A wretched month follows--a month of miserable misery--misery, that is, that springs from no God-sent misfortune; that has none of that fateful greatness to which we bow our heads, stooping meekly before the storm of the inevitable; but a misery that is paltry and reasonless--one of those miseries that we ourselves spin out of the web of our own spoilt lives. It seems such a folly and a shame to be miserable in the face of these yellow October days that by and by steal in, pranked out in the cheerful glory of their short-lived wealth, with such a steadfast sun throwing down his warmth upon you from his unchanging blue home; with a park full of such bronze bracken to push through at your very door; and with such an army of dahlias, ragged chrysanthemums, and 'Good-bye-Summers,' with their delicate broad disks, to greet you morning after morning as you pass in your pleasant ownership along their gossamered ranks.
So Peggy feels; but that does not hinder her from being wretched to her very heart's core. The inside world may throw a sunshine on the outside one, as we all know--may make June day out of January night--'the winter of our discontent' into glorious summer; but the outside can throw no sunshine on the inside unless some is there already. So Peggy's 'Good-bye-Summers,' though they never in their lives have flowered for her so beautifully before, smile at her in vain. She has no answering gladness to give them back. It has not taken twenty-four hours from the time of her return to prove that it has become absolutely impossible to please Prue. It is nothing that, on the first evening of her arrival, she has, as it were, walked over all poor Peggy's little planned surprises without even perceiving them; that she has turned her dinner over disdainfully, and remarked how much worse Sarah cooks than when she went away. These may be but the childish fretfulnesses engendered of fatigue, and that a good night's rest will sweep away. But when twenty-four hours have passed, when a week, when a fortnight have gone by, and find her still cavilling at the smallness of the rooms, the garden's confined space, and the monotony of their lives, then, indeed, Margaret's spirits sink as they have never sunk before.
The one definite property that Prue seems to have brought back from her Harborough visit is a sickly and contemptuous disgust for whatever had formerly given her pleasure; a standard by which to measure all the conditions of her own life, and find them grossly wanting. About the visit itself she is singularly reticent. Not a word does she breathe of her own prowess in donkey tandem-driving; not a hint does she let drop of any midnight gambols.
Once and again Margaret sadly fancies that she sees faint signs of the old lifelong habit of telling her everything trying to reassert its sway; but in a moment it is checked. Often Prue seems to her sister like a child who, engaged in some naughtiness, has been charged by its confederates not to tell. And Prue does not tell. Yet, from indications which she cannot help letting fall, Peggy gathers that the visit has not been all pleasure; that fits of bitter disappointment, sharp jealousy, grisly disillusion, freaked the surface of its feverish joy. And yet Freddy had been a co-guest with her through the whole fortnight! This fact Margaret has elicited by direct inquiry; it would never have been volunteered.
'Come, Prue,' she says coaxingly, on the morning after the young girl's return, as they stroll about the garden, whose flowers Prue notices only to disparage, 'I let you off last night because you were so sleepy, but you must tell me something about your visit now. Was Freddy there?'
'Yes.'
'All the time?'
'Yes.'
'Did you see much of him?'
A slight hesitation, and then an accent of impatience:
'Of course. Were not we staying in the same house?'
'And--and--did Mr. Harborough mount you? You know, don't you--I told you, I think,' a beam of pleasure shining in her anxious blue eyes--'that milady has lent you the little gray mare for the whole winter?'
'I do not think that I care for riding as much as I did,' replies Prue listlessly, plucking the seed-vessel from an overblown dahlia in the border beside her, and idly scattering the seeds over the walk. 'We did not ride much; there were so many more amusing things to do.'
'What sort of things?'
'Oh, they would not have amused you!'
'How do you know that, until you tell me what they were?'
'Oh, they would not have amused you; you are not easily amused. He always says so; and besides,' sinking down with a sigh on the bench under the Judas-tree, 'of what use to talk of them now they are over?'
For a second Peggy shrinks into herself in baffled discouragement, but immediately recovers. She will not be so easily disheartened.
'If they are so amusing,' she says cheerfully, 'perhaps we might adopt some of them here. We are not above learning, are we?'
Prue smiles disdainfully, curling her childish nose.
'In these extensive grounds?'
Nor as time goes on does she grow more communicative about her visit, though it is clear that its incidents occupy her thoughts to the exclusion of all other subjects, and though its influence may be traced in each fragment of her sparse talk. It is one of Peggy's severest daily penalties to recognise in her sister's languid speech continually recurring phrases of Betty's; thin echoes of her flippancies. Prue is even growing to have a dreadful likeness to her model. Possibly this may arise only from Betty's old hat, which she persistently wears; or from the mode of hair-dressing, slavishly copied from her original. That the now fixed bloom in her cheek may be derived from the same source as Lady Betty's, and cause the undeniable resemblance that exists between them, is a supposition too bad to be faced, and that Peggy drives away from her mind as soon as it presents itself. But it recurs. How many disagreeable things do not recur nightly as she lays her head on that pillow which is oftener than not wetted with her tears?
'Oh, why did I let her go?' she sobs. 'Why did I take any one's advice? What has happened to her? What shall I do? It is not my Prue at all that has come back to me!'
Now and again, indeed, there is a tantalising glimpse of the old Prue, hidden away, as it were, behind the new one. Once, twice, there is a curly head resting voluntarily on Peggy's knees; thin arms thrown--and oh, how thankfully welcomed!--round her glad neck; a little voice plaining to her of some small physical ill, with a touch of the old childish confidence in Peggy's power to kiss any wound well. But in a moment she is gone again; and the new Prue, the dreadful, new, cynical, imitation Betty Prue is back. It is this new Prue who daily steals with surreptitious haste to meet the postman, lest the eyes, whose love has enveloped her through life, should now dare to alight upon her correspondence. And yet Peggy knows by the after-mood of the day, as well as if she had scanned superscription and seal, whether or not the expected missive has come. Judging by this test, the postman is for Prue, far oftener than not, empty-handed. Once, twice, as Margaret learns from Lady Roupell, Freddy is expected at the Manor. Once, twice, at the last moment, some motive of exalted self-sacrifice prompts him to telegraph that he is unable to come. And now he can no longer be expected, for mid-October is here; the Universities have reopened their long-shut arms to their children, and Freddy has returned to Oxford. To add still further to the discomfort of the situation, the weather, hitherto so far beyond praise, becomes suddenly as much beyond blame. There follows a week of pouring, tearing, ruthless rain. The 'Good-bye-Summers' say good-bye indeed.
Three days after the fall of this final blow to Prue's hopes the two girls meet milady coming out of morning church; milady in her reluctant and temporary divorce from her spud and frieze-coat. They walk down the yellow, leaf-strewn church-path with her, as they always do, while she throws her brusque nods, and her good-hearted greetings to her fellow-worshippers. As she seats herself in the carriage she pulls a letter accidentally out of her pocket with her pocket-handkerchief.
'Oh, by the bye,' says she, 'I heard this morning from Freddy; I came away in such a hurry that I had not half time to read it. If I had been a little farther off the Vicar,' laughing, 'I would have read it during the sermon. (Poor dear man!' in a loud aside, 'he really ought to treat us to a new one.) Freddy says that he is ill.'
'Ill, is he?'
'So he says,' with a shrug. 'He says that he has caught a chill. Oh, I am not very much disturbed,' laughing again. 'I daresay that we are not going to lose him this time. You know he always cries out some time before he is hurt.'
She rolls cheerfully away, resuming the reading of her letter as she goes. Peggy turns apprehensively to her sister. The congregation have all issued into road and bridle-path, and they are alone. Peggy has time for an impulse of thankfulness that such is the case; for Prue is leaning, whiter than her pocket-handkerchief, against the lych-gate.
'Ill!' she says gaspingly, under her breath. 'Ill! and all alone! nobody with him!'
'Pooh!' replies Peggy lightly, and with a half tone of contempt. 'I daresay it is not much; he is always frightened about himself. Do not you remember the time when he thought he was going into a consumption, and bid us all good-bye? How white you look, darling! Had not you better sit down a moment? Take my arm.'
But Prue will not sit down--will not take her sister's arm. She walks home unhelped, and on getting there, refuses all Peggy's simple cordials. But she leaves her luncheon untouched, and is out the whole afternoon on a long aimless, solitary ramble. She comes in again a full hour after dusk has fallen, and, complaining of headache, goes to bed. The next morning she is up, and at her usual stand, lying in ambush for the postman. After he is gone Peggy catches distant glimpses of her walking up and down the kitchen garden, reading a letter. She has heard, then, from him. Thank God! Perhaps her heart will be more at ease.
With her own mind relieved, Margaret goes about her morning's work with a better courage; and it is eleven o'clock before she again thinks of her sister. The striking of the hour reminds her that Prue will probably forget to take her tonic, and that it will be safer to administer it herself. She pours it out, and opening the drawing-room door, calls 'Prue! Prue!' There is no answer. She moves to the foot of the stairs and repeats her call, 'Prue!' No answer. She sets the glass down upon a table, and runs into the garden. 'Prue! Prue!' There is an answer this time, but unfortunately it is not the right one. It is the parrot officiously replying, 'Yes,'m,' in the cook's voice. She re-enters the house. Possibly Prue may be in her own room--one of her new tendencies is to lock herself in there for hours together--and with the door shut Peggy's summonses may, though in so small a house it is not likely, have remained unheard. She runs up and knocks. No answer. She turns the handle, the door opens, and she looks in. In vain! The room is empty. She can see this at a glance. It is not likely that Prue is hiding in her own cupboard, or beneath her narrow chintz bed; and yet her sister, pushed by what vague suspicion she does not know, enters. A note in Prue's handwriting and addressed to herself, lying on the small writing-table in the window, at once catches her eye. In an instant she has sprung upon and torn it open. What is this? There is neither beginning nor ending; only a few unsteady lines straggling across a sheet of paper:
'I have not asked your leave, because I knew that you would not give it; but I could not--could not let him die alone. Oh, Peggy, do not be very angry with me! I am so miserable, and I could not help it.'
That is all. It has not taken Margaret two seconds to master the contents; and having done so, she stands vacantly staring at the empty envelope still held in her hand. It is a minute or two before she has recovered her wits enough to realise that it is not yet empty; that it contains a second sheet. This is in a different handwriting, one of those small, clear, clever handwritings affected by the cultured youth of the day. 'Ch. Ch. Oxford.
'MY PRUE,
'Send me a little word. I am suffering, and I am all alone. I am scratching you these few pencil-lines in case--as, I fear, is too probable--I may be too ill to write to-morrow. Oh, my Prue! "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint." What would not I give for one of your little cold white hands to lay on my throbbing brow? 'Your 'FREDDY.'
It was only with a half comprehension--so stunned was she--that Peggy had read Prue's missive; but at the end of Freddy's the dreadful white light of full understanding breaks upon her soul. Prue has gone to Oxford!--gone to fulfil young Ducane's aspiration--to 'lay her little cold hand on his throbbing brow.' Can it be possible? Can even Prue's madness have gone so far? She snatches up her sister's note again, and greedily reads it afresh, in the wild hope of finding that she has mistaken its drift. Alas! there is no room for misapprehension. If she need further confirmation of her worst fears it comes in the voice of Sarah, who looks in, duster in hand, through the half-open door.
'Please, 'm, did you want Miss Prue? She has gone out.'
'Gone out!' repeats Margaret breathlessly. Then, making a great effort over herself for composure, she adds, 'Yes, yes, I know; how did she go? did she walk or drive?'
'She went in the pony-carriage, 'm.'
'Did she take Alfred with her?'
'No, 'm; she said she should not want him.'
'And how--how long ago did she set off?'
'Indeed, 'm, I did not much notice. I happened to look out of the passage window as I was dusting the stairs, and I saw her drive off; it must be the best part of an hour ago.'
The best part of an hour ago! Like lightning it dawns upon Peggy that a train leaves her station for Oxford at ten minutes to eleven. It is a slow one, as all must be which draw up at the little wayside platform; not so slow, however, but that a crawl of a hundred and twenty minutes will land Prue as hopelessly beyond her power of reach as if it were the 'Flying Dutchman' itself, at Oxford station. She is as little able to hinder her sister from forcing her mad way into the young man's room as she would be to stop God's lightning from splitting the tree it is appointed to rend.
With a gesture of rage and despair she dashes Freddy's note to the ground, and flings her own head down on the open blotting-book whose pages keep the imprint, scarcely dry, of her sister's insane words. But in a few minutes she has pulled herself together. There is only one thing for her to do--to follow and overtake her sister as quickly as possible. As quickly as possible! But how quickly is that? This is the first thing to be discovered.
She goes down into the cheerful hall, where the birds in their big cage are swinging on John Talbot's ladder, and chattering to each other as jovially as if no disaster had fallen on their roof-tree; where Mink is lying on his small hairy side in a sun-patch, with his little paws crossed like a dying saint's. Margaret searches for the Bradshaw, which apparently Sarah has tidied away. Her first impulse is to call to her, and ask where she has put it; but her second corrects it. Why should the household learn any sooner than is unavoidable that Prue has fled?
By and by she discovers the missing volume, and sitting down, buries herself in its pages. What she had feared is realised. There is no second train for Oxford until 2.15. Three hours of forced inaction stretch before her--three hours for Prue to carry out whatever cureless folly her burning heart and rudderless mind may dictate.
She starts up. To sit still with such thoughts for company is out of the question. She wanders back again to Prue's room, picks up Freddy's note which she had left in her ire lying on the carpet; tears both it and Prue's into small pieces, and throws them into the grate; then, misdoubting their being sufficiently destroyed, collects the fragments again and burns them--tears out even that sheet of the blotting-book upon which Prue had dried her words, and burns it too.
Then she goes downstairs, and looks at the clock. It has seemed to her as if she had been a long time over her burning. Yet the clock-hand points only to a quarter past eleven. She must force herself to some occupation. To read is impossible. Needlework and gardening both sharpen instead of deadening thought. It is the day for doing up the week's accounts. She will compel herself to do them as usual. But the figures swim before her eyes. The simplest addition baffles her. The names of Prue, Freddy, Oxford, force themselves into her record of expenditure, making nonsense of it, defacing her neat columns; and after half an hour's vain efforts, she desists with a sigh. When one o'clock comes at last she sits down to luncheon, calmly telling Sarah that she does not expect Prue back; and having obliged herself, for the sake of appearances, to eat something, she puts on her hat and jacket.
Leaving word with her household as indifferently as she can that they are not to be surprised if she and her sister are late in returning, she sets forth on her walk to the station. She has reflected that she would start early, in order to give herself plenty of time to walk slowly. But she does not walk slowly; she walks fast; towards the end she runs. Who knows whether her clocks may not be slow? whether on coming in sight of the little upstart red-brick house that constitutes the station, she may not see the train sliding away without her? She arrives breathless, to find that she has half an hour to wait--half an hour in which to admire the station-master's canariensis and his mignonette, which greets each dusty train-load with its whiff of perfume.
By and by another intending traveller or two arrive. The Manor omnibus drives up, and disgorges the little Harboroughs and their nurses. Peggy had known and forgotten that they were to return home to-day. She feels rather guilty at her own cold inability to echo their loud expressions of pleasure at this unexpected meeting with her. But they apparently detect no lack of warmth in her answering greetings, as they each at once take possession of one of her hands, and march up and down with her. In the intervals of a searching interrogatory as to the goal and object of her journey, they continue a quarrel apparently begun in the omnibus; putting out their red tongues at each other before her face, and executing agile kicks at one another's legs behind her back.
When the train draws up they insist upon deserting their own suite and getting in with her. She had rather that they would not have done so; and yet perhaps it affords a wholesome diversion from her own thoughts to be continually jumping up to grasp Franky by the seat of his sailor-trousers, and hinder him from breaking his neck by tumbling out of the window, or his legs by his endeavours to climb up into the netting. Lily is not nearly so troublesome. She is sitting quite still, and showing off; trying, that is, to impress by her remarks two quiet ladies who are fellow-occupants of the carriage with a sense of her importance.
'I hope,' she says, in a loud voice, 'that my large box is in;' as she speaks she turns her eyes upon the strangers to see whether they look awed; but as they do not, she adds, in a still louder key, 'because it is full of clothes!'
The train slides on through the bright-dyed autumn country; past the flooded flat meadows lying a-dazzle in the sun, blinding mirrors for the gorgeous October trees; across and then again across the broad ribbon of the silver Thames; past distant country houses, lifting their shoulders out of the gold and red billows of their elms and beeches; past big villages and little towns, till, after several previous stoppages, they come to a standstill at the platform of a small station, as destitute of importance as the one from which they set off. It is that at which the little Harboroughs are to get out.
'Mammy is coming to meet us,' Lily had announced; 'she will give Franky such a hug! She never hugs me--I am father's child.'
She throws one final look at her fellow-travellers, to see whether they are not rather struck by the last statement, before joining her brother at the window, and jostling her hat against his in the endeavour to have the glory of obtaining the first glimpse of their common parent. Of this, however, she is balked, as, whatever may be her after-assertions to the contrary, there is no doubt that the shrill cries of boy and girl, 'There she is!' 'There's mammy!' rang out absolutely simultaneous.
Their curly heads fill up the window-space so completely that Peggy, for a moment, hopes to escape detection and recognition. She hopes it the more, since, for the first minute, Betty has no eyes save for her boy, whom she has caught in her arms; relieving Peggy at length from her convulsive hold of his small-clothes, and burying him under a perfect smother of kisses.
'My blessing--my beauty! so I have got you back at last! You must never--never leave your poor mammy again! Well, Lily, how are you? Goodness, child, what a figure you are! You are one large freckle! Oh, Miss Lambton, is that you? Where are you off to? Is Prue with you? No? What fun Prue is! I had no idea until she stayed with me what capital fun she was. You must let me have her again before long.'
The train moves off, and Margaret, a little heavier-hearted than before, with it. Some impulse prompts her to pull back the curtain of the little side-window in order to watch, as long as it is in sight, that figure on the little platform. Yes, Prue is certainly like her; but, alas! it is to be not even a good imitation for which she has foregone her own woodland grace. Margaret had forgotten how pretty Betty was. How charming she looks now, with her face full of wholesome mother-love, perfectly unconscious, indifferent as to whether any one is looking at her or not, clasping her little rosy child.
