“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 forget that her poor ma died of consumption: so I thought the best thing I could do was to write freely to you.—Your faithful friend and servant,
“Nancy.”
“Died of consumption!” The words came upon Vansittart like the icy hand of Death himself, taking hold of his heart.
“Is that true, Eve?” he asked. “Did your mother die of consumption?”
“I never heard exactly what her complaint was. She was far away from us when she died. I remember she always had a cough in the winter, and she had to be very careful of herself—or, at least, people told her she ought to be careful. She seemed to fade away, and I have always fancied that her grief about Harold had a good deal to do with her death.”
“Ah, that was it, no doubt. It was grief killed her. Her son’s exile, her change of fortune, were enough to kill a sensitive woman. She died of a broken heart.”
Anything! He would believe anything rather than accept the idea of that silent impalpable enemy threatening his beloved—the horror of hereditary consumption—the shadow that walketh in noonday.
“My sweet Peggy!” cried Eve, with brimming eyes. “I have been home a week, and I have not been to see my sisters—only an hour’s journey by road and rail! It is nearly three months since I saw them, and we were never parted before in all our lives. May I go to-day—at once, Jack? I shall be miserable——”