A fortnight later, and Peggy is alone. Prue has gone after all--gone to
that paradise, in yearning for which she seemed to be stooping towards
the grave; she has gone to empty jugs of water over stairs on
Guardsmen's heads, to put crackers into the coat-tail pockets of
Secretaries of Legation, and set booby-traps for Members of Parliament.
No wonder that even before entering upon these glories their mere
prospect had restored her to more than her pristine vigour. She has
gone, with Peggy's one string of pearls in her trinket-case; with
Peggy's best gown, contracted and modified to her smaller shape, in her
trunk. She has gone, nodding her head, waving her hand, and blowing
kisses, altogether restored apparently to the blithe Prueship of earlier
days. But at what price?
Peggy's repugnance to the plan has been in no degree diminished by the
fact of her having consented to it. She has consented to it, driven
partly by a suspicion that her opposition has been half-due to no
solicitude for her sister's welfare, but to a resentment and an ache of
her own; driven much more, though, by Mr. Evans's few light words, 'Take
care that she does not slip through your fingers!' They pursue her by
day and by night. 'Slip through her fingers!' There seems a dreadful
fitness in the very form of the phrase. Other people may die, may be
killed. Prue would just slip away! Oh, if he had but used another form
of expression! As she lies on her wakeful, anxious bed, one couple of
lines torments her with what she feels to be its prophetic
applicability:
'Like a caged bird escaping suddenly
The little innocent soul flitted away!'
Some day she will wake to find her arms empty of little Prue, whom for
seventeen fond years they have girdled. That Prue has always been sickly
and often forward, has from the moment of her birth caused her far more
pain than pleasure, makes no sort of difference. The sea does not reckon
how many little rills run into it. A great love has no debit and credit
account; it gives vastly, not inquiring for any return. People in weak
health, who can become genuinely moribund upon opposition, possess a
weapon which the sound cannot pretend to emulate.
On the evening of the day of Margaret's visit to the Vicarage Freddy
Ducane had unexpectedly returned to the Manor.
'I believe that that wretched little Prue is going to die on purpose to
spite Peggy for not letting her go to the Harboroughs!' says milady
crossly, vexed at her nephew's serene flower face. 'I cannot think what
possessed you to put such an idea into her stupid little head!'
And Freddy looks mournful, and answers sweetly that he supposes it is
useless his trying to explain that he had no hand in the matter, but
that he is afraid he shall never be able to inflict gratuitous pain upon
any one as long as he lives.
Despite his assertion of innocence, he has in his pocket a second letter
of invitation from Lady Betty for Prue, which he reads with her next day
under the Judas-tree while Peggy is away at the workhouse. She comes
back a little too soon, before the reading is quite finished, just in
time to see Prue stick the note hastily into her pocket. At this
gesture her heart sinks--Prue is beginning to look upon her as an enemy.
'You need not hide your letter, Prue. I am not going to ask to see it,'
she says, in a wounded voice, either forgetting or omitting to make any
salutation to Freddy.
Prue reddens.
'I should not have hidden it, only that I knew it would make you angry,'
she answers, with a sort of trembling defiance. 'Lady Betty has invited
me again. I cannot help it; it is not my fault.'
Freddy has risen, and, scenting a coming storm, follows his instincts by
beginning to edge away.
'How bad of you--you dear Peg!' cries he affectionately, holding out
both hands--'to come back just as I am obliged to be off! That is the
way you always treat me--is not it, Prue?'
'You needn't go,' replies Margaret, neglecting his hands, and looking
rather sternly at him. 'I shall not be here a moment; and we are not
going to quarrel, if that is what you are afraid of. Prue, since Lady
Betty is so urgent, and you wish it so much, tell her that you will go
to her.'
Then she leaves them with a steady step, but when she reaches her own
room her tears gush out. That gesture of Prue's hand to her pocket has
cut her to the quick; Prue, whose one first impulse through all her
seventeen years' span has hitherto been to run to her sister with
whatever of good or bad--be it broken head or new doll--fate has brought
her. That one small gesture tells her that the old habit is for ever
broken, and she cries bitterly at it. She may cry as much as she pleases
during the silent fortnight that follows, certain that neither Mink nor
the cat will ask her why; but she does not weep again. Through the
gossamer-dressed September mornings, and the gold-misted September
noons, she lives alone. Alone with her thoughts--thoughts none the less
worth thinking perhaps for their new tinge of deep sadness--with her
unpretending charities, with Jacob and her hollyhocks. It is a novel
experience, since never before in all Prue's little life has she borne
to have the child out of her sight for as much as a week.
Three months ago she would have thought it too hard a thing to have
asked of her to forego Prue's songs and kisses for a whole fortnight;
but of late Prue herself has so entirely robbed their intercourse of its
old confident sweetness, has put such a bitter sting into it, that for
the first few days after her departure Peggy (albeit with self-reproach)
experiences a sense of relief in no longer meeting the small miserable
face with its mute and dogged upbraidings. So little does she dread her
own company that she avails herself but sparingly even of such society
as is within her reach, _i.e._ that of the Manor and milady, with her
spud and frieze-coat; that of the Vicarage with its stocking-basket and
its _Earthly Paradise_. The only visitors of whom she sees much are the
little Harboroughs, who still adorn the Manor nurseries, and call upon
her almost daily, with that utter absence of misgiving as to being
always welcome that few people--and those only the most consummate
bores--are able to preserve in later life.
She likes them--the boy best; and even if she herself is not quite in
tune for their chatter, there is always the red fox to pant at them,
with pretty cunning face and hot wild breath, from behind the wire walls
of his house; the pump to wet their clothes, and the stable kittens to
scratch them. So no wonder that they come every day. She would enjoy
their conversation more if it did not involve so ceaseless a reference
to one whom she has neither the need nor the desire to have thus hauled
back into her memory. But it seems as if John Talbot had been so inwoven
with the very woof of their lives that no anecdote of their little past
is complete without it. She could endure it, however, if they confined
themselves to anecdotes. It is the perpetual appeal to her for her
opinion about him that she finds so trying.
'Oh, Miss Lambton! do not you like John Talbot? When is he coming back?
Do not you wish he would come and live with you here always? Do you like
him better than father? Franky says _he_ does. Is not it naughty of
him?'
And the questions of childhood are not like those of a maturer age,
which may be evaded or put aside. They must and will be directly
answered. Peggy cannot help a vexed internal laugh as she hears herself,
allowing that she likes John Talbot, asseverating that she has no wish
that he should come and live with her always, and explaining that it is
possible to appreciate him and father too. But she is always deeply
thankful when the conversational charms of Alfred the stable-boy, or the
chicken-feeding hour, or any other timely distraction releases her from
this trying interrogatory. Of John Talbot, except through the too glib
tongues of his little partisans, she has heard absolutely nothing. On
the morning of his departure she had sent his Keats and one or two other
of his books up to the Manor after him.
As she was neatly wrapping them in paper a sprig of lavender fell out of
the Keats--a sprig which, as she remembered, he had put in as a mark
into the unfinished 'Eve of St. Agnes,' on their last reading. She
stooped and picked it up, looking hesitatingly at it. Shall she return
it to its place? Why should she? No one could ever connect the idea of
Betty with lavender. Gardenias would bring her image at once--gardenias
wired and overpowering; but the clean and homely lavender--never! She
throws it pensively away; and as she does so a foolish fancy comes over
her, as if it were herself that she had just been tossing away out of
his life! That he acquiesces in that tossing away is but too evident.
He does not even send her a formal line to acknowledge the receipt of
his restored property. So it is not his fault that his image walks
beside her so often down the garden alleys; both at high blue noon and
when, on fair nights, she steps abroad to look at the thronged stars.
One must think of something; and there are many interstices in her
thoughts which cannot all be filled up by the one topic--Prue. Into them
he creeps; the more so as she lives almost wholly in her garden; and
with that his memory is so entangled that there is scarcely a plant that
does not say something to her of him. She thinks of him always without
bitterness; generally with deep compassion; never with any hope of
pulling lavender with him again. But she thinks of him. Perhaps there
was some truth in Betty's fleer, of her never having known any better
company than that of the village apothecary. The only outward incidents
of her life come in the shape of Prue's letters. These begin by being
long and full of ecstasies; end by being short and full of nothing.
Before the first week is over they are hurried up, ere the sheet is
full, with some excuse. She must go and get dressed to go out riding.
They are just off to a tennis-party. They are to go out shooting with
the men. The expressions of enjoyment grow fewer in each. Yet in not one
is the slightest wish expressed for a return home. In fact, before the
fortnight ends comes a feverish note, evidently written in hot haste and
deep excitement, begging for a further reprieve of a week. It gives
Peggy a little fresh pang to notice that this petition is urged as a
criminal might urge some request upon his executioner, not as one would
beg a boon of a tender friend.
But she is used to such pain now; rises up and lies down with it; and
to-day puts it patiently aside. What she cannot put aside is her
perplexity as to how to answer. She has a deep repugnance against
complying; and yet the memory of her terror at Prue's rapid decline upon
her former opposition makes her tremblingly shrink from adopting a
course that may all too probably bring back that condition. She dares
not decide upon her own responsibility. She will consult milady.
On her way to the Manor she goes round by the Vicarage, and looks in.
Over the lawn there is a festal air. It is evident that the little
Evanses have been drinking tea out of doors, in honour of a visit from
Miss and Master Harborough. The Vicar is nowhere to be seen; a fact
which does not surprise Peggy, as she knows that any signs of
conviviality on the part of his children are apt to make him disappear.
On catching sight of her Franky Harborough precipitates himself towards
her as fast as his fat legs will carry him. He is in wild spirits, and
has evidently, on his own showing, been extremely naughty.
'Oh, we have been having such fun!--we have had tea out of doors! Mrs.
Evans said that the next child who shook the table so as to upset
anything should have no tea! I,' with a chuckle, 'had finished my tea,
so I gave it a good shake!'
He looks so rosily delighted with his own iniquity, and is so
flatteringly glad to see her, that poor Peggy, who feels as if not many
people were glad to see her nowadays, has not the heart to rebuke him.
With her admirer's small soft hand tightly clutching hers, she advances
to where, under a copper beech's shade, sits Mrs. Evans--the
stocking-basket banished, and engaged upon some genteeler industry--in
company with a female friend.
'We were just talking of you,' says the Vicar's wife, putting out a
welcoming hand. 'Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Jones; she has
been staying in the neighbourhood of the Harboroughs; she saw Prue.'
'Did you indeed?' cries Peggy, turning with anxious interest to the new
comer. 'Was she well? Did she look well?'
'She looked extremely well.'
'She must have been very well indeed, I should think,' adds Mrs. Evans,
with a meaning smile. It is a smile of such significance that, for a
moment, Peggy dares not ask an explanation of it; and before she can
frame her question Mrs. Evans goes on. 'How very oddly people seem to
amuse themselves in smart houses nowadays!--one never heard of such
things when I was a girl; but I suppose, as it is the fashion, it is all
right.'
'Were they--were they doing anything very strange?' asks Peggy, with
rising colour and wavering voice, addressing the visitor.
'They seemed to be enjoying themselves very thoroughly,' replies the
latter, with a prim evasive smile.
'They were all driving donkey tandems full gallop down the main street
of the town,' cries Mrs. Evans, taking up the tale; 'it seems that there
is a town about three miles from Harborough Castle. Prue was driving
one!'
'PRUE?'
'Yes, _Prue_! I was as much surprised as you can be; but it must have
been Prue; there was no other unmarried girl there!' Peggy is silent.
'My cousin says it was wonderful how she got her donkeys along! She was
at the head of the party; and they were all shouting--shouting at the
top of their voices!' Still Margaret makes no comment. 'My cousin says
that the whole town turned out to look at them; they were all at their
doors and windows. I am sure so should I have been,' with a laugh; 'but
it seems a childish romp for grown-up people, does not it?'
Peggy's answer is a slight assenting motion of the head, but her words
are not ready. Her eyes seem fixed attentively on the distant gambols
of the children--on Lily Harborough swarming a cherry-tree, and being
pulled down by the leg by an indignant nurse; on Franky giving a covert
pull to the end of the white tea table-cloth, in the pious hope of
precipitating all the teacups to the ground.
'Another day,' pursues Mrs. Evans cheerfully, 'they drove into the town
and bought all the penny tarts at the confectioner's, and pelted one
another with them in the open street.'
Peggy has at length recovered her speech.
'It was very, _very_ stupid,' she says, in a voice of acute annoyance;
'senseless. But after all there was no great harm in it.'
'Of course one does not know what they did indoors,' rejoins Mrs. Evans,
as if, though a good-natured woman, unavoidably anxious to knock even
this prop from under our poor Peggy. 'People said--did not they?'
turning to her cousin--'that they sat up smoking till all hours of the
night, and ran in and out of each other's rooms; and the ladies put
things in the men's beds----'
'I am afraid I must be going on,' interrupts Margaret, starting up as if
she had been stung; 'I have to see Lady Roupell.'
She takes leave abruptly. It seems to her as if she should not be able
to draw her breath properly until she is alone. She pants still as she
walks on over the stubble fields, across the park, under the September
trees, whose green seems all the heavier and deeper for their
nigh-coming change of raiment. She pants at the recollection of the
picture just drawn for her of her Prue--_her Prue_--shouting, smoking,
making apple-pie beds!
Her worry of mind must have written itself upon her face, for no sooner
has she joined milady, whom she finds out in the shrubberies leaning on
her spade, like Hercules upon his club, than the old lady asks sharply
what she has been doing to herself.
'Nothing that I know of,' replies Peggy, 'except that I have been rather
bothered.'
'Prue, eh?'
'Yes.'
'What about her now?' with a slight accent of impatience.
'She wants to stay away another week.'
'And have you given her leave?'
'I came to ask your advice.'
Milady is neatly squirting a plantain or two out of the turf. She waits
until she has finished before answering. Then she says with decision:
'Have her back.'
'You think so? But if,' very anxiously, 'she falls ill again as soon as
she gets home?'
'Pish!' rejoins the other in a fury; 'give her a dose of jalap and a
whipping.'
But Peggy does not even smile.
'Have you--have you heard anything of the party?' she asks hesitatingly;
'of whom it consists, I mean? Prue is not very communicative. Is Lady
Clanranald there still?'
'No, she is gone,' replies milady shortly, digging her weapon into a
dandelion. 'She could not stand it. Betty is an ass!'
_Could not stand it!_
In a dismayed silence Margaret awaits further explanation, but none
comes. Milady, whatever she may know, is evidently determined not to be
diffuse on the subject.
'Have her home!' repeats she briefly, lifting her shrewd old eyes to
Peggy's, and replacing her billycock hat on the top of the cap from
which her stooping attitude has nearly dismounted it; 'have her home,
and do it as quickly as possible.'
Beyond this piece of short but very definite advice, nothing is to be
got out of her. She will explain neither why Lady Clanranald took flight
nor why Betty is an ass.
In an uneasiness all the deeper for the vagueness of milady's
implications, Peggy takes her way home to her little solitary Red House,
and writes the letter which is to summon Prue back.
But with how many tears is that letter penned! How many fond and anxious
apologies! Wrapped in what a mantle of loving phrases does the
unpalatable fiat go forth! However, it has gone now, and there is
nothing for her but to await its result. Between the day on which it was
sent and that appointed for Prue's homecoming there is ample time for an
answer to be returned; but none comes. The day arrives; the servant who
is to be Prue's escort sets off in the early morning, and through the
long hours, forenoon, noon, afternoon, Peggy waits. Not in idleness
though. She is hard at work from dawn till sunset, cooking, gardening,
rearranging, planning surprises that are her fatted calves for the
prodigal. As she works her spirits rise. The small house looks so
bright; perhaps, after all, Prue will not be very sorry to find herself
back in it; and how pleasant it will be to hear her little voice singing
about the garden, and to see her jumping over the tennis-net with Mink
again! Mink has not jumped over the tennis-net once since she left. With
a lightened heart Peggy stoops to ask him why he has not, but he answers
only by a foolish smirk.
The expected moment has come. For half an hour beforehand Peggy has been
standing at the garden-end straining her eyes down the road, and making
up her mind that there must have been an accident. But at length the
slow station fly with its dusty nimbus heaves in sight, rolls in at the
gate, stops at the door.
Before Prue can well emerge her sister has her in her arms.
'Oh, Prue! how nice it is to have you back! How are you? Have you
enjoyed yourself? Are you a little glad to see me?'
Prue's first remark can hardly be said to be an answer to any of these
questions. She has disengaged herself from her sister, and stands
staring round, as if half-bewildered.
Prue does not look like herself. She has an oddly-shaped hat; there is
something unfamiliar about the dressing of her hair; and can it be
fatigue or dust that has made her so extremely black under the eyes.
'What a squeezy little place!' she says slowly, with an accent half of
wonder, half of disgust. 'Surely it must have shrunk since I went away!'
And Peggy's arms drop to her sides, and her hopes go out.