'At Charing Cross, hard by the wayWhere we, thou know'st, do sell our hay,There is a house with stairs;And there did I see coming downSuch folk as are not in our town;Forty at least in pairs.'
'At Charing Cross, hard by the wayWhere we, thou know'st, do sell our hay,There is a house with stairs;And there did I see coming downSuch folk as are not in our town;Forty at least in pairs.'
'At Charing Cross, hard by the wayWhere we, thou know'st, do sell our hay,There is a house with stairs;And there did I see coming downSuch folk as are not in our town;Forty at least in pairs.'
On the night of the 15th of September a great many more than forty pairs of feet were passing up and down the stairs of that magnificent specimen of Jackson's domestic architecture, the Hartleys' new palace in ——shire. Amateur theatricals are, strange as it may appear, since going to see them is almost invariably the triumph of hope over experience, always an attractive bait to hold out to a country neighbourhood. Apart from the pleasure of thinking how much better than do the actors, one could have played their parts one's self; and that opposite and more good-natured, if not quite so acute pleasure, of wondering with Miss Snevellici's patroness, 'How they ever learnt to act as they do, laughing in one piece, and crying in the next, and so natural in both,' there is, in the present case, an element of curiosity which adds an additional poignancy to the expectation of enjoyment usual in such cases.
It is the Hartleycoup d'essaiin hospitality in the county, and there is a widespread interest manifested as to how they will do it. Almost as widespread is the comfortable conviction that they will do it well.
An old-established squire who has been seated on his modest acres for a couple of hundred years may venture to invite his friends to dance on a sticky floor to the sound of a piano, and to wash away their fatigue in libations of 50-shilling champagne; but the millionaire, who has only within the last year set an uncertain foot upon the land, is not likely to try any such experiments upon the county's patience. It is, then, with a confident hope of Gunter and Coote and Tinney that the occupants of most of the carriages step out on the red cloth—a hope that the first glimpse of the banks of orchids that line the entrance-hall goes far to make a certainty.
From the minds of the occupants of one carriage, to whose turn, after long waiting in the endless string, it at length comes to set free its load, Gunter, Coote and Tinney, and orchids are equally distant. Milady's head is still running on her Patience, which, by the aid of a carriage-lamp and a pack of tiny cards, she has been playing contentedly during the whole of the long ten miles. The little portion of Peggy's heart that is not filled with an aching compassion and anxiety for her sister is pierced by the fear of the extreme likelihood, in so promiscuous a gathering of three-fourths of the county, of her finding herself face to face with the one woman whom she would compass sea and land to avoid, and with the man whom that woman habitually carries in her train.
And Prue?
'I think he is sure to be at the door to receive us, do not you?' she has whispered to her sister, under cover of milady's absorption in her solitary game, while they are still waiting in the string; 'not that I shall be so silly as to attach any importance to it if he is not; but after a whole week!' stifling a sigh. 'Oh dear!' letting down the glass and craning her neck impatiently out, 'shall we never get there? I see carriage-lamps for half a mile ahead of us still!'
A whole week! It is true. For a whole week the Red House has been favoured with no glimpse of Mr. Ducane. How should it, indeed, since he has been compelled by the exigencies of his situation to take up his abode entirely at the scene of his labours? Of what use to waste upon the long ride there and back time so precious in a last week? the time of one upon whose inexhaustible stock of ability and good-nature every one thinks him or herself entitled to draw.
But though he has been unable to present himself in person to his betrothed, he has had time to scribble her a tiny pencil-note, just a word—but then how little can the value of a letter be measured by its length!—praying her to keep a place for him by her side at the theatricals.
'If my Prue refuses, it will be all over with my pleasure,' he ends simply.
The carriage, after many tantalising halts opposite dark laurels, draws up finally before a blaze of electric light, a crowd of powdered footmen, an arching of palm-boughs; and milady steps deliberately out in her fur boots and her diamond 'fender,' followed by her twoprotégées. Freddy is not at the door to receive them; and the moment that she has discovered this fact, Prue sees the irrationality of the hope that had led her ever to expect that he would be. He is naturally not in the cloak-room, where milady seems, to the girl's passionate impatience, to loiter unconscionably long, tugging at the strings of hersortie de bal, which have got into a knot, and talking to the numerous friends she meets there. To do her justice, it is not any care for her toilette that detains her. She would quite as soon have the famous tiara—her 'fender,' as she always calls it—which the county has admired for fifty years, on crooked as straight. The county expects to see it on great occasions, and so she puts it on; but if Mrs. Mason were to dispose it behind before, the circumstance would disturbbut very slightly her lady's equanimity. Mr. Ducane is not, as far as can be made out by a first glance, in the magnificent music-room, to-night arranged as a theatre, and at whose door Mrs. Hartley stands, smiling and splendid, to receive her guests. But though Prue's eye has as yet to fast from the sight of her betrothed, her ear at least is gladdened by his praises.
'Oh, Lady Roupell, I do not know how we ever can thank Mr. Ducane enough!' she hears Mrs. Hartley exclaim. 'My girls say they do not know what they should have done without him—so kind, so clever, and unselfish is not the word!'
Milady grunts.
'No, I do not think it is,' she says, halfsotto voce, as she passes on.
At the first look, the room, superb as are its proportions, seems already full; but a closer inspection reveals at the upper end several still vacant rows of arm-chairs, reserved by the host and hostess for those among their guests whom they most delight to honour. To this favoured category belongs milady, and she is presently installed with her two young friends by asémillantpapa Hartley, in the very middle of the front rank. For the present, nothing can be easier than for Prue to keep the chair at her side vacant. She has already anxiously and surreptitiously spread her white frock over it. Each of earth's glories has probably its attendant disadvantages; a warm and consoling doctrine for those to whose share not much of life's gilding falls; nor is a seat in the front row of synagogue or playhouse any exception to this rule. It has the inevitable drawback, that except by an uncomfortable contortion of the neck-muscles, it is impossible for its occupants to see what is going on in the body of the room; and the view of foot-lights and a drop-scene is one that after a while is apt to pall.
Prue's head is continually turning over her shoulder, as, from the body of the long hall, all blazing with pink-shaded electric lamps, comes the noise of gowns rustling, of steps and voices, as people settle into their seats. At first she had had no cause for uneasiness. The people, as they tide in, conscious of no particular claim to chief places, pack themselves, with laughs and greetings to acquaintances, into the unreserved seats. But presently Mr. Hartley is seen convoying a party of ladies and men to the top of the room with the same evidences of deferential tenderness as he had shown to milady; and no sooner are they disposed of, according to their merits, than he reappears with the same smile, and a new batch. This continues to happen until the human tide, like its prototype in its inexorable march over swallowed sands and drunk rocks, has advanced, despite the piteous protest in Prue's eyes, to within three chairs of her. Yes, including that one so imperfectly veiled by the poor child's skirt, there are only three vacant seats remaining.
'Oh, I wish he would come! Oh, I wish he would come!' she repeats, with something that grows ever nearer and nearer to a sob in her voice. 'Oh, Peggy, do you think he will not come after all? You are longer-sighted than I am; do look if you can see him anywhere! Oh, I wish he would come! I shall not be able to keep this chair for him much longer, and then——'
Her words are prophetic. Scarcely are they out of her mouth before the vision of the radiant host is again seen nearing them, with a fresh freight—a freight that rustles and jingles and chatters louder than any of the previous ones.
'Oh yes, do put me in a good place!' a high and apparently extravagantly cheerful voice is heard exclaiming; 'I always like the best places if I can get them—do not you? and I mean to applaud more loudly than anybody.I have been engaged by Freddy Ducane as a claque; and I assure you I mean to keep my word.'
Although she has been expecting it—although she has told herself that to hear it is among the most probable of the evening's chances, yet, at the sound of that clear thin voice, Peggy turns extremely cold. It has come then. In a second she will certainly be called upon to hear another voice. Let her then brace herself to bear it decently. Her hands clasp themselves involuntarily, and she draws in her breath; but she cannot lift her eyes. She sits looking straight before her, waiting. But instead of the tones that with such sick dread she is expecting, she hears only milady's voice—milady's voice not in its suavest key.
'Oh! it is you, is it? How many of you are there?—because we are pretty full here; and I suppose you do not mean to sit upon our knees.'
'There is nothing I should like better!' cries Lady Betty friskily. 'You are looking perfectly delightful to-night; all the more so because your fender is quite on one side. Come now, do not be ill-natured, but make room for me; you know I am not very——'
Peggy hears the voice break off abruptly; and involuntarily her eyes, hitherto glued to the back of the chair in front of her, snatch a hasty glance in Lady Betty's direction. She has turned away, and is addressing Mr. Hartley in an altered and hurried key.
'After all, I hope you will not think me very changeable, but I believe I should like to sit a little farther back; one sees better, and hears better, and gets a better general idea.'
'She is going away!' whispers Prue, with a long quivering sigh of relief. 'Oh, I was so frightened! I thought she was going to take my chair. Why did she go? She could not have seen us!'
But this is not quite the conclusion arrived at by Peggy,as her eyes follow Betty's retreating figure—Betty, with her
'Little headSunning with curls'
'Little headSunning with curls'
'Little headSunning with curls'
that go to bed in a box—Betty, with the docile Harborough and a couple of Guardsmen at her heels; and—without John Talbot! That for one chance evening she should happen to lack his attendance is, after all, but small evidence against his being still riveted with her fetters; but Peggy's heart swells with a disproportionate elation at the discovery. There is, alas! not much likelihood of poor Prue's feeling a like expansion; for scarcely has she finished drawing the long breath caused her by Betty's retreat, than the seat which the latter had spared is approached, settled upon, and irrevocably occupied—poor Prue's barriers politely but ruthlessly swept away.
She has attempted a hurried protest, but it has not been even heard; and now it is too late, for a bell has rung. The curtain has swept aloft, with less of hesitation and dubiousness as to the result than is generally the case with amateur curtains, and discloses to view the second Miss Hartley seated under the rustic berceau of a wayside Italian wine-shop, in peasant's cap and bodice, soliloquising rather nervously and at some length. What is the drift of that soliloquy; or of the dialogue that follows with a person of a bandit nature, whom it takes some moments for his acquaintance to decipher into a young man Hartley; or of the jiggy catchy songs with which the piece is freely interspersed, Peggy will never know to her last day.
Before her eyes, indeed, there is a phantasmagoria of people going and coming in a blaze of light—of more be-peasanted Misses Hartley, with more banditted brothers; in her ears a brisk dialogue that must be funny, judging from the roars of laughter coming from behind her; of smart galloping quartettes and trios that must be humorousand musical, from the storm of applause and encores that greet them. But to her brain penetrate none of the gay and smiling images conveyed by her senses. Her brain is wholly occupied by the painful and impossible effort to calm Prue, whose agitation, rendered more unmanageable by the weakness of her state of health and the lack of any habit of self-government, threatens to become uncontrollable.
'Oh, Peggy, why has not he come? What has become of him? Where can he be?' she keeps moaningly whispering.
Peggy has taken hold of one of her sister's feverish hands, whose dry fire is felt even through her glove, and presses it now and again.
'He will be here directly,' she answers soothingly; 'no doubt he could not get away. You heard how useful he has been! Probably he is helping them behind the scenes. Do not you think that you could try to look a little less miserable? I am so afraid that people will remark it.'
'If he is behind the scenes,' moans Prue, not paying any heed to, evidently hardly hearing, this gentle admonition, 'he is with her. You see that she is not acting either! Wherever they are, they are together! Oh, Peggy, I think I shall die of misery!'
The close of her sentence is drowned in a tempest of riotous applause, and Peggy's eyes involuntarily turn to the stage, to learn the cause. One of the performers, who has been throughout pre-eminently the funny man of the piece, is singing a solo, accompanied by many facetious gestures. The drift of the song is the excessive happiness of the singer—a theme which is enlarged upon through half a dozen successive verses:
'The lark is blithe,And the summer fly;Blithe is the cricket,And blithe am I.None so blithe, so blithe as I!'
'The lark is blithe,And the summer fly;Blithe is the cricket,And blithe am I.None so blithe, so blithe as I!'
'The lark is blithe,And the summer fly;Blithe is the cricket,And blithe am I.None so blithe, so blithe as I!'
Peggy happens to have some acquaintance with the singer off the stage; knows him to be sickly, melancholy, poor; to-night racked with neuralgia, yet obliged to do his little tricks, and go through his small antics, on penalty of banishment from that society, his soleraison d'êtrein which is his gift of making people laugh.
'La Comédie Humaine!' she says to herself—'La Comédie Humaine!'
'We men may say more, swear more; but indeed,Our shows are more than will, for still we proveMuch in our vows, but little in our love.'
'We men may say more, swear more; but indeed,Our shows are more than will, for still we proveMuch in our vows, but little in our love.'
'We men may say more, swear more; but indeed,Our shows are more than will, for still we proveMuch in our vows, but little in our love.'
The Hartleys are wise enough to avoid the error so common amongst amateur actors and managers, of prolonging their treat until pleasure is turned into weariness. They are obviously mindful of the fact that among their audience are a number of dancing feet, whose owners not even the acting of Rachel or Mrs. Siddons would indemnify, in their own opinion, for having the fair proportions of their dancing hours thrown away. The operetta has only three acts, and is followed by no farce or afterpiece. In point of fact, it is contained within the limits of a couple of hours. Yet to two of its auditors it appears practically interminable. To two amongst them it seems as if there never would be an end to its songs, its facetious misunderstandings, and jocose makings up; and when at length the curtain falls amid a hurricane of applause, only to be instantly drawn up again in order that the whole of the final quartette may be repeated, it appears as if they must have sat watching it for nights. At last the curtain drops finally. At last there is an end to the endless encores. The performers, in answer to the shouts which demand them, have appeared in turn before the curtain, and made their bows, and picked up their bouquets, with such differing degrees of grace andaplombas their nativegifts, or more or less familiarity with the situation, allow.
The sad little merryman has cut his final caper, and made a grimace of so surpassing a ludicrousness as will allow him to be peacefully melancholy for the rest of the evening.
And now all eyes are turned away from the stage; all tongues are loosed. The doors at the end of the hall are opened, and a stream of people is beginning rapidly to issue through them. Every one has risen and is looking about, glad to shift their position, say 'how do you do' to their friends, and exchange comments on play and actors.
There is a general stir and buzz; a seeking out of expected friends, and delighted greeting of unexpected ones; a reciprocal examination of gowns, now first possible; and a universal aspiration for supper.
Milady and her girls have risen with the others. Prue, indeed, has been the first person in the room on her legs. She is looking round, like the rest of the world; at least, so to a casual observer it might appear. But, alas! what is there in common between the smiling careless glances, lighting with easy amusement on indifferent objects, and the tragic searching—terrible in its one-ideaed intentness—of those despairing blue eyes? Peggy has firm hold of one burning hand, and is murmuring broken sentences of comfort into her inattentive ear.
'Yes, dear, yes! I will go with you wherever you like; but you know we cannot quite leave milady; and he is more likely to find us here. I dare say he has been looking at us all the while from behind the scenes, trying to see how you were enjoying yourself.' She leaves off hopelessly, since Prue is not listening to her. Snatches of talk, disjointed and mixed, reach her ear.
'Jackson was the architect; built the new schools at Oxford; they always strike one as rather like a splendid country house.'
'Thoroughly well built; made all his own bricks; sent them up to London to be tested; best that ever were made!'
'Really nearly as good as professionals; better than some professionals; might easily be that. They say that the one who acts best of all did not act to-night—the eldest.'
'Why did not she, I wonder?'
'Better employed perhaps—ha! ha!'
At the same moment Peggy feels a convulsive pressure on her arm, and hears Prue's passionately excited voice:
'There he is! at the far end of the room; he is looking for us! Oh, how can we make him see us?'
She has raised herself on tiptoe, and is sending a look of such agonised entreaty down the hall as, one would think, must penetrate even the mass of shifting, buzzing humanity that intervenes between her and its object. Perhaps it does. Perhaps the magnet that Freddy once prettily suggested to be in the hearts of all good people drawing them together is exercising its influence on his. At all events, in a few minutes they see him smilingly pushing his way, stopped at every step by greetings and compliments—for it has somehow become generally diffused through the room that to him is to be ascribed most of the glory of the entertainment—through the crowd. In a moment more he is before them.
'Here you are, you dear things!' he says, taking a hand of each, looking flushed and handsome, and speaking in an excited voice. 'Did not it go off wonderfully well?—not a hitch anywhere. Did you hear the prompter once? No? Neither of you? I thought not; and yet if you had seen us half an hour before the curtain drew up, you would have said that the whole thing was going to be a fiasco.'
He stops to draw a long breath of self-congratulation.
'I kept the chair beside me as long as I could,' says Prue, in a faltering voice; 'I did my best.'
His eye rests on her for a moment with a puzzled air—on her small face, flushed like his own; but, alas! how differently! It is evident that for the first second he does not comprehend her, having entirely forgotten his own request. Then recollecting:
'How good of you, dear!' he says affectionately. 'Of course, it was a bitter disappointment to me, too; but on occasions of this kind,' with a slight resigned shrug, 'one must, of course, give up all idea of individual enjoyment.'
He is such an embodiment of radiant joy as he speaks, that Margaret cannot help darting an indignant look at him—a bolt aimed so full and true, that it hits him right in his laughing eyes.
'Of course,' he says, reddening under it, 'I do not mean to say that there has not been a good deal of incidental enjoyment; butyou, dear,' turning to Prue, with lowered voice—'you who always see things intuitively—you will understand what a distinction there is between pleasure and happiness—Innigkeit!'
She has lifted her eyes, cleared for the moment of their agonised seeking, to his, and is beginning a little trembling eager speech to assure him of her complete comprehension; but his own mind having meanwhile flown off at a tangent, he breaks in upon it:
'Was not that song excellent—
"The lark is blithe,And the summer fly"?
"The lark is blithe,And the summer fly"?
"The lark is blithe,And the summer fly"?
Quite as good as anything of Grossmith's—do not you think so! Did not it make you laugh tremendously? Oh, I hope, dear,' with an accent of rather pained reproach, 'that it made you laugh!'
Prue hesitates. In point of fact she had not heard one word of the jocose ditty alluded to; as, during the wholeof it, she had been keeping up a conversation in heart-broken whispers with Peggy.
'Oh yes; of course,' she answers nervously; 'it was very funny—excessively funny! I—I—should like to hear it again. I—I—am sure that it is one of those things that one would think much funnier the second time than the first.'
'It is as good as anything of Grossmith's,' repeats Freddy confidently. Then, beginning to hum a valse, 'You can have no idea what a floor this is! Be sure, dear, that you keep quantities of dances for me!'
'Oh yes; of course—of course,' replies she, with tremulous ecstasy. 'Which—which would you like?'
But before Mr. Ducane has time to signify his preferences, a third person intervenes. Poor Prue has often expressed a wish to see the eldest Miss Hartley; but the mode in which our wishes are granted is not always quite that which we should have chosen.
'Oh, Mr. Ducane,' she says, hurrying up, 'I am so sorry to interrupt you; but it is the old story,' laughing, and with an apologetic bow to Prue—'we cannot get on without you. We are so puzzled to know who it is that papa ought to take in to supper! Is it Lady Manson, or Lady Chester? We thought you could tell us which is the oldest creation.'
Freddy has not an idea, but instantly volunteers to go off in search of a 'Peerage' to decide this knotty point; and Miss Hartley, having civilly lingered a moment to excuse herself to the Miss Lambtons, and to remark in almost the same words as her mother had used upon the extraordinary unselfishness of Mr. Ducane, flits away after him.
'It was too bad of her,' says Prue, with a trembling lip. 'She might at least have let him tell me how many dances he wanted; but'—brightening up—'he said "quantities," did not he? You heard him?'
Peggy's rejoinder is prevented by her attention being at the same moment claimed by milady, and by a general forward movement of the company, which has been requested by Mrs. Hartley to vacate the hall in order that it may be got ready for dancing.
In the slight confusion and pushing that follows, Peggy finds herself separated from her sister and her chaperon; and a few minutes afterwards, the joyful tidings having spread abroad that the supper-room doors are open, an acquaintance offers her his arm to lead her thither. She looks around anxiously once again in search of Prue; but not being able to catch a glimpse of either her or Lady Roupell, can only hope that both have reached the goal of supper before her.
The room is of course thronged—when was a just-opened supper-room not crowded?—and it is some little while before Peggy's partner is able to elbow a way for her to the table, which, when she reaches it, is already robbed of its virgin glory. She looks down the long rows of moving jaws; catches milady's eye—milady eatingpâté de foie gras, which always makes her ill; snatches a far glimpse of Mr. Evans setting down a champagne-glass, with the beatific smile of one who, drinking, remembers the Vicarage small-beer; and has a nearer, fuller view of Lady Betty, rosy and naked as Aphrodite, laughing at the top of her voice, and pulling a chicken's merry-thought with one of her Guardsmen to see which will be married first.
Peggy quickly averts her eyes; and, bringing them home, they alight upon Mrs. Evans, whom, by a singular accident, she finds next door to her.
Mrs. Evans, as we know, cannot come under the condemnation of those who 'have not on a wedding-garment,' since she never wears anything else. Despite her old dyed gown, however, she is obviously enjoying herself with the best.
'This is not the sort of thing that one sees every day,' cries she, in a voice of elated wonder, surveying the ocean of delicacies around her. 'I only wish I could get hold of amenuto take home with me! I am so glad we came. I was not at all anxious to come, on account of the distance; in fact, I yielded entirely on Mr. Evans's account. He is in one of his low ways; you know what that means! He wants change; we all want change. Did you hear the mistake he made last Sunday in the Psalms? He said, "In the midst were the damsels playing with theminstrels."'
Peggy laughs absently.
'It sounds rather frisky.'
'I only hope that nobody noticed it,' pursues the Vicaress; 'he always makes those kind of mistakes when he wants change. Dear me!' casting a look and a long sigh of envy round the room; 'if I had a house like this, I should never want change for my part; and to think that it is to be shut up for the whole of the winter—for a whole year, in fact!'
The Hartleys' house has not, so far, afforded Peggy such a large harvest of pleasure that she is able very cordially to echo this lamentation.
'What can possess any one to go round the world passes my understanding,' continues her interlocutor, pelican-like, as she speaks, forcing some nougat for her offspring surreptitiously into a little bag under cover of the table-edge; 'not but what they will do it in all possible luxury, of course—cheval glasses, and oil-paintings, and Indian carpets, just as one has in one's own drawing-room.'
At this last clause, sad and inattentive as she is, Peggy cannot forbear a smile of amusement, as the image of the Vicarage Kidder rises before her mind's eye; but it is very soon dissipated by her neighbour's next remark.
'By the bye, some one was telling me to-night that Freddy Ducane is to be of the party. I assured her,looking wise, that I knew better; but she persisted that she had had it upon the best authority—one of the family, as far as I could understand.'
She may continue her speech to the ambient air; for, when next she looks up from her larceny of bonbons, Peggy is gone. The hall, meanwhile, has been cleared of its innumerable chairs, and its theatrical properties generally, and converted into a back-room, with that surprising rapidity that unlimited money, with practically unlimited labour at its beck and call, can always command.
No sooner have the guests well supped, than, with no tiresome interregnum, no waiting and wondering, they may, if they list, begin to dance. A smooth sea of Vienna parquet spreads before them, and established on the stage, the British Grenadiers themselves—no mere piano and fiddle—are striking up the initial quadrille. It is some little time before Peggy is able to make her way between the forming sets to where milady sits, her coronet more hopelessly askew than ever, and an expression of good-humoured resignation on her face.
'My mind is braced for the worst,' she says good-naturedly; 'get along both of you and dance. Not that there can be much dancing in this silly child,' pointing to Prue; 'she must be as empty as a drum. She has not eaten a mouthful.'
She shrugs her shoulders, since it is evident that Prue does not hear. In a state of preoccupation so intense as that of the young girl's, it would be difficult for anything presented by the senses to make its way into the brain. She is standing stiffly upright, her head and chin slightly advanced, as one looking with passionate eagerness ahead. Her lips are moving, as if she were saying some one thing over and over to herself. Whatever of her face is not lividly white is burning; and her eyes——
As she so stands, an acquaintance comes up, and asksher for the dance, now well begun. She does not understand him at first; but, on his repeating his request, she refuses it curtly.
'Thank you, I am engaged.'
'If you are neither of you going to dance,' says milady, seeing both herprotégéesremaining standing beside her, and speaking with a slight and certainly pardonable irritation, 'I may as well go home to my blessed bed.'
Go home!Prue has caught the words, and cast a glance of agony at her sister.Go home!
'Do not be impatient, dear milady,' says Margaret, trying to speak lightly and look gay; 'you will be crying out in quite another key just now. I am engaged for nearly all the programme. Ah, here comes my partner!'
For by this time the quadrille has come to an end, and a valse has struck up. To join it, Margaret walks off reluctantly, looking behind her. She is profoundly unwilling to leave her sister in her present state; but, since to dance is the only means of averting milady's fulfilment of her threat of going home, there is no alternative.
To most girls of Peggy's age the joy in dancing for dancing's sake is a thing of the past; but to her, from the innocency of her nature, and her little contact with the world, which has preserved in her a freshness of sensation that usually does not survive eighteen, the pleasure in the mere movement of her sound young limbs, in the lilt of the measure and the wind of her own fleetness, is as keen as ever.
Peggy loves dancing. To-night she has a partner worthy of her, in her ears brave music beyond praise, under her light feet a Vienna parquet of slippery perfection; and she is no more conscious of these advantages than if she were dancing in clogs on a brick floor. Whenever she pauses—and, long-winded as she is, she must pause now and again, in whatever part of the pink-light-flooded room her partnerlands her, whether by the great bank of hothouse flowers at the lower end, or near the blaring Grenadiers at the top, or beneath one of the portraits of famous musicians that line the side walls—it seems to her that absolutely nothing meets her eyes but that one tiny burning face, stretched always forward in the same attitude, with its lips moving, and its eyes turning hither and thither in forlorn and desperate search. Prue is not dancing.
As Peggy, answering absently andà bâtons rompus, the civil speeches of her companion, watches, in a pained perplexity, the features whose misery has so effectually poisoned her own evening, she sees a fresh expression settle upon them, an expression no longer of deferred and piteous expectation, but of acute and intolerable wretchedness. She is not long in learning the cause. Following the direction of Prue's glance, her own alights upon a couple that have but just joined the dance. It is needless to name them.
Peggy's partner catches himself wondering whether it can be any of his own harmless remarks that has brought the frown that is so indubitably lowering there to her smooth forehead, or that has made her red lips close in so tight and thin. He wonders a little, too, at the request that immediately follows these phenomena.
'Would you mind taking me to Miss Hartley and her partner? I want to speak to them; we might dance there.'
A minute of smooth whirling lands her at Freddy's side, and fortunately for her, at the same moment some one addressing the daughter of the house from behind takes off her attention.
'Are not you going to dance with Prue?' she asks in a stern breathless whisper. 'Have you forgotten that you are engaged to Prue?'
He looks at her with a gentle astonishment.
'What are you talking about, dear? Is it a thing thatI am likely to forget? Of course I must get through my duty-dances first. Dear Prue is the last person not to understand that. You are lookingsplendidto-night, Peg! perhaps because you are so ill-tempered—evil passions always become you. You have not a dance to spare me, I suppose? What a floor! Tra la la!'
Away he scampers with Miss Hartley, and Peggy, curtly resisting all her ill-used swain's entreaties to take another turn, insists upon being led back there and then to her chaperon. Prue shall not, through her fault, have one second's more suspense to endure.
'It is all right!' she says eagerly, under her breath, into the young girl's ear; 'he is getting through his duty-dances first. It is all right.'
But the execution of Mr. Ducane's duty-dances is apparently no short task, nor one lightly or quickly accomplished. But few of them, as it turns out, are danced in the ball-room in the eye of the world, and of the electric light. A far larger number are danced on sofas, in obscure corners of little-frequented boudoirs, on steps of the stairs, and under the palm-fans and tree-ferns of the conservatory.
And meanwhile the night swings on. Dance has followed dance. The feet fall pat to the perfect time of the soldiers' music: valse, galop, polka, mazurka, Lancers—Peggy dances them all.
In the Lancers chance brings her close to Lady Betty, who is romping through them with a staid County Member, whom to the petrifaction of his wife, watching horror-struck from afar, she makes romp flagrantly too. Her voice throughout the evening is heard, penetratingly high, above the band; her laugh seems to be ringing from every corner of the room, accompanying her extraordinary antics. For Lady Betty is by no means on her best behaviour to-night, and permits herself such innocent and humorous playfulnesses as putting a spoonful of ice down the back of one of the young Hartleys, popping a fool's-cap out of a cracker on the head of a bald old gentleman perfectly unknown to her, etc. She is evidently not fretting very badly at Talbot's absence. So Margaret thinks, as with a sort of unwilling fascination she watches her.
Lady Betty is evidently in precisely the same mood as she was on that evening when she had favoured milady's guests at the Manor with her remarkable song. It would take uncommonly little persuasion to-night to induce her to sing—
'Oh! who will press that lily hand?'
'I think she isdrunk!' says Mrs. Evans charitably. 'I am sure she acts as if she were. IfIwere to behave like that, I should expect men to take any kind of liberty with me. I should not feel that I had any right to complain if they did.'
Peggy laughs. The idea of Mrs. Evans dancing the can-can, and getting kissed for her pains, is so irresistibly comic that for a minute or two she cannot help herself.
Lady Roupell has grown tired of scolding Prue for her obstinate refusal of all invitations to dance. Milady has happily fallen in with an old friend, whose path hers had not crossed for thirty years. With him she fights o'er again the battles of her youth, and forgets her 'blessed bed.' She goes in to supper a second time, and has morepâté de foie gras. Peggy sees it in the guilt of her eye when she comes out.
And meanwhile Peggy herself dances on indefatigably, returning, however, rigorously at the end of each dance to her chaperon, in order to assure herself that there is no change for the better in the position of Prue.
None! none! none! Always standing on precisely the same spot; the poor little figure rigidly upright; the flushed cheekbones; the straining eyes. Always? No, thank God, not always! At last it is gone! At last she finds its place vacant.
'Where is Prue?' she asks eagerly, forgetting her usual gentle good manners so far as to break with her question into milady'stête-à-tête.
'Prue!' repeats the other, looking round rather tartlyfrom her interrupted conversation; 'God bless my soul, child! how can I tell?' and so resumes her talk.
But though this is not a very lucid explanation of her sister's absence, Peggy returns from it with a considerably lightened heart. Since it is a matter of certainty that Prue would never have consented to dance with any one but Freddy, he must have come at last. They are nowhere in sight, therefore he must have carried her off to some retired corner, where he is persuading her—so easy of persuasion, poor soul—of how much he has been suffering all evening, and how extremely loftily he has behaved. Of whatever he is persuading her, her long agony is for this evening at least probably at an end.
Peggy draws a deep breath at the thought, and for the first time becomes aware how good the floor is, and how pleasant the long swallow-swoop from end to end of the ball-room. The crowd is growing much thinner. People who have a long distance to drive are already gone. Mrs. Evans, bulging at every point with the result of her thefts, and driving the reluctant Vicar before her, takes herself off, having indulged herself in one parting whisper to Peggy, to the effect that she 'shall not bow to Lady Betty, even if she looks as if she expected it.' For Betty is still here, and having run up the whole gamut of her schoolboy follies, having grown tired of throwing tarts at her admirers, and pelting them with lobster claws, has settled down into a steady audacious open flirtation with a Rural Dean, the sight of whose good lady's jealous writhings seems to afford her a great deal of innocent joy.
Lady Roupell's old friend has been reluctantly reft away from her by his party, and she is beginning to show signs of uneasiness, as Peggy can see from a distance. But since Prue's place beside her is still vacant, the elder sister is resolved that no action of hers—however apparently called for by the ordinary rules of politeness—shall tend to shortenthe few brief moments of happiness that have come, however tardily, to sweeten her evening's long bitterness. She has deliberately dodged milady's messengers sent in pursuit of her, has evaded them behind doors, and has slipped past them in passages; and it is not until she catches a distant glimpse of Prue returning to her chaperon on Mr. Ducane's arm, that she at length allows herself to be captured. Milady receives her rather testily.
'Come along! come along!' cries she fussily; 'why did not you come before? I do not want to help blow out the lights.'
But Peggy does not answer. Her eyes are fixed in a shocked astonishment on Prue. Instead of the radiant transformation she had expected to find in her—a transformation hitherto as certain under three kind words from Freddy, as the supplanting of night by red-rose day in the visible world—she sees her livid, and with an expression of hopeless stunned despair, such as never before in her saddest moments has been worn by it, on her drawn face. Her hand has fallen from Freddy's arm, and her sister snatches it.
'What is it, Prue? What is it?'
The girl does not seem to hear at first; then:
'Nothing, nothing!' she says stiffly. 'Home; let us go home.'
'She is tired!' cries Mr. Ducane—he too looks pale—caressingly lifting her other hand, which lies perfectly limp and nerveless in his clasp, and pressing it to his lips; 'our Prue is dead-beat. Dear milady, you know you never can recollect that we are not all Titans like yourself. She is worn out. Are not you, Prue?'
'She would have been all right if she had had some supper,' says milady gruffly, probably thinking in bitterness of spirit how greatly to their reciprocal advantage it would be, if a balance could be struck between her own past refreshments and Prue's. Then she adds very sharply,and with an obvious disposition in her tone to hustle her graceful nephew, 'I do not know what you are dawdling here for? Why do not you go and look after the carriage?'
He does not require to be told this twice, and by the alacrity with which he obeys the command, Peggy knows that it comes at this moment most welcome. No one could enjoy looking in a face with an expression such as Prue's now wears, knowing that he himself has brought it there; and for one so especially partial as Mr. Ducane to wreathed smiles, it is doubly painful and trying.
The footman and carriage are long in being found. Our party have to wait what seems to them for a good half-hour in the hall, cloaked, and, as far as concerns milady, fur-booted, while through the open hall-door streams in on the mist the flash of carriage-lamps; the frosty breath of horses—frosty though it is only mid-September—the noise of gravel kicked up under hoofs; the sound of other people's shouted names.
Freddy comes back, and stands beside Prue, and addresses her now and again in coaxing undertones, to which—a fact unparalleled in her poor history—she makes no rejoinder. She is standing right in the full draught from the open door. Her cloak is unfastened at the neck. She has evidently not taken the trouble to tie it. The keen north-wester blows in full upon her thin collar-bones; but when Peggy remonstrates with her, she does not seem to hear.
'Lady Roupell's carriage!'
Thank God, the welcome sound at last! Milady, who has been nodding, bounds to her feet and seizes the arm of her obsequious host, who has been struggling under difficulties to give her a pleasant impression of her last moments under his roof; under difficulties, since she has been more than three-quarters asleep. Peggy hurries after her, and Prue and Freddy bring up the rear. Thereare too many impatient carriages behind Lady Roupell's for there to be any moment for last words. The footman bangs the carriage-door, jumps on the box, and they are off.
Milady does not light her lamp or shuffle her Patience cards again on the homeward drive. She is fast asleep before the Hartleys' park gates are reached; nor does any jolt or jar avail to break her slumber, until she finds herself being bidden good-night to, and thanked by Peggy, at the door of the little Red House. Not one word is exchanged during the whole ten miles between the three occupants of the brougham. Prue has thrown herself into her corner, beside milady. Peggy, sitting back—she always sits with her back to the horses, and has so long pretended to like that position best, that she has at length almost persuaded herself that she does so—leans forward every now and then and peers into the blackness, trying to catch a glimpse of her sister's face or attitude. In vain at first. But after a while—once at a turnpike-gate, once at a flat railway-crossing—a ray of light streams in, and reveals her cast prone and hopeless in her corner, with her face pressed against the cushions.
Before they reach the Red House, though the dawn has not yet come, it is heralded by its dim, gray forerunner—a forerunner that gives shape to the still colourless hedges as they pass, and an outline to the vague trees looming out of the dim seas of chilly vapour, that a couple of hours more will turn into rich green meadows and yellow stubbles. But the light is not strong enough to reach the recesses of the carriage, to touch milady's sleepy head, rolling about in the tiara which makes so uncomfortable a night-cap, or to throw any cruel radiance on the blackness of Prue's despair.
The stopping of the carriage, which partially rouses the old lady, seems not to be even perceived by the younger woman; and it is not until Margaret has stooped over her, pulling her by the arm, and crying in a frightened voice,'Prue! Prue! we are at home. Do not you hear, dear? at home. Come, come!' that she slowly stirs, and lifts her head. Peggy has given her latch-key to the footman, and herself jumping out of the carriage, stands in the raw dawn wind, and receiving into her arms her staggering and half-conscious sister, carries rather than leads her into the little house, whose door that sister had left with so bounding a heart, such towering hopes of enjoyment seven or eight hours ago. In a moment more, milady—her slumbers already resumed—is borne swiftly away.
Peggy had forbidden the servants to wait up for her. She wishes now that she had not. It is very eerie here alone in the little dark house, whose darkness seems all the blacker for the faint, unsure glimmer of coming day that here and there patches the night's garment; alone with her half-swooning sister. Thank God! there is a lamp still burning in the sitting-hall, though the fire is out, and the air strikes cold. She staggers with her burden to the settle, and laying her gently down upon it, snatches up a flat candlestick, and lighting it at the lamp, hastens away upstairs to the closet where she keeps her drugs for the poor, medicine for the dogs, and her small stock of cordials; and taking thence a flask of brandy, hurries back with it, and pours some down Prue's throat. It is not an easy task to get it down through the girl's set and chattering teeth; but at length she succeeds, and is presently rewarded by seeing signs of returning animation in the poor body, whose feet and hands she is chafing with such a tender vigour.
'I am cold,' says Prue, shivering; 'so cold! May not I go to bed?'
'Do you think that you can walk?' asks Peggy anxiously; 'or shall I carry you?'
'Walk!' repeats the other, with a little dreary smile. 'Why not? There is nothing the matter with me.'
She rises to her feet as she speaks, but totters so pitiably that Peggy again comes to her rescue.
'Of course you can walk,' she says soothingly; 'but I think we are both rather tired: had not we better help each other upstairs?'
And so, with her strong and tender arm flung about her poor Prue's fragile, shivering figure, they slowly climb together—oh, so slowly!—the stairs, down which Prue had leaped with such gaiety eight hours ago.
In the bedroom, which they at last reach, the fire is happily still alight, and only needs a few fresh coals to blaze up cheerfully. But since Prue still shivers, long shudders of cold running down her limbs and convulsing her frame, Peggy wheels an arm-chair close to the fire, and wrapping a warm dressing-gown about her sister, holds her cold feet to the flame, rubbing them between both her hands. For some time Prue's only answer to these attentions is a low moan which, after awhile, shapes itself into articulate words:
'To bed! Let me go to bed!'
And so Peggy, unlacing with a sick heart the poor crumpled gown that had been put on in such pride and freshness over-night, carries its drooping wearer to her bed, and laying her down most gently in it, covers her with the warm bed-clothes, tucking them in, and bidding God bless her, as she has done every night for nigh upon eighteen years.
Prue lies exactly as she had laid her down, with no slightest change of posture, with no attempt at turning over and nestling to sleep; her eyes wide open, with that long shudder recurring at first at intervals. But then this ceases, and she lies like a log—the very dead no stiller than she—staring blankly before her. Peggy sits beside her through the remnant of the night, watching in impotent pain, to see whether the eyelids will never mercifully fallover those wide rigid eyes; watching the insolent light march up and take possession of the curtained room; watching its daring shafts push through chink and cranny even to the dying fire. The clock has struck seven. The servants are up and astir; and—oh, God be thanked!—at length Prue's eyes are closed, and her head has fallen a little sideways on the pillow. Having waited awhile, to assure herself of the blessed fact that she is asleep, Peggy rises noiselessly, and, turning with infinite precaution the door-handle, passes out.
The light seems unutterably glaring in the passage, and her tired eyes blink as they meet it; meeting at the same moment the astonished look in Sarah's face, called forth by seeing her still in her torn and tumbled ball-gown. She has not the heart to spend much time in explanations, but, passing quickly to her own room, tears off the crushed finery, associated in her mind with an evening of such acute misery; and having washed and again dressed in her usual chintz morning-gown, returns to Prue's door, and listening at it for a moment, cautiously enters. But her caution is needless, as her first glance into the room shows her. Though she has not been absent more than half an hour, its aspect is completely changed. The curtains are drawn back, and the blind pulled up to the top; and Prue, sitting up in bed, with blotting-book and ink-bottle before her, is rapidly writing. As her sister hastens up to her, with an exclamation of surprise and dismay, she puts her two hands over the page to hide it.
'I am writing a letter,' she says hurriedly. 'I do not wish you to see what I am writing; you have no business to look!'
'I should not think of such a thing!' cries Peggy, drawing back pained. 'But why are you writingnow, darling? It is only eight o'clock in the morning.'
Prue's trembling fingers are still clutching her pen.
'It—it—is as well to be in good time,' she says. 'This is a letter that ought to be written; the—the person to whom it is addressed will—will expect to get it.'
Peggy is standing by the bed, tall and sorrowful. She has taken the poor hand, pen and all, into her protecting clasp.
'Is it—is it all over then?' she asks chokingly.
'He is going round the world with the Hartleys,' says Prue, not answering directly, and beginning feverishly to fidget with her paper and envelopes. 'Of course I should like this to reach him before he sets off.'
Going round the world with the Hartleys!The blow has fallen, then. Peggy had known that it was coming, as surely as she knows the fact of her own existence. She had seen it approaching for months; and yet now that it has come, she stands stunned.
'I suppose that that was what he was talking to her about all evening,' pursues Prue, looking blankly away out of the window, to where, on the top of the apple-tree outside, a couple of jackdaws are sitting swinging in the fresh wind. 'That was what made him forget all about his dances with me. Of course, there would be a great deal to arrange; they are to be away a whole year. It was quite natural, quite; only it showed that it was all over with me. Even I could see that.'
She says it quite calmly, and with a sort of smile, her eyes still fixed on the jackdaws. Peggy is still too choked to speak.
'No one would have guessed last night that it wasIwho was engaged to him, would they?' pursues Prue, bringing home her straying look, and resting it in a half-uncertain appeal upon her sister. 'And yet I was, was not I? It was not my fancy; he did ask me once to be his wife—his wife,' dwelling on the word with a long, clinging intonation—'standing there by myself all those hours. I am surethat if he had known how it hurt me he would not have done it; he is too kind-hearted willingly to hurt a fly.'
Peggy's only answer is a groan.
'But of course I must write to him,' continues the younger girl, beginning again to draw her half-written sheet of paper tremblingly towards her. 'And—and it is not altogether an easy letter to write; you understand that. It requires all one's attention.'
'Lie down and rest first, and write afterwards,' says Peggy, in a tone of tender persuasion.
'No, no!' returns the other, pushing her sister away. 'I will lie down and rest afterwards; there will be plenty of time. But I could not rest before it was written; and do not disturb me; do not speak to me. I should be sorry if there were anything ridiculous—anything that she could laugh at in my last letter to him.'
Though she has begun so early, Prue is writing nearly all day; writing sitting up in bed—writing when the eastern sun is pouring in his rays from the gates of day—writing when he has climbed the zenith—writing when he is reddening westwards. She has asked to be left alone, so as to be quite undisturbed; and when, at intervals, unable longer to keep away, Peggy returns from her sad and aimless rambles about the dahliad garden, and, pushing the door, looks softly in, the same sight always greets her eyes. Prue, with a fire-spot on each cheek, writing—writing. And yet when the postman comes to take the letters, it is only one small letter that he carries away. She is very loth to let it go, even then. No sooner is it out of her hands than she would have it back. There is a phrase in it that she would fain have altered, that he may think unkind. It vexes her all through the night, that phrase. It keeps sleep away from her, even if the oppression on her chest, caused by the heavy cold she has contracted through standing in the draught at the Hartleys' hall-door, would allow slumber to approach her eyes. In the small hours, indeed, she wanders a little; and would be up, and walk after the postman to take her letter from him. At dawn she falls into a broken doze; and Peggy, who has sat by or hung over her all night, poulticing, giving her drink, holding her hand, and assuring her with tears that there is nothing in her poor sentence that could woundFreddy's feelings, rises, stiff and cold from her vigil, and sends Alfred off on the pony for the doctor.
He comes, and prescribes, and goes away again, leaving behind him that little fillip of cheerfulness that the doctor's visit always gives; and another day wears on. Prue talks a great deal throughout it, though her laboured breathing makes speech difficult. She is very restless: would get up; would go down into the hall; out into the garden; would sit under the Judas-tree. She sheds no tears, gives no sign of depression; indeed, she laughs many times at recollected absurdities told her by Freddy. But the fire-spots blaze on her cheeks, and the fever-flame glitters in her eyes.
Another night follows; sleepless as the previous one, and with stronger delirium. She is going out riding with her lover. He has lent her the bay mare, which he has taken from Miss Hartley for her sake! He is waiting for her!—calling to her! and she cannot find her whip or her gloves. Oh, where are they? Where can they be? Will not Peggy help her to look for them? And Peggy, with death in her heart, feigns to search, through the chill watches of the night, for that whip and those gloves whose services it seems so unlikely that their young owner will ever need again. With morning her delusions die; and, as the forenoon advances, she falls into a heavy sleep. Such as it is, it is induced by opiates.
Peggy has not been in bed for three nights, and an immense lassitude has fallen upon her. It is not that she is conscious of feeling sleepy; but her head is like a lump of lead, and her hands are ice-cold. She would be all right if she could get into the open air for five minutes. A greedy longing to drink in great draughts of the fresh wind that she can hear outside frolicking so gaily, yet gently too, with the tree-tops, lays hold of her; and, since Prue still sleeps heavily, she gives up her place by the bedside toSarah, and walks drearily out into the garden. It is only two days since she had been last in it; but it seems to her as if years had rolled by since she had last trodden that sward, seen Jacob digging, and watched the birds pecking at the sunflower-seeds, and the wasps pushing their way through the netting into the heart of the peaches. It appears to her a phantasmal garden, with an atmosphere of brilliance and joyousness that may have their home in that realm where Thomas the Rhymer lived; but can have no relationship to her bitter realities. But when she reaches the seat under the Judas-tree, the kingdom of Thomas the Rhymer is gone, and reality is here in its stead. As she looks at it, her hands clench themselves, and a tide of rage and misery surges up in her heart.
'You have killed her!' she says out loud; 'killed her as much as if you had cut her poor throat! When she is dead, I will tell you so!'
She walks on quickly; rapid motion may make her burden easier to bear. But, alas! her domain is small; and no sooner has she left Prue and the Judas-tree behind, than the hawthorn bower and Talbot face her. The creamy foam of flowers that had sent its little pungent petals, shaped like tiny sea-shells, floating down upon their two happy heads, has changed to lustreless red berries.
'They are not more changed than I!' she says; and so sinks, helplessly sobbing, upon the rustic bench, her cheek pressed against the gnarled trunk. 'They are all the same!—all the same!' she moans. If it were not so, would she be lying with her head achingly propped against this rough bark? Would not it have been resting on her love's breast? Would not he have been telling her that Prue will get well? She has no one now to tell her that Prue will get well; and when she tells herself so, it does not sound true.
The tears drip from under her tired lids. One moment she is here, with aching body and smarting soul; the nextshe is away—how far, who shall say? Away, at ease; all her sorrows sponged out, for God has sent her His lovely angel—sleep.
It is two hours later when she wakes with a frightened start, and springs—half unconscious of her whereabouts at first—to her feet. The position of the sun in the sky, the altered angle of the shadow cast by her may-bush, tell her to how much longer a period than she had intended her five minutes have stretched. She begins to run, with a beating heart, back towards the house. Prue will have missed her! Prue will have been crying out for her! How stupid, how selfish of her to fall asleep!
She has entered the hall, when the noise of a closing door—her ear tells her Prue's—reaches her; and by the time she gets to the foot of the stairs she is confronted by a person coming quickly down. It is not Sarah, nor yet the doctor. It is the person to whom, beside the Judas-tree, she had framed that bitter message. She can give it now if she chooses. Freddy's hair is all ruffled, and the tears are streaming down his face—real, genuine salt tears.
'Oh, Peggy!' he cries, in a broken voice, as he catches sight of her, seizing both her hands; 'is that you? Come and talk to me! Come and say something nice to me! I amsomiserable! Oh, how dreadful these partings are!'
As he speaks he draws her back into the hall with him; and throwing himself on the settle, flings his arms down upon the cushions, and his head upon them.
'Have you seen her?' asks Peggy in a shocked stern voice. 'Do you mean to say that you have seen her?'
The answer comes, blurred and muffled, from among the pillows.
'Yes, yes.'
'You are not satisfied, apparently, with the way in which you have done your work,' rejoins Peggy, with anintonation of icy irony, though her voice trembles; 'you are anxious to put the finishing-stroke to it!'
'I do not know what you are talking about,' says Freddy, lifting his tossed head and his tear-stained face, and looking at her with his wet eyes. 'I can see by your look that you mean to be unkind—that you have some cruel intention in your words; but you may spare yourself the trouble. I am so wretched that I am past feeling any blow you may aim at me. I knew nothing of her illness; her letter reached me only an hour ago. I came to see her; she heard my voice. Oh, Peggy, you do not realise how keen love's ears are! She asked to see me; she was lying on the sofa in her dressing-room. My Prue!—my Prue! What have you been doing to her? Oh, that word "Good-bye"! What long reverberations of sorrow there are in it!'
At the sight of the young man's emotion, so overpowering and to all appearance so genuine, Peggy's heart has been softening a little; but at this last sentence, uttered with something of his old manner of lofty and pensive reflection, it hardens again. Bitterness, such as had seized upon her by the Judas-tree, is rising again in her.
'You keep to your plan, then? you are going?' she asks, breathing hard, and with a sort of catch in her voice.
'And leave her as she now is?' answers Freddy, with an accent of wounded reproach, which perhaps in his opinion may exempt him from answering the question directly. 'Oh, my Peg, if I could but teach you to credit your poor fellow-creatures with at least bare humanity!'
'Then I am to understand that you arenotgoing? that the idea is given up?'
She is still standing inexorably over him.
'I do not know why we should discuss the subject at all to-day,' returns Mr. Ducane, again interring his head in the cushions; 'I have not the heart to discuss anything to-day.'
'Then you did not mention the subject to her?'
'She introduced it herself; she has quite come round to think it a good plan—if you do not believe me, you may ask her—a year's probation to make me fitter for my Prue'—in a voice of dreamy tenderness. 'Oh, Peggy, cannot you understand what a sacred deposit the care of such a soul as Prue's is? cannot you comprehend that I do not feel yet worthy of it? You know, dear, I am very young, though you never will own it; and you cannot put gray heads upon green shoulders. Be merciful to me, little friend! be merciful to me!'
As he makes this coaxing request, he takes her reluctant hand and presses his wet cheek against it. But she feels no mercy in her heart, and promises him none even when she leaves him stretched full-length upon the settle, shaken with real sobs. For her, he may sob as long as he pleases; while in one panic-stricken bound upstairs she reaches her sister. She finds her—the Prue upon whom the doctor had enjoined such a strict confinement to bed and maintenance at one temperature—sitting, not even lying upon the dressing-room sofa, breathing labouringly, with every symptom of imminent bronchitis, with racing pulse and burning hands, but with heaven in her eyes.
'You have seen him,' she says pantingly, as Margaret comes in. 'You have heard—oh, do not scold me for getting up! I know that I ought not, but I will go back to bed as soon as you like; and—and itisreal, is not it? itistrue? I am not wandering. I was last night, I know; but I am not now, am I? Give me something of his, something to hold that I may be sure that it is true!'
Peggy has sat down upon the sofa beside her, and gathered up the little quivering figure into her arms.
'I will go back to bed now,' says Prue restlessly; but oh, with how different a restlessness from that of three hours ago! 'If I do not, I shall be longer in getting well,and I want to get well quickly. If I do not get better he will not go, and it would be selfish to hinder him from doing what is so much the best thing for him; yes, and for me too—for me too! Take me back to bed, Peggy.'
So Peggy takes her back to bed, and as she lays her down the thin arms close gratefully round her neck.
'You dear old soul! It is your turn for a bit of luck next.'
And when the night comes—the night dreaded by watchers beside sick-beds, the night that doubles fever and sharpens pain, and accentuates grief—Prue, clasping to her feverish breast an old glove, left behind by careless Freddy on some former occasion, wakes repeatedly with a jump from her broken slumbers to ask in a terrified tone, 'Is it true? Is it real?' And Peggy is always there, always awake, always beside her to answer reassuringly that it is. It would have been too flagrant a violation of the laws of nature and disease, if poor Prue had escaped scot-free from her infraction of both; and, in fact, her escapade is followed, as the meanest observer might have predicted that it would be, by a very sharp attack of bronchitis.
For a few days her illness is so acute that it seems as if Mr. Ducane would be placed in the painful dilemma of either leaving his betrothed fighting hand to hand with death, or of abandoning his cherished project. He arrives at the Red House in the morning, almost before the shutters are opened; he strays for hours about the garden with his hands clasped, his head bent forward, and his charming face as white as a sheet, till even Jacob's bowels yearn over him; though the style of observations by which he elects to show his sympathy are not perhaps precisely of a cheering nature, consisting chiefly of remarks such as that 'his missis says she never see any one go downhill so quick as Miss Prue—never.'
One day when Prue is at her worst, Freddy lies on thefloor at her threshold, with his face buried in the mat, to the intense admiring compassion of Sarah and the nurse; but he really is not thinking of them. By and by the disease yields to treatment. Perhaps the patient's determination to get quickly better—her eagerness to return to a life once more become joyous and valuable to her—counts for much in the quickness of her rally.
Whatever be the cause, Prue is certainly better—is able once again to sit up; to shake milady's hearty hand, and eat her excellent jelly. But by the time that she is able to do so, the Hartleys' monster yacht is getting up her steam at Southampton; and all her passengers, with the exception of Mr. Ducane, are off to embark upon her. Within two days the die must be cast as to whether Freddy is to be of that ship's company or not.
'It is for you to decide, sweet,' he says, in his south-wind voice with all the joyousness taken out of it, as he half-lies, half-sits, beside the dressing-room sofa, upon which she is stretched in her shadowy convalescence, while his head rests on the pillow beside hers. 'Yes—no! go—stay! I have no will but yours. You know that the only reason I ever had for wishing it was that I might come back a little less unworthy of you—with wider experience and larger horizons. As topleasure'—with a small disdainful smile—'there can be no question ofthat! I think that my worst enemy will own that pleasure and I have waved farewell to each other of late.'
Prue has been lying prostrate and languid; but at his words she draws herself up into a sitting posture, and into her little face, not much less white than her dressing-gown, has come a faint pink flush—the flush of a generous effort.
'And, after all, it is only a year,' she says bravely. 'How absurd to make a fuss about only a year! When one was a child, one used to think it endless—an eternity; but now—why, it is gone by like a flash!'
'Onlya year!' repeats Freddy, with a moan. 'Oh, Prue, can you sayonly? How do you do it, dear? Teach me—teach me!'