Doctor Cupid: A Novel
'I am never fond of comic songs,' she answers stiffly; 'and I do not
think that that was a particularly favourable specimen.'
He makes a gesture of disgust.
'Pah!' Then adds: 'I should have followed you before, only that I wanted
to get Prue away. I knew that you would be glad if I could; but it was
impossible!'
He has never spoken of her as 'Prue' before; but in his present
agitation--an agitation for which Peggy is at a loss to account--he has
obviously clean forgotten the formal prefix.
She is too much touched by his thoughtfulness for her to answer.
'My chief motive for following you,' continues he, speaking in an
unusual and constrained voice, 'was that I thought I might possibly not
have another opportunity of giving you _this_.'
As he speaks he puts a small parcel into her hands.
'It is only the ladder for the birds.'
She breaks into a laugh.
'They are in no such great hurry for it,' says she gaily; 'they could
have waited until to-morrow.'
He sighs.
'I am afraid that they would have had to wait longer than until
to-morrow!'
'Well, I daresay that they might have made shift until Wednesday,'
returns she.
The entire unsuspiciousness of her tone makes his task a tenfold harder
one than it would otherwise have been.
'It is--it is better that you should take it yourself to them,' he says,
hesitating and floundering. 'I--I--might be prevented after all from
coming. There is a chance of my--my--being obliged after all to go
to-morrow!'
The star and moonlight are falling full on her face, lifted and
attentive: he can see it as plainly as at high noonday. It seems to him
that a tiny change passes over it. But still she does not suspect the
truth.
'What!' says she; 'has your chief telegraphed for you? What a thing it
is to be so indispensable!'
Shall he leave her in her error? Nothing would be easier! Leave her in
the belief that a legitimate summons to honourable work has called him
away; leave her with a friendly face turned towards him, expecting and
perhaps lightly hoping his return. The temptation is strong, but he
conquers it.
'No,' he says, trying to speak carelessly; 'my chief is innocent this
time of breaking into my holiday. I expect that he is enjoying his own
too much; I am not going Londonwards; but--but--other reasons compel me
to leave to-morrow.'
How unutterably flat and naked it sounds! There is no mistake now as to
the change in her face--the change that he has dreaded and yet known
would come--the hardening of eye and tightening of lip. Well, it is
better that it should come! And yet, do what he may, he cannot leave her
in the belief that, as he sees, has in one moment stolen all the frank
sweetness out of her eyes.
'I--I--am not going north, either,' he cries, in miserable, eager
stammering. 'I--I--do not know where I am going!'
'You are compelled to go, and yet you do not know where you are going!
is that a riddle?' asks she ironically.
Her tone jars horribly upon his strung and aching nerves.
'Not much of a riddle,' he answers, with a bitter laugh. 'I do not know
the exact road I am going to take; I only know the direction--downhill.'
She fixes her eyes steadily upon his for a moment or two, a ray of
compassion stealing into them. So they are to pass each other, like
ships upon the sea! After all, he has not been able to wrench himself
out of the arms of his octopus! A transient flash of self-derision
crosses her mind for having ever supposed it possible that he could,
coupled with an immense pity.
This is to be their last speech together; for some instinct tells her
that he will not return. Let it not, then, be bitter speech! Poor
fellow! There are aloes enough, God wot, in the cup he has brewed for
himself!
'Well!' she says, smiling kindly, albeit very sadly, at him, 'whether
you go uphill or downhill, the birds and I must always have a good word
for you. I do not know what we should have done without you; you have
been so kind to us all--to me and my Prue, and my fox and my birds!'
He ought to make some acknowledgment of this farewell civility of hers;
but to 'ought' and to do have, since the world was, never been one and
the same thing. He receives it in a suffocated silence.
'And I was so rude to you at first,' pursues she, lightly brushing, as
she speaks, her own lips with a bit of mignonette she has gathered from
the odorous bed at her feet, perhaps to hide the slight tremble of which
she cannot but be conscious in them--'so angry at being sent in to
dinner with you! but, then'--with another friendly starlit smile--'you
must remember that I did not know how well you could _mow_!'
He is still silent, his throat choked with words he dare not utter. Oh,
if she would only stop! But she goes on in all innocence:
'You never took your bunch of lavender after all to-day. I thought of
bringing it up for you to-night, but then I remembered that I should see
you to-morrow, so I did not; I wish I had now.'
Cannot he find even one word? one word of prayer to her in mercy to be
silent? Not one!
'Are you going by an early train?' continues she; 'because, if not, I
might send up Alfred with it in the morning, if you really cared to have
it.'
Perhaps it is that last most unnecessary clause that loosens the string
of his tied tongue.
'Do not!' he says almost rudely; 'I hope I shall never smell the scent
of lavender again!'
For a moment she looks at him, astonished at his discourtesy; but
probably his face explains it, for her eyes drop. When next she speaks
it is in a rather colder key.
'At all events I must send you back your books; you left some books with
us to-day, if you remember.'
_If he remember_ the Keats from which he was to have read aloud to her
to-morrow, sitting beside her under the Judas-tree, with her little
finches calling to her from the house, with Mink crouched on her white
skirt, and the parrot waddling over the sward, with his toes turned in,
to have his head scratched by her! _If he remember!_ She must be the
very 'belle dame sans merci' of whom John Keats spake, to ask him that!
May not he at least beg her to keep his Keats to remember him by--laying
here and there among the leaves a sprig of the lavender they together
plucked? No! No! No! Out of her life he and his Keats must depart, as
she and her lavender out of his. Who, in his place, will read her 'La
Belle Dame sans merci'? As if in devilish mockery of the jealous anguish
of this question comes Betty's disgusting refrain darting across his
mind:
'Some other man!
.....
.....'
He grinds his teeth. It is some minutes before he can regain sufficient
command over himself to answer with a tolerable appearance of composure:
'You are right; I will send for them!'
A little sighing gust has risen; sighing for him perhaps, he thinks,
with a flash of imaginative self-pity, as he watches its soft antics
among the lily-like flowers, and its light ruffling of Peggy's gown. It
has mistaken her for one of the flowers! What foolish fancies are
careering through his hot brain! There can be none in hers, or how could
she be holding out such a cool hand and lifting such a suave calm look
to his?
'I must be going,' she says, speaking in a rather lower voice than is
her wont; 'good-bye! Since'--a wavering smile breaking tremulously over
her face--'since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose I dare
not say that I hope our roads will ever meet again!'
Her hand slides out of his unreturning clasp. He feels that if he keep
that soft prisoner for one instant, he must keep it through eternity.
'Good-bye!' he says.
He would like to bid God bless her; but he can no more do it than
Macbeth could say 'Amen.' What right has he to bid God bless her? Will
God be more likely to send her a benison for his unworthy asking? So he
lets her go unblessed.
CHAPTER XV
The Beast Party is over. It has not differed materially from its
predecessors, though it may perhaps glory in the bad pre-eminence of
having left even more ill-feeling and mortification in its wake than did
they.
The little Evanses, indeed, bless its memory, gobbling the bonbons and
strutting about the Vicarage garden in the masks and fools' caps that
they have extracted out of its crackers. And Lady Roupell, too, is
perfectly satisfied with it. Her guests have come, have eaten and drunk,
have gone away again, and she need not trouble her head about them for
another six months. To-day she gets rid of all her friends except the
Harborough children, and is left at liberty to waddle about in her
frieze coat, and with her spud in her hand, in peace--a peace which, at
the worst of times, she never allows to be very seriously infringed. But
there are gradations of age and shabbiness in her frieze coats, and
to-day she may don the oldest.
The peace of the Manor, like its gaieties, is apt to be reflected in the
Cottage: an exodus from the one is virtually an exodus from the other;
and, as such, is apt to be rejoiced over by Margaret as the signal for
Prue to begin to eat her dinner better, sleep sounder, and engage in
some other occupation than running to the end of the garden to see
whether there is a sign of any messenger coming from the Manor. She is
at her post of predilection this morning--the end of the garden that
overhangs the highway--that highway along which all arrivers at and
departers from the Big House must needs travel. She is looking eagerly
down the road.
'Prue!' cries her sister from under the Judas-tree, where she is
sitting, for a wonder, unoccupied.
'Yes,' replies Prue, but without offering to stir from her post of
observation.
'Come here. I want to talk to you.'
'In a minute--directly--by and by.'
A few moments pass.
'Prue?'
'Yes.'
'What are you looking at? What are you waiting for?'
'I am waiting for the Harboroughs to pass. I want to kiss my hand to
Lady Betty as she goes by; she asked me to.'
Margaret makes a gesture of annoyance, and irritably upsets Mink, who
has just curled himself upon her skirt; but she offers no remonstrance,
and it is a quarter of an hour before--the brougham with its
Harboroughs, late as usual, and galloping to catch the train, having
whirled past and been watched till quite out of sight--Prue saunters up
radiant.
'She kissed her hand to me all the way up the hill!' says she, beaming
with pleasure at the recollection. 'I threw her a little bunch of
jessamine just as the carriage went by. She put her head out in a
second, and caught it _in her teeth_!' Was not it clever of her? She
_is_ so clever!'
'Why should she kiss her hand to you? Why should you throw her
jessamine?' asks Peggy gloomily.
'Why should not I?' returns the other warmly. 'I am sure she has been
kind enough to me, if you only knew!'
'You were not so fond of her last week,' says Margaret, lifting a pair
of very troubled eyes to her sister's face. 'Have you already forgotten
the three days running that she robbed you of your ride?'
'I cannot think how I could have been so silly!' returns Prue, with a
rather forced laugh. 'Of course, it was a mere accident. _He_ says he
wonders how I could have been so silly; he was dreadfully hurt about it.
He says he looks upon her quite as an elder sister.'
'An elder sister!' echoes Peggy, breaking into a short angry laugh. 'The
same sort of elder sister, I think, as the nursery-maid is to the Life
Guardsman!'
'I cannot think how you can be so censorious!' retorts Prue, reddening.
'He says it is your one weakness. He admires your character more than
that of any one he knows--he says it is--it is--laid upon such large
lines; but that he has often been hurt by the harshness of your
judgments of other people.'