The Uttermost Farthing | Page 8

you really think that, Peggy?" was all he said; then, more slowly,
as the arms about her relaxed their hold, "Why, my dear, you've always
been--you are--my life."
A sudden sob, a cry of joy broke from her. She sat up, and with a quick
passionate movement flung herself on his breast; slowly she raised her
face to his: "I love you," she whispered, "Laurence, I love you!"
His lips trembled for a moment on her closed eyelids, then sought and
found her soft, quivering mouth. But even then Vanderlyn's love was
reverent, restrained in its expression, yet none the less, perhaps the
more, a binding sacrament.

At last, "Why did you subject us," he said, huskily, "to such an ordeal?
What has made you give way--now? How can you dream of going back,
after a week, to our old life?" But even as he asked the searching
questions, he laid her back gently on her improvised couch.
Woman-like she did not give him a direct response, then, quite
suddenly, she yielded him the key to the mystery.
"Because, Laurence, the last time I was in England, something
happened which altered my outlook on life."
She uttered the words with strange solemnity, but Vanderlyn's ears
were holden; true, he heard her answer to his question, but the word
conveyed little or nothing to him.
He was still riding the whirlwind of his own poignant emotion; he was
telling himself, with voiceless and yet most binding oaths, that never,
never should the woman whose heart had just beaten against his heart,
whose lips had just trembled beneath his lips, go back to act the part of
even the nominal wife to Tom Pargeter. He would consent to any
condition imposed by her, as long as they could be together; surely
even she would understand, if not now, then later, that there are certain
moments which can never be obliterated or treated as if they have not
been....
It was with difficulty--with a feeling that he was falling from high
heaven to earth--that he forced himself to listen to her next words.
"As you know, I stayed, when in England, with Sophy Pargeter----"
Again she looked up at him, as if hesitating what she should say.
"Sophy Pargeter?" he repeated the name mechanically, but with a
sudden wincing.
Vanderlyn had always disliked, with a rather absurd, unreasoning
dislike, Peggy's plain-featured, rough-tongued sister-in-law. To him
Sophy Pargeter had ever been a grotesque example of the deep--they

almost appear racial--differences which may, and so often do, exist
between different members of a family whose material prosperity is
due to successful commerce.
The vast inherited wealth which had made of Tom Pargeter a selfish,
pleasure-loving, unmoral human being, had transformed his sister
Sophy into a woman oppressed by the belief that it was her duty to
spend the greater part of her considerable income in what she believed
to be good works. She regarded with grim disapproval her brother's
way of life, and she condemned even his innocent pleasures; she had,
however, always been fond of Peggy. Laurence Vanderlyn, himself the
outcome and product of an old Puritan New England and Dutch stock,
was well aware of the horror and amazement with which Miss Pargeter
would regard Peggy's present action.
"Well, Laurence, the day that I arrived there, I mean at Sophy's house, I
felt very ill. I suppose the journey had tired me, for I fainted----" Again
she hesitated, as if not knowing how to frame her next sentence.
"Sophy was horribly frightened. She would send for her doctor, and
though he said there was nothing much the matter with me, he insisted
that I ought to see another man--a specialist."
Peggy looked up with an anxious expression in her blue eyes--but again
Vanderlyn's ears and eyes were holden. He habitually felt for the
medical profession the unreasoning dislike, almost the contempt, your
perfectly healthy human being, living in an ailing world, often--in fact
almost always--does feel for those who play the rôle of the old augurs
in our modern life. Mrs. Pargeter had never been a strong woman; she
was often ill, often in the doctor's hands. So it was that Vanderlyn did
not realise the deep import of her next words----
"Sophy went with me to London--she was really very kind about it all,
and you would have liked her better, Laurence, if you had seen her that
day. The specialist did all the usual things, then he told me to go on
much as I had been doing, and to avoid any sudden shock or
excitement--in fact he said almost exactly what that dear old French
doctor said to me a year ago----"

She waited a moment: "Then, Laurence, the next day, when Sophy
thought I had got over the journey to London," Peggy