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 Brantock. 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 Granny 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 Euphemia. 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 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, abating 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 Australia 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 controversial attitude which would render you an obstructive to liberal 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.