Doctor Cupid: A Novel
having even for one moment forgotten him! Yes, I have him--bless him!
but for how long? Even if he lives--oh, he _will_ live! God cannot take
_him_ too from me--I was a fool ever to fear it; but even if he lives
to grow up, he too will go from me. People will tell him things about
me; or if they do not tell him, he will pick up hints. I shall see it in
his eyes, and then he--too--will--go--from me!' breaking into a long
moaning sob. 'I suppose,' looking in utter revolt up to heaven, 'that
_They_ will be satisfied then. I shall have nothing--_nothing_--NOTHING
left!'
She has broken into a storm of frantic tears, that rain from her eyes
and career unheeded down her white gown. He can only look on miserably.
'But at least,' she says deliriously, every word marking a higher stage
in the rising sea of her frenzy, 'I shall always have been _first_!
Neither you nor she can take that from me. It may make you both mad to
think so, but you _cannot_. I shall always--always have been there
first. You may tell her so from me, if you like,' with one last burst of
dreadful laughter; 'it will be no breach of confidence, for I give you
leave.'
Then, in a moment, before he can divine her intention, or--even if he
had the heart to do so--arrest her, she has flung her arms convulsively
about his neck; and in a moment more she is gone, leaving him there
dazed and staggering in the starlight, with the agony of her good-bye
kiss on his lips, and his face wet with her scorching tears.
CHAPTER XXIX
If there is one hour of the day at which the little Red House looks
conspicuously better than another, it is that young one when the garden
grass is still wet to the travelling foot, and the great fire-rose in
the east has not yet soared high enough to swallow the shadows. So
Talbot thinks, as he takes his way next morning to his love's little
russet-coloured home. She has promised over-night to rise betimes, to
give him an early tryst before he sets off on his dusty journey back
into the world without her. He is of course by much too early; and
though he tries to hasten the passage of time by looking at his watch
every two minutes, yet he is compelled, if he would not be at her door
long before it is opened to him, to journey towards her at a very
different rate from that at which his heart is doing. He walks along,
drawing in refreshment of soul and body with every breath. He has not
slept all night, and his eyes are dry and feverish; but the air, moist
with the tears of the dawn, beats his lids with its soft pinions, and
all the lovely common sights of early morning touch healingly upon his
bruised brain, and heart still jarred and aching with the ignoble pain
of that late encounter.
At every step he takes some sweet or gently harmonious sight or sound
steals away a parcel of that ugly ache, and gives him an atom of pure
joy instead. Now it is a stray wood-pigeon beginning its day-long
sweethearting in the copse. Now it is a merry din of quiring finches,
all talking together. Now it is a glimpse of a sprinkle of cowslips in
an old pasture, shaking off their drowsiness. Now it is only a stout
thrush lustily banging its morning snail against a stone, the one
instance of gross cruelty amongst the many that the scheme of nature
offers, which the most tender-hearted cannot fail to admire. And now a
turn of the road has given him to view her house, and the tears,
cleansing as those of the morning, leap to his eyes at the sight of it.
Dear little wholesome, innocent house, giving back the sun's smile from
each one of its shining panes; giving it back, as _her_ mirroring face
will give back his own love-look, when she comes--so soon now, oh, so
soon!--across the dew-drunk daisies to his arms. With what a feeling of
homecoming does his heart embrace it--he that, for so many arid years,
has had no better home than Bury Street lodgings, or Betty's boudoir!
He looks eagerly to see whether, by some blessed accident, she may even
now be ahead of him in time, awaiting him with sunshiny face uplifted,
and firm, fair arms resting on the top-rail of the gate. He knows how
early she rises, and that no coquettish punctilio as to being first at
the rendezvous will hinder her, if she is sooner ready than he. But
apparently to-day she is not. There is no trace of her.
A slight misgiving as to Prue's illness, which until this moment he had
indignantly dismissed from his memory as imaginary, having a more
serious character than he had credited it with, makes him glance
apprehensively towards the young girl's casement. The blind is down, it
is true; but over all the rest of the house there is such a cheerful air
of everyday serenity, that, considering the earliness of the hour, he
cannot attach much importance to the circumstance.
Prue is always--how unlike his fresh Peggy!--a lie-a-bed. Mink and the
cat are standing airing themselves on the door-step, and, by the
suavity of their manner, obviously invite him to enter.
The hall-door is open, and he passes through it. It is the first time
that he has had to push uninvited into her sanctuary--the first day that
she has not met him at the gate. He checks the rising chill that the
reflection calls forth, and hurries on into the hall; meaning to hurry
through it, for surely it will be in the garden that he will find her.
Perhaps, by one of love's subtilties, she has chosen to bid him farewell
under the very hawthorn-tree where he had first called her his. But he
has not made two steps into the hall before he discovers that his
calculations have erred. Can it be by another of love's subtilties that
she is sitting here indoors, away from the morning's radiance, sitting
quite idle apparently by the table; and that, on his entry, she does not
even turn her head?
'Peggy!' he cries, thinking that she cannot have heard his step, though
it has rung not more noiselessly than usual on the old oak boards; and
that Mink, with a friendly afterthought, is firing off little shrill
'good mornings' at his heels.
There is no change of posture in the sitting figure, no movement,
unless, if his eyes do not deceive him, a slight shiver running over it.
'Peggy!' he repeats, alarmed; and, in a second, has overleaped the
intervening distance--has fallen on his knees at her feet, and grasped
her hands. 'What is it? Quick--speak to me! Is Prue worse?'
There is no answer. She has averted her face, so that he can see only
the outline of her cheek's oval, at his approach; and--what is this? She
is drawing her hands with slow decision, not with any petulance or
coquetry, but as one irrevocably resolved, out of his. Then she rises
slowly to her feet, and, having put three paces between them, turns and
looks full at him. Looks full at him, this tall, risen woman, who will
not lend him the custody of her hand! But who is she--this woman? Not
his Peggy! Nay, surely not his Peggy! His Peggy, cheeked like the dawn,
with eyes made out of sapphires and morning dew--his kindly, loving
Peggy--what has she in common with this pale austerity that is facing
him?
'What is it?' he repeats huskily, a vague horror making his knees knock
together; 'is she----'
He breaks off. The idea has flashed across him that Prue is dead! What
lesser catastrophe can account for this horrible unnamed change?
'She is better,' replies Peggy hoarsely.
'Better!--thank God for that!' drawing a long breath of relief. 'What do
you mean by looking like this? You made me think--I do not know what;
but,' his agony of perplexity returning in profounder flood, 'if so--if
she is better, what is it?--what else? For mercy's sake answer
me!--answer me quickly! Do not keep me waiting! You do not know what it
is to be kept waiting like this!'
He has risen from his kneeling attitude; but that unaccountable
something in her face hinders him from making any effort to bridge the
distance she has set between them. Across that distance comes her reply,
in a voice that seems to set her continents and seas away from him:
'Are you--quite--sure--that--I--need answer you?'
'Sure that you need answer me?' repeats he bewildered, struggling
against the ice that is sweeping up over his heart; 'why, of course I
am! Why else should I have asked you? We must be playing at
cross-purposes,' with an attempted smile. 'Of course I am
sure!'--reading the disbelief in her white face--'quite sure! What can I
say to asseverate it? As sure as that I stand here--as sure as----'
'Oh, stop!--stop!' she cries vehemently, thrusting out her hands
towards him as if in passionate prohibition, while a surge of colour
coming into her face restores her to some likeness to his Peggy; 'do
not--do not let me have to think that I have been the cause of your
telling any more falsehoods!'
'Any _more_?' echoes he, putting up his hand to his forehead, and
feeling as if she had struck him across the eyes.
'Yes,' she says, gasping, while he sees her hand go out in unconscious
quest of the table-edge, as if to steady herself. 'Yes!--do not I speak
plainly? Any _more_!'
Again he passes his hand over that brow that feels cut and furrowed by
the lash of her words.
'You--must--explain,' he says slowly; 'apparently I am dull this
morning. What other falsehoods have I told you?'
Both her hands are clutching the table now; nor is its support unneeded,
for her body sways. Only for a moment, however. In a moment she is
standing firm again.
'What other?' she repeats, half under her breath; 'what other? Oh!' with
a long shuddering groan, 'how many, many you must have told before you
could grow to do it with a face that looks so like truth!'
But at that the insulted manhood of him awakes, goaded into life, and
shakes off the paralysis engendered by his horrible astonishment.
'Come!' he exclaims, disregarding her unspoken veto, going close up to
her and standing before her, with folded arms and flashing eyes; 'this
is intolerable!--this is more than man can bear! Let me hear what you
have to say--speak your accusation; but do not tell me to my face that I
am a liar, without bringing a rag of evidence to support it!'
She looks back at him, taking in, with a startled air, his changed
demeanour--the command of his attitude--the authority of his eyes.
Then--
'You--are--right,' she says, panting, while he sees her poor heart
miserably leap under the pink cotton gown he had praised yesterday--was
it yesterday, or before Noah's flood? 'I--have no right to bring vague
accusations, as you say. Will you--will you--let me wait a minute?'
She sinks upon a chair as she speaks; and, resting her elbow upon the
table, passes her pocket-handkerchief once or twice over her face,
wiping away the cold drops of anguish that, despite the morning's
radiant warmth, are gathering upon it. He waits beside her, in a black
suspense, pushing away from him the fear that he refuses to formulate.
'There!' she says, after a year's interval, which the clock falsely
calls sixty seconds; 'I--I--beg your pardon for keeping you waiting.'
She has banished, as far as she can, all signs of emotion, and begins in
a level low voice. 'Prue got better almost immediately after you went
away last night--was it really only last night?' with a bewildered look;
then, immediately recovering herself, 'so decidedly better, that I
thought I might safely leave her.' She pauses. 'I--I--thought
I--I--would follow you.'
Another pause. It is evidently killing work to get on at all. Angry as
he is with her, clearly as he now sees what is coming, he cannot help a
compassionate wish to help her, and make it easier for her.
'I--did not know which way you had gone,' she resumes, after another
battle with herself; 'no one had seen you. But I thought--I guessed--I