And so the chalk line was drawn. The only difficulty regarded the fire; but this was got over by some ingenuity on the part of Peggy and a workman, whereby the grate was altered so as to hold two cranes; and so minute were the engineers, that the end of the chalk line came up to the hearth, dividing it exactly into two halves; so that each crane could be got at without overstepping the mark. This arrangement lasted through eleven years; and if to that period we add the five years of prior strife, this domestic war endured for sixteen years; nor, according to the report of Mr Ross and Peggy, with that of the good many curious visitors who contrived through various excuses to get a view of the domestic arrangement, was that magic line which thus separated two hearts once so loving ever transgressed; nay, it seemed to become a point of honour in the two maidens. They might read their Bibles on either side of it, and send their mute anathemas across it, so as to reach the unhappy non-elect; but not a foot of either ever trod upon the mark. The foot of time might dull it, but the ready hand of either revived the line of demarcation, even as the feelings were kept alive in undying vividness; all which may easily enough be conceived; it contravenes no law of nature; but I fairly admit that I must draw a strong bill on the credulity of poor modern haters of the Armenian kind, when I state what was on all hands acknowledged, that after the chalk truce—that is, for eleven years—the residents of this room, divided so against itself, never interchanged a word with each other. I freely admit that all traditions become incrusted by the marvellous. We do not reject port wine because it has undergone a certain process. Yes; but we do not swallow the crust, which is only deposited sugar. So be it; and you are welcome to your advantage, provided you admit that the raciness you admire is the consequence of the deposit; and so, in my case, you may reject the eleven years’ silence of Martha and Mary Jopp, yet you cannot get quit of the tang of the reported marvel. For my own part, I am a little sceptical myself; but then I cannot prove the negative of a popular statement; and I rather doubt if there are many religions in the world which are founded on anything better than this defiance.
Towards the end of the eleventh year a new incident arose to change perhaps the tenor of this strange drama. Martha Darling, a daughter of the sister Margaret who went to India, was sent home to Mr Ross to be educated in Scotland, where she was to remain till the homecoming of her parents, who had become rich on the spoils of Cheyte Sing, or the Begums of Oude, or some other unfortunate Indian victim. The girl was generous, and full of young life; and Mr Ross became hopeful that by introducing her to her aunts some instinctive feelings might be called up in the breasts of the sisters which would break up the old congelation. He told her the story of the chalk line, and got a scream of a laugh for an answer, with the threat that she would force her aunts to embrace, and weep, and be friends. Next day the visit was made, and, designedly, without any intimation that the niece had arrived in Scotland. On opening the door, Mr Ross found the two ladies in that position in which he had so often before found them, each sitting stiffly on her own side of the chalk line, and looking out of her window into the close—for, as I should have stated before, the room was supplied by two windows.
“Your niece from India—only arrived yesterday.”
No more time for prologue, for the girl flew forward, and taking her elder aunt round the neck, hugged her very lovingly after the Anglo-Indian fashion, and thereafter, making a spring over the line of chalk, she ran to Aunt Mary, and performed the same operation upon her, but with no emolliating result; the old petrefactions, which had become harder by the passage of every wave of time, were not to be dissolved or softened by the sparkling rill from the green sunny mountains. They looked strangely only because they looked unnaturally; but that was no reason why Martha the younger should change her nature, and so she rattled away, every now and then casting her eye, with a laugh, at the line of chalk.
“If I had you only in India,” she went on, “where the natives, when they drink bang, dance such strange dances, you would laugh so. Shall I show you?”
And without waiting for an answer, she began to make very pretty but somewhat irregular revolving movements on the floor, whereby in a short time, by the rapid motion of her small feet, she contrived to efface the line of chalk.
“Now you can hardly see it,” she proceeded with shortened breath; “and now, the nasty thing being gone, you are to cross and shake hands, and kiss each other.”
But the good-natured girl’s efforts were useless. The sisters sat as stiff in their chairs as if they had been the figures in a pagoda irresponsive to the dance of the worshippers. Even the confident will-power of youth, which under-estimates all difficulties, was staggered by the resistance offered to its efforts, and the young Martha was obliged to leave without attaining an object over which she had been dreaming the preceding night. Next morning the chalk line was renewed, the still air of the room in Burnet’s Close had recovered its quietude from the oscillation produced by the young girl’s laugh, and the demon of obstinacy sat enshrined in its niche which it had occupied for so many years; nor had the after visits of the younger Martha had any better effect towards the object that lay nearest to her generous heart. And now a month had passed; a particular morning rose—not marked by an asterisk in the calendar, and yet remarkable for opening with the thickest gray dawn that had been observed for a time. And here you may already see I am getting among the mists, where old Dame Mystery, with her undefined lines, is ready to assume the forms forecast by brooding fancy. The gloom in the old room still hung thick, as the two maiden ladies moved slowly about, so like automatons, each preparing her cup of tea. So sternly had custom occupied the place of primary nature, that it would now have appeared more strange and out of joint for them to speak than to be silent. And so, as the minutes passed, the gray mist of the morning gave way to the struggling rays of the sun, and now there was something to be seen—nay, something that could not be unseen. Nor this the less by token that the eyes of both our Martha and Mary were fixed as if by a spell upon that part of the wall over the mantelpiece. There was hanging bodily, in the old frame, and radiant with the old light, the real picture of their mother, for the possession of which they had sighed for sixteen years. We may easily conceive that it could not fail of an effect, even as free from the connexion of any mystery as to how it came to be there. But the question, if put by either to herself or her neighbour, could not be answered in any way consistently with natural causes, for neither of them had been out of the room—nay, neither had been in a condition which could have been taken advantage of by any one who wished by a trick to take them by surprise. Then how catching the superstitious when it plays into the hand of our fears! As they looked with spell-bound eyes on that apparition, and read once more the expression in that blessed countenance that spoke peace and love,—reproof enough to those who for so many long years had disobeyed her injunctions to treat each other as sisters, and love each other even as she loved them and they her,—they never doubted but that some unseen hand placed that picture there for the end of chastening their rebellious hearts, and bringing them back to that love which was enjoined even by Him whom they worshipped as the very God of Love. It seemed as if they shook as they gazed, and each one at intervals sought with a furtive glance the face of the other. A charm was working among the old half-dead nerves that for years had quivered with the passions of the devil. The revived feelings of that olden time, when that mild loving mother was the centre of their affections and bond of love between themselves, were in a tumult below the hard crust of mutual hatred, that was breaking under the touch of the finger of God; they were both of the elect, since God took the trouble to chide them and recall them to their duty and their obedience. The relentings in the hard faces, the rising tears in the eyes of both, the tremors in the hands, all spoke eloquently to each other; nor did they speak in vain; they rose as if by sympathy. “O Martha!” “O Mary!” No more; the words were enough, and the two sisters were locked in the arms of each other, drawing long sighs, and sobbing convulsively.
A scene all this which, being apt to precipitate one of my disposition into the gushing vein, I must leave. I shall be on somewhat safer ground as I proceed to say what truth and probability equally require, that the paroxysm being over, and the two having begun, even as they had done of old, to make and sugar each other’s tea, to butter each other’s bread, and even to break each other’s egg, or bone each other’s small haddock—most delightful tricks of love, which selfishness knows nothing of, and cannot compensate by any means within its power,—they gradually began to doubt whether some kindly hand of flesh was not concerned in producing the phenomenon of the picture. They had both been sound asleep till nine o’clock, and Peggy Fergusson had in the gray dawn been in the room doing her duty to the fire. But what although the Indian elf, who had likely brought the picture home with her from India, had been put up by Mr Ross to a little deception, and had slipt in in the wake of Peggy, and hung it on the nail which had been so generously left by the old tenant? nay, these spinsters, apart from the delusion produced by the demon of obstinacy, were sensible women; and in the pleasant talk that now flowed like limpid water down a very pretty valley with flowers on either side they came to the conclusion, with—Oh, wonder!—a laugh fighting for utterance among the dry muscles, that the fact was just so as we have stated it. What then. Was not the effect admirable—yea, delectable?
A conclusion this which derived no little confirmation from the fact that the young Anglo-Indian came bouncing into the room about eleven o’clock, crying, in her spirited way, “Ah, I see it is all right,” and yet never saying a word of the said picture; but, indeed, the fairy had some work to do other than of revealing the secrets of Titania to her victims, for she straightway set to work with a wet cloth to eradicate every trace of that devil-invented line of chalk which had so long kept asunder good amiable spirits. Nor was she contented with even this, for to satisfy her impish whims, she got her now changed aunts, nothing loth, to cross and recross the place of the now defaced line, till all notion of the division was taken out of their minds.