Doctor Cupid: A Novel
the church decoration; but it is a couple of hours later before Peggy
follows her example. It is nearly eight o'clock when, with stiff arms
and tired legs, she enters the hall--embowered in spring blossoms, like
the church she has just left--of the Red House. As she comes in Prue
springs to meet her.
'Oh, Peggy, Peggy! have you heard?'
The elder sister's heart leaps. Prue understands. Prue is glad--gladder
than she had had any conception that she would have been. Kind little
Prue!
'Yes,' she falters, grateful surprised tears at her sister's sympathy
rushing to her eyes; 'yes, I have heard. Oh, Prue, how nice of you to be
glad!'
'Nice of me to be glad!' repeats Prue in a tone of profound wonderment,
her eyes growing round. 'Why is it nice of me? It would be very odd of
me if I were not glad; but I do not see anything _nice_ about it. How
did you hear? Has milady come back? Have you seen any one from the Big
House? Why, I only got the letter by the second post.'
'The letter?' repeats Peggy stupidly; 'what letter?'
'_What letter?_ why, _his_ letter of course, telling me that he is not
going to stay up for Commemoration after all: he says that without me
the balls would be Dead Sea apples to him, so he will be home a week
sooner; and the Hartleys are going, and they will not find him there
after all. But oh, Peggy! how could you have heard? I do not believe
that you did. Why did you say you had?'
The sparkle, but now as bright in Peggy's eyes as in her junior's, dies
out; a cold ripple of disappointment rises, and flows over her heart.
Prue was not glad for her, after all. It was her own preoccupation that
had credited her sister with a knowledge and an interest of which she is
quite innocent.
'You shall tell me about it at dinner,' she answers in an altered voice,
turning away.
And at dinner Prue does tell her all about it. Too excited to eat, she
chatters through their simple repast about the beauty of Freddy's
renunciation; his thoughtfulness for others; the irreparable loss that
Commemoration will sustain by his absence; the bitter disappointment of
Miss Hartley.
Into the middle of her talk, near the close of their short dinner, comes
the sound of a railway whistle, announcing the arrival of one of the few
stopping trains--in this case the last train of all that touches at
their little station. Peggy involuntarily puts up her hand, and cries:
'Hush!'
'The wind must be changed,' she says, reddening at the consciousness of
her own motive, though she is safe indeed from having it divined, 'one
hears the train so plainly; it is late to-night!'
'What of that?' cries Prue gaily; 'are you expecting a friend by it? Ah,
me! how I wish that _I_ was! He came by that train last time.'
And so Peggy keeps her tidings to herself. Perhaps if she had had some
one to impart them to they would not have made her so restless. As it
is, she cannot settle to any occupation. The wheels that will roll him
from the station to his inn must pass her door; and through all the
trickle of Prue's talk her ear is pricked to catch them. But it is
market night, and from the many vehicles noisily passing by, her hearing
is incapable of disentangling his. He must have reached the Roupell Arms
by now. Is Mrs. Bates setting a very unappetising dinner before him, so
unappetising that it will, in accordance with Mrs. Evans's pious
aspiration, drive him prematurely away?
'How fidgety you are!' cries Prue, surprised at her sister's unusual
restlessness. 'I should have thought that you would have been thankful
to sit down, after being on your legs all day.'
'So should I,' replies Peggy, again blushing, and sitting down; 'and I
have been upon them since ten o'clock in the morning, have not I?'
'It is quite disgraceful the way in which the Evanses put everything
upon you!' cries Prue indignantly; 'though indeed'--with an accent of
remorse not very common to her--'I do not think that they are much worse
than the rest of us. Why does everybody put everything upon you, Peggy?
You do everything for everybody, and nobody ever does anything for you.'
Peggy's eyes brim up at this unexpected recognition of her services by
the seventeen-years sovereign of them. Are all good things to come to
her together?
CHAPTER XXVI
It is Whit-Sunday. The morning service is over. The parish has had an
opportunity of admiring Peggy's nosegays, and of having their nostrils
comforted by the scent of her lilac branches and sweet nancies, and of
the Hartleys' giant gardenias. Among them a stranger has knelt.
Strangers are not very apt to be allured to Roupell Church by the fame
of Mr. Evans's sermons; and, indeed, to-day he has preached the same
sermon as he did last Whit-Sunday. It would have passed among his flock
for a new one, had it not been for an unusual phrase which they remember
and recognise. But since they recognise it with pleasure, as an old
friend, there is no harm done.
'Did you see that he was in church?' cries Mrs. Evans, hurrying
breathlessly out after Peggy, and joining her before she has reached the
lych-gate. 'Did you ever hear of anything so barefaced? It never
occurred to me that he would come to church. Oh, here are the children!
now we shall learn whether _she_ has arrived too.'
As she speaks the little Harboroughs, who apparently have hitherto been
kept at bay by their nurses, are seen--having broken away from them--to
be elbowing their vigorous small way through the press of country
people, who smilingly make way for them. In another second, both, with
entire disregard of the Vicaress's blandishments, have flung themselves
upon Peggy.
'Oh, Miss Lambton, we came last night! How is the fox? I saw Alfred in
church. What a lot of freckles he has got! May not I come and see Mink
and the kittens? May Franky come too?' asks Lily volubly.
'Of course he may,' replies Peggy kindly, warmly returning the little
boy's ardent embrace. 'Why, Franky dear, I have never seen you since you
were so ill!--you were very ill, were not you?'
'The doctor thought he was going to die,' answers Lily, officiously
replying for her brother before he can set his slower tongue in motion;
'and mammy never took off her clothes for three nights, and father
cried; and if Franky had died, I should have had no little brother!' She
makes this last statement in a rather triumphant tone, as a fact
redounding a good deal to her own credit. 'Why, there is John Talbot!'
cries she. 'Franky wanted to go to him in church. Did you ever hear of
anything so silly? Now, Franky, who will get to him first?'
But as she dishonestly sets off before poor Franky has had time to
withdraw his sturdy body and fat legs out of Peggy's embrace, there is
not much doubt as to the answer to her question. However, though Franky
is the last to arrive, and arrives weeping at his sister's injustice,
and crying, 'You nasty thing, you did not start fair!' yet he has, by
much, the warmer welcome.
Is not one welcomed back from the grave's brink deserving of a closer
clasp, of tenderer kisses, than one who has only returned from his daily
walk? Franky has quite forgotten--if, indeed, he ever, save through
Lily's information, knew--how nearly his curly head had been laid in the
dust. But Talbot cannot forget it.
'I wish he would not hug those children,' says Mrs. Evans, _sotto voce_;
'it gives me quite a turn. Well, Fanny,' as one of her own offspring
plucks her by the sleeve, 'what is it now? Mr. Allnutt wants to speak to
me? Dear me! some one is always wanting to speak to me!'
She turns aside reluctantly to interview her parishioner, and Peggy goes
on alone. But it can hardly be said to be _tete-a-tete_, or without a
chaperone, that she puts her hand in Talbot's under the lime-leaves,
young and juicy, stirring in the brisk spring wind.
'Oh, Miss Lambton,' cries Lily, 'may not John Talbot come to the Red
House too?'
As she speaks the face of the object of her kind patronage falls
perceptibly.
'Are you coming to the Red House?' he asks, with a slight accent of
disappointment; 'what, both of you?--now?'
'Miss Lambton says we way,' rejoins she, happily innocent of the motive
that had prompted her friend's inquiry; 'and we may stay to luncheon,
and all afternoon, may not we?'
Peggy laughs.
'We will see about that.'
'And John Talbot may come too?' urges Miss Harborough pertinaciously,
making play with her eyelashes; 'he would like to come.'
'And stay to luncheon, and all afternoon?' adds Talbot, emphasising his
apparently playful suggestion by a long pressure of the hand he has
forgotten to drop.
He has to drop it soon, however; for it is claimed by Franky, as well as
one of his own. Franky insists upon walking between his two friends;
where, by dragging well at their arms, he is enabled to execute many
playful somersaults, and, from under the aegis of their protection, to
make faces at his sister; who, having discovered that she can thereby
better watch their countenances, is backing before them.
Under these circumstances, conversation between the elders is not easy,
nor is there much of it. But the birds in the thickets they pass make
talk for them; and the leaves fresh escaped from their sheaths, and to
whom the wind is a new playfellow, rustle their pleasure in his gambols
to them, as they walk along beneath; and across the barrier of the
little rosy child their hearts cry out to each other. They would be in
heaven; but that Lily, by a judicious pull of the skirts, brings them
down to earth again.
'Why do you never come to Harborough now?' inquires she, fixing Talbot
with the unescapable vigilance of her large child-eyes; 'you used to be
always coming. Would not you like to come? I will get mammy to ask you.'
There is a moment of silence. For a second even the kind finches seem
cruelly still. Then,
'What are you holding my hand so tight for?' asks Franky plaintively.
'Why have you begun to squeeze it so? You hurt me!'
'I asked mammy the other day,' pursues Miss Harborough, with all her
species' terrible tenacity of an idea once grasped, 'why you never came
to see us now, and she began to cry; and when I asked her what she was
crying for, she boxed my ears: she never boxes Franky's ears!'
This remark is followed by another silence. Peggy is apparently looking
straight before her; but yet out of the tail of her eye she manages to
see that Talbot is quite beyond speech. She must come to the rescue.
'I have no doubt that you richly deserved it,' says she in a voice that,
despite her best efforts, is not steady. 'Why? Oh, I do not know why!
because you did. There! run--run away like a good child, and open the
gate for us.'
Lily complies, and Franky races after her.
Talbot draws a long breath. For a few moments, at all events, he will
have a respite from that terrible catechism. But from the effects of it
he cannot at once sufficiently recover to pass into easy speech.
Perhaps, too, the sight of the little Red House--the house that has been
built into so many of his dreams--helps to make him momentarily dumb.
It is a differently clad Red House from what it was when last he looked
upon it. The Virginia creeper and the clematis have laid aside their
purple and crimson ardours; and in their place a wistaria is hanging the
pale droop of its long clusters. Lilacs push up their blossoms against
its casements. The ineffable sappy green of spring everywhere sets and
embowers it.
He gives another sigh, a long, low sigh of happiness this time, and
turning, wordless at first, clasps her two soft hands--hands no longer
claimed by any little dimpled imperative fingers--in his.
She leaves them peaceably to him; but the variations of her colour from
red to white, and back from white to splendid red, sufficiently tell him