With that compliment, and with a lingering clasp of the strong hand, he concluded his first visit to Saltero’s Mansion, la Zia accompanying him to the door and curtsying him out.
CHAPTER XX.
PEGGY’S CHANCE.
If there were blue skies now and then in a London February, what was February along the Riviera but the most exquisite springtime? And perhaps on all that favoured shore, Cannes has the richest firstfruits of the fertile year, for it is then that the mimosas are in their glory, and the hill of Californie is a yellow fairyland, an enchanted region, where all the trees drop golden rain.
Eve and her lover husband were at Cannes. Delicious as the place was at this season, and new as the shores of the Mediterranean were to Eve, she and her husband had not come there for their own pleasure. They had come at the advice of the doctors—to give Peggy a chance. That was what it had come to. Peggy’s only chance of living through the winter was to be found in the south. One doctor had suggested Capri, another Sorrento; but for some unexplained reason Vansittart objected to Italy, and then Mentone or Cannes had been talked about; and finally Cannes was decided upon, for medical reasons, in order that Peggy might have the watchful care of Dr. Bright, which might give her an additional chance in the hand-to-hand struggle with her grim adversary.
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.”