The old woman was quite alert. There was nothing of the wheezy gammer about her. Only one ear was slightly deaf, she told me when I had been introduced by her granddaughter—a woman certainly over fifty. She smiled referring to her one infirmity, and when she smiled the parchment of her face became like the surface of the most ancient palimpsest: it was seamed by a thousand of the finest lines, and made me feel that I was looking at an original etching by Rembrandt or Albert Dürer—a “trial proof,” not evenly bitten in places; and the cap she wore added to the illusion.
She was, I could see, what might be called a professional centenarian, and so might retain some of those prejudices which existed long ago against “talking shop” and therefore I refrained from referring in any way to her age: I felt sure that when the right moment came she would give me an opening, and I found that I had not misjudged her. I had scarcely told her how greatly we all liked our house before she gratified me by a reminiscence of the antepenultimate owner: he had died, I happen to know, thirty-eight years ago, and Mrs. Trendall remembered the morning he first rode his black horse to hounds—that was the year before he married, and his son was now a major-general. “A long time ago,” I remarked, and she smiled the patronising smile of the professional at the feeble effort of an incompetent amateur. “Long ago? Oh no; only a bit over sixty years—maybe seventy.” The difference between sixty and seventy years ago was in her eyes not worth taking any account of. Her treatment of this reminiscence gave me warning of what she could do when she had her second wind and got into her stride.
“You must have a great memory, Mrs. Trendall,” I remarked. “Was there much stir in this neighbourhood when Queen Victoria got married? I heard something about a big bonfire on Earl's Beacon.”
“'Twere no more'n a lucifer match in compare with the flare up after Waterloo,” was her complacent reply; and I felt as if I had just had an audacious pawn taken by my opponent's Queen. “Ay, Thurswell lost three fine youngsters at Waterloo. There was Amos Scovell, him with the red hair.”
“The one they used to call Carrots?” I suggested.
She brightened up.
“The very same—Carrots they called him sure enough,” she said, nodding. “But you couldn't have knowed'un; you're no more'n a stripling as yet. Doan't you list to all that you hear from them that calls theirselves ancient old venerables; there's not a one of'un that's truthfully old—I'm the only one; take my word for it, sir.”
I gave her to understand (I hope) by my confidential smile and shake of the head that I was aware of the many fraudulent claims to longevity advanced by some of our friends about Thurswell.
“Age? Age is an empty thing without a memory,” I remarked. “But what a memory you have, Mrs. Trendall! I shouldn't wonder if you recollected the news of Nelson's victory at Trafalgar arriving in England—oh no: that was too long ago even for you.”
She bridled up in a moment.