When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

Gwen saw the way of this. Phoebe's letter, effaced to make way for the forgery, was to announce Isaac Runciman'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 thunderbolt 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 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 itself—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 kill. 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 Runciman, 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 thinking I was not saying the words I thought, and I was all 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 your 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 unchanged. "Was that enough?" she said. The mere coincidence of the twinship did not seem to her to have warranted the effect it produced.