HOW OLD MAISIE RECEIVED A VISIT FROM HER DAUGHTER RUTH, AND REMADE HER ACQUAINTANCE. HOW RUTH STAYED TO TEA. OF HER RESEMBLANCE TO POMONA. OF DAVE'S CONFUSION, 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 Court 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 window, to see the better the little 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 Macquarie that the awkward well-handle, the work of a convict on ticket-of-leave, who had started a forge near by, grew so 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 life elsewhere. She remembered that shoeing-smith well; a good fellow, sentenced for life for a crime akin to Wat Tyler's, mercifully 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 remembered 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 back to her mind like 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 memories that clung about it? She was glad that someone 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 Rendall—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'll 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.

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 cordiality, 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 Thrale'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 diffidence to believe that a quiet chat would really be welcome to her, made reference to the disappointment such a short allowance of her young ladyship had been, and resuming her high-backed chair, put on her spectacles to get a better view of her visitor—oh, how unconsciously!

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 monopolizing him. That was the result of a grande passion, generated perhaps by the encouragement the young 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 little 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 preference 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 founded 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.

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 implied 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 live in the house, ma'am," she said, "after it had fallen down?"

"Not in my rooms upstairs, nor his Aunt M'riar's underneath. 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 lamplighter." Old Maisie recollected seeing the lamplighter, but she had forgotten how she was got into that carriage.

"Then you hardly saw the children?"

"I was all mazed. I heard my Dolly 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.

"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 ... someone 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 little 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 had cut herself," 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 do me good to talk to."

But the old lady had talked to the full extent of her tether. 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 listener striving to take the hints you 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 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, rippling 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 hotter." The real Pomona never looked about fifty—she was a goddess, you see!—but if 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 unconscious in her presence. That was human nature. The establishment 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 attention 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 Maisie's own past experience, came like a breath of fresh air. Was it Pomona though?—or was it the tea? Reserve gave 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 married 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 young 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 dry. The glowing embers were getting spent, and the open hearth called for reimbursement. It seemed a shame those sweet fresh lichens should burn; but then, it would never do to let the fire out! Miss Lupin 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 baffled.

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 home, 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 little one makes me think of my own little 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 born, 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 could 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 convalescents 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 comeliness still clung to, invited it.

"'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 century. They shook hands, this time, and there was no glimmer 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 heart-broken beauty as she tore herself away, with the kiss on her lips that dwelt there still.

They shook hands, with affectionate cordiality, and the old lady, hoping again that the visitor's "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 little 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 deliver 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. They were found in the Verderer's Hall, where they had concealed 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 delayed 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 couple. 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 live, 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 guardianship?—friendship was hardly the word to use. An overpresumption 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 Skillicks? 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! What was her dress? Old Maisie could not recall this. The 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-like. Yes, she had had abundance in the summer of her life, 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 liking. 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, Solitude; not as mere means to live. But, indeed, Solitude had intruded upon her first, disguised as a friend. The irksomeness of life 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. Cosmic fires were at work upon his world—that world he thought so 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 little 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 little beetle, and would have liked 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 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 quarrelling. 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 suggestive 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 relight 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 futility of an empty matchbox is as the effrontery of the celebrated misplaced milestone. Expeditions 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 anything, 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 inaudible 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.

"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.... I don't know. Perhaps she does. I 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 found 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 timeserver's assumption of civility towards a plaguy old cat!

"You'll be feeling ready for your bit of supper, Mrs. Pilcher," said the housekeeper; who, having been snubbed by Miss Lutwyche 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 cat. 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 designation 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 thought—her duty by her young ladyship's protÉgÉe. 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 like she did over at Chorlton, was a sort of stranger at the Towers. But only a subacute stranger, as her husband, when living, 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. Granny 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! Ruth—Ruth—Ruth what?" She was trying to remember the name by which she had known Widow Thrale in her childhood. Her effort to do so, had it succeeded, would have made a complete disclosure almost inevitable, owing to the peculiarity of Granny Marrable's first husband's name. "I ought 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 departed, 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 combustibility.

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 unsuspicion 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 absolutely in the dark about it than the solitary old woman who that evening watched that log, stimulated by the scrapwood during 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 was 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 colliding 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 recollection should come back to her of Lutwyche's odious designation that she had taken to herself, so warrantably to all appearance. 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 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 like 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 meaning of the word "obstacle." Conceive that her poverty had never meant pauperisation, and that graciousness and condescension 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 qualification. 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 visÉ 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 if only that nice person that came to-day could have stayed on, to pass the time with her until the welcome sound 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 farewell interview with her idol before she went to bed. Yes—how nice it would have been to have her here! Ruth Thrale—yes, Ruth—her own little daughter's name of long ago!

This Ruth was her own daughter. But how to know it!