Hector Darcy knitted his brows, and started in bewilderment at the
little figure before him. "Peggy Saville!" he repeated blankly. "No,
you cannot mean it! The little girl who had lessons with Rob, and who
saved Rosalind's life at the time of the fire? The little girl I met at
The Larches with the pale face, and the pink sash, and the pigtail down
her back?"
"The self-same Peggy--at your service!"--and Miss Saville swept a
curtesy in which dignity mingled with mischief. Her eyes were sparkling
with pleasure, and Major the Honourable Hector Darcy--to give that
gentleman his full title--looked hardly less radiant than herself. Here
was a piece of luck--to make the acquaintance of an interesting and
attractive girl at the very beginning of a voyage, and then to discover
in her an intimate friend of the family! True, he himself had seen
little of her personally, but the name of Peggy Saville was a household
word with his people, and one memorable Christmas week, which they had
spent together at The Larches in years gone by, might be safely accepted
as the foundation of a friendship.
"Of course I remember you!" he cried. "We had fine romps together, you
and I. You danced me off my feet one night, and gave me my death of
cold putting up a snow man the next day. I have never forgotten Peggy
Saville, but you have changed so much that I did not recognise you, and
I did not see your name."
"I noticed yours in the list of passengers, and then I looked out for
you, and recognised you at once. There was a Darcy look about the back
of your head which could not be mistaken! I meant to ask father to
introduce you to me after lunch, but the book has taken his place. So
you think I have changed! I have `growed,' of course, and the pigtail
has disappeared; but in other respects there is not so much alteration
as could be desired. My father tells me, on an average three times a
day, that I shall remain the same `Peggy-Pickle' all my life."
"That sounds bad! So far as my remembrance goes, you used to be a
mischievous little person, always getting into scrapes and frightening
the wits out of your companions."
"Ah!" sighed Miss Saville dolorously. "Ah-h!" She shook her head with
a broken-hearted air, and looked so overwhelmed with compunction for her
misdeeds, that if it had not been for a treacherous dimple that defied
her control, the major would have felt remorseful at awakening a painful
memory. As it was he laughed heartily, and cried aloud:
"When you look like that, I can see you again with the pigtail and the
white frock, just as you looked that Christmas half-a-dozen years ago!
Your father is right--you have not changed a bit from the little Peggy I
used to know!"
"I'm a full-fledged young lady now, Major Darcy, and have been `out' for
three whole years. I've grown into `Miss Saville,' or at the very least
into `Mariquita.'"
"But not to me. I'm part of the old times; Rosalind's brother--Rob's
brother--you cannot treat me like a stranger. Peggy you have been, and
Peggy you must be, so far as I am concerned, for I could not recognise
you by another name. Sit down and tell me all about yourself. How long
have you been in India, and where are you bound for now?"
"I came out three years ago, when I was eighteen, and now we are going
home for good. I'm so glad, for though I've enjoyed India immensely,
there is no place like the old country. Mother is not strong, so we are
going to stay on the Continent until it is warm enough to return safely.
We shall land at Marseilles, stay a month in the Riviera, and gradually
work our way homewards. When I say home, of course you understand that
we have no home as yet, but we are going to look round for a house as
soon as possible. We know exactly what we want, so it ought to be easy
to get it. A dear old place in the country--the _real_ country, not a
suburb, but within half an hour's rail of town. A house covered with
roses and creepers, and surrounded by a garden. Oh! think of seeing
English grass again--the green, _green_ grass, and walking along between
hedges of wild roses and honeysuckle; and the smell of the earth after
it has rained, and all the little leaves are glistening with water--do
you remember--oh! do you remember?" cried Peggy, clasping her eager
hands, and gazing at her companion with a sudden glimmer of tears which
rose from very excess of happiness. "I don't say so to mother, because
it would seem as if I had not been happy abroad; but I _ache_ for
England! Sometimes in the midst of the Indian glare I used to have a
curious wild longing, not for the Country... that was always there--but
for the dull, old Tottenham Court Road! Don't laugh! It was no
laughing matter. You know how dull that road looks, how ugly and grimy,
and how grey, grey, grey in rainy weather? Well, amidst the glare of
Eastern surroundings that scene used to come back to me as something so
thoroughly, typically English, that its very dreariness made the
attraction. I have stood in the midst of palm and aloes, and just
longed my very heart out for Tottenham Court Road!"
Major Darcy laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"I know the feeling--had it myself; but you will lose it soon enough.
In the East you gasp and long for England; in England you shudder and
long for the East. It's the way of the world. What you haven't got
seems always the thing you want; but no sooner have you got it than you
realise its defects. England will strike you as intolerably dreary when
you are really there."
Peggy shook her head obstinately.
"Never! I was ablaze with patriotism before I left, and I have been
growing worse and worse all the time I have been abroad. And it will
_not_ be dreary! What is the use of imagining disagreeable things? You
might just as well imagine nice ones while you are about it. Now _I_
imagine that it is going to be a perfect summer--clear, and fine, and
warm, with the delicious warmth which is so utterly different from that
dreadful India scald. And father and I are going to turn gardeners, and
trot about all day long tending our plants. Did I tell you that we were
going to have a garden? Oh yes--a beauty!--with soft turf paths,
bordered with roses, and every flower that blooms growing in the
borders. We will have an orchard, too, where the spring bulbs come up
among the grass; and I've set my heart on a moat. It has been the dream
of my life to have a moat. `Mariquita of the Moated Grange!'... Sounds
well, doesn't it? It would be good for me to have an address like that,
for I possess a strong instinct of fitness, and make a point of living
up to my surroundings." Peggy lay back in her seat and coughed in the
languid, Anglo-Indian fashion which was her latest accomplishment. "I
suppose you don't happen to know the sort of house that would suit us?"
"Within half an hour of London? No! That is too much to ask. It's a
Chateau en Espagne, Peggy, and not to be had in Middlesex. You will
have to do like the rest of the world, and settle down in a red brick
villa, with a plot of uncultivated land out of which to manufacture your
garden. There will be neither green sward nor festoons of roses; but,
on the other hand, the house will contain every modern convenience, and
there will be hot and cold water, electric light--"
"Don't!" cried Peggy hastily. She lifted her hand with a gesture of
entreaty, and Hector was startled to see how seriously she had taken his
jesting words. "Don't laugh at me! I've been dreaming of it so long,
and it's such a dear, dear dream. Do you realise that in all my life I
have never had a permanent home? It has been a few years here, a few
years there, with always the certainty of another change ahead; but now
we mean to find a real home, where we can take refuge, with all our
possessions around us. Mother and I have talked about it until we can
_see_ every nook and corner, and it is waiting for us somewhere--I know
it is! So don't be sceptical, and pretend that it is not! We won't
talk about houses any more, but you shall tell me your own news. It is
four years since I saw Rob and Rosalind, as they were abroad for the
year before I left England. But you have been home since then, I know."
"Yes; only eighteen months ago. I should not be back so soon, but I've
had an attack of fever, and am taking a few months off, to pull myself
together. I'm glad our home-goings have taken place at the same time.
What do you want to know? My people were much as usual when I saw them
last; but the mater has not been at all well for some months back. She
has had to leave the house in charge of her sister, Mrs Everett, and go
off to some baths in Germany for a course of treatment, and I believe
she will not return to England until the autumn. Rosalind--"
"Yes--Rosalind?"
The major's handsome face softened into a smile, which showed that the
subject of his young sister was pleasant to his mind.
"Rosalind," he said slowly, "is a circumstance--decidedly a circumstance
to be taken into account! We look to her to redeem the fortunes of the
family, and the mater considers nobody under a royal duke worthy of her
acceptance. She is certainly a lovely girl, and a more agreeable one
into the bargain than I expected her to turn out. She was a spoiled,
affected child, but she took a turn for the better after her accident.
My parents, I believe,"--Major Darcy looked at his companion with a
brightening glance,--"my parents ascribe a great part of the change to
your beneficial influence."
Peggy's cheeks flushed with pleasure, for she had by no means outgrown
her childish love of a compliment; but she shrugged her shoulders, and
replied in a tone of would-be indifference:
"Plus the wholesome discipline of having her hair cut short. Poor
Rosalind! Never shall I forget her confiding to me that she was
`wesigned to becoming a hideous fwight,' while all the time she was
admiring her profile in the mirror and arranging her curls to hide the
scar. We had been on very distant terms before that accident; but when
we were both convalescent we took courage, and spoke faithfully to one
another on the subject of our several failings. I told Rosalind, in
effect, that she was a conceited doll, and she replied that I was a
consequential minx. It cleared the air so much that we exchanged vows
of undying friendship, which have been kept to the extent of some half-
a-dozen letters a year. I know much more about Rosalind than I do about
Rob. Please tell me all you can about Rob!"
"Oh, Rob, you know, was always a boor," said Rob's brother lightly,
"and, upon my word, he is a boor still! He did remarkably well at
Oxford, as no doubt you heard, and then went travelling about for a
couple of years through a number of uncomfortable and insanitary lands.
He has always been a great gardener and naturalist, and he brought home
some new varieties of shrubs and flowers, out of which he makes a fair
amount of money. His principal craze, however, as I understand it, was
to add to his knowledge on the engrossing subject of _Beetles_. He has
written some papers on them since his return, and they tell me he has
made his mark, and will soon be considered a leading authority. I must
say, however, that the whole thing seems to me of supreme unimportance.
What on earth can it matter whether there are ten varieties of beetles
or ten thousand? Rob is just the sort of hard-headed, determined fellow
who could have made himself felt in whatever _role_ he had taken up, and
it seems hard luck that he should have chosen one so extremely dull and
unremunerative." Hector leant his head against the wall with an air of
patronising disgust, for his own profession being one of avowed
readiness to kill as many as possible of his fellow-creatures, he felt a
natural impatience with a man who trifled away his time in the study of
animal nature. He sighed, and turned to his companion in an appeal for
sympathy. "Hard lines, isn't it, when a fellow has society practically
at his feet, that he should run off the lines like that?"
"De-plorable!" said Peggy firmly, and her expression matched the word.
She shook her head and gazed solemnly into space, as if overpowered by
the littleness of the reflection. "Poor Rob--he is incorrigible! I
suppose, then, he doesn't care a bit for dinners, or dances, or standing
against a wall at a reception, or riding in a string in the Park, but
prefers to pore over his microscope, and roam over the country, poking
about for specimens in the ditches and hedgerows?"
"Exactly. The mater can hardly induce him to go out, and he is never so
happy as when he can get on a flannel shirt and transform himself into a
tramp. You remember Rob's appearance in his school-days? He is almost
as disreputable to-day, with his hair hanging in that straight heavy
lock over his forehead, and his shoulders bowed by poring over that
everlasting microscope."
A light passed swiftly across Peggy's face, and her eyes sparkled. One
of the most trying features of a long absence from home is that the face
which one most longs to remember has a way of growing dim, and elusively
refusing to be recalled. In those hot Indian days, Peggy had often
seated herself in her mental picture gallery, and summoned one friend
after another before her: the vicar, with his kindly smiles; Mrs
Asplin, with the loving eyes, and the tired flush on the dear, thin
cheeks; Esther, with her long, solemn visage; Mellicent, plump and rosy;
Rex, with his handsome features and budding moustache; Oswald,
immaculately blond--they could all be called up at will, and would
remain contentedly in their frames until such times as she chose to
dismiss them; but Rob's face refused to be recalled in the same easy
fashion. Now and again, from out the gloom, a pair of stormy eyes would
flash upon her, or she would catch her breath as a stooping figure
seemed to rise suddenly beside the palm-trees; but Rob, as a whole, had
refused to be recalled, until at his brother's words his image had
appeared before her in so vivid and characteristic a guise that it
seemed almost as if Rob himself stood by her side. She drew a long
breath, and chimed in with an eager--
"Yes, yes! And his great long arms waving about--I never knew any one
with such long arms as Rob. And a pair of thick, nailed boots, with all
four tabs sticking out, and a tie slipping round to the back of his
neck. It's exactly like him. I can see him now!"
Hector Darcy shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't, please! It's not a pleasant prospect. I try to let distance
lend enchantment to the view, for it's bad enough having to go about
with him when I am at home. The fellow would not be bad-looking, if he
took a little care of himself; but he is absolutely regardless of
appearances."
"He must have an idea that there are other things of more importance.
He was always a ridiculous boy!" murmured Miss Saville sweetly. The
major glanced at her with a suspicious eye, once more disturbed by the
suspicion that she was being sarcastic at his expense, but Peggy was
gazing dreamily through the opposite windows, her delicately cut profile
thrown into relief against the dark wood of the background. She looked
so young, so fragile and innocent, that it seemed quite criminal to have
harboured such a suspicion. He was convinced that she was far too sweet
and unassuming a girl to laugh at such a superior person as Major Hector
Darcy.