Doctor Cupid: A Novel
hidden away, as it were, behind the new one. Once, twice, there is a
curly head resting voluntarily on Peggy's knees; thin arms thrown--and
oh, how thankfully welcomed!--round her glad neck; a little voice
plaining to her of some small physical ill, with a touch of the old
childish confidence in Peggy's power to kiss any wound well. But in a
moment she is gone again; and the new Prue, the dreadful, new, cynical,
imitation Betty Prue is back. It is this new Prue who daily steals with
surreptitious haste to meet the postman, lest the eyes, whose love has
enveloped her through life, should now dare to alight upon her
correspondence. And yet Peggy knows by the after-mood of the day, as
well as if she had scanned superscription and seal, whether or not the
expected missive has come. Judging by this test, the postman is for
Prue, far oftener than not, empty-handed. Once, twice, as Margaret
learns from Lady Roupell, Freddy is expected at the Manor. Once, twice,
at the last moment, some motive of exalted self-sacrifice prompts him to
telegraph that he is unable to come. And now he can no longer be
expected, for mid-October is here; the Universities have reopened their
long-shut arms to their children, and Freddy has returned to Oxford. To
add still further to the discomfort of the situation, the weather,
hitherto so far beyond praise, becomes suddenly as much beyond blame.
There follows a week of pouring, tearing, ruthless rain. The
'Good-bye-Summers' say good-bye indeed.
Three days after the fall of this final blow to Prue's hopes the two
girls meet milady coming out of morning church; milady in her reluctant
and temporary divorce from her spud and frieze-coat. They walk down the
yellow, leaf-strewn church-path with her, as they always do, while she
throws her brusque nods, and her good-hearted greetings to her
fellow-worshippers. As she seats herself in the carriage she pulls a
letter accidentally out of her pocket with her pocket-handkerchief.
'Oh, by the bye,' says she, 'I heard this morning from Freddy; I came
away in such a hurry that I had not half time to read it. If I had been
a little farther off the Vicar,' laughing, 'I would have read it during
the sermon. (Poor dear man!' in a loud aside, 'he really ought to treat
us to a new one.) Freddy says that he is ill.'
'_Ill_, is he?'
'So he says,' with a shrug. 'He says that he has caught a chill. Oh, I
am not very much disturbed,' laughing again. 'I daresay that we are not
going to lose him this time. You know he always cries out some time
before he is hurt.'
She rolls cheerfully away, resuming the reading of her letter as she
goes. Peggy turns apprehensively to her sister. The congregation have
all issued into road and bridle-path, and they are alone. Peggy has time
for an impulse of thankfulness that such is the case; for Prue is
leaning, whiter than her pocket-handkerchief, against the lych-gate.
'_Ill!_' she says gaspingly, under her breath. 'Ill! and all alone!
nobody with him!'
'Pooh!' replies Peggy lightly, and with a half tone of contempt. 'I
daresay it is not much; he is always frightened about himself. Do not
you remember the time when he thought he was going into a consumption,
and bid us all good-bye? How white you look, darling! Had not you better
sit down a moment? Take my arm.'
But Prue will not sit down--will not take her sister's arm. She walks
home unhelped, and on getting there, refuses all Peggy's simple
cordials. But she leaves her luncheon untouched, and is out the whole
afternoon on a long aimless, solitary ramble. She comes in again a full
hour after dusk has fallen, and, complaining of headache, goes to bed.
The next morning she is up, and at her usual stand, lying in ambush for
the postman. After he is gone Peggy catches distant glimpses of her
walking up and down the kitchen garden, reading a letter. She has heard,
then, from him. Thank God! Perhaps her heart will be more at ease.
With her own mind relieved, Margaret goes about her morning's work with
a better courage; and it is eleven o'clock before she again thinks of
her sister. The striking of the hour reminds her that Prue will probably
forget to take her tonic, and that it will be safer to administer it
herself. She pours it out, and opening the drawing-room door, calls
'Prue! Prue!' There is no answer. She moves to the foot of the stairs
and repeats her call, 'Prue!' No answer. She sets the glass down upon a
table, and runs into the garden. 'Prue! Prue!' There is an answer this
time, but unfortunately it is not the right one. It is the parrot
officiously replying, 'Yes,'m,' in the cook's voice. She re-enters the
house. Possibly Prue may be in her own room--one of her new tendencies
is to lock herself in there for hours together--and with the door shut
Peggy's summonses may, though in so small a house it is not likely, have
remained unheard. She runs up and knocks. No answer. She turns the
handle, the door opens, and she looks in. In vain! The room is empty.
She can see this at a glance. It is not likely that Prue is hiding in
her own cupboard, or beneath her narrow chintz bed; and yet her sister,
pushed by what vague suspicion she does not know, enters. A note in
Prue's handwriting and addressed to herself, lying on the small
writing-table in the window, at once catches her eye. In an instant she
has sprung upon and torn it open. What is this? There is neither
beginning nor ending; only a few unsteady lines straggling across a
sheet of paper:
'I have not asked your leave, because I knew that you would not
give it; but I could not--could not let him die alone. Oh, Peggy,
do not be very angry with me! I am so miserable, and I could not
help it.'
That is all. It has not taken Margaret two seconds to master the
contents; and having done so, she stands vacantly staring at the empty
envelope still held in her hand. It is a minute or two before she has
recovered her wits enough to realise that it is not yet empty; that it
contains a second sheet. This is in a different handwriting, one of
those small, clear, clever handwritings affected by the cultured youth
of the day.
'Ch. Ch. Oxford.
'MY PRUE,
'Send me a little word. I am suffering, and I am all alone. I am
scratching you these few pencil-lines in case--as, I fear, is too
probable--I may be too ill to write to-morrow. Oh, my Prue! "The
whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint." What would not I
give for one of your little cold white hands to lay on my
throbbing brow?
'Your
'FREDDY.'
It was only with a half comprehension--so stunned was she--that Peggy
had read Prue's missive; but at the end of Freddy's the dreadful white
light of full understanding breaks upon her soul. Prue has gone to
Oxford!--gone to fulfil young Ducane's aspiration--to 'lay her little
cold hand on his throbbing brow.' Can it be possible? Can even Prue's
madness have gone so far? She snatches up her sister's note again, and
greedily reads it afresh, in the wild hope of finding that she has
mistaken its drift. Alas! there is no room for misapprehension. If she
need further confirmation of her worst fears it comes in the voice of
Sarah, who looks in, duster in hand, through the half-open door.
'Please, 'm, did you want Miss Prue? She has gone out.'
'Gone out!' repeats Margaret breathlessly. Then, making a great effort
over herself for composure, she adds, 'Yes, yes, I know; how did she go?
did she walk or drive?'
'She went in the pony-carriage, 'm.'
'Did she take Alfred with her?'
'No, 'm; she said she should not want him.'
'And how--how long ago did she set off?'
'Indeed, 'm, I did not much notice. I happened to look out of the
passage window as I was dusting the stairs, and I saw her drive off; it
must be the best part of an hour ago.'
_The best part of an hour ago!_ Like lightning it dawns upon Peggy that
a train leaves her station for Oxford at ten minutes to eleven. It is a
slow one, as all must be which draw up at the little wayside platform;
not so slow, however, but that a crawl of a hundred and twenty minutes
will land Prue as hopelessly beyond her power of reach as if it were the
'Flying Dutchman' itself, at Oxford station. She is as little able to
hinder her sister from forcing her mad way into the young man's room as
she would be to stop God's lightning from splitting the tree it is
appointed to rend.
With a gesture of rage and despair she dashes Freddy's note to the
ground, and flings her own head down on the open blotting-book whose
pages keep the imprint, scarcely dry, of her sister's insane words. But
in a few minutes she has pulled herself together. There is only one
thing for her to do--to follow and overtake her sister as quickly as
possible. _As quickly as possible!_ But how quickly is that? This is the
first thing to be discovered.
She goes down into the cheerful hall, where the birds in their big cage
are swinging on John Talbot's ladder, and chattering to each other as
jovially as if no disaster had fallen on their roof-tree; where Mink is
lying on his small hairy side in a sun-patch, with his little paws
crossed like a dying saint's. Margaret searches for the _Bradshaw_,
which apparently Sarah has tidied away. Her first impulse is to call to
her, and ask where she has put it; but her second corrects it. Why
should the household learn any sooner than is unavoidable that Prue has
fled?
By and by she discovers the missing volume, and sitting down, buries
herself in its pages. What she had feared is realised. There is no
second train for Oxford until 2.15. Three hours of forced inaction
stretch before her--three hours for Prue to carry out whatever cureless
folly her burning heart and rudderless mind may dictate.
She starts up. To sit still with such thoughts for company is out of the
question. She wanders back again to Prue's room, picks up Freddy's note
which she had left in her ire lying on the carpet; tears both it and
Prue's into small pieces, and throws them into the grate; then,
misdoubting their being sufficiently destroyed, collects the fragments
again and burns them--tears out even that sheet of the blotting-book
upon which Prue had dried her words, and burns it too.
Then she goes downstairs, and looks at the clock. It has seemed to her
as if she had been a long time over her burning. Yet the clock-hand
points only to a quarter past eleven. She must force herself to some
occupation. To read is impossible. Needlework and gardening both sharpen
instead of deadening thought. It is the day for doing up the week's
accounts. She will compel herself to do them as usual. But the figures
swim before her eyes. The simplest addition baffles her. The names of
Prue, Freddy, Oxford, force themselves into her record of expenditure,
making nonsense of it, defacing her neat columns; and after half an
hour's vain efforts, she desists with a sigh. When one o'clock comes at
last she sits down to luncheon, calmly telling Sarah that she does not
expect Prue back; and having obliged herself, for the sake of
appearances, to eat something, she puts on her hat and jacket.
Leaving word with her household as indifferently as she can that they
are not to be surprised if she and her sister are late in returning, she
sets forth on her walk to the station. She has reflected that she would
start early, in order to give herself plenty of time to walk slowly.
But she does not walk slowly; she walks fast; towards the end she runs.
Who knows whether her clocks may not be slow? whether on coming in sight
of the little upstart red-brick house that constitutes the station, she