It would be difficult to say how the rumour got abroad in Vinehall and Leasan that the Mounts were going away. It may have been servants’ gossip, or the talk of some doctor come down to view the practice. But, whatever the source, the story was in both villages at the end of the month, and in the first week of December Rose Alard brought it to Starvecrow.
She had come to have tea with Vera, and Peter was there too. Vera was within three months of the heir, and displayed her condition with all the opulence of her race. Not even her purple velvet tea-gown could hide lines reminiscent of Sarah’s and Hannah’s exulting motherhood. Her very features seemed to have a more definitely Jewish cast—she was now no longer just a dark beauty, but a Hebrew beauty, heir of Rebecca and Rachel and Miriam and Jael. As Jenny had once said, one expected her to burst into a song about horses and chariots. She had for the time lost those intellectual and artistic interests which distinguished her from the other Alards. She no longer seemed to care about her book, for which she had so far been unable to find a publisher, but let it lie forgotten in a drawer, while she worked at baby clothes. Nevertheless she was inclined to be irritable and snap at Peter, and Peter himself seemed sullen and without patience. Rose watched him narrowly—“He’s afraid it’s going to be a girl.”
Aloud she said—
“Have you heard that the Mounts are leaving Vinehall?”
Her news caused all the commotion she could have wished.
“The Mounts leaving!”—“When?”—“Why?”—“Both of them?”
“Yes, both. I heard it at the Hursts; they seemed quite positive about it, and you know they’re patients.”
“But where are they going?” asked Vera.
“That I don’t know—yet. The Hursts said something about a colonial appointment.”
“I’m surprised, I must say. Dr. Mount’s getting old, and you’d think he’d want to stay on here till he retired—not start afresh in a new place at his age.”