Doctor Cupid: A Novel
may not see the train sliding away without her? She arrives breathless,
to find that she has half an hour to wait--half an hour in which to
admire the station-master's canariensis and his mignonette, which greets
each dusty train-load with its whiff of perfume.
By and by another intending traveller or two arrive. The Manor omnibus
drives up, and disgorges the little Harboroughs and their nurses. Peggy
had known and forgotten that they were to return home to-day. She feels
rather guilty at her own cold inability to echo their loud expressions
of pleasure at this unexpected meeting with her. But they apparently
detect no lack of warmth in her answering greetings, as they each at
once take possession of one of her hands, and march up and down with
her. In the intervals of a searching interrogatory as to the goal and
object of her journey, they continue a quarrel apparently begun in the
omnibus; putting out their red tongues at each other before her face,
and executing agile kicks at one another's legs behind her back.
When the train draws up they insist upon deserting their own suite and
getting in with her. She had rather that they would not have done so;
and yet perhaps it affords a wholesome diversion from her own thoughts
to be continually jumping up to grasp Franky by the seat of his
sailor-trousers, and hinder him from breaking his neck by tumbling out
of the window, or his legs by his endeavours to climb up into the
netting. Lily is not nearly so troublesome. She is sitting quite still,
and _showing off_; trying, that is, to impress by her remarks two quiet
ladies who are fellow-occupants of the carriage with a sense of her
importance.
'I hope,' she says, in a loud voice, 'that my large box is in;' as she
speaks she turns her eyes upon the strangers to see whether they look
awed; but as they do not, she adds, in a still louder key, 'because it
is full of clothes!'
The train slides on through the bright-dyed autumn country; past the
flooded flat meadows lying a-dazzle in the sun, blinding mirrors for the
gorgeous October trees; across and then again across the broad ribbon of
the silver Thames; past distant country houses, lifting their shoulders
out of the gold and red billows of their elms and beeches; past big
villages and little towns, till, after several previous stoppages, they
come to a standstill at the platform of a small station, as destitute of
importance as the one from which they set off. It is that at which the
little Harboroughs are to get out.
'Mammy is coming to meet us,' Lily had announced; 'she will give Franky
such a hug! She never hugs me--I am father's child.'
She throws one final look at her fellow-travellers, to see whether they
are not rather struck by the last statement, before joining her brother
at the window, and jostling her hat against his in the endeavour to have
the glory of obtaining the first glimpse of their common parent. Of
this, however, she is balked, as, whatever may be her after-assertions
to the contrary, there is no doubt that the shrill cries of boy and
girl, 'There she is!' 'There's mammy!' rang out absolutely simultaneous.
Their curly heads fill up the window-space so completely that Peggy, for
a moment, hopes to escape detection and recognition. She hopes it the
more, since, for the first minute, Betty has no eyes save for her boy,
whom she has caught in her arms; relieving Peggy at length from her
convulsive hold of his small-clothes, and burying him under a perfect
smother of kisses.
'My blessing--my beauty! so I have got you back at last! You must
never--never leave your poor mammy again! Well, Lily, how are you?
Goodness, child, what a figure you are! You are one large freckle! Oh,
Miss Lambton, is that you? Where are you off to? Is Prue with you? No?
What fun Prue is! I had no idea until she stayed with me what capital
fun she was. You must let me have her again before long.'
The train moves off, and Margaret, a little heavier-hearted than before,
with it. Some impulse prompts her to pull back the curtain of the little
side-window in order to watch, as long as it is in sight, that figure on
the little platform. Yes, Prue is certainly like her; but, alas! it is
to be not even a good imitation for which she has foregone her own
woodland grace. Margaret had forgotten how pretty Betty was. How
charming she looks now, with her face full of wholesome mother-love,
perfectly unconscious, indifferent as to whether any one is looking at
her or not, clasping her little rosy child.
CHAPTER XIX
'Ox--ford! Ox--ford!' Her goal is reached; and as she has no luggage,
and is therefore independent of the scanty-numbered and not particularly
civil porters, in two minutes after the stopping of the train she is in
a hansom, spinning up to Christ Church. At Tom Gate she gets out, and
rather timidly entering the archway, bends her steps to the porter's
lodge. He comes out politely to meet her.
'Can you tell me where Mr. Ducane's rooms are?'
'Certainly, ma'am. Peckwater Quad, third door on the left hand, second
staircase.'
As she is moving off hurriedly in the direction indicated her informant
adds:
'I am afraid that you will not find him in, ma'am.'
'Not in?' repeats she, in a tone of the most acute astonishment. 'Is not
he ill, then?'
'Not that I am aware of, ma'am; he went out about half an hour ago with
a lady.'
At the mention of the lady a sudden vermilion flies up into Peggy's
face.
'Did you happen to notice,' she asks precipitately--'can you tell me
which way they--they went?'
'I think they may have been going to the meadows, ma'am; they went out
by the Hall.'
Almost before he can lift his finger to point out the line she is to
take she is off upon it. Across the wide quad she speeds, under the
exquisite stone umbrella that has held itself for over three centuries
above the staircase up which thousands of stalwart young feet have
tramped to their dinner in the Hall. Along the still, gray cloisters;
past the mean flimsiness of the new buildings, erected apparently as a
bad practical joke, out into the sunshine and dignity of the Broad Walk.
She stands for a moment or two uncertainly, looking from the new avenue
to the old one. From the stripling rows of limes and poplars which will
shade 1900 and 2000--those strange-faced centuries, of which we that are
having our little innings willy-nilly now, and will have had them then,
think with a certain startled curiosity--she turns to the elm-veterans,
who are paying their two-hundredth tribute of amber and tawny leaves to
the passing season. Her eye travels the whole length of both long
alleys; but in neither does she discover a trace of the two figures she
is in quest of. Men in flannels she sees in plenty (_men_ they call
themselves; but have men such smooth lady-faces? do men laugh like
that?)--men by twos and threes and fours and ones going down to, or
coming up from, the glinting river. However, she cannot stand hesitating
for ever at the top of the diverging avenues; so, since both hold out
equally little promise to her, she takes the Broad Walk. It is a bright,
crisp afternoon. Above her the elms, thinned of their leaf-crowns, arch
their bicentenary heads; the flooded meadow flashes argent on either
hand. Merton's gray-gabled front, rose-climbed, and Magdalen's more
distant tower lift their time-coloured faces against the blue. On seats
beneath the trees, with the shadows, thinner than in high summer,
stretching at their feet, climbs here and there a child; rest an old
man; sit a pair of lovers. Here and there also--alas, too
frequently!--comes a gap in the ancient elm-brotherhood, ill filled by
some young puny twig, that shows where the storm laid low the
honourable age of a giant whose green childhood the Stuarts saw.
She has reached the end of the walk, and again glances about her
uncertainly. There is still no sign to be traced of her truants having
passed this way. Whither shall she now bend her steps? She is not long
in deciding. On her right a narrower path stretches, following the
windings of the Cherwell--narrower, yet delectable too; tree-hung,
shadow-pranked, and with the flush river for companion. The country
round is all in flood; the fair town sitting among the waters.
Margaret walks quickly along, her look anxiously thrown ahead of her,
eagerly asking of each new turn in the walk to give her the sight she
seeks. On she goes through the golden weather. A great old willow,
girthed like an oak, golden too, stoops over the brimful stream that
runs by, in silent strength--stoops with a flooring of its own gold
beneath it. There is no wind to speak of; yet the trees are dropping
their various leaves on the Cherwell's breast. She, speeding along all
the while, watches them softly fall--a horse-chestnut fan; a lime-leaf;
a little shower of willow-leaves, narrow and pointed like birds'
tongues--softly fall and swiftly sail away. At a better time who would
have enjoyed it all so much as she? but she draws no grain of pleasure
from it now. She can take none of nature's lovely substitutes in the
place of the two human objects she is pursuing. If she does not find
them here, where else shall she seek them? What clue has she to guide
her?
With a sinking heart she is putting this question to herself when, as
the sight of the moored barges, the flash of oars, the sound of shouting
voices tell her that she is nearing the spot where the Cherwell and Isis
join in shining wedlock, she comes suddenly upon them.
On the seat that runs round a tall plane-tree they are sitting side by
side. At least they have not chosen any very sequestered spot. His
blonde head is thrown back, and resting against the trunk; while from
his lips a stream of mellow words is pouring. He is obviously spouting
poetry; while she, in feverish unconsciousness of what she is doing,
tears into strips a yellow plane-leaf, her eyes down-dropped, and a
deeper stain than even that of Betty's prescribing on her cheeks.
Peggy noiselessly draws near.
'"Dearest, bury me
Under that holy oak, or gospel tree,
Where, though thou seest not, thou may'st think upon
Me, when thou yearly go'st procession;
Or, for mine honour, lay me in that tomb
In which thy sacred reliques shall have room
For my embalming, sweetest----"'
'Good heavens, Peggy!'
Some slight rustle of her gown must have betrayed her neighbourhood. The
lovers both spring to their feet; and for a moment all three young
people stand silently eyeing each other. Prue's hot roses have vanished,
but they have not travelled far. It is perhaps a sign that there is
still some grace left in him, that they are now transplanted to Freddy's
cheeks. Margaret is the first to speak.
'I am here to take you home, Prue,' she says in a low grave voice. 'Are
you ready?'
'Come, Peggy dear!' cries the young man, recovering his complexion and
his _aplomb_, never very far out of reach; 'you need not look so
tragic!--you quite frighten us! Do not scold her much,' laying a coaxing
hand on Peggy's arm; 'I have scolded her well myself already.'
'You!'
There is such a depth of contempt in this one monosyllable, and it is so
elucidated--if indeed it needed elucidation--by the handsome lightning
of her eye, that Freddy's colour again changes.
'I was coming home. I should have come home by the next train,' falters
Prue, hanging her head; and as this tremulous explanation is received by
her sister in a sorrowful silence, she adds with passionate eagerness,
'He was ill, really--very ill. It was not pretence--he was really ill.'
'No doubt,' replies Peggy, in withering quotation from Freddy's own
billet; '"the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint."'