Doctor Cupid: A Novel
'Indeed!' says Peggy, with a sort of snort. 'But I daresay that Lady
Betty bandages up his wounds.'
'You must have noticed how kind she was to me last night,' continues
Prue, thinking it wiser to appear not to have heard this last thrust.
'Of course, every one was longing to talk to her, but she quite singled
me out--_me_, of all people! Oh, if you only knew!'
'If I only knew what?' inquires Margaret, struck by the recurrence of
this phrase, to which on its first utterance she had paid little heed,
as being the vague expression of Prue's girlish enthusiasm.
Prue hesitates a moment.
'If--if--you only knew the delightful plan she has made!'
'What plan?' shortly and sternly.
'She--she--I cannot think why she did it; it must have been the purest
kind-heartedness--she asked me to go and stay with her.'
The colour has mounted brave and bright from Margaret's cheeks to her
brow.
'She asked you to stay with her?' repeats she, with slow incisiveness;
'she had the impudence to ask you to stay with her!'
Prue gives a start that is almost a bound.
'_The impudence?_'
'The woman who had the effrontery to sing that song last night,' pursues
Peggy, her voice gathering indignation as it goes along, 'has now the
impudence to invite a respectable girl like you to stay with her! Oh,
Prue!' her tone changing suddenly to one of eager, tender pain, 'just
think what I felt last night when I saw you standing among all those men
in fits of laughter at her stupid indecencies! Oh! how could you laugh?
What was there to laugh at?'
Prue has begun to whimper.
'They all laughed. I--I--laughed be--be--cause they laughed!'
'And now you want to go and stay with her!' says Margaret, touched and
yet annoyed by her sister's easy tears, and letting her long arms fall
to her side with a dispirited gesture, as if life were growing too hard
for her.
'I am sure it would be no great wonder if I did,' says Prue, still
snivelling. 'I, who never go anywhere. She--Lady Betty I mean--could not
believe it when I told her I had only been to London twice in my life;
and He says that the Harboroughs' is the pleasantest house in England!'
'What does He say?' inquires a soft, gay voice, coming up behind them.
'Why, Prue, what is this? Why are the waterworks turned on? It is early
in the day for the fountains to begin playing!' and Freddy Ducane--the
flower-like Freddy--with his charming complexion, his laughing eyes, and
his beautifully-fitting clothes, stands between the agitated girls.
He has taken Prue's hands, both the one that contains the small damp
ball of her pocket-handkerchief and the other. But she snatches them
away and runs off.
'You seem to have been having rather a quick thing,' says the young man,
bringing back his eyes from the flying to the stationary figure.
The latter has risen.
'Did you know of this invitation?' asks she abruptly, without any
attempt at a preliminary salutation.
'I do not much like that dagger-and-bowl way of being asked questions,'
returns Freddy, sinking pleasantly into the chair Margaret has just
quitted. 'What invitation?'
'You know perfectly well what invitation!' retorts she, her breast
beginning to heave and her nostril to quiver, while her pendent right
hand unconsciously clenches itself.
Freddy has thrown back his curly head, and is regarding her luxuriously
from under his tilted hat, and between his half-closed lids.
'I wish you would stay exactly as you are for just two minutes,' he says
rapturously; 'I never saw you look better in my life! What a pose! And
you fell into it so naturally, too! I declare, Peg, though we have our
little differences, there is no one that at heart appreciates you half
as much as I do!'
'I suppose that you suggested it?' says Margaret sternly, passing by
with the most absolute silent contempt her companion's gallantries, and
abandoning in the twinkling of an eye the admired posture which she had
been invited to retain.
'_I suggested it!_' repeats Freddy, lifting his brows. 'Knowing my Peggy
as I do, should I have been likely to call the chimney-pots down about
my own head?'
'But you knew of it? You had heard of it?'
'I daresay I did. I hear a great many things that I do not pay much
attention to.'
'And you think that Lady Betty Harborough would be a desirable friend
for Prue?' says Peggy in bitter interrogation, and unintentionally
falling back into her Medea attitude, a fact of which she becomes aware
only by perceiving Freddy's hand covertly stealing to his pocket in
search of a pencil and notebook to sketch her.
At the sight her exasperation culminates. She snatches the pencil out of
his hand and throws it away.
'Cannot you be serious for one moment?' she asks passionately. 'If you
knew how sick I am of your eternal froth and flummery!'
'Well, then, I _am_ serious,' returns he, putting his hands in his
pockets, and growing grave; 'and if you ask my opinion, I tell you,'
with an air as if taking high moral ground, 'that I do not think we have
any of us any business to say, "Stand by! I am holier than thou!" It has
always been your besetting sin, Peggy, to say, "Stand by! I am holier
than thou!"'
'Has it?' very drily.
'Now it is a sort of thing that I never _can say_' (warming with his
theme). 'I do not take any special credit to myself, but I simply
_cannot_. _I_ say, "Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner!"'
'Indeed!'
'And so I naturally cannot see'--growing rather galled against his will
by the excessive curtness of his companion's rejoinders--'that you have
any right to turn your back upon poor Betty! Poor soul! what chance has
she if we all turn our backs upon her?'
'And so Prue is to stay with Lady Betty to bolster up her decayed
reputation?' cries Peggy, breaking into an ireful laugh. 'I never heard
of a more feasible plan!'
'I think we ought all to stand shoulder to shoulder in the battle of
life!' says Freddy loftily, growing rather red.
'I shall do my best to prevent Lady Betty and my Prue standing shoulder
to shoulder anywhere,' retorts Peggy doggedly.
A pause.
'So that was what Prue was crying about?' says Freddy, with a quiet air
of reflection. 'Poor Prue! if you have been addressing her with the same
air of amenity that you have me, it does not surprise me. I sometimes
wonder,' looking at her with an air of candid and temperate speculation,
'how you, who are so genuinely good at bottom, can have the heart to
make that child cry in the way you do!'
'I did not mean to make her cry,' replies poor Peggy remorsefully. 'I
hate to make her cry!'
'And yet you manage to do it pretty often, dear,' rejoins Freddy
sweetly. 'Now, you know, to me it seems,' with a slight quiver in his
voice, 'as if no handling could be too tender for her!'
Peggy gives an impatient groan. At his words, before her mind's eye
rises the figure of Prue waiting ready dressed in her riding-habit day
after day--watching, listening, running to the garden-end, and crawling
dispiritedly back again; the face of Prue robbed of its roses, clipped
of its roundness, drawn and oldened before its time by Freddy's 'tender
handling.' A bitter speech rises to her lips; but she swallows it back.
Of what use? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his
spots?
Another pause, while Margaret looks blankly across the garden, and
Freddy inhales the smell of the mignonette, and scratches Mink's little
smirking gray head. At length:
'So you do not mean to let her go?' says the young man interrogatively.
'I think not,' replies Peggy witheringly. 'If I want her taught ribald
songs I can send her to the alehouse in the village, and I do not know
any other end that would be served by her going there.'
Freddy winces a little.
'I daresay you are right,' he rejoins blandly. 'I always say that there
is no one whose judgment I would sooner take than yours; and, in point
of fact, I am not very keen about the plan myself; it was only poor
Prue's being so eager about it that made me advocate it. You see,' with
a charming smile, 'I am not like you, Peggy. When persons come to me
brimming over with pleasure in a project, I have not the strength of
mind instantly to empty a jug of cold water all over them! I wish I had!
it would,' sighing pensively, 'make life infinitely less difficult!'
'You are going to Harborough yourself, I suppose?' asks Peggy brusquely,
brushing away like cobwebs her companion's compliments and aspirations.
He shrugs his shoulders.
'How can I tell? Do I ever know where I may drift to? I may wake up
there some fine morning. It is not a bad berth, and,' with a return to
the high moral tone, 'if one can help a person ever so little, I think
that one has no right to turn one's back upon her!'
'Of course not!' ironically.
'And I have always told you,' with an air of candid admission, 'that I
am fond of Betty!'
'I know,' returns Peggy, with a somewhat sarcastic demureness--'I have
heard; you look upon her quite as an elder sister; it is a charming
relationship!'
Freddy reddens, but instantly recovering himself:
'I am not so sure about that! I must consult Prue!' cries he, going off
with a laugh, and with the last word.
CHAPTER XVI
She remains behind without a laugh. She is not, however, left long to
her own reflections, for scarcely is young Ducane out of sight before
Prue reappears. Her eyes are dried, and her cheeks look hot and bright.
'Well?' she says, in a rather hard voice, coming and standing before her
sister.
'Well, dear!' returns Peggy, taking one of her hands and gently stroking
it.
'Has he been talking to you about it?' asks the young girl, with a quick
short breathing.
'I have been talking to him about it,' returns Margaret gravely, 'if
that is the same thing.'
'And you have told him that I--I--am not to go?'
'Yes.'
Prue has pulled her hand violently away, which for a few moments is her
only rejoinder; then:
'I hope,' she says in a faltering voice, 'that you told him as--as
gently as you could. You are so often hard upon him; it must have been
such a--such a bitter disappointment!'
'Was it?' says Peggy sadly; 'I think not! Did you hear him laughing as
he went away? You need not make yourself unhappy on that score; he told
me he had never been very eager for the plan!'
'_He said so!_' cries Prue, with almost a scream, while a deluge of
carnation pours over her face. 'Oh, Peggy! you must be _inventing_. He
could not have said that! I think--without intending it of course--you
often misrepresent him! Oh, he could not have said it! Why, only last
night, as we were walking home in the moonlight, he said that to have me
there under those chestnuts--I believe that the Harboroughs have some
very fine old Spanish chestnuts in their park--would be the realisation
of a poet's dream.'
Peggy groans.
'If he did say it,' continues Prue, in great agitation, 'it was to
please you. He saw how set against the plan you were, and he has such
beautiful manners--such a lovely nature that he cannot bear saying
anything that goes against the person he is talking to.'
'Perhaps you are right in your view of his character,' says Peggy
quietly, but with a tightening of the lines about her mouth that tells
of acute pain; 'in fact he told me that the only reason of his having
ever advocated the project was that you were so keen about it.'
If Peggy imagines that the drastic medicine conveyed in this speech will
have a healing effect upon her sister's sick nature, she soon sees that
she is mistaken.
'And is it any wonder if I _am_ keen about it?' asks she, trembling with
excitement. 'I who have never had any pleasure in all my life!'
'Never any pleasure in all your life!' repeats Peggy, in a tone of sharp