Whitsun is here. Again the tired workers are let loose. Again the great cities pour out their grimy multitudes over the fair green country, upon which, year by year, day by day almost, their sooty feet further and further encroach. Among the multitudes there are, of course, a good many who are not grimy. Cabinet ministers are, as a rule, not grimy--nor fashionable beauties--nor famous lawyers; but yet they all volley out, too, with the rest, to drink the country air, and smell the cowslips. All over the country the churches are being pranked for Whit-Sunday. It is that festival for which there is least need for devout souls to strip their hothouses and conservatories. In each parish the meadows need only be asked to give a few never-missed armfuls out of their perfumed plenty, and the church is a bower. The brunt of the labour of decorating her church, as of most other parish festivities, falls upon the shoulders--happily vigorous ones--of Peggy Lambton. The Whitsuns, Easters, Christmases, on which Mrs. Evans is not hovering on the verge of a new baby or two, and consequently handicapped for standing poised on ladders, are so few as not to be worth taking into consideration. Prue is willing; but her flesh is weak, and she tires easily. With the aid, therefore--an interchangeable term, as she sometimes thinks, for hindrance--of half a dozen of the best among the young Evanses, Peggy endures the toil, and reaps the glory alone. She has been standing most of the day, and for the greater part of the time with her arms uplifted, so that she is sufficiently weary; but as the work is not yet done, and there is no one to take her place, she treats her own fatigue with the contempt it deserves.
It is tolerably late in the afternoon, and Mrs. Evans has just looked in. Being in her normal condition, she has at once sunk down upon a seat. Mr. Evans has sauntered in after her. He has not much that is beautiful in his life; and the sight of the garlanded church gives him a sort of pale pleasure, something akin to that produced by the luscious flow of his favourite poem. He could not stir a finger to produce the effect himself; but he likes it when it is done for him.
'What a size these gardenias are!' says Mrs. Evans, fingering the blossoms in a box of hothouse flowers reserved for the altar. 'From the Hartleys of course? They are double as big as milady's. I wonder how her gardener likes having all the prizes carried off from under his nose! Dear me! what a thing money is! Burton, the butcher, told me the other day that five and twenty prime joints go into that house every week, beside soup-meat and poultry; and of course they have their own game and rabbits. Five and twenty prime joints, and a yacht that they can go round the world in! Not, I am sure, that I envy them that; for I am such a wretched sailor.'
Peggy makes no answer. Perhaps her attention is sufficiently occupied by the management of her long garland of cowslips, catchfly, and harebell; perhaps she has already heard, though not from Mrs. Evans, more about that world-girdling yacht than she cares to hear. She sighs, and her sigh is taken up and echoed in a deeper key by the Vicar; though whether his sigh is caused by regret at the sinful profuseness of a parishioner, or by a reflection upon the inequality of human destiny, that sends five and twenty prime joints into one man's kitchen, and sets a solitary leg of mutton spinning on another man's spit, may be best decided by those most acquainted with Mr. Evans's habitual turn of thought.
'It is a great disadvantage to a neighbourhood having a millionnaire in it,' pursues Mrs. Evans, going on contentedly with her trickle of talk; 'it sends up the price of everything--even eggs. I was saying so just now to Mrs. Bates at the Roupell Arms. I wanted to know whether she could let me have a dozen fresh ones. My hens are all sitting; and you would not believe the number of eggs we get through at the Vicarage--egg-puddings, and so on. Oh, by the bye,' with a change to an alerter key, 'from what she told me, I suppose that Lady Betty Harborough is expected at the Manor.'
The garland, whose dexterous disposition has cost Peggy ten minutes' labour, drops suddenly loose and wavering--a long rope of flowers--in the air.
'Lady Betty Harborough!' she repeats slowly--'with milady away?--most unlikely. Oh, now I see!' with a sudden dawn of relief breaking over her face; 'now I understand how the report has arisen! The children are to arrive to-day, and so it was supposed that she must be coming with them--of course, of course!'
'No; it has nothing to say to the children,' rejoins the Vicar's wife cheerfully; 'and I cannot say that I have heard in so many words that she is coming. It was only' (looking cautiously down the aisle, and lowering her voice)--'I suppose one ought not to talk scandal in a church, but it really is such an open secret--that I concluded it must be so, because a friend of hers is expected.'
'A friend of hers!' repeats Peggy slowly, the blood rushing to her cheek and brow, as she stands poised in space, with the unfinished wreath still dangling forgotten before her.
'Rather more than a friend, I am afraid,' returns Mrs. Evans, with a significance by no means devoid of enjoyment. 'Dear me! I do not half like talking of it here; but, after all, the truth is the truth. To the Roupell Arms of all places, too! and there can be no mistake about it, for I have just seen his portmanteau with "John Talbot, Esq.," in large letters upon it; his man arrived in charge of it this afternoon, and he is to follow by a later train. It really is too barefaced, is not it? I could see that Mrs. Bates herself thought so though of course I did not breathe a word to her.'
Peggy has put out a hand to steady herself on the ladder, since, for a moment, church and heaped flower-baskets, guelder roses and lilac branches, whirl round with her. His portmanteau come, and he coming! It would be a pity then if to-day, of all days, she were to break her neck.
It is nearly three weeks since she had parted from him at the door of the Mitre, in the middle of a sentence which Freddy Ducane never gave him the chance to finish, or her to answer; and since then she has heard neither tale nor tidings of him. Why should she? Of course his octopus has him again. Poor fellow! no doubt from those hundred straggling polypus arms it is harder than she, with her life ignorance, can estimate to tear himself free. And yet he had said he was free; said so--yes. But men's words and their actions are not apt to tally very nicely; at least, the words and the actions of the only man with whom she has any intimacy are not. 'They are all alike,' she has said to herself, and so has gone heavily--a little more heavily perhaps for that bootless, barren morning meeting on the tower-top--about her daily work. And now he is here--as good as here, at least--for does not his herald portmanteau make sure his approach?
'I wonder how he will like his quarters,' continues Mrs. Evans, with a rather malicious laugh. 'The beds are clean, I will say that for Mrs. Bates; but how a man accustomed to a French chef will enjoy her chops and rashers, is another question. She is very nervous about it herself, good woman!'
Peggy laughs; a little low laugh.
'Of course Lady Betty will make a pretence of coming to see her children,' pursues Mrs. Evans, warming with her theme; 'and indeed, after the escape that boy had, I cannot think how she can ever bear him out of her sight. And as milady and Freddy are both away, they will have the park all to themselves to philander in. It really is too barefaced.'
'Too barefaced, is it?' repeats Peggy, softly smiling, and staring at a great sheaf of sweet nancies that she has absently picked up.
'Is it?' echoes Mrs. Evans in astonishment; 'why, is not it? What other motive could bring him to such a dull village as this?'
'What indeed?' replies Peggy with emphasis, while the thought crosses her mind that she ought to feel mortified at its evidently never having come within the range of the Vicaress's possibilities that any one could visit a dull village in search of her. 'It cannot surprise her more than it does me,' she says to herself.
'One can only hope that he will be too uncomfortable to stay long,' says Mrs. Evans, slowly rising, and preparing to depart. 'Well, I wish I could help you' (this is a formula that recurs as often as do the festivals of the Church); 'but you are getting on capitally. Do you think that the font is quite as pretty as it was last year? I am so glad I sent the children to help you; do not overtire yourself.'
She strolls away, with the contented feeling of having done her part in the church decoration; but it is a couple of hours later before Peggy follows her example. It is nearly eight o'clock when, with stiff arms and tired legs, she enters the hall--embowered in spring blossoms, like the church she has just left--of the Red House. As she comes in Prue springs to meet her.
'Oh, Peggy, Peggy! have you heard?'
The elder sister's heart leaps. Prue understands. Prue is glad--gladder than she had had any conception that she would have been. Kind little Prue!
'Yes,' she falters, grateful surprised tears at her sister's sympathy rushing to her eyes; 'yes, I have heard. Oh, Prue, how nice of you to be glad!'
'Nice of me to be glad!' repeats Prue in a tone of profound wonderment, her eyes growing round. 'Why is it nice of me? It would be very odd of me if I were not glad; but I do not see anything nice about it. How did you hear? Has milady come back? Have you seen any one from the Big House? Why, I only got the letter by the second post.'
'The letter?' repeats Peggy stupidly; 'what letter?'
'What letter? why, his letter of course, telling me that he is not going to stay up for Commemoration after all: he says that without me the balls would be Dead Sea apples to him, so he will be home a week sooner; and the Hartleys are going, and they will not find him there after all. But oh, Peggy! how could you have heard? I do not believe that you did. Why did you say you had?'
The sparkle, but now as bright in Peggy's eyes as in her junior's, dies out; a cold ripple of disappointment rises, and flows over her heart. Prue was not glad for her, after all. It was her own preoccupation that had credited her sister with a knowledge and an interest of which she is quite innocent.
'You shall tell me about it at dinner,' she answers in an altered voice, turning away.
And at dinner Prue does tell her all about it. Too excited to eat, she chatters through their simple repast about the beauty of Freddy's renunciation; his thoughtfulness for others; the irreparable loss that Commemoration will sustain by his absence; the bitter disappointment of Miss Hartley.
Into the middle of her talk, near the close of their short dinner, comes the sound of a railway whistle, announcing the arrival of one of the few stopping trains--in this case the last train of all that touches at their little station. Peggy involuntarily puts up her hand, and cries: 'Hush!'
'The wind must be changed,' she says, reddening at the consciousness of her own motive, though she is safe indeed from having it divined, 'one hears the train so plainly; it is late to-night!'
'What of that?' cries Prue gaily; 'are you expecting a friend by it? Ah, me! how I wish that I was! He came by that train last time.'
And so Peggy keeps her tidings to herself. Perhaps if she had had some one to impart them to they would not have made her so restless. As it is, she cannot settle to any occupation. The wheels that will roll him from the station to his inn must pass her door; and through all the trickle of Prue's talk her ear is pricked to catch them. But it is market night, and from the many vehicles noisily passing by, her hearing is incapable of disentangling his. He must have reached the Roupell Arms by now. Is Mrs. Bates setting a very unappetising dinner before him, so unappetising that it will, in accordance with Mrs. Evans's pious aspiration, drive him prematurely away?
'How fidgety you are!' cries Prue, surprised at her sister's unusual restlessness. 'I should have thought that you would have been thankful to sit down, after being on your legs all day.'
'So should I,' replies Peggy, again blushing, and sitting down; 'and I have been upon them since ten o'clock in the morning, have not I?'
'It is quite disgraceful the way in which the Evanses put everything upon you!' cries Prue indignantly; 'though indeed'--with an accent of remorse not very common to her--'I do not think that they are much worse than the rest of us. Why does everybody put everything upon you, Peggy? You do everything for everybody, and nobody ever does anything for you.'
Peggy's eyes brim up at this unexpected recognition of her services by the seventeen-years sovereign of them. Are all good things to come to her together?
