'And such a boat!' The words ring in Peggy's ears through her homeward walk. After all, she had heard no new thing. That Freddy was an unseaworthy craft to which to commit the precious things of a life, the gems and spices of a throbbing human soul, has long been a patent fact to her. But there is a wide difference between a fact that has only been presented gently to one by one's self, and the same fact rudely thrust under one's eyes and into one's reluctant hands by some officious outsider.
'And such a boat!' She is unconsciously repeating milady's simple yet pregnant commentary on her nephew's character as she re-enters her own garden. Almost as she does so she is aware of Prue flying past her without seeing her, a condition of things explained by the fact of her handkerchief being held to her eyes in obvious passionate weeping.
Prue, too, crying! An idea dazedly flashes across her brain that Prue must have overheard, and before common-sense can correct it, the girl is gone.
With a still more uncomfortable feeling at her heart than that which had been already there, Margaret continues her course to the Judas-tree. One of the pair she had left smiling beneath its shade is still there, and still smiling; or, if not actually smiling, at least in a mood that has no relation to tears.
He is lying all along on the garden-seat--Prue's departure, though no doubt deplored, has at least given him more room to stretch his legs--and is murmuring something, apparently of a rhythmic nature, half under his breath, as he stares up at the clouds.
'What have you been making Prue cry about?' asks Peggy, abruptly stopping before him.
Freddy starts a little, and reluctantly begins to draw back his legs, which, being too long for the bench, are elevated upon and protruding beyond its rustic arm.
'I am sure you are not aware of it, dear,' he says pleasantly, 'but your question has taken rather an offensive form. Prue is crying, I regret to say; but why you should instantly conclude that it is I that have made her cry, I am at a loss to imagine. I think, Peg, I must refer you to 1 Corinthians xiii.'
'You used to tell me that I always made her cry,' returns Peggy sternly; 'that I was hard upon her; that she "needed very tender handling."'
'Did I indeed?' says the young man, with a sort of wondering interest. 'It shows how cautious one ought to be in one's judgment of others. Thank you for telling me, Peg!'
'What have you been talking about to make her cry?' repeats Peggy, with a sad pertinacity. 'She was not in the least inclined to cry when I went away. I never saw her more joyous, poor little soul!'
'I may return the compliment, dear,' retorts Freddy, carrying the war into the enemy's quarters, and staring up with a brotherly familiarity into her still flushed and tear-betraying face from under the brim of Prue's garden-hat, which, as being more comfortable and wider-brimmed than his own, he has worn all afternoon. 'What have you been talking about to milady to make you cry?'
She puts up her hand with a hasty gesture. She had not known or thought about the ravages wrought on her face by her late weeping; but now that the consciousness of it has been brought home to her, she is for a moment put out of countenance. But in a second she has recovered herself.
'We were talking of you,' she replies gravely. 'Milady knows; she has found out about you and Prue.'
Freddy has abandoned his prone posture; he is sitting up, lightly switching the end of his own boot with a small bamboo; Prue's hat, being capacious, veils his face almost entirely.
'I should have thought that the information would have come more gracefully from you,' continues Peggy coldly. 'I should have thought it would have been better if you had told her.'
'If I had told her,' repeats Freddy dreamily, without looking up; 'after all, Peggy, there was not much to tell: "I love;" "I am loved." The whole scheme of Creation lies in those two phrases; but when you come to telling--to putting it into brutal words----'
It is a warm evening, but Peggy feels a slight sensation of cold.
'It will have to be put into brutal words some day or other,' she says doggedly, with an indignant emphasis on the three syllables quoted from Mr. Ducane's speech.
'"Some day, some day!"' echoes he dreamily, humming the refrain of the hackneyed song. 'Of course it will,' lifting his head again, and staring at the heavens. 'Good Lord, Peggy, what a pace that upper strata of cloud is driving at! there must be a strong current up there, though it is so still down here. You know, dear, you and I have never been quite at one upon that head. I have always thought that it took the bloom off one's sacred things to blare them prematurely about.'
There is such a tone of firm yet gentle reproach in his voice, that, for a second, Peggy asks herself dazedly, 'Is it possible that he is in the right?'
'And what did milady say?' inquires the young fellow a moment later, in a lighter key, growing tired of watching the racing vapours in the upper air, and bringing his eyes back to earth again. 'You have not told me what milady said. Did she recommend my being put back into long-clothes?'
'No.'
'I am not at all sure that I should not be more comfortable in a white frock and a sash,' continues Freddy, laughing; 'I do feel so ridiculously young sometimes. I do not think that either you or dear Prue quite realise how young I am. You take me too seriously, Peggy. It is rather terrible to be taken so seriously.'
He has risen while speaking, and drawn coaxingly nearer to her. She looks at him with a sort of despair. It is quite true. He is terribly, ridiculously young. As her glance takes in the beardless bloom of his face, the Will-of-the-wispy laughter of his eyes, it comes home to her with a poignant force never before fully realised how ludicrous it is--ludicrous if it were not tragic, that commonest of earthly alternatives--for an agonising human soul to trust its whole life-treasure, without one thrifty or prudent reservation, into his butterfly keeping. Probably her thought translates itself into her sad eyes; for Freddy fidgets uneasily under them, slashes at a tree-bough with his bamboo, shifts from foot to foot.
'You are young,' she says sorrowfully, 'but you are twenty-one; at twenty-one----'
'At twenty-one Pitt was Prime Minister, or nearly so; that is what you were going to say, dear, was not it? Do not! I shall never be Prime Minister. I am like port wine,' breaking into a smile like sunshine; 'I should be better for a couple of voyages round the Cape!' and he is gone.
Though Margaret has been unable to extract from Freddy the occasion of Prue's tears, she has no great difficulty in learning it from the sufferer herself.
'It was very stupid of me,' she says, though the fountain shows symptoms of opening afresh at the bare recollection, 'and very cruel to him; he always says that the sight of tears unmans him so completely, that he cannot get over it for hours afterwards' (Peggy's lip curls). 'And of course it was only out of kindness, for my own good that he said it; as he told me,' blushing with pleasure at the recollection, 'when one is in possession of a gem, one naturally wishes to have it cut and polished to the highest pitch of brilliancy of which it is capable. Was not it a beautiful simile?'
'Yes, yes; but that was not what made you cry, surely?'
'Oh no, of course not; what made me cry,' clouding over again, 'was that he said--he spoke most kindly, no one could have spoken more kindly--that he was afraid that I had no critical faculty.'
'Was that all?' says Peggy, relieved. 'Well, a great many people go through life very creditably without it. I do not think I should have cried at that.'
'He was reading me some new poems of his,' continues Prue, not sensibly cheered by this reassurance; 'and when he had finished, he begged me to point out any faults I saw in them. And I told him what was the truth--that there were not any--that I thought them all one more beautiful than another; and then he looked rather vexed, and said he was afraid I had no critical faculty.'
Peggy smiles, not very gaily.
'He had better show them to me next time.'
'Do you think that he would have been better pleased if I had picked holes in them?' inquires Prue anxiously. 'But how could I? They all seemed to me to be perfectly beautiful; I did not see any holes to pick.'
'Do you happen to have them by you?' asks Peggy. 'If so, we might look them over together, and provide ourselves with some criticisms to oblige him with when next he calls.'
'No--o,' replies Prue reluctantly; 'I have not. He took them away with him, I think--I suppose that he wanted to read them to somebody else--somebody more intelligent. Peggy'--after a pause--'do you suppose that Miss Hartley has a critical faculty?'
The sisters are sitting, as usual after dinner, in their little hall. Prue stretched upon her favourite oak settle; Peggy on a stool at her feet.
'My dear,' with an impatient sigh, 'how can I tell?'
'I dare say it must be very tiresome to be always praised,' pursues Prue, after a pause, in a not very steady voice--'particularly if you are, as he is, of a nature that is always struggling up to a higher level--"agonising," as he said to-day, "after unrealisable ideals."'
Peggy coughs. It passes instead of a remark.
'I have often thought how terribly insipid he must find me,' pursues Prue, with a painful humility. 'But I suppose, in point of fact, the more brilliant you yourself are, the more lenient you are to other people's stupidity; and, after all,' with a distressingly apparent effort at reassuring herself, 'he has known it all along. It is not as if it came fresh to him; and I do not think that I am any duller than I was last year. Of course, if I had profited by all the advantages I have had in his conversation, I ought to be much brighter; but at least I do not think that I am any duller--do you?' eagerly grasping her sister's arm as if to rivet her attention, which, in truth, is in no danger of wavering.
'No, dear; of course not,' very soothingly.
'Come and sit on the settle by me,' cries Prue restlessly; 'we can talk more comfortably so, and I can rest my head on your shoulder. It is such a nice roomy shoulder.'
'Yes, darling--yes.'
There is a pause. The moon looks in from the garden. A startle-de-buzz booms by on the wings of the night, and once an elfin bat sweeps past on the congenial dusk.
The night is in Margaret's soul too, and not such a bland white night as that spread outside for elves to dance in.
'I am going to say such a silly thing,' says Prue presently, heralding her speech by a fictitious laugh. 'If it were not rather dark, I do not think that I should dare to say anything so foolish. I am going to ask you such a stupid question; I am sure you will not consider it worth answering. Do you think it possible--ha! ha! I really am idiotic to-night--that he might ever--not now, of course--if you had seen how distressed, how heart-broken he was to-day at my crying, you would not have thought there was much danger of its happening now--but,' her speech growing slow, and halting with quick feverish breaths between, 'do you think it is just possible that sometime--many years hence--twenty--thirty--he--might grow--a little--tired of me? There! there!' her utterance waxing rapid and eager again; 'do not answer! Of course, I do not mean you to answer!'
Peggy is thankful for the permission to be silent thus accorded to her; but she does not long profit by it.
'I think I had rather that you did answer, too,' says Prue, with a quick uneasy change of mind. 'It seems senseless to ask questions and get no answer to them; and, after all, there can be but one answer to mine.'
Peggy shivers. There can indeed be but one answer; but how dare she give it?
'Why do not you speak?' cries Prue, growing restless under her sister's silence. 'Did not you hear me say that I should like you to answer me after all? I believe you are asleep!'
'How can I answer, dear?' replies Peggy sadly. 'I have so little acquaintance with men and their ways; and I am not sure,' with a small bitter laugh, 'that what I do know of them is very much to their credit.'
There is a ring of such sharp hopelessness in her tone as to arrest the attention of even the preoccupied younger girl.
'You were not very lucky either, Peggy,' she says softly, rubbing her cheek caressingly to and fro against Margaret's shoulder. 'Why do I say either?' catching herself quickly up. 'As if I were not lucky--luckier than anybody; but you were unlucky. Oh, how unbearable to be unlucky in that of all things! And I was not very kind to you, was I?'
Peggy's heart swells. Her lips are passing in a trembling caress over her sister's hair.
'Not very, dear.'
'Somehow one never can think of you as wanting any one to be kind to you,' says Prue half-apologetically; 'it seems putting the cart before the horse. But,' with a leap back as sudden as an unstrung bow to her own topic, 'you have not answered my question yet! Oh, I see you do not mean to answer it! I do not know what reason you can have for not answering; but, after all, I do not mind. I ought never to have asked it. I had no business. It was not fair to him. Of course he will not get tired of me,' sitting up and clasping her hands feverishly together; 'and if he does,' with a slight hysterical laugh, 'why, I shall just die at once--go out like the snuff of a candle, and there will be an end of me, and no great loss either.'
