When Ghost Meets Ghost. William De Morgan
taken Aunt Elizabeth Jane largely into her confidence about Mrs. Prichard, repeating, indeed, all she knew of her except what related to her convict husband. About that she kept an honourable silence.
It was creditable to Miss Juliarawkins, whose name—written as pronounced—gives us what we contend is an innocent pleasure, that she should have suspected the truth about Wix or Daverill's want of shrewdness when he visited Sapps Court. She had been biased towards this suspicion by the fact that the man, when he first referred to Sapps Court, had spoken the name as though sure of it; and it was to test its validity that she invited Aunt Elizabeth Jane round by the private door, and introduced her to the darkened bar, where the ex-convict was lighting another pipe. She had heard Mrs. Treadwell speak of Aunt M'riar; and now, having formed a true enough image of the area of the Court, had come to the conclusion that all its inhabitants would be acquainted, and would talk over each other's affairs.
"Who the Hell's that?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had stung him, as the old charwoman's knock came at the private entrance alongside of the bar. He seemed very sensitive, always on the watch for surprises.
"Only old Treadwell from next door. She ain't going to hurt you, Tom. You be easy." Miss Hawkins spoke with another manner as well as another name now that she and this man were alone. She may never possibly have known his own proper name, he having been introduced to her as Thomas Wix twenty years ago. An introduction with a sequel which scarcely comes into the story.
His answer was beginning:—"It's easy to say be easy. … " when the woman left the room to admit Aunt Elizabeth Jane. Who came in finishing the drying of hands, suddenly washed, on a clean Sunday apron. "Lawsy me, Miss Hawkins!" said she. "I didn't know you had anybody here."
It was not difficult to entamer the conversation. After a short interlude about the weather, to which the man's contribution was a grunt at most, the old lady had been started on the subject of her nephew and Sapps Court, and to this he gave attention. If she had had her tortoiseshell glasses she might have been frightened by the way he knitted his brows to listen. But she had left them behind in her hurry, and he kept back in a dark corner.
"About this same aged widow body," said he, fixing the conversation to the point that interested him. "What sort of an age now should you give her? Eighty—ninety—ninety-five—ninety-nine?" He stopped short of a hundred. Nobody one knows is a hundred. Centenarians are only in newspapers.
"I can tell you her age from her lips, mister. Eighty-one next birthday. And her name, Maisie Prichard."
Mr. Wix's attention deepened, and his scowl with it. "Now, can you make that safe to go upon?" he said with a harsh stress on a voice already harsh. "How came the old lady to say her own christened name? I'll pound it I might talk to you most of the day and never know your first name. Old folks they half forget 'em as often as not."
Miss Hawkins struck in:—"Now you're talking silly, Mr. Wix. How many young folk tell you their christened names right off?" But she had got on weak ground. She got off it again discreetly. "Anyhow, Mrs. Treadwell she's inventing nothing, having no call to." She turned to Aunt Elizabeth Jane with the question:—"How come she to happen to mention the name, ma'am?"
"Just as you or I might, Miss Julia. Mrs. Wardle she said, 'I was remarking of it to Mrs. Treadwell,' she said, 'only just afore we come upstairs, ma'am,' she said, 'that you was one of twins, ma'am,' she said. And then old Mrs. Prichard she says, 'Ay, to be sure,' she says, 'twins we were—Maisie and Phoebe. Forty-five years ago she died, Phoebe did,' she says. 'And I've never forgotten Phoebe,' she says. 'Nor yet I shan't forget Phoebe not if I live to be a hundred!'"
"Goard blind my soul!" Mr. Wix muttered this to himself, and though Aunt Elizabeth Jane failed to catch the words, she shuddered at the manner of them. She did not like this Mr. Wix, and wished she had not forgotten her tortoiseshell spectacles, so as to see better what he was like. The words she heard him say next had nothing in them to cause a shudder, though the manner of them showed vexation:—"If that ain't tryin' to a man's temper! There she was all the time!" It is true he qualified this last substantive by the adjective the story so often has to leave out, but it was not very uncommon in those days along the riverside between Fulham and Kew.
"I thought you said the name was Daverill," said Miss Hawkins, taking the opportunity to release a curl-paper at a looking-glass behind bottles. It was just upon time to open, and the barmaid had got her Sunday out.
"Why the Hell shouldn't the name be Daverill? In course I did! Ask your pardon for swearing, missis. … " This was to the visitor, who had begun to want to go. "You'll excuse my naming to you all my reasons, but I'll just mention this one, not to be misunderstood. This here old lady's a sort of old friend of mine, and when I came back from abroad I says to myself I'd like to look up old Mrs. Daverill. So I make inquiry, you see, and my man he tells me—he was an old mate of mine, you see—she's gone to live at Sevenoaks—do you see?—at Sevenoaks. … "
"Ah, I see! I've been at Sevenoaks."
"Well—there she had been and gone away to town again. Then says I, 'What's her address?' So they told me they didn't know, it was so long agone. But the old woman—her name was Killick, or Forbes was it?—no, Killick—remembered directing on a letter to Mrs. Daverill, Sapps Court. And Juliar here she said she'd heard tell of Sapps Court. So I hunted the place up and found it. Then your Mrs. Wardle's husband—I take it he was Moses Wardle the heavyweight in my young days—he put me off the scent because of the name. The only way to make Prichard of her I can see is—she married again. Well—did no one ever hear of an old fool that got married again?"
"That's nothing," said Miss Hawkins. "They'll marry again with the rattle in their throats."
That tart was in the oven, and had to be remembered. Or else Aunt Elizabeth Jane wanted to see no more of Mr. Wix. "I must be running back to my cooking," said she. "But if this gentleman goes again to find out Sappses, he's only got to ask for my niece at Number One, or Mrs. Wardle at Number Seven, and he'll find Mrs. Prichard easy." She did not speak directly to the man, and he for his part noticed her departure very slightly, giving it a fraction of a grunt he wanted the rest of later.
Nor did Aunt Elizabeth Jane seem in a great hurry to get away when Miss Hawkins had seen her to the door. She lingered a moment to refer to Aunt's M'riar's talk of Widow Prichard. Certainly Mrs. Wardle at Number Seven she said nothing of any second marriage, and thought Prichard was the name of the old lady's first husband, who had died in Van Diemen's Land. Miss Julia paid very little attention. What business of hers was Widow Prichard? She was much more interested in a couple of policemen walking along the lane. Not a very common spectacle in that retired thoroughfare! Also, instead of following on along the riverside road it opened into, they both wheeled right-about-face and came back.
Miss Julia, taking down a shutter to reinstate The Pigeons as a tavern open to customers, noted that the faces of these two were strange to her. Also that they passed her with the barest good-morning, forbiddingly. The police generally cultivate intercourse with public-house keepers of every sort, but when one happens to be a lady with ringlets especially so; even should her complexion be partly due to correctives, to amalgamate a blotchiness. These officers overdid their indifference, and it attracted Miss Julia's attention.
Aunt Elizabeth Jane thought at the time she might have mistaken what she heard one of them say to the other. For, of course, she passed them close. The words she heard seemed to be:—"That will be Hawkins." Something in them rang false with her concept of the situation. But there was the cherry-tart to be seen to, and some peas to boil. Only not the whole lot at once for only her and Michael! As for that boy, she had sent him off to the baker's, the minute he came back, to wait till the bit of the best end of the neck was sure to be quite done, and bring it away directly minute.
That day there was an unusually high spring-tide on the river, and presumably elsewhere; only that did not concern Hammersmith, which ascribed the tides to local impulses inherent in the Thames. Just after midday the water was all but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith Bridge, and the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows standing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no longer able to speak for themselves,