Peggy looked from wife to husband, with a joyous laugh. She had red spots on her hollow cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. Vansittart heard the death-bell as he looked at her.
The sisters came trooping in, having seen the fly at the door and guessed its meaning. They were rapturous in their greetings, had worlds to say about themselves and their neighbours, and were more eager to talk of their own experiences than to hear about Eve’s Cornish wanderings.
“You should just see how the people suck up to us, now you are Lady Hartley’s sister-in-law,” said Hetty, and was immediately silenced for vulgarity, and to make way for her elder sisters.
Vansittart left them all clustered about Eve, and all talking together. He went out into the garden—the homely garden of shrubs and fruit and flowers and vegetables, garden which now wore its autumnal aspect of over-ripeness verging on decay, rosy-red tomatoes hanging low upon the fence, with flabby yellowing leaves, vegetable marrows grown out of knowledge, and cucumbers that prophesied bitterness, cabbage stumps, withering beanstalks—a wilderness of fennel: everywhere the growth that presages the end of all growing, and the long winter death-sleep.
It was not to muse upon decaying Nature that Vansittart had come out among the rose and carnation borders, the patches of parsley and mint. He had a purpose in his sauntering, and made his way to the back of the straggling cottage, where the long-tiled roof of the kitchen and offices jutted out from under the thatch. Here through the open casement he saw Yorkshire Nancy bustling about in the bright little kitchen, her pupil and slave busy cleaning vegetables at the sink, and a shoulder of lamb slowly revolving before the ruddy coal fire—an honest, open fireplace. “None of your kitcheners for me,” Nancy was wont to say, with a scornful emphasis which recalled the fox in his condemnation of unattainable grapes.
Vansittart looked in at the window.
“May I have a few words with you, Nancy?” he asked politely.
“Lor, sir, how you did startle me to be sure. Sarah, look to lamb and put pastry to rise,” cried Nancy, whisking off her apron, and darting out to the garden. “You see, sir, you and Miss Eve have took us by surprise, and it’s as much as we shall have a bit of lunch ready for you at half-past one.”
“Never mind lunch, my good soul. A crust of bread and cheese would be enough.”
“Oh, it won’t be quite so bad as that. Miss Eve likes my chiss-cakes, and she shall have a matrimony cake to her afternoon tea.”
“Nancy, I want a little serious talk with you,” Vansittart began gravely, when they had walked a little way from the house, and were standing side by side in front of the untidy patch where the vegetable marrows had swollen to huge orange-coloured gourds. “I am full of fear about Miss Peggy.”
“Oh, sir, so am I, so am I,” cried Nancy, bursting into tears. “I didn’t want to frighten dear Miss Eve—I beg pardon, sir, I never can think of her as Mrs. Vansittart.”
“Never mind, Nancy. You were saying—”
“I didn’t want to frighten your sweet young lady in the midst of her happiness; but when I saw that dear child beginning to go off just like her poor mother—”
“Oh, Nancy!” cried Vansittart, despairingly, with his hand on the Yorkshirewoman’s rough red arm. “Is that a sure thing? Did Mrs. Marchant die of consumption?”
“As sure as you and I are standing here, sir. It was a slow decline, but it was consumption, and nothing else. I’ve heard the doctors say so.”
XIX
“He Said, ‘She Has a Lovely Face’ ”
December’s fogs covered London as with a funeral pall, and hansom and four-wheeler crept along the curb more slowly than a funeral procession. It was the winter season, the season of cattle-shows, and theatres, and middle-class suburban gaieties, and snug little dinners and luncheons in the smart world, casual meetings of birds of passage, halting for a few days between one country visit and another, or preparing for migration to sunnier skies. There were just people enough in Mayfair to make London pleasant; and there were people enough in South Kensington and Tyburnia to fill the favourite theatres to overflowing.
A new comic opera had been produced at the Apollo at the beginning of the month, and a new singer had taken the town by storm.
The opera was called Fanchonette. It was a story of the Regency; the Regency of Philip of Orleans and his roués; the age of red heels and lansquenet, of little suppers and deadly duels; a period altogether picturesque, profligate, and adapted to comic opera.
Fanchonette was a girl who sang in the streets; a girl born in the gutter, vulgar, audacious, irresistible, and the good genius of the piece.
Fanchonette was Fiordelisa—and Fiordelisa in her own skin; good-natured, impetuous, a creature of smiles and tears; buoyant as a seagull on the crest of a summer wave; rejoicing in her strength and her beauty as the Sun rejoiceth to run his race.
What people most admired in this new songstress was her perfect abandon, and that abundant power of voice which seemed strong enough to have sustained the most exacting role in the classic repertoire, with as little effort as the light music of opera bouffe—the power of a Malibran or a Tietjens. The music of Fanchonette was florid, and the part had been written up for the new singer. Manager, artists, and author had thought Mervyn Hawberk, the composer, reckless almost to lunacy when he elected to entrust the leading part in his new opera to an untried singer;
