The Uttermost Farthing | Page 8

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 r?le 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 smiled at him a little whimsical smile, "she told me that she thought I ought to know--it was her duty to tell me--that I had heart disease, and that, though I should probably live a long time, it was possible I might die at any moment----"
A sudden wrath filled the dark, sensitive face of the man bending over her.
"What nonsense!" he exclaimed with angry decision. "What will the doctors say next, I wonder! I wish to God you would make up your mind, Peggy, once and for all, never to see a doctor again! I beg of you, if only for my sake, to promise me that you will