Doctor Cupid: A Novel
company. He may drive away for ever from before his eyes that hideous
vision of her as he had last seen her, and which has been for fourteen
days poisoning sleep and waking for him. He may drive it away; and not
only so, but he may replace it by any other vision he chooses. _Any
other!_ In the first stupefaction of that thought--for joy has her
stupefaction as well as pain--he covers his face with both hands, as if,
by shutting out all other objects, he could the better bring that
astounding change home to his mazed brain and his leaping heart. He is
free! He has to say the word over many, many times to himself before he
can at all take in its full significance. He is free!--free, too, with a
freedom that has been given to him, that has been gained by no violent
bursting of bars, and which therefore he may taste with that fulness of
joy that those alone can feel who have long lain fast bound in misery
and iron. He has been so long a bondman, the irons have cut so deeply
into his flesh, that on first coming out into God's good light he
staggers blindly as one drunk.
He walks to the window and looks out. The bells are ringing to afternoon
church, and the congregations are passing staidly by. He looks out at
them all, with a joyous smile at the _endimanche_ shop-boys, each with
his sweetheart on his arm; at the little children holding fathers' and
mothers' hands. He, too, may have a sweetheart. He, too, may be blessed
with little children. There are none of the possibilities which make
life lovely to other men, to which he, too, may not aspire. The happy
tears crowd into his eyes.
From the window he walks to his bureau, and out of a secret drawer takes
a tiny tissue-paper parcel, and from it carefully extracts its contents.
They consist of only one sprig of dried lavender, thieved from the
garden of the little Red House, and at which for five months he has not
dared to look. He may look at it now; may pass it lovingly across his
lips; may inhale whatever yet lingers of its innocent cottage sweetness.
There is enough still left to recall the parent-tree. He may see again
that spreading flowered bush; may see again Minky galloping like a
little gray whirlwind across the lawn; may hear again the parrot
swearing in the cook's voice, and sleepily clacking with his black
tongue in the sunshine; may watch the eleven birds--are there still
eleven, he wonders?--hopping and quarrelling and twittering up and down
upon his ladder; may see Jacob and the mowing-machine; and--_her_. Can
any bodily eyes show her to him much more plainly than his spirit's eyes
see her now, summoned up before him by that delicate, homely perfume,
that is to him so indissolubly associated with her?--see her as he saw
her last in the walled Manor garden, standing among the moon-shimmering
white gladioli, and saying to him with farewell smile and wavering
voice:
'Since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose I dare not say
that I hope our paths will ever meet again.'
But now--but now! God knows how he has long hated his downhill course;
and now--and now there is no reason, none in heaven above or earth
beneath, why their paths should not for ever merge. His head sinks
forward on his clasped hands, still jealously clasped upon the lavender
sprig, and his hot tears rain on its little dry buds. In his whole life
before he has never cried for joy. At night he cannot sleep for that
same troublesome joy; but, indeed, he would grudge any slumber that
robbed him for even a moment of the consciousness of his blessedness. He
feels no need of that lost sleep all next day as he walks, treading on
air, through the murky London streets, that seem to him gold-paved,
diamond-shining. He knows that he must look senselessly radiant; for, in
the course of the day, several people of his acquaintance meeting him
ask what he is smiling at. One inquires whether some one has left him a
fortune. Before he can stop himself, he has almost answered, 'Yes.' Is
not it true--most true? His state of exaltation lasts, with no
perceptible lessening, through all that day, through the night--almost
as sleepless as the preceding one--that follows it; but on the
succeeding morning there comes a check, a very slight one, but still a
check to the triumphal course of his felicity. Amongst that morning's
letters is one which, at the first glance, he imagines to be from Betty;
and though a second look reassures him on this point, and though, on
opening it, it proves to be merely an invitation to dinner from a slight
acquaintance, yet the train of thought induced by the shock of that
first impression successfully pulls him down from his empyrean. What
security has he that Betty may not write to him; that now that her
terror and her grief are alike past, she may not deride as superstition
the conduct dictated by that grief, and, like a child, ask to have back
again her given and repented gift? What security has he--a cold sweat
breaks out on his forehead at the thought--that any day, on his return
from his work, he may not find her standing by the fire, ready to throw
herself into his arms, and tell him with sobs that she cannot bear her
life without him, and that they must take up again the old relations?
And if she does so--there is such a horrible probability in the idea,
that it is as well to face it--what answer is he to make her? Would it
be chivalrous, loyal, to take her at that word wrung from her anguish,
wrung from her when she was no more her real self than if she had been
raving in a fit of madness? To make her keep to it, when with tears and
prayers she is begging him to let her resume it? And if not, if
not--with what a heart-sinking does he face the suggestion--must he
again bow his neck to the yoke? Must he again put on his gyves? God save
him from that hard alternative!
And so, in the fear of it, he goes day and night. For weeks it takes the
edge off his bliss; for weeks he never glances at the addresses of his
letters without a pang of dread; for weeks he never turns the handle of
his door on his return home from his work without a shiver of
apprehension. But not once does his eye alight on that feared
handwriting; always his room is empty of that once so longed-for, and
now dreaded presence. Ah, he is not so indispensable to her as he had
fancied! She can do better without him than in his self-value had
appeared possible. He need not be afraid that her fingers will ever
again trace his name upon paper, or hurriedly lift his latch. As he
realises this, so unaccountable is human nature, a slight pang of
irrational regret mingles with the profundity of his relief and joy. But
as the days, lengthening and brightening in their advance toward spring,
go by, the pang vanishes as the fear had done; only yet more quickly,
and his visions possess him wholly. When--_when_ may he make them
realities? How soon, without appearing brutally unfeeling towards,
prematurely forgetful of, his old sweetheart, may he take his new one by
her white hand under the Judas-tree, saying, in the lovely common words
that all the world uses and none can improve upon, merely, 'I love
you'?
CHAPTER XXIII
No one can be in profounder ignorance than is Peggy of the fact of any
one breathing passionate sighs towards her from Downing Street. The only
news that she has heard of John Talbot is a casual mention by Freddy of
the fact of his having invited him to spend his Christmas at the Manor,
and of his having refused without giving any particular reason.
'He does not care for our simple pleasures, I suppose,' says Freddy,
with a smile; 'and, on the whole, I am not sorry. He is a good fellow;
but we are really much more comfortable by ourselves. I like to have you
two dear things all to myself.'
As he speaks he extends a hand apiece impartially to his betrothed and
her sister. Peggy is in these days in possession of one of Freddy's
hands oftener than she altogether cares about; but, since he is always
reminding her that he is now a more than brother to her--in fact, as he
has long been in feeling--she decides that it is not worth making a fuss
about, and lets her cool and careless fingers lie in that fraternal hand
without paying any attention to it. For her the winter has passed _tant
bien que mal_. Christmas had brought her love to Prue, and the mumps to
the Evanses; and both events have supplied Peggy with plenty of work.
The Evanses are one of those families who have all their diseases
bountifully. Their very mumps are severe and simultaneous. They _all_
have them--father, mother, schoolboys, old baby, new baby. A hireling
tells the Christmas news from Mr. Evans's pulpit, while Mr. Evans sits
in his study, with the door locked to hinder the intrusion of his
suffering progeny, stooping his swelled features over his _Earthly
Paradise_, and thinking with envy and admiration of the institution of a
celibate clergy. Both babies bawl from morning to night at this
practical joke played upon them by Providence at the outset of their
career; and the boys wistfully press their enlarged faces--unnecessarily
enlarged, since they were large before--against the frozen panes of the
Vicarage windows, in futile longing for the unattainable joys held out
to them by the view of the iron-bound Vicarage pond, and the glassy
slideableness of the turnpike road.
The calamity to her clergy has thrown the conduct of the whole of the
parish charities and gaieties on Peggy's hands. Nor is she without a
little nursing on her own account; for Freddy, by dint of keeping his
Prue out on the leads till ten o'clock at night, talking to her about
himself and the fixed stars, has succeeded in giving her such a cold on
the chest, that neither can she hear the Christmas tidings. However, he
is so touchingly repentant for what he has done, says such cutting
things about himself, and sits by her side so devotedly for hours,
reading poetry to her in a charming sympathetic voice, that nobody can
be seriously angry with him--least of all Prue, whose one heart-felt
prayer is that her cold may become chronic, or that at least she may
have a new one every month.
'He has been reading me such beautiful poetry!' she says in a soft voice
one day, when Peggy rejoins her after her lover has taken his daily
departure. 'Very deep, you know; so that one had to put one's whole mind
to following it. But beautiful, too--like Browning, only better?'
Peggy lifts her eyebrows.
'_Like Browning, only better!_'
'And when I said so,' pursues Prue, with hot cheeks and bright proud
eyes, 'he told me that he never knew any one who had such an unerring
instinct for what was good in literature as I.'
'And whose was it?' inquires Margaret, a little suspiciously.
'He would not tell me. I could not get him to tell me; but I think--oh,
Peggy, I cannot help fancying that it was his own!'
'That would account for his looking upon your instinct as unerring,
would not it?' retorts Peggy, laughing.
But she does not always laugh over Freddy and Prue. Though young Ducane
repeats to her oftener than once or twice a day that he is now her more
than brother, in fact as well as in feeling, he does not tell any one
else so. Despite all Peggy's representations, entreaties, protests, he
has not yet given the slightest hint of his new situation to his aunt.
'I must insist upon your telling her,' Peggy has said. 'As things now
stand, I cannot bear to meet her; I feel an impostor and a cheat. It is
putting us all in such a false position; it makes me miserable to think
that she has not a suspicion that the old conditions are not quite
unaltered.'
'Poor old conditions!' says Freddy dreamily, leaning with thrown-back
head in the rocking-chair, and staring up at the ceiling, as in the