Doctor Cupid: A Novel
Not vouchsafing him another word or look, she takes her sister's
unresisting arm, and leads her away. Without exchanging a syllable, they
reach St. Aldate's. Then Peggy hails a hansom, and bids the cabman drive
as quickly as he can to the G. W. station. But both her injunctions and
his speed are vain. They gallop up only to find the train, reduced by
distance to a small puff of smoke, steaming unattainably northwards.
There is not a second one for another hour and a half. There is nothing
for it but to wait. After all, as Peggy reflects with some bitterness,
they are not returning to such a very happy home that they need be in
any scrambling hurry to get there.
In mid-October the days are already beginning to close in early, and
even before the light goes there comes a sharpness into the air. It is
blowing chilly through the draughty station now. Peggy looks
apprehensively at Prue. Neither of them have had the forethought to
bring any wraps with them. Prue is shivering in a thin summer jacket;
her face looks weary, drawn, and cold.
'Had not you better go and rest in the waiting-room?' asks Margaret
solicitously, addressing her for the first time, as she takes off her
own cloak and wraps it round her.
'Yes, if you wish. I do not mind,' replies Prue apathetically.
When she has been settled in the warmest corner, and her vitality raised
a little by a cup of hot tea, Peggy leaves her. There is a painful
irksomeness in her company that makes Peggy prefer to it even a silent
and solitary march up and down the platform, each footstep beating time
to some heavy thought. Her march is not destined to be solitary for
long, however. Before she has taken three turns a soft young voice with
an intonation of excessive deprecation sounds at her elbow:
'May I take a stroll with you, dear?'
She does not deign him one syllable in answer, but walks along as
before, looking straight ahead. He sighs patiently.
'When you come to think it over, dear, I am sure you will acknowledge
that you are unjust. I can perfectly see your side of the question. I
think that one ought always to try to see both sides; but whether you
believe me or not, I can assure you that I never was more horrified in
my life than I was this morning, when poor Prue walked in.'
And for once, at all events, Freddy speaks truth.
'Then why,' cries Peggy, blazing around upon him, 'did you write and
tell her you were dying? Why did you ask her to come and "lay her little
cold white hand upon your burning brow"?'
Freddy winces; and the tone of his charming cheeks rises several
degrees.
'I do not quite know, dear, how you justify to yourself the reading of
other people's letters,' he says sweetly; 'but if you must quote me, I
had rather that you did it correctly.'
'Do you mean to say,' cries she, turning her great honest eyes and her
indignant rose face full upon him, 'that you did _not_ ask her to "lay
her little cold white hand upon----"'
'Oh, you need not say it all over again,' says Freddy, writhing. 'How
dreadful it sounds, hammered out in that brutal voice! What a knack you
have, Peggy, of turning everything into prose! I did not _ask_ her to
lay her hand upon my forehead; I said I should like it. So I should; so
would you, if your head had been as hot as mine was yesterday.' He
pauses; but Peggy has no biting rejoinder to make. 'If I had for a
moment supposed,' continues Freddy, 'that poor Prue would have taken it
_au pied de la lettre_, I would have cut off my right hand before I
would have written it. It is always so much less painful,' he adds
thoughtfully, 'to hurt one's self than to hurt any one else.'
But Margaret does not seem much disarmed by this touching sentiment.
'If you did not want her to come, why did you write her that silly
letter?' she asks doggedly.
Again Freddy changes colour.
'As I before observed, Peggy dear,' he answers, with some symptoms of
exasperation in his soft voice, 'I do not think it would be a bad plan
if you confined yourself to your own correspondence.'
The girl's face flushes as much as his own has done.
'Prue left it for me to read,' she says coldly and proudly. After a
pause, drawing a long resolute breath, 'Well, next time that you are
dying, you will have to look out for some other hand to cool your
burning brow; for Prue's will be beyond your reach.'
'So it was now,' rejoins Freddy, showing symptoms of an inclination to
lapse into levity. 'Poor Prue! she would have had to make a long arm
from the Red House here.'
'As soon as I get home,' continues Peggy, annoyed by, and yet not
deigning to notice, his frivolous interpellation, 'I shall put the house
into the hands of a house-agent. There is nothing left us--you have left
us nothing but to go!'
'To go! Where?'
She shrugs her shoulders dispiritedly.
'I do not know--somewhere--anywhere--out of this misery.'
Her whole attitude and accent speak so deep a despondency that Freddy's
tendency to gaiety disappears. He feels thoroughly uncomfortable; he
wishes he had not come. He would like exceedingly to slip away even now;
but unfortunately it is impossible.
'My dearest Peg,' he cries, in a very feeling voice, 'you break my
heart! You are always so self-sufficing, so apt to rebut sympathy, that
one hardly likes to offer it; but if----'
'Sympathy!' she repeats, with a scornful lip that yet trembles;
'_sympathy_ from _you_, who are the cause of all my wretchedness?'
'I?'
'Yes, you!' turning upon him with gathering passion--a passion that is
yet not loud in its utterance; that passes unobserved by the few
listeners about the station. 'Have not you eyes to see that you are
killing her? You might have set yourself a task that would do your
philanthropy more credit than breaking an old friend's heart--than
turning a poor little childish head.'
Her voice wavers as she utters the last few words, and she stops
abruptly. Perhaps it is by accident that Freddy's eye strays furtively
to that spot on the platform where 'Way Out' is legibly inscribed.
'When you talk of "childish,"' he says, in an extremely pained tone, yet
one of gentle remonstrance, 'you seem to forget that I am not so very
old myself. You talk to me as if I were a hoary-headed old sinner. Do
you remember that I shall not be twenty-one till Christmas?' She looks
at him with a sort of despair. What he says is perfectly true. It seems
ludicrous to arraign this pink and white boy as guilty of the tragedy of
her own and Prue's lives. 'I assure you, dear,' he says, in a very
caressing tone, drawing a little nearer to her side, 'I often have to
tell myself that I am grown up; I am so apt to forget it.' Then, as she
is silent, he goes on, 'It would make our relations so much easier,
Peggy, if I could get you to believe in me a little--mutual confidence
is so much the highest and wholesomest basis for human relations. I
think we ought all to try and trust one another; will not you'--edging
nearer still, and dropping his voice to a very persuasive whisper--'will
not you trust me a little?'
Peggy has heard that whisper many times before; has heard it beguiling
her into frequent concessions that her judgment has disapproved. It is
therefore with a very unbelieving, even if half-relenting, voice that
she asks:
'How much the better shall I be if I do?'
'It makes things so much easier if one feels that one is believed in,'
he says touchingly, if a little coaxingly. 'Oh, Peggy dear, will not you
believe in me? Will not you trust me a little? Will not you wait--wait
till I have taken my degree? _Then_ you shall see!'
In his eagerness he has seized her hand, unmindful of the publicity of
the place; and she, unmindful of it also, is poring in disconsolate
anxiety upon his features to see if they look as if he were for once
speaking the truth.
'See _what_?' she asks drily; but he apparently does not hear the direct
question.
'And you will not let the Red House?' he pursues coaxingly. 'That was
only a threat, was not it? Of course, I can perfectly understand your
irritation; but you will not let it? Dear little house! if you only knew
what a sacred spot it is to me! And you yourself, Peggy--why, you are
like a limpet on your rock. You would be miserable anywhere else.'
'Thanks to you, I am miserable there too,' replies she bitterly.
She has withdrawn her hand sharply from him; and they now again walk
side by side along the platform, begun to be lit up for the evening
traffic.
'I think,' says Freddy reproachfully, 'that if you at all gauged the
amount of pain that those sort of speeches inflicted, you would be less
lavish of them.' As she makes no sort of rejoinder, he continues, with a
heavy sigh, 'Where shall you go? Where shall you take her?'
'That can be no concern of yours,' replies she brusquely. 'It will at
all events be beyond your pursuit.'
The moment that the word is out of her mouth she sees that it is an
unfortunate one; and, by the light of a gas-lamp which they are at that
moment passing, she detects on Freddy's face a curious smile, which
denotes the perception in him of a certain humorousness in the present
employment of that particular noun.
In this case it is certainly not he that is the pursuer. The station is
growing fuller; a train must be expected; not Peggy's, unfortunately,
which is still not nearly due. A good many undergraduates have appeared
on the platform; several recognise Freddy, and look curiously at his
companion. Whether it be their scrutiny that annoys her, or the
consciousness of the unlucky character of her last phrase that gives
added bitterness to her tone, it is with some asperity that she makes
her next observation:
'I hope you are not going to stay to see me off! I had very much rather
that you did not.'
'Of course I will not _force_ my society upon you,' replies Freddy in a
melancholy voice, under which, however, Margaret fancies that she
detects a lurking alacrity; 'however much it may cost me, I will go at
once, if you bid me.'
'Then I do bid you,' she answers curtly.
'And you--you will not do anything rash?' he says, looking extremely
wheedling, and sinking his voice to a coaxing whisper. 'You will let
things go on just as they are for a--for a little while? You--you will
trust me?'
Her only answer is a derisive laugh.
'You--you will not decide in a hurry; you will take time to consider?'
he pursues, with an agitation that seems genuine, following her, for she
has already begun resolutely to walk away from him towards the
waiting-room. 'You will--you will do nothing _rash_?'
'I do not know what you call rash. I shall write to the agent
to-morrow.'
'You will not!' cries he, keeping up with her, and trying to retard her
progress. 'You could not be so inhuman. I know that it is a matter of
absolute indifference to you what suffering you inflict upon me, but,'
with a tremble in his voice, 'you cannot, you must not hurt Prue!'
Again she gives that withering laugh.
'No, certainly not! I should not think of it; I leave that to you!
Good-bye!'
So saying she disappears determinedly from his vision within the
waiting-room door.
There is nothing left for him but to take the tears out of his smile and
the tremor out of his voice, and walk away.
* * * * *
Peggy is as good as her word. On the very next morning she writes, as
she had announced that she would, to the local house-agent, putting the
dear little Red House into his hands. The deed is done. The letter lies
with others in the bag, awaiting the postman; and Peggy goes out of
doors to try and dissipate the deep sadness in which her own deed, and
much more its causes, have steeped her. Into the garden first, but she
does not remain there long. It is too full of pain. Though it is