CHAPTER XXVI
It is Whit-Sunday. The morning service is over. The parish has had an opportunity of admiring Peggy's nosegays, and of having their nostrils comforted by the scent of her lilac branches and sweet nancies, and of the Hartleys' giant gardenias. Among them a stranger has knelt. Strangers are not very apt to be allured to Roupell Church by the fame of Mr. Evans's sermons; and, indeed, to-day he has preached the same sermon as he did last Whit-Sunday. It would have passed among his flock for a new one, had it not been for an unusual phrase which they remember and recognise. But since they recognise it with pleasure, as an old friend, there is no harm done.
'Did you see that he was in church?' cries Mrs. Evans, hurrying breathlessly out after Peggy, and joining her before she has reached the lych-gate. 'Did you ever hear of anything so barefaced? It never occurred to me that he would come to church. Oh, here are the children! now we shall learn whether she has arrived too.'
As she speaks the little Harboroughs, who apparently have hitherto been kept at bay by their nurses, are seen – having broken away from them – to be elbowing their vigorous small way through the press of country people, who smilingly make way for them. In another second, both, with entire disregard of the Vicaress's blandishments, have flung themselves upon Peggy.
'Oh, Miss Lambton, we came last night! How is the fox? I saw Alfred in church. What a lot of freckles he has got! May not I come and see Mink and the kittens? May Franky come too?' asks Lily volubly.
'Of course he may,' replies Peggy kindly, warmly returning the little boy's ardent embrace. 'Why, Franky dear, I have never seen you since you were so ill! – you were very ill, were not you?'
'The doctor thought he was going to die,' answers Lily, officiously replying for her brother before he can set his slower tongue in motion; 'and mammy never took off her clothes for three nights, and father cried; and if Franky had died, I should have had no little brother!' She makes this last statement in a rather triumphant tone, as a fact redounding a good deal to her own credit. 'Why, there is John Talbot!' cries she. 'Franky wanted to go to him in church. Did you ever hear of anything so silly? Now, Franky, who will get to him first?'
But as she dishonestly sets off before poor Franky has had time to withdraw his sturdy body and fat legs out of Peggy's embrace, there is not much doubt as to the answer to her question. However, though Franky is the last to arrive, and arrives weeping at his sister's injustice, and crying, 'You nasty thing, you did not start fair!' yet he has, by much, the warmer welcome.
Is not one welcomed back from the grave's brink deserving of a closer clasp, of tenderer kisses, than one who has only returned from his daily walk? Franky has quite forgotten – if, indeed, he ever, save through Lily's information, knew – how nearly his curly head had been laid in the dust. But Talbot cannot forget it.
'I wish he would not hug those children,' says Mrs. Evans, sotto voce; 'it gives me quite a turn. Well, Fanny,' as one of her own offspring plucks her by the sleeve, 'what is it now? Mr. Allnutt wants to speak to me? Dear me! some one is always wanting to speak to me!'
She turns aside reluctantly to interview her parishioner, and Peggy goes on alone. But it can hardly be said to be tête-à-tête, or without a chaperone, that she puts her hand in Talbot's under the lime-leaves, young and juicy, stirring in the brisk spring wind.
'Oh, Miss Lambton,' cries Lily, 'may not John Talbot come to the Red House too?'
As she speaks the face of the object of her kind patronage falls perceptibly.
'Are you coming to the Red House?' he asks, with a slight accent of disappointment; 'what, both of you? – now?'
'Miss Lambton says we way,' rejoins she, happily innocent of the motive that had prompted her friend's inquiry; 'and we may stay to luncheon, and all afternoon, may not we?'
Peggy laughs.
'We will see about that.'
'And John Talbot may come too?' urges Miss Harborough pertinaciously, making play with her eyelashes; 'he would like to come.'
'And stay to luncheon, and all afternoon?' adds Talbot, emphasising his apparently playful suggestion by a long pressure of the hand he has forgotten to drop.
He has to drop it soon, however; for it is claimed by Franky, as well as one of his own. Franky insists upon walking between his two friends; where, by dragging well at their arms, he is enabled to execute many playful somersaults, and, from under the ægis of their protection, to make faces at his sister; who, having discovered that she can thereby better watch their countenances, is backing before them.
Under these circumstances, conversation between the elders is not easy, nor is there much of it. But the birds in the thickets they pass make talk for them; and the leaves fresh escaped from their sheaths, and to whom the wind is a new playfellow, rustle their pleasure in his gambols to them, as they walk along beneath; and across the barrier of the little rosy child their hearts cry out to each other. They would be in heaven; but that Lily, by a judicious pull of the skirts, brings them down to earth again.
'Why do you never come to Harborough now?' inquires she, fixing Talbot with the unescapable vigilance of her large child-eyes; 'you used to be always coming. Would not you like to come? I will get mammy to ask you.'
There is a moment of silence. For a second even the kind finches seem cruelly still. Then,
'What are you holding my hand so tight for?' asks Franky plaintively. 'Why have you begun to squeeze it so? You hurt me!'
'I asked mammy the other day,' pursues Miss Harborough, with all her species' terrible tenacity of an idea once grasped, 'why you never came to see us now, and she began to cry; and when I asked her what she was crying for, she boxed my ears: she never boxes Franky's ears!'
This remark is followed by another silence. Peggy is apparently looking straight before her; but yet out of the tail of her eye she manages to see that Talbot is quite beyond speech. She must come to the rescue.
'I have no doubt that you richly deserved it,' says she in a voice that, despite her best efforts, is not steady. 'Why? Oh, I do not know why! because you did. There! run – run away like a good child, and open the gate for us.'
Lily complies, and Franky races after her.
Talbot draws a long breath. For a few moments, at all events, he will have a respite from that terrible catechism. But from the effects of it he cannot at once sufficiently recover to pass into easy speech. Perhaps, too, the sight of the little Red House – the house that has been built into so many of his dreams – helps to make him momentarily dumb.
It is a differently clad Red House from what it was when last he looked upon it. The Virginia creeper and the clematis have laid aside their purple and crimson ardours; and in their place a wistaria is hanging the pale droop of its long clusters. Lilacs push up their blossoms against its casements. The ineffable sappy green of spring everywhere sets and embowers it.
He gives another sigh, a long, low sigh of happiness this time, and turning, wordless at first, clasps her two soft hands – hands no longer claimed by any little dimpled imperative fingers – in his.
She leaves them peaceably to him; but the variations of her colour from red to white, and back from white to splendid red, sufficiently tell him that though she is nearly twenty-three years old, to her a long lover's look, a close lover's clasp, are unfamiliar things.
His heart bounds at the thought; but at the same moment is pierced by an arrow of pain. On what an inequality are they meeting! It is all new to her; while to him! Oh that he had but God's great gift of erasure! that he could sponge out from his life those other looks and clasps! that he could bring to her such eyes, such a heart, such a hand as she is bringing him!
How, save through his own giving to her, could Lily Harborough have had the power to poison these, his fairest moments?
'Will they be here all afternoon?' he asks under his breath.
'I think it is more than probable,' she answers in the same key, while right under his eye, over her cheeks, the lovely carnations and lilies are chasing and dispossessing each other.
It is part of his punishment, perhaps, that across his mind, as he looks, there flashes a recollection of Betty's paint; a comparison that he hates, and that yet he cannot avoid, between that colour and this. Which is brightest?
'Could not you send them away?'
'Lily would not go,' replies Peggy, with a slight shrug. 'And as for him, poor little fellow, I cannot bear to be unkind to him, when he is only just out of the jaws of death. Did you know that he had been at death's door?'
'Yes, I knew,' he answers briefly.
At this reply there comes, or at least it seems to him that there comes, a tiny cloud over the clear blue heaven of her eye; and seeing it, he hastens on:
'Is there no place where we can escape from them – where we can be by ourselves? Oh, Peggy, Peggy! do you think that I came down from London to talk to Lily Harborough?'
The cloud stirs a little, but does not altogether remove.
'Did you know that they were here?'
'I! of course not! How should I?'
A passer-by along the road, throwing in a casual glance between the bars of the gate, gives her a pretext for sliding her hands out of his. It strikes him that she is over-ready to avail herself of it.
'Do they ever go to church in the afternoon?' he asks, catching at this last straw.
A faint ripple of amusement steals over her lips.
'Never.'
She lifts the latch of the door as she speaks, and through the aperture the sun pours in, making a royal road into the cool and shaded interior, where he can catch a glimpse of the birds setting his own ladder aswing; of the Kabyle-pots full of country posies; of the familiar worn furniture he had grown last year to think so beautiful. He follows her with alacrity. It is morally impossible that the children can be inside. He is standing once again on the old Turkey carpet. Here is her sandal-wood workbox, among whose reels he has seen Franky ravaging. Here is the chair whose leg he had helped to mend. Here is the cottage eight-day clock, with the good-humoured moon-face, which they had all agreed to have a look of milady peeping over its dial-plate. Here is Mink, civil and smirking. Here is – herself!
'It is like coming home,' he says softly.
As he speaks a slight noise behind him makes him turn his head. Can it be Lily again? Lily, with more dreadful questions, more terrible invitations to draw out of her armoury of torments? But no! it is not Lily; it is only Prue. Prue, often a little out of sorts, a little sorry for herself, rising with the inevitable poetry-book in her hand, and with a look full of astonishment, from her oak settle by the fireside. He had forgotten Prue's existence.
'Mr. Talbot!' cries she; 'is it possible? I heard a man's voice; I could not imagine whose it could be. Are you staying at the Manor? Is milady back? Is there any one else there? A party?'
He laughs confusedly. 'I have no connection with milady.'
'Are you at the Hartleys' then?' (a greatly increased eagerness); 'do you know the Hartleys?'
'I have not that honour.'
'At the Evanses'? No! impossible! I cannot imagine any one in their right mind staying at the Evanses'.'
'I do not know whether I am in my right mind, but I am not at the Evanses'.'
'Where can you be then?'
'I am at the Roupell Arms.'
'The little inn in the village? Not really?'
He makes an affirmative sign. Surely, if the girl is not a perfect fool, she will understand, she will efface herself, she will take herself off, and leave them to themselves, as Peggy has so often left her and her Freddy to themselves. But to a person whose whole being is habitually permeated by one idea, other ideas are slow in penetrating. Prue has not the least intention of effacing herself. Her curiosity – always, save on one theme, a languid emotion – satisfied, she prepares to replace herself on her settle.
'The Roupell Arms!' repeats she; 'what a funny idea! I never heard of any one staying at the Roupell Arms; I am afraid you will be very uncomfortable. Peggy, would you mind covering me again with this shawl? I do not know what any one else feels, but I feel chilly.'
It is clear that to no member of her household has it ever occurred to efface herself for Peggy. Presently the luncheon-bell rings, and the children come bouncing in, delighted at the prospect of dining without pinafores, and the consequent opportunity for beslobbering their best clothes. Talbot's chance of a tête-à-tête seems to be retreating into a distance to which his eye cannot follow it. But at least his eye can follow her, as she tries to coax Prue's sickly palate, as she cuts up Franky's dinner. Into this last occupation Lily manages to introduce a slight element of awkwardness.
'When I was little John Talbot used to cut up my dinner sometimes,' says she narratively – 'sometimes he cut it up, and sometimes mammy did; but before I was as old as Franky I could cut it myself.'
'You are a very wonderful little girl,' says Talbot angrily, losing his temper at the consciousness that he is reddening, 'we all know that; but suppose that we do not hear any more about you just at present.'
After luncheon they are all dragged out by the children to see the wonders of the stable-yard. It is true that the hayloft kittens have, to Franky's surprise, expanded into sad and sober cats; but this not wholly unexpected metamorphosis has not found Alfred unprepared. He has brought instead, out of his treasure, ferrets new and old; and to see these interesting animals lift their pale noses and hands, and their red topaz eyes out of their box, Talbot has again indefinitely to defer the possession of his love's sole company. Franky is warmly clasping his hand, and Lily is hanging heavily on Margaret's arm.
'How red Alfred's ears are!' says she, in a stage aside; 'and how they stick out!'
Alfred becomes purple.
'Lily,' cries Peggy reprovingly, 'how can you be so rude? You ought never to make personal remarks.'
Lily tosses her head and giggles, and Franky giggles too, simply because he has a faint delighted sense that he ought not. There is an atmosphere of rising naughtiness about them both. Oh that they would but commit some sin big enough to justify their being sent to bed, or packed off home in charge of Sarah! But no. They are wily enough to keep on the hither side of any great iniquity. They are just naughty enough to prevent attention from being ever for more than a moment withdrawn from them; but they avoid incurring any guilt so great as to call down special vengeance on their heads.
Prue has long ago sauntered back to the settle and her rhyme-book. But for these imps he would have Peggy all to himself. He has several times begun eager speeches to her, which have met with interruptions such as these: 'Do you think that they can have fallen into the swill-tub?' 'What can they be doing to the parrot to make him swear so dreadfully?' 'They will pull out poor Minky's tail!'
By the end of an hour, Talbot, genuine child-lover as he is, is beginning to feel leniently towards Herod the Great. However, the French proverb says that everything comes to him who knows how to wait. It may be true, though some have to carry their waiting into the dark grave with them. Talbot has not to carry his quite so far. Just in time to save him from such an outrage to chivalry as would be implied by boxing Miss Harborough's ears, appear upon the scene, though late, yet better than never – gods out of the machine – the Harborough nurses. They sweep off both culprits, despite their earnest and sincerely believed-in asseverations that Miss Lambton wants them to stay all day. Franky, indeed, is borne away dissolved in bitter tears at being torn from the friends who, as he honestly thinks, have been so thoroughly enjoying his society. Franky's naughtiness is of a wholly imitative character; but his little warm heart is his own.
Lily, on the other hand, trips away with her head up, having poured one last stage whisper into Peggy's ear: 'Would it be a personal remark if I were to tell John Talbot that I think him handsome?'
The object of this flattering inquiry watches the maker of it with a poignant anxiety, until she, her brother, and her attendants have turned the corner, and are really and entirely out of sight. Then he heaves a sigh of profound relief.
'At last!' he says, sweeping a look round the horizon.
It is quite clear. There is not a living soul in sight. Being Sunday, not even Jacob. Everything comes to him who knows how to wait. He has known how to wait, and now his moment has come.
'Let us sit under the Judas-tree,' he says, and she acquiescing passively, they turn their steps thither.
But before they have gone three yards, there is a light foot on the turf behind them. Prue has fled across the sward from the open window-door, and is whispering something in Peggy's ear. Almost before he has had time to feel aghast at this new interruption, she has fled back again. He looks after her with an irritated inquiry, born of his long tantalisation.
'Well, what is it now?' he asks angrily; 'anything fresh that you are to do or leave undone?'
Peggy reddens.
'It was only that she asked us not to sit under the Judas-tree; she cannot bear any one to sit there – any one else.'
'Any one else!' he repeats, his brief and surface wrath dying away into a smile of passionate happiness; 'any other lovers, you mean. You may blink the word, Peggy; but you cannot blink the thing: we are lovers.'
Peggy does not answer. She has sat down on a seat, above which a great old thorn is just breaking into a foam of blossom. She has taken up this position in all unconsciousness of the advantages it presents, but of which Talbot's eager eye has instant cognisance. The thorn, now thick with flowers, effectually masks all sitters on that seat from the view of any eyes darted at them from the house, the only point whence observation need be dreaded; for what lover minds the robin's round bright eye, or the chaffinch's surveillance?
'We are lovers!' he repeats, sitting down resolutely beside her.
The thorn, leaning as old trees will, projects so far beyond their heads as to make a natural arbour for them, and tosses down now and again whiffs of its pungent perfume, which some strange persons affect to dislike.
'Are we?' she says, the words travelling softly out on a long sigh. 'You will think me very stupid' – the red rose of Lancaster for the moment chasing her pale sister of York out of her face – 'but, old as I am – twenty-three next birthday – I do not know what love – that kind of love – feels like. I – I – have never had any opportunity of knowing.'
He stares at her in an enraptured astonishment. For such a confession as this, his apprenticeship to Betty has certainly not prepared him. Can it be conceivable that he is the first – the very first – to reap the flowers of this fairest field?
'Do you mean to say,' he inquires, almost with incredulity, 'that you have never given back one small grain of love to any one of the many men who must have showered it upon you?'
'But they have not,' returns she, a slight humorous smile pushing its way through her blushes. 'You are determined that I have had so many lovers, and I have had scarcely any. Two or three people have wanted to marry me – not many. Oh, not at all many! You could count them on one hand, with several fingers to spare; and I do not think that they loved me. They did not give me that impression. They thought I should be a useful wife, strong and active; but love – love – love,' repeating the word dreamily – 'no,' shaking her head. 'There are not many women of twenty-three who can say so, I suppose; and I see that you have a difficulty in believing me; but love has never come near me.'
'And are you resolved that it never shall?' he asks, under his breath.
She pauses a moment before answering, while her eyes escape from the tyranny of his, and fix themselves on a row of tulips, rearing their striped and colour-splashed cups upon their strong, straight stalks, in the border before her. With the potent light smiting through them, they look as if they were cut out of some hard precious stone – sardonyx, or beryl, or bdellium – goblets to be filled with fairy wine at the feast of some mage-king.
'I do not know,' she says, with her lips trembling; 'I am not sure. When I see Prue – when I know that it has brought all the pain she has suffered – and she has suffered a good deal – more than you would think, to look at her, that she could bear – into her life – my one prayer is to keep clear of it; and yet – and yet' – with a yearning in her voice – 'one would not like to die having quite missed it. Oh, tell me' – with a change in her tone to one of compelling entreaty, bringing back the eyes but now so sedulously averted from him, and plunging them into his under the shade of the hawthorn bough – 'were you really speaking truth when you said you had come down from London only to see me? Are you quite sure – quite – that that was your real motive?'
'Quite.'
'Nobody would believe it,' she says, with a sort of wonder in her voice; 'nobody thinks so. They all' – faltering a little – 'they all think something quite different.'
'What does it matter what they think?' he cries hotly, the colour which unluckily is equally the livery of brazen guilt and oppressed innocence again mantling his face. 'What have we to do with their blatant suppositions? Are you going to let them come between us?'
'You will think me very suspicious,' she says tremulously – 'very hard to be convinced of what most women would find it easy enough to believe – but – but – I care for very few people,' she goes on, beginning a fresh sentence without finishing the former one; 'but when I do care, I care very badly. Do not be angry with me if I say that I have a sort of dread of caring very badly about you.' If he had had his will, the conclusion of that sentence would have found her in his arms; but she holds herself gently aloof. 'If I once let myself love you,' she says, the tears stealing afresh into her eyes, 'I know that I could never unlove you again – never while I lived, try as I might; and if afterwards I found out – '
'Found out what?' breathlessly.
'You know,' she goes on, trying to speak firmly – 'I am sure you must know – that when first I saw you, I had heard nothing but what was bad of you. That was my only excuse for the way in which I behaved to you. I had heard things about you – no; do not be afraid,' a writhing motion on his part conveying to her what her words are making him suffer. 'I am not going to ask you whether they were true. I have no business with your past; but what I must ask you – what I shall never have any peace until I have asked you,' her agitation deepening – 'is whether if people said them now they would still be true?'
There is a moment's stillness before he answers – a moment long enough for the hawthorn's perfume to be for ever after wedded in her memory to that pregnant pause. It is almost in a whisper that she has put her question, and it is quite in a whisper that his answer comes:
'If they would be true, should I be here now, Peggy?'
She heaves a deep, long sigh, as one off whose heart a great stone's weight had rolled; and the over-brimming drops roll soft and hot over her cheeks.
'And will they never be true again?' she asks, still under her breath; 'are you sure – quite sure of it? I will believe you if you tell me so. Oh, I want to believe you! Dog with a bad name as you are,' breaking into an unsteady laugh – 'angry as I was at being sent in to dinner with you – I want to believe you.'
The south wind brings a jangle of far church bells to their ears; outside their arbour a starling sits on a tree with its nose in the air, saying odd, short, harsh things; and upon this homely music the souls of Talbot and Peggy on Whit-Sunday float together into love's heaven.