“Can we? May we, do you think? Is it not a wicked life? We care only for ourselves; we think only of ourselves.”
“Oh, we can mend that in some wise. I’ll introduce you to all my cottage tenants; and you will find plenty of scope for your benevolence in helping them through their troubles and sicknesses. You can start a village reading-room; you can start—or revive—a working man’s club. You shall be Lady Bountiful—a young and blooming Bountiful—not dealing in herbs and medicines, but in tea, and wine, and sago puddings, and chicken broth; finding frocks for the children, and Sunday bonnets for the mothers—flashing across poverty’s threshold like a ray of sunshine.”
Life that seems like a happy dream seldom lasts very long. There is generally a rough awakening. Fate comes, like the servant bidden to call us of a morning, and shakes the sleeper by the shoulder. The dream vanishes through the ivory gate, and the waking world in all its harsh reality is there.
Eve’s awakening came in a most unexpected shape. It came one October morning in the first week of her residence at Merewood. It came in a letter from her old servant, a letter in a shabby envelope, lying hidden among that heap of letters, monogrammed, coroneted, fashionable, which lay beside Mrs. Vansittart’s plate when she took her seat at the breakfast table.
She left that letter for the last, not recognizing Nancy’s penmanship, an article of which the faithful servant had always been sparing. Eve read all those other trivial letters—invitations, acceptances, friendly little communications of no meaning—and commented upon them to her husband as he took his breakfast—and finally opened Nancy’s letter. It was October, and Vansittart was dressed for shooting. October, yet there was no house-party. Eve had pleaded for a little more of that dual solitude which husband and wife had found so delightful; and Vansittart had been nothing loth to indulge her whim. November would be time enough to invite his friends; and in the meantime they had their pine woods and copses and common all to themselves; and Eve could tramp about the covers with him when he went after his pheasants, without feeling herself in anybody’s way. October had begun charmingly, with weather that was balmy and bright enough for August. They were breakfasting with windows open to the lawn and flowerbeds, and the bees were buzzing among the dahlias, and the air was scented with the Dijon roses that covered the wall.
“Why, it is from Nancy,” exclaimed Eve, looking at the signature. “Dear old Nancy. What can she have to write about?”
“Read, Eve, read,” cried Vansittart. “I believe Nancy’s letter will be more interesting than all those inanities you have been reading to me. There is sure to be some touch of originality, even if it is only in the spelling.”
Eve’s eyes had been hurrying over the letter while he spoke.
“Oh, Jack,” she exclaimed, in a piteous voice, “can there be any truth in this?”
The letter was as follows, in an orthography which need not be reproduced:—
“Honoured Madam,
“I should not take the liberty to write to you about dear Miss Peggy, only at Miss Sophy’s and Miss Jenny’s age they can’t be expected to know anything about illness, and I’m afraid they may pass things over till it’s too late to mend matters, and then I know you would blame your old servant for not having spoken out.”
“What an alarming preamble!” said Jack. “What does it all mean?”
“It means that Peggy is very ill. Peggy, who seemed the strongest of all of us.”
She went on reading the letter.
“You know what beautiful weather we had after your marriage, honoured Madam. The young ladies enjoyed being out of doors all day long, and all the evening, sometimes till bedtime. They seldom had dinner indoors. It was ‘Picnic basket, Nancy,’ every morning, and I had to make them Cornish pasties—any scraps of meat was good enough so long as there was plenty of pie-crust—and fruit turnovers; and off they used to go to the copses and the hills directly after breakfast. They were all sunburnt, and they all looked so well, no one could have thought any harm would come of it. But Miss Peggy she used to run about more than her sisters, and she used to get into dreadful perspirations, as Miss Hetty told me afterwards, and then, standing or sitting about upon those windy hills, no doubt she got a chill. Even when she came home, with the perspiration teeming down her dear little face, she didn’t like the tew of changing all her clothes, and I was too busy in the kitchen—cooking, or cleaning, or washing—to look much after the poor dear child, and so it came upon me as a surprise in the middle of August when I found what a bad cold she had got. I did all I could to cure her. You know, dear Miss Eve, that I’m a pretty good nurse—indeed, I helped to nurse your poor dear ma every winter till she went abroad—but, in spite of all my mustard poultices and hot footbaths, this cough has been hanging about Miss Peggy for more than six weeks, and she doesn’t get the better of it. Miss Sophy sent for the doctor about a month ago, and he told her to keep the child warmly clad, and not to let her go out in an east wind, and he sent her a mixture, and he called two or three times, and then he didn’t call any more. But Miss Peggy’s cough is worse than it was when the doctor saw her, and the winter will be coming on soon, and I can’t
