"Ruth darling—fetch him to me to-morrow. Is it far to bring him?" There was hunger for the baby in her beseeching voice. She might enjoy him a little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so—a month or so even.
"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John will drive us."
Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson. "They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name Peter?—she asked, and was told that he was so called after his grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:—"I buried his grandfather thirteen years ago." To which her mother said:—"Tell me all his name, that I may know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd comment:—"Oh yes—I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."
She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of ignorance.
But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?
The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the loss of these two. But the third—how about the one who survived his childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.
"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed distress. Then Granny Marrable:—"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:—"Shall I ask her ladyship to come?"
Gwen immediately returned to the bedside. "Is she asking for me?" said she. And Granny Marrable replied:—"I think she has it on her mind to speak to you, my lady."
Not too many at once was the rule. Ruth made a pretence of something to be done in another room, but the Granny kept near at hand.
"My dear—my Lady—I am so afraid...."