, but my lady's hair is golden, and shines Uke the sun." 
 Thereon Gwen, to lubricate matters: — "Yes — ^look here ! But 
 I know which I Uke best." She managed to collate a handful 
 of her own glory of gold and her friend's rich black, in one hand. 
 " I know which I Uke best," said Irene. And Gwen laughed her 
 musical laugh that filled the place. " No head of hair is a 
 prophet in its own country," said she. 
 
 Old Maisie was trying to speak, but her voice had gone low 
 with fatigue. " Phoebe and I," she was saying, " long ago, 
 when we were girls .... It was a trick, you know, a game ... we 
 would mix our hair Uke that, and make Uttle Jacky Wetherall 
 guess whose hair he had hold of. When he guessed right he 
 had sugar. He was three. His mother used to lend him to us 
 
 when she went out to scrub, and he never cried " She 
 
 went on Uke this, dwelUng on scraps of her girlhood, for some 
 time; then her voice went very faint to say: — "Phoebe was 
 there then. Phoebe is back now — somehow — how is it ?" Gwen 
 saw she had talked enough, and took Irene away; and then Ruth 
 Thrale went to sit with her mother. 
 
 Dr. Nash, who arrived during their absence, had been greeted 
 by Adrian as the person who had welcomed him back to con- 
 sciousness after his " first appearance as a corpse," last summer. 
 He would have known the doctor's voice anywhere, "You 
 
PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 781 
 
 never were, a corpse," said that gentleman. To which Mr. 
 Torrens replied: — " You tJumght I was a corpse, doctor, you know 
 you did \" 
 
 Dr. Nash, being unable to deny it, shifted the responsibihty. 
 " Well," said he, " Sir Coupland thought so too. The fact is, 
 we had quite given you up. When he came out and said to me : — 
 'Come back. I want you to see something,' I said to him: — 
 ' Is that why the dog barked ?' Because your dog had given a 
 sudden queer sort of a bark. And he said to me: — ' It isn't only 
 the dog. It's Lady Gwen Rivers.' " 
 
 " What did he mean by that ?" said Gwen. 
 " He meant that your ladyship's strong impression that the 
 body . . . Excuse my referring to you, Mr. Torrens, as . . . ." 
 " As ' the body ' ? Not at all ! I mean, don't apologize." 
 " The — a — subject, say, still retained vitality. No doubt we 
 might have found out — probably should . . . ." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense !" said Gwen remorselessly. " You 
 would have buried him alive if it hadn't been for me. You 
 doctors are the most careless, casual creatures. It was me and 
 the dog — so now Mr. Torrens knows what he has to be thankful 
 for !" 
 
 " Well — as a matter of fact, it was that strong impression of 
 your ladyship that did the job. We doctors are, as your ladyship 
 says, an incautious, irresponsible lot. I hope you found Mrs. 
 Prichard going on well." 
 
 Gwen hesitated. " I wish she looked a little — ^thicker," said 
 she. 
 
 Dr. Nash looked serious. " We mustn't be in too great a 
 hurry. Remember her age, and the fact that she is eating 
 almost nothing. She won't take regular meals again — or what 
 she calls regular meals — ^till the tension of this excitement sub- 
 sides " 
 
 Said Adrian: — " It's perfectly extraordinary to me, not seeing 
 her, to hear her talk as she does. Because it doesn't give the 
 impression of such weakness as that. Her hands feel very thin, 
 of course." 
 
 Said the doctor: — " I wish I could get her to take some 
 stimulant; then she would begin eating again. If she could only 
 be slightly intoxicated ! But she's very obdurate on that point 
 — ^I told you ? — and refuses even Sir Cropton FuUer's old tawny 
 port. I talked about her to him, and he sent me half a dozen 
 the same evening. A good-natured old chap ! — ^wants to make 
 everyone else as dyspeptic as himself " 
 
782 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " That reminds me !" said Gwen. " We forgot the cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 " No, we didn't," said Irene. " It was put in the carriage, 
 I know. In a basket. Two bottles lying down. And it was 
 taken out, because I saw it." 
 
 " But was it put in the railway carriage ?" 
 
 " I meant the railway carriage." 
 
 " I believe it's in the old Noah's Ark we came here in, all 
 the while." 
 
 Gramiy Marrable said: — " I am sure there has nothing been 
 brought into the Cottage. Because we should have seen. There 
 is only the door through, to go in and out." 
 
 " You see. Dr. Nash," said Gwen, " when you said that in your 
 letter, about her wanting stimulant, champagne immediately 
 occurred to Sir Hamilton. So we brought a couple of bottles 
 of the King of Prussia's favourite Clicquot, and a little screwy 
 thing to milk the bottles with, Uke a cow, a glass at a time. 
 Miss Torrens and I axe quite agreed that very often one can get 
 quite pleasantly and healthily drunk on champagne when other 
 intoxicants only give one a headache and make one ill. Isn't it 
 so, 'Re 1" Miss Torrens and her brother both testified that 
 this was their experience, and Dr. Nash assented, saying that 
 there would at least be no harm in trying the experiment. 
 
 As for dear old Granny Marrable, her opinion was simply that 
 whatever her ladyship from the Towers, and the young lady 
 from Pensham and her brother, were agreed upon, was beyond 
 question right; and even if medical sanction had not been forth- 
 coming she would have supported them. " I am sure," said she, 
 " my dear sister wiU drink some when she knows your ladyship 
 brought it for her." 
 
 The reappearance of the Noah's Ark, when due, confirmed 
 Gwen's view as to the whereabouts of the basket, and was fol- 
 lowed by a hasty departure of the gentlefolks to catch the down- 
 train from London. As Granny Marrable watched it lurching 
 away into the fast-increasing snow, it looked, she thought, as if 
 it could not catch anything. But if old Pirbright, who had been 
 on the road since last century, did not know, nobody did. 
 
 The day after this visit, when Gwen was singing to Adrian airs 
 from Gluck's " Alceste," Irene and her father being both absent 
 on Christmas business, social or charitable, the butler brought in 
 a letter from Ruth Thrale in the very middle of a sostenuto note, 
 — ^for when did any servant, however inteUigent, allow music 
 
PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 783 
 
 to stop before proceeding to extremities ? — and said, respectfully 
 but firmly, that it was the same boy, and he would wait. He 
 seemed to imply that the boy's quality of identity was a sort of 
 guarantee of his waiting — a good previous character for per- 
 manency. Gwen left " Alceste " in C minor, and opened her 
 letter, thanking Mr. Tweedie cordially, but not able to say he 
 might go, because he was another family's butler. Adrian 
 said: — " Is that from the old lady ?" And when Gwen said: — 
 " Yes — ^it's Onesimus. I wonder he was able to get here, over 
 the snow,"— he dismissed Mr. Tweedie with the instruction that 
 he should see that Onesimus got plenty to eat. The butler 
 ignored this instruction as superfluous, and died away. 
 
 Then Gwen spun round on the music-stool to read aloud. 
 '" ' Honoured lady ' ; — Oh dear, I wish she could say ' dear Gwen ' ; 
 Ibut I suppose it wouldn't do. — ' I am thankful to be able to write 
 a really good report of my mother ' . . . . You'll see in a minute 
 she'll have to speak of Granny Marrable, and she'll call her 
 ' mother ' without the ' my.' See it she doesn't ! . . . . ' Dr. 
 INash said she might have some champane, and we said she 
 jreally must when you so kindly brought it. So she said indeed 
 yes, and we gave it her up to the cuts.' That means," said 
 Gwen, " the cuts of the wineglass." She glanced on in the 
 letter, and when Adrian said: — "Well — ^that's not all!" — 
 apologized with : — " I was looking on ahead, to see that she 
 :got some more later. It's all right. ' .... up to the cuts, 
 and presently, as Dr. Nash said, was minded to eat something. 
 So I got her the sweetbread she would not have for dinner, which 
 warmed up well. Then we persuaded her to take a little more 
 ■champane, but Dr. Nash said be careful for fear of reaction. 
 Then she was very chatty and cheerful, and would go back a 
 great deal on old times with mother . . . .' I told you she 
 would," said Gwen, breaking off abruptly. 
 
 " Of course she will always go back on old times," said Adrian. 
 " I didn't mean that. I meant call her aunt ' mother ' 
 without the ' my.' Let me go on. Don't interrupt ! ' . . . . old 
 times with mother, and one thing in particular, their hair. 
 Mother pleased her, because she could remember a little child 
 Jacky they would puzzle to tell which hair was which, saying 
 if she held them like that Jacky could tell, and have sugar. For 
 their hair now is quite strong white and grey instead of both the 
 
 same ' She was telling us about Jacky — me and Irene — 
 
 yesterday, and I suppose that was what set her off ' She 
 
 slept very sound. and talked, and then slept well at night. So 
 
 so 
 
784 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 we are in good spirits about her, and thank God she may be 
 better and get stronger. That is all I have to tell now and 
 
 remain dutifully yours ' Isn't that delightful ? Quite a 
 
 good report !" Instructions followed to Onesimus not to bring 
 any further news to Pensham, but to take his next instalment to 
 the Towers. 
 
 These things occurred on the Friday, the day after the visit 
 to Chorlton. Certainly that letter of Widow Thrale's justified 
 Lady Gwendolen in feeling at ease about Mrs. Picture during the 
 remainder of her visit to Pensham, and the blame she appor- 
 tioned to herself for an imagined neglect afterwards was quite 
 undeserved. 
 
 Adrian Torrens ought to have been in the seventh heaven 
 during the remainder of an almost uninterrupted afternoon. 
 Not that it was absolutely uninterrupted, because evidences of a 
 chaperon in abeyance were not wanting. A mysterious voice, of 
 unparalleled selectness, or bon-ton, or gentility, emanated from 
 a neighbouring retreat with an accidentally open door, where 
 the lady of the house was corresponding with philanthropists in 
 spite of interruptions. It said: — " What is that ? I know it 
 so well," or, " That air is very familiar to me," or, " I cannot 
 help thinking Catalani would have taken that slower." To all 
 of which Gwen returned suitable replies, tending to encourage a 
 belief in her questioner's mind that its early youth had been 
 passed in a German principaHty with Kapellmeisters and Con- 
 servatoriums and a Court Opera Company. This excellent lady 
 was in the habit of implying that she had been fostered in 
 various anciens r&gimes, and that the parentage of anything 
 so outlandish and radical as her son and daughter was quite 
 out of her line, and a freak of Fate at the suggestion of her 
 husband. 
 
 Intermittent emanations from Superiority-in-the-Bush were 
 small drawbacks to what might perhaps prove the last unalloyed 
 interview of these two lovers before their six months' separa- 
 tion — ^that terrible Self -Denying Ordinance — ^to which they had 
 assented without a true prevision of how very imwelcome it would 
 be when the time came. It was impossible to go back on their 
 consent now. Gwen might have hoisted a standard of revolt 
 against her mother. But she coiild not look her father in the 
 face and cry off from the fulfilment of a condition-precedent of 
 his consent to the perfect freedom of association of which she 
 and Adrian had availed themselves to the uttermost, always 
 under the plea that the terms of the contract were going to be 
 
PENSHAM AT STRIDES COTTAGE 785 
 
 honourably observed. As for Adrian, he was even more strongly 
 bound. That appeal from the Countess that his father had 
 repeated and confirmed was made direct to his honour; and 
 while he could say unanswerably: — " What would you have me 
 do ?" nothing in the world could justify his rebelling against so 
 reasonable a condition as that their sentiments should continue 
 reciprocal after six months of separation. 
 
 His own mind was made up. For his views about suicide, 
 however much he spoke of them with levity, were perfectly 
 serious. If he lost Gwen, he would be virtually non-existent 
 aheady. The end would have come, and the thing left to put 
 an end to would no longer be a Life. It would only be a sensi- 
 bihty to pain, with an ample supply of it. A bare bodkin would 
 do the business, but did not recommend itself. The right pro- 
 portion of Prussic Acid had much to say on its own behalf. It 
 was cheap, clean, certain, and the taste of ratafia was far from 
 unpleasant. But he had a lingering favourable impression of 
 the Warroo medicine-man, whose faith in the ef&cacy and pain- 
 lessness of his nostrum was evident, however much was uncertain 
 in his version of its 'provenance. 
 
 As to any misgivings about awakening in another world, if 
 any occurred to Adrian he had but one answer — he had been 
 dead, and had found death unattended with any sort of incon- 
 venience. Resuscitation had certainly been painful, but he did 
 not propose to leave any possibihty of it, this time. His death, 
 that time, had been a sudden shock, followed instantly by the 
 voice of Gwen herself, which he had recognised as the last his 
 ears had heard. If Death could be so easily negotiated, why 
 fuss ? The only serious objection to suicide was its unpopularity 
 with survivors. But were they not sometimes a little selfish ? 
 Was this selfishness not shown to demonstration by the gratitude 
 — ^felt, beyond a doubt — ^to the suicide who weights his pockets 
 when he jumps into mid-ocean, contrasted with the dissatis- 
 faction, to say the least of it, which the proprietor of a respectable 
 first-class hotel feels when a visitor poisons himself with the 
 door locked, and engages the attention of the Coroner ? There 
 was Irene certainly — and others — but after all it would be a 
 great gain to them, when the first grief was over, to have got rid 
 of a terrible encumbrance. 
 
 Therefore Adrian was quite at his ease about the Self -Denying 
 Ordinance; at least, it a clear resolve and a mind made up can 
 give ease. He said n6t a word of his views and intentions beyond 
 what the story has already recorded. What right had he to say 
 
786 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 anything to Gwen that would put pressure on her inclinations ? 
 Had he not really said too much already ? 
 
 Nevertheless, the foregoing made up the background of his 
 reflections as he listened to more "Alceste/' resumed after a 
 short note had been written for Onesimus to carry back over 
 the frost-bound roads to Chorlton. And he was able to trace 
 the revival in his mind of suicide by poison to Mrs. Picture's 
 narration of the Dasyurus and the witch-doctor who had cooked 
 and eaten its body. This fiction of her fever-ridden thoughts 
 had set him a-thinking again of the Warroo conjurer. He had 
 not repeated any of it to Gwen, lest she should be alarmed on old 
 Maisie's behalf. For it had a very insane sound. 
 
 But after such a prosperous report of her condition, above all, 
 of the magical effect of that champagne, it seemed ovemice to 
 be making a to-do about what was probably a mere effect of 
 overheated fancy, such as the circumstances might have pro- 
 duced in many a younger and stronger person. So when Alceste 
 had provided her last soprano song, and the singer was looking 
 for " Ifigenia in Aulide," Adrian felt at liberty to say that old 
 Mrs. Picture's ideas about possession were very funny and 
 interesting. 
 
 " Isn't it curious ?" said Gwen. " She really believes it all, 
 you know, like Gospel. All that about the devil that had 
 possession of her husband ! And how when he died, he passed 
 his devil on to his son, who was worse than himself." 
 
 " That's good, though," said Adrian. " Only she never told 
 me about the son. I had it all about the witch-doctor whose 
 devil came out because he couldn't fancy the little scorpion's 
 flavour. And all about the original devil — a, sort of opossum 
 they call a devil " 
 
 " She didn't tell me about him." 
 
 " They've got one at the Zoological Gardens. He's an ugly 
 customer. The keeper said he was a limb, it ever there was 
 one. The old lady evidently thought her idea that the doctor's 
 devil was this little beggar's soul, eaten up with his flesh, was 
 indisputable. I told her I thought it had every intrinsic possi- 
 bility, and I'm sure she was pleased. But the horror of her face 
 when she spoke of him was really . . . ." 
 
 " Adrian !" 
 
 " What, dearest ? Anything the matter ?" 
 
 " Only the way you put it. It was so odd. ' The horror of 
 her face'! Just as if ypu had seen it!" Indeed, Gwen was 
 looking quite disconcerted and taken aback. 
 
PENSHAM AT STfllDES COTTAGE 787 
 
 " There now !" said Adrian. " See what a fool I am ! I 
 never meant to tell of that. Because I thought it threw a doubt 
 onScatcherd. I've been wanting to make the most of Scatcherd. 
 I never thought much of Septimius Severus. Anyone might have 
 said in my hearing that the bust was moved, and it was just as 
 I was waking. But I'll swear no one said anything about 
 Scatcherd. Why — ^there tvas only Irene !" 
 
 Gwen went and sat by him on the sofa. " Listen, darUng I" 
 said she. " I want to know what you are talking about. What 
 was it happened, and why did it throw a doubt on Miss 
 Scatcherd ?" 
 
 " It wasn't anything, either way, you know." 
 
 " I know. But what was it, that wasn't anything, either way ?" 
 
 " It was only an impression. You mustn't attach any weight 
 to it." 
 
 " Are you going to tell what it was, or not ?" 
 
 " Going to. Plenty of time ! It was when the old lady 
 began telling me about the devil. Her tone of conviction gave 
 me a strong impression what she was looking like, and made an 
 image of her flash across my retina. By which I mean, flash 
 across the hole I used to see through when I had a retina. It 
 was almost as strong and lifelike as real seeing. But I knew it 
 wasn't." 
 
 " But how-^how — ^how ?" cried Gwen, excited. " How did 
 you know that it wasn't ?" 
 
 " Because of the very white hair. It was snow-white — ^the 
 image's. I suppose I had forgotten which was which, of the two 
 old ladies — had put the saddle on the wrong horse." 
 
 Gwen looked for a moment completely bewildered. " What, 
 on, earth, can, be, mean ?" said she, addressing Space very 
 slowly. Then, speaking as one who has to show patience with 
 a stiff problem: — "Dearest man — dearest incoherency! — do try 
 and explain. Which of the old ladies do you suppose has white 
 hair, and which grey ?" 
 
 " Old Grarmy Marrable, I thought." 
 
 " Yes— but which hair ? Which ? Which ? Which ?" 
 
 "White, I thought, not grey." Whereupon Gwen, seeing 
 how much himg upon the impression her lover had been imder 
 hitherto about these two tints of hair, kept down a growing ex- 
 citement to ask him quietly for an exact, undisjointed statement, 
 and got this for answer: — " I have always thought of Granny 
 Marrable's as snow-white* and the old Australian's as grey. 
 Was that wrong ?" 
 
788 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Quite wrong ! It's the other way round. The Granny's is 
 grey and old Mra. Picture's is silvery white." 
 
 Adrian gave a long whistle, for astonishment, and was silent. 
 So was Gwen. For this was the third incident of the sort, and 
 what might not happen ? Presently he broke the silence, to 
 say: — " At any rate, that leaves Scatcherd a chance. I thought 
 if this was a make-up of my own, it smashed her." 
 
 " Foolish man ! There is more in it than that. You saw 
 old Mrs. Picture. It was no make-up. . . . Well ?" She paused 
 for his reply. 
 
 It came after a studied silence, a dumbness of set purpose. 
 " Oh why — ^why — ^is it always Mrs. Picture, or Scatcherd, or 
 Septimius Severus ? Why can it never be Gwen — Gwen — 
 Gwen ?" 
 
 The attenuated chaperonage of the lady of the house may have 
 been moved by a certain demonstrativeness of her son's at this 
 point, to say from afar: — " I hope we are going to have some 
 'Ifigenia in Auhde.' Because I should have enjoyed that." 
 Which carried an implication that the musical world had been 
 palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by 
 the higher aspects of Opera. 
 
A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 789 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 HOW THE EABIi ASKED AFTER THE OlD TWINS. MBBENESS. RE- 
 CnjPEEATIVB POWER. HOW THE HOUSEHOLD HAD ITS ANNTTAL 
 DANCE. HOW THE COUNTESS HAD A CRACKED MP. HOW WAS 
 DR. TUXEORD SOMEBS ? SIR SPENCER DERRICK. GENERAL 
 RAWNSLBY. HE AND GWBn's INTENDED GREAT GRAND- 
 MOTHER-IN-LAW. GWEN HAD NEVER HAD TWINS BEFORE THE 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE QENEBAL's BROTHEE PHILIP. 
 SUPEBANNUATED COCKS AND HENS. HOW GWEN HAD DBEAMBD 
 SHE WAS TO MABEY A KETTLE-HOLDEE. HOW MBS. LAMPBEY 
 HAD A LETTBE FOB GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON 
 AT MIDNIGHT. 
 
 When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day 
 he certainly did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and 
 collected. " I am quite prepared to endure another Christmas," 
 said he resignedly to Gwen. " But a little seclusion and medita- 
 tion is good to prepare one for the ordeal, and Bath certainly 
 deserves the character everybody gives it, that you never meet 
 anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho have 
 something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be 
 identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from 
 the favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies ?" 
 
 This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a 
 quiet ten minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the 
 other's absence. It was late in the afternoon, two hours after 
 his arrival from London. He had been there a day or two to 
 make a show of fulfilling his obligations towards politics; had sat 
 through a debate or two, and had taken part in a division or 
 two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. " But," said he 
 to Gwen, " if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your 
 old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly 
 say the old ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them 
 came early in this recapitulation. 
 
 Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apolo- 
 getic tone about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that 
 she was really better intrinsically, although evidently some 
 person or persons uimamed must have said she was worse. Sha 
 
790 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 started on her report with every good-will to make it a prosperoua 
 one, and got entangled in some trivialities that told against her 
 purpose. Perhaps her last letter to her father, written from 
 Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had given too rose- 
 coloured an accoimt of her visit to Chorlton, and had caused the 
 rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old 
 Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest — 
 quite the merest — weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a 
 general rule, weakness might be mere enough to be negligible; 
 but then it should be the weakness of young and strong people, 
 possessed of that delightful property "recuperative power," 
 which does such wonders when it comes to the scratch. Never 
 be without it, if you can help. 
 
 The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope 
 a helping hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got another letter 
 from Ruth Thrale, brought by Onesimus the bull-cajoler, which 
 gave a very good account on the whole, though one phrase had a 
 damping effect. We were not " to rely on the champagne," 
 as it was " not nourishment, but stimulus." She mttst be got 
 to take food regularly, said Dr. Nash, however small the quantity. 
 This seemed to suggest that she had fallen back on that vicious 
 practice of starvation. But " my mother " was constantly 
 talking with " mother " about old times, and it was giving 
 " mother " pleasure. 
 
 " I wish," said Gwen, as her father went back to " Honoured 
 Lady " for second reading, and possibly second impressions, " I 
 wish that Dr. Nash had written separately. I want to know 
 what he thinks, and I want to know what Ruth thinks. I can 
 mix them up for myself." 
 
 The Earl read to the end, and suspended judgment, visibly. 
 " Eighty-one !" said he. " And how did Granny Marrable take 
 it ? You never said in your letters." 
 
 " Because I did not see her. Dr. Nash told — ^at least, he tried 
 to. But I told you about the little boy's letter. She knew it 
 from that." 
 
 *' I remember Well ! — yre must hope." And then they 
 
 spoke of matters nearer home; the impending journey to Vienna; 
 a perplexity created by a promise rashly given to Aimt Con- 
 stance that she should be married from the Ancester town- 
 residence — ^two things which clashed, for how could this wedding 
 wait till the Countess's return ? — and ultimately of Gwen's own 
 prospects. Then she told her father the incident of Adrian's 
 apparent vision of old Mrs. Picture, and both pretended that i| 
 
A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 791 
 
 was too sKght to build upou; but both used it for a superstructure 
 of private imaginings. Neither encouraged the other. 
 
 Adrian and his sister were to have returned with Gwen to the 
 Towers to stay till Monday, which was Christmas Day, when 
 their own plum-pudding and mistletoe would claim them at 
 Pensham. This arrangement was not carried out, possibly in 
 deference to the Countess, who was anxious to reduce to a 
 minimum everything that tended to focus the public gaze on the 
 lovers. Gwen was under a social obligation, inherited perhaps 
 from Feudalism, to be present at the Servants' Ball, which would 
 have been on Christmas Eve had that day not fallen on a Sunday. 
 Hence the necessity for her return on the Saturday, and the 
 interview with her father just recorded. The quiet ten minutes 
 filled the half -hour between tea and dressing for a dinner which 
 might prove a scratch meal in itself, but was distinguished by 
 its sequel. A general adjournment was to follow to the great 
 ball-room, which was given over without reserve on this occasion 
 to the revellers and their friends from the environs; for at the 
 Towers nothing was done by halves in those days. There the 
 august heads of the household were expected to walk solemnly 
 through a quadriUe with the housekeeper and head butler. Mrs. 
 Masham's and Mr. Norbury's sense of responsibility on these 
 occasions can neither be imagined nor described. This great 
 event made conscientious dressing for dinner more than usually 
 necessary, however defective the excitement of the household 
 might make the preparation and service thereof. 
 
 These exigencies were what limited Gwen's quiet ten minutes 
 with her father within the narrow bounds of halt an hour, leaving 
 no margin at all for more than three words with her mother on 
 her way to her own interview with Miss Lutwyche. She ex- 
 ceeded her estimate almost before her ladyship's dressiag-room 
 door had swung to behind her. 
 
 " Well, mamma dear, I hope you're satisfied." 
 
 " I am, my dear. At least, I am not dissatisfied Don't 
 
 kiss me in front, please, because I have a little crack on the 
 comer of my lip." The Coimtess accepted her daughter's acco- 
 lade on an imsympathetic cheek-bone. " What are you referring 
 
 to?" 
 
 " Why — ^Adrian not coming till to-morrow, of course. What 
 did you suppose I meant ?" 
 
 " I did not suppose. Some day you wiU Hve to acknowledge — 
 I am convinced of it — ^that what your father and I thought be$t 
 
792 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 was dictated by simple common sense and prudence. I am 
 sure Sir Hamilton will not misinterpret our motives. Nor Lady 
 Torrens." 
 
 " He's a nice old Bart, the Bart. We are great friends. He 
 likes it. He gets all the kissing for nothing What 1" 
 
 The Countess may have contemplated some protest against 
 the pronounced ratification implied of fatherdom-in-law. She 
 gave it up, and said: — " I was not going to say anything. Go 
 on!" 
 
 The way in which these two guessed each other's thoughts 
 was phenomenal. Gwen knew all about it. " Come, mamma !" 
 said she. " You know the Bart would not have Uked it half so 
 much if I had been a dowdy." 
 
 " I cannot pretend to have thought upon the subject." If her 
 ladyship threw a greater severity into her manner than the 
 occasion seemed to call for, it was not merely because she dis- 
 approved of her beautiful daughter's want of retenue, or ques- 
 tionable style, or doubtful taste, or defective breeding. You 
 must bear all the circumstances in mind as they presented them- 
 selves to her. Conceive what the " nice old Bart " had been 
 to her over five-and-twenty years ago, when she herseM was a 
 dazzling young beauty of another generation ! Think how 
 strange it must have been, to hear the audacities of this new 
 creature, undreamed of then, spoken so placidly through an 
 amused smile, as she watched the fireUght serenely from the 
 arm-chair she had subsided on — an anchorage " three words " 
 would never have warranted, even the most unbridled poly- 
 syllables. " Do you not think " — ^her dignified mamma con- 
 tinued — " you had better be getting ready for dinner ? You are 
 always longer than me." 
 
 " I'm going directly. Lutwyche is never ready. I suppose 
 
 I ought to go, though You are not asking after my old 
 
 lady, and I think you might." 
 
 " Oh yes," said her ladyship negligently. " I haven't seen you 
 since you didn't go to church with me. How is your old lady 1" 
 
 " You don't care, so it doesn't matter. How was Dr. Tuxford 
 Somers ?" 
 
 " My dear — don't be nonsensical ! How can you expect me 
 to gush over about an old person I have not so much as seen 1" 
 She added as an afterthought: — " However worthy she may be 1" 
 
 "You could have seen her quite well, when she was here. 
 Papa did. Besides, one can show a human interest, without 
 gushing over." 
 
A FESTIVITY AT' THE TOWERS 793 
 
 "My dear, I hope I am never wanting in human interest. 
 How is Mrs. .... Mrs ?" 
 
 " Mrs. Prichard ?" 
 
 " Yes — how is she ? Is she coming back here ?" 
 
 " Is it likely ? Besides, she can't be moved." 
 
 " Oh— it's as bad as that !" 
 
 " My dear mamma, haven't I told you fifty times ?" This 
 was not exactly the case; but it passed, in conversation. " The 
 darling old thing was all but killed by being told . . . ." 
 
 " By being told ? . . . . Oh yes, I remember 1 They were 
 
 sisters, in Van Diemens Land But she's better again 
 
 now ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^better. Oh, here's Starfield, and there's papa in his 
 room. I can hear him. I must go." 
 
 At dinner that evening nobody was in any way new or re- 
 markable, unless indeed Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick, who had 
 been in Canada, counted. There was one guest, not new, but of 
 interest to Gwen. Do you happen to remember General Rawns- 
 ley, who was at the Towers in July, when Adrian had his gunshot 
 accident ? It was he who was nearly killed by a Mahratta, at 
 Assaye, when he was a young lieutenant. Gwen had issued 
 orders that he should take her in to dinner, when she heard on 
 her arrival that he had accepted her mother's invitation for 
 Christmas. 
 
 Consider dinner despatched — ^the word is suitable, for an 
 approach to haste was countenanced or tolerated, in considera- 
 tion of the household's festivity elsewhere — and so much talking 
 going on that the old General could say to Gwen without fear 
 of being overheard: — "Now tell me some more about your 
 fellow. . . . Adrian, isn't he ? . . . He is your fellow, isn't he ? 
 — ^no compliments necessary ?" 
 
 " He's my fellow. General, to you and all my dear friends. 
 You saw him in July, I think ?" 
 
 " Just saw him — ^just saw him ! Hardly spoke to him — only a 
 word or two. Your father took me in to see him, because I was 
 in love with his great-grandmother, once upon a time." 
 
 " His grreai-grandmother. General ? You must mean his 
 grandmother." 
 
 " Not a bit of it, my dear ! It's all quite right. I was a boy 
 of eighteen. I'm eighty-four. Sixty-six years ago. If Mary 
 Tracy was aUve now, she'd make up to eighty-six. Nothing out 
 of the way in that. She was a girl of twenty then." 
 
 " Was it serious. General ?" 
 
794 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " God bless me, my dear, serious ? I should rather think it 
 was I Why — ^we ran away together, and went capering over 
 the country looking for a parson to marry us I Serious ? Rather 1 
 At least, it might have been." 
 
 " Oh, General, do tell me what came of it. Did you find the 
 paison ?" 
 
 " That was just it. We found the Rector of Threckingham^ 
 it was in Lincolnshire — and he promised to marry us in a week 
 if he could find some one to give the bride away. He took 
 possession of the young lady. Then a day or two after down 
 comes Sir Marmaduke and Lady Tracy, black in the face with 
 rage, and we were torn asunder, threatening suicide as soon as 
 there was a chance. I was such a jolly innocent boy that I 
 never suspected the Rector of treachery. Never guessed it at 
 all ! He told me thirty years after — a Uttle more. Saw him 
 when the Allied Sovereigns were in London — before Waterloo." 
 
 " And that young thing was Adrian's grreai-grandmother !" 
 said Gwen. Then she felt bound in honour to add: — " She was 
 old enough to know better." 
 
 " She didn't," said the General. " What's so mighty funny 
 to me now is to think that all that happened about the time of 
 the Revolution in Paris. Rather before." 
 
 Gwen's imagination felt the vertigo of such a rough grapple 
 with the Past. These things make brains reel. " When my old 
 twins were two Uttle girls in Ulac frocks," said she. 
 
 " Your what ?" Perhaps it was no wonder — so Gwen said 
 afterwards — ^that the General was a little taken aback. She 
 would have been so very old to have had twins before the French 
 Revolution. She was able to assign a reasonable meaning to 
 her words, and the old boy became deeply interested in the story 
 of the sisters. So much so that when the ladies rose to go, she 
 said calmly to her mother: — " I'm not coming this time. You 
 can all go, and I'll come when we have to start the dancing. 
 I want to talk to General Rawnsley." And the Countess had to 
 surrender, with an imphcation that it was the only course open 
 in deahng with a lunatic. She could, however, paUiate the 
 position by a reference to the abnormal circumstances. " We 
 are quite in a state of chaos to-day," said she to her chief lady- 
 guest. And then to the Earl: — "Don't be more than five 
 minutes Well ! — ^no longer than you can help." 
 
 The moment the last lady had been carefully shut out by the 
 young gentleman nearest the door, Gwen drove a nail in up to 
 the head, more auo. Suppose General Rawnsley had lost a twin 
 
A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 795 
 
 brother fifty years ago, and she, Gwen, had come to him and told 
 him it had aU been a mistake, and the brother was still living I 
 What would that feel Uke ? What would he have done ? 
 
 " Asked for it all over again," said the General, after con- 
 sideration. " Should have Uked being told, you see 1 Shouldn't 
 have cared so very much about the brother." 
 
 " No — do be serious ! Try to think what it would have felt 
 like. To oblige me !" 
 
 The General tried. But without much success. For he only 
 shook his head over an imdisclosed result. He could, however, 
 be serious. " I suppose," said he, " the twinnery — ^twinship — 
 whatever you call it . . . ." 
 
 " Isn't de rigueur ?" Gwen struck in. " Of course it isn't ! 
 Any real fraternity would do as well. Now try !" 
 
 " That makes a difference. But I'm still in a fix. Your old 
 ladies were grown up when one went off — and then she wrote 
 letters ? " 
 
 " Can't you manage a grown-up brother ?" 
 
 "Nothing over fourteen. Poor Phil was fourteen when he 
 was drowned. Under the ice on the Serpentine. He had just 
 been Ucking me for boning a strap of his skate. I was doing the 
 best way I could without it .... to get mine on, you see .... 
 when I heard a stop in the grinding noise — ^what goes on all 
 day, you know — and a sort of clicky slooshing, and I looked up, 
 and there were a hundred people imder the ice, all at once. There 
 was a f'ler who couldn't stop or turn, and I saw him follow the 
 rest of 'em under. Bad sort of job altogether !" The General 
 seemed to be enjoying his port, all the same. 
 
 Said Gwen: — " But he used to lick you, so you couldn't love 
 him." 
 
 " Coiddn't I ? I was awfully fond of Phil. So was he of me. 
 I expect Cain was very fond of Abel. They loved each other 
 like brothers. Not like other people !" 
 
 " But Phil isn't a fair instance. Can't you do any better 
 than Phil ? Never mind Cain and Abel." 
 
 " H'm — ^no, I can't ! Phil's not a bad instance. It's longer 
 ago — ^but the same thing in principle. If I were to hear that 
 Phil was really resuscitated, and some other boy was buried by 
 mistake for Wm, I should .... I should . . . ." The General 
 hung fire. 
 
 " What should you do ? That's what I want to know 
 
 Come now, confess — ^it's not so easy to say, after all !" 
 " No — ^it's not easy. But it would depend on the way how. 
 
796 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 K it was like the Day of Judgement, and he rose from the grave, 
 
 as we are taught in the Bible, just the same as he was buried 
 
 Well — you know — it wouldn't be fair play ! / should know 
 him, though I expect I should think him jolly small." 
 
 " But he wouldn't know you ?" 
 
 " No. He would be saying to himself, who the dooce is this 
 superannuated old cock ? And it would be no use my saying I 
 was his Uttle brother, or he was my big one." 
 
 " But suppose it wasn't like the Day of Judgement at all, but 
 real, like my old ladies. Suppose he was another superannuated 
 old cock ! My old ladies are superannuated old hens, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 " I suppose so. But I understand from what you tell me that 
 they have come to know one another again. They talk together 
 and recall old times ? Isn't that so ?" 
 
 " Oh dear yes, and each knows the other quite well by now. 
 Only I beHeve they are still quite bewildered about what haa 
 happened." 
 
 " Then I suppose it would be the same with me and my redi- 
 vivus brother — on the superannuated-old-cock theory, not the 
 Day of Judgement one." 
 
 " Yes — but I want you not to draw inferences from them, 
 but to say what you would feel ... of yourself . . . out of 
 your own head." 
 
 The General wanted time to think. The question required 
 thought, and he was taking it seriously. The Earl, seeing him 
 thinking, and Gwen waiting for the outcome, came round from 
 his end of the table, and took the seat the Countess had vacated. 
 He ought to have been there before, but it seemed as though 
 Gwen's escapade had thrown aU formalities out of gear. He 
 was just in time for the General's conclusion: — "Give it up ! 
 Heaven only knows what I should do 1 Or anyone else !" 
 
 Gwen restated the problem, for her father's benefit. " I am 
 with you. General," said he. " I cannot speculate on what I 
 should do. I am inclined to think that the twinship has had 
 something to do with the comparative rapidity of the .... 
 recohesion. . . ." 
 
 " Very good word, papa ! Quite suits the case." 
 
 " . . . . recohesion of these two old ladies. When we consider 
 how very early in Uf e they took their meals together - . . ." The 
 General murmured aotto voce: — " Before they were bom." 
 " .... we must admit that their case is absolutely exceptional 
 — absolutely !" 
 
A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 797 
 
 " You mean," said Gwen, " that if they had not been twins 
 they would not have swallot^ed each other down, as they have 
 done." 
 
 " Exactly," said the Earl. 
 
 " And yet," Gwen continued, " they never remember things 
 as they happened. In fact, they are still in a sort of fog about 
 what has happened. But they are quite sure they are Maisie and 
 Phoebe. I do think, though, there is only one thing about Maisie's 
 Australian life that Granny Marrable believes, and that is the 
 
 devil that got possession of the convict husband Why 
 
 does she ? Because devils are in the Bible, of course." Here 
 the devil stoiy was retold for the benefit of the General, who did 
 not know it. 
 
 The Earl did, so he did not listen. He employed himself 
 thinking over practicable answers to the question before the 
 house, and was just in time to avert a polemic about the authen- 
 ticity of the Bible, a subject on which the General held strong 
 views. " What helps me to an idea of a possible attitude of 
 mind before a resurrection of this sort," he said, " is what some- 
 times happens when you wake up from a dream years long, a 
 dream as long as a lifetime. Just the first moment of all, you 
 can hardly believe yourself free of the horrid entanglement you 
 had got involved in " 
 
 " I know," said Gwen. " The other night I dreamed I was 
 going to be married to a young gentleman I had known from 
 childhood. Only he was a kettle-holder with a parrot 
 on it." 
 
 " Didn't I object ?" said the Earl. 
 
 " You were upstairs. Don't ask explanations. That was all 
 there was in the dream. You were upstairs. And the dream 
 had been all my life. Don't fidget about particulars." 
 
 "I won't. That's the sort of dream I mean. It seems all 
 perfectly right and sound until your waking life comes back, 
 and then vanishes. You only regret your friends in the dream 
 for a few seconds, and then — ^they are nobody !" 
 
 " Don't quite see the parallel, yet. These old ladies haven't 
 waked from a dream, that I see." Thus the General, and Gwen 
 told him he was a miUtary martinet, and lacking in insight. 
 
 Her father continued: — "Each of them has dreamed the 
 other was dead, for half a century. Now they are awake. But 
 I suspect, from what Gwen says, that the discovery of the dream 
 has thfown a doubt on all the rest of the fifty years." \ 
 
 "That's it," said Gwen. "If the whole story of the two 
 
798 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 deaths is false, why should Van Diemens Land be true ? Why 
 should the convict and the forgery be true ?" 
 
 " Husbands and families are hard nuts to crack," said the 
 General. " Can't be forgotten or disbelieved in, try 'em any 
 side up !" 
 
 At this point a remonstrance from the drawing-room at the 
 delay of the appearance of the males caused a stampede and 
 ended the discussion. Gwen rejoined her own sex unabashed, 
 and the company adjourned to the scene of the household fes- 
 tivity. It is not certain that the presence of his lordship and 
 his Countess, and the remainder of the party in esse at the 
 Towers really added to the hilarity of the occasion. But 
 it was an ancient usage, and the sky might have fallen if it had 
 been rashly discontinued. The compromise in use at this date 
 under which the magnates, after walking through a quadrille, 
 melted away imperceptibly to their normal quarters, was no 
 doubt the result of a belief on their part that the household 
 would begin to enjoy itself as soon as formalities had been 
 complied with, and it was left to do so at its own free-will and 
 pleasure. Nevertheless, a hint at abolition would have been 
 blasphemy, and however eager the rank and file of the estab- 
 lishment may have been for the disappearance of the bigwigs, 
 not one of them — and still more not one of their many invited 
 neighbours — ever breathed a hint of it to another. 
 
 Shortly after ten Gwen and some of the younger members of the 
 party wound up a fairly successful attempt to make the materials 
 at their disposal dance the Lancers, and got away without 
 advertising their departure. It was a great satisfaction to over- 
 hear the outbreak of unchecked roystering that followed. Said 
 Gwen to Miss Dickenson and Mr. Pellew, who had entered into 
 the spirit of the thing and co-operated with her efforts to the 
 last: — "They will be at bear-garden point in half an hour. 
 Poor respectable Masham !" To which Atmt Constance re- 
 pUed: — "I suppose they won't go on into Sunday?" The 
 answer was: — "Oh no — ^not till Sunday! But Sunday is a 
 day, after all, not a night." Mr. Pellew said : — " Sunrise at eight," 
 and Gwen said: — " I think Masham will make it Sunday about 
 two o'clock. We shan't have breakfast till eleven. You'll 
 see!" 
 
 They were in the great gallery with the Van Dycks when Gwen 
 Btopped, as one stops who thinks suddenly of an omission, and 
 said, as to herself, more than to her hearers: — " I wonder whetiier 
 she meant me." 
 
A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 799 
 
 " Whether who meant you ?" said both, sharing the question. 
 
 " Nothing . , . Very likely I was mistaken. . . . No — ^it was 
 this. You saw that rather piquante, dry young woman ? You 
 know which I mean ?" 
 
 " Danced with that good-looking young groom ?...." 
 
 "Yes — my Tom — ^Tom Kettering. It was what I heard her 
 say to Lutwyche .... some time ago. ... ' Remember she's not 
 to have it till to-morrow morning.' It just crossed my mind, 
 did she mean me ? I dare say it was nothing." 
 
 " I heard that. It was a letter." Mr. Pellew said this. 
 
 " Had you any impression about it ?" 
 
 " I thought it was some joke among the servants." 
 
 Gwen was disquieted, evidently. " I wish I hadn't heard 
 it," said she, " if it isn't to be delivered till to-morrow. That 
 young woman is Dr. Nash's housekeeper — ^Dr. Nash at Chorl- 
 ton." She was speaking to ears that had heard all about the 
 twin sisters. She interrupted any answer that meant to follow 
 " Oh !" and " H'm I" by saying abruptly: — " I must see Lutwyche 
 and find out." 
 
 They turned with her, and retraced their steps, remarking that 
 no doubt it was nothing, but these things made one imcomfort' 
 able. Much better to find out, and know ! 
 
 A casual just entering to rejoin the revels stood aside to allow 
 them to pass, but was captured and utilised. " Go in and tell 
 Miss Lutwyche I want to speak to her out here." Gwen knew 
 all about local class distinctions, and was aware her maid would 
 not be " Lutwyche " to a village baker's daughter. The girl, 
 awed into some qualification of mere assent, which might have 
 been presumptuous, said: — " Yes, my lady, if you please." 
 
 Lutwyche was captured and came out. " What was it I was 
 not to have till to-morrow morning, Lutwyche ? You know 
 quite well what I mean. What was the letter ?" 
 
 The waiting-woman had a blank stare in preparation, to 
 prevaricate with, but had to give up using it. " Oh yes — there 
 was a note," she said. " It was only a note. Mrs. Lamprey 
 brought it from Dr. Nash. He wished your ladyship to have 
 it to-morrow." 
 
 " I will have it at once, thank you ! Have you got it there ? 
 Just get it, and bring it to me at once." 
 
 " I hope your ladyship does not blame me. I was only obeying 
 orders." 
 
 " Get it, please, and don't talk." Her ladyship was rather, 
 incensed with the young woman, but not for obeying orders. 
 
 61 
 
800 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 It was because of the attempt to minimise the letter. It was just 
 like Lutwyche. Nothing would make that woman really truthful! 
 Lutwyche caught up the party, which had not stopped for the 
 finding of the letter, at the drawing-room door. Gwen opened it 
 as she entered the room, saying, to anyone within hearing : — 
 " Excuse my reading this." She dropped on a sofa at hand, 
 close to a chandeUer rich with wax lights in the lampless drawing- 
 room. Percy Pellew and his fiancee stood waiting to share the 
 letter's contents, if permitted. 
 
 The world, engaged with its own affairs, took no notice. The 
 Earl and the General were listening to tales of Canada from 
 Sir Spencer Derrick. The Countess was pretending to Usten to 
 other versions of the same tales from that gentleman's wife. 
 The others were talking about the war, or Louis Napoleon, or 
 Florence Nightingale, or hoping the frost would continue, because 
 nothing was more odious than a thaw in the country. One 
 guest became very impopular by maintaining that a thaw had 
 already set in, alleging inf alUble instincts needing no confirmation 
 from thermometers. 
 
 The Countess had said, speaking at her daughter across the 
 room: — "I hope we are going to have some music; " and the 
 Colonel. had said: — " Ah, give us a song, Gwen I" without eliciting 
 any notice from their beautiful hearer, before anyone but Miss 
 Dickenson and Mr. Pellew noticed the effect this letter was pro- 
 ducing. Then the Earl, glancing at the reader's face, saw, even 
 from where he sat, how white it had become, and how tense 
 was its expression. He caught Mr. Pellew's attention. "Do 
 you know what it is, Percy ?" said he. Mr. Pellew crossed the 
 room quickly, to reply under his breath : — " I am afraid it is 
 
 some bad news of her old lady at Chorlton Oh no — not 
 
 that " — ^for the Earl had made the syllable dead with his lips, 
 inaudibly — " but an alarm of some sort. The doctor's house- 
 keeper there brought the letter." 
 
 The Earl left Mr. Pellew, reiterating what he had said to the 
 General, and went over to his daughter. " Let me have it to see," 
 said he, and took the letter from her. He read Uttle scraps, 
 half -aloud, " ' Was much better all yesterday, but improvement 
 has not continued.' ... ' Am taking advantage of my house- 
 keeper's visit to the Towers to send this.' ... ' Not to have it 
 till to-morrow.' .... How was that ?" Gwen explained 
 briefly, and he said: — "Looks as if the doctor took it for granted 
 you would come at once." 
 
 " Yes," said Gwen, " on receipt of the letter." 
 
A FESTIVITY AT THE TOWERS 801 
 
 The Countess said, as one whose patience is sorely and un- 
 deservedly tried : — " What is it all about ? I suppose we are 
 to know." The war and Louis Napoleon and Florence Night- 
 ingale lulled, and each asked his neighbour what it was, and 
 was answered: — "Don't know." The Colonel, a man of the 
 fewest possible words, said to the General: — "Rum! Not 
 young Torrens, I suppose ?" And the General replied: — "No, 
 no ! Old lady of eighty." Which the Colonel seemed to think 
 was aU right, and didn't matter. 
 
 " I think, if I were you, I should see the woman who brought 
 it," said the Earl, after reading the letter twice; once quickly 
 and once slowly. Gwen answered: — "Yes, I think so," — and 
 left the room abruptly. Her father took the letter, which he 
 had retained, to show to her mother, who read it once and 
 handed it back to him. " I cannot advise," said she, speaking 
 a little from Olympus. She came down the mountain, however, 
 to say: — "See that she doesn't do anything mad. You have 
 some influence with her," and left the case — one of dementia — 
 to her husband. 
 
 " I think," said he, " if you will excuse me, my dear, I will 
 speak to this woman myself." 
 
 Her ladyship demurred, " Isn't it almost making the matter 
 of too much importance ?" said she, looking at her finger- 
 diamonds as though to protest against any idea that she was 
 giving her mind to the case of dementia. 
 
 " I think not, my dear," said the Earl, meekly but firmly, and 
 followed his daughter out of the room. 
 
 Very late that night, or rather very early next day, in the 
 smoking-room to which such males as it pleased to do so retired 
 for a last cigar, sundry of the younger members of the vanishing 
 shooting-party, and one or two unexplained nondescripts, came to 
 the knowledge of a fact that made one of them say — " Hookey !"; 
 another — " Crikey!"; and a third and fourth that they were 
 blowed. All considered, more or less, that Mr. Norbury, their 
 informant, who had come to see the lights out, didn't mean to 
 say what he had said. He, however, adhered to his statement, 
 which was that Lady Gwendolen had had alarming news about 
 an old lady whom she was much interested in, and had been 
 driven away in the closed brougham by Tom Kettering to 
 Chorlton, more than two hours ago. " I thought it looked queer, 
 when she didn't come back," said one of the gentlemen who was 
 blowed. 
 
802 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 HOW GWEN AND MRS. LAMPEEY RODE TO STRIDES COTTAGE, 
 AND FOUND DR. NASH THERE. OF A LETTER FROM MAISIB'S 
 
 son, and how it had thrown her back. an anxiotts 
 night watch. imaginations of sapps court. peter 
 Jackson's namesake, how gwen dreamed of dolly on 
 
 GENERAL RAWNSLEY's KNEE, AND WAS WAKED BY A SCREAM. 
 READ ME ALOUD WHAT MY SON SAYS ! WHAT IS CALLED 
 SNEERING. A MAQ. A FLIMSY. HOW GWEN WAS GOT TO 
 BED, HALF ASLEEP. OLD MAKIE's WILL. NOT UPSTAIRS 
 OUT OF A CARRIAGE, DOWNSTAIRS INTO A CARRIAGE. TWO 
 steps BACK AND ONE FORWARD. BEFORE THAT CLOCK 
 STRIKES. THEIR DAUGHTER 
 
 Whoever detected a thaw outside the house, by instinct at 
 work within, was an accurate weather-gauge. A wet, despairing 
 moon was watching a soaking world from a misty heaven ; and 
 chilly avalanches of undisguised slush, that had been snow when 
 the sun went down, were sUpping on acclivities and roofs, and 
 clinging in vain to overhanging boughs, to vanish utterly in pools 
 and gutters and increasing rivulets. The carriage-lamps of 
 Gwen's conveyance, a closed brougham her father had made a 
 sine qua rum of her departure, shone on a highway that had seen 
 little traffic since the thaw set in, and that still had on it a 
 memory of fallen snow, and on either side of it the yielding 
 shroud that had made the land so white and would soon leave 
 it so black. Never mind ! — ^the road was a better road, for all 
 that it was heavier. No risk now of a stumble on the ice, with 
 the contingencies of a broken knee for the horse, and an hour's 
 tramp for its quorum ! 
 
 The yew-tree in the Httle churchyard at Chorlton had still 
 some coagulum of thaw-frost on it when the brougham plashed 
 past the closed lichgate, and left its ingrained melancholy to make 
 the most of its loneliness. Strides Cottage was just on ahead — 
 five minutes at the most, even on such a road. " They will be 
 sure to be up, I suppose — one of them at least," said Gwen to 
 the woman in the carriage with her. It was Mrs. Lamprey, 
 whom Tom Kettering was to have driven back in any case, but 
 not in the brougham. Gwen had overruled her attempt to ride 
 on the box, and was sorry when she had done so. For she could 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 803 
 
 not say afterwards : — " I'm siire you would rather be up there, 
 with Tom." 
 
 " I doubt they'll have gone to bed, my lady, either of them, 
 Nor yet I won't be quite sure we shan't find the doctor there." 
 Thus Mrs. Lamprey, making Gwen's heart sink. For what but 
 very critical circumstances could have kept Dr. Nash at the 
 Cottage till past one in the morning ? But then, these circum- 
 stances must be recent. Else he could never have wished the 
 letter kept back till to-morrow. She said something to this 
 effect to her companion, who replied: — " No doubt your ladyship 
 knows !" 
 
 There was a light in the front-room, and someone was moving 
 about. The arrival of the carriage caused the dog to bark, 
 once but not more, as though for recognition or warning; not as 
 a dog who resented it — merely as a janitor, officially. The 
 doorbell, in response to a temperate pull, grated on the silence 
 of the night, overdoing its duty and suggesting that the puller's 
 want of restraint was to blame. Then came a footstep, but no 
 noise of bolt or bar withdrawn. Then Ruth Thrale's voice, 
 wondering who this could be. And then her surprise when she 
 saw her visitor, whose words to her were: — " I thought it best to 
 come at once !" 
 
 " Oh, but she is better ! Indeed we think she is better. Dr. 
 Nash was to write and tell you, so you should know — ^not to 
 hurry to come too soon." Thus Ruth, much distressed at this 
 result of the doctor's despatch. 
 
 " Never mind me ! You are sure she is better ? Is that 
 Dr. Nash's voice ?" Yes — ^it was. He had been there since 
 eleven, and was just going. 
 
 Ruth went in to teU Granny Marrable it was her ladyship, as 
 Dr. Nash came out. " I'm to blame. Lady Gwendolen," said he. 
 " I'm to blame for being in too great a hurry. It was a blunder. 
 But I can't pretend to be sorry I made it — ^that's the truth 1" 
 
 " You mean that she isn't out of the wood ?" 
 
 " That kind of thing. She isn't." 
 
 " Oh dear 1" Gwen sank into a chair, looking white. Hope 
 had flared up, to be damped down. How often the stokers — 
 nurses or doctors — have to pile wet ashes on a too eager blaze ! 
 How seldom they dare to add fresh fuel ! 
 
 " I will tell you," said the doctor. " She was very much 
 better all Friday, taking some nourishment. And there is no 
 doubt the champagne did her good — ^just a spoonful at a time, 
 you know, not more. She isn't halfway through the bottle yet. 
 
804 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 I thought she was on her way to pull through, triumphkeatly. 
 Then something upset her." 
 
 "Well, but — what?" For the doctor had paused at some 
 obstacle, unexplained. 
 
 "That I can't tell you. You must ask Granny Marrable 
 about that. Not her daughter — ^niece — ^whatever she is. Don't 
 say anything to her. She is not to know." 
 
 Granny Marrable was audible in the passage without. " Can't 
 you tell me what sort of thing ?" said Gwen, under her voice. 
 
 " It was in a letter that came to her from Snaps — Sapps 
 Court. The Granny wouldn't tell me what was in it, and begged 
 I would say notldng of it to Widow Thrale. But the old 
 soul was badly upset by it, shaking all over and asking for 
 you " 
 
 " Was she asking for me ? Then I'm so glad you sent for me. 
 I would not have been away on any account." 
 
 " It had nothing to do with my writing. I should have written 
 
 for you to come to-morrow anyhow Here comes Granny 
 
 Marrable." They had been talking alone, as Mrs. Lamprey had 
 gone outside to speak to Tom. 
 
 " Still asleep. Granny ?" said the doctor. Yes — she was, 
 said the old lady; nicely asleep. " Then I'll be off, as it's late." 
 Gwen suggested that Tom might drive him home, with Mrs. 
 Lamprey, and call back for instructions. 
 
 Said Granny Marrable then, not as one under any new stress : — 
 " My lady, God bless you for coming, though I would have been 
 glad it had been daylight. To think of your ladyship out in the 
 cold and damp, for our sakes !" 
 
 " Never mind me. Granny ! I'll go to bed to-morrow night. 
 
 Now tell me about this letter Is Ruth safe in there ?" 
 
 Yes, she was; and would stay there by her dear mother. Gwen 
 continued: — "Dr Nash has just told me there was some letter. 
 But he did not know what was in it." 
 
 " He was not to know. But you were, my lady. This is it. 
 Can you see with the candle ?" 
 
 Gwen took the letter, and turned to the signature before 
 reading it. It was from " Ralph Thornton Daverill, alias Rix," 
 which she read quite easily, for the handwriting was educated 
 enough, and clear. " I see no date," said she. " Why did 
 Dr. Nash say it had come from Sapps Court ?" 
 
 " Because, my lady, he saw the envelope. Perhaps yoiu" 
 ladyship knows of 'Aunt Maria.' She is httle Dave's aimt, in 
 London." 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 805 
 
 " Oh yes — I know ' Aunt M'riar/ I know her, herseK. Why 
 does she write her name on a letter from this man ?" 
 
 " I do not know. There is all we know, in the letter, as you 
 have it." 
 
 "Whom do you suppose Ralph Thornton Daverill to be. 
 Granny ?" 
 
 " I know, unhappily. He is her son." 
 
 " The son Oh yes — I knew of him. She has told me 
 
 of him. Besides, I knew her name was Daverill, from the 
 letters." Granny Marrable was going on to say something, but 
 Gwen stopped her, saying: — "First let me read this." Then 
 the Granny was silent, while the young lady read, half aloud and 
 half to herself, this following letter: — 
 
 " MOTHEB — ^You win be surprised to get this letter from 
 me. Are you sorry I am not dead 1 Can't say I'm glad. 
 I have been His Majesty's guest for one long speU, and Her 
 Majesty's for another, since you saw the last of me. I'm 
 none so sure I wasn't better ofE then, but I couldn't trust 
 H.M.'s hospitality again. It might run to a rope's end. 
 Dodging blood-hounds is my lay now, and I lead the life of 
 a cat in hell. But I'm proud — ^proud I am. You read the 
 newspaper scrap I send along with this, and you'll be proud 
 of your son. I'm a chip of the old block, and when my 
 Newgate-frisk comes, I'll die game. Do you long to see your 
 loving son t If you don't, send him a quid or two — or put 
 it at a fiver. Just for to enable him to lead an honest life, 
 which is my ambition. You can come to a fiver. Or would 
 you rather have your loving son come and ask for it % How 
 would you like it, if you were an honest man without a mag 
 in his pocket, and screwpulls of conscience % You send on 
 a flimsy to M'riar. She'U see I get it. I'U come for more 
 when I want it — ^you be easy. So no more at present from 
 your dutiful son. — Kalph Thornton Daveeill, alias Eix. 
 
 P.S. — You can do it — or ask a Mnd friend to help." 
 
 " What a perfectly intolerable letter !" said Gwen. " What 
 does he mean by a newspaper scrap ? . . . Oh, ia that it ?" 
 She took from the old lady a printed cutting, and read it aloud. 
 " Fancy his being that man," said she. " It made quite a talk 
 last winter — ^was in all the papers." It was the paragraph 
 Uncle Mo had come upon in the Stm: 
 
 " I have seen that man," said Granny Marrable. And so 
 sharp was Gwen in linking up clues, that she exclaimed at ono^ ;— r 
 
806 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " What — ^the madman ? Dr. Nash told me of him. Didn't he 
 come to hunt her up ?" 
 
 " That was it, my lady, And he was all but caught. But I 
 have never spoken of my meeting him, and she has barely spoken 
 of him, till this letter came yesterday. And then we could 
 speak of him together. But not Ruth. She was to know 
 nothing. She was not here, by good luck, just the moment that 
 it came." 
 
 " And my dear old Mrs. Picture ? Oh, Granny — ^what a 
 letter for her to get !" 
 
 " Indeed, my lady, she was very badly shaken by it, I would 
 have been glad if I might have read it myself first, to tell her of 
 it gently." Granny Marrable was entirely mistaken. " Break 
 it gently," sounds so well ! What is it worth in practice ? 
 
 " Could she understand the letter. / couldn't, at first." 
 
 " She understood it better than I did. But it set her in a 
 trembling, and then she got lost-like, and we thought it best to 
 
 go for Dr. Nash No — Ruth never knew anything of the 
 
 letter, not a word. And her mother said never a word to her. 
 For he was her brother." 
 
 " I cannot understand some things in the letter now, but I see 
 he is thoroughly vile. One thing is good, though I What he 
 wants is money." 
 
 " WiU that r 
 
 " Keep him quiet and out of the way ? Yes — of course it 
 will. Let me take the letter to show to my father. He wiU 
 know what to do." She knew that her father's first thought 
 might be to use the clue to catch the man, but she also knew he 
 would not act upon it if his doing so was Ukely to shorten the 
 span of hfe still left to old Maisie. " What was he hke ?" said she 
 to Granny Marrable. 
 
 " Some might call him good-looking," was the cautious answer. 
 
 " You think / shouldn't, evidently ?" Evidently. 
 
 " It is not the face itself. It is in the shape of it, A twist. 
 I took him for mad, but he is not." 
 
 " How came you to know him for your sister's son ?" 
 
 " Ah, my lady, how could I ? For Maisie was still dead then, 
 for me. I could know he was Mrs. Prichard's son, for he said 
 so. 
 
 " I see. It was before. But you talk about him to her 
 now ?" 
 
 " She cannot talk of much else, when Ruth is away. She will 
 talk of him to you, when she wakes Hush — ^I think Ruth 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 807 
 
 is coming I" Gwen slipped the letter in her pocket, to be out of 
 the way. 
 
 No change in her mother— that was Ruth's report. She had 
 not stirred in her sleep. You could hardly hear her breathe. 
 This was to show that you could hear her breathe, by listening. 
 It covered any possible alarm about the nature of so moveless 
 a sleep, without granting discussion of the point. 
 
 Gwen had told Tom Kettering to return shortly, but only for 
 orders. Her own mind was quite made up — ^not to leave the old 
 lady until alarms had died down. If the clouds cleared, she 
 would think about it. Tom must drive back at once to the 
 Towers; and if anyone was still out of bed whose concern it 
 was to know, he might explain that she was not coming back 
 at present. Or stop a minute ! — she would write a short line to 
 her father. Ruth and Granny Marrable lodged a formal protest. 
 But how glad they were to have her there, on any terms ! 
 
 She had really come prepared to stay the night; but until she 
 could hear how the land lay had not disclosed her valise. Tom, 
 returning for orders, deposited it in the front-room, and departed, 
 leaving it to be carefully examined by the dog, who could not 
 disguise his interest in leather. 
 
 The only obstacle to an arrangement for one of the three to 
 be always close at hand when the sleeper waked was the usual 
 one. In such cases everyone wants to be the sentinel on the 
 first watch, and not on any account to sleep. A dictator is 
 needed, and Gwen assumed the office. Her will was not to be 
 disputed. She told Granny Marrable and Ruth to go to bed 
 or at least to go and he down, and she would call one of them if 
 it was necessary. They looked at each other and obeyed. She 
 herself could lie down and sleep, if she chose, on the big bed 
 beside the old lady, and she might choose. The end would be 
 gained. There would then be no fear of old Maisie awakening 
 alone in the dark, a prey to horrible memories and apprehensions, 
 this last one worst of all — this nightmare son with his hideous 
 gaol-bird past and his veiled threats for the future. That was 
 more important than the meat-jelly, beef-tea, stimulants, what 
 not ? They would probably be refused. Still they were to be 
 reckoned with, and Ruth was within call to supply them. 
 
 In the darkness and the silence of the night, a solitary, dis- 
 couraged candle in a shade protesting feebly against the one, 
 and every chance sound that day would have ignored empha- 
 sizing the other, the stillness of the figure on the bed became a 
 
808 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 mystery and an oppression. How Gwen would have welcomed 
 a recurrence of the faintest breath, to keep alive her confidence 
 that this was only sleep — sleep to be welcomed as the surest 
 herald of life and strength ! How she longed to touch the blue- 
 veined wrist upon the coverUd, but once, just for a certainty of 
 a beating pulse, however faint ! She dared not, even when a 
 heavy avalanche of melted snow from the eaves without, that 
 made her start, left the sleeper undisturbed; even when a sudden 
 faggot in the fireplace, responsive to the snowfall, broke and fell 
 into the smouldering red below, and crackled into flame without 
 awakening her. For Gwen knew the shrewd powers of a finger- 
 touch to rouse the deepest sleeper. But she was grateful for 
 that illumination, for it showed her a silver thread of hair 
 near enough to the nostril to be stirred to and fro by the breath 
 that went and came. And by its light the delicate transparency 
 of the wrist showed the regular pulsation of the heart. All 
 was well. 
 
 She had plenty to occupy her thoughts. She could sit and 
 think of the strangeness of her own life, and its extraordinary 
 inequahties. What could clash more discordantly than this mo- 
 ment and a memory of a month ago that rushed into her mind 
 for no apparent reason but to make a parade of its own incon- 
 gruity. Do you remember that brilUant dress of Madame 
 Pontet that she tried on at Park Lane, with " the usual tight 
 armhole " ? That dress had figured as a notable achievement 
 of the modiste's art, worthy of its wearer's surpassing beauty, 
 in a dazzling crowd of Stars and Garters and flashing diamon(^, 
 and loveliness that was old enough for Society, and valour that 
 was too old for the fleld of battle; and much of the wit of the 
 time and a Httle of the learning, trappings of well-mounted 
 dramatis personce on the World's stage. That dress and its 
 contents had made many a woman jealous, and been tenacious 
 of many a man's memory, young and old, for weeks after. Here 
 was the wearer, watching in the night beside a convict's relict, 
 a worse convict's mother, a waif and stray picked up in a London 
 Court off Tottenham Court Road ! And the heart of the watcher 
 was praying for only one httle act of grace in Destiny, to grant 
 a short span yet of life, were it no more than a year, to this frail 
 survivor of a long and cruel separation from one whose youth had 
 been another self to her own. 
 
 And as for that other affair, what did she really recollect of 
 it ? Well — she could remember that tight armhole, certainly, 
 and was far from sure she should ever forget it. 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 809 
 
 The chance that had brought the sisters back to each other 
 was so strange that the story of their deception and the loss of 
 every clue to its remedy seemed credible by comparison — a 
 neghgible improbability. Would they necessarily have recog- 
 nised one another at all if that letter had not come into the 
 hands of her father ? She herself woiild never have dared to 
 open it; or, if she had, would she have understood its contents ? 
 Without that letter, what would the course of events have 
 been ? Go back and think of it ! Imagine old Mrs. Picture in 
 charge of Widow Thrale, groimdedly suspected of lunacy, miser- 
 able under the fear that the suspicion might be true — ^for who 
 can gauge his own sanity ? Imagine Granny Marrable, kept 
 away at Denby by her daughter, that her old age should not be 
 afflicted by a lunatic. Imagine the longing of Sapps Court to 
 have Mrs. Picture back, and the chair with cushions, in the top 
 garret, that yawned for her. Imagine these, and remember that 
 probably old Maisie, to seem sane at any cost, would have gone 
 on indefinitely keeping silence about her own past life, whatever 
 temptation she may have been under to speak again of the mill- 
 model, invisible in its carpet-roll above the fireplace. Remember 
 that what Dr. Nash ehcited from her, as an interesting case of 
 dementia, was not necessarily repeated to Mrs. Thrale, and 
 would have been a dead letter in the columns of the Lancet later 
 on. Certainly the chances of an iclairciasement were at a mini- 
 mum when Gwen returned from London, her own newly acquired 
 knowledge of its materials apart. But then, how about the poor 
 crazy old soul's daughter's new-bom love for her unrecognized 
 mother, and her mysteriously heart-whole return for it ? 
 
 That might have brought the end about. But to Gwen it 
 seemed speculative and uncertain, and to point to no more than 
 a possible return to London of the mother, accompanied by her 
 unknown and unknowing daughter. A curious vision fiashed 
 across her mind of Ruth Thrale, entertained at Sapps by old 
 Mrs. Picture; and there, by the window, the table with the new 
 leg; and, in the drawer of it ... . what ? A letter written five- 
 and-forty years ago, that had changed the lives of both ! Gwen's 
 imagination restored the unread letter to its place, with rigid 
 honesty. But — how strange ! 
 
 Then her imagination came downstairs, and glanced in on the 
 way at the room where the mysterious fireman, who came from 
 the sky, had deposited the half-insensible old lady, after the 
 cataclysm. It was Uncle Mo's room, on the safe side of the 
 house; and the walls were enriched with prints of heroes of 
 
810 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the Ring in old time; Figg and Broughton, Belcher and Bendigo, 
 sparring for ever in close-fitting pants by themselves on a very 
 fine day. She recalled how the unmoved fireman, departing, 
 had shown a human interest in one of these, remarking that it 
 was a namesake of his. Suppose that fireman had not been at 
 hand, how would old Maisie have been got downstairs ? Suppose 
 that she herself had been flattened under the ruins, would all 
 things now have been quite otherwise ? See how much had 
 turned on that visit to Cavendish Square ! No — a hundred 
 things had happened, the absence of any one of which might 
 have changed the current of events, and left- old Maisie to end 
 her days undeceived; and perhaps the whole tale of her lonely 
 life and poverty to come to hght afterwards, and cast a gloom 
 without a chance of solace over the last hours of her surviving 
 twin 
 
 Was that the movement of a long-drawn breath, the precursor 
 of an unspoken farewell to the land of dreams ? Scarcely ! 
 Nothing but a fancy, this time, bred of watching too closely in 
 the silence ! Wait for the clear signs of awakening, sure to come, 
 in time ! 
 
 It was so still, Gwen could hear the swift tick-tick-tiok in 
 the watch-pocket at the bed's head; and, when she listened to 
 it, her consciousness that the big clock in the kitchen was at 
 odds- with the hearth-cricket, rebuking his speed solemnly, grew 
 less and less. For the sound we look to hear comes out of the 
 silence, when no other sound has in it the force to speak on its 
 own behalf. Two closed doors made the kitchen-chorus dim. 
 The new faggot had said its say, and given in to mere red heat, 
 with a stray flicker at the end. Drip and trickle were without, 
 and now and then a plash that said : — " Keep in doors, because 
 of me !" Gwen closed her eyes, as, since she was so wakeful, 
 she could do so with perfect safety; and listened to that indus- 
 trious little watch. 
 
 It had become Dolly reciting the days of the week, before she 
 knew her vigilance was in danger. Gwen was certainly not asleep 
 long, because Dolly had only got to the second Tundy, when a 
 scream awoke her, close at hand to where DoUy was seated on 
 General Rawnsley's knee. But it was quick work, to think out 
 where she was, and to throw her arms round the frail, trembling 
 form that was starting up from some terror of dreamland un- 
 explained, on the bed beside her. 
 
 " What is it, dear, what is it ? Don't be frightened. See, 
 I'm Gwen ! I brought you here, you know. There — there ! 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 811 
 
 Now it's all right." She spoke as one speaks to a frightened 
 child. 
 
 Old Maisie was trembling all over, and did not know where 
 she was, at first. " Don't let him come — don't let him come !" 
 was what she kept saying, over and over again. This passed off, 
 and she knew Gwen, but was far from clear about time and place. 
 Questioned as to who it was that was not to come, she had 
 forgotten, but was aware she had been asleep and dreaming. 
 " Did I make a great noise and shout out ?" said she. 
 
 Ruth Thrale appeared, waked by the cry. It had not added 
 to her uneasiness. " She was like this, all yesterday," said she. 
 " All on the jar. Dr. Nash hopes it will pass off." Ruth, of 
 course, knew nothing of the coming of the son's letter, and 
 regarded her mother's state as only a fluctuation. She had a 
 quiet self-command that refused to be panic-struck. In fact, 
 she had held back from coming, long enough to make sure that 
 Granny Marrable had slept through the scream. That was aU 
 right. Gwen urged her to go back to bed, and prevailed over 
 her by adopting a positive tone. She agreed to go when she had 
 made " her mother " swallow something to sustain life. Gwen 
 asked if the champagne had continued in favour. " She doesn't 
 fancy it alone," said Ruth. " But I put it in milk, and she 
 takes it down without knowing it." Probably nurses are the 
 most fraudulent people in the world. 
 
 Old Maisie kept silence resolutely about the letter until Ruth 
 had gone back; which she only did unwillingly, as concession to 
 a jarce, majeure. Then the old lady said: — "Is she gone ? I 
 would not have her see her brother's letter. But I would be 
 glad you should see it, my dear." She was exploring feebly 
 under her pillow and bolster, to find it. Gwen understood. 
 " It's not there," said she. " I have it here. Granny Marrable 
 got at it to show to me." She hoped the old lady was not going 
 to insist on having that letter re-read. It made the fouiness of 
 the criminal world, unknown to her except as material for the 
 legitimate drama, a horrible reality, and bred misgivings that 
 the things in the newspapers were really true. 
 
 Old Maisie disappointed her. " Read me aloud what my son 
 says," said she. Then Gwen understood what Granny Marrable 
 had meant when she said that, of the two, her sister had under- 
 stood it the better. For as she uttered the letter's repulsive 
 expressions, reluctantly enough, a side-glance showed her old 
 Maisie's listening face and closed eyes, nowise disturbed at her 
 son's rather telling description of his hunted life. At the refer- 
 
812 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 ence to the " newscraper scrap " she said: — " Yes, Phoebe read 
 me that with her glasses. He got away." Gwen felt that that 
 strange past life, in a land where almost every settler had the 
 prison taint on him, had left old Maisie abler to endure the 
 flavour of the gaol-bird's speech about himself. It was as though 
 an Angel who had been in Hell might know all its ways, and yet 
 remain unsullied by the knowledge. 
 
 But at the words: — " Do you long to see your loving son ?" 
 she moved and spoke uneasily. " What does he mean ? Oh, 
 what does he mean ? Was it all his devil ?" She seemed ill 
 able to find words for her meaning, but Gwen took it that she 
 was trying to express some hint of a better self in this son, per- 
 haps latent behind the evil spirit that possessed him. 
 
 Her comment was : — " Oh dear no ! What he means is that 
 he will come and frighten you to death if you don't send him 
 money. It is only a threat to get money. Dear Mrs. Picture, 
 don't you fret about him. Leave him to me and my father. 
 .... What does he mean by a quid ? A hundred pounds, I 
 suppose ? And a fiver, five hundred ? .... is that it ?" 
 
 " Oh no — he would never ask me for all that money ! A quid 
 is a guinea — only there are no guineas now. He means a five- 
 pound-note by a fiver." Her voice died from weakness. The 
 " Please go on !" that followed, was barely audible. 
 
 Gwen read on : — " ' Just for to enable him to lead an honest 
 life.' Dear Mrs. Picture, I must tell you I think this is what is 
 called sneering. You know what that means ? He is not in 
 earnest." 
 
 " Oh yes — I know. I am afraid you are right. But — ^is it 
 himself?" That idea of the devil again ! 
 
 Gwen evaded the devil. " We must hope not," said she. 
 She went on, learning by the way what a "mag " was, and a 
 " flimsy." She paused on Aunt M'riar. Why was " M'riar " 
 to act as this man's agent ? She wished Thothmes was there, 
 with his legal acumen. But old Maisie might be able to tell 
 something. She questioned her gently. How did she suppose 
 Aunt Maria came to know anything of her son ? She had to 
 wait for the answer. 
 
 It came in time. " Not Aunt M'riar. Someone else." 
 
 "No — Aunt Maria. She wrote her name on the envelope; 
 to show where it came from, I suppose." The perplexity sug- 
 gested silenced old Maisie. Gwen compared the handwritings 
 of the letter and direction. They were the same — a man's hand, 
 clearly. " From Aunt Maria " was in a woman's hand. Gwen 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 813 
 
 did not attempt to clear up the mystery. She was too anxious 
 about the old lady, and, indeed, was feeling the strain of this 
 irregular night. For, strong as she was, she was human. 
 
 Her anxiety kept the irresistible powers of Sleep at bay for 
 awhile; and then, when it was clear that old Maisie was slumber- 
 ing again, with evil dreams in abeyance, she suirendered at dis- 
 cretion. All the world became dim, and when the clock struck 
 four, ten seconds later, she did not hear the last stroke. 
 
 When Gwen awoke six hours after, she had the haziest recollec- 
 tions of the night. How it had come about that she found herself 
 in another room, warmly covered up, and pillowed on luxury 
 itself, with a smell of lavender in it that alone was bliss, she 
 could infer from Ruth Thrale's report. This went to show that 
 when Ruth and Granny Marrable came into the room at about 
 six, they found her ladyship undisguisedly asleep beside old 
 Maisie; and when she half woke, persuaded her away to more 
 comfortable quarters. She had no distinct memory of details, 
 but found them easy of belief, told by eyewitnesses. 
 
 How was the dear old soul herself ? Had she slept sound, 
 or been roused again by nightmares ? Well — she had certainly 
 done better than on the previous afternoon and evening, after 
 the receipt of that letter. Thus Granny Marrable, in conference 
 with her ladyship at the isolated breakfast of the latter. Ruth, 
 to whom the contents of the letter were still unknown, was 
 keeping guard by her mother. 
 
 " We put it all down to your ladyship," said the Granny, with 
 grave truthfulness — ^not a trace of flattery. " She can never 
 tire of telling the good it does her to see you." This was the 
 nearest she could go, without personahty, to a hint at the effect 
 the sheer beauty of her hearer had on the common object of their 
 anxiety. 
 
 Gwen knew perfectly well what she meant. She was used to 
 this sort of thing. " She likes my hair," said she, to lubricate 
 the talk; and gave the mass of unparalleled gold an illustrative 
 shake. Then, to steer the ship into less perilous, more impersonal 
 
 waters : " I must have another of those dehghtful httle hot 
 
 rolls, if I die for it. Mr. Torrens's mother — him I brought here, 
 you know; he's got a mother — says new bread at breakfast is 
 sudden death. I don't care !" 
 
 The Granny was fain to soften any implied doubt of a County 
 Magnate's infallibiHty, even when uttered by one still greater. 
 " A many," said she, " do not find them unwholesome." This 
 
814 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 left the question pleasantly open. But she was at a loss to 
 express something she wanted to say. It is difficult to tell your 
 guest, however surpassingly beautiful, that she has been mis- 
 taken for an Angel, even when the mistake has been made by 
 failing powers or delirium, or both together. Yet that was 
 what Graimy Marrable's perfect truthfulness and literal thought 
 were hanging fire over. Old Maisie had said to her, in speech 
 as passionate as her weakness allowed: — " Phoebe, dearest 
 Phoebe, my lady is God's Angel, come from Heaven to drive the 
 fiend out of the heart of my poor son." And Phoebe, to whom 
 everything Uke concealment was hateful, wanted sorely to repeat 
 to her ladyship the conversation which ended in this climax. 
 Otherwise, how could the young lady come to know what was 
 passing in Maisie's mind ? 
 
 She approached the subject with caution. " My dear sister's 
 mind," said she, " has been greatly tried. So we must think 
 the less of exciting fancies. But I would not say her nay in any- 
 thing she would have me think." 
 
 Gwen's attention was caught. "What sort of things ?" said she. 
 " Yes — some more coffee please, and a great deal of sugar !" 
 
 " Strange, odd things. Stories, about Van Diemens Land." 
 
 Gwen had a clue, from her tone. " Has she been telling you 
 about the witch-doctor, and the devil, and the scorpion, and the 
 little beast ?" 
 
 " They were in her story. It made my flesh creep to hear so 
 outlandish a tale. And she told your ladyship ?" 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! She has told me all about it ! And not only 
 me, but Mr. Torrens. The old darling ! Did she tell you of the 
 little polecat beast the doctor ate, who was called a devil, and 
 how he possessed the doctor — no getting rid of him ?" 
 
 " She told me something like that." 
 
 " And what did you say to her ?" 
 
 " I said that Our Lord cast out devils that possessed the swine, 
 and had He cast them again out of the swine, they might have 
 possessed Christians. For I thought, to please Maisie, I might 
 be forgiven such speech." 
 
 " Why not ? That was all right." Gwen could not under- 
 stand why Scripture should be inadmissible, or prohibited. 
 
 Granny Marrable seemed to think it might be the latter. " I 
 would not be thought," she said, "to compare what we are i 
 taught in the Bible with .... with things. Our Lord was in 
 Galilee, and we are taught what came to pass. This was in The 
 Colonies, where any one of us might be, to-day or to-morrow." 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 816 
 
 Gwen appreciated the distinction. It would clearly be ir- 
 reverent to mention a nowadays-devil, close at hand, in the same 
 breath as the remoter Gadarenes. She said nothing about 
 Galilee being there still, with perhaps the identical breed of swine, 
 and even madmen. The Granny's inner vision of Scripture 
 history was unsullied by realisms — a true history, of course, but 
 clear of vulgar actuaUties. Still, something was on her mind 
 that she was bound to speak about to her ladyship, and she was 
 forced to use the Gospel account of an incident " we were taught '' 
 to believe no longer possible, as a means of communicating to 
 Gwen what she herself held to be no more than a feverish dream 
 of her sister's weakness. Gwen detected in her tone its protest 
 against the confusion of vulgar occurrences, in all their coarse 
 authenticity, with the events of Holy Writ, and forthwith 
 launched out in an attempt to find the underlying cause of it. 
 " Did the old darling," said she, " tell you how Rookaroo, or 
 whatever his name was, passed his devil on to her husband and 
 son ?" 
 
 " I think, my lady, she has that idea." 
 
 " It seems to me a very reasonable idea," said Gwen. " Once 
 you have a devil at all, why not ? And it was to be like the 
 madman ia the tombs in the land of the Gadarenes ! Poor old 
 darling Mrs. Pictiu:e !" 
 
 Old Phoebe felt very uncomfortable, for Gwen was not taking 
 the devil seriously. Although scarcely prepared to have Scrip- 
 ture used to substantiate a vulgar Colonial sample, the old lady 
 was even less ready to have such a one doubted, if the doubt 
 was to recoil on his prototype. " Maisie is of the mind to fancy 
 this evil spirit might even now be driven from her son's heart, 
 and bring him to repentance. But I told her a many things 
 might be, in the days of our blessed Lord, in the Holy Land, that 
 were forbidden now. It was just his own wickedness, I told her, 
 and no devil to be cast out. But she was so bent on the idea, 
 that I could not find it in me to say this man might not repent 
 and turn to Godliness yet, by your ladyship's influence, or Parson 
 Dunage's." This introduction of the incumbent of Chorlton was 
 an afterthought. The fact is. Granny Marrable was endeavour- 
 ing to suggest a rationalistic interpretation of her sister's un- 
 disguised mysticism; fever-bred, no doubt, but scarcely to be 
 condemned as delusion outright without impugning devils, who 
 are standard institutions. Good influences, brought to bear on 
 perverted human hearts, are quite correct and modem, 
 
 Graimy Marrable's words left Gwen unsuspicious that powers 
 
 52 
 
816 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOSTS 
 
 of exorcism had been imputed to her. The ascription of them 
 might be — certainly was — nothing but an outcome of the over- 
 strain and tension of the last few days, but the repetition of it 
 in cold blood to its subject might have been taken to mean that it 
 was a sjmiptom of insanity. Gwen did not press her to tell more, 
 as Dr. Nash made his appearance. The frequency of his visits was 
 a source of uneasiness to her. She would have Uked to hear him 
 say there was now no need for him to come again till he was sent 
 for. 
 
 " Any fresh developments ?" said he, as Granny Marrable 
 left the room to herald his arrival. He heard Gwen's account 
 of her own experience in the night, and seemed disquieted. 
 " I wish," said he abruptly, " that people would keep their 
 letters to themselves. I am not to be told what was in the 
 letter, I understand 1" For Gwen had skipped the contents of 
 it, merely saying that Mrs. Picture had asked to hear her letter 
 read through again. 
 
 Then Widow Thrale came in, saying her mother was ready to 
 see the doctor. Mother was with her mother, she said. The 
 doctor departed into the bedroom. 
 
 "How long has your mother been awake?" asked Gwen, 
 under no drawback about the designation. 
 
 " Quite half an hour. I told her your ladyship was having a 
 little breakfast. She always asks for you." 
 
 " I heard that she was talking, through the door. What has 
 she been talking about ?" 
 
 Buth's memory went back conscientiously, for a starting- 
 point. " About her annuity," she said, " first. Then about 
 the young children — ^little Dave and Dolly. That's mother's 
 little Dave, only it's all so strange to think of. And then she 
 talked about the accident." 
 
 " What about her annuity ? I'm curious about that. I 
 wonder who sends it to ^:er ?" 
 
 " She says it comes from the Ofl&ce, because they know her 
 address. She says Susan Burr took them the new address, 
 when they left Skillick's. She says she writes her name on the 
 back " 
 
 " It's a cheque, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Your ladyship would know. Susan Burr takes it to the 
 Bank and brings back the money." Ruth hesitated over say- 
 ing : — " I would be happier my mother should not fret so about 
 herself .... she was for making her will, and I told her there 
 would be time for that." 
 
ANOTHER NIGHT WATCH 817 
 
 " Oh yes— plenty !" Gwen thought to herself that old Mrs. 
 Picture's testamentary arrangements were of less importance 
 than tranquillity, as matters stood at present. " What did she 
 say of Dave and Dolly V 
 
 " She was put about to think how they would be told, if she 
 died." 
 
 " How would they be told ? . . . I can't think." Gwen asked 
 herself the question, and parried it. 
 
 Ruth Thrale escaped in a commonplace. The dear children 
 would have to be told, but they would not grieve for long. 
 Children didn't. 
 
 Gwen hoped she was right — always a good thing to do. But 
 what had her mother said about the accident ? Oh — the acci- 
 dent ! Well — she remembered very little of it. She did not 
 know why she should have become half unconscious. The last 
 thing she could be clear about was that Dave was shouting for 
 joy, and Dolly frightened and crying. Then a gentleman 
 carried her upstairs out of a carriage. 
 
 " No !" said Gwen. " Carried her downstairs into a car- 
 riage Oh no ! — I know what she meant. It was my 
 
 cousin Percy, not the fireman." 
 
 At this point Dr. Nash returned from the bedroom. Gwen 
 began hoping that he had found his patient really better, but 
 something stopped her speech, and she said: — "Oh!" Ruth 
 Thrale was outside the room by then, far enough to miss the 
 disappointment in her voice. 
 
 Dr. Nash glanced round to make sure she was out of hearing, 
 and closed the door. " I don't like to say much, either way," 
 said he. 
 
 Gwen turned pale. " You need not be afraid to tell me," she 
 said. 
 
 " I see you know what I mean," said he, reading into her 
 thoughts. " Miracle apart, one knows what to expect. I don't 
 believe in any miracle, though certainly she has everything in 
 her favour for it, in one sense." 
 
 " Meaning 1" said Gwen interrogatively. 
 
 " Meaning that she has absolutely nothing the matter with 
 her. If she has any active disorder, all I can say is it has baffled 
 me to find it out." 
 
 " But, then, why ? " 
 
 " Why be frightened ? Listen, and I'll tell you We 
 
 gain nothing, you know, by not looking the facts in the face." 
 
 "I know. Go on." Gwen aat down, and waited. Some 
 
818 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 faces lose under stress of emotion. It was a peculiarity of this 
 young lady's that every fresh tension added to the surpassing 
 beauty of hers. 
 
 " I want you," said the doctor, speaking in a dry, business- 
 like way — " I want you to go back to when you brought her 
 down here from London. TWnk of her then." 
 
 " I am thinking of her. I can remember her then, perfectly." 
 And Gwen, thinking of that journey, saw her old companion 
 plainly enough. A very old delicate woman, in need of con- 
 sideration and care. No bedridden invalid ! 
 
 " When did the change show itself ?" The doctor took the 
 image in her mind for granted, successfully. 
 
 Then Gwen cast about to find an answer. " I think it must 
 have been . . . ." said she, and stopped. 
 
 " When did you see it ?" 
 
 " When I came back, first. After I told her, still more." 
 
 •' After that ?" 
 
 " I thought she was improving, every day." 
 
 " I thought you thought so." 
 
 " And you mean that it was a mistake. Oh dear !" 
 
 The doctor shook his head, slowly and sadly. " Yesterday, 
 at this time," said he, " she could sit up in bed. With an exer- 
 tion, you know ! To-day she can't do it at all." Both remained 
 silent, and seemed to accept a conclusion that did not need 
 words. Then the doctor resumed, speaking very quietly : — " It 
 is always like this. Two steps back and one forward — ^two steps 
 back and one forward. We see the one step on because we 
 want to. We don't want to see what's unwelcome. So we don't 
 discount the losses." 
 
 Then Gwen, with that quiet resolution which he had known 
 to be part of her character, or he would scarcely have been so 
 explicit, said: — " What will she die of ?" 
 
 " Old age, accelerated by mental perturbation." 
 
 " Can you at all guess when ?" 
 
 " If she had any definite malady, I could guess better. She 
 may linger on for weeks. It won't go to months, in any case. 
 Or she may pop off before that clock strikes." 
 
 " Shall we tell them ?" 
 
 " I say no. No. They will probably have her the longer for 
 not knowing. And, mind you, she is keeping her faculties. She's.. 
 wonderfully bright, and is sufEering absolutely nothing." j 
 
 " You are sure of that 1" , 
 
 " Absolutely sure. Go in and talk to her now. You'll find. 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 819 
 
 her quite herself, but for a little fancifuhiess at times. It really 
 is no more than that. . . . By-the-by !.,.." 
 
 " What ?" 
 
 " Do you know what was in the letter that upset her so ? The 
 old Granny did not say what was in it, and charged me to say 
 nothing to her daughter." The doctor had all but said: — " To 
 their daughter !" 
 
 " I know what was in the letter." Gwen paused a moment to 
 consider how much she should tell, and then took the doctor into 
 her confidence; not exhaustively, but sufficiently. " You are 
 supposed to know nothing about it," said she. " But I don't 
 think it much matters, so long as Ruth — ^Widow Thrale — does 
 not know. That is her mother's wish. I don't suppose she 
 really minds, about you." 
 
 " All I can say is, I wish to God this infernal scoundrel's devil 
 would fly away with him. Grood-moming. I shall be round 
 again about six o'clock." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HOW SPAEEOWS GOEMANDISB. DAVE's CISTEEN. DOLLY AND 
 
 Jones's bull, the i^tteb had done it. how tom 
 
 KBTTBEING DEOVE WIDOW THEALB TO DENBY's FARM, AND 
 MAISIB WOKE UP. HOW DAVE ATE TOO MANY MULBEEEIES. 
 OLD JASPEE. OLD GOSSET AND CULLODEN. HIS TOES. 
 HOW MAISIB ASKED TO SEE THE OLD MODEL AGAIN, AND HAD 
 IT OUT BESIDE THE BED. DID IT GO BOUND, OR WAS DAVE 
 MISTAKEN ? THE GLASS WATEE, AND HOW MAISIB HAD 
 BEOKEN A PIECE OEE, SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW A RATCHBT- 
 SPEING STRUCK WOEK. WAS IT TOBY OB TOFT ? BAENABY. 
 BEAINTREE. ST. PAUL's. BARNABY's CO-RESPONDENCE. OLD 
 OmPSTONE. HOW PHCEBE NEARLY LOST HER EYE. OLD 
 MARTHA PRICHARD. A EEVBBIE OF GWBN'S, ENDING IN 
 LAZAEUS. MAISIE's PUESE 
 
 Has it ever been your lot — ^you who read this — to be told that 
 Life is ebbing, slowly, slowly, every clock-tick telling on the 
 hours that are left before the end — the end of all that has made 
 ^our fellow in the flesh more than an image and a name 1 Iq 
 
820 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 80 many hours, so many minutes, that image as it was will be 
 vanishing, that name will be a memory. All that made either 
 of them ours to love or hate, to be thought of as friend or foe, 
 will have ceased for all time — ^for all the time we anticipate; 
 more, or less as may be, than Oblivion's period, named in her pact 
 with Destiny. In so many hours, so many minutes, that unseen 
 mystery, the thing we call our friend's, our foe's, own self will 
 make no sign to show that this is he. And we shall determine 
 that he is no more, or agree that he has departed, much as we 
 have been taught to think, but little as we have learned to know. 
 
 If you yourself have outlived other lives, and yet borne the 
 foreknowledge of Death unmoved, you will not understand why 
 Gwen's heart within her, when she heard Dr. Nash's words and 
 took their meaning, should be likened to a great stifled sob, nor 
 why she had to summon all her powers afield to bear arms against 
 her tears. They came at her call, and fought so well that the 
 enemy had fled before she had to show dry eyes, and speak with 
 normal voice, to Ruth Thrale, who came in to say that her 
 mother was asking for her ladyship. Come what might, she must 
 keep her gloomy knowledge from Ruth. 
 
 " What a fuss about old me !" says the voice from the pillow, 
 speaking low, but with happy contentment. " Would not anyone 
 think I was dying ?" 
 
 Now, if only Dr. Nash would have kept those prophecies to 
 himself, Gwen would have thought her better. She could have 
 discounted the weakness, or laid it down to imperfect nourish- 
 ment. She could not trust herself to much speech, saying only : — 
 "We shall have you walking about soon, and what will the doctor 
 say then ?" 
 
 She looked across at the old sister, grave and silent, whom she 
 had supposed unoppressed, so far, by medical verdicts. But 
 the invitation of a smile she achieved, mechanically, to help 
 towards incredulity of Death, only met a half-response. " In- 
 deed, my lady," said Granny Marrable, " we shall have some 
 time to wait for that, if she will still eat nothing. A sparrow 
 could not live upon the little food she takes." 
 
 What was old Maisie saying ? She could live on less than a 
 sparrow's food — ^that was the upshot. The sparrow was a greedy 
 little bird, and she had seen him gormandise in Sapps Court. 
 " My darling Dave and Dolly," she said, " would feed them, on 
 the leads at the back, out of my bedroom window, where the 
 cistern is." Gwen perceived the source of a misapprehension of 
 Dave's. 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 821 
 
 " He's to come here," said she. " Him and Dolly. And then 
 they can feed the cocks and hens." 
 
 " When I'm up," said old Maisie. She had no misgivings. 
 " When you're up." 
 
 " And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull 1" 
 " And Dave may go and see Farmer Jones's Bull." 
 " But not Dolly, because she would be frightened." 
 " Not Dolly, then. DoUy is small, to see Bulls." Old Maisie 
 closed her eyes upon this, and enjoyed the thought of Dave's 
 rapture at that appalling Bull. 
 
 Granny Marrable indicated by two glances, one at Gwen, the 
 other at the white face on the pillow, that her sister might sleep, 
 given silence. Gwen watched for the slackening of the hand that 
 held hers, to get gently free. Old Phoebe did the same, and drew 
 the bed-curtain noiselessly, to hide the window-light. Both stole 
 away, leaving what might have been an alabaster image, scarcely 
 breathing, on the bed. 
 
 " It is the letter that has done it. Oh, how unfortunate !" 
 So Gwen spoke, to the Granny, in the kitchen : for Euth, though 
 attending to the Sunday dinner, was for the moment absent. So 
 the letter could be referred to. 
 
 " I fear what your ladyship says is true." 
 
 " But at least we know what it is that has done it. That is 
 something." Granny Marrable seemed slow to understand. " I 
 mean, if it had not been for the letter, she certainly need not 
 have been any worse than she was ' at Sunday. She was getting 
 on so well, Ruth said, on Friday, afi-er the champagne. Oh 
 dear !" 
 
 " It will be as God wills, my lady. If my dear sister is again to 
 be taken from me . . . ." 
 
 " Oh, Granny, do not let us talk like that !" But Gwen could 
 put little heart into her protest. The doctor had taken all the 
 wind out of her sails. 
 
 Old Phoebe let the interruption pass. " If Maisie dies . . . ." 
 said she, and stopped. 
 
 " If Maisie dies ....?" said Gwen, and waited. 
 
 The answer came, but not at once. " It is the second time." 
 
 " I don't think I quite understand, Granny," said Gwen gently. 
 Which was meant, that this made it easier to bear, or harder 1 
 
 " I am slow to speak what I think, my lady. I would like to 
 
 find words to say it I lost Maisie forty-five— yes !— 
 
 forty-six years ago, and the grief of her loss is with me still. 
 
822 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Had she died here, near at hand, so I might have known where 
 they laid her, I would have kept fresh flowers on her grave till 
 now. But she was dead, far away across the sea. I am too old 
 now for what has come of it. But I can see what-like it all is. 
 Maisie is with me again, from the tomb — for a little while, and 
 then to go. She will go first, and I shall soon follow; it cannot 
 be long. No — ^it cannot be long ! The light will come. And 
 God be praised for His goodness ! We shall lie in one grave, 
 Maisie and I. We shall not be parted in Death." These last 
 words Gwen accepted as conventional. She listened, somewhat 
 as in a dream, to Granny Marrable's voice, going quietly on, with 
 no very audible undertone of pain in it : — " It is not of myself 
 I am thinking, but my child. She has found her mother, and 
 loved her, before she knew it was herself, risen from the grave. 
 .... Oh no — ^no — ^no, my lady, I know it all well. My head 
 is right. Maisie has been at hand these long years past, all 
 unknown to me — oh, how cruelly unknown !" Here her words 
 broke a little, with audible pain. " Her coming to us has been a 
 resurrection from the tomb. It is little to me now, I am so near 
 the end. But my heart goes out to my child, who will lose her 
 mother Hush, she is coming back !" 
 
 The thought in Gwen's heart was: — " Pity me too. Granny, 
 for I too — I, with all the wealth of the world at my feet ! — shall 
 feel a heartstring snap when this frail old waif and stray, so 
 strangely found by me in a London slum, so strangely brought 
 back by me into your life again, has passed away into the im- 
 known." For she had scarcely been alive till now to the whole 
 of her mysterious affection for dear old Mrs. Kcture. 
 
 Ruth Thrale came back, and the day went on. Old Maisie 
 remained asleep, sleeping as the effigy sleeps upon a tomb, but 
 always with regular breath, barely sensible, and the same slow 
 pulse. Now and again it might have seemed that breath had 
 ceased. But it was not so. If the powers of life were on the 
 wane, it was very slowly. 
 
 Tom Kettering returned at the appointed time, to a minute, 
 and took no notice of his own arrival beyond socketing his whip 
 in its stall, in token of its abdication. He had been told to come 
 and wait, and he proceeded to wait, sine die. Gwen interrupted 
 him in this employment, by coming out to tell him that she was 
 stopping on, and that he was to go back to the Towers and say 
 so. He looked so depressed at this that she bethought her of a 
 compensation. She knew that Buth Thrale had cause for 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 823 
 
 anxiety about her own daughter; and, so far as could be seen, 
 her immediate presence was not necessary, for no change ap- 
 peared inmunent. So she persuaded, or half -commanded, Ruth 
 to be driven over to Denby's Farm by Tom Kettering, to remain 
 there two or three hours, and be brought back by him or other- 
 wise, as might be convenient. Her son-in-law might drive her 
 back, and Tom might return to the Towers. It would make 
 her mind easier to see Maisie junior, and get a forecast of prob- 
 abilities at the faun. Ruth was not hard to prevail upon to do 
 this, and was driven away by Tom over slushy roads, through 
 the irresolute Winter's unseasonable Christmas Eve, after dele- 
 gating some of her functions to Elizabeth-next-door. 
 
 Old Maisie still remained asleep, and almost motionless. With 
 some help from Elizabeth-next-door the perfunctory midday 
 meal had been served, very little more than looked at, and cleared 
 away; then the motionless figure on the bed stirred visibly, 
 breathed almost audibly. At this time of the day vitality is at 
 its best, with most of us. Gwen, standing by the bedside, saw 
 the lips move, and, bending forward, heard speech. 
 
 When she said, a moment after: — " I think I must have been 
 asleep. I'm awake now," — she uttered the words much as Gwen 
 had always heard her speak. Yet another moment, and she 
 said: — " I was dreaming, Phoebe dear, dreaming of our mill. 
 And I was asking for you in my dream. Because Dave was up 
 in our mulberry-tree, and wouldn't come down." She showed 
 how perfectly clear her head was, by saying to Gwen : — " My 
 dear, if I could have kept asleep, I would have seen Phoebe young 
 again. You would never think how young she was then." 
 
 Gwen felt that she was nowise bound to dwell on the futility 
 of dreams, and said, as she caressed the old hand's weak hold on 
 her own : — " Was Dave eating too many mulberries in that 
 tree ?" 
 
 Old Maisie smiled happily at the thought of Dave. " His 
 hands were quite purple with the juice," she said. " But he 
 wouldn't come down, and went on eating the mulberries. It was 
 the tree by itself behind the house, near the big hole where the 
 sunflowers grew." 
 
 Granny Marrable's memory spanned the chasm — seventy 
 years or so ! " The biggest mulberry," she said, " was Old 
 
 Jasper, in the front garden, near the wall It was always 
 
 called Old Jasper." This replied to a look of Gwen's. Why 
 ehould a mulberry-tree be called Old Jasper 1 Well— why should 
 anything be called anything ? 
 
824 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I can smell the honeysuckle," said old Mrs. Picture. And 
 her face looked quite serene and happy. " But the pigeons used 
 to get all the mulberries on that tree, because they were close 
 
 by." 
 
 " It stood by itself," said Granny Marrable. " And all the 
 fruit-trees were in the orchard. So old Gosset with the wooden 
 leg was always on that side with his clapper, never out in front." 
 
 " Old Gosset — ^who lost his leg at the battle of Culloden ! I 
 remember him so well. He said he could feel his toes all the 
 same as if they was ten. He said it broke his heart to see the 
 many cherries the birds got, for all the noise he made. He said 
 
 they got bold, when they found he had a wooden leg " 
 
 She paused, hesitating, and then asked for Ruth. 
 
 Gwen told her how Ruth had gone to her own daughter, who 
 was married, and how a second grandchild was overdue. In 
 telling this, she feared she might not be understood. So she 
 was pleased to hear old Mrs. Kcture say quite clearly: — " Oh, 
 but I know. A long while ago — ^my child — ^my Ruth — ^when 
 she was Widow Thrale .... told me all that " 
 
 " Yes, yes !" Gwen struck in. " / know. When you were 
 here at the cottage, before . . . ." she hesitated. 
 
 " Yes, before," said old Mrs. Picture. " When she showed me 
 our old model, and did not know. That was the time she thought 
 
 me mad. Phoebe — ^I want you .... I want you " Her 
 
 voice was getting weaker; as it would do, after much talking. 
 
 " What ? — ^I wonder !" said Granny Marrable, and waited. 
 
 Gwen guessed. " You want to see the old model again ? Is 
 that it ?" Yes, she did. That was a good guess. 
 
 " Maisie dearest, I will fetch you the model to the bedside, 
 and light candles, so you shall see it. Only you will eat some- 
 thing first — to please me — to please my lady — ^will you not ? 
 Then you may be able to sit up, you know, and look at it." 
 Granny Marrable jumped at the opportunity to get some food — 
 ever so little — down her sister's ttiroat. She had not given up 
 hope of her reviving, if only for a while. Bear in mind that she 
 was still in the dark about the doctor's real opinion. 
 
 The attempt at refection had a poor show of success, its only 
 triumph worth mentioning being the exhibition of a driblet of 
 champagne in milk. Almost before the patient had swallowed 
 it, she had fallen back on her pillow in a drowsy half -sleep, with 
 what seemed an increased colour, to eyes that were on the watch 
 for it. She remained so until after the doctor's visit at six o'clock. 
 
 The doctor admitted that she had picked up a very little, and 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 825 
 
 when she awoke would probably have another spell of brightness. 
 But .... Speaking with Gwen alone on his way out, he ended 
 on this monosyllable. 
 
 " What does that ' but ' mean, doctor ?" 
 
 " Means that you mustn't expect too much. I suppose you 
 know that the mildest stimulant means reaction." 
 
 " I don't know that I ever thought about it, but I'll take your 
 word for it." 
 
 " Well — ^you may. And you may take my word for this. 
 When the vital powers are near their end — ^without disease, you 
 know, without disease . . . ." 
 
 " I know. She has nothing the matter with her." 
 
 " You can intensify vitality for a moment. But the reaction 
 will come, and must hasten the end. You might halve the 
 outstanding time of Life by doubling the -dtality. If you employ 
 any artificial stimulant, you only use up the heart^beats that are 
 left. The upshot of it is — don't go beyond a tablespoonful twice 
 a day with that liquor." 
 
 " I don't suppose she has had so much." 
 
 " Well — don't go beyond it. There is always the possibility 
 — the bare possibility, even at eighty — of a definite revival. 
 But " 
 
 " But, again, doctor !" 
 
 "But again ! Let it stop at thait. I shall do no better by 
 saying more. If I foresaw .... anything — ^within the next 
 twelve hours, I would stay on to see your ladyship through. 
 But there is nothing to go by. Quite impossible to predict !" 
 
 " Why do you say ' to see me through ' ? Why not her sister 
 and daughter ?" 
 
 " Because they are her sister and daughter. It's all in their 
 day's work. Good-night, Lady Gwendolen." Gwen watched 
 the doctor's gig down the road into the darkness, and saw that 
 a man riding stopped him, as though to give a message. After 
 which she thought he whipped up his pony, which also felt the 
 influence of the rider's cob alongside, and threw off its usual 
 apathy. 
 
 Old Maisie must have waked up just as the doctor departed, 
 for there were voices in the bedroom, and Granny Marrable was 
 coming out. TJie old lady had an end in view. She was bent on 
 getting down the mill-model from over the fireplace. " My dear 
 sister has a great fancy to see it once more," she said. " And 
 I would be Idth to say nay to her." Gwen said:—" Anything 
 
826 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 to keep her mind o£E that brute of a son !" And then between 
 them they got the model down, and unwrapped the cloth from it. 
 Elizabeth-next-door, coming in at this moment, left Gwen free 
 to go back to old Maisie in the bedroom, who seemed roused to 
 expectation. The doctor was clearly wrong, and all was going 
 to be well. Mrs. Picture was not quite herself again, perhaps; 
 but was mending. 
 
 " My dear, I am giving a world of trouble," she said. " But 
 Phoebe is so kind, to take every little word I say." 
 
 " She likes doing it, Mrs. Picture dear. We've got down the 
 mill to show you, and she will get it in here by the bed, so that you 
 shall see without getting up. Elizabeth from next door is there 
 to help her." So the mill-model, that had so much to answer for, 
 was got out from behind its glass, and placed on the little table 
 beside the bed. 
 
 Old Maisie's voice had rallied so much that surely her power 
 of movement should have done so too. But no ! — she could not 
 raise herself in bed. It was an easy task to place her to the best 
 advantage, but the sense of her helplessness was painful to Gwen, 
 who raised her like a child with scarcely an efEort, while Granny 
 Marrable multiplied pillows to support her. The slightest at- 
 tempt on her pajt towards movement would have been reassuring, 
 but none came. 
 
 " I wonder now," she said vaguely. " Was it only Dave 1" 
 
 " What about Dave, dear ? What did Dave say ?" 
 
 " Was it Dave who said it went round ? I had the thought it 
 went round. Which was it ?" 
 
 " I showed it to Dave," said Graimy Marrable, " and then it 
 went, the same as new. I could try it again, only then I must 
 take out the glass water, and put in real. And wind it up." 
 
 Old Mrs. Picture almost laughed, and the pleasure in her voico 
 was good to hear. " Why, now I have it all back !" she said, 
 " And there is father ! Oh, Phoebe, do you remember how angry 
 father was with me for breaking a piece off the glass water ?" 
 
 Granny Marrable was looking for something, in the penetralia 
 ofthemodel. " Oh, I know," said she. "It's in behind the glass 
 
 water I was looking for the piece I'll take the 
 
 glass water out." She did so, and its missing fraction was 
 found, stowed away behind the main cataract, a portion of 
 which appeared to have stopped dead in mid-air. 
 
 " Oh, Phoebe darling," said old Maisie, " we can have it 
 mended." 
 
 " Of course we can," said Gwen. " Do let us make it go round. 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 827 
 
 I want to make it go round, too." Her heart was rejoicing at 
 what seemed so like revival. 
 
 Granny Marrable poured water into what stood for " the 
 sleepy pool above the dam," and found the key to wind up the 
 clockwork. " I remember," said old Maisie. " The water first, 
 and then the key !" Her face was as happy as Dave's had been, 
 watching it. 
 
 But alas for the uncertainty of all things human ! — ^machinery 
 particularly. The key ran back as fast as it was woimd up, and 
 the water slept on above the dam. What a disappointment ! 
 " Oh dear," said Gwen, " it's gone wrong. Couldn't we find a 
 man in the village who could set it right, though it is Simday ?" 
 No — certainly not at eight o'clock in the evening. 
 
 " I fear, my lady," said Granny Marrable, " that it was injured 
 when the little boy Toby aimed a chestnut at it. And had I 
 known of the damage done, I should have allowed him no sugar 
 in his tea. But it may have been Toft, when he repaired the glass, 
 for indeed he is little better than a heathen." She examined it 
 and tried the key again. It was hopeless. 
 
 " Never mind, Phoebe dearest ! I would have loved to see 
 the millwheel turn again, as it did in the old days. Now we 
 must wait for it to be put to rights. I shall see it one day." If 
 she felt that she was sinking, she did not show it. She went 
 
 on speaking at intervals. " Let me lie here and look at it 
 
 Yes, put the candle near That was the deep hole, below 
 
 the wheel, where the fish leapt. . . . Father would not allow us 
 near it, for the danger. . . . There were steps up, and so many 
 nettles. . . . Then above we got to the big pool where the 
 alders were . . . where the herons came. ..." A pause; then: — 
 "Phoebe dearest! " 
 
 " What, darling ?" 
 
 " I was not mad You were not here, or you would have 
 
 known me Would you not ?" 
 
 " I would have known you, Maisie dearest — I would have 
 known you, in time. Not at the first. But when I came to think 
 of it, would I have dared to say the word ?" 
 
 Gwen remembered this answer of old Phoebe's later, and saw 
 its reasonableness. She only saw the practical side at the 
 moment. "Why, Granny," she said — "if it hadn't been the 
 mill, it would have been something else." 
 
 " But I was not mad," Maisie continued. " Only I must have 
 
 frightened my Ruth I went up there once, Phoebe. 
 
 Bamaby took me up one day " 
 
828 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Up where, Mrs. Picture dear 1" Gweii left the old right 
 hand free to show her meaning, but it fell back after a languid 
 effort. The strength was near zero, though no one would have 
 guessed it from the voice. 
 
 " Up there — ^in the roof — ^where the trap comes out 
 
 Phoebe would not come, because of the dust It was so 
 
 hot too Bamaby pulled up a flour-sack, to show me, and 
 
 would have let me out on the trap, only I was frightened, it 
 
 was so high ! I could see all the way over to Braintree 
 
 And Bamaby said on a clear day you could see St. Paul's 
 
 I liked Bamaby — ^I disliked old Muggeridge. ... Do you know, 
 Phoebe dear, I used to think Bamaby's wife was old Muggeridge's 
 sister, because her name had been Muggeridge ?" 
 
 Old Phoebe threw light on the affair. Bamaby's wife was 
 young Mrs. Muggeridge, who had exchanged into another regi- 
 ment — ^was not really Bamaby's wife; that is to say, not his 
 legal wife. 
 
 " But there now !" said old Phoebe, when she had ended this, 
 " if that was not the very first of it all with me, when Dr. Nash 
 he set me a-thinking, by telling of Muggeridge ! For how 
 would I ever have said a word of that old sinner to our little 
 Dave ?" 
 
 Old Maisie's attention was still on the mill-model. " You 
 would not come up into the corn-loft, Phoebe," said she, " be- 
 cause of all the white dust. It was on everything, up there. 
 When I went up with Bamaby the mill was not going, because 
 the stones were out for old Chipstone to dress their faces. His 
 real name was not Chipstone, but ChepstoWi He could do two 
 stones in one day, he worked so quick. So both were got out 
 when he came, and the mill was stopped. Oh, Phoebe, do you 
 remember when a chip flew in your eye, you were so bad ?" 
 
 " Now, to think of that !" said Granny Marrable. " And me 
 clean forgot it all these years ! Old Chipstone, with glasses to 
 shelter his eyesight; like blinkers on a horse. 'Tis all come 
 back to me now, like last week. And I might have been a one- 
 eyed girl all my days, the doctor said, only the chip just came 
 a little out of true. To think that all these years I have for- 
 gotten it, and never thanked God once !" 
 
 " 'Tis the sight of the mill brings it all back," said old Maisie. 
 " I mind it so well, and the guy you looked, dear Phoebe, with a 
 bandage to keep out the light. It was wolfsbane did it good, 
 beat up in water quite fine." 
 
 " Be sure. Only 'twas none of Dr. Adlam's remedies, I lay. 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 829 
 
 .... Wasn't it Martha's— our old Martha ? . . . There, now ! 
 —I've let go her name. . . . 'Twas on the tip of my tongue to 
 say it " 
 
 Old Maisie's voice was getting faint as she said: — " Old Martha 
 
 Prichard .... the name I go by now, Phoebe darling I 
 
 took it to .... to keep a memory . . . ." 
 
 She was speaking in such a dying voice that Gwen struck in 
 to put an end to her exerting it. " I see what you mean," she 
 said. " You mean you took the name to bring back old times. 
 Now be quiet and rest, dear ! You are talking more than is 
 good for you. Indeed you are !" 
 
 Thereon Granny Marrable, though she had never felt clear 
 about the reason <?f this change of name, and now thought she 
 saw enlightenment ahead, followed in compliance with what she 
 conceived to be Lady Gwendolen's wishes. " Now you rest 
 quiet, Maisie dearest, as her ladyship says. What would Dr. 
 Nash think of such a talking ?" 
 
 Ruth might not be back till very late, and as she had not 
 reappeared it might be taken for granted she had stayed to sup 
 with her daughter. Gwen suggested rather timidly — ^for it was 
 going outside her beat — that the grandchild might have chosen 
 its birthday. The Granny said, with a curious certainty, that 
 there was no likelihood of that for a day or two yet, and went to 
 summon Elizabeth from next door, to help with their own 
 supper. She herself was rather old and slow, she said, in matters 
 of house-service. 
 
 Gwen was not sorry to be left for a while to her own reflections 
 before the smouldering red log on the kitchen fire. 
 
 The great bulldog from the lobby without, as though his 
 courtesy could not tolerate such a distiaguished guest being left 
 alone, paid her a visit in her hostess's absence. He showed his 
 consciousness of her identity by licking her hand at once. He 
 would have smelt a stranger carefully all round before bestowing 
 such an honour. Gwen addressed a few words to him of appre- 
 ciation, and expressed her confidence in his integrity. He 
 seemed pleased, and discovered a suitable attitude at her feet, 
 after consideration of several. He looked up from his forepaws, 
 on which his chin rested, with an expression that might have 
 meant anything respectful, from civility to adoration. The 
 cat, with her usual hypocrisy, came outside her fender to profess 
 that she had been on Gwen's side all along, whatever the issue. 
 Her method of explaining this was the sort that trips you up — 
 
830 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 that curls round your ankles and purrs. The cricket was too 
 preoccupied to enter into the affairs of fussy, uncontinuous 
 mortals, and the kettle was cool and detached, but ready to act 
 when called on. The steady purpose of the clock, from which 
 nothing but its own key could turn it, was to strike nine next, 
 and the cloth was laid for supper. Supper was ready for in- 
 carnation, somewhere, and smelt of something that would have 
 appealed to Dave, but had no charm for Gwen. 
 
 For she was sick at heart, and the moment that a pause left 
 her free to admit it, heavy-eyed from an outcrop of head- 
 oppression on the lids. It might have come away in tears, but 
 her tissues grudged an outlet. She saw no balm in Gilead, but 
 she could sit on a little in the silence, for rest. She could 
 hear the voices of the two old sisters through the doors, and 
 knew that Mrs. Picture was again awake, and talking. That 
 was well ! — leave them to each other, for all the time that 
 might still be theirs, this side the grave. 
 
 What a whirl of strange unprecedented excitements had been 
 hers since .... since when ? Thought stopped to ask the ques- 
 tion. Could she name the begiiming of it all ? Yes, plainly 
 enough. It all began, for her, at the end of that long rainy 
 day in July, when the sunset flamed upon the Towers, and she 
 saw a trespasser in the Park, with a dog. She could feel again 
 the unscrupulous paws of Achilles on her bosom, could hear his 
 master's indignant voice calling him off, and then could see those 
 beautiful dark eyes fixed on what their owner could not dream 
 was his for ever, but which those eyes might never see again. 
 She could watch the retiring figure, striding away through the 
 bracken, and wonder that she should have stood there without 
 a thought of the future. Why could she not have seized him 
 and held him in her arms, and baffled all the cruelty of Fate ? 
 For was he not, even then, hers — hers — hers beyond a doubt ? 
 Could she not see now that her heart had said "I love you " 
 even as he looked up from that peccant dog-collar, the source of 
 all the mischief ? 
 
 That was what began it. It was that which led her to stay 
 with her cousin in Cavendish Square, and to a certain impatience 
 with conventional " social duties," making her welcome as a 
 change in excitements an excursion or two into unexplored 
 regions, of which Sapps Court was to be the introductory sample. 
 It was that which had brought into her life this sweet old woman 
 with the glorious hair. No wonder she loved her ! She never 
 thought of her engrossing affection as strange or to be wondered 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN 831 
 
 at. That it should have been bestowed on the twin sister of 
 an old villager in her father's little kingdom in Eocestershire 
 was where the miracle came in. 
 
 And such a strange story as the one she had disinterred and 
 brought to a climax ! And then, when all might have gone so 
 well — ^when a very few years of peace might have done so much to 
 heal the lifelong wounds of the two souls so cruelly wrenched 
 apart half a century ago, that the frail earthly tenement of 
 the one should be too dilapidated to give its tenant shelter ! So 
 small an extension of the lease of life would have made such a 
 difEerence. 
 
 But if it was hard for her to bear, what would it be to the 
 survivor, the old sister who had borne so bravely and well what 
 seemed to Gwen almost harder to endure than a loss; a resurrec- 
 tion from the tomb, or its equivalent ? She had often shuddered 
 to think what the family of Lazarus must have felt; and found 
 no ease from the reflection that they were in the Bible, and it was 
 quite a different thing. They did not know they were in the 
 Bible. 
 
 She helped the parallel a little farther^ while the cricket 
 chirped unmoved. Suppose that Lazarus had died again in 
 earnest from the shock — and suppose, too, please, that he was 
 deeply beloved, which may not have been the case ! How would 
 the wife, mother, sisters, who had said one farewell to him, have 
 borne to see him die a second time ? Of course, Gwen was alive 
 to the fact that it would be bad reUgious form to suggest that 
 this contingency was not covered by some special arrangement. 
 But put it as an hypothesis, like the lady she had ascribed 
 Adrian's ring to ! 
 
 She could hear Granny Marrable's voice and Elizabeth's afar, 
 in conference. That was satisfactory. It made her certain that 
 the slightest sound from old Maisie, so much nearer, would 
 reach her. Her door stood wide, and the other door was just 
 ajar. 
 
 But she did not hear the slightest sound. The dog did, for 
 he flashed into sudden vitality and attention, and was out of 
 the room in an instant. He was unable to say to Granny Mar- 
 rable: — " I heard your invalid move in the bedroom, and I think 
 you had better go and see if she wants you," but he must have 
 gone very near it. For Gwen heard the old lady's step come 
 quicker than her wont along the passage, and she reached the 
 kitchen-door just in time to see her pass into the room opposite. 
 " Is she all right ?" she said. 
 
 63 
 
832 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " I hope she is still asleep, my lady ?" said old Phoebe. 
 But she was not asleep, and said so. Her voice was clear, 
 and the hand Gwen took — so she thought — closed on hers with 
 a greater strength than before. K only she had stirred in bed, 
 it would have seemed a return of living power. But this slight 
 vitality in the hands alone seemed to count for so little. She 
 wanted something, evidently, and both her nurses tried to get 
 a clue to it. It was not food; though, to please them, she 
 promised to take some. Gwen's thought that possibly she had 
 something for her ear alone — ^which she had hesitated to com- 
 municate to old Phoebe — ^was confirmed when the latter left the 
 room to get the beef -tea, and so forth, which was always within 
 reach if needed. For old Maisie said plainly: — " Now I can tell 
 you — my dear !" 
 
 " What about, dear Mrs. Picture ?" said Gwen, caressing the 
 hand she held, and smoothing back the silver locks from the 
 grave grey eyes so earnestly fixed on hers. " Tell me what." 
 
 " My son," said old Maisie. " I have a son, have I not t" — 
 this in a frightened way, as though again in doubt of her own 
 sanity — " and he is bad, is he not, and has written me a letter 1" 
 
 " That's all right. I've got the letter, to show to my father." 
 
 " Oh yes — do show it — ^to the bid gentleman I saw. He is 
 your father " 
 
 " You would like to say something about your son, dear Mrs. 
 Picture — something we can do for you. Now try and tell me 
 jvist what you would like." 
 
 " I want you, my dear, to find me my purse out of the other 
 
 watch-pocket. I asked my Ruth to put it there She is 
 
 Widow Thrale .... is she not ?" Every effort at thought of 
 her surroundings was a strain to her mind, plainly enough. 
 
 " There it is !" said Gwen. " Soon found ! . . . Now, am I to 
 see how much money you've got in it ?" 
 
 " Yes, please !" It was an old knitted silk purse with a slip- 
 ring. In the early fifties the leather purses with snaps, that 
 leak at the seam and let haK-sovereigns through before you find 
 it out, were rare in the pockets of old people. 
 
 " Six new pounds, and one, two, three, f oiu* shillings in silver, 
 and two sixpences, and one f ourpence, and a halfpenny ! Shall 
 I keep it for you, to be safe ?" 
 
 " No, dear ! I want — I want . . . ." 
 
 " I hope," thought Gwen to herself, " she's not going to have 
 it sent to her execrable son. Yes, dear, what is it you want done 
 with it ?" 
 
HOW SHE SAW THE MODEL AGAIN S33 
 
 " I want three of the pounds to go to Susan Burr, for her 
 to pay eight weeks of the rent. It's seven-and-sixpence a week." 
 
 " And the rest — shall I keep it ?" 
 
 " Tell me — my son Ralph's letter. . . . Did it not say that he 
 wanted money ?" 
 
 " Yes, it did. But I'm going to see about that — I and my 
 father." 
 
 Old Maisie's voice became beseeching, gaining strength from 
 earnestness. " Oh my dear — do let me ! And, after all, is it 
 not his money ? For I had nothing of my own when I came 
 back. I might have gone to the workhouse, but for him." 
 What followed, disjointedly, was an attempt to tell the portion of 
 her story that related to the miscarriage of her husband's will. 
 
 " Very well, dear ! It shall all be done as you wish it. I'll 
 see to that. The money shall be sent to Aunt M'riar, at Sapps 
 Court, to give to him." 
 
 " Why is it Aunt M'riar, at Sapps Court ? I know Aunt 
 M'riar." Do what she would, she could not grapple with these 
 relativities. And, indeed, this one was a mystery she could not 
 have solved in any case. 
 
834 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXVin 
 
 HOW A BOOMER GOT AWAY. GRANNY MARHABLE's THEISM. COLD 
 FEET. HOW GRANNY MARRABLB LOST HER HEAD. ADRIAN 
 ON RESIGNATION. THE SHOP OPPOSITE. HOW MAISIE HEARD 
 HER son's LETTER, AND WISHED HTM TO KNOW HE WAS POS- 
 SESSED. LADY ANOESTER's REMONSTRANCE. HOW EMILY AND 
 FANNY WOULDED THAT THEIR LOVE. HOW MAISIE WANTED 
 PETER, AND DOLLY MIGHT NOT BE FRIGHTENED OF LAMBS. 
 HOW SUSAN BXJRR WAS TO HAVE THE FURNITURE. LAST 
 MESSAGE TO DAVE AND DOLLY. MAISIE's DEATH. HOW 
 GRANNY MARRABLE WENT AWAY TO SEE TO A NEWCOMER. 
 HOW GWBN SLEPT, AND WAKED, AND HOW THERE WAS SOME- 
 THING IN THE EMPTY ROOM WHERE MRS. PICTURE HAD BEEN, 
 ON THE BED. HOW THE CONVICT CALLED TO INTRODUCE 
 HIMSELF. A DOG WHO HAD KILLED A MAN, WORTH FORTY 
 POUNDS. HOW THE CONVICT SAW WHAT WAS ON THE BED. 
 THE CUT FINGER. INSPECTOR THOMPSON. HOW RUTH HAD 
 PASSED A TRAMP, ON THE ROAD 
 
 " Has she not talked at all about Australia, Granny ? . . . . 
 No, thanks ! I'm sure it's a beautiful ham — but I shall do very 
 nicely with this. One very big lump of sugar, please, and plenty 
 of milk, or I shall lie awake." Thus Gwen, and the influence of 
 Strides Cottage is visible in her speech. 
 
 Old Maisie was again asleep, and they had left her and gone 
 into the front-room ; as much to speak together without disturbing 
 her as to get their own suppers. They were doing this last, 
 however, in a grudging sort of fashion; for the pleasures of the 
 table are no match for a heartache. Gwen found it a solace to 
 make her own toast with a long toasting-fprk, an experience 
 which her career as an Earl's daughter had denied to her. 
 
 " Maisie has talked many times of Australia, my lady. She 
 talks on, so I could not repeat much." 
 
 " You mean she jumps from one thing to another ?" 
 
 " Yes, so I cannot always follow her. But she has told me a 
 many things of her life there. How at first she would never 
 see a soul at the farm from week's end to week's end, and hpr 
 husband got to own all the land about." 
 
 " Do you think she is really alive to her husband's villainy ? 
 I sometimes think she forgets all about it." 
 
HOW HEB SON CAME TOO LATE 835 
 
 " Please God she does so ! 'Tis better for her she should. I 
 would have felt happier if she could have known me, and Ruth, 
 and never had the tale of his wickedness." 
 
 " But that was impossible, Granny. She mvst have known, 
 in the end." 
 
 " That is so, I know, my lady. But when I hear her forget it 
 all, it makes my heart glad. When she gets to telling of the old 
 time, on the farm, her mind is off it, and I thank God that it 
 should be so, for her sake ! Friday last she was talking so 
 happy, you could not have known her for the same." 
 
 " About the farm and the convicts ? Do recollect some of 
 the things she told you !" 
 
 " There was a creature tiiey hunt with dogs, that leaps on its 
 hind-legs to any height." 
 
 " Oh yes — the Kangaroo." 
 
 " She called it something else— something like ' Boomer '." 
 This did not matter. Granny Marrable went on to repeat how 
 a " boomer," chased by the dogs, had made straight for her 
 sister's husband, whose gun, missing fire, had killed his best dog ; 
 while the quarry, unterrified by the report, sprang at a bound 
 over his head and got away scathless. This, and other incidents 
 of the convict's after-life in Van Diemens Land, told without lead- 
 ing to the crime of the forged letter, had shown how completely 
 separate in Maisie's mind were the memories of her not imhappy 
 life with her husband in the past, and that of the recent revelation 
 of his iniquity. She somehow dissociated the two images of him, 
 and her mind could dwell easily on Ms identity as it had appeared 
 to her during her thirty years of widowhood, without losing the 
 new-found consciousness of Phoebe's. 
 
 But Granny Marrable had taken special note of the fact that 
 her sister never referred to the son who had come with her from 
 Australia, and had herself been scrupulously careful not to do 
 so. She did not really know whether Maisie was alive to the 
 possibility of his reappearance at any moment; and, indeed, could 
 not have said positively whether allusion had or had not been 
 made to her own alarming experience of him. Her own shock 
 and confusion had been too great for accurate recollection. 
 Silence about him was to her thought the wisest course, and she 
 had remained silent. 
 
 She seemed to Gwen a wonderful old woman, this Granny 
 Marrable. Her untiring patience and strength, at her great age; 
 her simple theism, constantly in evidence; her resolute calmness 
 in facing a second time the harrowing grief of a twin sister's 
 
836 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 death — for that she saw it at hand, Gwen was convinced — ^were 
 surely the material of which heroism is made, when heroism is 
 in the making. To Gwen's thought, the miraculous news that 
 had been broken to her so suddenly might easily have prostrated 
 many a younger person, even without that mysterious vmknown 
 factor, the twinship, the force of which could only be estimated 
 by the two concerned. As the old lady sat there at the supper- 
 table, breaking her resumptions of her sister's Australian tales 
 by gaps of listening to catch any sound from the bedroom, she 
 seemed to Gwen a duplicate of the old Mrs. Prichard of Sapps 
 Court, spared by time or with some reserve of constitutional 
 energy, grey rather than white, resolute rather than resigned. 
 The difEerent inflexion of voice helped Gwen against that per- 
 plexing sense of her likeness to her twin, which would assert itself 
 whenever she became silent. 
 
 It was to fend this off, in such a pause, that she said: — " You 
 are both just eighty this year, Granny, are you not ?" 
 
 " Eighty-one, my lady. When our clock strikes midnight 
 Maisie will have been eighty-one years in the world, and myself 
 with but a few minutes to make up the tale. My mother told 
 me so when I was still young to understand, but I bore her 
 words in mind. She was dead a year when my brother dressed 
 those little dolly figures in the mill. I mind that he put it oflE, 
 BO we should not be in black for our mother. He died himself, 
 none so long after that." 
 
 The foolish lines of keeping up hope mechanically to the last 
 did not recommend themselves to Gwen. But she could trust 
 herself to say, seeing the strength on the old face before her: — 
 " Oh, Granny, do not let us despair too soon !" The phrase 
 acknowledged Death, and did not choke her like the sham. 
 
 " My lady, have you felt her feet ?" 
 
 " No — ^are they so cold ?" 
 
 Instead of repljdng. Granny Marrable rose and passed into 
 the bedroom. Gwen, whose own speech had stopped her from 
 hearing old Maisie's half-utterance on waking, followed, and 
 stood beside the bed. Granny Marrable said: — " She is not 
 awake yet, but I heard her." As she said this, Gwen slipped her 
 warm hand between the sheets, and touched the motionless 
 extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone bottle 
 of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on 
 each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and 
 laying stress upon its iciness. " Oh, Granny," said Gwen, 
 trying in vain to make the living warmth of her own hand 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 837 
 
 of service, " can nothing be done ? Surely — ^her feet in hot 
 water ?" 
 
 But old Phoebe only shook her head. iSAeknew. It would only 
 be to no purpose ! Better let her rest ! Moreover, Gwen could 
 not fail to notice that the feet remained passive to her touch, 
 never shrinking. That is not the way of feet. Was ever foot 
 that did not shrink from mysterious unexpected fingers, coming 
 from the beyond in the purlieus of a private couch ? 
 
 And yet old Maisie was alive there still, and her speech was 
 clear, however low. If anything, its sound savoured of revival. 
 But she was not clear about her whereabouts and whom she was 
 speaking to. She seemed to think it was Susan Burr, who 
 " would find her thimble if she looked underneath." Thus much 
 and no more had come articulate from the land of dreams. 
 The moment after she was quite collected. Was that Phoebe, 
 and her Lady ? This was not the conventional phrase " My 
 lady." She was evidently in possession of a Lady she had been 
 guided to find by some Guardian Angel, if, indeed, the Lady were 
 not a Guardian Angel herself. She went on to ask : — ^Where was 
 her Ruth ? When would she come ? 
 
 She was coming, Ruth was, very soon. Both vouched for it. 
 Gwen added: — " She's gone to see her daughter, who has a little 
 boy." 
 
 Then Granny Marrable lost her head for the first time. " She's 
 gone to my granddaughter," said she. " And I'm looking to 
 have another great-grandchild there soon, before a many days 
 are over." 
 
 For a moment Gwen was afraid the confusion of Ruth's 
 daughtership might make old Maisie's head whirl, and set her 
 fretting. She began' to explain, but explanation was not neces- 
 sary. The old hand she held was withdrawn from hers, that it 
 might make common cause with its fellow that old Phoebe already 
 held. " My darling," said she, " did I not give her to you when 
 I ran away to the great ship ? Fifty years ago, Phoebe — fifty 
 years ago !" There was no trace of any tear in the eye that Gwen 
 could still see, though it looked no longer into her own. The 
 voice was not failing, and the words still came, clear as ever. 
 " I kissed her in her crib, and I would have kissed her yet 
 once more, but I dared not. So I said to myself :— 'She will wake 
 and never see me ! But Phoebe will be there, to kiss her when 
 she wakes. She will kiss her for me, just on the place we used 
 to say was good to kiss.' Tell me, Phcebe, did my child cry 
 much ? " 
 
838 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Granny Marrable's words: — "I cannot — I cannot — ^my dar- 
 ling !" caught in her voice, as she bent over the face that, but for 
 its frail attenuation, was her own face over again, touching it 
 tenderly with her own old lips — the same, thought Gwen, that 
 had inherited that place it was so good to kiss, on that baby face 
 of half a century ago, now a grandmother's. She rose noise- 
 lessly from where she half sat, half leaned, beside the figure on the 
 bed, and stole a little way apart; not so far as to be unable to 
 hear what that musical voice kept on saying, though she could 
 not catch the replies. 
 
 " I said to myself : — ' Phoebe will be her mother when I am 
 miles away across the sea, and she will be as good a mother as 
 
 I ' Was it not best, dearest, I should go alone, rather 
 
 than carry my child aWay and leave all the loneliness for you ? 
 .... Yes — ^but my heart ached for my little one on the great 
 
 ship I would watch the stars — the very stars you saw 
 
 too, Phoebe — and they were like friends for many a long week, 
 till they sank down in the sea behind us, and it was thirty years 
 
 before I saw them again Yes — then I knew it would be 
 
 England soon, and I would know if Phoebe had any other grave 
 
 than the cold sea Yes, my darling, that was my first 
 
 thought — to go to the little church by Darenth Mill, and look in 
 
 the south comer I did, and there was mother's grave, 
 
 and father's name cut on the stone, but none other. So I 
 thought: — ^They are all gone — all gone ! . . . . Oh, if I had 
 known that you were here !...." 
 
 The sound of lamentation barely grew in her voice, but it was 
 there. To turn her mind from the recollection that provoked it. 
 Granny Marrable thought it well to say that Nicholas Cropredy, 
 her first husband, whom the forged letter had drowned at sea, 
 had not been buried at Darenth Mill, but at Ingatestone, with 
 his kindred and ancestors. " Did they find his body ?" said 
 old Maisie. She knew that he was dead long years back, but 
 had not received any new impression of the cause of his death. 
 
 She did not even now seem to find its proper place in her mind 
 for this correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal 
 with all the facts, but held fast to the identities of her sister and 
 child. Probably the established memory of the false news of her 
 brother-in-law's death continued in possession. She only looked 
 puzzled; then drifted on the current of her thought. " If I had 
 known that you were here ! . . . . Oh, Phoebe ! — such a many 
 times my boy made me think of his sister he would never see 
 now That was before the coming of the news. Oh 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 839 
 
 yes, I always had a thought till then the time might come before 
 they would be grown up, so they should be children together. 
 .... That was my elder boy Isaac, after father — ^in those days 
 
 little Ralph was in his cradle But the time never came— 
 
 only the time to think it might have been And all those 
 
 years I thought you dead, you were here ! . . . . Oh, Phoebe — 
 you were here ! . . . . Oh, why — ^why — why could I not be told 
 that you were here ?" 
 
 " It was the Lord's will, darling. His ways are not for us to 
 understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling 
 some irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. 
 But though she almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety — 
 "No connection with the shop opposite" — she could and did 
 pay a mental tribute to the Granny's quiet earnestness. She 
 would have done the same by " Kismet " to an old Sheikh in 
 the shadow of the Pyramids. 
 
 " Why — oh, why ? — ^when my dear husband was gone could 
 I not have found you then, even if I had died of joy in the find- 
 ing ? Had I not known enough pain ? Oh, Phoebe — ^when I 
 came back — ^when I came back .... it would have been so much 
 then ! . . . . I had some great new trouble after that. .... 
 Oh, tell me — what was it !" 
 
 What could old Phoebe do but answer, seeing that she knew 1 
 " It was the wickedness of your son, Maisie darling. We have 
 talked of him, have we not ?" She feared to say much, as she 
 shrank from reference to her own knowledge of the convict. 
 She tried to get away from him. " And it was then you took old 
 Martha's name, not to be known by your own, and went to Sapps 
 Court ?" This succeeded. 
 
 " Not Sapps Court, not yet for a long time. But I did go, 
 
 and I was happy there I had my little Dave and Dolly, 
 
 and when the window stood open- in the summer, I heard the 
 piano outside across the way .... and Aunt M'riar came, and 
 
 sometimes Mr. Wardle — ^he was so big he filled the room 
 
 But tell me — ^was it a horrible dream, or was it true, that a letter 
 came to me ?...." Her powers of speech fiagged. 
 
 Gwen took upon herself to answer, to spare Granny Marrable. 
 " Yes, Mrs. Picture dear, it came from your son, and I've got it 
 here. You're not to fret about him. I'm to show his letter to 
 my father, don't you know ? — ^you've seen him — and you know 
 what he does will be all right." 
 
 "What he does will be all right." Old Maisie repeated it 
 mechanically, and lay quiet, holding a hand on either side, aa 
 
840 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 before; then after a short time rallied, and turned to Gwen, 
 saying: — " My Lady — my dear — ^I want you to promise me one 
 thing I want you to promise me . . . ." 
 
 " To promise you what ? Is it something I can do ?" 
 
 The answer came with an ejrtraordinary clearness. " That 
 you will not let them get him. Read his letter, that I may hear. 
 .... Yes — like that !" She fixed her eyes eagerly on it, as 
 Gwen drew it from her pocket. Granny Marrable snuffed the 
 candles, and moved them to give a better light. 
 
 Gwen read aloud as best she might, for the handwriting was 
 none too visible. When she came to the writer's picturesque 
 suggestion of his life of constant dodging and evasion of his 
 pursuers, she softened nothing of his brutal phraseology. 
 Maisie only said: — "That is it. That is what I want." PhcBbe 
 was restless under its utterance, and murmured some protest. 
 That such words should pass her ladyship's lips — such lips ! 
 Gwen merely commented: — "Like a fox before the pack! 
 That's what he means. He's got to say it somehow, you know ! 
 Yes, tell me, what is it about that ?" 
 
 " I want you .... to save him from them. I want you to 
 tell him .... to tell him . . . . " 
 
 " Something from you ? — ^yes !" 
 
 " To tell him his mother forgave him. For I know now — I 
 know it, my dear — ^that his wicked work was none of his own 
 doing, but the evil spirit that had possession of him. Was it 
 not ?" 
 
 Why should Gwen stand between Mrs. Picture, dying, and 
 something that gave her happiness, just for the sake of a Uttle 
 pitiful veracity ? She was all the readier to endorse a draft on 
 her credulity, from the knowledge that Granny Marrable would, 
 if applied to, be ready with a covering security. She said 
 quietly: — " I think it very far from imppssible." 
 
 " Then you will tell him for me, and save him — save him from 
 the officers ?" 
 
 It seemed a large promise to make, but would its fulfilment 
 ever be called for ? "I promise," said Gwen, " and I will tell , 
 
 him you forgave him, if ever I see him There's Rufch back 
 
 — I hear her. Now, dear, you must lie quiet, and not talk any 
 more. You know you don't want her to know anjrthing at all 
 about her brother." Whereon Maisie lay silent with closed eyes, 
 her hand in Gwen's just acknowledging its chance pressures, 
 while Granny Marrable rose and went to the door ; and then Gwen 
 heard her in an earnest undertone of conversation with Ruth, 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 841 
 
 just alighted from a vehicle whose horse, considered as a sound, 
 she would have sworn to. It was the grey mare. 
 
 Ruth's visit to her daughter was the first since the extra- 
 ordinary discovery of Mrs. Prichard's identity, and she had been 
 very anxious about her. Nevertheless, its object appeared 
 equable, blooming, and prosperous on her arrival; very curious 
 to hear details of her new-found grandmother, and indignant with 
 Dr. Nash for telling her husband that he was not, on peril of 
 becoming a widower, to allow his wife to travel over to Strides 
 Cottage to see her. She mixed with this a sort of resentment 
 against the defection from her post of her real grandmother — 
 to wit, the one she had grown up under. For the young woman's 
 wish for her presence had been one of those strong predispositions 
 very common under her circumstances, and far less unreasonable 
 than many such. " Granny " had been all-wise and all-powerful 
 with her from her cradle ! 
 
 But, in spite of young Maisie's confidence on the subject, her 
 mother coiild not resist the misgiving that her expected grand- 
 child was girding up its insignificant loins to make a dash for 
 existence. Consider its feelings if it had inherited its great- 
 grandmother's scrupulous punctuality ! Widow Thrale was 
 between two fires — duty to a mother and duty to a daughter. 
 An instinct led her to choose the former. Her son-in-law affected 
 to think her nervous; but, after whistling the halves of several 
 tunes to himself, put his horse in the gig and went ofiE to fetch the 
 doctor. The story has seen how he caught him just coming 
 away from Strides. 
 
 Ruth had not yet done quite all she could. She could summon 
 someone to take her place beside her daughter in her absence. 
 Preferably her cousin Keziah from the Towers. But she must 
 see her and know that she was available. Tom Kettering, just 
 departing for the Towers, was caught in time for Ruth to accom- 
 pany him. On her arrival, finding that Keziah was available, 
 she arranged to walk with her to Denby's Farm, and then 
 on to the Cottage. Under six miles, all told ! — that was 
 nothing. 
 
 But there was no need for this. Tom Kettering, going up to 
 the house to report her young ladyship's decision to remain on 
 another day, was told he must wait for a letter her ladyship the 
 Countess would write, to take to Strides Cottage, and bring back 
 an answer. He could easily go a few inches out of his way to 
 leave his Aunt Keziah at Denby's, and take Ruth Thrale home to 
 Strides. But he put up the closed brougham, and harnessed the 
 
842 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 grey mare in the dogcart, as she wanted a run. He knew that 
 Gwen meant what she said, and would rtot come back. 
 
 It was about nine o'clock when they reached the Cottage, 
 and Tom waited for the answer to the Countess's letter. Ruth 
 came in, to be told that her mother had talked too much, and 
 must lie quiet. But she had been talking — that was something ! 
 The comment was Ruth's, and the reply to it was hopeful 
 and consolatory. Oh yes — a great deal ! And she must 
 be better, to be able to talk so much. However, Ruth saw 
 no change in the appearance of the still, white figure on the 
 bed. 
 
 Gwen sat in the front-room and read her mother's remonstrance 
 with her for absenting herself in this way and leaving her lady- 
 ship alone to contend with the arduous duty of entertaining her 
 guests. " I think," it ran, " that you might at least remember 
 that you are your father's daughter, even if you forget that 
 Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick have come all the way from Net- 
 tisham in Shropshire." What followed was a good deal empha- 
 sized. " Understand, my dear, that what I say is not intended to 
 hold good if this old lady is actvally dying, but for anything short 
 of that it does appear to me that your behaviour is at least incon- 
 siderate. Do let me entreat you to fix a reasonable hour for your 
 return to-morrow, if you adhere to your resolution not to come 
 to-night. Pray tell Kettering when he is to call for you before 
 twelve to-morrow, so that you may be in time for lunch." This last 
 was a three-lined whip. 
 
 In order that Gwen should not suppose that there had been 
 too flattering a hiatus owing to her absence, the letter wound 
 up: — "We have had some very nice music. It turns out that 
 Emily and Fanny sing ' / would that my love ' quite charmingly." 
 Gwen's remark to herself: — " Of course !" may be intelligible to 
 old stagers who remember the fifties, and the popularity of this 
 Mendelssohn duet at that time — ^notably the intrepidity of the 
 singers over the soft word the merry breezes wafted away in 
 sport. Emily and Fanny were two ingenues, come of a remote 
 poor relation, who were destined never to forget the week they 
 were spending at the Towers in Rocestershire. The letter was 
 scribbled across to the effect that General Rawnsley had said he 
 should ride over to Chorlton to-morrow to see if he could be of 
 any use. " The dear old man," said Gwen to herself. " And 
 eighty-four years old ! Oh, why — ^why — could not my old dar- 
 ling Mrs. Picture Uve only three years more ? . . . . Only three 
 years!" ***** 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 843 
 
 Ten o'clock. The time was again at hand for those last ar- 
 rangements we all know so well, when one watcher is chosen to 
 remain by the sick man's couch, that others may sleep; each one 
 to be roused from f orgetfulness and peace to the sickening fore- 
 knowledge of the hour of release for all, when the life he has it 
 at heart to prolong, if only for a day, shall have become a memory 
 to perish in its turn, as one by one its survivors grow few and 
 fewer and follow in its track. 
 
 A night comes always when ObUvion becomes a terror, and 
 we dare not sleep, from fear of what our ears may hear on waking. 
 It had come at Strides Cottage for Granny Marrable and Gwen, 
 and even Ruth was conscious of a creeping dread of Death at 
 hand, waiting on the threshold. But she imagined herself alone 
 in her anticipations — fancied that " mother " and her ladyship 
 were cherishing false hopes. She would not allow her own to 
 die lest she should betray fears that might after all be just as 
 false. Why should her mother — her new-foimd real mother — 
 be sinking, because her hmbs were cold, when her speech was still 
 articulate, and her soft grey eyes so full of tenderness and 
 light? 
 
 Gwen held a little aloof, not to take more than her fair share 
 of what she feared was an ebbing life, although it kept so strangely 
 its powers of communion with the world it was leaving behind. 
 She could hear all the old voice said, as she had heard it before. 
 What was that she was saying now ? 
 
 " When the baby comes you will bring it here to show to me ? 
 I may not be up by then, to go and see it." 
 
 " The minute my daughter is strong enough to bring it, mother 
 dear." 
 
 " She must take her time Is there not a little boy 
 
 already ?" 
 
 " Yes. He's Peter. He's a year old. He's very strong and 
 wilful, and gets very angry when things are not given to him." 
 
 "Ruth darling — ^fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to 
 bring him ?" There was hunger for the baby in her beseeching 
 voice. She might enjoy him a little before the end, surely ! 
 Just a brief extension of a year or so — a month or so even. 
 
 " I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to 
 carry, but John will drive us." 
 
 Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great- 
 grandson. " They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was 
 the child's name Peter ? — she asked, and was told that he was 
 so called after his grandfather, Ruth's husband. " He is dead 
 
844 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 now, is he not 1" -was her puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied: — 
 " I buried his grandfather thirteen years ago." To which her 
 mother said: — "Tell me all his name, that I may know," 
 and was told " Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd 
 comment: — " Oh yes — I was told. But that was when Ruth 
 was Widow Thrale." 
 
 She never came to any real clearness about the lost history 
 of her sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, 
 her mind flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank 
 years of ignorance. 
 
 But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, 
 and in time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. 
 To overhear this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavour- 
 able auguries. How was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should 
 be dying, when she could look forward to a baby in the flesh 
 with such a zest ? 
 
 The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of 
 her own babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her 
 eldest, dead and buried in England while Ruth was still too young 
 to put by memories of her elder brother. Then her second, who 
 died in his boyhood in Australia. No mother ever loses count of 
 her children, even when her mind fails at the last: and old 
 Maisie's memory was still green over the loss of these two. But 
 the third — how about the one who survived his childhood ? 
 When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent 
 mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, 
 not a trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a 
 curse to himself and his mother. In some still feebler stage of 
 her failing powers the happier phase of his career might have 
 remained isolated. Now, her mind was still too active to avoid 
 the recollection of its sequel. 
 
 " What is it, mother dearest ?" So Gwen heard her daughter 
 speaking to her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom 
 of a concealed distress. Then Granny Marrable: — " Yes, Maisie 
 darling, what is it ? Tell us." Some answer came, which caused 
 Ruth to say: — " Shall I ask her ladyship to come ?" 
 
 Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. " Is she asking 
 for me ?" said she. And Granny Marrable replied: — " I think 
 she has it on her mind to speak to you, my lady." 
 
 Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of 
 something to be done in another room, but the Granny kept 
 near at hand. 
 
 " My dear — ^my Lady — I am so afraid " 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 845 
 
 " Afraid of what, Mrs. Picture dear ? Don't be frightened I 
 We are all here." 
 
 " Afraid about my son — afraid Ruth may know " 
 
 " No one has told Ruth of him, dear. No one shall tell Ruth. 
 I promise you." 
 
 " It is not that. It is what I may say myself." Gwen had not 
 heard her speak so clearly for a long time. " It was on my lips 
 to speak of him — ^but just now. Because — ^is he not the same 1" 
 
 " The same as what, dear ? Try and tell me !" 
 
 " The same as the son that came with me in the ship. The 
 same as the baby I suckled the last of four, out there on the farm. 
 It was he that I was telling of before, and I was glad to tell my 
 child — my Ruth — of the brother she never set eyes on. And 
 then it came upon me, the thought of what he was, and what he 
 had come to be Oh, my dear — ^my dear !...." 
 
 Gwen could not think of any stereotyped salve for a wounded 
 heart. She could only say: — " Don't think of it, dear. Don't 
 think of it ! Lie still and get better now, and then I will make 
 Aunt M'riar fetch Dave and Dolly, and Dave shall see Jones's 
 Bull, and Dolly shall see the new baby." 
 
 " Suppose, my dear, I don't get better, will Dave and Dolly 
 come all the same; for Phoebe and my Ruth, the same as if I was 
 here?". 
 
 It was a sore tax on the steadiness of Gwen's voice, but she 
 managed her assent. Yes — even in the improbable event of old 
 Maisie's non-recovery, Dave and Dolly should visit Granny Mar- 
 rable. And so consolatory had the assurance proved more than 
 once before, that she repeated her undertaking about the visit to 
 Farmer Jones's; for Dave, not for Dolly. " But there will be 
 plenty for Dolly to see," Gwen said. " She won't be frightened 
 of lambs — at least, I think not. Because she has never been in 
 the country." 
 
 " No — but she has been in the Regents Park, and is to go to 
 Hampstead Heath some day with Uncle Mp. She is not fright- 
 ened of the sheep in the Park, only in . . . ." 
 
 " Only in where ?" said Gwen. " Where is Dolly frightened of 
 sheep ?" 
 
 " In the street, because they run on the pavement, and the 
 
 dog runs over their backs There are very few sheep here, 
 
 compared to what we had in the colony Our shepherds 
 
 were very good men, but all had their numbers from the Governor 
 .... they had all been convicted .... but not of doing anything 
 wrong " 
 
846 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Oh dear ! — ^what a mistake Gwen had made about those sheep ! 
 But how could she have known ? She knew so little about the 
 colony — had even asked General Rawnsley, when they were talk- 
 ing of Van Diemens Land, if he knew where " Tasmania " was ! 
 She tried to head off the pastoral convicts — the cancelled men, 
 who had become numbers. " When Dolly comes, she will see 
 the mill too. And it will go round and round by then." She 
 clung in a sort of desperation to Dolly and Dave, having tested 
 their power as talismans to drive away the black spectres that 
 hung about. 
 
 But the mill was as Scylla to their Charybdis. " Phoebe 
 dearest I" said old Maisie suddenly, " when did father die ?" 
 
 " When did our father die ?" said Granny Marrable. " Nigh 
 upon forty-six years ago. Yes — ^forty-six." 
 
 " How can that be ? — forty-six — ^forty-six !" The words were 
 shadowily spoken, as by a speaker too weary to question them, 
 yet dissatisfied. " How can my father have died then ? That 
 was when my sister died, and my little girl I left behind." 
 
 " Oh, how I wish she could sleep \" Gwen exclaimed under her 
 breath. Granny Marrable said: — " She will sleep, my lady, 
 before very long." She said it with such a quiet self-command, 
 that Gwen accepted the obvious meaning, that the sleeper would 
 sleep again, as before. Perhaps nothing else was meant. 
 
 There had been a time, just after she first came to the strange 
 truth of her surroundings, when she could follow and connect the 
 sequence of events. Now the Past and the Present fell away by 
 turns, either looming large and excluding the view of the other 
 alternately. But, that Phcebe and Ruth were there, beside her, 
 was the fact that kept the strongest hold of her mind. 
 
 Eleven o'clock. Granny Marrable had been right, and old Maisie 
 had slept again, or seemed to sleep, after some dutiful useless 
 attempts to head off Death by trivialities of nourishment. The 
 clock-hand, intent upon its second, obUvious of its predecessors, 
 incredulous of those to come, was near halfway to midnight 
 when Ruth Thrale, rising from beside her mother, came to her 
 fellow - watchers in the front -room and said: — "I think she 
 moved." 
 
 Both came to the bedside. Yes — she had moved a Httle, 
 and was trying to speak. Gwen, half seated, half leaning on the 
 pillow as before, took a hand that barely closed on hers, and 
 spoke. " What is it, Mrs. Picture dear ? Say it again." 
 
 " Is it all true ?" 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 847 
 
 What coiild Gwen have said but what she did say ? " Yes, 
 dear Mrs. Picture, quite true. It is youx own sister Phoebe beside 
 you here, and your child Ruth, grown up." 
 
 " Maisie darling, I am Phoebe — Phoebe herself." It was all 
 Granny Marrable could find voice for, and Ruth was hard put to 
 it to say : — " You are my mother." And as each of these women 
 spoke she bent over the white face of the dying woman, and kissed 
 it through the speechlessness their words had left upon their lips. 
 
 It was not quite old Mrs. Picture's last word of all. A few 
 minutes later she seemed to make weak efforts towards speech. 
 If Gwen, listening close, heard rightly, she was saying, or trying 
 to say: — " You are my Lady, that came with the accident, are 
 you not ?" 
 
 " Is there anything you want me to do for you 1" For Gwen 
 thought shd was trying to say more. " It is about someone. 
 Who?" 
 
 " Susan Burr " 
 
 " Yes — you want me to give her some message ?" 
 
 " Susan .... to have my furniture .... for her own." 
 
 " Yes — I will see to that And — and what ?" 
 
 " Kiss Dave and Dolly for me." 
 
 They watched the scarcely breathing, motionless figure on the 
 bed for the best part of an hour, and could mark no change that 
 told of death, nor any sign that told of life. Then Granny Mar- 
 rable said: — " What was that ?" And Gwen answered, as she 
 really thought: — " It was the clock." For she took it for the 
 warning on the stroke of midnight. But old Phoebe said, with 
 a, strangely imf altering voice: — "No — ^it is the change!" and 
 the sob that broke the silence was not hers, but Ruth's. Old 
 Mrs. Picttire had just lived to complete her eighty-first year. 
 
 There came a sound of wheels in the road without. Not the 
 doctor, surely, at this time of night ! No — ^for the wheels were 
 not those of his gig. Ruth, going out to the front-door, was 
 met by a broad provincial accent — ^her son-in-law's. Gwen 
 heard it fall to a whisper before the news of Death; then earnest 
 conversation in an undertone. Gwen was aware that old Phoebe 
 rose from her knees at the bedside, and went to listen through 
 the door. Then she heard her say with a quiet self-restraint 
 that seemed marvellous:— " Tell him— tell John that I will 
 
 come Come back here and speak to me." She thought 
 
 she caught the words as Ruth returned: — " I must not leave her 
 alone." And she knew they referred to herself. 
 
 64 
 
848 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Then it came home to her that possibly her own youth and 
 her difference of antecedents might somehow encumber arrange- 
 ments that she knew would have to be carried out. They would 
 be easiest in her absence. At her own suggestion she went away 
 to lie down in the bedroom she had occupied. 
 
 Granny Marrable followed her. She had something tc say, 
 
 " Dear Lady, I have to go. God bless you for all your goodness 
 
 to my darling sister and to me ! You gave her back to me " 
 
 That stopped her. 
 
 " Oh, Granny, Granny, we have lost her — ^we have lost her !" 
 She could feel that old Phoebe's tears were running down the 
 hand she had taken to kiss, and she drew it away to fold the old 
 woman fairly in her arms, and kiss the face whose likeness to old 
 Mrs. Picture's she could almost identify by touch. " We have 
 lost her," she repeated, " and you might have had her for so 
 long !" 
 
 Said Granny Marrable: — " I shall follow Maisie soon, if the 
 Lord's will is. She might have died, my lady, but for you, un- 
 known to me in London. And who woiild have told me where 
 they had laid her ?" 
 
 " Where are you going ?" 
 
 " I am going to my granddaughter — Ruth's daughter. It is 
 her fancy to have me rather than another. There might be harm 
 to her did I stop away. Why should I delay here, when all is 
 over ?" 
 
 Why indeed ? Still, Gwen could not but reverence and love 
 the old lady for her imflinching fortitude and resolute sense of 
 duty. She saw her driven away through the cold night, and went 
 back to her room, leaving Ruth and Elizabeth the neighboiu: to 
 make an end in the chamber of Death. 
 
 Sleep came, and waking came too soon, in a cold, dark Christ- 
 inas morning. Oppression and pain for something not known 
 at once came first, like a black cloud; then consciousness of what 
 was in the heart of the cloud. 
 
 She wrapped herself in a warm dressing-gown, and went out 
 through the silent house. It was still early, and it might be 
 Ruth was still sleeping. Once asleep, why not remain so, when 
 waking could only bring cold and darkness, and the memory of 
 yesterday ? Besides, it was not unlikely Ruth had watched half 
 through the night. Gwen opened the door of the death-chamber 
 with noiseless caution, and felt as soon as she saw that the day- 
 light was still excluded, that it was empty of any living occupant. 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 849 
 
 Dread was ia her curiosity to see the thing beneath the white 
 sheet on the bed — but see it she must ! 
 
 The great bulldog, the only creature moving, came shambling 
 along the passage to greet her, and — so she rendered his subdued 
 dog-sounds that came short of speech — concerned that something 
 was amiss he was excluded from knowing. She said a word to 
 comfort him, but kept him outside the room, to wait for her 
 rettim. 
 
 What had been till so lately old Mrs. Picture, whom she had 
 chanced upon in Sapps Court, and found so strange a truth about, 
 lay under that face-cloth on the bed. She moved the window- 
 curtain for a stronger light, and uncovered the marble stillness 
 of the face. The kerchief tied beneath the chin ran counter to 
 her preconceptions, but no doubt it was all right. Ruth would 
 know. 
 
 She did not look long. An odd sense of something that was 
 not sacrilege, but akin to it, associated itself with this gazing on 
 the empty tenement. Even so one shrinks from the emptiness 
 of what was his home once, and will never know another dweller, 
 but be carted o£E to the nearest dry-rubbish shoot. She laid the 
 sheet back in its place, and went into the front-room. 
 
 Suddenly the dog growled and barked, then went smelling 
 along the door into the front-garden. There was someone out- 
 side. She was conscious of a man on the gravel, through the 
 window. A stranger, or he would enter without leave, or at 
 least find the bell to ring. She glanced at the clock. It was 
 half-past eight already, though it had seemed so early. 
 
 How about the dog, if she opened the door ? His repute was 
 great for ferocity towards doubtful characters, but he was 
 credited with discrimination. Was this invariable ? She pre- 
 ferred to take down his chain from its hook by the window, and 
 to use it to hold him by. 
 
 " What is it ? Who are you ?" She had opened the door 
 without reserve, feeling sure that the dog would be excited by 
 a gap. As it was, he growled intolerantly, and had to be re- 
 proved. 
 
 " You'll excuse me — ^I was enquiring .... Is your dog safe ? 
 I ain't fond of dogs, and they ain't fond of me." He was a man 
 with a side-lurch, and an ungracious manner. 
 
 " The dog is safe — ^unless I let him go." Gwen was not sorry 
 to have a strong ally in a leash, at will. " You were enquiring 
 — you said ?" 
 
 " Concerning of an old lady by the name of Prichard. The 
 
850 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 address given was Strides Cottage, and I see this little domi- 
 cile here goes by that name. Next we come to the old lady 
 of the name of Prichard. Can you do her, or anything near 
 about ?" 
 
 " Yes — ^Mts. Prichard is here, but you can't see her now. 
 What do you want with Mrs. Prichard ? Who are you ?" 
 
 The man kept looking imeasily up and down the road. " I'm 
 a bad hand at talking, mostly. Standing about don't suit me 
 — ^not for conversation. If you was to happen to have such 
 a thing as a chair inside, and you was to make the offer, 
 I might see about telling you what I want of old Goody 
 Prichard." 
 
 Gwen looked at him and recognised him. She would have 
 done so at once had his clothes been the same as when she saw 
 him before, in the doorway at Sapps Court. He was that man, 
 of course ! Only with this difference, that while on that occa- 
 sion his get-up was nearest that of a horse-keeper, his present 
 one was a carter's. He might have been taken for one, if you 
 had not seen his face. Gwen said to him: — "You can pass 
 the dog. Don't do anything to irritate him." He entered and 
 sat down. 
 
 " Where have you got the old woman ?" said he. 
 
 " First tell me what you want with her." 
 
 " To introduce myself to her. I wrote her a letter nigh a 
 fortnight since. What did I say to her in that letter ? Told 
 her I was looking forward to re-newing her acquaintance. You 
 tell the old lady that, from me. You might go so far as to say 
 it's Ralph, back again." An idea seemed to intensify his gaze 
 of admiration, or rather avidity, narrowing it to her face. " This 
 ain't my first sight of you, allowance made for toggery." 
 
 Gwen merely lifted her eyebrows. But seeing his offensive 
 eyes waiting, she conceded: — "Possibly not," and remained 
 silent. 
 
 He chose to interpret this as invitation to continue, although 
 it was barely permission. "I set eyes on you first, as I was 
 coming out of a door. You were coming in at that door. 
 You looked at me to recollect me, for I saw you take notice. 
 Ah ! — ^you've no call to blaze at me on that accoimt. You may 
 just as well come down off of the high ropes." 
 
 For Gwen's face had shown what she thought of him, as he 
 sat there, half wincing before her, half defiant. She was not in 
 the habit of concealing her thoughts. " I see you are a reptile," 
 said she explicitly. And then, not noticing his snigger of satis- 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 851 
 
 faction at having, as it were, dravm her: — "What were you 
 doing at Mr. Wardle's ?" 
 
 " Ah — what was I a-doing at Moses Wardle'a ? I suppose 
 you know what he was ? Or maybe you don't ?" 
 
 " What was he V 
 
 The convict's ugly grin, going to the twisted side of his face, 
 made it monstrous. " Mayhap you don't know what they call 
 a scrapper ?" said he. 
 
 " I don't. What did he scrap ?" She felt that Uncle Mo 
 did it honourably, whatever it was. 
 
 " He was one of the crack heavyweights, in my time." 
 
 " I know what that means. I should recommend you not to 
 show yourself at his house, unless . . . ," 
 
 The man sniggered again. " Don't you lie awake about me," 
 said he. " Old Mo had seen his fighting-days when I had the 
 honour of meeting him five-and-twenty years ago at The Tun, 
 which is out of your line, I take it. Besides, my best friend's 
 in my pocket, ready at a pinch. Shall I show him to you ?" 
 He showed a knife with a black horn handle. " I don't 
 open him, not to alarm a lady. So you've no call for 
 h3rsterics." 
 
 " I am not afraid of you or your knife, if that is what you 
 mean." Indeed, absolute fearlessness was one of Gwen's charac- 
 teristics. " What did you go to Mr. Wardle's for ?" 
 
 " On a visit to my wife." 
 
 Gwen started. " Who is yom: wife ?" said she. Susan Burr 
 flashed into her mind first. But then, how about " Aunt 
 Maria " on the envelope, and her readiness to act as this man's 
 agent ? 
 
 " Polly DaveriU's my wife — ^my lawful wife ! That's more 
 than my father could say of my mother." 
 
 " I know that you are lying, but I do not care why. Do you 
 want to see your mother ?" 
 
 " If sootable and convenient. No great hurry !" 
 
 " She is in bed. I will get her ready for you to see her. Do 
 not go near the dog. They say he has killed a man." 
 
 " A man'U kill him if he gives occasion. Make him fast, for 
 his own sake. There's money there — he's a tike o' some value. 
 Maybe forty pound. You tie him up !" Gwen hooked his chain 
 round the table-leg, starting him on a series of growls — low 
 thunder in short lengths. He had been very quiet. 
 
 She passed into the bedroom, and opening the shutters, threw 
 light full on the bed. Then she drew back the sheet she had 
 
852 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 replaced. Oh, the beauty of that white marble face, and the 
 Btillnessl 
 
 " You can come in, quietly." 
 
 " Is she having a snooze ?" 
 
 " You will not wake her." 
 
 " This is one of your games." The sort was defined by an 
 adjective, omitted. " What's your game ? What the Hell are 
 you at ?" He said this as to himself. 
 
 " Go in. You will find your mother." Gwen took back 
 the dog's chain from the table-leg, and the low thunder died 
 down. 
 
 She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been 
 to touch the heart of the brute, if he had one; another to con- 
 vince him, without a long parley, of his mother's death. He 
 might have disputed it, and in any case she could not have 
 refused him the sight of his own mother's body. 
 
 She could not have restrained that dog had he acted on his 
 obvious impulse to strangle, rapidly and thoroughly, this vermin 
 intruder. But he was an orderly and law-abiding dog, who 
 would not have strangled a rat without permission. 
 
 Gwen did not catch the convict's exclamation at sight of his 
 mother, beyond the " What the ....!" that began it. Then 
 he was silent. She saw him go nearer without fear of ill-demean- 
 our on his part, and touch the cold white hand, not roughly 
 or without a sort of respect. As well, perhaps, for him; for 
 Gwen was quite capable of loosing that dog on him, under suffi- 
 cient provocation. She thought he seemed to examine the 
 fingers of the left hand. Then he came back, and they returned 
 to the front-room. She was the first to speak. 
 
 " Are you satisfied ?" 
 
 " I couldn't have sworn to her myself, not from her face, 
 but I made sure." Probably he had looked for the cut finger, 
 his own handiwork of thirty-odd years ago. He said abruptly, 
 after a moment's pause: — " I don't see nothing to gain by 
 hanging about here." 
 
 " Nothing whatever." 
 
 He said not a word more, his only sign of emotion or excite- 
 ment having been his exclamation at first sight of the corpse. 
 He walked away towards the village, and had just reached the 
 point where the road turns out of sight, when Gwen, watching 
 his slow one-sided footsteps, saw him turn and come quickly 
 back. She went back into the Cottage and closed the door, 
 resolved not to admit him a second time. 
 
HOW HER SON CAME TOO LATE 853 
 
 But he passed by, going away by the road towards Denby's 
 and the Towers, never even glancing at the Cottage. He was 
 scarcely out of sight when a tax-cart with two men in it came 
 quickly from the village and stopped. 
 
 " You will excuse me, madam. I am Police-Inspector Thomp- 
 son, from Grantley Thorpe. A man whom I am looking for has 
 been traced here " The speaker had alighted. 
 
 " A man with a limp ? He came here and went away. He 
 has only just gone." 
 
 " Which way ?" 
 
 " He went away in that direction " 
 
 " What I said \" struck in the second man on the driver's 
 seat. " He's for getting back to the Railway. He'll cut across 
 by Moreton Spinney. Jump up, Joe !" 
 
 Gwen could easily have added that he had come back, and 
 was going the other way. But her promise to old Mrs. Picture, 
 lying there dead, kept her silent. If the officers chose to jump 
 to a false conclusion, let them ! She had misled them by a 
 literal truth. She would much rather have told a lie, honour- 
 ably. But she could not remedy that now, without risk. 
 
 Another trot sounded from the opposite direction. It was 
 Farmer Costrell's cart, and Ruth was in it, driven by her son- 
 in-law. She was bringing some evergreens to place upon the 
 body. Too anxious to remain in ignorance about her daughter, 
 she had walked over to Denby's while it was still almost dark, 
 and had found a new granddaughter and its mother, both doing 
 well. t 
 
 " And ne'er a soul would I have seen either way," said she, 
 " if it had not been for a tramp a few steps down the road, who 
 set me thinking it was as well I was not alone, by the looks of 
 him. Yes — thank your ladyship — ^I got some sleep, till after 
 five o'clock. Then I could not be easy till I knew about my 
 child. But all has gone well, God be thanked !" 
 
 It was the only time she ever saw that brother, and she never 
 knew it was be. 
 
854 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 HOW MICKY BECAME A UNKBOY. HIS IDEAS ON INVESTMENTS. 
 DOG FOUND. NO SAFETY LIKE A THICK FOG. OLD MB. 
 NIXON. HIS SEUT-BESTEAINT. WIX's MESSAGE. JULIa's 
 DILEMMA. HEB VIEWS ON MAEEIAGE LINES. DAMN LAWFUL 
 POLLY ! HOW MICKY 'S MOTHER HELPED HIM TO DELIVBB HIS 
 
 MESSAGE. CUE OLD LADY GONE ! WHO WILL TELL DAVE 
 
 AND DOLLY ? HOW PUSSY WAS THE OTHERS. HOW MO DID 
 NOT STOP AT THE SUN. A VISITOR IN HIS ABSENCE. THE 
 END 
 
 The irresolute winter only wavered some forty-eight hours, 
 setting to work in earnest on the second day after Christmas 
 Day, following on suggestions of seasonableness on Boxing Day. 
 London awoke to a dense fog and a hard frost, and its spirits 
 went up. Its citizens became possessed with an unnatural 
 cheerfulness, as is their wont when they cannot breathe without 
 choking, when the gas has to be lighted at what should be the 
 hour of daybreak, when the vapour lies thick in places, and will 
 not move from contact; though now and again the darkness, 
 where the sky was once, seems at odds with a languid some- 
 thing that may be Ught, beyond. Then, fires within, heaped 
 with fresh coal, regardless of expense, to keep the fog at bay, 
 contribute more and more through chimney-pots without to the 
 unspeakable opacities overhead, and each seeming ultimatum of 
 blackness is followed by another blacker still. Then, while 
 timid persons think the last day has come, the linkboys don't 
 care whether it has or not, and enjoy themselves intensely. 
 
 A good example of the former class was Mrs. Treadwell, 
 Michael Ragstroar's great-aunt at Hammersmith; of the latter, 
 Michael himself. On the afternoon of that Wednesday in 
 Christmas week he had conducted an old bloke of enormous 
 wealth, on foot, from the said bloke's residence in Russell Square 
 to his son-in-law's less pretentious one at Chiswick, and had 
 earned liberal refreshments, golden opinions, and silver coin by 
 his intrepidity and perception of London localities in Egyptian 
 darkness. And he had never so much as once asked the name 
 of a blooming street ! So ran his communication to his great- 
 aunt, on whom he called afterwards; being, as he said, handy. 
 
 " Now you do Uke I tell you, Micky, and bank it with the 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 855 
 
 Savings Bank, and you'll live to be thankful." This referred to 
 Micky's harphsicrownd, just earned. That was his exact pro- 
 nunciation, delivered ore rotundissimo, to do full justice to so 
 large an amount. 
 
 Micky's reply was: — " Ketch me at it ! I don't put no faith 
 in any of these here Banks, like you see at street corners. The 
 Bank, where you go on the green bus, is another pair o' stockin's. 
 .... No — I ain't going to put it on a 'orse. You cam't never 
 say they ain't doctored." He went on to express an astute 
 mistrust of investments, owing to the bad faith of Man, and 
 wound up: — " The money won't run away of itself, so long as 
 you don't let it out of your porket." Into which receptacle 
 Micky returned it, slapping the same in ratification of its 
 security. 
 
 " Then you button it in, Micky, and see you don't talk 
 about it to no one. Only I should have said it would be safer 
 put by, or giv' to some responsible person to take charge of." 
 But Michael shook his head, assuming a farsighted expression. 
 He was immovable. Mrs. Treadwell continued: — " Bein' here, 
 I do declare you might be a useful boy, and write Dog Found 
 large on a sheet of paper, and ask Miss Hawkins to put it up in 
 her window for to find the owner." 
 
 " Wot's the dog ?" 
 
 " Well now, he was here a minute back ! Or he run out when 
 you come in." Fog-retarded search discovered a woebegone 
 refugee under the stairs; who had been fetched in, said Mrs. 
 Treadwell, by her puppy in the early morning, and whom she 
 had not had the heart to drive away. 
 
 Michael was proud to show his skill as a penman, and with 
 his aunt's assistance composed an intelligible announcement 
 that the owner of a black-and-tan terrier with one eye might 
 recover the same on production of some proof of ownership. 
 Michael devised one, suggesting that any applicant might be 
 told to say what name was wrote on the collar. 
 
 " But there now, Micky," said the old charwoman. " He 
 hasn't got no collar !" 
 
 " Werry good, then," said her nephew. " When he tells you 
 what's wrote on the collar, you'll know he's a liar, and don't 
 you give him up the dog." 
 
 " But shan't I be a story," said Mrs. Treadwell, " for to tell 
 him the collar's wrote upon, when it's no such a thing ?" 
 
 " Not you, Arnty ! Don't you say anything's wrote. Just 
 you ask him what, and cotch him out !" 
 
856 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The puppy wanted to help, and nearly blotted the composi- 
 tion. But this was avoided, and Micky went out into the fog 
 bearing the placard, of which he was rather proud. 
 
 A typical sot was the only occupant of the bar, who was so 
 far from sober that he imagined he was addressing a public 
 meeting. Micky distinguished that he was referring to his 
 second wife, and had some fault to find with the chairman. 
 Voices in the little parlour behind the bar caught the boy's ear, 
 and took his attention off. He was not bound to stop his ears. 
 If parties hollered, it was their own lookout. Parties hollered, 
 in this case, and Micky coiild hear, without listening. He was 
 not sure, though, when he heard one of the voices, that he would 
 not have listened, if he had any call to do so. For it was the 
 voice of his old acquaintance the convict. 
 
 " No safety like a thick fog, JUiar ! I'll pay her a visit this 
 very afternoon, so soon as ever you've given me some belly- 
 timber. Sapps C!oiu:t'll be as black as an inch-thick of ink for 
 twelve hours yet. Don't you let that steak burn !" 
 
 Michael heard the steak rescued — ^the hiss of its cookery 
 intercepted. Then he heard Miss JuUa say with alarm in her 
 voicer-r—" You're never going there, Wix ! Not to Sapps 
 Court ?" 
 
 " And why the Hell shouldn't I go to Sapps Court ? One 
 place is as safe as another, a day like this." Insert if you will 
 an adjective before " place," here. 
 
 Michael, sharp as he was, could not tell why the woman's 
 answer sounded embarrassed, even through a half-closed door. 
 The story knows. She had betrayed the knowledge she had 
 acquired from the letter she had tampered with, that Sapps was 
 being specially watched by the Police. How could she account 
 for this knowledge, without full confession ? And would not 
 absolution be impossible ? She could only fence with the cause 
 of her confusion. " I got the idea on my mind, I expect," 
 said she uneasily. " Didn't you say she had a man hanging 
 round ?" 
 
 " Old Mo, sure enough. Yes, there's old Mo. But he. won't 
 be there. He'll be swiping, round at The Sun. I can reckon 
 him up ! He don't train for fighting, like he did thirty years 
 ago. One sight of him would easy your mind — ^an old dot-and- 
 go-one image !" 
 
 " I got the idea the ofl&cers would look to catch you there. 
 I did, Wix." 
 
 " And I got the idea no such a thing !" Omission again 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 857 
 
 before this last word. " Why in thunder do you suppose ? 
 .... Shut to that door I" 
 
 " There's no one there — only old Nixon." 
 
 " Who's he talking to ?" 
 
 " Nobody. Empty space 1" 
 
 " Tell you he is ! Look and see." Thereupon Miss Julia, 
 looking through a transparent square in a glass chessboard into 
 the bar, saw that the typical sot was certainly under the im- 
 pression that he had an audience. He was, in fact, addressing 
 a homily to Michael on the advantages of Temperance. See, 
 he said — substantially — the reward of self-restraint ! He was 
 no mere bigoted doctrinaire, wedded to the absurd and exag- 
 gerated theories of the Teatolers. He had not a word to say in 
 favour of Toalabshnensh. It was against Naysh — Human Naysh I 
 But Manshknewwhairtshtop, like himself, was always on the 
 safe side. He charged Micky to be on his guard against Temp- 
 tation, who lay in wait for inexperience without his first syllable, 
 which had been absorbed in a hiccup. Micky was not grateful 
 to Mr. Nixon for this, as it interfered with his hearing of the 
 conversation within. 
 
 " Who are you, in behind that handle ?" asked Miss Hawkins. 
 
 " Come out and show us your face What's this ? ' Dog 
 
 Found '? Yes — very happy to oblige your aunt Stick it 
 
 up against the front-glass yoiu"self ' Won't stick of itself,' 
 
 won't it ? Wait till I see for a wafer." She returned into the 
 small parlour, and foraged in the drawer of her inkstand, which 
 had probably done no service since her experiment in faussure, 
 till it supplied Mr. Wix with a simile for the fog, ten minutes 
 since. 
 
 " That's young Ikey," said the convict. " I can tell him by 
 his Up. Fetch him inside. I've a message for him to carry." 
 Miss Julia had found red wafers; and, after instructing Michael 
 how to use them — to suck them in earnest, as they had got dry 
 awaiting their mission in life — ^induced him into Mr. Wix's 
 presence. Micky's instinctive hatred of this man was subdued 
 by the recollection of the douceurs he had received from him. 
 But do what he would, he was only equal to a nod, as greeting. 
 He hardly received so much himself. 
 
 The convict eyed him sleepily from the window-seat, his usual 
 anchorage at The Pigeons, and said nothing for some seconds. 
 Then he roused himseU to say: — "Well, young shaver, what 
 the office for you ? — that's the point ! Look you now— are you 
 going home ?" 
 
858 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, 
 neither way. Spit it out, guv'nor !" 
 
 Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before 
 he answered: — "You've to carry a message. A message to 
 Aunt M'riar. Got that ? You know Aunt M'riar." 
 
 " Knew Aunt M'riar afore ever you did." 
 
 Mr. Wix looked through his first puff of smoke, amused. 
 " About right you are, that time !" said he. Not that this was 
 untrue enough to be worth telling as a falsehood. Polly the 
 barmaid had no niece or nephew that he knew of, in the early 
 days. " But you could carry a message to her, if you 
 didn't. Just you tell her old Goody Prichard's gone off her 
 hooks." 
 
 " The widder two pair up at Number Seven ? What hooks ?" 
 
 " She's slipped her wind, handed in her chips." 
 
 " Mean she's dead ? Cam't you say so, mister ?" 
 
 " Sharp boy ! That's what she is. Dead." 
 
 "That won't soote Aunt M'riar." Micky had only known 
 old Maisie by repute, but he knew the Court's love for her. A 
 wish for some confirmation of the convict's statement arose in 
 his mind. " How's she to know it's not a lie ?" said he. 
 
 " She'll know, fast enough ! Say I told you. Say who I am. 
 
 She'll twig, when you tell her Stop a bit !" He was 
 
 thinking how to authenticate the death without telling the boy 
 overmuch about himself. " Look here — ^I'U tell you what you've 
 got to say. Say her son — old mother Prichard's son — was just 
 up from Rocestershire, and he'd seen her dead, with his own 
 eyes. Dead as a boiled lobster. That's your message." 
 
 If Micky had known that this man was speaking of himself 
 and his own mother ! Perhaps it was some instinctive inward- 
 ness that made him glad he had got his message and could be 
 gone. He made short work of his exit, saying: — " All right, 
 mister, I'm yovu: man " — and departed after a word in the bar 
 to Miss Julia : — " Right you are, missis ! Don't you let him 
 have another half-a-quartem." For Mr. Nixon being a penny 
 short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life 
 had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of 
 encouraging drunkenness at integers — halves not countiag as 
 fractions, by tacit consent. They are not hard enough. 
 
 Miss Hawkins had placed herself in a difficulty by that in- 
 discreet tampering with Aunt M'riar's letter. She had done it 
 in a fit of furious exasperation with Daverill, immediately the 
 result of an interview with him on his reappearance at The 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 859 
 
 Pigeons some weeks ago. Some whim had inclined him towards 
 the exhibition of a better selfhood than the one in daily use; 
 perhaps merely to assert the power he still possessed over the 
 woman; more probably to enable him to follow it up with re- 
 newed suggestions that she should turn the freehold Pigeons 
 into solid cash, and begin with him a new life in America. She 
 had kept her head in spite of kisses and cajolery, which appealed 
 with some success to her memories of twenty years ago, and had 
 refused to entertain any scheme in which lawful marriage was 
 postponed till after the sale of her property. The parson was 
 to precede the auctioneer. 
 
 But an escaped convict with the police inquiring for him 
 cannot put up the banns. Had Daverill seen his way to doing 
 so he would have made light of bigamy. Besides, was it likely 
 his first wife would claim him ? He preferred to suppress his 
 real reason for refusing to " make an honest woman " of Miss 
 Julia, and to take advantage of the fact that his " real wife " 
 Polly was still living. 
 
 Then Miss Hawkins had made a proposal which showed a 
 curious frame of mind about marriage law. Her idea may be 
 not unknown in the class she belonged to, still. It certainly 
 existed in the fifties of last century. If Aunt M'riar could be 
 deprived of her " marriage lines " her teeth woidd be drawn, 
 not merely practically by making proof of a marriage difficult, 
 but definitely by the removal of a mysterious influence — most 
 to be likened to the key of a driving-pulley, whose absence from 
 its slot would leave the machinery of Matrimony at a deadlock. 
 Let Mr. Wix, by force or fraud, get possession of this charter of 
 respectability, and he and his lawful wife would como apart, 
 like a steamed postage-stamp and its envelope. Nothing would 
 be lacking then but a little fresh gum, and reattachment. This 
 expresses Miss Julia's idea, however faulty the simile may be in 
 itself. 
 
 " She's got her lines to show " — So the lady had been saying, 
 shortly before Michael came into the bar. — " But she won't have 
 them long, if you put your mind on making her give 'em up. 
 Tmi can do it, Wix." She seemed to have a strong faith in the 
 convict's cunning. 
 
 . He appeared to ponder over it, saying finally: — " Right you 
 are, Juliar ! I see my way." 
 
 " What are you going to do 1" 
 
 " That's telUngs. I'll get the dockyment out of her. That's 
 enough for you, without your coming behind to see. I'll make 
 
860 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 you a New Year's present of it, gratish. What'U you do 
 with it ?" 
 
 " Tear it up— bum it ! That'll quiet her o£E. Lawful Polly 1 
 Damn her !" Really Miss Hawkins made a better figure in a 
 rage, than when merely vegetating. And yet her angry flush 
 was inartistic, through so much pearl powder. It made streaks. 
 
 It had its effect on Daverill, soothing his complaisant mood, 
 making him even more coming than before. " I'll get it out of 
 her, Juliar," said he, " and you shall have it to tear up, to your 
 heart's content. It don't make one farthing's worth of differ- 
 ence, that I see. But have it your own choice. A woman's a 
 woman !" There seems no place in this for Mr. Wix's favourite 
 adjective; but it called for omission before "farthing's worth," 
 for all that ! 
 
 " Not a penny of mine shall go your way, Wix, till I've put 
 it on the fire, and seen it bum." Miss Hawkins dropped her 
 voice to say: — " Only keep safe, just the little while left." 
 
 After Micky's exit one or two customers called for attention, 
 and subsided into conversation over one or two quarts. One 
 had a grievance that rumbled on continuously, barely pausing 
 for intermittent sympathy from the other or others. Their 
 quarts having been conceded and paid for. Miss Julia returned. 
 That steak — ^which you may have felt anxious about — ^was being 
 kept hot, and Mr. Wix was tapping the ashes out of his finished 
 pipe. " There !" said he. " You run your eye through that, 
 and you'll see there's no more cause to shy off Sapps than any 
 other place." His exact words suggested recent carnage in Sapps 
 Court, but only for rhetoric's sake. 
 
 Miss Hawkins picked up the letter he threw across the table, 
 and recognised the one she had stealthily converted to an assur- 
 ance of the disappearance of extra police from Sapps Court. 
 She felt very uncomfortable indeed — but what could she do ? 
 
 Ill news is said to travel fast, always. It had not done so in 
 this case, and Sapps Court was still in ignorance of old Maisie's 
 death when Michael passed under its archway, to experience for 
 the first time the feelings that beset the bearer of fatal tidings 
 to those it will wound to hear them far worse than himself. 
 To a not inhuman creature, in such a case, a title to sorrow, 
 that will lessen the distance between his own heart and the 
 one he has to lacerate, is almost a relief. 
 
 He himself was not to blame for delay in delivering his mes- 
 sage. On the contrary, his sympathetic perception of its un- 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 861 
 
 welcomeness to its recipients took the strange form of a deter- 
 mination not to lose a second in fulfilling his instructions. So 
 deeply bent was he on doing this that he never questioned the 
 reasonableness of his own alacrity until he had passed the iron 
 post Dave fell off — you remember ? — and was opposite to his 
 own family residence at the head of the Court. His intention 
 had been to pass it, and go straight on to No. 7. Some- 
 thing made him change his mind; perhaps the painfulness of 
 his task dawned on him. His mother was surprised to see 
 him. " There now," said she. " I thought you was going to 
 be out all day, and your father he'll want all the supper there 
 is for hisself ." 
 
 " So I was a-going to be out all day. I'm out now, in a 
 manner o' speaking. Going out again. Nobody's going to 
 suffer from an empty stummick along o' me." He had subsided 
 on a rocking-chair, dropping his old cloth cap between his 
 feet. 
 
 " Whereabouts have you been to, Micky ?" said his mother 
 conciliatorily, to soothe her son's proud independent spirit. 
 
 He recited his morning's work rapidly. " Linked an old cock 
 down to Chiswick Mawl what was frightened to ride in a hansom, 
 till half -past eleven, 'cos he could only go slow. Got an early 
 dinner off of his cook by reason of roomuneration. Cold beef 
 and pickles as much as I choose. Slice o' plum pudding hotted 
 up a purpose, only no beer for to encoiu:age wice in youth. 
 Bein' clost handy, dropped round on a wisit to Amty Lisbeth. 
 Amty Lisbeth she's makin' inquiry concerning a young tike's 
 owner. Wrote Arnty Lisbeth out a notice-card. Got Miss 
 Horkings next door to allow it up in her window on the street. 
 That's how I came by this here intelligence I got to pass on to 
 Wardle's. Time I was going !" 
 
 Mrs. Ragstroar stopped scraping the brown outer skin ofE a 
 very large potato, and looked reproachfully at Micky. " You've 
 never said nothing of {hat," said she. 
 
 " Who ever went to say I said anything of it ?" was the reply. 
 In this family all communications took the form of contradic- 
 tions or indictments, more or less defiant in character. " I 
 never said not one word. I'd no call to say anything, and I 
 didn't." 
 
 " Then how can you ever expect anyone to know, unless you 
 say ?" She went on peeling. 
 
 " Who's ever said I expected anyone to know ?" But in 
 spite of his controversial method, he did not go away to give 
 
862 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 this message; and evidently wanted a helping hand, or at least 
 sympathy. 
 
 His mother perceived the fact, and said magnanimously: — 
 " You might just as well up and tell, Micky." Then she nearly 
 imdid the effect of her concession by saying: — "Because you 
 know you want to \" 
 
 What saved the situation was that Micky did want to. He 
 blurted out the news that was oppressing him, to his own great 
 relief. " Old Mother Prichard, Wardleses Widder upstairs, she's 
 dead." 
 
 " Sakes alive ! They was expecting her back." 
 
 " Well— she's dead, Uke I tell you !" 
 
 " For sure ?" 
 
 " That's what her son says. If he don't know, nobody don't." 
 
 " Was it him told you ? I never heard tell she had a son — 
 not Mrs. Prichard." 
 
 Micky's family pugnacity preferred to accept this as a cen- 
 sure, or at least a challenge. He raised his voice, and fired ofi 
 his speech in platoons, to say: — " Never see her son ! Shouldn't 
 know him if I was to see him. Wot — I'm telUng — ^you — that's — 
 wot — ^her — ^son said to the party what commoonicated it to me. 
 Miss Wardle she'll reco'nise the party, by particklars giv'." This 
 embodied the impression received from the convict's words, 
 which had made no claim to old Maisie as his mother. 
 
 " Whatever shall you say to Mrs. Wardle ?" 
 
 Micky picked up his cap from the ground, and used it as a 
 nose-polisher — after slapping it on his- knee to sterilise it, a use 
 ^hich seemed to act in relief of perplexity. " If I know, I'm 
 blest," said he. " Couldn't tell you if you was to arsk me !" 
 
 It was impossible to resist the implied appeal for help. Mrs. 
 Ragstroar put a large fresh potato on the table to enjoy its skin 
 yet a little longer, and wiped the memory of its predecessors off 
 on her apron. " Come along, Micky," she said. " I got to see 
 Aunt M'riar; you come along after me. I'll just say a word 
 aforehand." Micky welcomed this, and saying merely: — "Ah ! 
 ■ — Uke a tip !" followed his mother down the Court to No. 7. 
 
 Someone, somewhere, must have known, clocks apart, that a 
 day was drawing to a close; a short winter's day, and a dark 
 and cold one at the best. But the someone was not in the 
 Thames Valley, and the somewhere surely was not Sapps Court. 
 There Day and Night alike had been robbed of their birthright 
 by sheer Opacity, and humankind had to choose between sub- 
 mission to Egyptian darkness and an irksome leisure, or a 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 863 
 
 crippled activity by candlelight, on the one hand, and min, on 
 the other. Not that tallow candles were really much good — 
 they got that yellow and streaky. Why — the very gaslamps 
 out of doors you couldn't hardly see them, not unless you went 
 quite up close ! If it had not been that, as Micky followed his 
 mother down the Court, a ladder-bearer had dawned suddenly, 
 and diied away after laying claim to lighting you up a bit down 
 here, no one would never have so much as guessed illumination 
 was afoot. But then the one gaslamp was on a bracket a great 
 heicth up, on the wall at the end of Druitt's garden, so called. 
 And Mrs. Ragstroar and her son had followed along the wood- 
 paUngs in front of the houses, on the left. 
 
 Micky's flinching from his mission had grown on him so by 
 the time they reached the end house, that he hung back and 
 allowed his mother to enter first. He wanted the tip to exhaust 
 the subject of Death, and to leave him only the task of authenti- 
 cation. He did not hear what his mother said in a quick under- 
 tone to Aunt M'riar, within, manifestly ironing. But he heard 
 its efEect on her hearer — a cry of pain, kept under, and an appeal 
 to Uncle Mo, in some dark recess beyond. " Oh, Mo ! — only 
 hark at that ! Our old lady — gone 1" Then Uncle Mo, emerging 
 probably from pitch darkness in the little parlour, and joining 
 in the undertones on inquiry and information mixed — ^mixed 
 soon enough with sobs. Then the struggle against them in Mo's 
 own voice of would-be reassurance: — " Poor old M'riar ! Don't 
 ye take on so ! We'll all die one day." Then more undertones. 
 Then Aunt M'riar's broken voice: — "Yes — I know she was 
 eighty" — and her complete coUapse over: — "It's the children 
 I'm thinking of ! Our children. Mo, our children !" 
 
 Old Mo saw that point. You could hear it in his voice. 
 " Ah — the children !" But he tried for a forlorn hope. Was 
 it possibly a false report ? Make sure about that, anyhow, 
 before giving way to grief ! " Was it only that young shaver of 
 yours brought the news, Mrs. Ragstroar ? Maybe he's put the 
 saddle on the wrong horse !" 
 
 " He's handy to tell his own tale, Mr. Wardle. Here, young 
 Micky ! Come along in and speak for yourself." Whereupon 
 the boy came in. He had been secretly hoping he might escape 
 being called into council altogether. 
 
 " You're sure you got the right of it, Michael," said Uncle Mo, 
 " Tell it us all over again from the beginning." 
 
 Whereupon Micky, braced by having a member of his own 
 noble sex as catechist, but sadly handicapped by inability to 
 
 65 
 
864 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 employ contentious formulas, gave a detailed account of his 
 visit to The Pigeons. He identified the convict by short lengths 
 of speech, addressed to Mr. Wardle's ear alone, suggestive of 
 higher understandings of the affairs of men than aunts and 
 mothers could expect to share. " Party that's givin' trouble to 
 
 the Police Party I mentioned seeing in Hy' Park 
 
 Party that come down the Court inquirin' for widder lady . . . ." 
 came at intervals. Micky's respectful and subdued reference to 
 Mrs. Prichard was a tribute to Death. 
 
 " And did he say her son told him, to his own hearing ? . . . . 
 All right, M'riar, I know what I'm talking about." This was to 
 stop Aunt M'riar's interposing with a revelation of old Maisie's 
 relation to the party. It would have encumbered cross- 
 examination; which, even if it served no particular end, would 
 seem profound and weighty. 
 
 " That's how I took it from him," said Micky. 
 
 " Didn't he say who her son was ?" Aunt M'riar persisted, 
 with unflinching simplicity. 
 
 Micky, instantly illuminated, replied: — "Not he ! He never 
 so much as said he wasn't her son, hisself." This did not mean 
 that afiBrmation was usually approached by denial of every 
 possible negation. It was orily the involuntary echo of a notion 
 Aunt M'riar's manner had clothed her words with. 
 
 " That was tellings, M'riar," said Uncle Mo. " But it don't 
 make any odds, that I can see. Look ye here, young Micky ! 
 What was it this charackter said about coming here this after- 
 noon ?" 
 
 " Werry first words I heard him say ! ' No safety like a 
 thick fog,' he says. ' And I'll pay her a visit this very arter- 
 noon,' he says. Only he won't ! You may take that ofE me, 
 like Gospel." 
 
 " How do you make sure of that, young master ?" 
 
 " 'Cos he's got nothing to come for, now I've took his message 
 for him. If he hadn't had reliance, he'd not have arxed me to 
 carry it. He knows me for safe, by now, Mr. Wardle." 
 
 " Don't you see. Mo," said Aunt M'riar. " He'd no call to 
 come here, exceptin'. It was only to oblige-like, and let know. 
 Once Micky gave his word, what call had he to come four mile 
 through such a fog ?" 
 
 " That's the whole tale, then ?" said Uncle Mo, after reflection. 
 " Onlest you can call to mind something you've forgot. Master 
 Micky." 
 
 " Not a half a word, Mr. Moses. If there had a been, I'd 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COTJNTER THAT LANDED 865 
 
 have made you acquainted, and no lies. And all I said'a 
 ackerate, and to rely on." Which was perfectly true, so far as 
 reporter's good faith went. Had Micky overheard the conversa- 
 tion two minutes sooner, he would have gathered that Mr. Wix 
 had other reasons for coming to Sapps Court than to give the 
 news of Mrs. Prichard's death. Indeed, it is not clear why, 
 intending to go there for another purpose, Wix thought it neces- 
 sary to employ Michael at all as an ambassador. But a story 
 has to be content with facts. 
 
 Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were alone with the shadow of 
 their trouble, and the knowledge that the children must be 
 told. 
 
 The boy and his mother, their painful message delivered, had 
 vanished through the fog to their own home. The voices of 
 Dave and Dolly came from the room above through the silence 
 that followed. Mo and M'riar were at no loss to guess what 
 wajs the burden of that earnest debate that rose and fell, and 
 paused and was renewed, but never died outright. It was the 
 endless arrangement and rearrangement of the preparations for 
 the great event to come, the feast that was to welcome old Mrs. 
 Picture back to her fireside, and its chair with cushions. 
 
 " Oh, Mo — Mo ! I haven't the heart — I haven't the heart 
 to do it." 
 
 " Poor old M'riar — poor old M'riar !" The old prizefighter's 
 voice was tender with its sorrow for his old comrade, who shrank 
 from the task that faced them, one or both; even sorrow — 
 though less oppressive — for the loss of the old lady who had 
 become the cldldren's idol. 
 
 " No, Mo, I haven't the heart. Only this very day .... if 
 it hadn't been for the fog .... Dave would have got the last 
 halfpenny out of his rabbit to buy a sugar-basin on the stall in 
 the road .... and he's saving it for a surprise for Dolly .... 
 when the fog goes " 
 
 " Is Susan Burr upstairs with them ?" 
 
 " No — she's gone out to Yardley's for some thread. She's all 
 right. She's walking a lot better." 
 
 They sat silent for a while, the unconscious voices overhead 
 reaching their hearts, and rousing the question they would have 
 been so glad to ignore. How should they bring it to the chil- 
 dren's knowledge that the chair with cushions was waiting for 
 its occupant in vain ? Which of their unwilling hands should 
 be the first to draw aside the veil that still sheltered those two 
 babies' lives from the sight of the face of Death. 
 
866 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The man was the first to speak. " Young Mick, he saw his 
 way pretty sharp, M'riar — about who was .... her son." His 
 voice dropped on the reference to old Maisie herself, and he 
 avoided her name. 
 
 " Did he understand 1" 
 
 " Oh yes — he twigged, fast enough There's a p'int to 
 
 consider, M'riar. This man's her son — ^but it don't follow he 
 knows whether she's dead or living, any better than you or me. 
 Who's to say he's not lying ? Besides, we should have had a 
 
 letter to tell .... Who from ? . . . . H'm— well— from " 
 
 But Mo found the completion of this sentence difficult. 
 
 No wonder ! How could he reply: — " Her ladyship ?" He 
 may have been convinced that Gwen would write, but how could 
 he say so ? The sister and daughter, neither of whom were 
 more than names to him, seemed out of the question. Sister 
 Nora would be sure to come with the news, some time. But 
 was she back from Scotland, where they knew she had gone to 
 convalesce ? 
 
 Aunt M'riar looked the fact in the face. " No — we shouldn't 
 have had no letter. Mo. Not yet a while, at least. Daverill's 
 a bad man, and lies. But not when there's no advantage in it. 
 He'd not go about to send me word she was dead, except he 
 knew." 
 
 " How should he know, more than we ?" 
 
 " Don't you ask me about when I see him, nor yet where, nor 
 yet how, and I'll tell you. Mo." She waited, as for a safe- 
 conduct. 
 
 " Poor old M'riar !" said Mo pitifully. " I'll not witness-box 
 you. Catch me ! No — ^no ! — you shan't tell me nothing you 
 don't like." 
 
 " He told me he should try to see his mother again. And I 
 said to him if he went there he would be taken, safe and certain. 
 And he said not he, because the PoUce were too sharp by half, 
 and would take for granted he would be afraid to go anigh the 
 place again. He said he could always see round them." 
 
 " I see what he was driving at. And you think he went." 
 
 " None so long ago, I should say. He never see her — not 
 alive, I couldn't say why, only I feel that was the way of it." 
 
 " When did you see him last ? . . . . No — old girl ! I won't 
 do that. It's mean — after sayin' I wouldn't witness-box 1 
 Don't you tell me nothing." 
 
 " I won't grudge telling you that much. Mo. It's a tidy long 
 time back now. I couldn't say to a day. It was afore I wrote 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 867 
 
 to him to keep away from the Court for fear of the Police 
 
 Yes — I did ! Just after Mr. Rowe came round that time, 
 
 asking inquiries I aw his wife. Mo — ^nothing can't 
 
 alter it." 
 
 " I ain't blaming you, old girl." 
 
 " Well — ^it was then he said he'd go to Chorlton again. And 
 he's been." 
 
 Silence again, and the sound of the children above. Then a 
 footstep without, recognised as Susan Burr's by its limp. 
 
 " She'll have to be told. Mo," said Aunt M'riar. " We've 
 never had a thought for poor Susan." 
 
 A commonplace face came white as ashes from the fog without, 
 and a suffocating voice, gasping against sobs. " Oh, M'riar ! — 
 Oh, Mr. Wardle ! — Is it true she's gone ?" 
 
 Aunt M'riar could not tighten her lips against their instability 
 and speak, at the same time, so she nodded assent. Uncle Mo 
 said, steadily enough: — "I'm afraid it's true, Mrs. Burr. We 
 can't make it out no otherwise." Then M'riar got self-command 
 to say: — "Yes — she's taken from us. It's the Lord's will." 
 And then they could claim their birthright of tears, the last 
 privilege left to hearts encompassed with the darkness of the 
 grave. 
 
 The three were standing, some short while later, at the stair- 
 foot, each looking at the othir. Which was to go first ? 
 
 Aunt M'riar made a hesitating suggestion. " Supposin' you 
 was to step up first, and look back to say ....!" 
 
 " That's one idear," said Uncle Mo. " Suppose you do !" 
 Susan Burr, referred to by both, accepted the commission, 
 limping slowly up the stairs while the others waited below, 
 listening. They heard that the door above was opened, when 
 the children's voices came clearer, suddenly. But Susan Burr 
 had only cautiously pushed the door ajar, making no noise, to 
 listen herself before going in. There was a flare from a gas- 
 birth in the fire as she got a sight of the group within, through 
 the opening. It illuminated Dolly, Dave, and the newly 
 christened wax doll; the Persian apparatus on the floor — a 
 mere rehearsal, whose cake had to be pretence cake, and whose 
 tea lacked its vegetable constituent — and the portraits of robed 
 and sceptred Royalty on the wall. Some point in stage-manage- 
 ment seemed to be under discussion, and to threaten a dissolu- 
 tion of partnership. For Dave was saying: — "Then oy shall 
 go and play with The Boys, because the fog's a-stopping. You 
 look out at the winder !" 
 
868 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Dolly met this with a firm, though gentle, prohibition. " No, 
 you s'arn't. You is to be Gwaimy Mawwowbone vis time, and 
 set on the sofa. And me to be old Mrs. Spicture via time, and 
 set in the chair -wiv scushions. And Pussy to be ve uvvers. 
 And Gweng to paw out all veir teas. Only vey take veir sugar 
 veirselves." Dolly may have had it in view to reduce Dave to 
 impotence by assigning to him the position of a guest. His 
 manhood revolted against a subordinate part. Super- 
 human tact is needed — an old story ! — ^in the casting of 
 the parts of any new play, and Dolly, although kissable 
 to a degree, and with an iron will, was absolutely lacking in 
 tact. 
 
 " Then oy shall go and play with The Boys, because the f org's 
 a-stoarping." But this was an empty tkreat, as Dave knew 
 perfectly well that Uncle Mo would not allow him to go out of 
 doors so late, even if the fog melted, since its immediate cessa- 
 tion would have left London in the dark, for it was past the 
 Official hour of sunset. 
 
 Dolly said again: — " No, you s'arn't !" and went on with the 
 arrangements. " You take tite hold of Pussy, and stop her off 
 doin' on ve scushions. Gweng to paw out the tea, only to wait 
 f aw the hot water ! Ven I shall go in the chair with scushions, 
 and be Mrs. Spicture. And ven you to leave hold of Pussy, and 
 be Gwanny Mawwowbone on the sofa." The supernumeraries 
 were intransigeant and troublesome; that is to say, their repre- 
 sentative the Cat was. 
 
 Dave, whose enjoyment of these games was beginning to be 
 marred by his coming manhood — for see how old he was getting ! 
 — utilised magnanimity as an excuse for concession. He kept 
 the supers in check while Dolly suggested an attitude to Gweng. 
 Gweng had only to wait for hot water, so it was easy to find 
 one. DoUy then scrambled into the chair with cushions, and 
 the supernumeraries wedged themselves round her and purred, 
 in the person of the Cat. But having made this much conces- 
 sion, Dave struck. 
 
 Instead of accepting his part, he went to the window. " Oy 
 can see across the way," said he. " Oy don't call it a forg 
 when you can see the gairslamp all the way across the Court. 
 That hoyn't a forg ! Oy say, Dolly, oy'm a-going for to see 
 Uncle Mo round to The Sun parlour, and boy a hoypny sorcer 
 coming back. Oy am !" 
 
 Dolly shook a mass of rough gold that cried aloud for a comb, 
 and said with sweet gravity: — " You tarn't !" 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 869 
 
 " Why not ?" Dave's indignation at this statement made him 
 shout. " Why cam't oy, same as another boy ?" 
 
 " Because you're Gwanny Mawwowbone, all ve time. You 
 tam't help it." Dolly's solemn nods, and a pathos that seemed 
 to grieve over the inevitable, left Dave speechless, struggling 
 in vain against the identity he had so rashly undertaken to 
 assume. 
 
 Susan Burr missed a great deal of this, and marked what she 
 heard but little. She only knew that the children were happy, 
 and that their happiness must end. Even her own grief — ^for 
 think what old Maisie's death meant to her ! — was hushed at 
 the thought of how these babies could be told, could have their 
 first great grief burst upon them. She felt sick, and only knew 
 that she herself could not speak the word. 
 
 Aunt M'riar stole up after her stealthily — ^not Uncle Mo; his 
 weight on the old stairs would have made a noise. They stood 
 side by side on the landing, just catching sight of the little 
 poppet in the armchair, all unkempt gold and blue eyes, quite 
 content with her personation of the beloved old presence it 
 would never know again. Aunt M'riar could just follow Susan 
 Burr's stifled whisper: — "She's being old Mrs. Picture, in her 
 chair." 
 
 It was confirmed by Dave's speech from the window, unseen. 
 " You ain't old Mrs. Picture. WTien Mrs. Picture comes, oy shall 
 tell her you said you was her, and then you'll see what Mrs. 
 Picture'll say !" He spoke with a deep earnestness — a champion 
 of Truth against an insidious and ungrounded fiction, that 
 pretence was reality. 
 
 Then Dolly's voice, immovable in conviction, sweet and clear 
 in correction of mere error: — " I is Mrs. Spicture, and when she 
 comes she'll say I was Mrs. Spicture. She'll set in her chair 
 wiv scushions, and say I was Mrs. Spicture." 
 
 The two listeners without did not wait to hear Dave's in- 
 dignant rejoinder. They could not bear the tranquil ignorance 
 of the children, and their unconsciousness of the black cloud 
 closing in on them. They turned and went noiselessly down 
 the stairs, choking back the grief they dared not grant indulgence 
 to, by so much as a word or sound. The chronic discussion 
 that they had left behind went on — on — always the same con- 
 troversy, as it seemed; the same placid assurance of Dolly, the 
 same indignant protest of Dave. 
 
 At the stairfoot. Uncle Mo, silent, looking enquiry, mistrusting 
 speech. Aimt M'riar used a touch on his arm, and a nod towards 
 
870 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 the door of the little parlour, to get safe out of the children's 
 hearing before risking speech, mth that suffocation in her th'-oat. 
 Then when the door was closed, it came. 
 
 " We c-c-couldn't do it. Mo, we c-couldn't do it." Her sobs 
 became a suppressed wail of despair, which seemed to give 
 relief. Susan Burr had no other tale to tell, and was inarticu- 
 late to the same effect. They could not break through the 
 panoply of the children's ignorance of Death, there in the very 
 home of the departed, in the face of every harbinger of her 
 retui'n. 
 
 " Poor old M'riar ! You shan't have the telling of 'em." 
 Uncle Mo's pitying tones were husky in the darkened room; 
 not quite dark, as the fog was lifting, and the Court's one gas- 
 lamp was perceptible again through its remains. " Poor old 
 M'riar ! You shan't tell 'em — nor yet Susan Burr. I'll tell 
 'em, myself." But his heart sank at the prospect of his task, 
 and he was fain to get a little respite — of only a few hours. 
 " Look ye here, M'riar, I don't see no harm to come of standing 
 of 'em over till we know. Maybe, as like as not, we'll have a 
 letter in the morning." 
 
 But Uncle Mo was not to have the telling of the children. 
 
 Once it was clearly understood that the news was to be kept 
 back, it became easier to exist, provisionally. Grief, demanding 
 expression, gnaws less when silence becomes a duty. It was 
 almost a reKef to Susan Burr to have to be dry-eyed, on com- 
 pulsion; far, far easier than to have to explain her tears to the 
 young people. She went upstairs to them, mustering, as she 
 went, a demeanour that would not be hypocritical, yet would 
 safeguard her from suspicion of a hidden secret. She had been 
 a long way, and was feeling her foot. That covered the position. 
 Further, the children might stop upstairs a bit longer, it good. 
 Dave was not to go out. Uncle Mo had said so. H Uncle Mo 
 did go round to The Sun to-day, it would be after little boys 
 and girls were abed and asleep. Mrs. Burr made her attitude 
 easier to herself by affecting a Draconic demeanotir. It was 
 due to her foot, Dave and Dolly decided. 
 
 The unconscious children accepted the fog as all-sufficient to 
 account for the household's gloom, and never knew how heavily 
 the hours went by for its older members. Bedtime came, and 
 the fog did not go, or, at least, went no further than to leave 
 the gaslamp as Dave had seen it, just visible across the Court, 
 or discernible from the iirchway at a favourable fluctuation. 
 Susan Burr stepped round to Mrs. Ragstroar's, alleging anxiety 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 871 
 
 to hear Michael's story again, and some hopes of further par- 
 ticulars. She may have felt indisposed for the loneliness of her 
 ovm room, with that empty chair ; and yet that a company of 
 three would bear reduction, all that called for saying having 
 been said twice and again. 
 
 This was soon after supper; when little boys and girls are 
 abed and asleep. The little boy in this case was half asleep. 
 He heard his Aunt's and Uncle's voices get fainter as his own 
 dream-voices came to take their place, and then came suddenly 
 awake with a start to find Uncle Mo looming large beside him 
 in the half-dark room. " Made you jump, did I, old man ?" 
 said Uncle Mo, kissing him. " Go to sleep again." Dave did 
 so, but not before receiving a dim impression that his uncle 
 went into the neighbouring room to Dolly, and kissed the 
 sleeping child, too; gently, so as not to wake her. That was 
 the impression, gleaned somehow, under which he went to sleep. 
 Uncle Mo often looked in at Dave and Dolly, so this visit was 
 no surprise to Dave. 
 
 Aunt M'riar awaited him at the stairfoot, on his return. 
 " They'll be happy for a bit yet," said she. " Now, if only 
 Jerry would come and smoke with you. Mo, I wouldn't be sorry 
 to get to bed myself." 
 
 " Maybe he'll come !" said Mo. " Anyways, M'riar, don't you 
 stop up on account of me. I'll have my pipe and a quiet think, 
 
 and turn in presently Or look here ! — tell you what ! I'll 
 
 just go round easy towards Jeff's, and if I meet Jerry by the way, 
 I meet him; and if I don't, I don't. I shan't stop there above 
 five minutes if he's not there, and I shan't stop all night if he 
 is. Good-bye, M'riar." 
 
 " Good-night's plenty. Mo : you're coming back." 
 
 " Ay, surely ! What did I say ? Good-bye ? Good-night, I 
 should have made it." But he Tiad said " Good-bye !" 
 
 Has it ever occurred to you — you who read this — ^to feel it 
 cross your mind when walking that you have just passed a 
 something of which you took no notice ? If you have, you will 
 recognise this description. Did Uncle Mo, when he wavered at 
 the arch, fancy he had half -seen a figure in the shadow, near 
 the dustbin, and had automatically taken no notice of it ? If 
 so, he decided that he was mistaken, for he passed on after 
 glancing back down the Court. But very likely his pause was 
 jonly due to the fact that he was pulling on his overcoat. It 
 was one he had purchased long ago, before the filling out had 
 set in which awaits all athletes when they relapse into a seden- 
 
872 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 tary life. Mo hated the coat, and the difficulties he met with 
 when getting it on and off. 
 
 He was as good as his word about not stopping long at The 
 Sun. Although he found his friend awaiting him, he did not 
 remain in his company above half an hour, including his seven- 
 minutes' walk back to the Court, to which Jerry accompanied him, 
 saying farewell at the archway. He didn't go on to No. 7 at 
 once, remembering that M'riar had said she wouldn't be sorry 
 to go to bed. 
 
 Seeing lights and hearing voices in at Ragstroar's, he turned 
 in for a chat, more particularly for a repetition of Micky's tale 
 of his Hammersmith visit. Finding the boy there, he accepted 
 his mother's suggestion that he should sit down and be com- 
 fortable. He did the former, having first pulled off the ob- 
 noxious coat to favour the latter. 
 
 He may have spent twenty minutes there, chiefly cross- 
 examining Micky on particulars, before he got up to go. He 
 forgot the odious coat, for Susan Burr called him back, and 
 tried to persuade him to put it on. He resisted all entreaties. 
 Such a httle distance ! — ^was it worth the trouble ? He threw 
 it over his arm, and again departed. The two women saw him 
 from the door, and then, as they were exchanging a final word 
 in the passage, were startled by a loud screaming, and, running 
 out, saw Mo fling away the coat on his arm, and make such 
 speed as he might towards a struggling group not over visible 
 in the shadow of the lamp immediately above their heads. 
 
 This was within an hour of Mo's good-night, or good-bye, to 
 M'riar at his own doorway. 
 
 Aunt M'riar had wavered yet a little before the fire, and had 
 then given way to the thought of Dolly asleep. Dolly would 
 be so unconscious of all things that it would now be no pain 
 to know that she knew nothing of Death. Dolly asleep was 
 always a solace to Aunt M'riar, even when she kicked or made 
 sudden incoherent dream-remarks in the dark. 
 *So, after placing Mo's candlestick conspicuously, that Susan 
 Burr, who was pretty sure to come first, should see that he was 
 still out, and not put up the chain nor shoot to the bolt, M'riar 
 made her way upstairs to bed, very quietly, so as not to wake 
 the children. 
 
 She was less than halfway to bed when she heard, as she 
 thought, Susan Burr's return. It could not be Mo, so soon. 
 Besides, he would have struck a match at once. He always did. 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 873 
 
 She listened for Susan's limping footstep on the stairs. Why 
 did it not come ? Something wrong there, or at least unusual 1 
 Leaving her candle, she wrapped herself hurriedly in a flannel 
 garment she called her dressing-gown, and went downstairs to 
 the landing. All was dark below, and the door was shut, to 
 the street. She called in a loud whisper: — " Is that Susan ?" 
 and no answer came : — " Who is that ?" and still got no answer. 
 
 She went back quickly for her candle, and descended the 
 stairs, holding it Mgh up to see all round. No one in the 
 kitchen itself, certainly. The little parlour-door stood open. 
 She thought she had shut it. Could she be sure ? She looked 
 in, and could see no one — advanced into the room, still seeing 
 no one — and started suddenly forward as the door swung to 
 behind her. 
 
 She turned terrified, and found herself alone with the man 
 she most dreaded — her husband. He had waited behind the 
 door till she entered, and had then pushed it to, and was 
 leaning against it. 
 
 " Didn't expect to see me, Polly Daverill, did you now ? 
 It's me." He pulled a chair up, and, placing it against the 
 door, sat back in it slouchingly, with a kind of lazy enjoyment 
 of her terror that was worse than any form of intimidation. 
 " What do you want to be scared for ? I'm a lamb. You might 
 stroke me ! This here's a civility call. For to thank you for 
 your letter, Polly Daverill." 
 
 She had edged away, so as to place the table between them. 
 She could only suppose his words sardonically spoken, seeing 
 what she had said in her letter. " I wrote it for your own sake, 
 Daverill," said she deprecatingly, timidly. " What I said about 
 the Police was true." 
 
 " Can't foUer that. Say it again !" 
 
 " They had put on a couple of men, to keep an eye. They 
 may be there now. But I'd made my mind up you should not 
 be taken along of me, so I wrote the letter." 
 
 " Then what the Hell ....!" His face set angrily, as he 
 searched a pocket. The sunken line that followed that twist in 
 his jaw grew deeper, and the scar on his knitted forehead told 
 out smooth and white, against its reddening furrows. He found 
 what he sought — ^her letter, which she recognised — ^and opened 
 it before he finished his speech. " What the Hell," he repeated, 
 " is the meaning of this ?" He read it in a vicious undertone, 
 biting off each word savagely and throwing it at her. 
 She had rallied a little, but again looked more frightened than 
 
874 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 ever. It cost her a gasping effort to sa^y: — " You are reading 
 it wrong ! Do give an eye to the words, Daverill." 
 
 " Read it yourseK," he retorted, and threw the letter across 
 the table. 
 
 She read it through and remained gazing at it with a fixed 
 stare, rigid with astonishment. " I never wrote it so," said she 
 at last. 
 
 " Then how to God Almighty did it come as it is ? Answer 
 me to that, Polly Daverill." 
 
 Her bewilderment was absolute, and her distress propor- 
 tionate. " I never wrote it like that, Daverill. I declare it 
 true and solemn I never did. What I wrote was for you to 
 keep away, and I made the words according. I can't say no 
 other, if I was to die for it." 
 
 " None of your snivelling ! How came it like it is ? — that's 
 the point ! Nobody's touched the letter." He used his ill- 
 chosen adjective for the letter as he pointed at it, so that one 
 might have thought he was calUng attention to a stain upon 
 it. He dropped his finger slowly, maintaining his reproachful 
 glare. Then suddenly: — "Did you inveUop the damned thing 
 yourself ?" 
 
 She answered tremulously: — " I wrote it in this room at this 
 table, where you sit, and put it in its invellop, and stuck it to, 
 firm. And I put back the blotting-book where I took it from, 
 not to tell-tale " 
 
 He interrupted her roughly. " Got the cursed thing there ? 
 Where did you take it from ? . . . . Oh — thal^a your blotting- 
 book, is it ? Hand it over !" She had produced it from the 
 table-drawer close at hand, and gave it to him without knowing 
 why he asked for it. 
 
 There is no need to connect his promptness to catch a clue 
 to a forgery with his parentage. The clue is too simple — the 
 spelling-book lore of the spy's infancy. The convict pxilled out 
 the top sheet of blotting-paper, and reversed it against the 
 light. The second Hne of the letter was clear, and ended " now 
 not." The " not " might, however, have been erased indepen- 
 dently — probably would have been. But how about the end 
 of the fourth line, also clear, with the word " run " on an oasis 
 of clean paper, and nothing after it. That " no " in the letter 
 was not the work of its writer. 
 
 " I put it in its invellop, Daverill, and not a soul see inside 
 that letter from me till you . . . ." 
 
 " How do you know that ?" He paused, reflecting. " It 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 875 
 
 wasn't Juliar. She'd got no ink." This man was clever enough 
 to outwit Scotland Yard, with an offer of fifty pounds for Ms 
 capture, but fell easily to the cunning of a woman, roused by 
 jealousy. It wasn't JuUa, clearly ? " Who had hold of the 
 letter, between you and her ?" said he, quite off the right scent. 
 
 " Only young Micky Ragstroar " 
 
 " There we've got it !" The man pounced. " Only that 
 young offender and the Police. That was good for half a sov. 
 
 for him Don't see what I mean ? I'll tell you. He 
 
 delivered your letter all right, after they'd run their eyes over 
 it. I'll remember him, one day !" A word in this is not the 
 one Daverill used, and his adjective is twice omitted. Aunt 
 M'riar's puzzled face produced a more temperate explanation, 
 to the effect that Micky had carried the letter to a " tec," or 
 detective, who had " got at him," and that the letter had been 
 tampered with at the police-station. 
 
 " I wouldn't beUeve it of Micky, and I don't," said Aunt 
 M'riar. " The boy's a good boy at heart, and no tale-bearer." 
 She ventured, as an indirect appeal on Micky's behalf, to add: — 
 " I'm shielding you, Daverill, and a many wouldn't." 
 
 He affected to recognise his indebtedness, but only grudgingly. 
 "You're what they call a good wife, Polly Daverill. Partner 
 of a cove's joys and sorrows ! Got your marriage lines to show I 
 That's your style. You stick to that !" 
 
 Something in his tone made M'riar say: — " Why do you speak 
 like that ? You know that I have." Her speech did not seem 
 to arise from his words. She had detected a sneer in them. 
 
 " You've got 'em to show Ah ! But I shouldn't show 
 
 'em, if I were you." 
 
 " Am I likely ?" 
 
 " That's not what I was driving at." 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 " Shall I tell you, Polly, my angel ? Shall I tell you, re- 
 spectable married woman ?" 
 
 " Don't werrit me, Daverill. I don't deserve it of you !" 
 
 " Right you are, old Polly ! And told you shall be ! . . . , 
 Sure you want to know ? . . . . There, there— easy does it ! 
 I'm a-telling of you." He suddenly changed his manner, and 
 spoke quickly, collectedly, drily. " The name on your stifficate 
 ain't the correct name. / saw to that. Only you needn't fret 
 your kidneys about it, that I see. You're an immoral woman, 
 you are ! Poor Polly ! Feel any different ?" 
 
 Anyone who knows the superstitious reverence for the 
 
876 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " sacred " marriage tie that obtains among women of M'riar's 
 class and type will understand her horror and indignation. And 
 all the more if he knows the extraordinary importance they 
 attach to a certificate which is, after all, only a guarantee that 
 the marriage-bond is recorded elsewhere, not the attested record 
 itself. For a moment she was unable to speak, and when words 
 did come, they were neither protest nor contradiction, but: — 
 " Let me out ! Let me out !" 
 
 The convict shifted his chair without rising, and held, the door 
 back for her exit. " Ah," said he, " go and have a look at it !" 
 He had taken her measure exactly. She went straight upstairs, 
 carrying her candle to the wardrobe by Dolly's bed, where her 
 few private possessions were hidden away. Dolly would not 
 wake. If she did, what did it matter ? Aunt M'riar heard a 
 small melodious dream- voice in the pillow say tenderly: — " One 
 cup wiv soody." It was the rehearsal of that banquet that the 
 great Censorship had disallowed. 
 
 A lock in a drawer, refractory at first, brought to terms at 
 last. A box found far back, amenable to its key at sight. A 
 still clean document, found and read by the light of a hurriedly 
 snuffed candle. Then an exclamation of relief from the reader : — 
 " There now ! As if I could have been mistook !" It was such 
 a relief that she fairly gasped to feel it. 
 
 No doubt a prudent, judicious person, all self-control and 
 guiding maxims, would have refolded and replaced that docu- 
 ment, locked the drawer, hidden the key, and met the cunning 
 expectancy of the evil face that awaited her with: — "You are 
 entirely mistaken, and I was absolutely right." 
 
 But M'riar was another sort. Only one idea was present in 
 the whirlwind of her release from that hideous anxiety — ^the idea 
 of striking home her confutation of the lie that had caused it in 
 the face of its originator. She did the very thing his subtlety 
 had anticipated. As he heard her returning footsteps, and the 
 rustle of the paper in her hand, he chuckled with delight at his 
 easy triumph, and perhaps his joy added a nail in the cofiStU of 
 his soul. 
 
 The snicker had gone from his face before she returned, 
 marriage certificate in hand, and held it before his eyes. " There 
 now !" said she. " What did I tell you ?" 
 
 He looked at it apathetically, reading it, but not offering to 
 take it from her. " 'Tain't reg'lar !" said he. " Name spelt 
 wrong, for one thing. My name." 
 
 " Oh, Daverill, how can you say that ? It's spelt right." 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 877 
 
 " Let's have a look !" He stretched out his hand for it in 
 the same idle way. Aunt M'riar's nature might have been far 
 less simple than it was, and yet she might have been deceived 
 by his manner. That he was aiming at possession of the paper 
 was the last thing it seemed to imply. But he knew his part 
 . well, and whom he had to deal with. 
 
 Absolutely unsuspicious, she let his fingers close upon it. 
 Even then, so sure did he feel of landing his fish, that he played 
 it on the very edge of the net. " Well," said he. " Just you 
 look at it again," and relinquished it to her. Then, instead of 
 putting his hand back in his pocket, he stretched it out again, 
 saying: — " Stop a bit ! Let's have another look at it." 
 
 She instantly restored it, saying: — " Only look with your 
 eyes, and you'll see the name's all right." And then in a startled 
 voice: — " But what ? — but why ?" provoked by the unaccoimt- 
 able decision with which he folded it, never looking at it. 
 
 He slipped it inside the breast-pocket of his coat, and but- 
 toned it over. " That was my game, you see !" said he, equably 
 enjoying the dumb panic of his victim. 
 
 As for her, she was literally speechless, for the moment. At 
 last she just found voice to gasp out: — " Oh, Daverill, you can't 
 mean it ! Give it me back— oh, give it me back ! Will you 
 give it me back for money ? . , , . Oh, how can you have the 
 heart ? " 
 
 " Let's see the money. How much have you got ? Put it 
 down on this here table." He seemed to imply that he was 
 open to negotiation. 
 
 With a trembhng hand M'riar got at her purse, and emptied 
 it on the table. " That is every penny," she said — " every 
 penny I have in the house. Now give it me !" 
 
 " Half a bean, six bob, and a mag." He picked up and 
 pocketed the sixteen shillings and a halfpenny, so described. 
 
 " Now you will give it back to me ?" cried poor Aunt M'riar, 
 with a wail in her voice that must have reached Dolly, for a 
 pathetic cry answered her from the room above. 
 
 " Some o' these days," was all his answer, imperturbably. 
 
 " There's your kid squeaUng. Time I was off What's 
 
 that ?" 
 
 Was it a new terror, or a thing to thank God for ? Uncle 
 Mo's big voice at the end of the Court. 
 
 The convict made for the street-door — peeped out furtively. 
 "He's turned in at young Ikey's," said he. Then to M'riar, 
 using an epithet to her that cannot be repeated: — " Down on 
 
878 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 your knees and pray that your bully may stick there till I'm 
 clear, or ... . Ah ! — smell that \" It was his knife-point, open, 
 close to her face. In a moment he was out in the Court, now 
 so far clear of fog that the arch was visible, beyond the light 
 that shone out of Ragstroar's opeii door. 
 
 Another moment, and M'riar knew what to do. Save Mo, or 
 die attempting it ! If the chances seemed to point to the con- 
 vict passing the house unobserved she would do nothing. 
 
 That was not to be the way of it. He was still some twenty 
 paces short of Ragstroar's when old Mo was coming out at the 
 door with the light in it. 
 
 Aunt M'riar, quick on the heels of the convict, who was rather 
 bent on noiselessness than speed, had flung herself upon him — 
 so Httle had he foreseen such an attack — before he could turn 
 to repel it. She clung to him from behind with all her dead- 
 weight, encumbering that hand with the knife as best she might. 
 She screamed loud with all the voice she had: — " Mo — Mo — he 
 has a knife — he has a knife !" Mo flung away the coat on his 
 arm, and ran shouting. " Leave hold of him, M'riar — keep off 
 him — leave hold J" His big voice echoed down the Court, 
 resonant with sudden terror on her behalf. 
 
 But her ears were deaf to any voice but that of her heart, 
 crying almost audibly : — " Save Mm ! Never give that mtirderoua 
 right hand its freedom ! In spite of the brutal clutch that 
 is dragging the hair it has captured from the living scalp — ^in 
 spite of the brutal foot below kicking hard to reach and break 
 a bone — cling hard to it ! And if, power failing you against its 
 wicked strength, it should get free, be you the first to meet its 
 weapon, even though the penalty be death." That was her 
 thought, for what had Mo done that he should suffer by this 
 man — ^this nightmare for whose obsession of her own life she 
 had herself alone to blame ? 
 
 The struggle was not a long one. Before Mo, whose weak 
 point was his speed, had covered half the intervening distance, 
 a kick of the convict's heavy boot-heel, steel-shod, had found 
 its bone, and broken it, just above the ankle. The shock was 
 irresistible, and the check on the knife-hand perforce flagged 
 for an instant — long enough to leave it free. Another blow 
 followed, a strange one that M'riar could not localise, and then 
 all the Court swam about, and vanished. 
 
 What Mo saw by the light of the lamp above as he turned out 
 of Ragstroar's front-gate was M'riar, <h:essing-gowned and dis- 
 hevelled, clinging madly to the man ho could recognise as her 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 879 
 
 convict husband. He heard her cry about the knife, saw that 
 her hold relaxed, saw the blade flash as it struck back at her. 
 He saw her fall, and believed the blow a mortal one. He heard 
 the voice of Dolly wailing in the house beyond, crying out for 
 the missing bedfellow she would never dream beside again. At 
 least, that was his thought. And there before him was her 
 slayer, with his wife's blood fresh upon his hands. 
 
 All the anger man can feel against the crimes of man blazed 
 in his heart, all the resolution he can summon to avenge them 
 knit the muscles of his face and set closer the grip upon his lip. 
 And yet, had he been asked what was his strongest feeling at 
 this moment, he would have answered: — "Fear!" — ^fear, that 
 is, that his man, more active than himself and younger, should 
 give him the sUp, to right or to left, and get away un- 
 harmed. 
 
 But that was not the convict's thought, with that knife open 
 in his hand. Indeed, the small space at command might have 
 thwarted him. If, for but two seconds, he could employ those 
 powerful fists that were on the watch for him on- either side of 
 the formidable bulk whose slow movement was his only hope, 
 then he might pass and be safe. It would have to be quick 
 work, with young Ikey despatched by the screaming women at 
 Ragstroar's to call in help; either his father's from the nearest 
 pot-house, or any poHce-officer, whichever came first. 
 
 Quick work it was ! A gasp or two, and the man's natural 
 flinching before the great prizefighter and his terrible reputation 
 had to yield to the counsels of despair. It had to be done, 
 somehow. He led ■with, his left — so an expert tells us we should 
 phrase it — and hoped that his greater alacrity would land a 
 face-blow, and cause an involuntary movement of the fists to 
 lay the body open. Then his knife, and a rip, and the thing 
 would be done. 
 
 It might have been so, easily, had it been a turn-to with the 
 gloves, for diversion. Then, twenty years of disuse would have 
 had their say, and the slow paralysing powers of old age asserted 
 themselves, quenching the swift activity of hand and eye, and 
 making their responsive energy, that had given him victory in 
 so many a hard-fought field, a memory of the past. But it was 
 not so now. The tremendous tension of his heartfelt anger, 
 when he found himself face to face with its dastardly object, 
 made him again, for one short moment, the man that he had 
 been in the plenitude of his early glory. Or, short of that, a 
 
 near approach to it. 
 
 66 
 
880 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 For never was a movement swifter than old Mo's duck to the 
 left, which allowed his opponent's " lead off " to pass harmless 
 over his right shoulder. Never was a cross-counter more deadly, 
 more telling, than the blow with his right, which had never 
 moved till that moment, landing full on the convict's jaw, and 
 stretching him, insensible or dead, upon the ground. The 
 sound of it reached the men who came running in through the 
 arch, and made more than one regret he had not been there a 
 moment sooner, to see it. 
 
 Speechless and white with excitement, all crowded down to 
 where Mo was kneeling by the woman who lay stretched upon 
 the ground beyond. Not dead, for she was moving, and speak- 
 ing. And he was answering, but not in his old voice. 
 
 " I'm all as right as a trivet, M'riar. It's you I'm a-thinkin' 
 of Some of you young men run for the doctor." 
 
 One appeared, out of space. Things happen so, in events of 
 this sort, in London. No — she is not to be lifted about, till he 
 sees what harm's done. Keep your hands ofiE, all 1 
 
 By some unaccountable common consent, the man on the 
 ground, motionless, may wait his turn. Two or three inspect 
 him, and one tentatively prods at the inanimate body to make 
 it show signs of life, but is checked by public opinion. Then 
 comes a medical verdict, a provisional one, marred by reserva- 
 tions, about the work that knife has done. A nasty cut, but no 
 danger. Probably stuimed by the fall. Bring her indoors. 
 Bagstroar's house is chosen, because of the children. 
 
 Uncle Mo never took his eyes ofE M'riar till after a stretcher 
 had come suddenly from Heaven knows where, and borne his 
 late opponent away, with a crowd following, to some appointed 
 placOi He thought he heard an inquiry answered in the words : — 
 " Doctor says he can do nothing for him," and may have drawn 
 his inferences. Probably it was the frightened voices and cry- 
 ing of the children that made him move away slowly towards 
 his own house. For he had asked the boy Micky " Had anyone 
 gone to see to them ?" and been answered that Mrs. Burr was 
 with them. It was then that Micky noticed that his voice had 
 fallen to little more than a whisper, and that his face was grey. 
 What Micky said was that his chops looked awful blue, and you 
 couldn't ketch not a word he said. 
 
 But he was able to walk slowly into the house, very slowly 
 up the stairs. Dave, in the room above, hearing the well* 
 known staircreak under his heavy tread, rushed down to find 
 him lying on the bed in his clothes. Mo drew the child's face 
 
A RIGHT CROSS-COUNTER THAT LANDED 881 
 
 to his own as he lay, saying: — " Here's a kiss for yon, old man, 
 and one to take to Dolly." 
 
 " Am oy to toyk it up to her now this very minute ?" said 
 Dave. 
 
 " Now this very minute 1" said Uncle Mo. And Dave rushed 
 off to fulfil his mission. 
 
 When Susan Burr, a little later, tapped at his door, doubting 
 if all was well with him, no answer came. Looking in and seeing 
 him motionless, she advanced to the bed, and touched his hand. 
 It never moved, and she listened for a breath, but in vain. 
 Heart-failure, after intense excitement, had ended this life for 
 Uncle Mo. 
 
 THB tillB 
 
A BELATED PENDRIFT 
 
 " I CAN tell you exactly when it was, stupid \" said a middle- 
 aged lady at the Zoological Gardens to a contented elderly 
 husband, some eighteen years after the foregoing story ended. 
 " It was before we were married." 
 
 " That does not convey the precise date, my dear, but no 
 doubt it is true," said the gentleman unpoetically. At least, 
 we may suppose so, as the lady said: — " Don't be prosy, Percy." 
 A little Macacao monkey '" the cage they were inspecting 
 withdrew his left hand from a searcti for something on his person 
 to accept a nut sadly from the lady, but said nothing. The 
 gentleman seemed unofEended, and carefully stripped a brand- 
 label from a new cigar. " I presume," said he, " that .' before 
 we were married ' means ' immediately before '?" 
 " What would you have it mean ?" said the lady. 
 The gentleman let the issue go, and made no reply. After 
 he had used a penknife on the cigar-end to his satisfaction, he 
 said : — " Exactly when was it ?" 
 
 " Suppose we go outside and find my chair, if you are going 
 to smoke," said the lady. " You mustn't smoke in here, and 
 quite right, because these little darlings hate it, and I want 
 to see the Hippopotamus." 
 
 " Out we go !" said the gentleman. And out they went. 
 It was not until they had recovered the lady's wheeled chair, 
 and were on their way towards the Hippopotamus, that she 
 resumed the lost thread of their conversation, as though nothing 
 had interrupted it. 
 
 " It was just about that time we came here, and Dr. Sir 
 Thingummybob came up when we were looking at the Kinkajou 
 — over there ! . . . . No, I don't want to go there now. Go 
 on through the tunnel." This was to the chairman, who had 
 shown a tendency to go off down a side-track, Uke one of his 
 class at a public meeting. " I suppose you remember that ?" 
 " Rather !" said the gentleman, enjoying his first whifE. 
 " Well — it was just about then. A little after the accident 
 — don't you remember ? — the house that tumbled down ?" 
 
A BELATED PENDRIFT 883 
 
 " I remember all about it. The old lady I carried upstairs. 
 Well — didn't you believe then it was all up with Sir Adrian's 
 eyesight ? I did." 
 
 " My dear ! — how you do overstate things ! Shall I ever per- 
 suade you to be accurate ? We were all much alarmed about 
 him, and with reason. But I for one always did believe, and 
 always shall believe, that there was immense exaggeration. 
 People do get so excited over these things, and make mountains 
 out of molehills." 
 
 The gentleman said:—" H'm !" 
 
 " Well !" said the lady convincingly. " All I say is — see how 
 well his eyes are now !" 
 
 The gentleman seemed only half convinced, at best. " There 
 was something rum about it," said he. " You'll admit that ?" 
 
 " It depends entirely on what you mean by ' rum.' Of course, 
 there was something a little singular about so sudden a recovery, 
 if that is what" you mean." 
 
 " Suppose we make it ' a little singular '! I've no objection." 
 
 The interest of the main topic must have superseded the 
 purely academical issue. For the lady appeared disposed to- 
 wards a recapitulation in detail of the incidents referred to. 
 " Gwen went away to Vienna with her mother in the middle of 
 January," said she. " And .... No — I'm not mistaken. I'm 
 sure I'm right ! Because when we came back from Languedoc 
 in June there was not a word of any such thing. And Lord 
 Ancestor never breathed as much as a hint. And he certainly 
 would have, under the circumstances. Why don't you speak 
 and agree with me, or contradict me, instead of puffing ?" 
 
 " Well, my love," said the gentleman apologetically, " you 
 see, my interpretation of your meaning has to be — as it were — 
 constructive. However, I believe it to be accurate, this time. 
 If I understand you rightly . . . ." 
 
 " And you have no excuse for not doing so. For I am sure 
 that what I did say was as clear as daylight." 
 
 " Exactly. It is perfectly true that, when we went to Gros- 
 venor Square in June, Tim said nothing about recovery. In 
 fact, as I remember it — only eighteen years is a longish time, 
 you know, to recollect things — he was regularly down in the 
 mouth about the whole concern. I always believed, myself, 
 that he would sooner have had Adrian for Gwen, on any terms, 
 by that time — sooner than she should marry the Hapsburg, 
 certainly. Not that he believed that Gwen was going to cave 
 out !" 
 
884 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " You never said he said that !" 
 
 " Because he didn't. He only cautioned me particularly 
 against believing the rubbish that got into the newspapers. I 
 am sure that if he had said anything then about recovery, I 
 should remember it now." 
 
 " I suppose you would." 
 
 " And then six weeks after that Gwen came tearing home by 
 herself from Vienna. Then the next thing we heard was that 
 he had recovered his eyesight, and they were to be married in 
 the autumn." 
 
 This was at the entrance to the tunnel, on the way to the 
 Hippopotamus. One's voice echoes in this tunnel, and that 
 may have been the reason the conversation paused. Or it may 
 have been that resonance suggests publicity, and this was a 
 private story. Or possibly, no more than mere cogitative 
 silence of the parties. Anyhow, they had emerged into the 
 upper world before either spoke again. 
 
 Then said the lady: — " It seems that it comes to the same 
 thing, whichever way we put it. Something happened." 
 
 " My dear," repHed the gentleman, " you ought to have been 
 on the Bench. You have the summing-up faculty in the highest 
 degree. Something happened that did not, as the phrase is, 
 come out. But what was it ? — ^that's the point ! I believe we 
 shall die without knowing." 
 
 " We certainly shall," said Mrs. Percival Pellew — ^for why 
 should the story conceal her identity ? " We certainly shall, 
 if we go over and over and over it, and never get an inch nearer. 
 You know, my dear, if we have talked it over once, we have 
 talked it over five hundred times, and no one is a penny the 
 wiser. You are so vague. What was it I began by saying ?" 
 
 " That that sort of flash-in-the-pan he had .... when he saw 
 the bust, you know . . . ." 
 
 " I know. Septimius Severus." 
 
 " . . . . Was just about the time Sir Coupland Merridew met 
 us at the Kinkajou, and asked for the address in Cavendish 
 Square. That was the end of September. Gwen told you all 
 about it that same evening, and you told me when I came next 
 day." 
 
 " I know. The time you spilt the coffee over my poplinette." 
 
 " I don't deny it. Well — what was it you meant to say ?" 
 
 " What about ? . . . . Oh, I know — the Septimius Severus 
 business I Nothing came of it. I mean it never happened 
 again." 
 
A BELATED PENDRIFT 885 
 
 " I'm — ^not — so — sure ! I fancy Tim thought something of 
 the sort did. But I couldn't say. It's too long ago now to 
 remember anything fresh. That's a Koodoo. If I had horns, 
 I should like that sort." 
 
 " Never mind the Koodoo. Go on about Gwen and the 
 blind story. You know we both thought she was going to marry 
 the Hapsburg, and then she turned up quite suddenly and 
 unexpectedly in Cavendish Square, and told Clo Dalrymple she 
 had come back to order her trousseau. Then the Earl said that 
 to you about the six months' trial." 
 
 " Ye-es. He said she had come home in a fine state of mind, 
 because her mother hadn't played fair. He didn't give par- 
 ticulars, but I could see. Of course, that story in the papers 
 may have been her mamma's doing. Very bad poUcy if it 
 was, with a daughter like that. However, he said it was very 
 near the end of the six months, and after all the whole 
 thing was rather a farce. Besides, Gwen had played fair. 
 So he had let her off three weeks, and she was going down 
 to the Towers at once — which meant, of course, Pensham 
 Steynes." 
 
 " And nothing else ?" 
 
 " Only that he thought on the whole he had better go with 
 her. Can't recall another word, 'pon my honour I" 
 
 " I recollect. But he didn't go, because Gwen waited for her 
 mother to come with her. Undoubtedly that was the propra: 
 course." This was spoken in a Grundy tone. " But she was 
 very indignant with Phihppa about something." 
 
 " Philippa was backing the Hapsburg. All that is intelhgible. 
 What I want to understand — only we never shall — ^is how 
 Adrian's eyes came right just at that very moment. Because, 
 when we met him with his sister in London, he was as blind as 
 a bat. And that was at Whitsuntide. You remember ? — ^when 
 his sister begged we wouldn't speak to him about Gwen. We 
 thought it was the Hapsbiu-g." 
 
 " Yes — they were just going back to Pensham after a month 
 in London. She just missed them by a few hom:s. There was 
 not a word of his being any better then." 
 
 "Not a word. Quite the other way. And then in a fort- 
 night, or less, he saw as well as he had ever seen in his life. 
 I don't see any use in putting it down to previous exaggera- 
 tion, because a man can't see less than nothing, and that's 
 exactly what he did see. Nothing ! He told me so himself. 
 Said he couldn't see me, and rather hoped he never should. 
 
886 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 Becaiose he had formed a satisfactory image of me in his mind, 
 and didn't want it disturbed by reality." 
 
 " He had that curious paradoxical way of talking. I always 
 ascribed the odd things he said to that, more than to any lack 
 of good taste." 
 
 " To what ?" 
 
 " My dear, my meaning is perfectly obvious, so you needn't 
 pretend you don't understand it. I am referring to his very 
 marked individuality, which shows itself in speech, and which 
 no person with any discernment could for one moment suppose 
 to imply defective taste or feeling. He did say odd things, and 
 he does say odd things." 
 
 " I can't see anything particularly odd in what he said about 
 me. If a fillah forms a good opinion of another fillah whom 
 he's never seen, obviously the less he sees of him the better. 
 Let well alone, don't you know !" 
 
 " That is because you are as paradoxical as he is. All men 
 are. But you might be sensible for once, and talk reason- 
 ably." 
 
 " Well, then — suppose we do, my dear !" said the gentleman, 
 conciliatorily. " Let me see — ^what was I going to say just now 
 — at the Koodoo ? Awfully sensible thing, only something put 
 it out of my head." 
 
 " You must recollect it for yourself," said the lady, with some 
 severity. " / certainly cannot help you." 
 
 The gentleman never seemed to resent what was apparently 
 the habitual manner of his lady wife. He walked on beside her, 
 puffing contentedly, and apparently recollecting abortively; until, 
 to stimulate his memory, she said rather crisply: — "Well?" 
 He then resumed: — "Not so sensible as I thought it was, but 
 somethin' in it for all that ! Don't you know, sometimes, when 
 you don't speak on the nail, sometimes, you lose your chance, 
 and then you can't get on the job again, sometimes ? You get 
 stuck. See what I mean ?" 
 
 " Perhaps I shall, if you explain it more clearly," said his 
 wife, with civility and forbearance, both of the controversial 
 variety. 
 
 " I mean that if I had told Adrian then and there that he 
 was an unreasonable chap to expect anyone to believe that his 
 eyesight came back with a jump, of itself — because that was the 
 tale they told, you know " 
 
 " That was the tale." 
 
 "Then very hkely he would have told me the whole story. 
 
A BELATED PENDRIFT 887 
 
 But I was rather an ass, and let the thing slip at the timcK— and 
 then I couldn't pick it up again. Never got a chance !" 
 
 " Precisely. Just like a man ! Men are so absurdly secretive 
 with one another. They won't this and they won't that, until 
 one is surprised at nothing. I quite see that you couldn't rake 
 it up now, seventeen years afterwards." 
 
 " Seventeen years ! Come — I say !" 
 
 " Cecily is sixteen in August." 
 
 " Well — ^yes — well ! — I suppose she is. I say. Con, that's a 
 queer thing to think of !" 
 
 " What is ?" 
 
 " That we should have a girl of sixteen !" 
 
 " What can you expect ?" 
 
 " Oh — ^it's all right, you know, as far as that goes. But she'll 
 be a grown-up young woman before we know it." 
 
 " Well ?" 
 
 " What the dooce shall we do with her, then ?" 
 
 " All parents," said the lady, somewhat didactically, " are 
 similarly situated, and have identical responsibilities." 
 
 " Yes — but it's gettin' serious. I want her to stop a little 
 girl." 
 
 " Fathers do. But we need not begin to fuss about her yet, 
 thank Heaven !" 
 
 " 'Spose not. I say, I wonder what's become of those two 
 young monkeys ?" 
 
 " Now, you needn't begin to fidget about them. They can't 
 fall into the canal." 
 
 " They might lose sight of each other, and go huntin' about." 
 
 " Well — suppose they do ! It won't hurt you. But they 
 won't lose sight of one another." 
 
 " How do you know that ?" 
 
 " Dave is not a boy now. He is a responsible man of five- 
 and-twenty. I told him not to let her go out of his sight." 
 
 " Oh well — I suppose it's all right. You're responsible, you 
 know. You manage these things." 
 
 " My dear ! — ^how can you be so ridiculous ? See how young 
 she is. Besides, he's known her from childhood." 
 
 The story does not take upon itself to interpret any portion 
 whatever of this conversation. It merely records it. 
 
 The last speech has to continue on reminiscent lines, appar- 
 ently suggested by the reference to the childhood of the speaker's 
 daughter; one of the young monkeys, no doubt. " It does seem 
 BO strange to think that he was that little boy with the black 
 
888 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 grubby face that CIo's carriage stopped for in the street. Just 
 eighteen years ago, dear !" 
 
 " The best years of my life, Constantia, the best years of my 
 life ! Well — ^they think a good deal of that boy at the Foreign 
 Office, and it isn't only because he's a protege of Tim's. He'll 
 make his mark in the world. You'll see if he doesn't. Do you 
 know ? — that boy . . . ." 
 
 " Suppose you give these crumbs to the Hippopotamus ! 
 I've been saving them for him." 
 
 The gentleman looked disparagingly in the bag the lady 
 handed to him. " Wouldn't he prefer something more tangible ?" 
 said he. " Less subdivided, I should say." 
 
 " My dear, he's grateful for absolutely anything. Look at 
 him standing there with his mouth wide open. He's been there 
 for hours, and I know he expects something from me, and I've 
 got nothing else. Throw them well into his mouth, and don't 
 waste any getting them through the railings." 
 
 " Easier said than done ! However, there's nothing Uke 
 trying." The gentleman contrived a favourable arrangement 
 of sundry scoriae of buns and biscuits in his palms, arranged 
 cupwise, and cautiously approaching the most favourable inter- 
 stice of the iron railings, took aim at the powerful yawn beyond 
 them. 
 
 " Good shot !" said he. " Only the best bit's hit his nose 
 and fallen in the mud !" 
 
 " There now, Percy, you've choked him, poor darling ! How 
 awkward you are !" It was, alas, true ! For the indiscriminate 
 shower of crumbs made straight, as is the instinct of crumbs, 
 for the larynx as well as the oesophagus of the hippo, and some 
 of them probably reached his windpipe. At any rate, he coughed 
 violently, and when the larger mammals cough it's a serious 
 matter. The earth shook. He turned away, hurt, and went 
 deliberately into his puddle, reappearing a moment after as an 
 island, but evidently disgusted with Man, and over for the 
 day. " You may as well go on with what you were saying," 
 said Mrs. Pellew. 
 
 " Wonder what it was ! That Allah's mouth's put it all out 
 of my head. What was 1 saying ?" 
 
 " Something about David Wardle." 
 
 " Yes. Him and that old imcle of his — ^the fighting man. 
 The boy can hardly talk about him now, and he wasn't eight 
 when the old chap died. Touchin' story ! He has told me all 
 he recollects — more than once — but it only upsets the poor boy. 
 
A BELATED PENDEIET 889 
 
 I've never mentioned it, not for years now. The old chap must 
 have been a fine old chap. But I've told you all the boy told 
 me, at the time." 
 
 " Ye-es. I remember the particulars, generally. You said 
 the row wasn't his fault." 
 
 " His fault ? — no, indeed ! The fellow drew a knife upon 
 him. You know he was that awful miscreant, Daverill. There 
 wasn't a crime he hadn't committed. But old Moses killed 
 him — splendidly! By Jove, I should like to have seen 
 that !" 
 
 " Really, Percy, it you talk in that dreadful way, I won't 
 listen to you." 
 
 " Can't help it, my dear, can't help it ! Fancy being able to 
 kill such a damnable beast at a single blow !" The undertone 
 in which Mr. Pellew went on speaking to his wife may have 
 contained some particulars of Daverill's career, for she said: — 
 " Well — I can understand yoiir feeling. But we won't talk 
 about it any more, please !" 
 
 Whereto the reply was : — " All right, my dear. I'll bottle up. 
 Suppose we turn round. It's high time to be getting home." 
 So the chairman put energies into a return towards the tunnel. 
 
 But for all that, the lady went back to the subject, or its 
 neighbourhood. " Wasn't he somehow mixed up with that old 
 Mrs. AJibone at Chorlton — ^Dave's aunt she is, I believe. At 
 least, he always calls her so." 
 
 " Aunt Maria ? Of course. She is his Aunt Maria. He was 
 — or had been — ^Aunt Maria's husband. But people said as 
 little about that as they could. He had been an absentee at 
 Norfolk Island — a convict. That old chap she married — old 
 Alibone — he's the great authority on horseflesh. Tim found it 
 out when they came to Chorlton to stay at the very old lady's — 
 what's her name ?" 
 
 "Mrs. Marrable." Here Mrs. Pellew suddenly became 
 luminous about the facts, owing to a connecting link. " Of 
 course ! Mrs. Marrable was the twin sister." 
 
 " A — oh yes ! — ^the twin sister I remember .... at 
 
 least, I don't. Not sure that I do, anyhow 1" 
 
 " Foolish man ! Can't you remember the lovely old lady at 
 CIo Dalrymple's ?...." 
 
 " She was the one I carried upstairs. I should rather think 
 I did recollect her. She weighed nothing." 
 
 " Oh yes — you remember all about it. Mrs. Marrable's twin 
 sister from Australia." 
 
890 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 " Of course ! Of course ! Only I'd forgotten for the moment 
 what it was I didn't remember. Cut along !" 
 
 " I was not saying anything." 
 
 " No — but you were just going to." 
 
 " Well — I was. It was her grave in Chorlton Churchyard." 
 
 " That what V 
 
 " That Gwen and our girl went to put the flowers on, three 
 weeks ago." 
 
 " By-the-by, when are the honeymooners coming back ?" 
 
 " The Crespignys ? Very soon now, I shoidd think. They 
 were still at Siena when Gwen heard from Dorothy l^st, and it 
 was unbearably hot, even there." 
 
 " I thought Cis wrote to Dolly in Florence." 
 
 " Not the last letter. They were at the Montequattrini's in 
 May. That's what you're thinking of. Cis wrote to her there, 
 then. It was another letter." 
 
 " 'Spose I'm wrong 1 I meant the letter where she told how 
 the very old lady walked with them to the grave." 
 
 " Old Mrs. Marrable. Yes — and old Mrs. Alibone had to go 
 in the carriage, because of her foot, or something. She has a 
 bad foot. That was in the middle of June. That letter was to 
 Fiesole. You do get so mixed up." 
 
 " Expect I do. Fancy that old lady, though, at ninety- 
 eight !" 
 
 " Yes — ^fancy ! Gwen said she was just as strong this year as 
 last. She'll live to be a hundred, I do believe. Why — ^the other 
 old woman at Chorlton is over seventy 1 Her daughter — or is 
 it niece ? I never know "' 
 
 " Didn't Cis say she spoke of her as ' my mother '?" 
 
 "No — that was the twin sister that died. But she always 
 spoke to her as ' mother.' " 
 
 " Oh ah — ^that was what Cis couldn't make head or tail of. 
 B,ather a puzzling turn out ! But I say " 
 
 " What ? . . . . Wait till we get out of the noise. What 
 were you going to say ?" 
 
 " Isn't her head rather .... I mean, doesn't she show signs 
 of " 
 
 " Senile decay ? No. What makes you think that ?" 
 
 " Of course, / don't know. I only go by what our girl said. 
 Of course, Gwen Torrens is still one of the most beautiful women 
 in London — or anywhere, for that matter ! And it may have 
 been nothing but that." 
 
 " Oh, I know what you mean now. ' Glorious Angel.' I 
 
A BELATED PENDRIFT 891 
 
 don't think anything of that Isn't that the children along 
 
 there — by the Pelicans ?" 
 
 It was, apparently. A very handsome young man and a very 
 pretty girl, who must have been only sixteen — as her parents 
 could not be mistaken — ^but she looked more. Both were 
 evidently enjoying both, extremely; and nothing seemed to be 
 further from their thoughts than losing sight of one another. 
 
 Says Mrs. Pellew from her chariot: — "My dear, what an 
 endless time you have been away ! I wish you wouldn't. It 
 makes your father so fidgety." Whereupon each of these two 
 young people says: — " It wasn't me." And either glances fur- 
 tively at the other. No doubt it was both. 
 
 " Never mind which it was now, but tell me about old Mrs. 
 Marrable at Chorlton. I want to know what it was she called 
 your Aunt Gwen." 
 
 " Yes — ^tell about Granny Marrowbone," says the young 
 man. 
 
 The girl testifies: — "Her Glorious Angel. When we first 
 went into the Cottage. What she said was : — ' Here comes my 
 Glorious Angel !' Well ! — ^why shouldn't she ?" 
 
 " She always calls her that," says the young man. 
 
 " You see, my dear ! It has not struck anyone but yourself 
 as anything the least out of the way." Mrs. Pellew then ex- 
 plains to her daughter, not without toleration for an erratic 
 judgment — to wit, her husband's — ^that that gentleman has got 
 a nonsensical idea into his head that old Mrs. Marrable is not 
 quite .... Oh no — ^not that she is failing, you know — ^not at 
 all! ... . Only, perhaps, not so clear as ... . Of course, very 
 old people sometimes do ... . 
 
 The girl looks at the young man for his opinion. He gives it 
 with a cheerful laugh. " What ! — Granny Marrowbone off her 
 chump ? As sound as you or 1 1 She's called Lady Gwendolen 
 her Glorious Angel ever since I can recollect. Oh no — she's all 
 right." Whereupon Mr. Pellew says: — " I see — sort of expres- 
 sion. Very applicable, as things go. Oh no — ^no reason for 
 alarm ! Certainly not !" 
 
 " You know," says the girl, Cis — ^who is new, and naturally 
 knows things, and can tell her parents,—" You know there is 
 never the slightest reason for apprehension as long as there is 
 no delusion. Even then we have to discriminate carefully 
 between fixed or permanent delusions and . . . ." 
 
 " Shut up, mouse !" says her father. " What's that strik- 
 ing ?" 
 
892 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 The young man looks at his watch — is afraid it must be 
 seven. The elder supposes that some of the party don't want 
 to be late for dinner. The young lady says: — " Well — ^I got it 
 all out of a book." And her mother says: — " Now, please don't 
 dawdle any more. ^ Go the short way, and see for the carriage." 
 Whereupon the young people make off at speed up the steps to 
 the terrace, and a brown bear on the top of his pole thinks they 
 are hurrying to give him a bun, and is disillusioned. Mr. Pellew 
 accompanies his wife, but as they go quick they do not talk, 
 and the story hears no further disconnected chat. Nor does it 
 hear any more when the turnstiles are passed and the carriage 
 is reached. 
 
 Soon out of sight — ^that carriage ! And with it vanishes the 
 last chance of knowing any more of Dave and Dolly and their 
 country Granny. And when the present writer went to look 
 for Sapps Court, he found — ^as he has told you — only a tea-shop, 
 and the tea was bad. 
 
 But if ever you go to Chorlton-imder-Bradbury, go to the 
 churchyard and himt up the graves of old Mrs. Picture and 
 Granny Marrowbone. 
 
NOTE BY BINDEE.— The author seems not to have noticed 
 the discrepancy in dates hetween the story of Moses Wardle's 
 fight with the sweep in this novel and the account of the same 
 mcident given in " Joseph Yance." According to the latter, the 
 Eanley Linnet knocked Peter Gunn out in 1848-49. According 
 to this present version, the date would be somewhere within 
 Moses Wardle's fighting period, say 1830 at latest. 
 
 Another serious error is in assigning Bob Brettle to him as an 
 opponent. Brettle was in his prime somewhere about the date 
 of the story. Perhaps the author meant Tom Paddock. We 
 could often correct errors of this sort if the books came to this 
 shop in an earlier stage of development.