‘The foreign strain?’

Your mother’s maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does not
deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. _That_, I believe, is a foreign
name.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest
again. ‘Van der Gucht, of course. I—how stupid of me!’

‘As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But there,’ she flung out little fin-like sleeves, ‘if you don’t let me
keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn’t,’
she added even more fretfully, ‘you didn’t tell me the time.’

Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without
replying. ‘It’s a few minutes to ten,’ he said at last. ‘Dear me! And I’m keeping the cabman! I must hurry on. Well, now, I put
it to you; you shall be my father confessor—though I detest the idea in
real life—was I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor fellow
that I detected a likeness when there was extremely little likeness
there?’

‘What! None at all!’ cried Lawford; ‘not the faintest trace?’

‘My dear good Mr Lawford,’ she expostulated, patting her lap, ‘there’s
very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary in _you_, her
own son. How could there be—how could you expect it in him, a complete
stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might
have been Mary’s son for all that I could recollect. I haven’t for
years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from
_you_. I am firmly of opinion that I was justified. My motive was
entirely benevolent. And then—to my positive amazement—well, I won’t
say hard things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a
“Thank you, Miss Bennett.” Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won’t agree
that I had any justification in being vexed and—and affronted at
_that_.’

‘I think, Miss Sinnet,’ said Lawford solemnly, ‘that you were perfectly
justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give
the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for—for the
stranger.’

‘Well, candidly,’ said Miss Sinnett severely. ‘I was very much
scandalised; and I shouldn’t be here now telling you my story if it
hadn’t been for your mother.’

‘My mother!’

The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. ‘Yes, Mr Lawford,
your mother. I don’t know why—something in his manner, something in his
face—so dejected, so unhappy, so—if it is not uncharitablnesse to say
it—so wild: it has haunted me: I haven’t been able to put the matter
out of my mind. I have lain awake in my bed thinking of him. Why did he
speak to me, I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very aimless a
trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary
and so dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of him? A
little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps—what might I not
have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and distressed me more
than I can say. Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on one
occasion, three times in a day made my way to the seat—hoping to see
him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown
all, I had a most remarkable dream about your mother. But that’s my own
affair. Elderly people like me are used—well, perhaps I won’t say
used—we’re not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have
gone before. We live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would not
have you fancy it’s in any way a morbid or unhappy life to lead. We
don’t talk about it—certainly not to young people. Let them enjoy their
Eden while they can; though there’s plenty of apples, I fear, on the
Tree yet, Mr Lawford.’

She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:—‘We don’t
even discuss it much among ourselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer
to the wicket-gate there’s other company around one than you’ll find
in—in the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight. Very probably my errand may seem to have no meaning for you. You look
ill, but you don’t appear to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I
feared in my—well, there—as I feared you might be. I must say, though,
it seems a terribly empty house. And no lights, too!’

She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned her
head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of the
half-open door. ‘But that’s not my affair.’ And again she looked at him
for a little while. Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the
knee. ‘Trouble or no trouble,’ she said, ‘it’s never too late to remind
a man of his mother. And I’m sure, Mr Lawford, I’m very glad to hear
you are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave
heart, forty or seventy, whichever we may be: “While the evil days come
not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in
them,” though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the
bottom of my heart, not to _you_.’

She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her
large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief,
fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all
but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech. ‘And now that I’ve eased my conscience,’ said the old lady, pulling
down her veil, ‘I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the
evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr
Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must
have a very peculiar notion of mankind. Is the fly still there? I
expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if—!’

‘He’s there,’ Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow
progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a flock of birds
scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a
whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in his mind—memories whose
import he made no effort to discover. None the less, the leisurely
descent became in their company something of a real experience even in
such a brimming week. ‘I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?’ he said,
pushing the old lady’s silk skirts in after her as she slowly climbed
into the carriage. ‘Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,’ she called back to him,
groping her way into the rather musty gloom, ‘you’ll dream such dreams
for yourself. Life’s not what’s just the fashion. And there are queerer
things to be seen and heard just quietly in one’s solitude than this
busy life gives us time to discover. But as for my mystifying Bewley
acquaintance—I confess I cannot make head or tail of him.’

‘Was he,’ said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim white
face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage window, ‘was
his face very unpleasing?’

She raised a gloved hand. ‘It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr Lawford;
its—its conflict! Poor fellow; I hope, I do hope, he faced his trouble
out.