Vansittart had offered, in the first instance, to send Peggy to the south in the care of one of her elder sisters and an experienced travelling-maid, who should be also a skilled nurse; but Eve had been so distressed at the idea of parting with the ailing child, that of his own accord he had offered to accompany his youngest sister-in-law on the journey that was to give her a chance—alas! only a chance. None of the doctors talked of cure as a certainty. Peggy’s family history was bad; and Peggy’s lungs were seriously affected.
It was almost inevitable that the youngest child—born after the mother’s health had begun to fail—should inherit the mother’s fatal tendency to lung disease; but things were altogether different in the case of Eve, the eldest daughter, born before her mother had begun to develop lung trouble. For Eve there was every chance. This was what a distinguished specialist told Vansittart, when he asked piteously if the hereditary disease shown too clearly by Peggy, were likely to appear by-and-by in Eve’s constitution. He was obliged to take what comfort he could from this assurance. He would not alarm Eve by suggesting that her chest should be sounded by the physician who had just passed sentence upon her sister. Perhaps he did not want to know too much. He was content to see his young wife fair and blooming, with all the indications of perfect health, and to believe that she must needs be exempt from inherited evil.
She was enraptured when he offered to take her to the south with Peggy.
“You are more than good, you are adorable,” she cried. “Now I feel justified in having worshipped you. What, you will leave Hampshire just when the hunting is at its best? You will forego all your plans for the spring? And you will put up with a sick child’s company?”
“I shall have my wife’s company, and that is enough. I shall see you happy and at ease, and not wearing yourself to death with anxieties and apprehensions about Peggy.”
“Yes, I shall be ever so much happier with her, should things come to the worst”—her eyes brimmed over with sudden tears at the thought—“it will be so much to be with her—to know that we have made her quite happy.”
They went to Haslemere next morning, and there was a grand scene with Peggy, who screamed with rapture on hearing that Eve and Jack were going to take her to Cannes their very own selves. She, who fancied she had lost Eve forever, was to live with her, to sleep in the next room to her, to see her every day and all day long.
Then came the journey—the long, long journey, which made Eve and Peggy open wondering eyes at the width of France from sea to sea. They travelled with all those luxuries which modern civilization provides for the traveller who is able and willing to pay. And every detail of the journey was a surprise and a joy for Peggy, who brought upon herself more than one bad fit of coughing by her irrepressible raptures. The luncheon and dinner on board the rushing Rapide; the comfortable wagon-lit to retire to at Lyons, when darkness had fallen over the monotony of the landscape—and anon the surprise of awaking at midnight in a large bright room where two small beds were veiled like brides in white net curtains, and where piled up pine-logs blazed on a wide open hearth, such as Peggy only knew of in fairy tales.
How comforting was the basin of hot soup which Peggy sipped, squatting beside this cavernous chimney, while Benson, the courier-maid, skilled in nursing invalids, who had been engaged chiefly to wait upon Peggy, unpacked the Gladstone bag, and made everything comfortable for the night. Peggy had slept fitfully all the way from Lyons, hearing as in a dream the porters shouting “Avignon,” at a place where they stopped in the winter darkness, and faintly remembering having heard of a city where Popes lived and tortured people once upon a time. She woke now and again in her white-curtained bed at Marseilles; for however happy her days might be her nights were generally restless and troubled. The new maid was very attentive to her, and gave her lemonade when her throat was parched, but the maid was able to sleep soundly between whiles, when Peggy was lying awake gazing through the white net curtains, and half expecting Robin Goodfellow to come creeping out of the wide black chimney, where the spark had faded from the heap of pale grey ashes on the hearth.
Towards morning Peggy fell into a refreshing slumber, and when she opened her eyes again the room was full of sunshine, and there was a band playing the “Faust Waltz” in the public gardens below.
“Why, it’s summer!” cried Peggy, clapping her hands, and leaping out of the parted white curtains, and rushing to the open window.
The maid was dressed, and Peggy’s breakfast was ready for her. “Oh, such delicious coffee!” she told Eve afterwards, “in a sweet little copper pot, and rolls such as were never made in humdrum England.”
Yes, it was summer, the February summer of that lovely shore. The Vansittarts stayed nearly a week at Marseilles, to rest Peggy after her forty-eight hours’ journey; and to see the Votive Church on the hill, and that
