Doctor Cupid: A Novel
half-swooning sister. Thank God! there is a lamp still burning in the
sitting-hall, though the fire is out, and the air strikes cold. She
staggers with her burden to the settle, and laying her gently down upon
it, snatches up a flat candlestick, and lighting it at the lamp, hastens
away upstairs to the closet where she keeps her drugs for the poor,
medicine for the dogs, and her small stock of cordials; and taking
thence a flask of brandy, hurries back with it, and pours some down
Prue's throat. It is not an easy task to get it down through the girl's
set and chattering teeth; but at length she succeeds, and is presently
rewarded by seeing signs of returning animation in the poor body, whose
feet and hands she is chafing with such a tender vigour.
'I am cold,' says Prue, shivering; 'so cold! May not I go to bed?'
'Do you think that you can walk?' asks Peggy anxiously; 'or shall I
carry you?'
'Walk!' repeats the other, with a little dreary smile. 'Why not? There
is nothing the matter with me.'
She rises to her feet as she speaks, but totters so pitiably that Peggy
again comes to her rescue.
'Of course you can walk,' she says soothingly; 'but I think we are both
rather tired: had not we better help each other upstairs?'
And so, with her strong and tender arm flung about her poor Prue's
fragile, shivering figure, they slowly climb together--oh, so
slowly!--the stairs, down which Prue had leaped with such gaiety eight
hours ago.
In the bedroom, which they at last reach, the fire is happily still
alight, and only needs a few fresh coals to blaze up cheerfully. But
since Prue still shivers, long shudders of cold running down her limbs
and convulsing her frame, Peggy wheels an arm-chair close to the fire,
and wrapping a warm dressing-gown about her sister, holds her cold feet
to the flame, rubbing them between both her hands. For some time Prue's
only answer to these attentions is a low moan which, after awhile,
shapes itself into articulate words:
'To bed! Let me go to bed!'
And so Peggy, unlacing with a sick heart the poor crumpled gown that had
been put on in such pride and freshness over-night, carries its drooping
wearer to her bed, and laying her down most gently in it, covers her
with the warm bed-clothes, tucking them in, and bidding God bless her,
as she has done every night for nigh upon eighteen years.
Prue lies exactly as she had laid her down, with no slightest change of
posture, with no attempt at turning over and nestling to sleep; her eyes
wide open, with that long shudder recurring at first at intervals. But
then this ceases, and she lies like a log--the very dead no stiller than
she--staring blankly before her. Peggy sits beside her through the
remnant of the night, watching in impotent pain, to see whether the
eyelids will never mercifully fall over those wide rigid eyes; watching
the insolent light march up and take possession of the curtained room;
watching its daring shafts push through chink and cranny even to the
dying fire. The clock has struck seven. The servants are up and astir;
and--oh, God be thanked!--at length Prue's eyes are closed, and her head
has fallen a little sideways on the pillow. Having waited awhile, to
assure herself of the blessed fact that she is asleep, Peggy rises
noiselessly, and, turning with infinite precaution the door-handle,
passes out.
The light seems unutterably glaring in the passage, and her tired eyes
blink as they meet it; meeting at the same moment the astonished look in
Sarah's face, called forth by seeing her still in her torn and tumbled
ball-gown. She has not the heart to spend much time in explanations,
but, passing quickly to her own room, tears off the crushed finery,
associated in her mind with an evening of such acute misery; and having
washed and again dressed in her usual chintz morning-gown, returns to
Prue's door, and listening at it for a moment, cautiously enters. But
her caution is needless, as her first glance into the room shows her.
Though she has not been absent more than half an hour, its aspect is
completely changed. The curtains are drawn back, and the blind pulled up
to the top; and Prue, sitting up in bed, with blotting-book and
ink-bottle before her, is rapidly writing. As her sister hastens up to
her, with an exclamation of surprise and dismay, she puts her two hands
over the page to hide it.
'I am writing a letter,' she says hurriedly. 'I do not wish you to see
what I am writing; you have no business to look!'
'I should not think of such a thing!' cries Peggy, drawing back pained.
'But why are you writing _now_, darling? It is only eight o'clock in the
morning.'
Prue's trembling fingers are still clutching her pen.
'It--it--is as well to be in good time,' she says. 'This is a letter
that ought to be written; the--the person to whom it is addressed
will--will expect to get it.'
Peggy is standing by the bed, tall and sorrowful. She has taken the poor
hand, pen and all, into her protecting clasp.
'Is it--is it all over then?' she asks chokingly.
'He is going round the world with the Hartleys,' says Prue, not
answering directly, and beginning feverishly to fidget with her paper
and envelopes. 'Of course I should like this to reach him before he sets
off.'
_Going round the world with the Hartleys!_ The blow has fallen, then.
Peggy had known that it was coming, as surely as she knows the fact of
her own existence. She had seen it approaching for months; and yet now
that it has come, she stands stunned.
'I suppose that that was what he was talking to her about all evening,'
pursues Prue, looking blankly away out of the window, to where, on the
top of the apple-tree outside, a couple of jackdaws are sitting swinging
in the fresh wind. 'That was what made him forget all about his dances
with me. Of course, there would be a great deal to arrange; they are to
be away a whole year. It was quite natural, quite; only it showed that
it was all over with me. Even I could see that.'
She says it quite calmly, and with a sort of smile, her eyes still fixed
on the jackdaws. Peggy is still too choked to speak.
'No one would have guessed last night that it was _I_ who was engaged to
him, would they?' pursues Prue, bringing home her straying look, and
resting it in a half-uncertain appeal upon her sister. 'And yet I was,
was not I? It was not my fancy; he did ask me once to be his wife--_his
wife_,' dwelling on the word with a long, clinging intonation--'standing
there by myself all those hours. I am sure that if he had known how it
hurt me he would not have done it; he is too kind-hearted willingly to
hurt a fly.'
Peggy's only answer is a groan.
'But of course I must write to him,' continues the younger girl,
beginning again to draw her half-written sheet of paper tremblingly
towards her. 'And--and it is not altogether an easy letter to write; you
understand that. It requires all one's attention.'
'Lie down and rest first, and write afterwards,' says Peggy, in a tone
of tender persuasion.
'No, no!' returns the other, pushing her sister away. 'I will lie down
and rest afterwards; there will be plenty of time. But I could not rest
before it was written; and do not disturb me; do not speak to me. I
should be sorry if there were anything ridiculous--anything that she
could laugh at in my last letter to him.'
CHAPTER XXXVI
Though she has begun so early, Prue is writing nearly all day; writing
sitting up in bed--writing when the eastern sun is pouring in his rays
from the gates of day--writing when he has climbed the zenith--writing
when he is reddening westwards. She has asked to be left alone, so as to
be quite undisturbed; and when, at intervals, unable longer to keep
away, Peggy returns from her sad and aimless rambles about the dahliad
garden, and, pushing the door, looks softly in, the same sight always
greets her eyes. Prue, with a fire-spot on each cheek, writing--writing.
And yet when the postman comes to take the letters, it is only one small
letter that he carries away. She is very loth to let it go, even then.
No sooner is it out of her hands than she would have it back. There is a
phrase in it that she would fain have altered, that he may think unkind.
It vexes her all through the night, that phrase. It keeps sleep away
from her, even if the oppression on her chest, caused by the heavy cold
she has contracted through standing in the draught at the Hartleys'
hall-door, would allow slumber to approach her eyes. In the small hours,
indeed, she wanders a little; and would be up, and walk after the
postman to take her letter from him. At dawn she falls into a broken
doze; and Peggy, who has sat by or hung over her all night, poulticing,
giving her drink, holding her hand, and assuring her with tears that
there is nothing in her poor sentence that could wound Freddy's
feelings, rises, stiff and cold from her vigil, and sends Alfred off on
the pony for the doctor.
He comes, and prescribes, and goes away again, leaving behind him that
little fillip of cheerfulness that the doctor's visit always gives; and
another day wears on. Prue talks a great deal throughout it, though her
laboured breathing makes speech difficult. She is very restless: would
get up; would go down into the hall; out into the garden; would sit
under the Judas-tree. She sheds no tears, gives no sign of depression;
indeed, she laughs many times at recollected absurdities told her by
Freddy. But the fire-spots blaze on her cheeks, and the fever-flame
glitters in her eyes.
Another night follows; sleepless as the previous one, and with stronger
delirium. She is going out riding with her lover. He has lent her the
bay mare, which he has taken from Miss Hartley for her sake! He is
waiting for her!--calling to her! and she cannot find her whip or her
gloves. Oh, where are they? Where can they be? Will not Peggy help her
to look for them? And Peggy, with death in her heart, feigns to search,
through the chill watches of the night, for that whip and those gloves
whose services it seems so unlikely that their young owner will ever
need again. With morning her delusions die; and, as the forenoon
advances, she falls into a heavy sleep. Such as it is, it is induced by
opiates.
Peggy has not been in bed for three nights, and an immense lassitude has
fallen upon her. It is not that she is conscious of feeling sleepy; but
her head is like a lump of lead, and her hands are ice-cold. She would
be all right if she could get into the open air for five minutes. A
greedy longing to drink in great draughts of the fresh wind that she can
hear outside frolicking so gaily, yet gently too, with the tree-tops,
lays hold of her; and, since Prue still sleeps heavily, she gives up her
place by the bedside to Sarah, and walks drearily out into the garden.
It is only two days since she had been last in it; but it seems to her
as if years had rolled by since she had last trodden that sward, seen
Jacob digging, and watched the birds pecking at the sunflower-seeds, and
the wasps pushing their way through the netting into the heart of the
peaches. It appears to her a phantasmal garden, with an atmosphere of
brilliance and joyousness that may have their home in that realm where
Thomas the Rhymer lived; but can have no relationship to her bitter
realities. But when she reaches the seat under the Judas-tree, the
kingdom of Thomas the Rhymer is gone, and reality is here in its stead.
As she looks at it, her hands clench themselves, and a tide of rage and
misery surges up in her heart.
'You have killed her!' she says out loud; 'killed her as much as if you
had cut her poor throat! When she is dead, I will tell you so!'
She walks on quickly; rapid motion may make her burden easier to bear.