Doctor Cupid: A Novel
Despite his assertion of innocence, he has in his pocket a second letter
of invitation from Lady Betty for Prue, which he reads with her next day
under the Judas-tree while Peggy is away at the workhouse. She comes
back a little too soon, before the reading is quite finished, just in
time to see Prue stick the note hastily into her pocket. At this
gesture her heart sinks--Prue is beginning to look upon her as an enemy.
'You need not hide your letter, Prue. I am not going to ask to see it,'
she says, in a wounded voice, either forgetting or omitting to make any
salutation to Freddy.
Prue reddens.
'I should not have hidden it, only that I knew it would make you angry,'
she answers, with a sort of trembling defiance. 'Lady Betty has invited
me again. I cannot help it; it is not my fault.'
Freddy has risen, and, scenting a coming storm, follows his instincts by
beginning to edge away.
'How bad of you--you dear Peg!' cries he affectionately, holding out
both hands--'to come back just as I am obliged to be off! That is the
way you always treat me--is not it, Prue?'
'You needn't go,' replies Margaret, neglecting his hands, and looking
rather sternly at him. 'I shall not be here a moment; and we are not
going to quarrel, if that is what you are afraid of. Prue, since Lady
Betty is so urgent, and you wish it so much, tell her that you will go
to her.'
Then she leaves them with a steady step, but when she reaches her own
room her tears gush out. That gesture of Prue's hand to her pocket has
cut her to the quick; Prue, whose one first impulse through all her
seventeen years' span has hitherto been to run to her sister with
whatever of good or bad--be it broken head or new doll--fate has brought
her. That one small gesture tells her that the old habit is for ever
broken, and she cries bitterly at it. She may cry as much as she pleases
during the silent fortnight that follows, certain that neither Mink nor
the cat will ask her why; but she does not weep again. Through the
gossamer-dressed September mornings, and the gold-misted September
noons, she lives alone. Alone with her thoughts--thoughts none the less
worth thinking perhaps for their new tinge of deep sadness--with her
unpretending charities, with Jacob and her hollyhocks. It is a novel
experience, since never before in all Prue's little life has she borne
to have the child out of her sight for as much as a week.
Three months ago she would have thought it too hard a thing to have
asked of her to forego Prue's songs and kisses for a whole fortnight;
but of late Prue herself has so entirely robbed their intercourse of its
old confident sweetness, has put such a bitter sting into it, that for
the first few days after her departure Peggy (albeit with self-reproach)
experiences a sense of relief in no longer meeting the small miserable
face with its mute and dogged upbraidings. So little does she dread her
own company that she avails herself but sparingly even of such society
as is within her reach, _i.e._ that of the Manor and milady, with her
spud and frieze-coat; that of the Vicarage with its stocking-basket and
its _Earthly Paradise_. The only visitors of whom she sees much are the
little Harboroughs, who still adorn the Manor nurseries, and call upon
her almost daily, with that utter absence of misgiving as to being
always welcome that few people--and those only the most consummate
bores--are able to preserve in later life.
She likes them--the boy best; and even if she herself is not quite in
tune for their chatter, there is always the red fox to pant at them,
with pretty cunning face and hot wild breath, from behind the wire walls
of his house; the pump to wet their clothes, and the stable kittens to
scratch them. So no wonder that they come every day. She would enjoy
their conversation more if it did not involve so ceaseless a reference
to one whom she has neither the need nor the desire to have thus hauled
back into her memory. But it seems as if John Talbot had been so inwoven
with the very woof of their lives that no anecdote of their little past
is complete without it. She could endure it, however, if they confined
themselves to anecdotes. It is the perpetual appeal to her for her
opinion about him that she finds so trying.
'Oh, Miss Lambton! do not you like John Talbot? When is he coming back?
Do not you wish he would come and live with you here always? Do you like
him better than father? Franky says _he_ does. Is not it naughty of
him?'
And the questions of childhood are not like those of a maturer age,
which may be evaded or put aside. They must and will be directly
answered. Peggy cannot help a vexed internal laugh as she hears herself,
allowing that she likes John Talbot, asseverating that she has no wish
that he should come and live with her always, and explaining that it is
possible to appreciate him and father too. But she is always deeply
thankful when the conversational charms of Alfred the stable-boy, or the
chicken-feeding hour, or any other timely distraction releases her from
this trying interrogatory. Of John Talbot, except through the too glib
tongues of his little partisans, she has heard absolutely nothing. On
the morning of his departure she had sent his Keats and one or two other
of his books up to the Manor after him.
As she was neatly wrapping them in paper a sprig of lavender fell out of
the Keats--a sprig which, as she remembered, he had put in as a mark
into the unfinished 'Eve of St. Agnes,' on their last reading. She
stooped and picked it up, looking hesitatingly at it. Shall she return
it to its place? Why should she? No one could ever connect the idea of
Betty with lavender. Gardenias would bring her image at once--gardenias
wired and overpowering; but the clean and homely lavender--never! She
throws it pensively away; and as she does so a foolish fancy comes over
her, as if it were herself that she had just been tossing away out of
his life! That he acquiesces in that tossing away is but too evident.
He does not even send her a formal line to acknowledge the receipt of
his restored property. So it is not his fault that his image walks
beside her so often down the garden alleys; both at high blue noon and
when, on fair nights, she steps abroad to look at the thronged stars.
One must think of something; and there are many interstices in her
thoughts which cannot all be filled up by the one topic--Prue. Into them
he creeps; the more so as she lives almost wholly in her garden; and
with that his memory is so entangled that there is scarcely a plant that
does not say something to her of him. She thinks of him always without
bitterness; generally with deep compassion; never with any hope of
pulling lavender with him again. But she thinks of him. Perhaps there
was some truth in Betty's fleer, of her never having known any better
company than that of the village apothecary. The only outward incidents
of her life come in the shape of Prue's letters. These begin by being
long and full of ecstasies; end by being short and full of nothing.
Before the first week is over they are hurried up, ere the sheet is
full, with some excuse. She must go and get dressed to go out riding.
They are just off to a tennis-party. They are to go out shooting with
the men. The expressions of enjoyment grow fewer in each. Yet in not one
is the slightest wish expressed for a return home. In fact, before the
fortnight ends comes a feverish note, evidently written in hot haste and
deep excitement, begging for a further reprieve of a week. It gives
Peggy a little fresh pang to notice that this petition is urged as a
criminal might urge some request upon his executioner, not as one would
beg a boon of a tender friend.
But she is used to such pain now; rises up and lies down with it; and
to-day puts it patiently aside. What she cannot put aside is her
perplexity as to how to answer. She has a deep repugnance against
complying; and yet the memory of her terror at Prue's rapid decline upon
her former opposition makes her tremblingly shrink from adopting a
course that may all too probably bring back that condition. She dares
not decide upon her own responsibility. She will consult milady.
On her way to the Manor she goes round by the Vicarage, and looks in.
Over the lawn there is a festal air. It is evident that the little
Evanses have been drinking tea out of doors, in honour of a visit from
Miss and Master Harborough. The Vicar is nowhere to be seen; a fact
which does not surprise Peggy, as she knows that any signs of
conviviality on the part of his children are apt to make him disappear.
On catching sight of her Franky Harborough precipitates himself towards
her as fast as his fat legs will carry him. He is in wild spirits, and
has evidently, on his own showing, been extremely naughty.
'Oh, we have been having such fun!--we have had tea out of doors! Mrs.
Evans said that the next child who shook the table so as to upset
anything should have no tea! I,' with a chuckle, 'had finished my tea,
so I gave it a good shake!'
He looks so rosily delighted with his own iniquity, and is so
flatteringly glad to see her, that poor Peggy, who feels as if not many
people were glad to see her nowadays, has not the heart to rebuke him.
With her admirer's small soft hand tightly clutching hers, she advances
to where, under a copper beech's shade, sits Mrs. Evans--the
stocking-basket banished, and engaged upon some genteeler industry--in
company with a female friend.
'We were just talking of you,' says the Vicar's wife, putting out a
welcoming hand. 'Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Jones; she has
been staying in the neighbourhood of the Harboroughs; she saw Prue.'
'Did you indeed?' cries Peggy, turning with anxious interest to the new
comer. 'Was she well? Did she look well?'
'She looked extremely well.'
'She must have been very well indeed, I should think,' adds Mrs. Evans,
with a meaning smile. It is a smile of such significance that, for a
moment, Peggy dares not ask an explanation of it; and before she can
frame her question Mrs. Evans goes on. 'How very oddly people seem to
amuse themselves in smart houses nowadays!--one never heard of such
things when I was a girl; but I suppose, as it is the fashion, it is all
right.'
'Were they--were they doing anything very strange?' asks Peggy, with
rising colour and wavering voice, addressing the visitor.
'They seemed to be enjoying themselves very thoroughly,' replies the
latter, with a prim evasive smile.
'They were all driving donkey tandems full gallop down the main street
of the town,' cries Mrs. Evans, taking up the tale; 'it seems that there
is a town about three miles from Harborough Castle. Prue was driving
one!'
'PRUE?'
'Yes, _Prue_! I was as much surprised as you can be; but it must have
been Prue; there was no other unmarried girl there!' Peggy is silent.
'My cousin says it was wonderful how she got her donkeys along! She was
at the head of the party; and they were all shouting--shouting at the
top of their voices!' Still Margaret makes no comment. 'My cousin says
that the whole town turned out to look at them; they were all at their
doors and windows. I am sure so should I have been,' with a laugh; 'but
it seems a childish romp for grown-up people, does not it?'
Peggy's answer is a slight assenting motion of the head, but her words
are not ready. Her eyes seem fixed attentively on the distant gambols
of the children--on Lily Harborough swarming a cherry-tree, and being
pulled down by the leg by an indignant nurse; on Franky giving a covert
pull to the end of the white tea table-cloth, in the pious hope of
precipitating all the teacups to the ground.
'Another day,' pursues Mrs. Evans cheerfully, 'they drove into the town