Doctor Cupid: A Novel
'Dye your wedding-gown black?'
She knows that she would not. She knows that she would lay it up in
lavender, and tenderly show the yellowed skirt and outlandish sleeves to
her grandchildren forty years hence. But in the pleasure of
contradicting him, truth is worsted.
'Yes.'
'You would?' in a tone of surprise.
She must repeat her fib.
'Yes.'
'Well, I should not have thought it.'
He would like her to ask him why he would not have thought it; but she
does not oblige him.
'I think it would show a want of sentiment,' pursues he perseveringly.
'Yes?'
Good heavens! If she has not got back again to her monosyllable!
'Do not you?'
'No.'
'I should think it would bring ill-luck, should not you?'
'No.'
'Should not you, really?'
'I do not think that it is worth arguing about,' replies Peggy, roused
and wearied. 'I may dye mine, and you need not dye yours, and we shall
neither of us be any the worse.'
'And yet----' he begins; but she interrupts him.
'After all,' she says, turning once more upon him those two dreadfully
direct blue eyes--'after all, I am not at all sure that it is not a good
emblem of marriage--the white gown that goes through muddy waters, and
comes out black on the other side.'
There is such a weight of meaning and emphasis in her words that he is
silent, and wishes that she had kept to her monosyllables.
CHAPTER IV
'Yon meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes,
More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the moon shall rise?'
'Oh, Peggy! I have had such a dinner!' cries Prue, in an ecstatic voice,
drawing her sister away into a window as soon as the ladies have reached
the drawing-room.
'Have you indeed?' replies Margaret distrustfully, and wilfully
misunderstanding. 'Had you two helps of venison, like Mr. Evans?'
'Oh! I am not talking of the food!' rejoins the other impatiently. 'I do
not know whether or not I ate anything; I do not think I did. But they
were so amusing, I did not want to talk. He saw that I did not want to
talk, so he let me sit and listen.'
'That was very considerate of him.'
'She was so amusing; she told us such funny stories about Mr.
Harborough--no harm, you know, but rather making game of him. I do not
know what Mrs. Evans meant by saying that she stuck at nothing. She said
one or two things that I did not quite understand; but I am sure there
was no harm in them.'
'Perhaps not.'
'And she was so kind to me,' pursues Prue, with enthusiasm; 'trying to
draw me into the conversation, asking how long I had been out.'
But here the sisters' _tete-a-tete_ is broken in upon by the
high-pitched voice of the subject of their conversation.
'Who would like to come and see my children in bed? Do not all speak at
once. H'm! nobody? This is hardly gratifying to a mother's feelings.
Miss Lambton, I am sure you will come; you look as if you were fond of
children. And you, Miss Prue, I shall insist upon your coming, whether
you like it or not!'
So saying she puts her hand familiarly through the delighted little
girl's arm, and walks off with her, Peggy following grudgingly. She has
not the slightest desire to see the young Harboroughs, asleep or wake;
though she has already had to defend her heart against an inclination to
grow warm towards them, upon their rosy nightgowned entry before dinner.
She has to defend it still more strongly, when, the nursery being
reached, she sees them lying in the all-gentleness of perfect slumber in
their cribs. Even that not innumerous class who dislike the waking
child, the self-assertive, interrogative, climbing, bawling, smashing,
waking child, grow soft-hearted at the sight of the little sleeping
angel. Is this really Lady Betty bending over the little bed? recovering
the outflung chubby arm from fear of cold, straightening the coverlets,
and laying a light hand on the cool forehead? Peggy ought to be pleased
by such a sign of grace; but when we have formed a conception of a
person we are seldom quite pleased by the discovery of a fact that
declines to square with that conception.
'You are very fond of them?' she says in a whisper, that, without her
intending it, is interrogative; and through which pierces perhaps a tone
of more surprise than she is herself aware of.
Lady Betty stares.
'Fond of them! Why, I am a perfect fool about them; at least I am about
him! I do not care so much about her; she is a thorough Harborough! Did
you ever see such a likeness as hers to her father? He' (with a
regretful motion of the head toward the boy's bed) 'is a little like him
too; but he has a strong look of me. When his eyes are open he is the
image of me. I have a good mind to wake him to show you.'
'Oh, do not!' cries Margaret eagerly; 'it would be a sin!'
But the caution is needless. The mother had no real thought of breaking
in upon that lovely slumber.
'Did you ever see such a duck?' says she rapturously, stooping over him;
'and his hand!'--taking the little plump fist softly into her own
palm--'look at his hand! Will not he be a fine strong man? He can pummel
his nurse already, cannot he, Harris? And not a day's illness in all his
little life, bless him!'
Her eyes are almost moist as she speaks. The colour would no doubt come
and go in her cheeks, only that unfortunately it has contracted the
habit of never going, unless washed off by eau-de-Cologne. Against her
will, Peggy feels her ill opinion melting away like mist; but happily,
on her return to the drawing-room, she is able to restore it in its
entirety. For no sooner have the men appeared than Lady Betty
disappears. The exact moment of her flight and its companion Peggy has
been unable to verify; as, at the moment when it must have taken place,
she was buttonholed by Mrs. Evans on the subject of rose-rash, an
unhandsome little disorder at present rioting among the Evans's ranks;
and for which Peggy is supposed to have a specific. But though she did
not actually see the person who shared Lady Betty's evasion, she is as
sure as to who it was as if her very bodily eyes had looked upon
him,--John Talbot, of course. With John Talbot she is now dishonestly
philandering under the honest harvest-moon; to John Talbot she is now
talking criminal nonsense, with those very lips that five minutes ago
were laid upon the sacred velvet cheeks of her little children. With a
curling lip Margaret looks round the room.
Why, Prue is missing too, and Freddy! Prue, the prone to quinsy, to
throats, to delicacy of all kinds, straying over the deep-dewed grass
without cloak or goloshes! For it would be expecting something more than
human of her to suppose that when invited out by her admirer to hear all
that the poets have said of Orion and Arcturus and the sister Pleiads,
she should stop him in the full flow of his inspiration to inquire after
what the Americans prettily call her 'gums.' If she will only have the
sense to keep to the gravel paths! The elder sister has walked to the
window, and now stands straining her eyes down the long alley to see if
she can catch any glimpse of the little figure that, since its wailing
infancy seventeen years ago, has caused her so many anxious hours. Shall
she take upon herself the invidious office of spy, and follow her? or
trust to the child's common sense, and to the possibility of her
occasionally dropping her eyes from the enormous moon, now queening it
in a great field of radiance above her head, to her own thin-shod feet?
She is still hesitating when a voice, coming from behind her, makes her
start.
'What a night!'
She turns to find that the utterer of this original ejaculation is none
other than John Talbot. Is it possible that they have already returned
from their lovers' ramble? But no! there is no sign of Lady Betty. It is
clear that _he_ could not have been the companion of her stroll. For the
second time this evening Margaret has found herself in error.
'_You?_' she says, in a tone of rather vexed surprise.
'Why not?'
'I thought that you were out.'
'_I!_ no!'
A moment's silence. Whom then could she have lured into her toils?
Freddy? But Freddy must be with Prue. Mr. Evans? the diplomate? There is
not much choice.
Her speculations are again broken in upon by the voice:
'Will not you take a turn?'
'I think not; that is to say'--correcting herself--'I shall only go a
few steps, just to find my sister.'
'May I help you to find her?'
'I do not know why I should give you that trouble.'
A moment's silence, spent by both in reflections. This is the outcome of
his.
'I do not think that I have done anything fresh.'
'Anything fresh?'
'Not since we parted; nothing to earn me a new set of snubs.'
She smiles a little. 'You have not had much time.'
'And I will not do anything fresh.' Then aside, 'I am blessed if I know
what I did.'
'That is rather a rash engagement,' smiling again.
It is fortunate that her teeth are so good, for she shows a great many
of them.
'But if I keep it I may come?' pertinaciously.
'I suppose so;' and out they step together.
It cannot be helped, but it is a little perverse of fate that, after
all, it should be she who, in appearance at least, is the one to
philander in the moonlight with this despiser of the marriage law. And
whether or no it is his presence that brings her ill-luck, it is some
time before she succeeds in the object of her search. The grounds are
rather large, with meandering walks and great clumps of shrubs that hide
them from one another.
Each of Prue's favourite resorts has been visited, but without result.
The walled garden, hushed and sleeping; the trellised wall, where
ancient brick has disappeared beneath the thronged faces, diversely
dazzling, of the brown, orange, tawny and sulphur nasturtiums; the
retired seat beneath the tulip-tree. All, all are empty. Nothing remains
but the kiosk, and Peggy feels sure that Prue is not in the kiosk.
Thither, however, they bend their steps; but before they reach it a turn
of the walk reveals to them two seated figures. One is certainly the
Prue whom they seek; Prue sitting upon an uncomfortable garden bench, on
which nobody ever sits--on which she herself has never sat before. But
is it conceivable that, since dinner, Freddy can have doubled in size,
can have lost all the hair off the top of his head, and have exchanged
his cambric shirt-front and his diamond and turquoise studs for a
double-breasted waistcoat buttoned to the chin?
With a feeling akin to stupefaction Peggy realises that it is Mr. Evans,
and not Freddy, who is Prue's companion. As they approach he rises
reluctantly. He had much rather that they had not come. Prue never wants
to talk to him. She lets him sit and silently ruminate and dream beside
her; a cigarette between his lips, and a blessed oblivion of dissenters,
boys' schooling, girls' ugly faces, rickety baby, Christmas bills,
invading his lulled brain. Prue neither rises nor changes her position.
Her arms lie listlessly on her lap, and she is staring up at Cassiopeia,
the one constellation for ever exalted above its fellows by having had
Freddy Ducane for its exhibitor.
'Do you think you are quite wise to sit out here, with nothing over your
shoulders?' asks Margaret, stooping over her sister, and speaking in a
tone of such exceeding gentleness as positively to astound Talbot, who
had not calculated upon the existence of such tones in a voice which has
conscientiously employed only its harsher keys for his benefit.
'I am not cold,' replies Prue dully.
'How long have you been here? Long?'
'I do not know.'
'We were too comfortable to take note of time, were not we, Miss Prue?'