Doctor Cupid: A Novel
girl's ear; 'he is getting through his duty-dances first. It is all
right.'
CHAPTER XXXV
But the execution of Mr. Ducane's duty-dances is apparently no short
task, nor one lightly or quickly accomplished. But few of them, as it
turns out, are danced in the ball-room in the eye of the world, and of
the electric light. A far larger number are danced on sofas, in obscure
corners of little-frequented boudoirs, on steps of the stairs, and under
the palm-fans and tree-ferns of the conservatory.
And meanwhile the night swings on. Dance has followed dance. The feet
fall pat to the perfect time of the soldiers' music: valse, galop,
polka, mazurka, Lancers--Peggy dances them all.
In the Lancers chance brings her close to Lady Betty, who is romping
through them with a staid County Member, whom to the petrifaction of his
wife, watching horror-struck from afar, she makes romp flagrantly too.
Her voice throughout the evening is heard, penetratingly high, above the
band; her laugh seems to be ringing from every corner of the room,
accompanying her extraordinary antics. For Lady Betty is by no means on
her best behaviour to-night, and permits herself such innocent and
humorous playfulnesses as putting a spoonful of ice down the back of one
of the young Hartleys, popping a fool's-cap out of a cracker on the head
of a bald old gentleman perfectly unknown to her, etc. She is evidently
not fretting very badly at Talbot's absence. So Margaret thinks, as with
a sort of unwilling fascination she watches her.
Lady Betty is evidently in precisely the same mood as she was on that
evening when she had favoured milady's guests at the Manor with her
remarkable song. It would take uncommonly little persuasion to-night to
induce her to sing--
'Oh! who will press that lily hand?'
'I think she is _drunk_!' says Mrs. Evans charitably. 'I am sure she
acts as if she were. If _I_ were to behave like that, I should expect
men to take any kind of liberty with me. I should not feel that I had
any right to complain if they did.'
Peggy laughs. The idea of Mrs. Evans dancing the can-can, and getting
kissed for her pains, is so irresistibly comic that for a minute or two
she cannot help herself.
Lady Roupell has grown tired of scolding Prue for her obstinate refusal
of all invitations to dance. Milady has happily fallen in with an old
friend, whose path hers had not crossed for thirty years. With him she
fights o'er again the battles of her youth, and forgets her 'blessed
bed.' She goes in to supper a second time, and has more _pate de foie
gras_. Peggy sees it in the guilt of her eye when she comes out.
And meanwhile Peggy herself dances on indefatigably, returning, however,
rigorously at the end of each dance to her chaperon, in order to assure
herself that there is no change for the better in the position of Prue.
None! none! none! Always standing on precisely the same spot; the poor
little figure rigidly upright; the flushed cheekbones; the straining
eyes. Always? No, thank God, not always! At last it is gone! At last she
finds its place vacant.
'Where is Prue?' she asks eagerly, forgetting her usual gentle good
manners so far as to break with her question into milady's
_tete-a-tete_.
'Prue!' repeats the other, looking round rather tartly from her
interrupted conversation; 'God bless my soul, child! how can I tell?'
and so resumes her talk.
But though this is not a very lucid explanation of her sister's absence,
Peggy returns from it with a considerably lightened heart. Since it is a
matter of certainty that Prue would never have consented to dance with
any one but Freddy, he must have come at last. They are nowhere in
sight, therefore he must have carried her off to some retired corner,
where he is persuading her--so easy of persuasion, poor soul--of how
much he has been suffering all evening, and how extremely loftily he has
behaved. Of whatever he is persuading her, her long agony is for this
evening at least probably at an end.
Peggy draws a deep breath at the thought, and for the first time becomes
aware how good the floor is, and how pleasant the long swallow-swoop
from end to end of the ball-room. The crowd is growing much thinner.
People who have a long distance to drive are already gone. Mrs. Evans,
bulging at every point with the result of her thefts, and driving the
reluctant Vicar before her, takes herself off, having indulged herself
in one parting whisper to Peggy, to the effect that she 'shall not bow
to Lady Betty, even if she looks as if she expected it.' For Betty is
still here, and having run up the whole gamut of her schoolboy follies,
having grown tired of throwing tarts at her admirers, and pelting them
with lobster claws, has settled down into a steady audacious open
flirtation with a Rural Dean, the sight of whose good lady's jealous
writhings seems to afford her a great deal of innocent joy.
Lady Roupell's old friend has been reluctantly reft away from her by his
party, and she is beginning to show signs of uneasiness, as Peggy can
see from a distance. But since Prue's place beside her is still vacant,
the elder sister is resolved that no action of hers--however apparently
called for by the ordinary rules of politeness--shall tend to shorten
the few brief moments of happiness that have come, however tardily, to
sweeten her evening's long bitterness. She has deliberately dodged
milady's messengers sent in pursuit of her, has evaded them behind
doors, and has slipped past them in passages; and it is not until she
catches a distant glimpse of Prue returning to her chaperon on Mr.
Ducane's arm, that she at length allows herself to be captured. Milady
receives her rather testily.
'Come along! come along!' cries she fussily; 'why did not you come
before? I do not want to help blow out the lights.'
But Peggy does not answer. Her eyes are fixed in a shocked astonishment
on Prue. Instead of the radiant transformation she had expected to find
in her--a transformation hitherto as certain under three kind words from
Freddy, as the supplanting of night by red-rose day in the visible
world--she sees her livid, and with an expression of hopeless stunned
despair, such as never before in her saddest moments has been worn by
it, on her drawn face. Her hand has fallen from Freddy's arm, and her
sister snatches it.
'What is it, Prue? What is it?'
The girl does not seem to hear at first; then:
'Nothing, nothing!' she says stiffly. 'Home; let us go home.'
'She is tired!' cries Mr. Ducane--he too looks pale--caressingly lifting
her other hand, which lies perfectly limp and nerveless in his clasp,
and pressing it to his lips; 'our Prue is dead-beat. Dear milady, you
know you never can recollect that we are not all Titans like yourself.
She is worn out. Are not you, Prue?'
'She would have been all right if she had had some supper,' says milady
gruffly, probably thinking in bitterness of spirit how greatly to their
reciprocal advantage it would be, if a balance could be struck between
her own past refreshments and Prue's. Then she adds very sharply, and
with an obvious disposition in her tone to hustle her graceful nephew,
'I do not know what you are dawdling here for? Why do not you go and
look after the carriage?'
He does not require to be told this twice, and by the alacrity with
which he obeys the command, Peggy knows that it comes at this moment
most welcome. No one could enjoy looking in a face with an expression
such as Prue's now wears, knowing that he himself has brought it there;
and for one so especially partial as Mr. Ducane to wreathed smiles, it
is doubly painful and trying.
The footman and carriage are long in being found. Our party have to wait
what seems to them for a good half-hour in the hall, cloaked, and, as
far as concerns milady, fur-booted, while through the open hall-door
streams in on the mist the flash of carriage-lamps; the frosty breath of
horses--frosty though it is only mid-September--the noise of gravel
kicked up under hoofs; the sound of other people's shouted names.
Freddy comes back, and stands beside Prue, and addresses her now and
again in coaxing undertones, to which--a fact unparalleled in her poor
history--she makes no rejoinder. She is standing right in the full
draught from the open door. Her cloak is unfastened at the neck. She has
evidently not taken the trouble to tie it. The keen north-wester blows
in full upon her thin collar-bones; but when Peggy remonstrates with
her, she does not seem to hear.
'Lady Roupell's carriage!'
Thank God, the welcome sound at last! Milady, who has been nodding,
bounds to her feet and seizes the arm of her obsequious host, who has
been struggling under difficulties to give her a pleasant impression of
her last moments under his roof; under difficulties, since she has been
more than three-quarters asleep. Peggy hurries after her, and Prue and
Freddy bring up the rear. There are too many impatient carriages behind
Lady Roupell's for there to be any moment for last words. The footman
bangs the carriage-door, jumps on the box, and they are off.
Milady does not light her lamp or shuffle her Patience cards again on
the homeward drive. She is fast asleep before the Hartleys' park gates
are reached; nor does any jolt or jar avail to break her slumber, until
she finds herself being bidden good-night to, and thanked by Peggy, at
the door of the little Red House. Not one word is exchanged during the
whole ten miles between the three occupants of the brougham. Prue has
thrown herself into her corner, beside milady. Peggy, sitting back--she
always sits with her back to the horses, and has so long pretended to
like that position best, that she has at length almost persuaded herself
that she does so--leans forward every now and then and peers into the
blackness, trying to catch a glimpse of her sister's face or attitude.
In vain at first. But after a while--once at a turnpike-gate, once at a
flat railway-crossing--a ray of light streams in, and reveals her cast
prone and hopeless in her corner, with her face pressed against the
cushions.
Before they reach the Red House, though the dawn has not yet come, it is
heralded by its dim, gray forerunner--a forerunner that gives shape to
the still colourless hedges as they pass, and an outline to the vague
trees looming out of the dim seas of chilly vapour, that a couple of
hours more will turn into rich green meadows and yellow stubbles. But
the light is not strong enough to reach the recesses of the carriage, to
touch milady's sleepy head, rolling about in the tiara which makes so
uncomfortable a night-cap, or to throw any cruel radiance on the
blackness of Prue's despair.
The stopping of the carriage, which partially rouses the old lady, seems
not to be even perceived by the younger woman; and it is not until
Margaret has stooped over her, pulling her by the arm, and crying in a
frightened voice, 'Prue! Prue! we are at home. Do not you hear, dear?
at home. Come, come!' that she slowly stirs, and lifts her head. Peggy
has given her latch-key to the footman, and herself jumping out of the
carriage, stands in the raw dawn wind, and receiving into her arms her
staggering and half-conscious sister, carries rather than leads her into
the little house, whose door that sister had left with so bounding a
heart, such towering hopes of enjoyment seven or eight hours ago. In a
moment more, milady--her slumbers already resumed--is borne swiftly
away.
Peggy had forbidden the servants to wait up for her. She wishes now that
she had not. It is very eerie here alone in the little dark house, whose
darkness seems all the blacker for the faint, unsure glimmer of coming
day that here and there patches the night's garment; alone with her