When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

Instead of replying. Granny Marrable rose and, passed into the bedroom. Gwen, whose own speech had stopped her from hearing old Maisie's half-utterance on waking, followed, and stood beside the bed. Granny Marrable said:—"She is not awake yet, but I heard her." As she said this, Gwen slipped her warm hand between the sheets, and touched the motionless extremities; cold marble now, rather than flesh. A stone bottle of hot water, just in contact with the feet, had heated a spot on each, making its cold surrounding colder to the touch, and laying stress upon its iciness. "Oh, Granny," said Gwen, trying in vain to make the living warmth of her own hand of service, "can nothing be done? Surely—her feet in hot water?"

But old Phoebe only shook her head. She knew. It would only be to no purpose! Better let her rest! Moreover, Gwen could not fail to notice that the feet remained passive to her touch, never shrinking. That is not the way of feet. Was ever foot that did not shrink from mysterious unexpected fingers, coming from the beyond in the purlieus of a private couch?

And yet old Maisie was alive there still, and her speech was clear, however low. If anything, its sound savoured of revival. But she was not clear about her whereabouts and whom she was speaking to. She seemed to think it was Susan Burr, who "would find her thimble if she looked underneath." Thus much and no more had come articulate from the land of dreams. The moment after she was quite collected. Was that Phoebe, and her Lady? This was not the conventional phrase "My lady." She was evidently in possession of a Lady she had been guided to find by some Guardian Angel, if, indeed, the Lady were not a Guardian Angel herself. She went on to ask:—Where was her Ruth? When would she come?

She was coming, Ruth was, very soon. Both vouched for it. Gwen added:—"She's gone to see her daughter, who has a little boy."

Then Granny Marrable lost her head for the first time. "She's gone to my granddaughter," said she. "And I'm looking to have another great-grandchild there soon, before a many days are over."

For a moment Gwen was afraid the confusion of Ruth's daughtership might make old Maisie's head whirl, and set her fretting. She began to explain, but explanation was not necessary. The old hand she held was withdrawn from hers, that it might make common cause with its fellow that old Phoebe already held. "My darling," said she, "did I not give her to you when I ran away to the great ship? Fifty years ago, Phoebe—fifty years ago!" There was no trace of any tear in the eye that Gwen could still see, though it looked no longer into her own. The voice was not failing, and the words still came, clear as ever. "I kissed her in her crib, and I would have kissed her yet once more, but I dared not. So I said to myself:—'She will wake and never see me! But Phoebe will be there, to kiss her when she wakes. She will kiss her for me, just on the place we used to say was good to kiss.' Tell me, Phoebe, did my child cry much?..."

Granny Marrable's words:—"I cannot—I cannot—my darling!" caught in her voice, as she bent over the face that, but for its frail attenuation, was her own face over again, touching it tenderly with her own old lips—the same, thought Gwen, that had inherited that place it was so good to kiss, on that baby face of half a century ago, now a grandmother's. She rose noiselessly from where she half sat, half leaned, beside the figure on the bed, and stole a little way apart; not so far as to be unable to hear what that musical voice kept on saying, though she could not catch the replies.

"I said to myself:—'Phoebe will be her mother when I am miles away across the sea, and she will be as good a mother as I....' Was it not best, dearest, I should go alone, rather than carry my child away and leave all the loneliness for you?... Yes—but my heart ached for my little one on the great ship.... I would watch the stars—the very stars you saw too, Phoebe—and they were like friends for many a long week, till they sank down in the sea behind us, and it was thirty years before I saw them again.... Yes—then I knew it would be England soon and I would know if Phoebe had any other grave than the cold sea.... Yes, my darling, that was my first thought—to go to the little church by Darenth Mill, and look in the south corner.... I did, and there was mother's grave, and father's name cut on the stone, but none other. So I thought:—They are all gone—all gone!... Oh, if I had known that you were here!..."

The sound of lamentation barely grew in her voice, but it was there. To turn her mind from the recollection that provoked it, Granny Marrable thought it well to say that Nicholas Cropredy, her first husband, whom the forged letter had drowned at sea, had not been buried at Darenth Mill, but at Ingatestone, with his kindred and ancestors. "Did they find his body?" said old Maisie. She knew that he was dead long years back, but had not received any new impression of the cause of his death.

She did not even now seem to find its proper place in her mind for this correction of its mistaken record. It could not deal with all the facts, but held fast to the identities of her sister and child. Probably the established memory of the false news of her brother-in-law's death continued in possession. She only looked puzzled; then drifted on the current of her thought. "If I had known that you were here!... Oh, Phoebe!—such a many times my boy made me think of his sister he would never see now.... That was before the coming of the news.... Oh yes, I always had a thought till then the time might come before they would be grown up, so they should be children together.... That was my elder boy Isaac, after father—in those days little Ralph was in his cradle.... But the time never came—only the time to think it might have been.... And all those years I thought you dead, you were here!... Oh, Phoebe—you were here!... Oh, why—why—why could I not be told that you were here?"