'God Almighty first planted a Garden. And indeed it is the Purest of Humane pleasures. It is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirit of Man; Without which Buildings and Pallaces are but Grosse Handy-works: And man shall ever see that when Ages grow to Civility and Elegancie they come to Build Stately, sooner than to Garden Finely: as if Gardening were the Greater Perfection.'
I do not know whether Peggy had ever read Bacon, but she certainly endorsed his opinion.
'The garden is the only really satisfactory thing,' she says to herself, three days after that on which she had conducted Miss Harborough's devotions, as she stands beside her carnation-bed, and notes how many fat buds have, during the night, broken into pale sulphur and striped and blood-red flowers.
To few of us, I think, has not at one time or other of our lives the doubt presented itself, whether the people we love are not a source of more pain than pleasure to us, what with their misfortunes, their ill-doings, and their deaths. But despite frost, and snail, and fly, and drought, and flood, the joy in a garden must always enormously exceed the pain. The frost may shrivel the young leaves, but the first sun-kiss brings out green successors; the drought may make the tender herbs bow and droop, but at the next warm rain-patter they look up again. The frost that nips our human hearts often no after-sunbeam can uncongeal; and the rain falls too late to revive the flower that the world's cruel drought has killed.
'Did you find out how soon they are going?' asks Prue breathlessly, running down the road to meet her sister on her return from the Manor, in her eagerness to get her tidings.
It has been the one thought that has filled her mind during the three hours of Margaret's absence. Peggy shakes her head despondently.
'Milady did not know.'
'I suppose that they had gone out riding before you got there.'
This is not a question, so Margaret thinks herself exempted from the necessity of answering it.
'Had they gone out riding before you got there?' repeats Prue, with feverish pertinacity.
It is a question now, so she must make some reply. She only shakes her head.
'Then you saw them set off?'--very eagerly. 'How did she look? beautiful, I am sure!'
'I did not see them.'
It is a moment before the younger girl takes in what the last sentence implies; then she says in a changed low key:
'You mean to say that they did not go out riding at all?'
'No,' replies Peggy, softly putting her arm round her sister's shoulders, as if she would ward off the imminent trouble from her by that kind and tender gesture; 'they did not go out riding at all; they sat in the park together instead.'
There is a short silence.
'Then he threw me over for nothing?' says Prue, in a choked whisper.
'Yes,' in a whisper too.
Prue has snatched herself out of Peggy's arms, and drawn up her small willowy figure.
'He shall not have the chance of playing fast and loose with me again in a hurry,' she says, her poor face burning.
Alas! he would have the chance next day, if he chose to take it; but he does not even take the trouble to do that. Two whole days pass, and nothing is either seen or heard of him. And through these two long days Prue, with flagging appetite and fled sleep, rejecting occupation, starting at the sound of the door-bell, watches for him; and Peggy watches too, and starts, and is miserable for company.
During those weary two days Prue's mood changes a hundred times, varying from pitiful attempts at a dignified renunciation of him, always ending in a deluge of tears, to agonised efforts at finding excuses for his neglect, and irritation at her sister for not being able to say that she thinks them sufficing ones.
'He is so hospitable,' she says wistfully, as the sun sets upon the second empty day; 'he has almost exaggerated ideas of what he owes to his guests. And after all, there is no one else to entertain them. Milady does not trouble her head about them; he has such good manners; he is so courteous! Come now, prejudiced as you always are against him, you yourself have often said, "How courteous he is!"' Then, as Peggy makes but a faint and dubious sign of acquiescence, she adds irritably: 'Whether you own it or not, you have said so repeatedly; but there is no use in talking to a person who blows hot and cold, says one thing to-day and another to-morrow.'
The third morning has come. In the garden, dew-crisped and odorous, but whose spicy clove-carnation breath brings no solace to her careless nostril, Prue sits bent and listless, her fragile prettiness dimmed, and the nosegay of her choicest flowers--usually most grudgingly plucked--extravagantly gathered by Margaret five minutes ago, in the hope that their morning beauty may tempt her sick chick to a smile, lying disregarded on the grass beside her, and sniffed at by Mink, who makes a face of unaffected disgust at the mignonette.
'He has never in his life been so long without coming to see us when he was at home,' says Prue dejectedly; 'once he was thirty-six hours, but that was accounted for afterwards by his having had one of his neuralgic headaches. Do you think'--with a little access of life and animation--'that he can be ill?'
'It is possible, of course,' replies Margaret gravely; 'but I do not think it is probable.'
'If I could only know,' says the other wearily; 'if I could be sure; it would be something to be sure of anything! I am so tired of wondering!'
'I might go up to the Big House to find out for you,' suggests Peggy, magnanimously swallowing down her own acute distaste to this proposition, and speaking with a cheerful relish, as if she liked it. 'I could easily make an excuse to go up to the Big House; shall I go?'
The capricious poppy colour has sprung back into Prue's thin cheek.
'Oh, if you would!'
'Of course I will,' replies Margaret gaily; 'it will be a nice walk for me; the garden makes me so lazy about walking. What time shall I go? morning or afternoon?'
'Oh, if you did not mind, morning is the soonest.'
The words are scarcely out of her mouth before ting, tang! sharply sounds the hall-door bell. It is a bell that is hardly ever pulled in a forenoon, save by one person--a person who does not confine himself to the canonical hours of calling.
In a moment there is a light in Prue's dimmed eyes, and Margaret's great blue ones beam for company.
'I think that I need not go up to the Big House, after all,' she says, with soft gladness.
'Shall I go away,' asks Prue, in a trembling whisper, 'and not come back for ten minutes or so? Perhaps he would think better of me if I did not seem so eager to meet him. Shall I?'
'I think I would not,' answers Peggy gently; 'I would sit quietly here, just as if nothing had happened. I think it would be more dignified.'
They wait in silence. What a long time Sarah is in putting on a clean apron and turning down her sleeves! But he is admitted at last, has passed through the house, and is stepping across the turf towards them.
He! But what he? Alas for Prue! there are more he's than one in the world--more he's that call at uncanonical hours!
'Oh, Peggy!' she says, with almost a sob, 'it is only John Talbot! It is not he after all.'
Peggy does not answer. Her feelings, though nearly as poignant as her sister's, are a good deal more complex. An indignation for which she can perfectly account, and an agitation for which she can give herself no reason at all, make her disappointment, though not far from being as bitter, less simple than Prue's.
She advances to meet her visitor with an air that would make a more impudent heart than his sink. Over her face is written, though the words do not actually pass her lips, that least reassuring of salutations, 'To what are we indebted for the honour of this visit?'
A woman's anger is seldom wholly reasonable, and on this occasion Margaret's indignation against Talbot is called forth not only by his being himself, but by his not being Freddy Ducane, which is certainly more his misfortune than his fault. After all, he is, for a villain, not possessed of very much effrontery, since the austerity of so young an eye strikes him dumb.
The only person who shows him any civility is Mink, who, being of a rather superficial character, is glad of any addition to his social circle, and does not inquire too nicely into its quality.
It is probable that Talbot, being a man of the world, would have recovered the use of his tongue in time; but as he is rather slow about it, Margaret takes the initiative.
'Is it something about the village concert?' she asks.
He looks puzzled.
'The village concert! I am afraid that I have not heard anything about the village concert.'
'Oh!' returns she, coldly surprised. 'I thought that probably Lady Roupell had asked you to leave a message with me about it. It is not that, then?'
She continues to look expectantly at him. Since it is not that, it must be on some other errand he has come. She clearly thinks it an impossible impertinence on his part to have called on her at eleven o'clock in the morning without an excuse.
And yet such is the case. He has come because he has come; he has no better reason to give, either to her or to himself. A wild idea of trumping up the expected message, and another of feigning that he has come to inquire after the fox, cross his mind; but he dismisses both: the first because he knows he should be found out, and the second because Miss Lambton might take it as a fresh demand upon her pity for the wound got in her service.
'I am afraid I have no message,' he says boldly. 'I was passing your door, and I--I--rang. By the bye' (smiling nervously as the utter inadequacy of his explanation falls upon his ears), 'what a loud bell yours is! I was so frightened at the noise I made that I was half inclined to run away when I had rung it.'
She does not say that she is glad he did not; she does not say anything civil. She only asks him to sit down, which, when he has shaken hands with Prue, and wondered inwardly what she can have been doing to make herself look so odd, he does.
Again silence, and again it is broken by Margaret. After all, she cannot be conspicuously rude even to him in her own house. It is, indeed, one of the problems of life, 'When is it permissible to insult one's neighbour?' Not in one's own house; not in his. There is, then, only the open street left.
For the sake of saying something, and also because she knows that she is giving voice to her sister's unspoken wish, Peggy inquires civilly whether they are all well at the Manor.
'Yes, I think so,' replies Talbot slowly. 'I have not heard any of them complain of any disease beyond the long disease of life.'
His tone is so little what one would expect from the happy lover of a fashionable beauty, that Margaret, with that charity that thinketh no evil, to which we are all so prone, instantly sets it down to affectation.
'That is a disease that I daresay does not hinder you all from amusing yourselves,' returns she sarcastically.
'Amusing ourselves? Oh yes, very well. I do not complain.'
There is such an obviously true ring about the depression with which this announcement of his contentment with his lot is uttered, that even she can no longer doubt of its reality. So he is not happy with his Betty after all! And a very good thing, too! Serve him right! But perhaps the discovery tends to mollify a little the tone of her next observation.
'Are you thinking how badly we want mowing?' she asks, her eyes following the direction of his, which are absently bent upon the sward, to-day not shorn to quite its usual pitch of velvet nicety. 'So we do, indeed. But Jacob has unluckily fallen ill, just as milady lent me the machine, and there it and the pony stand idle, and we'--regretfully eyeing her domain--'are, as you see, like a hay-meadow.'
Talbot does not speak for a moment. A great idea is labouring its way to birth in his mind--an idea that may give him a better foothold here than any casually escaped fox or precarious porterage of messages can ever do.
'Why should not I mow?' asks he at last.
'You?'
'Yes, I; and you lead the pony.'
She looks at him, half inclined to be angry.
'Is that a joke?'
'A joke--no! Will you tell me where the pony is? May I harness it?'
Again she looks at him, waveringly this time, and thence to her turf. It is already an inch and a half too long; by to-morrow morning it will be three inches, an offence to her neat eye; and when Jacob falls ill he is apt to take his time about it. She yields to temptation.
'I will call the boy.'
But the boy is out--marbleing, vagranting after his kind about the near village, no doubt.
They have to harness the pony themselves; and by the time that they have put the bridle over her head, inserted her feet into her mowing shoes, and led her out of her dark stall into the sunny day, John has almost recovered the ground he had lost since that fortunate hour when, with three drops of his blood, he had bought a square inch of oil-silk and a heavenly smile.
They set off. Loudly whirs the machine. Up flies the grass in a little green cloud, which the sun instantly turns into deliciously scented new-mown hay; sedately steps the pony; gravely paces Margaret beside her; honourably John stoops to his toil behind. It is not a pursuit that lends itself much to conversation; but at least he has continuously before his eyes her flat back, her noble shoulders, the milky nape of her neck; and can conjecture as to the length of her unbound hair by counting the number of times that the brown plait winds round the back of her broad head. Every now and then they pause to empty out the grass, and each time a few words pass between them.
'Is Jacob very ill?'
'I am afraid that he suffers a good deal.'
'Is he likely to die?'
'Heaven forbid!'
'Because if he is, I wish you would think of me.'
He is half afraid when he has said this; it verges, perhaps, too nearly upon familiarity.
But she is not offended. Her eye, flattered by her shaven lawn, cannot rest very severely upon him who has shaven it for her. Her spirits have risen; exhilarated by the wholesome exercise, by the sunshine, by who knows what. Only when her look falls now and again upon Prue, still flung listlessly on the garden-seat, with her nosegay--not more flagging than she--withering on the ground beside her, does a cloud come over it.
'Should I get a good character from your last place?' returns she playfully.
'From the Foreign Office?'
'Was it the Foreign Office?' with a momentary impulse of curiosity for which she instantly pulls herself up. 'You know one always expects to get a character from the last place.'
'I do not know whether it is a good one. It is a nine-years' one.'
Then they set off again. Next time it is about Prue.
'I hope she is not ill?' his eyes following Margaret's to the little forlorn figure under the Judas-tree.
'No-o.'
'Nor unhappy?'
'We all have our Black Mondays'--evasively--'only some of us have Black Tuesdays and Black Wednesdays as well--ah!'
What has happened to her? Her gloomy sentence has ended in a suppressed cry of joy, and her cheeks have changed from pink to damask. He turns to seek the cause of this metamorphosis.
'Why, there is Ducane!'
In an instant his eyes have pounced back upon her face. It is settling again into its pretty normal colours, but the joy is still there.
'Yes, there is Freddy!' she acquiesces softly.
A sharp needle of jealousy pricks his heart. This, then, is why she received him so frigidly. She was expecting the other.
'We stop now, I suppose?' he says abruptly.
'What! tired already, Jacob's would-be successor?' asks she rallyingly.
'Hardly. But I supposed that you would wish to stop.'
'On account of Freddy?'--with a little shrug. 'Pooh! he is a fly on the wall; and besides, he--he is not coming this way.'
It is true. Straight as a die young Ducane is making for the Judas-tree; and from under that Judas-tree a little figure, galvanised back into youth and bloom, rises, walking on air to meet him.
The eyes of John and Margaret meet, and he understands. As he goes home he feels that he has made a real step in advance this time. He shares a secret with her. He knows about Prue!
