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 is _drunk_!' says Mrs. Evans charitably. 'I am sure she
acts as if she were. If _I_ were 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 more _pate 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's
_tete-a-tete_.
'Prue!' repeats the other, looking round rather tartly from 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 shorten
the 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. There are 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 fall over 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 writing _now_, 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 was _I_ who 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 sure that 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.'