Doctor Cupid: A Novel
tender-heartedness, he says, 'Nice Peggy!'
'Which was Peggy?' asks Mr. Harborough, looking up from his cutlet; 'the
big one? Yes? I like Peggy. I do not know when I have seen such a
good-looking girl.'
His wife bursts into a laugh.
'I knew that Ralph would admire her. Did not I tell you so?' turning to
Talbot. 'She is just his style; they cannot be too big for Ralph; he
admires by avoirdupois weight.'
'As to that, my dear,' retorts Mr. Harborough tranquilly, 'we all know
that you are not much in the habit of commending your own sex; but I
think you will find that I am not alone in my opinion.'
There is a moment's silence. Men are cowardly things. Not one of them is
found to take up the cudgels for poor Margaret.
'She would be good-looking perhaps if she were bled,' pursues Lady
Betty; 'she looks so aggressively healthy!'
'You cannot make the same complaint of poor Prue, at any rate,' says
Lady Roupell, in a voice that betrays some slight signs of
dissatisfaction with her guest's observations, for she likes her
Lambtons.
'No; she is a high-coloured little skeleton!' rejoins Betty, looking
with pensive ill-nature at her plate. 'What a pity that they cannot
strike a balance! The one is as much too small as the other is too big;
they are like a shilling and sixpence!'
And having thus peaceably demolished the sisters, whom nobody defends,
she passes smilingly to another subject.
After luncheon Talbot is lounging before the hall door, with a
cigarette, thinking, with a sort of subdued disgust (engendered,
perhaps, by the fragment of conversation but now related) of himself,
his surroundings, and his life in general, when he is joined by his
hostess, dressed for walking--as villainously dressed as only a female
millionnaire dares be: a frieze jacket like a man's, a billycock hat set
on the top of her cap, and a stout stick in her hand. She tells him that
she is going down to the farm to see how the stacks are getting on, and
he strolls along aimlessly beside her. He knows that he ought not--he
knows that his unwritten laws bind him for all the afternoon to the side
of the hammock where Lady Betty is swinging; and yet he goes on
strolling along by the side of an old woman to whom no laws, either
God's straight or man's crooked ones, bind him, simply opening his
nostrils to the pungent perfume of the hot bracken, and his eyes to the
sight of the gentle doves watching him from under Queen Elizabeth's oak.
Arrived at the farm, he is slowly making up his mind to return to his
duty, when his companion addresses him:
'Will you go a message for me?'
'With all the pleasure in life,' replies he, a slight misgiving crossing
his mind as to how he will be received on his return after so prolonged
a truancy.
'It is only just to run over to the Lambtons'.'
'The Lambtons'?'
'Yes--Peggy and Prue.'
'Of course, of course; but--but how am I to find them?'
'I thought you knew the way; I took you there last year. You cannot miss
it; a hundred yards down the road'--(pointing)--'just outside the park;
a little old red house. You cannot miss it.'
She is turning away back to her ricks and her reapers when he recalls
her.
'But what am I to say when I get there?'
'Pooh?' she says, laughing; 'what a head I have! I forgot the message.
Tell Peggy we are all coming down to-morrow afternoon, Sunday, as usual;
and bid her have plenty of muffins for us.'
As he walks along the road he ponders with himself whether, if Margaret
looks at him with the unaccountable austerity of last night, he shall
ever be able to give her that insolent order for unlimited muffins.
Lady Roupell was right. There is no missing the way. He almost wishes
that there was. He has rung the bell--how much too loudly! It seems as
if it would never stop clanging. And yet the odd thing is that he has
produced no result by his violence; nor does the stout Annian door
show any signs of rolling back on its hinges. He stares up at the face
of the house; every window wide open, and above each a little
century-and-a-half-old decoration of Cupids and cornucopias, and
apples and grapes; a broken arch over the relentless door, and on
either hand of it a great bush of traveller's joy, with its pretty
welcoming name; and a Virginia creeper, in its dazzling decay, showing
the stained and faded red brick what red can be. Is that one of the
windows of the drawing-room on the right-hand side--that window into
which he has so much difficulty in hindering himself from
looking--with the green earthenware cruches and the odd-shaped
majolica pot crammed with corn marigolds on the window-ledge? It is
certainly very strange. He rings again, more mildly, but still very
distinctly, without any further result than before. A third time; the
same silence. A ridiculous idea crosses his mind that perhaps Margaret
has seen from an upper window who her visitor is, and has forbidden
any of her household to admit him; and, though he dismisses it as
incredible, he is so disheartened by it, and by his thrice-repeated
failures to attract attention, that he is turning away towards the
entrance-gate, when, at last, something happens. A figure appears,
flying round the corner of the house; a figure so out of breath, so
dishevelled, so incoherent, that it is some seconds before he
recognises in it the younger Miss Lambton--the 'high-coloured little
skeleton,' as his gentle lady had sweetly baptized her. High-coloured
she is now with a vengeance!
'Oh! it is you, is it?' she cries pantingly. He has never been presented
to her, nor have they ever exchanged a sentence; but, in great crises
like the present, the social code goes to the wall. 'Oh, I wonder could
you help us? we are in such trouble!' Her tone is so _navre_ that his
heart stands still. Peggy is dead, of course. 'The fox has got out!'
pursues she, sobbing; 'got out of his house, and we do not know what has
become of him!'
'_The fox!_' repeats he, relieved of his apprehensions, and with a
flash of self-reproach--'of course it was a _fox_! of course it was not
a _badger_!'
Surprise at this observation checks Prue's tears.
'No!' says she; 'who ever thought it was?'
And at that moment another tumultuous figure appears round the corner of
the house. This time it is Margaret; Margaret nearly as breathless, as
scarlet, as tearful as Prue. On catching sight of Talbot she pulls
herself into a walk, and with a laudable, instantaneous struggle to look
cold and neat and repellent, she holds out her hand.
'I hope you have not been waiting long,' she says formally. (The little
unconquerable pants between each word betray her.) 'Did you ring often?
I am afraid that there was nobody in the house; we were all, servants
and all, about the fields and garden. Oh!' (nature and sorrow growing
too strong for her) 'have you heard of our misfortune?'
'That I have,' replies Talbot, throwing as much sympathetic affection as
that organ is capable of into his voice; 'and I am so sorry!'
'He has never been out except upon a chain in all his life, poor little
fellow!' says Peggy, sinking dejectedly upon a large old-fashioned round
stone ball, one of which ornaments each side of the door. 'He will know
no more than a baby how to take care of himself!'
'Have you searched everywhere?'
'Everywhere.'
'The hen-house?'
'Yes.'
'Stables?'
'Yes.'
'Coach-house?'
'Yes.'
'Hayloft?'
'Yes.'
'Boot-hole?'
'Yes.'
'Cellar?' growing wild in his suggestions. 'Once I knew a hard-pressed
fox run right into a cellar.'
'Even there.'
Talbot is at the end of his ingenuity. But at least there is one thing
gained--she has spoken to him as to a fellow-sufferer.
This is no great advance perhaps, since were a new Deluge to cover the
earth, which of us would not cling round the neck of a parricide if he
were on a higher ledge of rock than we?
'If he is once away in the open,' says Margaret desperately, 'he is sure
to get into a trap or be worried by a dog; he has no experience of life.
Oh, poor little man!'
Her eyes brim up, and her voice breaks.
Prue has fallen, limp and whimpering, upon the other stone ball. Talbot
stands between the mourners.
'Come,' says he stoutly, 'let us be doing something. Let us rout out
every possible hole and corner once again; and if he does not turn up, I
will go and tell the game-keepers and the farm-labourers to be on the
look-out for him.'
Something in the manly energy of his tone puts new life into the
dispirited girls, and the search recommences.
The procession is swelled by the three maids, with their aprons over
their heads; by the stable-boy, and by Jacob with a pitchfork. It is led
by Talbot, whose zeal sometimes degenerates into ostentation, as when he
insists on exploring chinks into which the leanest lizard could not
squeeze itself, and on running his stick through little heaps of mown
grass where not a field-mouse could lie perdue.
The party has gradually dispersed in different directions, and Talbot
finds himself alone in the tool-house, which has been already twice
explored. In one corner stands a pile of pots of all sizes, reaching
almost to the roof, and with its monotony enlivened by a miscellaneous
stock of rakes, pea-sticks, and scythes leaning against it. The whole
erection looks too solid to admit of its being a hiding-place for
anything, but it is possible that there may be a hollow behind it.
After prying about for a few moments on his knees, he finds indeed an
aperture, which has been hidden by a pendent bit of bass-matting--an
aperture large enough to admit the passage of a small animal. To this
aperture he applies his eye. What does he see? Two things like green
lamps glaring at him from the darkness. Aha! he is here!
CHAPTER VI
Talbot looks round apprehensively. Heaven send that no one, neither
meddlesome Jacob, nor gaping boy, nor screaming maids, nor--worst of
all--Peggy herself, may come up till he has got at his prey, may come up
to rob him of the glory of safe recovery and restoration. In his haste
he incautiously thrusts in his arm, feels something warm and woolly, but
feels too, at the same instant, a smart stinging sensation as of little
teeth fastening on his finger. He draws his hand away quickly, and
shakes it, for the pain is acute.
'You are there, my young friend, that is very clear.'
But he cannot be stopped by such a trifle! He hastily binds up his wound
with his pocket-handkerchief, and begins quickly to enlarge the opening.
As it grows, he has to fill it with his body, to obviate the danger of
the fox making a dash past him. In the course of his labours, several
little pots fall about his ears; a dislodged spade-handle gives him a
brisk blow on the shoulder; old cobwebs get into his mouth. But he is
rewarded at last. Through the breach he has made daylight pours in, and
shows him a little red form crouched up against the wall, and showing
all its dazzling white teeth in a frenzy of fear. Poor little beast!
Probably some indistinct memory of the cruel hounds that tore its mother
limb from limb is giving its intensity of terror to that grin. But if he
is suffering from fear, he is also perhaps at present a little
calculated to inspire it. It just crosses Talbot's mind how exceedingly
unpleasant it will be, if, in these very close quarters, the companion
of his _tete-a-tete_ makes for his nose. There is nothing for it but to
take the initiative. It occurs to him that he may have a pair of
dog-skin gloves in his pocket; and this on examination, proving to be
the case, he puts them on. The right-hand glove will of course not go
over the handkerchief that binds his finger. It--the handkerchief--has
therefore to be removed, and the blood spurts out afresh. What matter?