Percy does not draw Peggy to him; he lays her back among the pillows; he bathes her head and lips and hands with liquor from his flask; he holds the slender fingers in his palm, as, amid awful terror lest his Lady die, he is racked with consternation and wonder at the present outcome, and in his distraught mind endeavors to patch and piece out the strange network of the mystery now beginning to solve itself before his eyes.
As he prays God to spare her, if not for him, for some better man, a shrill, weird sound smites his ear.
Percy throws back his head and listens; ’tis the long roan neighing for the last time back on Farnham Heath, where Sir Robin, picking up his money, dejectedly shivering like an aspen (since he would rake hell with a nail to secure a ha’penny, and fairly weeps at the six-pences he can’t recover), presently and ruefully, one of his men behind him, pillion fashion, t’other running at his side, turns back to Tooting on top of Grigson’s black, his fox teeth chattering in his wide mouth as he congratulates himself on his second and miraculous escape from the famous Sir Percy de Bohun.
’Twas, in sooth, for this latter a bitterly sad hour which was spent in covering the distance between the heath and the Castle. Revived a bit, no doubt by the fumes of the liquor, Her Ladyship’s lids quivered, contracted, and finally opened, but it was with a distraught and unrecognizing stare that she surveyed her companion.
“’S death!” cries she aloud, her feeble right hand seeking her sword-side, “I tell ye, Chock, your mistress is now full-fledged a man! Hist, girl, an you love me, keep it close. Sir Percy’s wed to Lady Diana! Aye!” Peggy laughs with such a heart-break in her voice and such tears in her winkers as causes Percy a pang of cruelest misery.
“Tut, tut, Chock! What’s his marriage to me? Fetch the pack, Mr. Brummell; aye, I’m at your service, loo, crimp, or whist! I, Sir Robin McTart, ’ll lay you a thousand to nothing! Zounds! Sir, fetch coffee to stain my face with! and where, oh, where’s my precious bundle with my woman’s duds in’t, my patch-box that I burned, and the long tail of my hair I cut off when you, Chock, bought me the counterfeit of Sir Robin’s own wig at the perruquier’s in Lark Lane. Aye! So!—No! No! No!” and now a shiver and a lower tone, as Lady Peggy, with her wide wild eyes, shrank back in the far corner of the jolting coach.
“My Lady Mother,—I command you, Chock, tell her not of my escapades; and when Percy comes home with his bride, swear him, as will I, I was off pleasuring in Kent at my godmother’s. Mother! Mother!” cries she, piteously now, as Percy’s arms enfold her, and a thousand fond words jostle each other on his lips.
Then she sinks into the stupor again, and remains so until the great coach rolls through the park and up to the entrance of her home; until Percy, with few words, lays her in the stout arms of the faithful Chockey and sees her mother bending above her; her father distract in his night-rail and cap; cook wailing, being from Kerry and prompt at any sort of hubbub; Bickers’ toothless mouth agape with groans; sees his Lady carried up, limp, little hands down-hanging, to her chamber out of his sight.
Sir Percy leaves Peggy’s bundle, which he had gathered up as best he could and slung about his shoulders, on the table in the hall. The little scrap of paper he carries away with him and reads when he reaches home that night; ’tis Her Ladyship’s note to him, written on the fly-leaf of the prayer-book of the young Curate of Brook-Armsleigh Village. As he scans it, presses it to his lips, sits until dawn, remembering many things since he parted from his Lady long ago in the parlor at Kennaston, the most of the mystery is unraveled by light of the scrawl; and the delirium of his joy at knowing himself to have been in her heart almost equals the mad anxiety that consumes him now as to her life and well-being.
