Part 54 (1/2)

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

'Weep with me, all you that read This little story, And know, for whom a tear you shed, Death's self is sorry.'

It is Sunday. The _Lapwing_ is ploughing her way through a short chopping sea in the Bay of Biscay; and here at home, at Roupell, the people are issuing in a little quiet stream from afternoon church. They are coming out rather later, and with rather more alacrity than usual, both which phenomena are to be accounted for by the fact of Mr.

Evans--never churlishly loth to yield his pulpit to a spiritual brother--having lent it to a very young deacon, who has taken a mean advantage of this concession to inflict fifty minutes of stammering extempore upon the congregation.

The Vicar has sat during this visitation in an att.i.tude of hopeless depression, and has given out, with an intense feeling born of the excessive appositeness of the words to his own case, the hymn after the sermon--

'Art thou weary, art thou languid?'

Peggy sits alone in her pew, and her mind straying away from the fledgeling curate's flounderings, she asks herself sadly for how many more Sundays will this be so?

Mrs. Evans overtakes her as she walks down the path after service, to tell her that she and her whole family are to set forth on the following Tuesday in pursuit of that change for which she has been so long sighing.

'Mr. Evans is off on his own account!' cries she in cheerful narration.

'He does not like travelling with so large a party; it fidgets him, so he is off on his own account. The Archdeacon wanted him to go with him to the Diocesan Conference; but, as he justly says, what he needs to recruit him is an entire change of ideas as well as scene. So he is going to run over to Trouville or Deauville, or one of those French watering-places.'

'Indeed!'

'It seems very unkind of us--I am so sorry that we are leaving you here alone,' pursues Mrs. Evans, her elated eye and tone giving the lie to her regretful words. 'And they tell me that you are to lose milady too; she talks of a month at Brighton. She does not much fancy being at the Manor at the fall of the leaf.'

'Thank you,' replies Peggy civilly; 'but we never mind being by ourselves.'

'Oh, I know that you do not in a general way,' returns Mrs. Evans. 'But of course just now it is different; Prue so far from well. I only thought--I was only afraid--in case----'

'In case what?' asks Peggy curtly, while a cold hand seems crawling up towards her heart.

'Oh, nothing! nothing! I was only going to say, in case--in case she--she had a relapse.'

'And why should she have a relapse?' inquires Margaret sharply, in an alarmed and angry voice, turning round upon her companion.

'Why indeed!' replies the other, looking aside, and laughing rather confusedly. 'And at all events, you have Dr. Acton. He is so nice and attentive, and yet does not go on paying his visits long after there is any need for them, just to run up a bill as so many of them do.'

She is interrupted in her eulogium of the parish doctor by the appearance on the scene--both of them running at the top of their speed, as if they more than suspected pursuers behind them--of Lily and Franky Harborough. They, too, being on the wing home to-morrow, have come to bid their friend, Miss Lambton, good-bye; a ceremony which they entirely disdain to go through either in the churchyard or in the road, or indeed anywhere but under her own roof.

'Well, then, if you come you must be very quiet; you must make no noise,' she has said warningly.

She repeats the caution when they have reached the hall of the Red House, upon the settle of which there is no Prue lying; for though she is so much better--oh, so much--she has not yet been moved downstairs from the dressing-room.

'You must be very quiet,' Peggy repeats; 'you must remember that Prue is ill!'

Franky has climbed upon her knee, and is playing with the clasp of her Norwegian belt. He pauses from his occupation to ask her gravely, and in a rather awed voice, 'Is she _very_ ill? Is she going to die?'

'G.o.d forbid!' cries Peggy, starting as if she had been stabbed. What!

are they all agreed to run their knives in their different ways into her? 'My darling, do not say such dreadful things!'

'People do not die because they are ill,' remarks Lily, rather contemptuously; 'you did not die!'

'No, I did not die,' echoes the little boy thoughtfully.