m:^^^ f^/vNf^ \ J fUi^ Uu^ / /'ry; iC = fcylJ^ DOCTOE CUPID Ich komme, Ich •n'eiss iiiclit wolter ; Icli gehe, Ich weiss Jiicht woliin ; Ich Lin, Ich woiss nicht was ; Mich wuudcrt dass Ich so fiohlich bia DOCTOE CUPID <^ gobti BY EHODA BEOUGHTON / AUTHOR OV 'COilETU LP AS A KI.OWER,' ' NANCY,' 'COOD-BVE, SWEETHEAEt!' ' SECOND TUOUGHTS,' ETC. ' Oh, Doctor Ctqnd, tJioufor me rqily' Sir Philip Sidney A NEW EDITION LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. 13ufalis1)rrs \\\ ig for Kalpli ; he admires by avoirdupois weight.' 38 DOCTOR CUPID ' 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 Eoupell, 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, Avith a sort of subdued disgust (engendered, perhaps, by the fragment of conversation but now related) of himself, his surroundings, and his life in general, Avhen 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 ci'ooked ones, DOCTOR CUPID 39 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 mis- giving 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 tlie 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 Koupell 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 Avindow wide open, and 40 DOCTOR CUPID above each a little century-and-a-lialf-okl 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 dis- tinctly, without any further result than before. A third time ; the same silence. A ridiculous idea crosses his mind that perhaps ]\Iargaret 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 f 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 navri that his heart stands still. Peggy is dead, of course. ' The fox has got out!' pursues she, sobbing; 'got oat of his house, and we do not know what has become of him !' ' Tkt fox ! ' repeats he, relieved of his apprehensions, and DOCTOR CUPID 41 with a flash of self-reproach — ' of course it was a fox ! of course it was not a hadgcr ! ' Surprise at this observation checks Prue's tears. ' No ! ' says she ; ' who ever thought it was f And at that moment another tumultuous figure appears roimd 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 of ten ? 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 V ' That I have,' replies Talbot, throwing as much sympa- thetic aflection 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 1' 'Have you searched everywhere]' 'Everywhere.' 'The hen-house?' ' Yes.' 'Stables?' 'Yes.' ' Coach-house '{' ' Yes.' 'Hayloft?' ' Yes.' 42 DOCTOR CUPID '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 jiitchfork. 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 DOCTOR CUPID 43 of pots of all sizes, reacliing 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 seel 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, m^ay 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 perliaps at present a little calculated to DOCTOR CUPID 45 inspire it. It just crosses Talbot's mind how exceedingly unpleasant it will be, if, in these very close quarters, the companion of his Ute-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. ^Yhat matter? Thus protected, without further delay he makes a bold grab, past that grinning, gleaming row of fangs, at the scruff of the fox's neck, and having got a good grip of it, proceeds to back out of the hole, dragging his booty after him ; the booty snapping, and holding on to the ground with all his four pads in agonised protestation. To back out of a hole, with all the blood in your body running to your head, smothered in cobwebs, with dusty knees and barked knuckles — this is hardly the way in which a man would wish to present himself to a Avoman with whom he is anxious to stand well. And yet it is under these conditions that Peggy, at whose feet he finds himself on having completed his retrograde movement, first sees anything in him to admire. 'So you have found himi' cries she, dropping on her knees, and turning a radiant face towards the procession on all-fours which has now quite emerged into the daylight ; ' behind the pots ? and we thought that we had searched everywhere so carefully. How clever of you ! — but ' (her tone changing) ' you have hurt him ! ' her glance falling on a few drops of Talbot's blood which, stealing from under the glove, have dropped on the fox's fur. 'I do not think so,' replies the young man drily; l)ut he docs not more directly claim his own property, nor protest against the — as it happens — rather ingenious in- justice of this accusation. 46 DOCTOR CUPID 'Then he has hurt you!' says she, drawing this obvious inference ; and her blue eye darts Hke lightning at his hand. ' He has bitten you ! oh, how shocking of him ! Not badly V ' He mistook me for a hound, I suppose,' replies John, smiling. ' He was determined that you should not forget a second time that he was a fox,' says she, breaking into a charming mischievous laugh, lapsing, however, at once again into grave solicitude ; ' but it is not a bad bite, is it 1 Let me look ! Here, Prue ! take this little villain home, and shut him up, and let us hear no more about him !' Prue complies, and the two young people remain in the tool-house alone. 'Let me look,' says she, beginning very delicately to pull off the glove, so as not to hurt him. 'How did he manage to get at you through this thick glove V ' I did not put it on till afterwards,' replies Talbot. ' Of whom does that trait remind you I If it is Simple Simon, do not mind saying so !' They both laugh. 'But it is a dreadful bite!' says she, holding the wounded finger Avitli two or three of her slight yet strong ones — fingers a little embrowned by much practical gar- dening, and do^vn which he now feels little shivers of compunction and concern running. ' Almost to the bone ! oh, poor finger ! I feel so guilty. Come with me into the house, and let me tie it up for you.' He is in no great hurry to have it tied up. He likes the dusty tool-house, and is not at all alarmed at the sight of his own gore ; but, consoling himself with the reflection that Prue will probably pass some time in weeping over and fondling their amiable pet, and that he has a good chance of, at all events, some further tete-h-Ute over the rag and oil-silk, he follows her docilely, and presently finds himself inside the little room into which he had had so DOCTOR CUPID 47 much ado to hinder himself from peering during his long lacking his heels at the hall door. It proves to be not a drawing-room after all — to have more of the character and informality of a little sitting-hall ; a room where dogs may jump on the chairs Avith as valid a right as Christians ; a room with an oak settle by the chimney-corner, and a great cage full of twittering finches in a sunny window, and into which half the flowers of the field seem to have walked, and colonised its homely vases ; a room with nothing worth twopence-halfpenny in it, and that yet is sweet and lovable. He has not many minutes in which to make his explorations, for she is promptly back with her appliances, and silently binding round his finger her bit of linen that smells of lavender. As she stoops over his hand he can look down on the top of her head, and admire her parting — a thing which not many ladies possess nowadays. Hers is as straight as a die ; and on each side of that narrow white road rises the thick fine hair, bright and elastic. It is many years since Betty has owned a parting. On the other hand, she has two very nice toupets — a morning and an evening one. Talbot has once or twice seen one of these toupets off duty, and has regretted his knowledge that it came off and on. Well, there is nothing about Peggy that comes off" and on. How quickly and daintily she has dressed his wound, and — oh ! if here is not Prue already back again ! 'Have you shut him safely inl' looking up from her nearly finished task. ' Yes.' 'And given him his dinner?' ' Yes ; but he will not eat it. I think he is seriously vexed ; he tried to bite me, too !' Talbot laughs. 48 DOCTOR CUPID ' What could have made you choose such a pet ?' 'We did not exactly choose him,' replies Margaret gravely ; ' he was sent to us ; all the rest of the litter were killed. He was the only one the huntsman could save. He brought him to show us. He was a mere ball of fluff then. One could not turn away a poor little orphan ball of fluff from one's door, could one V ' He was a very tiresome orphan then, as he always has been since,' says Prue drily. ' No one but Peggy would have been bothered with him; he was far more trouble than a baby. She had him,' — turning towards Talbot — 'to sleep in her room for a whole fortnight, and got up every two hours all through the night to feed him.' Margaret reddens. ' He would have died else !' 'But no other person on earth would have had the patience, would theyl' cries Prue, warming with her theme. ' Prue ! ' says Peggy severely, ' is my trumpeter dead, and are you applying for the situation V At this moment the door opens, and one of the three neat maids whom John has* already seen careering about the pleasure-grounds in pursuit of the fox, enters with a tea-tray. The si2;ht of a covered dish of hot cakes recalls to Talbot the original object of his visit. ' Oh, by the bye, I was forgetting ! I have a message for you from Lady Eoupell.' 'Have you?' She is standing, straight and lithe as a young poplar, by the tea-table, brandishing a brown teapot in her hand. 'Yes. She bid me tell you that they are all coming down to see you to-morrow afternoon.' Is it his imagination that a sudden slight stiffening comes over her as he speaks — a stiffening that seems to extend even to the friendly teapot % DOCTOR CUPID 49 'And also,' coutiuiies he, not much Hking liis errand, and hastening to get it over, ' she desired me to say that, as she is particularly fond of muffins, and as yours are an exceptionally good ' 'Are you sure that she said all thatf interrupts Prue, with a sceptical gaiety. 'She is not generally so polite. She generally says only, " Girls, I'm coming ; have lots of muffins ! " ' Talbot laughs, convicted. ' Perhaps that was nearer the mark.' 'I am so glad that they are all coming,' pursues Prue, with excitement. ' Will Lady Betty come ? Oh, I hope so! How beautiful she is ! What eyes ! What a colour !' Talbot looks sheepish. The alarmingly increased volume and splendour of his Betty's carnations of late have been the cause of several sharp altercations between him and her. And yet he cannot doubt that the child says it in all good faith. It is not at the corners of her mouth that that tiny malicious smile is lurking. To him how much pleasanter a topic was the fox ! He relishes the change in the conversation so little that he scalds his throat in his haste to drink his tea and be gone. As he walks home across the park he entertains himself with the reflection how he shall account to Betty for his finger. Next day is CHAPTER VII * The day that comes between A Saturday and Monday,' as the pretty old song obliquely puts it. Such of the parish as are not Dissenters, drunkards, or the mothers of young babies (it does not leave a very large margin), have been to morning church. The Vicarage, the Manor, and the Red House have all been represented. The Vicarage sits immediately below the pulpit, so that the preacher's eloquence may soar on stronger pinions, upborne by the sight of the nine ugly faces to whom he has given the light of day. The Manor, with its maids, footmen, and stables, spreads half over the aisle ; and in one of its pews the Red House, pewless itself, is allowed to take its two seats. On this particular morning Peggy's devotions are a good deal distempered by the fact of her having Miss Harborough for a neighbour — Miss Harborough without her nurse; Miss Harborough wriggling a good deal, bringing out of her pocket things new and old; and finally (the devil having entered into her), when the hymn begins, striking up in rivalry, ' Over the Garden Wall.' As, however, no one perceives this piece of iniquity except Peggy, who feigns not to hear it, she desists, and adopts instead the less reprehensible but still somewhat embarrassing course of closely copying Peggy's every smallest gesture— un- buttoning her glove, turning a page of her prayer-book, DOCTOR CUPID SI whipping out her pocket-handkerchief at the very same instant as her unwitting model. It is even a relief when this flattering if servile imitation gives way to loud stage- whispers, such as, Tranky has got his book upside down;' 'Don't you wish you were as tall as John Talbot?' 'Evans is all in white;' 'Did you hear me say the Lord's Prayer 1' etc. etc. It is afternoon now. You need not be either a Dissenter, a drunkard, or a mother, not to go to church in the after- noon. Nobody goes — nobody, that is, except Mr. Evans and the children whom he catechises, asking them questions which they never answer, and which he would be very much embarrassed if they did. Luncheon is over. 'Let us give them all the slip,' says Lady Betty. 'I know what milady's Sunday walks are — she does not spare one a turnip or a pigsty ; and as to going to tea with the Lambtons, I say, like the man in the Bible, " I prithee have me excused." ' Talbot, to whom this is addressed, follows her in silence, to where, beneath a great lime-tree only just out of flower, hangs the hammock, spread the wolf-skins, stand the wicker- chairs and tables, the iced drinks, and the Sunday papers. ' Now we'll be happy !' says Betty, sitting down sideways on the hammock, and adroitly whisking her legs in after her. 'As soon as milady's back is turned I will have a cigarette, and you shall talk me to sleep. By the bye,' with a slight tinge of umbrage in her tone, ' your conversa- tion of late has rather tended to produce that eff'ect.' 'And what better eff"ect could it produce?' asks John ironically. 'I sometimes wish that I could get some one to talk me to sleep for good and all !' 'How tiresome!' cries his fair one, not paying much heed to this lugubrious aspiration, and feeling in her pocket. ' I have left my cigarette-case in the house ; go, like a good fellow, and get it foi' mc. 7\sk Julio for it.' 52 DOCTOR CUPID He goes with the full docility of a pack-horse or a per- forming poodle, and on his Avay indoors meets his young host, sent by his aunt in search of the truants, and to whom he imparts Betty's change of plans. 'So you are not coming!' says Freddy, in a broken- hearted voice, throwing himself into a chair. In his soul he is rather glad. ' So I'm not coming ! ' repeats she, mimicking his tone. 'May not I stay too?' travelhng over the sward in his chair nearer the hammock, and lightly touching the pendent white hand. ' What ! and leave your little anatomical specimen lamenting f cries she ill-naturedly. He winces. ' I do not know to whom you are alluding. But may not I stay?' with a slight tremble in his voice. 'Of course you may,' replies she cheerfully. 'Who hinders you ? — stay by all means ! ' He looks confused. He has not the slightest wish to stay. He has only followed his habitual impulse to say what he imagines to be the agreeable thing — an impulse that has already led him into many quagmires, and will lead him into many more. 'I would not be so selfish,' he says with a charming smile of abnegation; 'I know my place better,' with an expressive glance at the back of the disappearing John. And, suiting the action to the word, he disappears too; when she screams after him : ' Give my love to the sack of potatoes and the skeleton ! ' By the time that Talbot returns with the cigarette-case the coast is quite clear, and Betty is at liberty to light her cigarette as soon as she pleases ; a liberty of which she immediately avails herself. There is a prospect before them of an unbroken tete-h-tete until eight oclock. With how deep a joy and elation ought DOCTOR CUPID 53 this reflection to fill him ! A year ago it would hav^e done so. To-day with how leaden a foot does the stable clock pace from quarter to quarter. And yet there is no lack of talk. He himself, indeed, does not contribute much ; but Betty is in a fine flow. She favours him — not for the first time by many — with several unamiable traits in Mr. Harborough's character, with the dreadful things her dearest friend said of her last week — faithfully reported to her by her second dearest — together with various shady particulars in the personal history of both friends. She gives him the latest details of an internecine broil between two ladies, both candidates for the favour of a great per- sonage. She makes some good jokes upon the death of a relation, and the approaching collapse of an intimate acquaintance's reputation \ and, in short, dots her i's and crosses her f s, and calls a spade a spade, and enjoys herself famously. And Ae .? He listens in a sort of wonder. This, then, is what he has for five years sacrificed his career to. This, then — to be alone with this — he has manoeuvred for invitations, planned risky rendezvous, abandoned the hope of home's sanctities. A heavy leaden sickness seems to steal over him. He is recalled to the present by a tone of very decided indignation in his lady's voice — his lady, who, by an easy transition, has slipped from scandal to the hardly dearer or less dear subject of clothes. * Shepherd is a beast ! Just fancy ! he sent me out deer-stalking in a silk skirt ! Why, you are not listening to a word I say ! ' It is in vain for him to protest. On cross-examination he shows so culpaljle an ignorance as to who Shepherd is — though heaven knows that in his day he has heard enough of the great woman's tailor — that her ladyship's anger is heightened instead of appeased. ' You certainly are not amusing to-day,' cries she, flounc- ing out of the hammock. 54 DOCTOR CUPID ' I never was much of a Jack Pudding,' replies he wearily. ' Was I ever amusing % I do not recollect it. I think that I left that to you.' His tone is so dry that she reddens even under her rouge. ' Perhaps it is your finger that pains you too much,' says she, looking round her armoury for a weapon of offence, and rather cleverly hitting upon this one. ' We have never got to the bottom of that mysterious wound yet. I believe it is somehow connected with your Blowsabella. Perhaps you became too attentive, and she had to set her dog or her cat upon you in self-defence.' There is such a horrible caricature of the truth in this supposition, and her tone is so insulting, that he turns pale, and it is a moment or two before he can speak ; then : ' Do not you think it would be a good thing if you gave up this sort of joke?' he asks, with a rather dangerous quietness. 'They are not very ladylike. Had you not better leave them to Julie?' He has no sooner finished these sentences than Betty bursts into tears. She had imagined that she was amusing him as much as herself ; and, indeed, he has often before laughed heartily at things not less ill-natured or more harmless ; now the disgust and ennui of his tone are a disagreeable revelation to her. And besides, as I have before observed, her paint is of that quality that she may confidently afford herself a few tears. But even if it were not to be done with safety she must give way to them now, anger and mortification forcing them from her eyes. Now if there is one thing that a waning lover dreads more than a quarrel, it is the reconciliation that follows it. So, by the time that Betty has sobbed, and wished herself and him dead, and announced her intention of telling Mr. Harborough, and going away to-morrow and taking Freddy Ducane with her, and been apologised to and comforted, DOCTOR CUPID 55 her admirer is reduced to such a pitch of flat lassitude of mind that there is no bidding of hers Avhich he would not tamely execute. He therefore acquiesces dumbly when, her smiles being at length restored, she proposes that the}; shall go to tea with the Lambtons after all. They can easily overtake the others, and perhaps it will be more amusing than sitting here quarrelling — ' though there is a certain charm in quarrelling too !' she adds sentimentally. As he cannot echo this, he pretends not to hear it. His mind is occupied by the doubt, which he is unable to re- solve, whether her proposal is dictated by a generous desire to make an am,ende, or by further malice. She is perfectly capable of either. They have not a very pleasant walk. Betty's preposterous heels turn under her at every three steps ; and though she always says that she is very fond of the country, she generally forgets to look at it, while John loves it too heartily and deeply dear to say anything about it to such ears. As they near the Red House his heart sinks lower and lower. He has never had the moral courage to confess his yesterday's visit, and the episode that marked it. There are ninety-nine chances to one against his escaping without some inquiry after his finger, some mention of the fox, some chance allusion which will betray him. And then 1 what then ■? Why, another quarrel, another reconciliation. Pah ! No ; sooner than face that he Avill be telegraphed for back to Downing Street. They are not kept waiting at the door at all to-daj', but are at once ushered through the house into the garden, where they are told that they will find Miss Lanibton. As she hears their footsteps she looks up, and sees them approaching — Betty stepping smartly ahead, and Talbot following sheepishly behind. Ho is conscious of there being a sort of false air of man and Avife about them — a happy couple spending their Sunday afternoon in parading 56 DOCTOR CUPID their domestic bliss before their friends. By an intuition that he Avould far rather have been without, he sees the same idea passing through Margaret's mind, and reflected in a sudden cloud, and as sudden honest redness on her face. Certainly any stranger coming in upon the scene would be more likely to credit him with the honour of being Lady Betty's owner than he would the insignificant figure kneeling and mysteriously bending over something on the top of the stone steps that lead down a gentle bank from the gravel walk to the sward and the vivid August bor- ders — a figure whose manoeuvres are interestedly watched by the rest of the company, and which does not take the trouble to turn its head an inch at the sound of its wife's voice. 'We have been quarrelling,' cries Betty, with a sprightly candour which grates horribly upon Talipot, ' and we have come to you to help us to keep the peace. Oh !' — making a face — 'so Ralph is showing you some of his tricks. I would not look at them if I were you. He will never leave you any peace if you encourage him ! The whole of the first year of our married life he spent in teaching me to tie knots in my pocket-handkerchief and swallow spoons ; and I have never found that I have been much the better for either.' Not a shadow of a smile shows itself upon Margaret's face, but Prue has smiles enough for the two. 'He is showing us how to mesmerise a hen !' cries she delightedly. ' Oh ! it is so clever ! I cannot think how he does it !' In effect, upon closer examination, Mr. Harborough is seen to be grappling with a large barn-door fowl, which is squawking a good deal, and resisting his efforts to hold her nose down upon the stone step ; while Freddy, with a piece of chalk, draws a straight line from her beak to the end of the step. ' You must none of you speak ! ' says Mr. Harborough, DOCTOR CUPID with avithority. ' If you talk, you will prevent her going off into the mesmeric sleep.' Dead silence. The protesting squalls have ceased. After a few moments the hands that hold her are lightly removed. She lies quite still. 'There!' says the operator, in a tone of subdued triumph ; ' she will not awake until the chalk line is rubbed out. Curious, is not if?' But even as he speaks Dame Partlet, to give him the lie, has struggled to her legs, and lustily screeching, makes off with her longest stride and fluttered wings. Instantly the whole company gives chase. John Talbot, Mr. Har- borough, Freddy Ducane, Margaret, Prue, even Chinese- footed Betty, two collies, and a terrier, who have been standing officiously round, all off in full cry at once. Across the garden-beds ; through Jacob's best potatoes ; over the sunk fence into the open park, helter-skelter they go — John leading, closely followed by Freddy and Mr. Harborough, while the three women tear madly behind. John has got her ! Not at all ! She has slipped between his fingers, and he has measured his length on the grass ! Then it is Freddy's turn, but she runs between his legs, and down goes he too. Certainly she is a gallant hen ! John is up again, and now both he and Peggy make an unsuccessful lunge at her as she passes; and if it had not been for Mink, who adroitly pinned her by the wing — a feat for which he was afterwards much blamed, though they profited by his discourtesy — they would probably still have been tumbling ever each other in pursuit of that speckled hen. At the moment when Peggy and John had made their joint and futile grab at the object of their chase, her hand had come with some violence into contact with his wounded one. Instantly she is off her guard, and down from her stilta ' Did I hurt your finger X very anxiously. 'Not in the least, thanks.' 58 DOCTOR CUPID ' Are you quite sure V ' Quite.' 'But I am afraid that I must have done.' * I assure you no ! How is the fox V He adds the last words with a hasty attempt to keep the conversation to the one topic over which alone they seem fated to be friendly. 'He is very well ! better' — "vvith a slight smile — 'than he deserves.' 'I should like to see him, to tell him that I bear no malice.' She looks irresolute for a moment ; then, ' Would you 1 Come this way ! ' Before they have made three steps Betty is after them. * Where are you two making off to in such a hurry V ' We are going to see the fox,' replies Peggy coldly. 'The fox? What fox r 'Why, my tame fox,' rejoins Peggy, with a little air of surprise ; ' the one that bit Mr. Talbot when he was here yesterday.' The murder is out. ' H'm ! ' says Betty, in a very dry voice ; ' so the mystery is solved !' 'What mystery?' asks the other, in a tone of ever colder and growing astonishment. ' There is no mystery ; it is only that my fox escaped from his house yesterday, and Mr. Talbot was good enough to catch him again for me ; and in so doing was unfortunately bitten. What mystery is there in that?' Her displeased blue eyes turn in inquiry from one to the other, but neither has any answer ready for her. Nor does she again repeat her question ; but Talbot, stealing one guilty look at her, sees that she has comprehended that he has been afraid to own his visit to her, and that she despises him heartily for it. CHAPTER VIII John Talbot spends a wretched night. He does not owe this to the fact of Betty's infantine gambols, her ogles and cats'-cradles with Freddy Ducane through the previous evening; nor yet to any physical ill. It is one ray of honest contempt from a country-bred girl's heaven -blue eye that kills his rest. It seems to shine in upon his whole life, as a beam of clear morning sunshine shines in upon some ugly overnight revel, bringing out into all their un- lovely prominence the wine-stains, and the guttered candles, and the faded flowers. A desire, whose futility he recog- nises, but which is none the less real for the impossibility of its ever being gratified, to set himself right Avith this thrice-seen stranger, takes possession of him; a desire to tell her his story — to lay before her the reasons why she should be lenient with him. Would she think them very cogent ? His memory, made acuter by the darkness, jour- neys back over the past five years, weighing, sifting, recall- ing — back to the beginning, that August when his chief's affairs kept him in London after everybody else had left ; when, sick at heart from a recent grief, he had fallen sick in body too ; and when Betty, also detained in London by some accident — Betty, whom he had hitherto met only as one meets in the world, hearing of his sad plight, had come out of pure kind-heartedness — yes, he is quite sure that at first it was only out of pure kind-heartedness — to sit beside his sofa; Betty, laden with sweet flowers; Betty, with 6o DOCTOR CUPID compassionate eyes and a womanly smile ; Betty, with less paint and a lower voice; with more clothes and fewer after-dinner stories; and last, fatalest of all, with that likeness, fancied or real, to the sister he had just lost. He remembers the day on which he first told her of that re- semblance. In the dark night he recalls again many another little landmark in that first period of his passion, and grows half tender again as their dead faces rise before him. But what did that first idyllic stage lead to % To nothing, indeed, as criminal as the world, as Margaret pro- bably gives them credit for, but to those unhandsome shifts and expedients which have made of his life since one long shuffle and evasion. The kotowing to people he dis- liked and despised for invitations to meet her ; the risky rendezvous ; the mad jealousies ; the half-heartedness in his work ; the entire disintegration of all his plans, liable to be upset at a moment's notice, in order to dovetail in with her convenience ; the irrepressible senseless friendli- ness, Avhich he dare not refuse, on the part of the stupid worthy Harborough ; the genuine fondness of that Har- borough's little children— he looks back upon them all with nausea. No ! there is nothing to be said for him ! She would say that there was nothing to be said for him ! He has slidden down a precipice, it is true, whose first slope was easy and gentle ; but there were many bushes at which he might have caught in his downward passage to save himself if he had wished ; and he caught at none. And now he is at the bottom ! The very passion which gave some slight tinge of a bastard nobility to his ignoble life is dead — dead as the roses that flushed its dawn, and he must still be tied to its lifeless body as fast as — nay, faster than — he was to its living charms. This is his conclusion ; and it is one not much calculated to lull him into slumber. To prove the difference between a bad conscience and a good one, Margaret sleeps calmly ; but she wakes in the DOCTOR CUPID 61 morning with the sense of something faintly disagreeable having happened. She shakes it off as she goes about lier garden and her chicken-pens, the more easily as Prue is in bounding spirits, which is to be accounted for by the fact of Freddy having invited her to go out riding with him in the afternoon, and promised to mount her upon one of his own horses — a privilege often before accorded to her, but which never fails to lift her into Elysium. She is too ex- cited to settle to anything more solid than jumping over the earden-beds and the teunis-net, to and fro with ]\Iink. If you are in paradise, why trouble yourself with earth's sordid tasks? But Margaret, not being in paradise, is meditatively grubbing on hands and knees in the rather overgrown border, when a ring at the door-bell brings her somewhat quickly to her feet. A sudden thought sends the indignant blood to her cheek. Ts it possible that it can be Talbot % After yesterday, is it conceivable that he can have the presumption again to force himself upon her \ She moves hastily towards the house to forbid his admission, if it be he. But she is too late. The visitor has been already let in ; and proves to be one to whom her door is never shut — only Freddy Ducane. 'Have you come to fix the time for your ride?' asks she cordially, beaming upon him. He, at least, has wrenched himself out of Circe's sty, ' Do you want Prue 1 She is in the garden.' The young man looks a shade embarrassed. ' Yes,' he says ; ' I do. No ; I do not — at least, I have something to say to her, but I think' — insinuatingly — ' that I had rather say it to you. You know, Peggy, how fond I am of saying things to you ! There is no one to whom I can say things as comfortably as I can to you.' At this preface her heart sinks a little. 'What is it?' she asks curtly. 'Oh, only my luck!' throwing himself into a chair. 62 DOCTOR CUPID 'By Jove' — looking round the room^'how cool you feel ! and how good you smell ! ' 'I do not suppose that you came here to say that,' rejoins she, still standing over him in expectant anxiety. His answer is to try and get possession of her hand. 'Peggy,' he says plaintively, 'that is not a nice way to speak to me ; that is not the way I like to be spoken to. The reason why I came here— it is very inhospitable of you to insist upon my giving a reason — was to say ' — sigh- ing profoundly — ' that I fear dear little Prue and I shall have to give up our ride this afternoon.' Her foreboding was a true one then ! 'Why?' ' Oh, because — because — just my luck ! ' ' I understand,' replies she caustically. ' You are in the case of the man who telegraphed to the house where he did not wish to stay, " So sorry. Cannot come. No lie, ready. " ' Freddy colours. ' Peggy, if I were not so really fond of you,' he says, in an injured voice, ' I should not allow you to speak to me like that. There are days when you rasp one like a file. Prue never rasps one.' 'Is that the reason why you think yourself justified in always letting her go to the walH' asks Margaret, with a bitterness that seems out of proportion to the occasion ; but in her mind's eye she sees the poor little figure that has been frolicking among the geraniums with dog and cat — sees, too, the metamorphosis that will be worked in it. Freddy rolls his curly head uneasily to and fro on the chair-back. 'You talk as if I were not quite as disappointed as she,' he says, in a lamentable tone. ' But what is one to do 1 When one has guests, one must entertain them. Somebody must entertain lier.^ DOCTOR CUPID (^^ 'Must entertain whomi' * Oh, you know as well as I do ! You are only asking out of ill-nature. Betty, of course !' 'Betty, of course!' repeats she after him, with an in- definable accent. ' Well, Peggy, I appeal to you. ^Miat could I do, when she asked me point-blank 1 You know that I never can refuse to do anything that anybody asks me point-blank.' ' Then suppose that / ask 3^ou point-blank to throw her overf suggests Margaret, looking full at him with her straightforward blue eyes. 'But you would not,' returns he hastily. 'You dear thing, it would not be the least like you; and it would only make her hate Prue for life. Ah, you do not know Betty !' 'And, meanwhile, where is her dme damnSe, prayl' asks Margaret with a curling nose. ' " Where is John Talbot ? Where is valiant Johu V ' Freddy shrugs his shoulders. ' Valiant John is a little slack of late ; he wants poking up a bit. But ' — with a coaxing change of tone—' it will be just the same to Prue to go another day, will not it ? and you will tell her, will not you ? I — I really am in a great hurry this morning; and I — I — think I had rather you told her.' 'I will do nothing of the kind,' replies Peggy severely. 'You may do your own errands.' Nor do any of his blandishments, any of his numerous assertions of the reverential attachment he has always felt for herself, any of his asseverations of the agonising grief it causes him to give the slightest pain to Prue, avail to make her budge one inch from her original resolution. She watches him as, with a somewhat hang-dog air, he walks across the grass-plot to meet her sister, who comes treading 64 DOCTOR CUPID on air to meet him. And then Margaret looks away. She cannot bear to witness the extinction of that poor short radiance. She does not again meet young Ducane; nor does Prue reappear until luncheon-time, when she comes down from her bedroom with red eyes, but an air of determined cheerfulness. ' It would have been much too hot for riding to-da}^,' she says, fanning herself ; ' unbearable, indeed ! We are going a far longer ride in a day or two. He says he does not think that they will stay long. He was so bitterly dis- appointed. I -do not think that I ever saw any one so disappointed — did youf casting a wistful glance at her elder. ' He &(M he was,' replies Peggy sadly. The incident has made her own heart heavy ; and it is with an unelastic step that she sets off in the afternoon to the Manor, summoned thither by one of Lady Eoupell's almost daily cocked-hat notes, to hold sweet converse upon the arrangements of an imminent village concert. A casual sentence to the effect that everybody but the old lady her- self mil be out has decided Margaret to obey the summons, which, did it expose her to a meeting with Lady Betty and John Talbot, she would have certainly disregarded. Prue accompanies her to their gate, still with that strained look of factitious content on her childish face; and, as she parts from her sister, whispers feverishly : 'Find out how soon they are going !' Dispirited as she was on leaving her own home, Miss Lambton's cheerfulness undergoes still further diminution before she reaches her goal; as, in passing through the park, has not she, in a retired and bosky dell, caught a fdimpse of a white gown, and of a supine male figure, with a curly head and a poetry book, stretched beside it % She starts at the sight. Freddy had certainly implied that he was going out DOCTOR CUPID 6s riding Avith Lady Betty. On searching her memory, she found that he had not actually said so ; but he had know- ingly conveyed that idea to her mind. It is not the first time by many that Freddy Ducane has succeeded in con- veying impressions that do not absolutely tally with the fact ; but each fresh discovery of his disingenuousness gives her a new shock. Lady Koupell's boudoir is upstairs ; and, following her usual custom, Margaret repairs thither un- announced. In doing so she passes the day nursery's open door ; and, through it, sees Miss Harborough sitting on the floor, buttoning her boots. Peggy stops a moment to throw the child a greeting; but is instantly checked by the nurse. ' Oh, please, ma'am, do not speak to her ! I am sure that she does not deserve it ! she has been a real naughty girl!' On inquiry, it appears that the enemy of man having again entered into Miss Lily, she has cut the string of her necklace, strewed the beads all over the floor, and then told a barefaced lie, and entirely denied it. During this recital of her iniquities she continues her buttoning quite calmly; and merely says, with a dis- passionate tone of indifierence and acquiescence : 'Yes, I am bad.' It is two hours later — so long does the discussion- over the penny reading last — before Margaret again passes the nursery door. The interval has been filled by a discussion as to which of the local talent must be invited to contribute, and which may be, without giving too much offence, left out ; but the larger part has been spent in a confederate consultation as to how best to prevent Mrs. Evans from singing ' Love, the Pilgrim.' The matter is arranged at last ; and Peggy puts on her hat and gloves again to depart. As she repasses the nursery door she finds that an entire change of decoration 5 66 DOCTOR CUPID has taken place. Instead of the young cynic defiantly buttoning her boots in the teeth of the law, she sees a little pious figure in a white nightgown, kneeling by its nurse's side. The instant, however, that the saintly little form catches sight of her it is up on its bare legs, and rushing towards her, ' Oh, Miss Lambton, do let me say my prayers to you ! it would be so pleasant ! — No, Franky,' with a disposition to hustle her little brother, who is putting in a like claim ; ' you are too little ; you can say yours to Nanny ! ' As she speaks she pulls Peggy by the gown into the room ; and, placing her in a chair, kneels down at once— so that there may be no chance of her escaping — beside her, with hands devoutly folded, but a somewhat roving eye. ' Which shall I say V asks she, with a wriggle of the back and an air of indifference : '" Our Father" or " Gentle Jesus"?' 'Say whichever you please,' replies Margaret gently; 'only attend and make up your mind which.' 'Oh, then,' with another wriggle, 'I will say "Gentle Jesus." ' After a pause : 'Do you think that there Avould be any harm in my praying for John Talbot?' Margaret gives a little jump. It is, then, an hereditary passion ! But she answers drily : 'Not the least.' Another pause. The wriggling has ceased. ' Only,' pursues Peggy, quite determined not to supply the form of petition for Talbot's welfare, 'only you must say it out of your own head. I am not going to tell you what to say.' ' Oh, then,' with an air of resolution, ' I had better say, " God bless John Talbot ; and I am glad he is here." ' She has pronounced this last somewhat eccentrically- DOCTOR CUPID 67 worded supplication rather loud, and at the end of it her wandering eye takes in an object which makes her spring from her knees as hastily as she had done before. 'Oh ! there is John Talbot !' cries she, tearing out bare- foot into the passage, and flinging herself into his arms. ' I have been praying for you ! ' cries she, hugging him. 'JVIiss Lambton said that I midit.' At this unexpected colouring given to her reluctant permission Peggy reddens. ' I said that there was no harm in it,' explains Peggy hurriedly ; 'there is no harm in praying for any one.' ' And the more they need it the greater charity it is,' replies he, looking at her with so sad and deprecating a humilit}- that her anger against him melts. CHAPTEE IX ' God Almighty first planted a Garden. And indeed it is the Purest of Humane pleasures. It is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirit of Man ; Without which Buildings and Pallaces are but Grosse Handy- works : And man shall ever see that when Ages grow to Civility and Elegancie they come to Build Stately, sooner than to Garden Finely : as if Gardening were the Greater Perfection.' I DO not know whether Peggy had ever read Bacon, but she certainly endorsed his opinion. ' The garden is the only really satisfactory thing,' she says to herself, three days after that on which she had conducted Miss Harborough's devotions, as she stands beside her carnation-bed, and notes how many fat buds have, during the night, broken into pale sulphur and striped and blood-red flowers. To few of us, I think, has not at one time or other of our lives the doubt presented itself, whether the people we love are not a source of more pain than pleasure to us, what with their misfortunes, their ill -doings, and their deaths. But despite frost, and snail, and fly, and drought, and flood, the joy in a garden must always enormously exceed the pain. The frost may shrivel the young leaves, but the first sun -kiss brings out green successors ; the drought may make the tender herbs bow and droop, but at the next warm rain -patter they look up again. The frost that nips our human hearts often no after -sunbeam can uncongeal; and the rain falls too DOCTOR CUPID 69 late to revive the flower that the world's cruel drought has killed. 'Did you find out how soon they are going 1' asks Prue breathlessly, running down the road to meet her sister on her return from the Manor, in her eagerness to get her tidings. It has been the one thought that has filled her mind during the three hours of Margaret's absence. Peggy shakes her head despondently. ' Milady did not know.' ' I suppose that they had gone out riding before you got there.' This is not a question, so Margaret thinks herself ex- empted from the necessity of answering it. ' Had they gone out riding before you got there V repeats Prue, with feverish pertinacity. It is a question now, so she must make some reply. She only shakes her head. 'Then you saw them set off?' — very eagerly. 'How did she look % beautiful, I am sure ! ' ' I did not see them.' It is a moment before the younger girl takes in what the last sentence implies ; then she says in a changed low key: ' You mean to say that they did not go out riding at aiir ' No,' replies Peggy, softly putting her arm round her sister's shoulders, as if she would ward off the imminent trouble from her by that kind and tender gesture ; ' they did not go out riding at all ; they sat in the park together instead.' There is a short silence. 'Then he threw me over for nothing?' says Prue, in a choked whisper. ' Yes,' in a whisper too. 70 DOCTOR CUPID Prue has snatched herself out of Peggy's arms, and drawn up her small willowy figure. ' He shall not have the chance of playing fast and loose with me again in a hurry,' she says, her poor face burning. Alas ! he would have the chance next day, if he chose to take it ; but he does not even take the trouble to do that. Two whole days pass, and nothing is either seen or heard of him. And through these two long days Prue, with flagging appetite and fled sleep, rejecting occupation, starting at the sound of the door-bell, watches for him ; and Peggy watches too, and starts, and is miserable for company. During those weary two days Prue's mood changes a hundred times, varying from pitiful attempts at a dignified renunciation of him, always ending in a deluge of tears, to agonised efforts at finding excuses for his neglect, and irritation at her sister for not being able to say that she thinks them sufficing ones. ' He is so hospitable,' she says wistfully, as the sun sets upon the second empty day ; ' he has almost exaggerated ideas of what he owes to his guests. And after all, there is no one else to entertain them. Milady does not trouble her head about them ; he has such good manners ; he is so courteous ! Come now, prejudiced as you always are against him, you yourself have often said, " How courteous he is ! " ' Then, as Peggy makes but a faint and dubious sign of acquiescence, she adds irritably : ' Whether you own it or not, you have said so repeatedly ; but there is no use in talking to a person who blows hot and cold, says one thing to-day and another to-morrow.' The third morning has come. In the garden, dew- crisped and odorous, but whose spicy clove -carnation breath brings no solace to her careless nostril, Prue sits bent and listless, her fragile prettiness dimmed, and the nosegay of her choicest flowers — usually most grudgingly DOCTOR CUPID 71 plucked — extravagantl}" gathered by Margaret five minutes ago, in the hope that their morning beauty may tempt her sick chick to a smile, lying disregarded on the grass beside her, and sniffed at by ]\Iink, who makes a face of unaffected disgust at the mignonette. ' He has never in his life been so long without coming to see us when he was at home,' says Prue dejectedly ; ' once he was thirty-six hours, but that was accounted for afterwards by his having had one of his neuralgic head- aches. Do you think' — "v^dth a little access of life and animation — 'that he can be ilH' ' It is possible, of course,' replies Margaret gravely ; ' but I do not think it is probable.' ' If I could only know,^ says the other wearily ; ' if I could be sure; it would be something to be sure of any- thing ! I am so tired of wondering ! ' 'I might go up to the Big House to find out for you,' suggests Peggy, magnanimously swallowing down her own acute distaste to this proposition, and speaking with a cheerful relish, as if she liked it. ' I could easily make an excuse to go up to the Big House ; shall I gol' The capricious poppy colour has sprung back into Prue's thin cheek. ' Oh, if 3^ou Avould ! ' ' Of course I will,' replies Margaret gaily ; * it will bo a nice walk for me ; the garden makes me so lazy about walking. What time shall I go 1 morning or afternoon V ' Oh, if you did not mind, morning is the soonest.' The words are scarcely out of her mouth before ting, tang ! sharply sounds the hall-door bell. It is a bell that is hardly ever pulled in a forenoon, save l)y one person — a person who does not confine himself to the canonical hours of calling. In a moment there is a light in Prue's dimmed eyes, and Margaret's great blue ones beam for company. 72 DOCTOR CUPID ' I think that I need not go up to the Big House, after all,' she says, with soft gladness. ' Shall I go away,' asks Prue, in a trembling whisper, 'and not come back for ten minutes or so? Perhaps he would think better of me if I did not seem so eager to meet him. Shall I V ' I think I would not,' answers Peggy gently ; ' I would sit quietly here, just as if nothing had happened. I think it would be more dignified.' They wait in silence. What a long time Sarah is in putting on a clean apron and turning down her sleeves ! But he is admitted at last, has passed through the house, and is stepping across the turf towards them. He ! But what he % Alas for Prue ! there are more he's than one in the world — more he's that call at un- canonical hours ! 'Oh, Peggy!' she says, with almost a sob, 'it is only John Talbot ! It is not he after all.' Peggy does not answer. Her feelings, though nearly as poignant as her sister's, are a good deal more complex. An indignation for which she can perfectly account, and an agitation for which she can give herself no reason at all, make her disappointment, though not far from being as bitter, less simple than Prue's. She advances to meet her visitor with an air that would make a more impudent heart than his sink. Over her face is Aviitten, though the words do not abtually pass her lips, that least reassuring of saluta- tions, 'To what are we indebted for the honour of this visits' A woman's anger is seldom wholly reasonable, and on this occasion Margaret's indignation against Talbot is called forth not only by his being himself, but by his not being Freddy Ducane, which is certainly more his misfortune than his fault. After all, he is, for a villain, not possessed DOCTOR CUPID 72, of very much effrontery, since the austerity of so young an eye strikes him dumb. The only person who shows him any civiUty is Mink, who, being of a rather superficial character, is glad of any addition to his social circle, and does not inquire too nicely into its quality. It is probable that Talbot, being a man of the world, would have recovered the use of his tongue in time ; but as he is rather slow about it, Margaret takes the initiative, 'Is it something about the village concert?' she asks. He looks puzzled. ' The village concert ! I am afraid that I have not heard anything about the village concert.' 'Oh!' returns she, coldly surprised. 'I thought that probably Lady Eoupell had asked you to leave a message with me about it. It is not that, then V She continues to look expectantly at him. Since it is not that, it must be on some other errand he has come. She clearly thinks it an impossible impertinence on his part to have called on her at eleven o'clock in the morning without an excuse. And yet such is the case. He has come because he has come ; he has no better reason to give, either to her or to himself. A wild idea of trumping up the expected message, and another of feigning that he has come to inquire after the fox, cross his mind ; but he dismisses both : the first because he knows he should be found out, and the second because Miss Lambton might take it as a fresh demand upon her pity for the wound got in her service. 'I am afraid I have no message,' he says boldly. 'I was passing your door, and I — I — rang. By the bye' (smiling nervously as the utter inadequacy of his explana- tion falls upon his ears), ' what a loud bell yours is ! I was so frightened at the noise I made that I was half inclined to run away when I had rung it.' 74 DOCTOR CUPID She does not say that she is glad he did not ; she does not say anything civil. She only asks him to sit down, Avhich, when he has shaken hands with Prue, and wondered inwardly what she can have been doing to make herself look so odd, he does. Again silence, and again it is broken by Margaret. After all, she cannot be conspicuously rude even to him in her own house. It is, indeed, one of the problems of life, 'When is it permissible to insult one's neighbour 1' Not in one's own house ; not in his. There is, then, only the open street left. For the sake of saying something, and also because she knows that she is giving voice to her sister's unspoken wish, Peggy inquires civilly whether they are all well at the Manor. 'Yes, I think so,' replies Talbot slowly. 'I have not heard any of them complain of any disease beyond the long disease of life.' His tone is so little what one would expect from the happy lover of a fashionable beauty, that Margaret, with that charity that thinketh no evil, to which we are all so prone, instantly sets it down to affectation. ' That is a disease that I daresay does not hinder you all from amusing yourselves,' returns she sarcastically. 'Amusing ourselves? Oh yes, very well. I do not complain.' There is such an obviously true ring about the depression with which this announcement of his contentment with his lot is uttered, that even she can no longer doubt of its reality. So he is not happy with his Betty after all ! And a very good thing, too ! Serve him right ! But perhaps the discovery tends to mollify a little the tone of her next observation. 'Are you thinking how' badly we want mowing?' she asks, her eyes following the direction of his, which are DOCTOR CUPID absently bent upon the sward, to-day not shorn to quite its usual pitch of velvet nicety. 'So Ave do, indeed. But Jacob has imluckily fallen ill, just as milady lent me the machine, and there it and the pony stand idle, and we ' — - regretfully eyeing her domain — 'are, as you see, like a hay -meadow.' Talbot does not speak for a moment. A great idea is labouring its way to birth in his mind — an idea that may give him a better foothold here than any casually escaped fox or precarious porterage of messages can ever do. * AVhy should not I mow V asks he at last. 'YoiiV ' Yes, I ; and you lead the pony.' She looks at him, half inclined to be angry. 'Is that a joker ' A joke — no ! Will you tell me where the pony is ? IMa}^ I harness it V Again she looks at him, waveringly this time, and thence to her turf. It is already an inch and a half too long ; by to-morrow morning it will be three inches, an offence to her neat eye ; and when Jacob falls ill he is apt to take his time about it. She yields to temptation. ' I will call the boy.' But the boy is out — marhleing, vagranting after his kind about the near village, no doubt. They have to harness the pony themselves ; and by the time that they have put the bridle over her head, inserted her feet into her mowing shoes, and led her out of her dark stall into the sunny day, John has almost recovered the ground he had lost since that fortunate hour when, with three dro})s of his blood, he had bought a square inch of oil-silk and a heavenly smile. They set off. Loudly whirs the machine. Up flies the grass in a little green cloud, which the sun instantly turns into deliciously scented new-mown hay ; sedately steps the 76 DOCTOR CUPID pony; gravely paces Margaret beside her; honourably John stoops to his toil behind. It is not a pursuit that lends itself much to conversation; but at least he has continuously before his eyes her flat back, her noble shoulders, the milky nape of her neck ; and can conjecture as to the length of her unbound hair by counting the number of times that the brown plait winds round the back of her broad head. Every now and then they pause to empty out the grass, and each time a few words pass between them. 'Is Jacob very ilU' 'I am afraid that he suffers a good deal' 'Is he likely to die?' ' Heaven forbid ! ' ' Because if he is, I wish you would think of me.' He is half afraid when he has said this; it verges, perhaps, too nearly upon familiarity. But she is not offended. Her eye, flattered by her shaven lawn, cannot rest very severely upon him who has shaven it for her. Her spirits have risen ; exhilarated by the wholesome exercise, by the sunshine, by who knows what. Only when her look falls now and again upon Prue, still flung listlessly on the garden-seat, with her nosegay — not more flagging than she — withering on the ground beside her, does a cloud come over it. ' Should I get a good character from your last place V returns she playfully. 'From the Foreign Office f 'Was it the Foreign Office?' with a momentary impulse of curiosity for which she instantly pulls herself up. ' You know one always expects to get a character from the last place.' 'I do not know whether it is a good one. It is a nine-years' one.' Then they set off again. Next time it is about Prue. DOCTOR CUPID 77 'I hope she is not ilH' his eyes following Margaret's to the little forlorn figure under the Judas-tree. 'No-o.' 'Nor unhappy?' 'We all have our Black Mondays' — evasively — 'only some of us have Black Tuesdays and Black Wednesdays as AveU— ahl' What has happened to her 1 Her gloomy sentence has ended in a suppressed cry of joy, and her cheeks have changed from pink to damask. He turns to seek the cause of this metamorphosis. ' Why, there is Ducaue ! ' In an instant his eyes have pounced back upon her face. It is settling again into its pretty normal colours, but the joy is still there. ' Yes, there is Freddy ! ' she acquiesces softly. A sharp needle of jealousy pricks his heart. This, then, is why she received him so frigidly. She was expecting the other. ' We stop now, I suppose 1 ' he says abruptly. 'What! tired already, Jacob's w^ould-be successor?' asks she rallyingly. ' Hardly. But I supposed that you would wish to stop. ' ' On account of Freddy V — with a little shrug. ' Pooh ! he is a fly on the wall ; and besides, he — he is not coming this way.' It is true. Straight as a die young Ducane is making for the Judas-tree ; and from under that Judas-tree a little figure, galvanised back into youth and bloom, rises, walking on air to meet him. The eyes of John and Margaret meet, and he undei'- stands. As he goes home he feels that he has made a real step in advance this time. He shares a secret with her. Ho knows about True ! CHAPTEE X ' Oui' Master hath a garden which fair flowers adorn, There will I go and gather, both at eve and morn : Nought's heard therein but Angel Hymns with harp and lute, Loud trumpets and bright clarions, and the gentle, soothing flute. ' The lily white that bloometh there is Purity, The fragrant violet is surnamed Humility : Nought's heard therein but Angel Hymns with harp and lute, Loud trumpets and bright clarions, and the gentle, soothing flute.' ' Well,' cries Peggy anxiously, as, the young men having taken leave, she sees her sister come running and jumping, and humming an air, to meet her, 'is it all right?' ' Of course it is all right,' replies Prue, vaulting over the tennis-net to let off a little of her steam. ' If it had not been for your long face, I should never have doubted it.' 'Yesr * It was just as I expected ; he was too polite to leave them. He says he never in his life remembers spending two such tedious days; but he is so unselfish. He says himself that he knows he is full of faults, but that he cannot understand any one being selfish, even from the point of view of their own pleasure. He said it so simply.' 'H'm!' ' I was so sorry for you, Peggy — saddled Avith that tiresome John Talbot all morning. Of course I ought to have helped you ; but you know I had not a word to throw DOCTOR CUPID 79 to a dog. It was very provoking of him, wasting all your morning for yon.' 'INI}' morning was not wasted,' rejoins Margaret calmly. 'He may be a very bad man, but he mows well.' ' He might as well have finished it while he was about it,' says Prue, captiously eyeing the lawn. ' It looks almost worse than it did before, half mown and half unmown.' For an instant Margaret hesitates ; then, with a shght though perceptible effort over herself, she says : ' I suppose he thought so ; for he has offered to come aoain to-morrow to finish it. He said one could not leave it half-shaven, like a poodle.' She looks at her sister a little doubtfully as she speaks — as one not quite sure of the soundness of the comparison, and that would be glad to have it confirmed by another judgment. But Prue's wings have already carried her up again into her empyrean. 'We are to ride quite late this afternoon. He wants me to see the reapers reaping by moonlight as we come home. He says he always associates me with moonlight. I am to ride the bay. He says he quite looks upon her as mine — that it gives him a sort of turn to see any one else on her;' and so on, and so on, Margaret smiles rather sadly ; but as it is no use going to meet trouble half-way, she allows herself to be carried away by Prue's infectious spirits, on however rickety a foundation those spirits may be built. In her heart she is scarcely more pleased with her own conduct than with her sister's. 'One cannot touch pitch without being defiled,' she says to herself severely. She says it several times — is, indeed in the act of saying it next morning, when, on the stroke of eleven, punctual to his minute, the poor pitch reappears. She sets him at once to his mowing, and allows him very short intervals 8o DOCTOR CUPID for rest and conversation. Since he has come to work, let him work. No doubt as soon as he discovers that it is honest labour and not play that is expected of him he will trouble her with no more of his assiduities. And yet, as he bids her good-bye, leaving behind him a smooth sweep of short velvet for her to remember him by, he seems to linger. ' How is Jacob V he asks. 'No better.' 'The garden looks a little straggly,' suggests he insi- diously, knowing her weak side. 'A great many things want tying up. The beds need edging, and the carnations ought to be layered,' 'You are very learned,' says she, smiling. 'Does the F.O. teach you gardening f 'Well, no; that is not included in the curriculum. That is an extra.' 'Who did teach you, then?' asks she, with an inquisi- tiveness which, as soon as the words are out of her mouth, shocks and surprises herself. Can it be Betty % A Betty that loves her children and digs in her garden ! If it is so, Peggy will have to recon- struct her altogether. ' My sister.' His sister ! What a relief ! It would have been so humiliating to have had her strongest taste degraded by a community mth painted, posturing Betty. 'You have a sister f ' Had. There is a good deal of diflFerence.' And with that he leaves her abruptly. But he returns next day at the same hour ; and, as there has blown a boisterous wind in the night, which has prostrated top- heavy plants, torn off leaves, and scattered flower-petals, she has not the heart to refuse his aid in a general tidying and sweeping up. Next day he clips the edges of the DOCTOR CUPID 8i borders very nicel}' -with a pair of shears ; and the next day they gather lavender off the same bush. Gathering lavender, particularly off the same bush, is a good deal more productive of talk than mowing ; nor is it possible to her to keep her new servant within the bounds of a silence to which she had never attempted to confine her old one. But, indeed, by the time that they have come to the lavender day the wish for his silence has ceased. On the second — the general sweeping day — he had told her about his sister — had told her in short dry sentences how he had lost her ; and she had cried out of sympathy for him who did not cry, and had said to herself, ' What if it had been my Prue 1 ' On the third day, though assuredly no word or hint of Betty had passed his lips, somehow, by woman's instinct, sharpened by observation, she has sprung to a conclusion, not very erroneous, as to his garish mock- happiness and his shattered life. On the fourth day she asks herself why he never comes except in the forenoon ; and herself answers the question, that it is because lazy Betty lies late, and until one o'clock has no knowledge of his comings or goings. On the fifth day she resolves that he shall come in the afternoon. She will be visited openly or not at all. So when, giving his bundle of lavender into her hands, he says with a valedictory formula, ' The same hour to-morrow f she answers quietly : 'I am afraid not; I have an engagement M'ith Mrs. Evans for to-morrow morning ; Ave must give up the garden to-morrow, unless' — as if with an after-thought — 'unless you could come later — some time in the afternoon V His countenance falls. What property has he in his OAvn afternoons % His weary afternoons of hammock and scandal and cigarettes ? * I am afraid ' he begins ; but at once he sees her face hardening. She knows. She imderstands. Cost what it may, he will not see again in her mouth and eyes 6 82 DOCTOR CUPID that contempt whose dawning he had once before detected, to the embittering of his rest. He will not leave her with those tight lips and that stern brow. Pay for it as he may, he will do her bidding. ' At what hour, then V he asks readily. ' Four % five % it is all one to me.' She hesitates a moment. She has laid a trap for him, and he has not fallen into it. 'Shall we say fivef He sees the surprise in her look, and is rewarded by it. But as he walks home he ponders. How is he to break to Betty the act of insubordination of which he has pledged himself to be guilty % For the last week he has been leading a double life ; dissembling his happy mornings from the monopoliser of his weary afternoons. A sense of shame and revolt comes over him. He "will dissemble no longer. Know as he may that from the tyranny whose yoke he himself fastened about his neck — from the chain which he himself has encouraged to eat into his life, only death or Betty's manumission can — according to honour's distorted code — free him ; yet there is no reason why he should deny himself the solace of such a friendship as a good woman who divines his miserable story will accord him : a woman who lies under no delusion as to his being a free agent ; in whose clear eyes — their innocence not being a stupid ignorance — he has read her acquaintance with his history; and whose strong heart can run no danger from the company of one whom she despises. Nor as the time draws near, though the natural man's aversion from vexing anything weaker than itself, coupled with his knowledge of his lady's unusual tear-and-invective power, may make him wince at the thought of the coming contest, does his resolution at all flag as to asserting and sticking to his last remnant of liberty. He might, as it happens, have cut the knot by flight, Betty having given him the occasion DOCTOR CUPID 83 by forsaking him for a game of billiards with Freddy ; but he is determined to fight the battle out on the open field. She has rejoined him now, and the weather being fresher than it was, and Betty the chilliest of mortals, they are walking briskly up and down the terrace, she -m-apped in a ' fluther ' of lace and feathers, and \A\\\ her children frisking round her, a good and happy young matron. She is very happy just now, dear Betty. She has beaten Freddy at billiards, and made him break tryst with Prue. She is going to make him break another to-morrow. Is it any wonder that she looks bright and sweet % Little Franky has hold of her hand ; and Lily is backing along the gravel walk before her. Betty laughs. ' Can you imagine what can be the pleasure of walking backwards with your tongue out?' asks she of Talbot. 'Franky darling, you are pulling my hand off; Avould not you like to run away and play with Lily V But the little spoilt fellow only clutches her fingers the tighter. 'No, no ; I like to stay with you, mammy !' ' And so you shall,' cries she, hugging him ; ' you shall always do whatever you like. But Lily ' — in a colder key — ' you may run away ; we do not want you. What are you staring at me so for, child V Lily puts her head on one side, and hoisting up her shoulder to meet her cheek, rubs them gently together, uath her favourite gesture. 'I was only thinking, mammy,' replies she pensively, ' what much smaller ears than yours Miss Lambton has. Do you think that she will grow deaf sooner than other people because her ears are so small ?' 'Nonsense!' rejoins the mother sharply; 'do not get into the habit of asking stupid questions. Run away !' 'Out of the moutli of babes and sucklings,' etc. The way has been paved for Talbot in a way that he could not have expected. Miss Harborougli walks away slowly, 84 DOCTOR CUPID dragging her legs, and with a very deep rehictance. She scents an interesting conversation in the air. * It is odd that Lily should have mentioned Miss Lambton,' says Talbot, taking the plunge; 'for I was just going to mention her myself.' ' It is what you do not often do,' replies Betty drily ; ' " out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," cannot be said of you.' ' Her gardener is ill,' continues Talbot, leaving unnoticed this little fling, and speaking in as matter-of-fact a tone as he can assume ; ' and I promised to help her to water her garden. By the bye ' — with an unnecessary glance at the stable clock — ' if you could spare me for half an hour — I said I would be there by five — I ought to be of£' There is an ominous silence. Then : ' How do you know that her gardener is ill % Did she think it necessary to write and communicate that interesting fact to you?' 'No.' ' She has not been here since Monday V 'I believe not.' ' Then you have been there V 'Yes.' ' What day V He hesitates. Shall he make a clean breast of it % Yes ; ' in for a penny, in for a pound.' 'I have been there five days,' replies he slowly, and looking down. Another pause. He keeps his eyes resolutely averted from her face, but he hears an angry catch in her breath. 'In the morning, I suppose, before I was up?' 'Yes.' She breaks into a rather shrill laugh. * What an incentive to early rising ! The early Blowsabel picks the worm.' DOCTOR CUPID 85 Her tone is so inexpressibly insulting that he has to bite his lips hard to keep in the furious retort that rises to them ; but he masters himself. Of what use to bandy words with an angry woman % And, after all, from her point of view she has some cause of complaint. Franky has altered his mind, and trotted off after his senior, for whose tree-climbing, cat-teasing, general mischief-doing powers he entertains a respect tempered with fear. They are alone. Betty is walking along with her nose in the air, a smile of satisfied ire at the happiness of her last shaft giving a malicious upward curve to her pretty mouth. 'How I should have laughed,' says she presently, 'if any fortune-teller had told me that it would be my fate to be supplanted by a sa ' ' You are going to say " a sack of potatoes," ' says he, interrupting her. 'Do not. If you must call names, invent a new one ! '" 'Why give myself that trouble,' asks she insolently, ' when the old one fits so admirably 1 Siqyplanted hy a sack/ ' (dwelling with prolonged relish on the obnoxious noun). ' What a good title for a novel ! Ah ! Freddy, my child !' catching sight of the young fellow, who is just stepping out of the window of the drawing-room. 'I was afraid you had gone to dry your skeleton's eyes. Come and dry mine instead : I assure you they need it much more.' As she speaks she goes hurriedly to meet Ducane, and disappears with him round a corner of the house. Tall)ot is free to pursue his scheme with what heart he may. The last ten minutes' conversation has taken all the bloom off his project. That the Avhole pleasure to himself has been eliminated from it is, however, no reason Avhy lie should break his word to Peggy, and, if he wishes to obey her with the punctuality that he has always hitherto shown, he must set off at once. He begins to walk towards a turn-stile that leads into the park ! CHAPTER XI Her cheeks so rare a white was on, No daisy makes comparison (Who sees them is undone) ; For streaks of red were mingled there, Such as are on a Catherine pear, The side that's next the sun.' He has not gone above a hundred yards when he hears a small thunder of feet behind him, and turning, finds Miss Harborough flying at the top of her speed to overtake him. ' Mammy said I might go with you,' cries she breathlessly. He stops and hesitates. Is it possible that she has sent this innocent child to be an unconscious spy upon him ? * Mammy said I might go with you,' repeats Lily, see- ing his hesitation, and beginning to drop her long lashes, and rub her cheek with her shoulder, according to her most approved methods of fascination. 'But I did not say so,' returns he gravely. ' Oh, but you will,' cries she, flinging herself boisterously into his arms ; ' and I — I'll help you over the stiles.' Who could resist such a bribe as this 1 Certainly not Talbot. They walk ofi" amicably hand-in-hand. After all, he ought to be thankful for anything that distracts him from his own thoughts, which are certainly neither pleasant nor profitable enough to be worth thinking. To-day he is sad, not only on his own account, but on Margaret's. Short as has been the time of his acquaintance with her, he has DOCTOR CUPID 87 got into a habit, which seems long, of being sony with her sorrows. He knows that to-day will be a black day for Prue, and that Peggy will be darkened in company. Is it not better then, seeing that he cannot stir a finger to lift the weight from the three hearts he would fain lighten, that he should have his eight-year-old companion's chatter to be distracted by, that he should be initiated into the hierarchy of her aftections, and learn the order and degree in which her relations and friends are dear to her ? He is surprised and flattered at the extremely high place as- signed to himself immediately after father, and some way above mammy ; but is less exhilarated on finding out that he shares it with the odd-man, who has made and presented a whistle to her. 'And Franky? where does Frankycomef asks John, really quite interested in the subject. 'My dear little brother!' exclaims Lily, with an ex- travagant affection of sisterly tenderness. ' I am so fond of him ! Poor little brother ! he has no toys !' John smiles rather grimly. He knows that Miss Lily squabbles frightfully with her little brother in real life ; and how entirely mendacious is her statement as to his destitution of playthings. ' I have given him most of mine,' pursues Lily, casting one eye subtly up to watch the effect of her words, ' but he has broken them nearly all, and now we neither of us have any ! ' John receives this broad hint in a silence which Miss Lily feels to be sceptical ; but as her attention is at the same moment diverted by the sight of Miss Lambton's Eed House, and of Mink's face looking through the bars of the gate, on the anxious watch for passing market-carts to insult, she does not pursue the subject. Mink takes them for a market-cart at first, and insults them ; Ijut afterwards apologises, and shows them the way 88 DOCTOR CUPID to the garden, jumping np at Lily's nose, with an affectation of far greater pleasure than he can really feel. They find his mistress standing alone in the middle of her domain, a great gutta-percha snake lying on the ground behind her, and the hose directed at a thirsty verbena-bed. As they come up with her, the chiming church clock, having finished its preliminary stave of 'Home, Sweet Home,' strikes five. Whether the chimes or her own thoughts have deafened her, she does not hear their apj)roach. 'Is not that punctuality?' asks Talbot, drawing near. ' Which is better, to have only one very small virtue, and to have it in absolute perfection, or to have a smattering of several large onesf At his voice she starts, and turns, her eye falling upon him, and also, of course, upon the child. The latter in- stantly flings herself into her arms. 'Mammy and John Talbot said I might come!' cries she efi'usively. 'You did not give John Talbot much choice in the matter,' returns he drily. 'But mammy told me to come,' urges Lily in eager self-defence ; ' she told me to run fast that I might be sure to overtake you ! ' John feels a dull red rising to his brow ; but he will not let his eyes sink : they meet Peggy's full and straight. She shall see that this time, at all events, he has been neither ashamed nor afraid to proclaim his visit to her. Peggy has gently unclasped the child's arms from about her neck. ' What a dear little doggy ! ' cries Lily, chattering on, and deceived by Mink's manner, as all strangers are, into the belief that he has conceived a peculiar fancy for her. ' What is his name V •Mink.' DOCTOR CUPID 89 * Aud what kind of dog is he 1 ' ' That is what uo one — not even himself — has ever been able to make out,' returns Margaret, Avith a smile. ' Some- times he thinks that he is a Yorkshire terrier, and sometimes he does not. I bought him at the Dogs' Home, because he was the most miserable little dog there, and because I was quite certain that if I did not, nobody else would. He has grown so uppish now that sometimes I have to remind him of his origin — have not I, Minky % ' 'Mammy had a Yorkshire terrier once,' says Miss Harborough thoughtfully — ' John Talbot gave it her — but he died. She had him stuffed : he looks horrid now ! ' Talbot writhes. It seems to him as if he had never before tasted the full degradation of his position. He makes a clumsy plunge at changing the conversation by inquiring after Prue. ' She is lying down,' replies Peggy, while he sees a furrow come upon her white forehead. 'The heat tries her ; at least ' — her eye meeting his with a sort of appeal — * she is very easily tired ; and she has been waiting all afternoon Avith her habit on. She was engaged to go out riding at three, and now it is five; people ought not to make engagements if they are not prejiared to keep them ! ' 'I am afraid he had forgotten all about it,' answers Talbot sadly. Margaret's only answer is a dispirited shrug ; and Lily having by this time scampered off to visit the fox; if possible, with safety, pull his brush ; eat anything that is eatable in the kitchen-garden ; and make friendly advances to the stable-boy — Miss Lambton again takes up the hose. ' This,' says she, looking at it affectionately, ' is the one solid good I have ever got from the Big House ! ' He does not answer. Though he certainly does not class himself under the head of a solid good, her words give him a vague chilL go DOCTOR CUPID 'It sounds ungrateful,' pursues Peggy; 'but I often wish we could move this acre of ground, with everything that is on it, fifty miles farther away.' 'Do your 'Of course,' pursues she gravely, 'we get a great deal more society here than we should anywhere else; but I often think that that is a doubtful good. We grow to know people whose acquaintance we should be far better without. ' He winces. Does he himself come under this category % But she means no offence. ' You can have no notion how our lives are cut up,' she continues. 'We live in a whirl of tiny excitements, that would not be excitements to anybody but us. We never can settle to any serious occupation ; the moment we take up a book there is a note: "Prue, come out riding;" " Peggy, come and look over the accounts of the Boot and Shoe Club ; " " Peggy and Prue, come and dine to meet the— the " ' Harboroughs is the name which rises to her lips, and which she suppresses out of politeness to him. He knows, too, that the plural pronoun which she has employed throughout has been used only as a veil for Prue's weakness; that the pictui^e she has drawn has no likeness to her own steady soul. 'I sometimes think seriously of moving,' she says pre- sently. ' It would be a wrench ' — looking round wistfully. ' The only two big things that ever happened to me have happened here : Prue was born here, and mother died here. Yes, it would be a wrench.' He listens to her in a respectful silence. It would be impertinent in him to express overt sympathy in her trouble, the trouble she has never put into words. ' Sometimes I think that we should do better in London,' she goes on, looking at him almost as if appealing to him DOCTOR CUPID 91 for counsel ; ' there would be more to interest and distract us in London.' 'What, and leave the garden?' says he, lifting his eyebrows. 'She does not care really about the garden,' answers Margaret, forgetting herself, and using the singular pronoun which she might have employed all along. 'And as for me ' — with a little laugh — ' I would grow mignonette in a box ; and buy a load of hay, as I heard of one country-sick lady doing, and make myself a haycock in the back-yard.' ' I cannot fancy you in a town,' says he, almost imder his breath. It is true. It is impossible to him to picture her except with a background of waving trees, a floor of blossoming flowers, a spicy wind to toss her hair, and finches to sing to her. His imagination is not strong enough to transplant her to the narrow bounds of a little South Kensington home, lost in the grimy monotony of ten thousand others. ' It is very difficult to know what to decide,' she says, almost plaintively, 'and I have no one to advise me. Though I am not very young — twenty-two — I have very little experience of life. There must be a best ; but it is hard to find. Do you never feel it so 1 ' Her large pure eyes are upon him, asking him, as well as her mouth does, for an answer to this unanswerable question. For a moment he hesitates, then : ' Do not you know that there are some people who have arranged their lives so ingeniously that for them there is no best ; that the only choice left them lies between bad and worse % ' 'I do not believe it,' answers she solemnly. 'God gives us all a best, if we will only look for it ; and ' (in a lighter key) ' never fear but I shall find mine before I have done ! ' After that they finish their watering almost in silence. When he bids her good-ljye, having recaptured his Miss 92 DOCTOR CUPID Harborough, who is restored to him a good deal smirched by a delirious half-hour in the hayloft Avith a litter of kittens, Margaret thanks him simply, yet very heartily, for his services to her. ' Wliy are you so grateful to-day particularly % ' asks he, alarmed. ' You make me feel as if the band were playing " God Save the Queen," and everything was at an end.' 'Jacob comes back to his work to-morrow,' answers she, ' and you know,' with a smile, ' I cannot afford to keep two gardeners.' 'He must be very weak still.' 'Do not be afraid,' laughing again ; 'I will not overwork him.' ' Then I am to consider myself dismissed % ' 'With thanks — yes.' ' Out of work % Turned into the street % ' ' Yes.' 'And without a character?' 'I daresay you will not miss it,' replies she, a little cynically. ' Many people do without one.' He winces. She is not half so nice when she is cynical. ' Come along, Lily,' he says, in a vexed voice ; ' we are not wanted here any longer. We are old shoes, sucked lemons, last year's almanacs. Let us go.' 'My child !' cries Margaret, her eye falling for the first time on a gigantic rift in the front of Miss Harborough's frock, 'what have you done to yourself? What will Nanny say to youf ' I do not care what she says !' replies Lily swaggeringly. ' She is an old beast ! Oh, Miss Lambton,' with a sudden change of key, 'may not I come again to-morrow? Alfred wants me to come again to-morrow.' (Alfred is the stable- boy.) ' May not I come with John Talbot again to-morrow V 'You see that we are both of one mind,' says John, with a melancholy whine, walking off with his young lady. CHAPTER XII The Harboroughs' and Talbot's invitation to the Manor had been for a fortnight. Of that fortnight fully a week has already elapsed. To the house which comes next in the Harboroughs' autumn programme John Talbot has, by some strange oversight, not been asked. For this reason — to mark her indignation at so flagrant a departure from the code of civilised manners — Betty shows every symptom of an intention to throw up her engagement. But for once Mr. Harborough's love of sport exceeds his pliability. From a house which possesses some of the best grousing on the Yorkshire moors, not even the fact that his wife's admirer is not bidden to share it can keep him; and what is more, as it is an old-fashioned house which expects to see husband and wife together, he will make Betty go too. Talbot's engagements are more elastic. By an easy readjustment of them he might spare another seven days to his present quarters. It is true that Lady Eoupell has not as yet definitely asked him to prolong his visit, but he knows that she is hardly aware whether he goes or stays ; and as to Freddy, he is always brimming over with an easy hospitality Avhich costs him nothing, and makes every one say what a good fellow he is. A whole week of absolute freedom, afternoons as well as mornings; a whole week during which he need not pretend to be jealous — pretend to be fond — pretend to bo 94 DOCTOR CUPID everything that he once Avas, and is not, and never will be again ! It is possible, too, that Jacob may have a relapse. In that case, a whole week of mowing, of clipping edges, of picking lavender, and gathering groundsel for the cage- birds ! He knows that there must always be eleven bits gathered, because there are eleven birds, and she cannot bear one to be without. He smiles softly at this tender- hearted puerility of hers. And meanwhile, since she has made it clear to him that she does not desire any more of his immediate company, he keeps himself away for two whole days. AVhat business has he, who can never claim any rights over her, to expose her, by his assiduities, to the coarse gossip of a gaping village % But though his eye is not enriched by her, her presence and her words are with him night and day. One of her sentences rings for ever in his ears — ' God gives us all a best, if we will only look for it.' Look for it as he may, how can he find his best ? and finding, how dare he take hold of and make it his ? His best ! The best for him — does not it apparently stare him in the face % To shake off this chain that was once of flowers, and is now of cold eating iron, and to walk the world a free man, free for honest work and honest love. Ay, but to the riveting of that chain there went an oath, from which the mere fact of his having grown tired of wearing its fetters does not, in his opinion, release him. He is bound by an engagement the more perversely sacred, because none can hold him to it. Only by her with whom it was made can he be eman- cipated from it ; and for that emancipation how can he ask her % How can he go to her and say, ' I have grown tired of you ; I have grown fond of another woman. Let me go!' ^ It is only as a free gift from her hand that he can accept DOCTOR CUPID 95 his dismissal ; and, of the improbability of her ever making him that gift, his sinking spirit assures him. It is not only vanity and habit that tie her to him. Deep in his heart he knows that, cold wife, partial mother, bad friend as she is, to him she has been, and is, a fond and faithful lover ; that, if he were but to hold up his finger, she would toss to the winds position, diamonds, toilettes, admirers, everything that for her life holds of valuable, to face opprobrium and poverty by his side. He knows that he and Franky are the two things in the world she really loves, and for whom her foolish heart beats as truly under its worldly ' fluther ' of lace and satin as did ever Cornelia's for her Gracchi, or Lucretia's for her lord. It is absolutely impossible that he can cut her adrift. Bitterly unsatisfactory, wrong, senseless, and now oppressive as is the connection that binds him to her, he must hope for none other, none better, none dearer, as long as her and his lives last. Such being the case, is not it the height of unwisdom to himself, perhaps of injustice to that other woman, that he should seek her company with the consciousness of a heart he dare not give, and a hand he dare not offer ? This is the question that dings perpetually in his ears, as he lies down and as he rises up, as he walks moody and alone in the park, as he answers Lily's startling questions, and evades her broad hints ; or listens to Betty's anathemas of her man-milliner, or her petulant lamentations over the expected loss of his society during the ensuing week. He has not yet answered it on the third day after his last visit to the little Ecd House, when he meets Peggy in the lane, staggering under a philanthropic load of framed lithographs, which he helps her to carry to the workhouse, and to hang up on the walls, whose dreary monotony of whitewash they agreeably and gaudily vary. He has not yet answered it the next day, when he carries a message to 96 DOCTOR CUPID her from Lady Eoupell, a message which must be prepos- terously long, since it takes two hours and a half to deliver ; he has not yet answered it on the day after, nor on the day after that again, which is the last of the Harboroughs' visit. On the afternoon of that day some business has brought Peggy reluctantly up to the Manor, where she had not appeared for above a week. John and Lily, as is but civil, escort her home again ! It is true that Miss Harborough has had a near shave, at the moment of setting off, of being recaptured by her nurse — a danger from which she has been rescued only by her own presence of mind, a presence of mind made all the acuter by her excessive desire to flirt with John, and to overhear what — unintended for Lilyan ears — he has to say to his companion. 'Oh, Miss Lambton !' cries she, pulhng down Peggy's face in order to whisper importantly into her ear ; ' do not you think I had better come with you? There are the stiles ! I do not see,' with an affectation of excessive delicacy, 'how you are to get over the stiles with only John Talbot!' Her plea is admitted as sound. They all three spend a long dawdling afternoon at the Little House. They take the fox out for a run in the j&eld on his chain ; and in his joy he gallops round and round, tying all their legs together, even throwing Miss Harborough down — an accident which fills her with delight. He offers to play with Mink, who growls, and receives his advances with such hauteur that he has to be reminded of the humility of his own beginnings, and of the Dogs' Home. The snubbed fox throws himself on the sward and pants, swishing his brush from side to side like a cross cat. Then they restore him to his prison, at which he opens his red mouth Avide, making little angry wild noises. After they have done with the fox, they have still the DOCTOR CUPID 97 garden to water ; the kittens in the hayloft — to which they ascend, on the joint imitation of Alfred and Lily — to see ; peas to throw to the pretty prosy pigeons, long-Aviudedly courting in fans and pouts, and prism-coloured throats on the dove-cot roof. And when at length her guests take their tardy leave, Peggy is insensibly lured, step by step, into accompanying them more than half-way home. Into what could not such an evening lure one ? Through a barley-field first ; all the pale spears slanting westward in the level sun ; then a field of old pasture, knapweeds purpling, little hawkweed clocks telling the time in fairyland, loitering buttercups. Then a hedgerow with woody nightshade and long blue vetch ; then the green night of a little wood. Though the sun is nearing his declension, the -delicious smell that all day long he has compelled the grass and the flowers to bring him, in odorous tribute, still tarries, making the air rich— acre, as the French say ; a word for which there is no precise English equivalent. On the farther side of the tiny forest they part ; if so short a severance can indeed be called to part. Are not they to meet again in an hour or so, at that dinner-party at the IVIanor, to which both Peggy and Prue are bidden 1 and even if it were not so, have not they to-morrow, and again to-morrow, and yet to-morrow again, to look forward to ? This being so, why is it that such a curious last-time feeling clings to Talbot as he crosses the park with liis little chattering comrade, making him turn his head again and again in futile seeking towards the sylvan gate whence his tall and white-gowned friend has already disappeared % On entering the house, and going through an upper passage to his room, he is accosted by Betty's maid, who tells him that her ladyship's headache is better ; that she is on the sofa in Lady Roupell's boudoir, and that she has expressed a wish to see him as soon as he comes in. He 7 98 DOCTOR CUPID follows with a guilty conscience and a sinking heart. Has he for one moment of his long blissful afternoDn re- membered the headache, to which alone he owed his freedom; the headache genuine enough — though it took its birth from mortification and sjileen — to keep her stretched in pain and solitary darkness the livelong day % She is in semi -darkness still, her windows closed (a headache always makes her chilly) ; not a glint of apricot cloud or suave blue sky-field reaching her. A sense of pity, largely touched with remorse, comes over him, as he takes her hand, and says softly ; 'You are better at lasf? Come, that is well !' She leaves her hand, languid and rather feverish, lying in his. ' It is time that I should be better ! ' she says, with an impatient sigh. 'What a day I have had ! — our last day !' There is such genuine grief and regret in the accent with which she pronounces the three final words that his remorse deepens ; but that increase of self-reproach does not make it the least more possible to him to echo her lamentation. 'I asked Julie how often you had been to inquire after me,' continues she, turning her eyes, innocent to-day of their usual black smouches, interrogatively upon him ; ' she said she could not remember.' Talbot blesses the wisely ambiguous maid ; and, to hide his confusion, stoops his head over the hand, which he still — since it is evidently expected of him — holds. 'I wish my inquiries could have made you better,' says he, taking — and feeling with shame that he is taking — a leaf out of Julie's book. ' I am afraid that you will not be able to come down to dinner.' ' Oh, but I shall ! ' returns she sharply, ' Why do you think I shall not ? Is the wish father to the thought % ' He laughs constrainedly, taking refuge in what is often the best disguise, truth. DOCTOR CUPID 99 'Yes, that is it!' 'Milady would never forgive me,' pursues she, rolling her head restlessly about upon the cushions, ' if I left her to struggle with the natives alone ; I am sure I have not the heart to struggle with any one ! Oh, how miserable I am ! John !' — laying her other hand on his, and clasping it between both hers — ' how am I to get through the next fortnight V Talbot wonders whether the burning blush that he feels searing him all through his body shows in his face, whether he looks the double-faced cur that he feels. Probably he does not, or else the faint light helps him ; for she goes on unsuspiciously : ' You have never told me where you have decided to go to-morrow — to the Mackintoshes or the Delaneys ? If you ask my advice,' with a rather showery smile, ' I should say the Delaneys ; for you will be less well amused there, and have more time to think of me ! Remember that you have not given me your address; give it me now, lest you should forget it !' The tug of war has come. He would rather have put it off until her headache was gone — until he could meet her upon more equal terms. What chance has a man against a woman lying on a sofa with her eyes full of tears, and a handkerchief wetted with eau-de-Cologne tied round her aching brows % None. His hesitation is so obvious that she cannot 1)ut notice it. ' AYell,' she says, with some sharpness, ' why do not you answer me? Where is the difficulty?' He laughs artificially. ' The difficulty,' he says, trying to speak carelessly — ' the difficulty is that there is no difficulty. You have my address already. I am going to stay here !' He has deposited his box of dynamite : he has now only to wait for the explosion. But for twenty or thirty loo DOCTOR CUPID heart-beats she remains entirely silent, and, at the end of that time, only repeats his own words : 'To— stay— here!' 'Yes.' Another silence. He begins to wish that the exjilosion would come. It would at least be better than this. She has sat up on her sofa, and pushed back the wet bandage from her damp and straightened hair. She has neither belladonna nor rouge. He has always strongly deprecated and even reviled the use of either ; and yet he cannot help thinking, though he hates himself for so thinking, that she looks old and haggard without them. ' And this,' says she at last, speaking between her teeth in a low voice, ' is your delicate way of intimating to me that I am superseded ! ' He has risen to his feet. They stand staring each at each in the twilight room, the one not whiter than the other. How much worse it is than he had feared ! Close outside the window a robin is piping blithely. A stupid wonder flashes across his mind as to whether he is one of those for whom Peggy scatters crumbs on her window- sill. ' I think that that is a question not worth answering,' he replies, trying to speak calmly. 'But all the same it must be answered,' rejoins she, with symptoms of rising excitement. * You shall not leave the room until it is answered.' 'Will you plesise to repeat it then in a more intelligible form?' asks he, with a forced composure. For a moment she glares at him with dead-white face and shining eyes ; then, rising from her sofa, flings herself into his arms. 'How can you expect me to say such words twice?' cries she, bursting into a tempest of tears ; ' but if it is so, tell me the truth. You have always blamed me for not DOCTOR CUPID loi speaking trutli ; learn your own lesson : tell me the truth. Is it all over — all at an end V She has Avithdra'svTi herself again from him, and now stands holding him at arm's length, a hand upon each shoulder, her dimmed eyes fixed upon his face, searching for the least sign of faltering or evasion vipou it. But she finds none. 'You know,' he answers, in a low quiet voice, wliose gentleness is the cover for a bottomless depression, ' that there will never be an end to it until you make one.' Something in his tone dries her tears. 'Then why do you Avant to stay here '2 ' asks she, her voice still shaking from her late gust of passion. He is silent. Her words find an echo in his own heart. Why indeed 1 Seen in the hell-light of his renewed bondage, his plan for that one little halcyon week ahead seems to him to have been a monstrosity of folly and unreason. How could he, for even a moment, have enter- tained it ? Betty has sat down again upon the sofa; and wiping rather viciously the eyes in which an ireful light is flashing, she says softly, as if she were saying something rather pleasant : ' I am sure you would not wish to hurt lier, or blight lier young afi"ections ; and yet it seems to me that you are on the high-road to do both.' He writhes, but he could not speak, if flaying alive were to be the penalty of his dumbness. 'I do not think' — still in that silky key — 'that you have any right to turn the poor thing's head with attentions such as she has probably never received before.' At that he laughs out loud, and insultingly : 'Turn her head! Ha! ha!' ' It is very amusing, no doubt,' rejoins Betty, her false suavity giving way to a most real fury. In-cast heaving, and I02 DOCTOR CUPID colour rising, * and such hilarity becomes you extremely ; but, as she has probably never seen any one more attractive than the village apothecary, it would be no great excess of coxcombry on your part to suppose that you might be his successful rival.' But this taunt fails to extract any reply. Exasperated by her insuccess in driving him into angry speech, she goes on : ' I do not think you have had to complain of her rigour ; how many days' — with an innocent air of inquiry — 'has she allowed you to mow her lawn, and milk her cow, and feed her pig for her % Six % Seven ? I suppose you have been with her to-day, tool' At that he unwisely abandons his fortress of silence, and speaks : ' You had better ask Lily ; you have set her on more than once as a spy. Have your child in and ask her !' To this cold and withering taunt her own weaker sarcasms succumb; and again abandoning all self-control, she bursts into an agony of weeping, burying her head in the sofa-cushions, and convulsed from head to foot by her sobs. 'Is it any wonder,' she moans, 'that I do not want to see the only thing I have in the world go from me % What am I saying ?' — pulling herself up suddenly — ' how dare I say the only thing 1 have not I my Franky? I shall always have my Franky ! ' The grief of her tone is so poignant and so real that his heart softens to her, despite her former gibes. He lays his hand upon her shoulder. 'What is all this about?' he asks kindly. 'You know as well as I do that you will have me — such as I am — as long as you choose to keep me ! ' 'Then you will not stay here f cries she precipitately, cputting her desperate posture, and springing back with DOCTOR CUPID 103 startling suddenness into life and animation again ; ' then you will go to-moiTow V There is a pause. He walks to the window. Through it there comes the peaceful sound of bleating sheep ; and the distant sharp bark of a little dog. Can it be Mink ? He has a sharp bark. Poor little ]\Iink ! He will probably never see Mink again. And to-morrow, according to Peggy, Mink had promised to tell them all about the Dogs' Home ! He smiles transiently at the recollection of her childish jest. How many things they were to have done to-morrow ! Then he walks slowly back from the window and says : 'I will go to-morrow !' Perhaps there is something in the tone of this concession which takes away from the value of it, for Betty begins to sob again ; this time more in wrath than in sorrow. ' I do not think you need make such a favour of it ; I do not think it is much to ask, considering all things — considering how I have com — com — compromised my reputation for your sake for the last five years !' cries she hysterically. He does not defend himself; only a thought, whose want of generosity shocks him, flashes across his mind, that that was already a fnxt accomjM when he had first made her acquaintance. ' JVe know that there is no harm in our friendship,' pursues she, a slight red staining her tear- washed cheeks ; ' but nobody else knows it. The world is always only too pleased to think the worst, and in one sense ' — again mastered by her emotion — 'it is right! I would have given up anything — everything for you — you know I would ! and you — you — will give up nothing for me, not even such a trifle as tliis!' Once again pity gets the upper hand of him ; but a pity crossed by such a bottomless regret and remorse at having let himself slide into this tangled labyrinth of wrong, when I04 DOCTOR CUPID honour and dishonour have changed coats, and he does not know which is which, as the Lost Souls in Hell, if such there be, might feel in looking back upon their earthly course. * You are right,' he says ; ' we must do the best we can for each other ! We must not make life harder for one another than it already is. I will do what you wish ! I ought ! I will ! Such a trifle, too !' CHAPTER XIII * At length burst in the argent revelry, With plume, tiara and all rich array, Numerous as shadows haunting fairily The brain new stuffed in youth with triumphs gay Of old Romance.' The ' argent revelry ' has burst into the Manor in the shape of what Lady Eoupell, with more vigour than ele- gance, is apt to call one of her 'Beast Parties,' i.e. one of those miscellaneous gatherings of the whole neighbourhood to which she thinks herself bound twice or thrice in the year — gatherings which, though dictated by hospitality, are not usually very successful. It is Lady Roupell's principle to override all the small social distinctions of the neighbourhood, to invite all the people who quarrel, all the people who look down upon each other, all the people who are bored by one another, all the people who are try- ing to avoid each other, to hobnob at her bounteous board. 'They all go to God's house together, my dear; why should not they come to minef asks she, with a logic that she thinks unanswerable. And so they do ; but they do not enjoy themselves. That, however, is no concern of milady's. The ' Beasts ' musi like to talk to one another, or, if they do not, they ouglit to like it. Having thrown open her house to them, having given them every opportunity of over-eating themselves on her io6 DOCTOR CUPID excellent food, and being exhilarated by her admirable wines, she washes her hands of them ; and having enjoyed her own champagne and venison, sits down to her Patience- table, which is set out for her every night of her life, and would be were Queen Victoria to honour her with a visit. Of the Beast Parties the Evans pair invariably form a constituent part. 'I always ask the Evanses,' says milady good-naturedly. ' It is quite pretty to see the way in which he enjoys his dinner ; and she likes to wear her dyed gown, good woman, and smuggle candied ajmcots into her pockets for those ugly urchins of hers, and look out my friends in her "Peer- age" next day !' So the Evanses are here, and several harmless rural clergy; like them to the outer eye, though no doubt to the inner as dissimilar as each island-like human soul is from its neighbour. There are some large landowners with their wives, and some very small lawyers and doctors with theirs. There is a tallow- merchant, who to-day grovels in hides and tallow, but to-morrow will probably — oh, free and happy England ! — soar to a seat in the Cabinet. There is a Colonial Bishop imported by one neighbour, and a fashionable buffoon introduced by another; and lastly, there are Peggy and Prue. Never before has Peggy set off to a Beast Party with so light a heart. She knows how little chance of rational or even irrational entertainment such a feast affords ; and yet, do what she will, she feels gay. Prue is gay too, ex- travagantly gay, for did not Freddy stroll in half an hour ago with a flower for her, and a request to her to wear her green gown for his sake % Before setting off Peggy bids her eleven birds good- night, telling them that to-morrow they shall have a swing- ing ladder in their large cage to remind them of the DOCTOR CUPID 107 swinging tree-tops. Has not Talbot promised to make them a ladder % The girls have timed their arrival better than on a former occasion. The room is already full when they walk in with their breeze-freshened cheeks and their simple clothes. Margaret has not even her best dress on. She had looked at it waveringly and hankeringly at dressing-time ; but a sort of superstition — an undefined feeling that she is not going to meet any one for whom she has a right to prank herself out, prevents her wearing it. But she can- not help having her best face on. There is sunshiny weather in her heart. Even her repulsion for Lady Betty is weakened. Possibly she has been unjust towards her. Certainly she is not the human octopus from whose grasp no prey can escape alive, for which she took her. She herself has the best reason for knowing that from this octopus's arms prey can and does escape alive and well. After all, she has condemned her upon mere loose hearsay evidence. Henceforth she will trust only the evidence of her own eyes and ears. At present her eyes tell her that Betty is very highly rouged, and rather naked; and her ears — thanks to the din of tongues — tell her nothing. For a wonder. Lady Eoupell is down in time, her gown properly laced — usually, from excessive hurry, her maid has to skip half the eyelet-holes — and with her ornaments duly fastened on. She is following her usual rule, talking to the person who amuses her most, and leaving all the others to take care of themselves. As soon as dinner is announced, and Freddy has walked off with his allotted lady, she turns with an easy smile to her company, and says : ' Will everybody take in somebody, please V At this command, so grateful and natural in a small and intimate party, so extremely ill-suited to this large and io8 DOCTOR CUPID miscelUmeous crowd, there is a moment of hesitating and consternation. The hearts of those who know that they are never anybody's vohmtary choice, but whom conven- tionality generally provides with a respectable partner, sink to the soles of their shoes. The young men hang back from the girls, because they think that some one else may have a better right to them. All fear to grasp at a percedence not their due. At length there is a movement. The tallow-merchant, true to his principle of soaring, offers his arm to the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant. The parsons and doctors begin timidly to exchange wives. The Colonial Bishop casts his landing-net over Prue. Margaret's is one of the few breasts in the room in Avhich the order for promiscuous choice has excited a spark of pleasure. In the ordinary course of things she is aware that it is improbable that Talbot would be her portion. If it is a case of selection, the improbability vanishes. She smiles slightly to herself as she recalls the surly indignation with which she had discovered that he was to be her fate on the last occasion of her dining here. She is still smiling when he passes her by with Betty on his arm. For a few seconds it seems as if the handsomest girl in the room were to be left altogether overlooked and unclaimed ; and, in point of fact, she is one of the latest to be paired. Usually such a blow to her vanity would have disquieted her but little, as her pretensions are never high. To-day she is shocked to find how much it galls her. The ill-sorted party have taken their seats, precedence gone, natural barriers knocked on the head, reciprocal antipathies forced into close contact, in that topsy-turvy Utopia of universal equality and amity which it is Lady Eoupell's principle to produce. Margaret looks round the table to see how the principle has worked. Mrs. Evans has been led in by the doctor, to whom she is fully persuaded that she owes the death of DOCTOR CUPID 109 the last Evans but one. The next largest squiress in the parish to Lady Eoupell is made sulky for the evening by having had to accept the arm of her man of business. Prue's Bishop has innocently planted her as far as the length of the interminable table will allow from Freddy. Betty and Talbot, though distant, are in sight. She can see that they are sitting side by side in total silence. Is this their mode of expressing their sorrow at their approach- ing separation % Possibly ; but, at all events, what a depth of intimacy does such a total silence imply ! Margai'et's own mate is the buffoon. She has often heard his name as that of the pet of royalty ; the darling of the fine ladies ; the croiATiing sparkle in each choicest social gathering. To her, whether it be that her mental palate is out of taste, he seems dull and coarse ; his wit made up of ugly faces, elderly douhle-entendres, flat indecencies. ' It is clear that I am not made for good company,' she says to herself sadly and Avearily. ' Jacob, and the birds, and the fox — these are my society ! They are the only ones I am fit for.' The long dinner ends at last, and the incongruous couples part — in most cases with mutual relief. Neither Margaret nor her merry man ever wish to set eyes upon each other again. In the drawing-room natural affinities reassert themselves : intimates gather into little groups. The squiress, escaped from her presumptuous solicitor, makes her plaint to her fellows. Mrs. Evans makes hers to Peggy. 'Did you see how unlucky I was?' cries she. 'I assure you it gave me quite a shudder to put my hand upon his arm ! I declare I look upon that man as as much tlie murderer of my Natty as if he had stuck a knife into her. I could hardly bear to speak to him. However, I managed to secure some crackers for the children ' — indicatiu'' a tell-tale bulge in the direction of her pocket. ' Their last no DOCTOR CUPID word to rae before I came away was, " Mother, be sure you brins; us some crackers !'" Then it is Prue's turn to make her lament, which she begins \\A\X\ almost the same words as Mrs. Evans : ' Did you ever see anything like my ill-luck % I was the farthest from Mm of anybody at the table. There were eighteen between us. I counted. But did you notice how he rushed to open the door? As I passed him he said to me, " Thank you, Prue." That was because I had jiut my green gown on. He is always so grateful for any little thing that one does for him.' She pauses rather suddenly, for Lady Betty has drawn near. ' \Vliat a pretty frock ! ' says she, stopping before the two girls. ' As green as grass, as jealousy, as green peas ! Come and talk to me. Miss Prue, and tell me what you have all been doing to-day. You may have been up to any amount of mischief for all I can tell. Do you know that I have been writhing on a bed of pain from morning to night 1 No? but I have. Are not you sorry for me?' As she speaks she draws the childish figure down on the sofa beside her. Margaret walks away. She would like to take Prue away too. There seems to her to be something unnatural and sinister in an alliance, however temporary, between these two, and from the distant corner to which she has retired her eye often wanders uneasily back to them. Presently her view is obscured. It is no use her looking any longer. The sofa is shut out from her by a ring of black eoats that has clustered round it. Only now and then, through the interstices, she catches the glint of one of the numerous hornets, lizards, frogs, flashing in diamonds upon Betty's breast. Bursts of laughter come from the group, which Freddy and the buffoon have joined. In the intervals of the other conversations buzzing around Peggy DOCTOR CUPID III can hear Betty's high voice piercing. She cannot hear what she says ; but apparently it is always followed by torrents of mirth, among which Prue's girl-tones are plainly audible. Oh, what is Prue laughing at % If she could but get her away ! As she so thinks, herself wedged in among a jjlialanx of women, she sees a stir among the band she is watching. It expands and moves, pursuing Betty, who has walked to the piano. Evidently she has been persuaded to sing. As soon as this intention has become manifest in the room there is a polite hush in the talk. Wives look menacingly at unmusical husbands. The Bishop, who is fond of music, approaches the instrument. Betty has seated herself leisurely, her audacious eyes wandering round and taking in the prelate with a mischievous twinkle. ' I am not quite sure that you will like it,' Peggy hears her say. ' But, you know, I cannot help that — I did not ■svi-ite it. It is supposed to be said by an affectionate husband on the eve of his setting out for the wars.' With this prelude she sets off — ' Oh ! who will press that lily-white hand When I am far away ? Some other man !' Two more lines in the nature of a chorus follow, but they are so dro^vned by a roar of applause that Peggy can't catch them. She can only conjecture their nature from the look of impudent laughing challenge which the singer throws at the men around her. Under cover of that roar of applause the Bishop turns abruptly away. The second verse follows — ' Oh ! who will kiss those ruby lips When I am far away ? Some other man !' Again the two drowned lines. Again the chord and the 112 DOCTOR CUPID applause ; but this time it is very evident that the approba- tion is confined to the circle round the piano. Betty has been Avell taught, and her enunciation is exceedingly pure and distinct. Not a word of her charm- ing song is lost. She has reached the third verse — ' Oil ! who will squeeze that little waist When I am far away ? Some other man ! ' Again that roar of admiring laughter from the men round the piano — all the more marked from the displeased silence of the rest of the room. But is it only men who are encoring so ecstatically % Is not that Prue who is joining her enraptured plaudits to theirs'? — Prue, with flushed face and flashing eyes, and slight shoulders convulsed with merriment % If she could but get her away ! But that is oiit of the question ; Prue is in the inner circle, utterly beyond reach. ' Oh ! who will pay those little bills V Peggy cannot stand it any longer ; it makes her sick. A gap in the ranks of ladies that had shut her in gives her the wished-for opportunity to escape. She slips towards an open French window giving on the terrace. Before reaching it she has to pass Lady Roupell and her Patience. As she does so she hears the old lady saying, in a voice of tepid annoyance, to the man beside her : ' I wish that some one would stop her singing that in- decent song. She will not leave me a rag of character in the county !' CHAPTER XIV. ' Whilst she was here Methought the beams of light that did appear Were shot from her ; methought the moou gave none But what it had from her.' Safely out on the terrace in the moonlight ! Not, it is true, a great wash of moonlight such as went billowing over the earth when she paid her former night -visit to milady's garden ; but such small radiance as a lessening crescent, now and then dimmed by over-flung cloud-ker- chiefs, can lend. The stars, indeed, seeing their lady faint and fail, eke her out with their lesser lights. Peggy stands drawing deep breaths, staring up at them with her head thrown back, as they shine down upon her in their over- whelming, overpowering distance, and purity and age. But between her and their august and soothing silence comes again that odious refrain : ' Some otlicr man '. She puts her fingers in her ears and runs, nor does she stop until she has reached the close of the long, broad gravel walk that keeps the house-front company from end to end. Then she pauses and listens. No, she is not far enough off even yet. Fainter, but still perfectly audible, comes the vulgar ribaldry : ' Some other man ! 8 114 DOCTOR CUPID and then the storm of applause. Let her at all events reach some spot where she will be unable to detect any tone of Prue's in that insane mirth ! But is there such a spot ? To her excited fancy it seems as if in the remotest dell, the loneliest coppice of the park, she would still over- hear hgr Prue's little voice applauding that disgusting pleasantry. She walks quickly on, between flower-borders and shrub- beries, until she reaches a wrought-iron gate that leads into the walled garden. She opens it and passes through, then stands still once again to listen. She has succeeded at last. Not an echo of Betty's high-pitched indecencies attains to this quiet garden-close to offend her ears. There is no noise less clean and harmless than that of the south wind delicately wagging the heads of the slumberous flowers. The garden, as its name implies, is hedged in from each rude gust on three sides by stout walls, stone-coped and balled. On the fourth, towards the sun-setting, it is guarded only by a light decorated iron railing, now muffled in the airy fluff" of the traveller's joy, and embraced by the lux- uriant arms of the hop, tlie clematis, and the wandering vine. Between their tendrils, between the branches of the strong tea-rose and the Virginia creeper's autumn fires, one catches friendly glimpses of the church tower and the park, and the gentle deer. Inside, the garden is encompassed by wide and crowded flower-borders, but the middle is sacred to the green simplicity of the velvet grass. Margaret draws a deep breath of relief, and begins to walk slowly along. A row of tall, white gladioli, nearly as high-statured as herself, looking ghostly fair in the star- shine, keep her company, lovely and virginal as May lilies ; and from the farther side of the garden comes an ineff'able waft of that violet smell which we used to connect only with spring. As she paces to and fro the ugly din fades out of her ears and the ireful red out of her cheeks. A DOCTOR CUPID 115 sort of peace settles down upon her — only a smt of peace, however ! Her mind is still oppressed by the image of Prue, and by a vague misgiving of coming trouble, coupled with a sense, which she will not own to herself, of personal disappointment, and of a mortified covert self-gratulation upon not having worn her best gown, or in anywise tricked herself out. To one, however, Avhose hand is on the garden-latch, as she so thinks, she looks tricked out enough, indeed, in her own fairness ; enough to make his heart sick with the hopelessness of its longing as he goes towards her. After all, she is not much surprised at his having followed her ! Possibly he may have a message of recall for her. 'Well!' she says, meeting him with a delicate moonlit smile. Low as the light is, it is light enough to show that there is no answering smile on his face. ' So you escaped at last ! ' he says, with a sort of groan. ' I watched to see how long you could stand it.' The shadow that the star-beams, and the violet breath, and Heaven knows what other gentle influence, have chased from her features, settles down on them again. ' I am never fond of comic songs,' she answers stiffly ; ' and I do not think that that was a particularly favourable specimen.' He makes a gesture of disgust. 'Pah!' Then adds: 'I should have followed you be- fore, only that I wanted to get Prue away. I knew that you would be glad if I could ; but it was impossible !' Ho has never spoken of her as ' Prue ' before ; but in his present agitation — an agitation for which Peggy is at a loss to account — he has obviously clean forgotten the formal prefix. She is too much touched by his thoughtfulncss for her to answer. ii6 DOCTOR CUPID 'My chief motive for following you,' continues he, speaking in an unusual and constrained voice, ' was that I thought I might possibly not have another opportunity of giving you tliis.^ As he speaks he puts a small parcel into her hands. ' It is only the ladder for the birds.' She breaks into a laugh. 'They are in no such great hurry for it,' says she gaily; ' they could have waited until to-morrow.' He sighs. ' I am afraid that they would have had to wait longer than until to-morrow ! ' ' Well, I daresay that they might have made shift until Wednesday,' returns she. The entire unsuspiciousness of her tone makes his task a tenfold harder one than it would otherwise have been, ' It is — it is better that you should take it yourself to them,' he says, hesitating and floundering. ' I — I — might be prevented after all from coming. There is a chance of my — my— being obliged after all to go to-morrow ! ' The star and moon-light are falling full on her face, lifted and attentive : he can see it as plainly as at high noonday. It seems to him that a tiny change passes over it. But still she does not suspect the truth. 'What!' says she; 'has your chief telegraphed for you % What a thing it is to be so indispensable ! ' Shall he leave her in her error? Nothing would be easier ! Leave her in the belief that a legitimate summons to honourable work has called him away ; leave her with a friendl}' face turned towards him, expecting and perhaps lightly hoping his return. The temptation is strong, but he conquers it. ' No,' he says, trying to speak carelessly ; ' my chief is innocent this time of breaking into my holiday. I expect that he is enjoying his own too much; I am not going DOCTOR CUPID 117 Londouwards ; but — but — other reasons compel me to leave to-morrow.' How unutterably flat and naked it sounds ! There is no mistake now as to the change in her face — the change that he has dreaded and yet known would come — the hardening of eye and tightening of lip. "Well, it is better that it should come ! And yet, do what he may, he cannot leave her in the belief that, as he sees, has in one moment stolen all the frank sweetness out of her eyes. ' I — I — am not going north, either,' he cries, in miserable, eager stammering. ' I — I — do not know where 1 am going ! ' 'You are compelled to go, and yet you do not know where you are going ! is that a riddle V asks she ironically. Her tone jars horribly upon his strung and aching nerves. ' Not much of a riddle,' he answers, with a bitter laugh. ' I do not know the exact road I am going to take ; I only know the direction — downhill' She fixes her eyes steadily upon his for a moment or two, a ray of compassion stealing into them. So they are to pass each other, like ships upon the sea ! After all, he has not been able to wrench himself out of the arms of his octopus ! A transient flash of self-derision crosses her mind for having ever supposed it possible that he could, cou])led with an immense pity. This is to be their last speech together; for some instinct tells her that he will not return. Let it not, then, be bitter speech ! Poor fellow ! There are aloes enough, God wot, in the cup he has brewed for himself ! 'Well!' she says, smiling kindly, albeit very sadly, at him, ' whether you go uphill or downhill, the birds and I must always have a good word for you. I do not know what we should have done without you ; you have been so kind to us all— to me and my True, and my fox and my birds !' ii8 DOCTOR CUPID He ought to make some acknowledgment of this fare- well civility of hers \ but to ' ought ' and to do have, since the world was, never been one and the same thing. He receives it in a suffocated silence. ' And I was so rude to you at first,' pursues she, lightly brushing, as she speaks, her own lips with a bit of mignon- ette she has gathered from the odorous bed at her feet, perhaps to hide the slight tremble of which she cannot but be conscious in them — ' so angry at being sent in to dinner with you ! but, then ' — with another friendly starlit smile — ' you must remember that I did not know how well you could mow P He is still silent, his throat choked Avith words he dare not utter. Oh, if she would only stop ! But she goes on in all innocence : ' You never took your bunch of lavender after all to-day. I thought of bringing it up for you to-night, but then I remembered that I should see you to-morrow, so I did not; I wish I had now.' Cannot he find even one word % one Avord of prayer to her in mercy to be silent % Not one ! 'Are you going by an early train?' continues she ; 'be- cause, if not, I might send up Alfred with it in the morning, if you really cared to have it.' Perhaps it is that last most unnecessary clause that loosens the string of his tied tongue. ' Do not ! ' he says almost rudely ; ' I hope I shall never smell the scent of lavender again ! ' For a moment she looks at him, astonished at his discourtesy ; but probably his face explains it, for her eyes drop. When next she speaks it is in a rather colder key. ' At all events I must send you back your books ; you left some books with us to-day, if you remember.' IJ lie remcmher the Keats from which he was to have read aloud to her to-morrow, sitting beside her under the DOCTOR CUPID 119 Judas-tree, with her Httle finches calling to her from the house, with Mink crouched on her white skirt, and the parrot waddling over the sward, with his toes turned in, to have his head scratched by her ! Ij lie rememher ! She must be the very ' belle dame saus merci ' of whom John Keats spake, to ask him that ! May not he at least beg her to keep his Keats to remember him by — laying here and there among the leaves a sprig of the lavender they together plucked % No ! No ! No ! Out of her life he and his Keats must depart, as she and her lavender out of his. "Who, in his place, will read her ' La Belle Dame sans merci '1 As if in devilish mockery of the jealous anguish of this question comes Betty's disgusting refrain darting across his mind : ' Some other man ! He grinds his teeth. It is some minutes before he can regain sufficient command over himself to answer with a tolerable appearance of composure : ' You are right ; I Avill send for them ! ' A little sighing gust has risen; sighing for him perhaps, he thinks, with a flash of imaginative self-pity, as he watches its soft antics among the lily-like flowers, and its light ruffling of Peggy's gown. It has mistaken her for one of the flowers ! What foolish fancies are careering through his hot brain ! There can be none in hers, or how could she be holding out such a cool hand and lifting such a suave calm look to his % ' I must be going,' she says, speaking in a rather lower voice than is her w^ont ; ' good-bye ! Since ' — a wavering smile breaking tremulously over her face — ' since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose I dare not say that I hope our roads will ever meet again ! ' I20 DOCTOR CUPID Her hand slides out of Lis unreturning clasp. He feels that if he keep that soft prisoner for one instant, he must keep it through eternity. ' Good-bye ! ' he says. He would like to. bid God bless her; but he can no more do it than Macbeth could say 'Amen.' What right has he to bid God bless her % Will God be more hkely to send her a benison for his unworthy asking? So he lets her go unblessed. CHAPTER XV The Beast Party is over. It has not differed materially from its predecessors, though it may perhaps glory in the bad pre-eminence of having left even more ill-feeling and mortification in its wake than did they. The little Evanses, indeed, bless its memory, gobbling the bonbons and strutting about the Vicarage garden in the masks and fools' caps that they haA^e extracted out of its crackers. And Lady RouiJell, too, is perfectly satisfied with it. Her guests have come, have eaten and drunk, have gone away again, and she need not trouble her head about them for another six months. To-day she gets rid of all her friends except the Harborough children, and is left at liberty to waddle about in her frieze coat, and with her spud in her hand, in peace — a peace which, at the worst of times, she never allows to be very seriously infringed. But there are gradations of age and shabbiness in her frieze coats, and to-day she may don the oldest. The peace of the Manor, like its gaieties, is apt to be reflected in the Cottage : an exodus from the one is virtually an exodus from the other ; and, as such, is apt to be rejoiced over by Margaret as the signal for Prue to begin to eat her dinner better, sleep sounder, and engage in some other occupation than running to the end of the garden to see whether there is a sign of any messenger coming from the Manor. She is at her post of predilection this morning — the end of the garden that overhangs the highway — that 122 DOCTOR CUPID highway along which all arrivers at and departers from the Big House must needs travel. She is looking eagerly down the road. ' Pruc ! ' cries her sister from under the Judas-tree, where she is sitting, for a wonder, unoccupied. * Yes,' replies Prue, hut without offering to stir from her post of observation. 'Come here. I want to talk to you.' ' In a minute — directly — by and by.' A few moments pass. * Prue % ' 'Yes.' * What are you looking at ? What are you waiting for % ' ' I am waiting for the Harboroughs to pass. I want to kiss my hand to Lady Betty as she goes by ; she asked me to.' Margaret makes a gesture of annoyance, and irritably upsets Mink, who has just curled himself upon her skirt ; but she offers no remonstrance, and it is a quarter of an hour before — the brougham Avith its Harboroughs, late as usual, and galloping to catch the train, having whirled past and been watched till quite out of sight — Prue saunters up radiant. ' She kissed her hand to me all the way up the hill ! ' says she, beaming Avith pleasure at the recollection. ' I threw her a little bunch of jessamine just as the carriage went by. She put her head out in a second, and caught it in her teeth/ Was not it clever of herl She is so clever ! ' ' Why should she kiss her hand to you 1 Why should you throw her jessamine 1 ' asks Peggy gloomily. ' Why should not 1 1 ' returns the other warmly. ' I am sure she has been kind enough to me, if you only knew ! ' 'You were not so fond of her last week,' says Margaret, lifting a pair of very troubled eyes to her sister's face. DOCTOR CUPID 123 ' Have you already forgotten the three clays ruuiiiiig that slie robbed you of your ride 1 ' ' I cannot think how I could have been so silly ! ' returns Prue, with a rather forced laugh. 'Of course, it was a mere accident. Re says he wonders how I could have been so silly ; he was dreadfully hurt about it. He says he looks upon her quite as an elder sister.' ' An elder sister ! ' echoes Peggy, breaking into a short angry laugh. 'The same sort of elder sister, I think, as the nursery-maid is to the Life Guardsman ! ' ' I cannot think how you can be so censorious ! ' retorts Prue, reddening. ' He says it is your one weakness. He admires your character more than that of any one he knows — he says it is — it is — laid upon such large lines ; but that he has often been hurt by the harshness of your judgments of other people.' ' Indeed ! ' says Peggy, Avith a sort of snort. ' P)Ut I daresay that Lady Betty bandages up his wounds.' ' You must have noticed how kind she was to me last night,' continues Prue, thiidving it wiser to appear not to have heard this last thrust. 'Of course, every one was longing to talk to her, but she quite singled me out — me, of all people ! Oh, if you only kncAv !' 'If I only knew whatf inquires Margaret, struck by the recurrence of this phrase, to which on its first utterance she had paid little heed, as being the vague expression of Prue's girlish enthusiasm. Prue hesitates a moment. 'If — if — you only knew the delightful plan she has made !' ' What plan V shortly and sternly. 'She — she — I cannot think why she did it; it must have been the purest kind-heartedness — she asked mo to go and stay with her.' The colour has mounted brave and bright from Margaret's cheeks to her brow. 124 DOCTOR CUPID 'She asked you to stay with her?' repeats she, with slow incisiveness ; ' she had the impudence to ask you to stay with her ! ' Prue gives a start that is almost a bound. * The, impudence ? ' ' The woman who had the effrontery to sing that song last night,' pursues Peggy, her voice gathering indignation as it goes along, 'has now the impudence to invite a respectable girl like you to stay with her ! Oh, Prue ! ' her tone changing suddenly to one of eager, tender pain, 'just think what I felt last night Avhen I saw you standing among all those men in fits of laughter at her stupid indecencies ! Oh ! how could you laugh ? What was there to laugh atl' Prue has begun to whimper. ' They all laughed. I — I — laughed be — be — cause they laughed !' ' And now you want to go and stay with her ! ' says Margaret, touched and yet annoyed by her sister's easy tears, and letting her long arms fall to her side with a dispirited gesture, as if life were growing too hard for her. ' I am sure it would be no great wonder if I did,' says Prue, still snivelling. 'I, who never go anywhere. She — Lady Betty I mean — could not believe it when I told her I had only been to London twice in my life ; and He says that the Harboroughs' is the pleasantest house in England !' 'What does He sayT inquires a soft, gay voice, coming up behind them. 'Why, Prue, what is this? Why are the waterworks turned on 1 It is early in the day for the fountains to begin playing!' and Freddy Ducane — the flower-like Freddy — with his charming complexion, his laughing eyes, and his beautifully -fitting clothes, stands between the agitated girls. He has taken Prue's hands, both the one that contains DOCTOR CUPID 125 the small damp ball of her pocket-handkerchief and the other. But she snatches them away and runs off. ' You seem to have been having rather a quick thing,' says the young man, bringing back his eyes from the flying to the stationary figure. The latter has risen. 'Did you know of this invitation?' asks she abruptly, without any attempt at a preliminary salutation. ' I do not much like that dagger-and-bowl way of being asked questions,' returns Freddy, sinking pleasantly into the chair Margaret has just quitted. 'What invitation ■? ' 'You know perfectly well what invitation !' retorts she, her breast beginning to heave and her nostril to quiver, while her pendent right hand unconsciously clenches itself. Freddy has thrown back his curly head, and is regarding her luxiuiously from under his tilted hat, and between his half-closed lids. 'I wish you w^ould stay exactly as you are for just two minutes,' he says rapturously ; ' I never saw you look better in my life ! What a pose ! And you fell into it so naturally, too ! I declare. Peg, though we have our little differences, there is no one that at heart appreciates you half as much as I do !' 'I suppose that you suggested itf says Margaret sternly, passing by with the most absolute silent contempt her companion's gallantries, and abandoning in the twink- ling of an eye the admired postui'e which she had been invited to retain. '/ suggested it/' repeats Freddy, lifting his brows. Knowing my Peggy as I do, should I have been likely to call the chimney-pots down about my own head?' ' But you knew of it ? You had heard of it ?' ' I daresay I did. I hear a great many things tliat I do not pay much attention to.' ' And you think that Lady Betty Harborough would bo 126 DOCTOR CUPID a desirable friend for Prue?' says Peggy in bitter in- terrogation, and unintentionally falling back into her Medea attitude, a fact of which she becomes aware only by perceiving Freddy's hand covertly stealing to his j^ocket in search of a pencil and notebook to sketch her. At the sight her exasperation culminates. She snatches the pencil out of his hand and throws it away. 'Cannot you be serious for one moment '?' she asks passionately. ' If you knew how sick I am of your eternal froth and flummery !' ' Well, then, I am serious,' returns he, putting his hands in his pockets, and grooving grave ; ' and if you ask my opinion, I tell you,' Avith an air as if taking high moral ground, 'that I do not think we have any of us any business to say, "Standby! I am holier than thou!" It has always been your besetting sin, Peggy, to say, " Stand by ! I am holier than thou !" ' 'Has it?' very drily. ' Now it is a sort of thing that I never can say ' (wamning with his theme). 'I do not take any special credit to myself, but I simply cannot. I say, "Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner ! " ' " 'Indeed!' ' And so I naturally cannot see ' — growing rather galled against his will by the excessive curtness of his companion's rejoinders — ' that you have any right to turn your back upon poor Betty ! Poor soul ! what chance has she if we all turn our backs upon her"?' ' And so Prue is to stay with Lady Betty to bolster up her decayed reputation 1' cries Peggy, breaking into an ireful laugh. 'I never heard of a more feasible plan !' ' I think we ought all to stand shoulder to shoulder in the battle of life ! ' says Freddy loftily, growing rather red. ' I shall do my best to prevent Lady Betty and my Prue DOCTOR CUPID 127 standing shoulder to shoulder anywhere,' retorts Peggy doggedly. A pause. 'So that was what Prue was crying about?' says Freddy, with a quiet air of reflection. ' Poor Prue ! if you have been addressing her with the same air of amenity that you have me, it does not surprise me. I sometimes wondei',' looking at her with an air of candid and temperate speculation, 'how you, Avho are so genuinely good at bottom, can have the heart to make that child cry in the way you do !' 'I did not mean to make her cry,' replies poor Peggy remorsefully. ' I hate to make her cry ! ' ' And yet you manage to do it pretty often, dear,' rejoins Freddy sweetly. ' Now, you know, to me it seems,' with a slight quiver iu his voice, ' as if no handling could be too tender for her!' Peggy gives an impatient groan. At his words, before her mind's eye rises the figure of Prue waiting ready dressed in her riding-habit day after day — watching, listening, running to the garden-end, and crawling dispiritedly back again ; the face of Prue robbed of its roses, clipped of its roundness, drawn and oldened before its time by Freddy's 'tender handhng.' A bitter speech rises to her lips; but she swallows it back. Of what use % Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots % Another pause, while Margaret looks blankly across the garden, and Freddy inhales the smell of the mignonette, and scratches Mink's little smirking gray head. At length : 'So you do not mean to let her gof says the young man interrogatively. ' I think not,' replies Peggy witheringly. ' If I want her taught ribald songs I can send her to the alehouse in the village, and I do not know any other end that would be served b}' her going there.' 128 DOCTOR CUPID Freddy winces a little. ' I daresay you are right,' he rejoins blandly. ' I always say that there is no one whose judgment I would sooner take than yours ; and, in point of fact, I am not very keen about the plan myself \ it was only poor Prue's being so eager about it that made me advocate it. You see,' with a charming smile, ' I am not like you, Peggy. When persons come to me brimming over with pleasure in a project, I have not the strength of mind instantly to empty a jug of cold water all over them ! I wish I had ! it would,' sighing pensively, 'make life infinitely less difficult !' 'You are going to Harborough yourself, I supposed asks Peggy brusquely, brushing away like cobwebs her companion's compliments and aspirations. He shrugs his shoulders. ' How can I tell ? Do I ever know where I may drift to ? I may wake up there some fine morning. It is not a bad berth, and,' with a return to the high moral tone, ' if one can help a person ever so little, I think that one has no right to turn one's back upon her !' ' Of course not ! ' ironically. 'And I have always told you,' with an air of candid admission, ' that I am fond of Betty ! ' 'I know,' returns Peggy, with a somewhat sarcastic demureness — ' I have heard ; you look upon her quite as an elder sister; it is a charming relationship !' Freddy reddens, but instantly recovering himself : 'I am not so sure about that! I must consult Prue!' cries he, going off" with a laugh, and with the last word. CHAPTER XYI She remains behind without a laugh. She is not, however, left long to her own reflections, for scarcely is young Ducane out of sight before Prue reappears. Her eyes are dried, and her cheeks look hot and bright. 'WelU' she says, in a rather hard voice, coming and standing before her sister. 'Well, dear!' returns Peggy, taking one of her hands and gently stroking it. 'Has he been talking to you about it?' asks the yoiuig girl, with a quick short breathing. ' I have been talking to him about it,' returns Margaret gravely, 'if that is the same thing.' ' And you have told him that I — I — am not to go ?' ' Yes.' Prue has pulled her hand violently away, which for a few moments is her only rejoinder ; then : ' I hope,' she says in a faltering voice, ' that you told him as — as gently as you could. You are so often hard upon him; it must have been such a — such a bitter disappointment !' '\Yas itf says Peggy sadly; 'I think not! Did you hear him laughing as ho went away ? You need not make yourself unhappy on that score ; he told me he had never been very eager for the plan !' ' He said so 1 ' cries Prue, with almost a scream, while a deluge of carnation pours over her face. ' Oh, Peggy ! you 9 I30 DOCTOR CUPID must be iiiventing. He could not have said that ! I think — without intending it of course — you often misrepresent him ! Oh, he could not have said it ! Why, only last night, as we were walking home in the moonlight, he said that to have me there under those chestnuts — I believe that the Harboroughs have some very fine old Spanish chestnuts in their park — would be the realisation of a poet's dream.' Peggy groans. ' If he did say it,' continues Prue, in great agitation, ' it was to please you. He saw how set against the plan you were, and he has such beautiful manners — such a lovely nature that he cannot bear saying anything that goes against the person he is talking to.' ' Perhaps you are right in your view of his character,' says Peggy quietly, but with a tightening of the lines about her mouth that tells of acute pain ; ' in fact he told me that the only reason of his having ever advocated the project was that you were so keen about it.' If Peggy imagines that the drastic medicine conveyed in this speech will have a healing effect upon her sister's sick nature, she soon sees that she is mistaken. 'And is it any wonder if I a7n keen about itf asks she, trembling with excitement, ' I who have never had any pleasure in all my life !' 'Never any pleasure in all your life!' repeats Peggy, in a tone of sharp suffering. ' Oh, Prue ! and I thought we had been so happy together ! I thought we had not wanted anything but each other !' Prue looks rather ashamed. ' Oh ! of course we have been happy enough,' returns she ; ' just jogging along from day to day — every day the same. But that — that,' her agitation gathering volume again, 'that is not pleasure.' ' Pleasure I ' repeats Margaret, with reflective bitterness ; DOCTOR CUPID 131 ' what is i^leasure % I suppose that the party last night was pleasure. I think, Prue, that pleasure is an animal that mostly carries a sting in its tail.' ' I — I should not be among strangers either,' urges Prue, with that piteous crimson still raging in her cheeks ; ' he would be there.' 'And he would be such an efficient chaperon, would not he f returns Peggy, unable to help a melancholy smile. ' But from what he said to me, even his going seems prob- lematical.' 'Oh no, it is not !' cries Prue hurriedly. 'There is no doubt about that ; the very day is fixed. I — I,' faltering, 'was invited for the same one, too.' Again Margaret gives vent to an impatient groan at this fresh proof of Freddy's imveracity, but she says nothing. 'Is it quite sure that I am not to gof asks Prue, throwing herself upon her knees at her sister's feet, and looking up -nath her whole fevered soul blazing in her eyes. ' I do not feel as if I had ever wished for anything in my whole life before.' Peggy turns away her head. ' I shall have to begin to live on my own account some time!' continues Prue, her words tumbling one over another in her passionate beseeching. 'I cannot always be in leading-strings ! Why may not I begin nowl' 'Are you going to kill me, thenf asks Margaret, with a painful laugh. ' Am I to die to be out of your way % I am afraid, for your sake, that I do not see much chance of it.' 'I have never in my whole life stayed in the same house with- him,' pursues Prue, too passionately bent upon her own aim to be even aware of her sister's sufferings. 'He says himself that our meetings are so scrappy and patchy that he sometimes thinks they are more tantalising than none.' 132 DOCTOR CUPID 'And whose fault is it, pray, if they are scrappy and patchy?' cries Peggy, bursting out into a gust of irrepress- ible indignation. ' Who hinders him from coming here at sunrise and staying till sunset?' ' You never did him justice,' returns Prue irritably. ' You never see how sensitive he is ; he says he thinks that every one's privacy is so sacred, that he has a horror of in- truding upon it. Ah ! you will never understand him ! He says himself that his is such a complex nature, he fears you never will' ' I fear so too ! ' replies Peggy sadly. There is a short silence. 'I — I — would behave as nicely as I could,' says poor Prue, beginning again her faltering beseechments. ' I — I — would not do anything that I was not quite sure that you would like.' The tears have stolen again into her great blue eyes, and across Margaret's mind darts, in a painful flash, the recollection of Freddy's late reproach to her, for the fre- quency with which she makes his Prue cry. ' I am sure you would not ! ' cries the elder sister, in a pained voice, taking the little eager face, and framing it in both her compassionate hands. ' Oh, Prue, it is not you that I doubt!' ' But indeed you are not just to her !' returns the young girl, eagerly seizing her sister's wrists, and pressing them with a violence of which she herself is not aware, in her own hot, dry clasp. ' You should see her at home ! He says that you should see her at home ; that every one should see her at home ; that no one knows what she is at home, and that she has a heart of gold — oh, such a good heart ! ' ' They always have good hearts ! ' rejoins Margaret, with a sad irony. 'These sort of women always have good hearts.' 'And every one goes there,' urges Prue, panting and DOCTOR CUPID 133 sj^eaking scarcely above a whisper. ' Last year the Prince of Morocco Avas there.' ' H'm ! Nice customs curtsey to great kings !' ' And the Bishop.' 'What Bishop r 'Oh, I do not quite know. A Bishop; and when he went away he thanked Lady Betty for the most delightful three days he had ever spent.' 'H'm!' ' Ee, thought it so beautiful of him ; he said it showed so large a charity.' 'So it did.' ' And if a Bxslioi^ visits her ' (redoubling her urgencies, as she fancies she detects a slight tone of relenting in her sister's voice) 'Do you think that she sang to \\\mV interrupts Margaret scathingly. 'Oh, Prue !' (as the vision of Betty mth her song, her naked shoulders, bismuthed eyes, and dubious jests, rises in all its horrible vividness between her and the poor, simple face, lifted in such passionate begging to hers), ' I cannot ; it is no use to go on asking me. Oh, do not ask me any more ; it only makes us both miserable ! I tell you ' (with rising excitement) ' I — I had rather push you over that wall ' (pointing to the one at the garden-end, which drops sharply to the road), ' or throw you into that pool ' (indicating a distant silver glint), ' than let you go to her !' There is such an impassioned decision in both eyes and words that Prue's hopes die. She rises from her knees, and stands quite still on tlie sAvard opposite her sister. Her colour has turned from vivid red to paper-white, with that rapidity peculiar to people in weak health. In a moment she has grown to look ten years older. 'I suppose,' she says in a low but very distinct key, 'that it is John Talbot who has made you hate her so!' 134 DOCTOR CUPID Then she turns on her heel and walks slowly towards the house. As long as she is in sight Peggy stares after her wide- eyed, and as if stunned ; then she covers her face with both hands and bursts into a passion of tears, in comparison with which Prue's small weepings are as a summer shower to a lashing winter storm. Can it be that there is any truth in her sister's words % • ••••» A few days pass, and to a superficial look the Big House and the Little House wear precisely the same aspect as they did before the invasion of the former by its last batch of guests. It is only to a more careful eye that the pre- sence of the little Harboroughs in the Manor nurseries, to which they are chiefly confined — milady having no great passion for the society of other people's children — is re- vealed; and it would require a still nicer observation to detect the change in the Little Eed House. There is no longer any question there of the Harborough invitation. It has been declined, though in what terms the refusal was couched Peggy is ignorant. At all events the letter to Lady Betty has gone. Freddy has gone too. It had been understood, or Margaret imagined that it had been under- stood, that he, at least, was to have remained ; that he had, in fact, been counting the hours until the departure of importunate strangers should leave him free to show the real bent of his inclinations. However that may be, he has gone, having deferred his going no later than the day but one after that which saw the Harboroughs' exodus. He leaves behind him a misty impression of having reluctantly obeyed some call of duty — some summons of exalted friendship. It is a duty, a task that involves the taking with him of two guns, a cricket-bag, and some fishing-rods. The Manor is therefore tenanted only by its one old DOCTOR CUPID 135 woman, and the Eed House by its two young ones. This is a condition of things that has existed very often before without any of the three looking upon herself as an object of pity in consequence of it. Milady is far, indeed, from thinking herself an object of pity now. But the other two % Prue has made no further effort to alter her sister's decision. She has beset her with no more of those tears and entreaties that Margaret had found so sorely trying, but she has exchanged them for a mood which makes Peggy ask herself hourly whether she does not -vvish them back. A heavy blanket of silence seems to have fallen upon the cheerful Little House, and upon the garden, still splendid in colour and odour, in its daintily tended smallness. The parrot appears to have taken a vow of silence, in expiation of all the irrelevant and loose remarks of his earlier years ; a vow of silence which the greenfinch and the linnet have servilely imitated. Even Mink barks less than usual at the passing carts ; and though his bark, as a bark, is below contempt for its shrill thinness, Peggy Avould be glad to hear even it in the absence of more musical sounds. Prominent among those more musical sounds used to be Prue's singing, and humming, and lilting, as she ran about the house, and jumped about the garden with Mink and the cat. Prue never now either sings or runs. She is not often seen in the garden : dividing her time between the two solitudes of her own room and of long and lonely walks. If spoken to, she answers briefly and gravely ; if her sister asks her to kiss her, she presents a cold cheek ; but she volunteers neither speech nor caress. She eats next to nothing, and daily falls away in flesh and colour. By the close of the week Peggy is at her wits' end. She has spent hours in the hot kitchen trying to concoct some dainty that may titillate that sickly palate. In vain. To her anxious apostrophes, ' Oh, Prue ! you used to like 136 DOCTOR CUPID my jelly!' 'Oh, Prue ! cannot you fancy this cream? I made it myself !' there is never but the one answer, ihe pushed-away plate, and the ' Thank you, I am not hungry ! ' One morning, when the almost ostentatiously neglected breakfast, and the hollow cheeks that seem to have grown even hollower since over-night, have made Peggy well-nigh desperate, she puts on her hat and runs up to the Manor. She must hold converse with some human creature or creatures upon the subject that occupies so large and painful a share of her thoughts. Perhaps to other and impartial eyes Prue may not appear so failing as to her over-anxious ones. She reaches the Big House just as milady takes her seat at the luncheon-table. Miss and Master Harborough, who have been given swords by some injudicious admirer, have been rushing bellowing downstairs, brandishing them in pursuit of the footmen. Nor has the eloquence of the latter at all availed to induce Franky to relinquish his, even when he is hoisted into his high chair and invested with his dinner-napkin. He still wields it, announcing a doughty intention of cutting his roast-beef with it. ' You will do nothing of the kind !' rej)lies milady, who, on principle, always addresses children in the same tone and words as she would grown-up people ; ' it would be preposterous; no one ever cuts beef with a sword. You would be put into Bedlam if you did.' And Lily, whose clamour has been far in excess of her brother's, chimes in with pharisaic officiousness, ' Nonsense, Franky !• do not be naughty ! You must remember that we are not at home !' 'Bedlam!' repeats Franky, giving up his weapon peaceably, and pleased at the sound. ' Where is Bedlam % Is that where mammy has gone V Milady laughs. ' Not yet ! Eat your dinner, and hold your tongue.' DOCTOR CUPID 137 Franky complies, and allows the conversatiou to flow on without any further contribution from himself. 'It was not such a bad shot, was itf says milady, chuckling; 'I heard from her this morning.' ' Yes V ' They are still at the B 's. She says that the one advantage of visiting them is, that it takes all horrors from death ! Ha ! — ha !' 'Prue heard from her the other day,' says Peggy, speak- ing slowly and with an overclouded brow; 'she asked Prue to pay her a visit.' ' H'm ! What possessed her to do that, I wonder % I suppose Freddy wheedled her into it. Well, and when is she to gof ' She — she's not going.' ' H'm ! You would not give her leave V Peggy glances expressively at Miss Harborough, who has dropped her knife and fork, and is listening with all her ears to what has the obvious yet poignant charm of not being intended for them. ' Pooh ! ' replies milady, following the direction of Mar- garet's look. ' Ne f aites pas attention h. ces marmots ! ils ne comprennent pas de quoi il s'agit !' At the sound of the French words a look of acute baffled misery has come into Lily's face, which, later on, deepens on her being assured that she and her brother have sufficiently feasted, and may efface themselves. Franky gallops off joyfully with his sword ; and his sister follows reluctantly with hers. As soon as they are really out of earshot — Peggy has learnt by experience the length of Lily's ears — she answers the question that had been put to her by another. 'Do you think that I ought to have let her gol' Milady shrugs her shoulders. 'Everybody goes there. Lady Clanranald, who is the 138 DOCTOR CUPID most straitlaced woman in London, takes her girls there ; one must march with one's age.' The colour has deepened in Margaret's face. ' Then yon think that I ought to have let her go f Lady Eoupell is peeling a peach. She looks up from it for an instant, with a careless little shrug. ' I daresay that she would have amused herself. If she likes bear-fighting, and apple-pie beds, and practical jokes, I am sure that she would.' 'And songs?' adds Peggy, with a curling lip; 'you must not forget them.' 'Pooh!' says milady cynically; 'Prue has no ear, she would not pick them up ; and, after all, Betty's bark is worse than her bite.' 'Is it?' very doubtfully. 'A\'liy do not you go too, and look after her?' asks the elder woman, lifting her shrewd eyes from the peach, off whose naked satin she has just whipped its rosy blanket, to her companion's troubled face. 'I am not invited.' 'And you would not go if you were — eh V ' I would sooner go than let her go by herself,' replies poor Peggy with a groan. ' She is looking very ill,' says Lady Roupell, not unkindly. ' What have you done to her 1 I suppose that Freddy has been teasing her ! ' 'I suppose so,' dejectedly. ' I wish that he would leave her alone,' rejoins milady, with irritation. ' I have tried once or twice to broach the subject to him, but he always takes such high ground that I never know where to have him.' 'I wish you would send him away somewhere!' cries Peggy passionately. ' Could not you send him on a tour round the world V The old lady shakes her head. DOCTOR CUPID 139 ' He would not go ; he would tell me that though there is nothing in the world he should enjoy so much, it is his obvious duty to stay by my side, and guide my tottering footsteps to the grave.' She laughs robustly, and Peggy joins dismally. There is a pause. 'She does look very ill,' says the younger woman, in a voice of poignant anxiety ; ' and long ago our doctor told us that she was not to be thwarted in anything. Oh, milady,' vA\h an outburst of appeal for help and sympathy, ' do you think I am killing her % What am I to do 1 oh, do advise me !' ' Let her go ! ' replies the elder woman half -impatiently, yet not ill-naturedly either. 'She will fret herself to fiddlestrings if you do not; and you will have a long doctor's bill to pay. I daresay she will not come to much harm. I will tell Lady Clanranald to have an eye upon her ; and if she fall ill, I can promise you that nobody will poultice and bolus her more thoroughly than Betty would ; she loves physicking people.' Even this last assurance fails very much to exhilarate Margaret, She draws on her gloves slowly, takes leave sadly, and walks heavily aAvay. She does not go directly home, but fetches a compass through the lanes, on whose high hedges the passing harvest- waggons have left their ripe tribute of reft ears ; over a bit of waste land, barrenly beautiful with thistles, some in full purple flush, some giving their soft down to the fresh wind. Singing to them, sitting on a mountain -ash tree, is a sleek robin. Peggy stands still mechanically to listen to him ; but his contented music knocks in vain at her heart's door. There is no one to let it in. Li vain, too, the reaped earth and the pretty white clouds, voyaging northwards under the south wind's friendly puffs, and the thistle's imperial stain ask entrance to her eye. Whether standing or walking, I40 DOCTOR CUPID whether abstractedly looking or deafly listening, there is but one thought in her mind; one question perpetually asking itself, ' Is it really and solely for Prue's good that I have prevented her going?' Neither the thistles nor the redbreast supply her with any answer. The only one that she gets comes ringing and stinging back in Prue's own words : ' I suppose it is John Talbot who has made you hate her so.' ' Can there be any truth in themf she asks again, as she had asked with tears when they were first spoken. Her aimless walk has brought her, when the afternoon is already advanced, to the gate of the Vicarage. It is open, swinging to and fro, with a bunch of ugly little Evanses clustered upon its bars. This slight fact of its being open just makes the scale dip towards entering. She enters. Mrs. Evans is in the nursery, as the nurse is taking her holiday. She is sitting Avith a newish baby in a cradle at her side, and an oldish one alternately voyaging on its stomach across the scoured boards, and forcing its sketchy nose between the uprights of the tall nursery fender. A basket of unmended stockings balances the cradle on Mrs. Evans's other side, and an open Peerage lies upon her lap. 'Why, you are quite a stranger!' she says. 'I have not seen you since the party at the Manor, I was just looking out some of the people who were there. I have not had a moment to spare since ; and you know I like to find out who is who.' Peggy sits down, and the old baby props itself against the leg of a chair to stare at her, 'How is Prue?' asks Mrs. Evans, discarding the Peerage. ' Mr. Evans met her yesterday on Wanborough Common, five miles away from home. Do you think it is Avise to let her take such long walks f 'I did not knoAV that she had been so far,' answers Peggy dispiritedly. DOCTOR CUPID T41 ' I do not like her looks,' continues the other, consulting Peggy's face with a placid eye, full of that comfortable and easy-sitting compassion with which our neighbours' anxieties are apt to inspire us. ' Do you ever give her cod-liver oil ?' 'She has been taking it for the last two months.' ' Or malt % Malt is an excellent thing ; the extract, you know — half a glass taken after meals. It did wonders for Bill}^ No one would have known him for the same boy.' ' I have tried that too.' 'I expect that what she wants is change of air,' says Mrs. Evans, shaking her head as she thrusts her hand into the foot of a stocking, running an experienced eye over the area of its injuries. ' Could not you manage to give her a littler For an instant Margaret is silent; then she says abruptly : * Lady Betty Harborough has invited her to pay her a visit.' '■Lady Betty Earhormgh!' cries Mrs. Evans, dropping stocking and darning-needle. ' Dear me ! what luck some people have ! And you, too 1 No 1 I wish she had asked you too.' It is the measure of how low Peggy has fallen that she goes nigh to echoing this wish. ' Well, she must be a very kind-hearted woman,' pursues Mrs. Evans, resum- ing her darning-needle, ' as well as a very pretty one. And what a charming voice she has ! That was a horrid song she sang; I did not hear the words very clearly myself. Mr. Evans says it was just as well that I did not ; but how well she sang it ! What spirit ! When does Prue go V ' I — I — am not sure that she is going at all.' ' I would not put it off longer than I could help, if I were you,' says Mrs. Evans. ' Do not yon thiiik that she has fallen away a good deal of late ? And such an oppor- tunity may not come again in a hurry. Dear me !' with a sigh and a glance towards the two babies and the stocking- basket, ' some people are in luck !' 142 DOCTOR CUPID It is evident that Margaret is not destined to draw much consolation from her visits to-day. At the gate Mr. Evans is waiting to greet her, having routed that numerous detach- ment of his offspring which was ornamenting it on Peggy's arrival. There are days on which Mr. Evans's children appear to him intolerably ugly, and his lot unbearably sordid. On such days he lies under a tree, reading Morris's Earthly Paradise, and his family give him a wide berth. 'How is Miss Pruef he asks, holding the gate open for her to pass through. ' I met her yesterday on Wanborough Common, looking like a ' 'Yes, yes, I know,' interrupts Peggy, almost rudely. 'Mrs. Evans told me.' 'Are you quite happy about her^ inquires he, not per- ceiving his companion's shrinking from the subject, glad to escape for a few moments from the contemplation of his own unpicturesque ills to the more poetic ones of other people, and walking a few paces do^vn the road at her side. ' Had not you better take care that she does not slip through your fingers V CHAPTER XVII A FORTNIGHT later, and Peggy is alone. Prue has gone after all — gone to that paradise, in yearning for which she seemed to be stooping towards the grave ; she has gone to empty jugs of water over stairs on Guardsmen's heads, to put crackers into the coat-tail pockets of Secretaries of Legation, and set booby-traps for Members of Parliament. No wonder that even before entering upon these glories their mere prospect had restored her to more than her pristine vigour. She has gone, with Peggy's one string of pearls in her trinket-case ; with Peggy's best gown, con- tracted and modified to her smaller shape, in her trunk. She has gone, nodding her head, waving her hand, and blo\ving kisses, altogether restored apparently to the blithe Prueship of earlier days. But at what price 1 Peggy's repugnance to the plan has been in no degree diminished by the fact of her having consented to it. She has consented to it, driven partly by a suspicion that her opposition has been half-due to no solicitude for her sister's welfare, but to a resentment and an ache of her own ; driven much more, though, by Mr. Evans's few light words, ' Take care that she does not slip through your fingers ! ' They pursue her by day and by night. ' Slip through her fingers !' There seems a dreadful fitness in the very form of the phrase. Other people may die, may be killed. Prue would just slip away ! Oh, if he had but used an- other form of expression ! As she lies on her wakeful. 144 DOCTOR CUPID anxious bed, one couple of lines torments her with what she feels to be its prophetic applicability : ' Like a caged bird escaping suddenly The little innocent soul flitted away ! ' Some day she Avill wake to find her arms empty of little Prue, whom for seventeen fond years they have girdled. That Prue has always been sickly and often forward, has from the moment of her birth caused her far more pain than pleasure, makes no sort of difference. The sea does not reckon how many little rills run into it. A great love has no debit and credit account; it gives vastly, not inquiring for any return. People in weak health, who can become genuinely moribund upon opposition, possess a weapon which the sound cannot pretend to emulate. On the evening of the day of Margaret's visit to the Vicarage Freddy Ducane had unexpectedly returned to the Manor. ' I believe that that wretched little Prue is going to die on purpose to spite Peggy for not letting her go to the Harboroughs ! ' says milady crossly, vexed at her nephew's serene flower face, ' I cannot think what possessed you to put such an idea into her stupid little head ! ' And Freddy looks mournful, and answers sweetly that he supposes it is useless his trying to explain that he had no hand in the matter, but that he is afraid he shall never be able to inflict gratuitous pain upon any one as long as he lives. Despite his assertion of innocence, he has in his pocket a second letter of invitation from Lady Betty for Prue, which he reads with her next day under the Judas-tree while Peggy is away at the workhouse. She comes back a little too soon, before the reading is quite finished, just in time to see Prue stick the note hastily into her pocket. DOCTOR CUPID 145 At this gesture her heart sinks — Prue is beginning to look upon her as an enemy. ' You need not hide your letter, Prue. I am not going to ask to see it,' she says, in a wounded voice, either for- getting or omitting to make any salutation to Freddy. Prue reddens. ' I should not have hidden it, only that I knew it would make you angry,' she answers, with a sort of trembling defiance. 'Lady Betty has invited me again. I cannot help it ; it is not my fault.' Freddy has risen, and, scenting a coming storm, follows his instincts by beginning to edge away. ' How bad of you — you dear Peg ! ' cries he affectionately, holding out both hands — ' to come back just as I am obliged to be off ! That is the way you always treat me — is not it, Prue?' 'You needn't go,' replies Margaret, neglecting his hands, and looking rather sternly at him. ' I shall not be here a moment ; and we are not going to quarrel, if that is what you are afraid of. Prue, since Lady Betty is so urgent, and you wish it so much, tell her that you will go to her.' Then she leaves them with a steady step, but when she reaches her own room her tears gush out. That gesture of Prue's hand to her pocket has cut her to the quick; Prue, whose one first impulse through all her seventeen years' span has hitherto been to run to her sister with whatever of good or bad — be it broken head or new doll — fate has brought her. That one small gesture tells her that the old habit is for ever broken, and she cries bitterly at it. She may cry as much as she pleases during the silent fortnight that follows, certain that neither Mink nor the cat will ask her why ; but she does not weep again. Through the gossamer-dressed September mornings, and the gold-misted September noons, she lives alone. Alone with her tlioughts— thoughts none the less worth thiidving 10 146 DOCTOR CUPID perhaps for their new tinge of deep sadness — with her unpretending charities, with Jacob and her hollyhocks. It is a novel experience, since never before in all Prue's little hfe has she borne to have the child out of her sight for as much as a week. Three months ago she would have thought it too hard a thing to have asked of her to forego Prue's songs and kisses for a Avhole fortnight ; but of late Prue herself has so entirely robbed their intercourse of its old confident sweetness, has put such a bitter sting into it, that for the first few days after her departure Peggy (albeit with self- reproach) experiences a sense of relief in no longer meeting the small miserable face with its mute and dogged uj)braid- ings. So little does she dread her own company that she avails herself but sparingly even of such society as is within her reach, i.e. that of the Manor and milady, with her spud and frieze-coat; that of the Vicarage with its stocking- basket and its Earthly Paradise. The only visitors of whom she sees much are the little Harboroughs, who still adorn the Manor nurseries, and call upon her almost daily, with that utter absence of misgiving as to being always welcome that few people — and those only the most con- summate bores — are able to preserve in later life. She likes them — the boy best ; and even if she herself is not quite in tune for their chatter, there is always the red fox to pant at them, with pretty cunning face and hot wild breath, from behind the wire walls of his house ; the pump to wet their clothes, and the stable kittens to scratch them. So no wonder that they come every day. She would enjoy their conversation more if it did not involve so ceaseless a reference to one whom she has neither the need nor the desire to have thus hauled back into her memory. But it seems as if John Talbot had been so inwoven with the very woof of their lives that no anecdote of their little past is complete without it. She could DOCTOR CUPID 147 endure it, however, if they confined themselves to anecdotes. It is the perpetual appeal to her for her opinion about him that she finds so trying. ' Oh, JVIiss Lambton ! do not you like John Talbot % "When is he coming back? Do not you wish he would come and live with you here always? Do you like him better than father? Franky says lie does. Is not it naughty of him ? ' And the questions of childhood are not like those of a maturer age, which may be evaded or put aside. They must and will be directly answered. Peggy cannot help a vexed internal laugh as she hears herself, allowing that she likes John Talbot, asseverating that she has no wish that he should come and live with her always, and explain- ing that it is possible to appreciate him and father too. But she is always deeply thankful when the conversational charms of Alfred the stable-boy, or the chicken-feeding hour, or any other timely distraction releases her from this trying interrogatory. Of John Talbot, except through the too glib tongues of his little partisans, she has heard absolutely nothing. On the morning of his departure she had sent his Keats and one or two other of his books up to the Manor after him. As she was neatly wrapping them in paper a sprig of lavender fell out of the Keats — a sprig which, as she re- membered, he had put in as a mark into the unfinished 'Eve of St. Agnes,' on their last reading. She stooped and picked it up, looking hesitatingly at it. Shall she return it to its place % Why should she ? No one could ever connect the idea of Betty with lavender. Gardenias would bring her image at once — gardenias wired and oveqwwering ; but the clean and homely lavender — never ! She throws it pensively away ; and as she does so a foolish fancy comes over her, as if it were herself that she had just been tossing away out of his life ! That he acquiesces 148 DOCTOR CUPID ill that tossing away is but too evident. He does not even send her a formal line to acknowledge the receipt of his restored property. So it is not his fault that his image walks beside her so often down the garden alleys; both at high blue noon and when, on fair nights, she steps abroad to look at the thronged stars. One must think of something; and there are many interstices in her thoughts which cannot all be filled up by the one topic — Prue. Into them he creeps ; the more so as she lives almost wholly in her garden ; and with that his memory is so entangled that there is scarcely a plant that does not say something to her of him. She thinks of him always without bitterness ; generally with deep com- passion ; never with any hope of pulling lavender with him again. But she thinks of him. Perhaps there was some truth in Betty's fleer, of her never having known any better company than that of the village apothecary. The only outward incidents of her life come in the shape of Prue's letters. These begin by being long and full of ecstasies ; end by being short and full of nothing. Before the first week is over they are hurried up, ere the sheet is full, with some excuse. She must go and get dressed to go out riding. They are just off to a tennis- party. They are to go out shooting with the men. The expressions of enjoyment grow fewer in each. Yet in not one is the slightest wish expressed for a return home. In fact, before the fortnight ends comes a feverish note, evidently written in hot haste and deep excitement, begging for a further reprieve of a week. It gives Peggy a little fresh pang to notice that this petition is urged as a criminal might urge some request upon his executioner, not as one would beg a boon of a tender friend. But she is used to such pain now; rises up and lies down with it ; and to-day puts it patiently aside. What she cannot put aside is her perplexity as to how to answer. DOCTOR CUPID 149 She has a deep repugnance against complying; and yet the memory of her terror at Prue's rapid decline upon her former opposition makes her tremblingly shrink from adopting a course that may all too probably bring back that condition. She dares not decide upon her own re- sponsibility. She will consult miladj'. On her way to the Manor she goes round by the Vicarage, and looks in. Over the lawn there is a festal air. It is evident that the little Evanses have been drinking tea out of doors, in honour of a visit from Miss and Master Harborough. The Vicar is nowhere to be seen ; a fact which does not surprise Peggy, as she knows that any signs of conviviaKty on the part of his children are apt to make him disappear. On catching sight of her Franky Harborough precipi- tates himself towards her as fast as his fat legs will carry him. He is in wild spirits, and has evidently, on his own showing, been extremely naughty. ' Oh, we have been having such fun ! — we have had tea out of doors ! Mrs. Evans said that the next child who shook the table so as to upset anything should have no tea! I,' with a chuckle, 'had finished my tea, so I gave it a good shake ! ' He looks so rosily delighted with his own iniquity, and is so flatteringly glad to see her, that poor Peggy, who feels as if not many people were glad to see her nowadays, has not the heart to rebuke him. With her admirer's small soft hand tightly clutching hers, she advances to where, under a copper beech's shade, sits Mrs. Evans — the stocking-basket banished, and engaged upon some genteeler industry — in company with a female friend. 'We were just talking of you,' says the Vicar's wife, putting out a welcoming hand. 'Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Jones; she has been staying in the neigh bourhood of the Harboroughs ; she saw Prue.' ISO DOCTOR CUPID 'Did you indeed?' cries Peggy, turning with anxious interest to the new comer. ' Was she well 1 Did she look wein' ' She looked extremely well' ' She must have been very well indeed, I should think,' adds Mrs. Evans, with a meaning smile. It is a smile of such significance that, for a moment, Peggy dares not ask an explanation of it ; and before she can frame her question Mrs. Evans goes on. 'How very oddly people seem to amuse themselves in smart houses nowadays ! — one never heard of such things when I was a girl ; but I suppose, as it is the fashion, it is all right.' 'Were they — were they doing anything very strange?' asks Peggy, with rising colour and wavering voice, address- ing the visitor. ' They seemed to be enjoying themselves very thoroughly,' replies the latter, with a prim evasive smile. ' They were all driving donkey tandems full gallop down the main street of the town,' cries Mrs. Evans, taking up the tale ; ' it seems that there is a town about three miles from Harborough Castle. Prue was driving one ! ' ' Prue % ' ' Yes, Fnie ! I was as much surprised as you can be ; but it must have been Prue ; there was no other unmarried girl there ! ' Peggy is silent. ' My cousin says it was wonderful how she got her donkeys along ! She was at the head of the party; and they were all shouting — shouting at the top of their voices ! ' Still Margaret makes no comment. 'My cousin says that the whole town turned out to look at them; they were all at their doors and windows. I am sure so should I have been,' with a laugh ; ' but it seems a childish romp for grown-up peoj)le, does not it?' Peggy's answer is a slight assenting motion of the head, but her words are not ready. Her eyes seem fixed atten- DOCTOR, CUPID 151 tively on the distant gambols of the children — on Lily Harborough swarming a cherry-tree, and being pulled down by the • leg by an indignant nurse ; on Franky giving a covert pull to the end of the white tea table- cloth, in the pious hope of precipitating all the teacups to the ground. 'Another day,' pursues ]\Irs, Evans cheerfiUly, 'they drove into the town and bought all the penny tarts at the confectioner's, and pelted one another with them in the open street.' Peggy has at length recovered her speech. ' It was very, very stupid,' she says, in a voice of acute annoyance ; ' senseless. But after all there was no great harm in it.' ' Of course one does not know what they did mdoors,' rejoins Mrs. Evans, as if, though a good-natured woman, unavoidably anxious to knock even this prop from under our poor Peggy. ' People said — did not they "? ' turning to her cousin — 'that they sat up smoking till all hours of the night, and ran in and out of each other's rooms ; and the ladies put things in the men's beds ' ' I am afraid I must be going on,' interrupts Margaret, starting up as if she had been stung ; ' I have to see Lady Eoupell.' She takes leave abruptly. It seems to her as if she should not be able to draw her breath properly until she is alone. She pants still as she walks on over the stubble fields, across the park, under the September trees, whose green seems all the heavier and deeper for their nigh-coming change of raiment. She pants at the recollection of the picture just drawn for her of her Prue — lier Prue — shouting, smoking, making apple-pie beds ! Her worry of mind mxist have written itself upon her face, for no sooner has she joined miladj'-, whom she finds out in the shrubberies leaning on her spade, like Hercules 152 DOCTOR CUPID upon his club, than the old lady asks sharply what she has been doing to herself. ' Nothing that I know of,' replies Peggy, ' except that I have been rather bothered.' ' Prue, eh % '" 'Yes.' ' What about her nowf with a slight accent of impatience. ' She wants to stay away another week.' ' And have you given her leave % ' ' I came to ask your advice.' Milady is neatly squirting a plantain or two out of the turf. She waits until she has finished before answering. Then she says with decision : ' Have her back.' 'You think so? But if,' very anxiously, 'she falls ill again as soon as she gets home 1 ' ' Pish ! ' rejoins the other in a f uiy ; ' give her a dose of jalap and a whipping.' But Peggy does not even smile. 'Have you — have you heard anything of the party?' she asks hesitatingly ; ' of whom it consists, I mean ? Prue is not very communicative. Is Lady Clanranald there still f 'No, she is gone,' replies milady shortly, digging her Aveapon into a dandelion. ' She could not stand it. Betty is an ass ! ' Cmdcl not stand it ! In a dismayed silence Margaret awaits further explana- tion, but none comes. Milady, whatever she may know, is evidently determined not to be diffuse on the subject. ' Have her home ! ' repeats she briefly, lifting her shrewd old eyes to Peggy's, and replacing her billycock hat on the top of the cap from which her stooping attitude has nearly dismounted it; 'have her home, and do it as quickly as possible.' Beyond this piece of short but very definite advice, DOCTOR CUPID 153 notliiug is to be got out of her. She will explain neither why Lady Clanranald took flight nor why Betty is an ass. In an uneasiness all the deeper for the vagueness of milady's implications, Peggy takes her Avay home to her little solitary Eed House, and writes the letter which is to summon Prue back. But with how many tears is that letter penned ! How many fond and anxious apologies ! Wrapped in what a mantle of loving phrases does the unpalatable fiat go forth ! However, it has gone now, and there is nothing for her but to await its result. Between the day on which it was sent and that appointed for Prue's homecoming there is ample time for an answer to be returned ; but none comes. The day arrives ; the servant who is to be Prue's escort sets off in the early morning, and through the long hours, forenoon, noon, afternoon, Peggy waits. Not in idleness though. She is hard at work from dawn till sunset, cooking, garden- ing, rearranging, planning surprises that are her fatted calves for the prodigal. As she works her spirits rise. The small house looks so bright ; perhaps, after all, Prue will not be very sorry to find herself back in it ; and how pleasant it will be to hear her little voice singing about the garden, and to see her jumping over the tennis-net with Mink again ! Mink has not jumped over the tennis-net once since she left. With a lightened heart Peggy stoops to ask him why he has not, but he answers only by a foolish smirk. The expected moment has come. For half an hour beforehand Peggy has been standing at the garden- end straining her eyes down the road, and making up her mind that there must have been an accident. But at length the slow station fly with its dusty nimbus heaves in sight, rolls in at the gate, stops at the door. Before Prue can well emerge her sister has her in her arms. 'Oil, Prue ! how nice it is to have you back ! How are 154 DOCTOR CUPID you % Have you enjoyed yourself ] Are you a little glad to see me % ' Prue's first remark can hardly be said to be an answer to any of these questions. She has disengaged herself from her sister, and stands staring round, as if half-bewildered. Prue does not look like herself. She has an oddly- shaped hat ; there is something unfamiliar about the dressing of her hair ; and can it be fatigue or dust that has made her so extremely black under the eyes. 'What a squeezy little place !' she says slowly, with an accent half of wonder, half of disgust. 'Surely it must have shrunk since I went away !' And Peggy's arms drop to her sides, and her hopes go out. CHAPTER XVIII A WRETCHED moiitli follows — a month of miscraLIc misery — misery, that is, that springs from no God-sent misfortune; that has none of that fateful greatness to which we bow our heads, stooping meekly before the storm of the in- evitable ; but a misery that is paltry and reasonless — one of those miseries that we ourselves spin out of the web of our own spoilt lives. It seems such a folly and a shame to be miserable in the face of these yellow October days that by and by steal in, pranked out in the cheerful glory of their short-lived wealth, with such a steadfast sun throwing down his warmth upon you from his unchanging blue home; with a park full of such bronze bracken to push through at your very door; and with such an army of dahlias, ragged chrysanthemums, and ' Good-bye-Summers,' with their delicate broad disks, to greet you morning after morning as you pass in your pleasant ownership along their gossamered ranks. So Peggy feels; but that does not hinder her from being wretched to her very heart's core. The inside world may throw a sunshine on the outside one, as we all know — may make June day out of January night — ' the winter of our discontent ' into glorious summer ; but the outside can throw no sunshine on the inside unless some is there already. So Peggy's 'Good-bye-Summers,' tliough they never in their lives have flowered for her so beautifully before, smile at her in vain. She has no answering 156 DOCTOR CUPID gladness to give tliem back. It has not taken twenty-four hours from the time of her return to prove that it has l)ecome absolutely impossible to please Pruc. It is nothing that, on the first evening of her arrival, she has, as it were, walked over all poor Peggy's little planned surprises without even perceiving them ; that she has turned her dinner over disdainfully, and remarked how much worse Sarah cooks than when she went away. These may be but the childish fretfulnesses engendered of fatigue, and that a good night's rest will sweep away. But when twenty-four hours have passed, when a week, when a fortnight have gone by, and find her still cavilling at the smallness of the rooms, the garden's confined space, and the monotony of their lives, then, indeed, Margaret's spirits sink as they have never sunk before. The one definite property that Prue seems to have brought back from her Harborough visit is a sickly and contemptuous disgust for whatever had formerly given her pleasure ; a standard by which to measure all the conditions of her own life, and find them grossly wanting. About the visit itself she is singularly reticent. Not a word does she breathe of her own prowess in donkey tandem- driving; not a hint does she let drop of any midnight gambols. Once and again Margaret sadly fancies that she sees faint signs of the old lifelong habit of telling her every- thing trying to reassert its sway ; but in a moment it is checked. Often Prue seems to her sister like a child who, engaged in some naughtiness, has been charged by its confederates not to tell. And Prue does not tell. Yet, from indications which she cannot help letting fall, Peggy gathers that the visit has not been all pleasure ; that fits of bitter disappointment, sharp jealousy, grisly disillusion, freaked the surface of its feverish joy. And yet Freddy had been a co-guest with her through the whole fortnight ! DOCTOR CUPID 157 This fact Margaret has elicited by direct inquir}^ ; it would never have been volunteered. ' Come, Prue,' she says coaxingly, on the morning after the young girl's return, as they stroll about the garden, whose flowers Prue notices only to disparage, ' I let you off last night because you were so sleepy, but you must tell me something about your visit now. "Was Freddy there % ' 'Yes.' 'All the time?' 'Yes.' ' Did you see much of him % ' A slight hesitation, and then an accent of impatience : ' Of course. Were not we staying in the same house V 'And — and — did Mr. Harborough mount youl You know, don't you — I told you, I think,' a beam of pleasure shining in her anxious blue eyes — 'that milady has lent you the little gray mare for the whole winter?' ' I do not think that I care for riding as much as I did,' replies Prue listlessly, plucking the seed-vessel from an overblown dahlia in the border beside her, and idly scattering the seeds over the walk, 'We did not ride much ; there were so many more amusing things to do.' ' What sort of things V ' Oh, they would not have amused you !' ' How do you know that, until you tell me what they were?' ' Oh, they would not have amused you ; you are not easily amused. He always says so ; and besides,' sinking down with a sigh on the bench under the Judas-tree, ' of what use to talk of them now they arc over?' For a second Peggy shrinks into herself in baffled discouragement, but immediately recovers. She will not be so easily disheartened. 'If they are so amusing,' she says cheerfully, 'perhaps 158 DOCTOR CUPID we might adopt some of them here. We are not above learning, are we?' Prue smiles disdainfully, curling her childish nose. 'In these extensive grounds?' Nor as time goes on does she grow more communicative about her visit, though it is clear that its incidents occupy her thoughts to the exclusion of all other subjects, and though its influence may be traced in each fragment of her sparse talk. It is one of Peggy's severest daily penalties to recognise in her sister's languid speech continually recurring phrases of Betty's ; thin echoes of her flippancies. Prue is even growing to have a dreadful likeness to her model. Possibly this may arise only from Betty's old hat, which she persistently wears; or from the mode of hair- dressing, slavishly copied from her original. That the now fixed bloom in her cheek may be derived from the same source as Lady Betty's, and cause the undeniable resem- blance that exists between them, is a supposition too bad to be faced, and that Peggy drives away from her mind as soon as it presents itself. But it recurs. How many disagreeable things do not recur nightly as she lays her head on that pillow which is oftener than not wetted with her tears % 'Oh, why did I let her go?' she sobs. 'Why did I take any one's advice ? What has happened to her ? What shall I do ? It is not my Prue at all that has come back to me !' Now and again, indeed, there is a tantalising glimpse of the old Prue, hidden away, as it were, behind the new one. Once, twice, there is a curly head resting voluntarily on Peggy's knees ; thin arms thrown — and oh, how thank- fully welcomed! — round her glad neck; a little voice plaining to her of some small physical ill, with a touch of the old childish confidence in Peggy's power to kiss any wound well. But in a moment she is gone again; and DOCTOR CUPID 159 the new Prue, the dreadful, new, cynical, imitation Betty Prue is back. It is this new Prue who daily steals with surreptitious haste to meet the postman, lest the eyes, whose love has enveloped her through life, should now dare to alight upon her correspondence. And yet Peggy knows by the after-mood of the day, as well as if she had scanned superscription and seal, whether or not the ex- pected missive has come. Judging by this test, the postman is for Prue, far oftener than not, empty-handed. Once, twice, as Margaret learns from Lady Roupell, Freddy is expected at the Manor. Once, twice, at the last moment, some motive of exalted self-sacrifice prompts him to tele- graph that he is unable to come. And now he can no longer be expected, for mid-October is here; the Uni- versities have reopened their long -shut arms to their children, and Freddy has returned to Oxford. To add still further to the discomfort of the situation, the weather, hitherto so far beyond praise, becomes suddenly as much beyond blame. There follows a week of pouring, tearing, ruthlessrain. The'Good-bye-Summers'say good-bye indeed. Three days after the fall of this final blow to Prue's hopes the two girls meet milady coming out of morning church ; milady in her reluctant and temporary divorce from her spud and frieze -coat. They walk down the yellow, leaf-strewn church-path with her, as they always do, while she throws her brusque nods, and her good- hearted greetings to her fellow-worshippers. As she seats herself in the carriage she pulls a letter accidentally out of her pocket with her pocket-handkerchief. ' Oh, by the bye,' says she, ' I heard this morning from Freddy ; I came away in such a hurry that I had not half time to read it If I had been a little farther off the Vicar,' laughing, ' I would have read it during the sermon. (Poor doar man!' in a loud aside, 'he really ought to treat us to a new one.) Freddy says that he is ill.' i6o DOCTOR CUPID 'III, is he?' ' So he says,' with a shrug. ' He says that he has caught a chill. Oh, I am not very much disturbed,' laughing again. ' I daresay that we are not going to lose him this time. You know he always cries out some time before he is hurt.' She rolls cheerfully away, resuming the reading of her letter as she goes. Peggy turns apprehensively to her sister. The congregation have all issued into road and bridle-path, and they are alone. Peggy has time for an impulse of thankfulness that such is the case ; for Prue is leaning, whiter than her pocket-handkerchief, against the lych-gate. ' 111 P she says gaspingly, under her breath. '111! and all alone ! nobody with him ! ' 'Pooh!' replies Peggy lightly, and with a half tone of contempt. ' I daresay it is not much ; he is always frightened about himself. Do not you remember the time when he thought he was going into a consumption, and bid us all good-bye 1 How white you look, darling ! Had not you better sit down a moment ? Take my arm.' But Prue will not sit down — will not take her sister's arm. She walks home unhelped, and on getting there, refuses all Peggy's simple cordials. But she leaves her luncheon untouched, and is out the whole afternoon on a long aimless, solitary ramble. She comes in again a full hour after dusk has fallen, and, complaining of headache, goes to bed. The next morning she is up, and at her usual stand, lying in ambush for the postman. After he is gone Peggy catches distant glimpses of her walking up and down the kitchen garden, reading a letter. She has heard, then, from him. Thank God ! Perhaps her heart will be more at ease. With her own mind relieved, Margaret goes about her morning's work with a better courage ; and it is eleven DOCTOR CUPID i6i o'clock before she again thinks of her sister. The striking of the hour reminds her that Prue "ttdll probably forget to take her tonic, and that it will be safer to administer it herself. She pours it out, and opening the drawing-room door, calls ' Prue ! Prue !' There is no answer. She moves to the foot of the stairs and repeats her call, 'Prue !' No answer. She sets the glass down upon a table, and runs into the garden. 'Prue ! Prue !' There is an answer this time, but unfortunately it is not the right one. It is the parrot officiously replying, 'Yes, 'm,' in the cook's voice. She re-enters the house. Possibly Prue may be in her o^vn room — one of her new tendencies is to lock herself in there for hours together — and with the door shut Peggy's summonses may, though in so small a house it is not likely, have remained unheard. She runs up and knocks. No answer. She turns the handle, the door opens, and she looks in. In vain ! The room is empty. She can see this at a glance. It is not likely that Prue is hiding in her own cupboard, or beneath her narrow chintz bed ; and yet her sister, pushed by what vague suspicion she does not know, enters. A note in Prue's handwriting and addressed to herself, lying on the small writing-table in the window, at once catches her eye. In an instant she has sprung upon and torn it open. "What is this % There is neither beginning nor ending ; only a fcAV unsteady lines straggling across a sheet of paper : * I have not asked your leave, because I knew that you would not give it ; but I could not — could not let him die alone. Oh, Peggy, do not be very angry with me ! I am so miserable, and I could not help it.' That is all. It has not taken Margaret two seconds to master the contents ; and having done so, she stands vacantly staring at the empty envelope still licld in her I I 1 62 DOCTOR CUPID hand. It is a minute or two before she has recovered her wits enough to realise that it is not yet empty; that it contains a second sheet. This is in a different handwriting, one of those small, clear, clever handwritings affected by the cultured youth of the day. 'Ch. Ch. Oxford. ♦My Prue, ' Send me a little word. I am suffering, and I am all alone. I am scratching you these few pencil-lines in case — as, I fear, is too probable — I may be too ill to write to-morrow. Oh, my Prue ! " The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint." What would not I give for one of your little cold white hands to lay on my throbbing brow % ' Your * Freddy.' It was only with a half comprehension — so stunned was she — that Peggy had read Prue's missive ; but at the end of Freddy's the dreadful white light of full understanding breaks upon her soul. Prue has gone to Oxford ! — gone to fulfil young Ducane's aspiration — to ' lay her little cold hand on his throbbing brow.' Can it be possible? Can even Prue's madness have gone so far % She snatches up her sister's note again, and greedily reads it afresh, in the Avild hope of finding that she has mistaken its drift. Alas ! there is no room for misapprehension. If she need further confirmation of her worst fears it comes in the voice of Sarah, who looks in, duster in hand, through the half-open door. 'Please, 'm, did you want Miss Prue? She has gone out. ' Gone out ! ' repeats Margaret breathlessly. Then, making a great effort over herself for composure, she adds, ' Yes, yes, I know ; how did she go % did she walk or drive V ' She went in the pony-carriage, 'm,' DOCTOR CUPID 163 ' Did she take Alfred with her V 'No, 'm; she said she should not want him.' 'And how — how long ago did she set off f ' Indeed, 'm, I did not much notice. I happened to look out of the passage window as I was dusting the stairs, and I saw her drive off; it must be the best part of an hour ago.' The best part of an hour ago ! Like lightning it dawns upon Peggy that a train leaves her station for Oxford at ten minutes to eleven. It is a slow one, as all must be which draw up at the little wayside platform ; not so slow, however, but that a crawl of a hundred and twenty minutes will land Prue as hopelessly beyond her power of reach as if it were the ' Flying Dutchman ' itself, at Oxford station. She is as little able to hinder her sister from forcing her mad way into the young man's room as she would be to stop God's lightning from splitting the tree it is appointed to rend. With a gesture of rage and despair she dashes Freddy's note to the ground, and flings her own head down on the open blotting-book whose pages keep the imprint, scarcely dry, of her sister's insane words. But in a few minutes she has pulled herself together. There is only one thing for her to do — to follow and overtake her sister as quickly as possible. A& quickhj as possible 1 But how quickly is that % This is the first thing to be discovered. She goes dowTi into the cheerful hall, where the birds in their big cage are swinging on John Talbot's ladder, and chattering to each other as jovially as if no disaster had fallen on their roof-tree ; where Mink is lying on his small hairy side in a sun-patch, with his little paws crossed like a dying saint's. IMargaret searches for the Bradshaio, which apparently Sarah has tidied away. Her first impulse is to call to her, and ask where she has put it ; but her second corrects it. Why should the household learn any sooner than is unavoidable that Prue has tied? i64 DOCTOR CUPID By and by she disco^'ers the missing vohirne, and sitting down, buries herself in its pages. What she had feared is reahsed. There is no second train for Oxford until 2.15. Three hours of forced inaction stretch before her — three hours for Pruo to carry out whatever cureless folly her burning heart and rudderless mind may dictate. She starts up. To sit still with such thoughts for company is out of the question. She wanders back again to Prue's room, picks up Freddy's note which she had left in her ire lying on the carpet; tears both it and Prue's into small pieces, and throws them into the grate ; then, misdoubting their being sufficiently destroyed, collects the fragments again and burns them — tears out even that sheet of the blotting-book upon which Prue had dried her words, and burns it too. Then she goes downstairs, and looks at the clock. It has seemed to her as if she had been a long time over her burning. Yet the clock-hand points only to a quarter past eleven. She must force herself to some occupation. To read is impossible. Needlework and gardening both sharpen instead of deadening thought. It is the day for doing up the week's accounts. She will compel herself to do them as usual. But the figures swim before her eyes. The simplest addition baffles her. The names of Prue, Freddy, Oxford, force themselves into her record of expenditure, making nonsense of it, defacing her neat columns ; and after half an hour's vain efforts, she desists with a sigh. When one o'clock comes at last she sits down to luncheon, calmly telling Sarah that she does not expect Prue back ; and having obliged herself, for the sake of appearances, to eat something, she puts on her hat and jacket. Leaving word with her household as indifferently as she can that they are not to be surprised if she and her sister are late in returning, she sets forth on her walk to the station. She has reflected that she would start early, in DOCTOR CUPID 165 order to give herself plenty of time to walk slowly. But she does not Avalk slowly; she walks fast; towards the end she runs. Who knows whether her clocks may not be slow ? whether on coming in sight of the little upstart red- brick house that constitutes the station, she may not see the train sliding away without her 1 She arrives breathless, to find that she has half an hour to wait— half an hour in which to admire the station-master's canariensis and his mignonette, which greets each dusty train-load with its whiff of perfume. By and by another intending traveller or two arrive. The Manor omnibus drives up, and disgorges the little Harboroughs and their nurses. Peggy had known and forgotten that they were to return home to-day. She feels rather guilty at her own cold inability to echo their loud expressions of pleasure at this unexpected meeting with her. But they apparently detect no lack of warmth in her answering greetings, as they each at once take possession of one of her hands, and march up and down with her. In the intervals of a searching interrogatory as to the goal and object of her journey, they continue a quarrel apparently begun in the omnibus; putting out their red tongues at each other before her face, and executing agile kicks at one another's legs behind her back. ^\Tien the train draws up they insist upon deserting their own suite and getting in vnth her. She had rather that they would not have done so; and yet perhaps it affords a wholesome diversion from her own thoughts to be continually jumping up to grasp Franky by the seat of his sailor-trousers, and hinder him from breaking his neck by tumbling out of the window, or his legs by his endeavours to climb up into the netting. Lily is not nearly so troublesome. She is sitting quite still, and slmmng off; trying, that is, to impress by her remarks two quiet ladies who are fellow- occupants of the carriage with a sense of licr importance. i66 DOCTOR CUPID 'I hope,' she says, in a loud voice, 'that my large box is in ;' as she speaks she turns her eyes upon the strangers to see whether they look awed ; but as they do not, she adds, in a still louder key, ' because it is full of clothes ! ' The train slides on through the bright-dyed autumn country; past the flooded flat meadows lying a-dazzle in the sun, blinding mirrors for the gorgeous October trees ; across and then again across the broad ribbon of the silver Thames ; past distant country houses, lifting their shoulders out of the gold and red billows of their elms and beeches ; past big villages and little towns, till, after several previous stoppages, they come to a standstill at the platform of a small station, as destitute of importance as the one from which they set off". It is that at which the little Har- boroughs are to get out. ' Mammy is coming to meet us,' Lily had announced ; ' she will give Franky such a hug ! She never hugs me — I am father's child.' She throws one final look at her fellow-travellers, to see whether they are not rather struck by the last statement, before joining her brother at the window, and jostling her hat against his in the endeavour to have the glory of obtaining the first glimpse of their common parent. Of this, however, she is balked, as, whatever may be her after- assertions to the contrary, there is no doubt that the shrill cries of boy and girl, 'There she is!' 'There's mammy!' rang out absolutely simultaneous. Their curly heads fill up the window-space so completely that Peggy, for a moment, hopes to escape detection and recognition. She hopes it the more, since, for the first minute, Betty has no eyes save for her boy, whom she has caught in her arms ; relieving Peggy at length from her convulsive hold of his small-clothes, and burying him under a perfect smother of kisses. ' My blessing — my beauty ! so I have got you back at DOCTOR CUPID 167 last! You must never— never leave your poor mammy again ! Well, Lily, how are you % Goodness, child, what a figure you are ! You are one large freckle ! Oh, Miss Lambton, is that you % Where are you off to % Is Prue with you % No % What fun Prue is ! I had no idea until she stayed with me what capital fun she was. You must let me have her again before long.' The train moves off, and Margaret, a little heavier- hearted than before, with it. Some impulse prompts her to pull back the curtain of the little side-window in order to watch, as long as it is in sight, that figure on the little platform. Yes, Prne is certainly like her ; but, alas ! it is to be not even a good imitation for which she has foregone her oMTi woodland grace. Margaret had forgotten how pretty Betty was. How charming she looks now, with her face full of wholesome mother-love, perfectly uncon- scious, indifi"erent as to whether any one is looking at her or not, clasping her little rosy child. CHAPTER XIX ' Ox — FORD ! Ox^ — ford !' Her goal is reached ; and as she has no higgage, and is therefore independent of the scanty- numbered and not particularly civil porters, in two minutes after the stopping of the train she is in a hansom, spin- ning up to Christ Church. At Tom Gate she gets out, and rather timidly entering the archway, bends her steps to the porter's lodge. He comes out politely to meet her. 'Can you tell me where Mr. Ducane's rooms are?' ' Certainly, ma'am. Peckwater Quad, third door on the left hand, second staircase.' As she is moving off hurriedly in the direction indicated her informant adds : 'I am afraid that you will not find him in, ma'am.' 'Not in?' repeats she, in a tone of the most acute astonishment. 'Is not he ill, then?' ' Not that I am aware of, ma'am ; he Avent out about half an hour ago with a lady.' At the mention of the lady a sudden vermilion flies up into Peggy's face. ' Did you happen to notice,' she asks precipitately — * can you tell me which way they — they went?' 'I think they may have been going to the meadows, ma'am ; they went out by the Hall.' Almost before he can lift his finger to point out the line she is to take she is off upon it. Across the wide quad DOCTOR CUPID 169 she speeds, uneler the exquisite stone umbrella that has held itself for over three centuries above the staircase up which thousands of stalwart young feet have tramped to their dinner in the Hall. Along the still, gray cloisters ; past the mean flimsiness of the new buildings, erected apparently as a bad practical joke, out into the sunshine and dignity of the Broad "Walk. She stands for a moment or two uncertainly, looking from the new avenue to the old one. From the stripling rows of limes and poplars which will shade 1900 and 2000 — those strange-faced centuries, of which we that are having our little innings willy-nilly now, and will have had them then, think with a certain startled curiosity — she turns to the elm-veterans, who are paying their two-hundredth tribute of amber and tawny leaves to the passing season. Her eye travels the whole length of both long alleys ; but in neither does she discover a trace of the two figures she is in quest of. Men in flannels she sees in plenty {men they call themselves ; but have men such smooth lady -faces % do men laugh like that?) — men by twos and threes and fours and ones going down to, or coming up from, the glinting river. However, she cannot stand hesitating for ever at the top of the diverging avenues; so, since both hold out equally little promise to her, she takes the Broad Walk. It is a bright, crisp afternoon. Above her the elms, thinned of their leaf-crowns, arch their bicenten- ary heads ; the flooded meadow flashes argent on either hand. Merton's gray -gabled front, rose -climbed, and Magdalen's more distant tower lift their time-coloured faces against the blue. On seats beneath the trees, with the shadows, thinner than in high summer, stretching at their feet, climbs here and there a child ; rest an old man ; sit a pair of lovers. Here and there also — alas, too frequently ! — comes a gap in the ancient elm-brotherhood, ill filled by some young puny twig, that shows where the storm laid I70 DOCTOR CUPID low the honourable age of a giant whose green childhood the Stuarts saw. She has reached the end of the walk, and again glances about her uncertainly. There is still no sign to be traced of her truants having passed this way. Whither shall she now bend her steps 1 She is not long in deciding. On her right a narrower path stretches, following the windings of the Cherwell — narrower, yet delectable too; tree-hung, shadow-pranked, and with the flush river for companion. The country round is all in flood; the fair town sitting among the waters. Margaret walks quickly along, her look anxiously thrown ahead of her, eagerly asking of each new turn in the walk to give her the sight she seeks. On she goes through the golden weather. A great old willow, girthed like an oak, golden too, stoops over the brimful stream that runs by, in silent strength — stoops with a flooring of its own gold beneath it. There is no wind to speak of ; yet the trees are dropping their various leaves on the Cherwell's breast. She, speeding along all the while, watches them softly fall — a horse-chestnut fan ; a lime-leaf ; a little shower of willow-leaves, narrow and pointed like birds' tongues — softly fall and swiftly sail away. At a better time who would have enjoyed it all so much as she 1 but she draws no grain of pleasure from it now. She can take none of nature's lovely substitutes in the place of the two human objects she is pursuing. If she does not find them here, Avhere else shall she seek theml What clue has she to guide her '\ With a sinking heart she is putting this question to herself when, as the sight of the moored barges, the flash of oars, the sound of shouting voices tell her that she is nearing the spot where the Cherwell and Isis join in shining wedlock, she comes suddenly upon them. On the seat that runs round a tall plane-tree they are DOCTOR CUPID 171 sitting side by side. At least they have not chosen any very sequestered spot. His blonde head is throA^Ti back, and resting against the trunk ; while from his lips a stream of mellow words is pouring. He is obviously spouting poetry ; while she, in feverish unconsciousness of what she is doing, tears into strips a yellow plane-leaf, her eyes down-dropped, and a deeper stain than even that of Betty's prescribing on her cheeks. Peggy noiselessly draws near. ' "Dearest, bury me Under that holy oak, or gospel tree, Where, though thou seest not, thou may'st think upon Me, when thou yearly go'st procession ; Or, for mine honour, lay me in that tomb In which thy sacred reliques shall have room For my embalming, sweetest " ' 'Good heavens, Peggy !' Some slight rustle of her go^wTi must have betrayed her neighbourhood. The lovers both spring to their feet ; and for a moment all three young people stand silently eyeing each other. Prue's hot roses have vanished, but they have not travelled far. It is perhaps a sign that there is still some grace left in him, that they are now transplanted to Freddy's cheeks. Margaret is the first to speak. ' I am here to take you home, Prue,' she says in a low- grave voice. ' Are you ready f ' Come, Peggy dear ! ' cries the young man, recovering his complexion and his aplomb, never very far out of reach ; ' you need not look so tragic ! — you quite frighten us ! Do not scold her much,' laying a coaxing hand on Peggy's arm ; ' I have scolded her well myself already.' 'You!' There is such a depth of contempt in this one mono- syllable, and it is so elucidated — if indeed it needed elucidation — by the handsome lightning of her eye, that Freddy's colour again changes. 172 DOCTOR CUPID ' I was coming home. I should have come home by the next train,' falters Prue, hanging her head ; and as this tremulous explanation is received by her sister in a sorrow- ful silence, she adds with passionate eagerness, ' He was ill, really — very ill. It was not pretence — he was really ill.' ' No doubt,' replies Peggy, in withering quotation from Freddy's own billet ; ' " the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint." ' Not vouchsafing him another word or look, she takes her sister's unresisting arm, and leads her away. Without exchanging a syllable, they reach St. Aldate's. Then Peggy hails a hansom, and bids the cabman drive as quickly as he can to the G. W. station. But both her injunctions and his speed are vain. They gallop up only to find the train, reduced by distance to a small puff of smoke, steaming unattainably northwards. There is not a second one for another hour and a half. There is nothing for it but to wait. After all, as Peggy reflects with some bitterness, they are not returning to such a very happy home that they need be in any scrambling hurry to get there. In mid-October the days are already beginning to close in early, and even before the light goes there comes a sharpness into the air. It is blowing chilly through the draughty station now. Peggy looks apprehensively at Prue. Neither of them have had the forethought to bring any wraps with them. Prue is shivering in a thin summer jacket ; her face looks weary, drawn, and cold. 'Had not you better go and rest in the waiting-room 1' asks Margaret solicitously, addressing her for the first time, as she takes off her own cloak and wraps it round her. *Yes, if you Ansh. I do not mind,' replies Prue apathetically. When she has been settled in the warmest corner, and her vitality raised a little by a cup of hot tea, Peggy leaves her. DOCTOR CUPID I /J There is a painful irksomeness in her company that makes Peggy prefer to it even a silent and solitary march up and down the platform, each footstep beating time to some heavy thought. Her march is not destined to be solitary for long, however. Before she has taken three turns a soft young voice with an intonation of excessive deprecation sounds at her elbow : 'May I take a stroll with you, dear^' She does not deign him one syllable in answer, but walks along as before, looking straight ahead. He sighs patiently. ' When you come to think it over, dear, I am sure you will acknowledge that you are unjust. I can perfectly see your side of the question. I think that one ought always to try to see both sides ; but whether you believe me or not, I can assure you that I never was more horrified in my life than I was this morning, when poor Prue walked in.' And for once, at all events, Freddy speaks truth. 'Then why,' cries Peggy, blazing around upon him, 'did you write and tell her you were dying % Why did you ask her to come and "lay her little cold white hand upon your burning brow"?' Freddy winces; and the tone of liis charming cheeks rises several degrees. ' I do not quite know, dear, how you justify to yourself the reading of other people's letters,' he says sweetly ; ' but if you must quote me, I had rather that you did it correctly.' ' Do you mean to say,' cries she, turning her great honest eyes and her indignant rose face full upon him, 'that you did not ask her to "lay her little cold white liand upon " ' ' Oh, you need not say it all over again,' says Freddy, writhing. 'How dreadful it sounds, hammered out in that brutal voice ! AVhat a knack you have, Peggy, of turning everything into prose ! I did not fl.s/c her to lay her liaiid upon my forehead ; I said 1 should like it. So 174 DOCTOR CUPID I should ; so Avould you, if your head had been as hot as mine was yesterday.' He pauses ; but Peggy has no biting rejoinder to make. 'If I had for a moment supposed,' continues Freddy, 'tliat poor Prue would have taken it au pied de la lettre, I would have cut off my right hand before I would have written it. It is always so much less painful,' he adds thoughtfully, 'to hurt one's self than to hurt any one else.' But Margaret does not seem much disarmed by this touching sentiment. ' If you did not want her to come, why did j- ou write her that silly letter?' she asks doggedly. Again Freddy changes colour. 'As I before observed, Peggy dear,' he answers, with some symptoms of exasperation in his soft voice, ' I do not think it would be a bad plan if you confined yourself to your own correspondence.' The girl's face flushes as much as his own has done. ' Prue left it for me to read,' she says coldly and proudly. After a pause, drawing a long resolute breath, ' Well, next time that you are dying, you will have to look out for some other hand to cool your burning brow ; for Prue's will be beyond your reach.' ' So it was now,' rejoins Freddy, shoAving symptoms of an inclination to lapse into levity. ' Poor Prue ! she would have had to make a long arm from the Red House here.' 'As soon as I get home,' continues Peggy, annoyed by, and yet not deigning to notice, his frivolous interpellation, 'I shall put the house into the hands of a house-agent. There is nothing left us — you have left us nothing but to go !' 'Togo! Where r She shrugs her shoulders dispiritedly. 'I do not know — somewhere — anywhere — out of this misery.' DOCTOR CUPID 175 Hev whole attitude and accent speak so deep a despond- ency that Freddy's tendency to gaiety disappears. He feels thoroughly uncomfortable ; he wishes he had not come. He would like exceedingly to slip away even now ; but un- fortunately it is impossible. ' My dearest Peg,' he erics, in a very feeling voice, ' you break my heart ! You are always so self-sufficing, so apt to rebut sympathy, that one hardly likes to ofier it ; but if ' 'Sympathy!' she repeats, with a scorufid lip that yet trembles ; ' sympathy from you, who are the cause of all my wretchedness f 'ir 'Yes, you !' turning upon him with gathering passion — a passion that is yet not loud in its utterance ; that passes unobserved by the few listeners about the station. ' Have not you eyes to see that you are killing her 1 You might have set yourself a task that would do your philanthropy more credit than breaking an old friend's heart — than tuining a poor little childish head.' Her voice wavers as she utters the last few words, and she stops abruptly. Perhaps it is by accident that Freddy's eye strays furtively to that spot on the platform where ' Way Out ' is legibly inscribed. 'When you talk of " childish," ' he says, in an extremely pained tone, yet one of gentle remonstrance, ' you seem to forget that I am not so very old myself. You talk to mo as if I were a hoary-headed old sinner. Do you remember that I shall not be twenty-one till Christmas V She looks at him with a sort of despair. What he says is perfectly true. It seems ludicrous to arraign this pink and white boy as guilty of the tragedy of her own and Prue's lives. *I assure you, dear,' he says, in a very caressing tone, drawing a little nearer to her side, 'I often have to tell myself that I am grown up; I am so apt to forget it.' 176 DOCTOR CUPID Then, as she is silent, he goes on, 'It would make our relations so much easier, Peggy, if I could get you to believe in me a little — mutual confidence is so much the highest and wholesomest basis for human relations. I think we ought all to try and trust one another ; will not you ' — edging nearer still, and dropping his voice to a very persuasive whisper — 'will not you trust me a little f Peggy has heard that whisper many times before ; has heard it beguiling her into frequent concessions that her judgment has disapproved. It is therefore with a very unbelieving, even if half -relenting, voice that she asks : ' How much the better shall I be if I do f ' It makes things so much easier if one feels that one is believed in,' he says touchingly, if a little coaxingly. ' Oh, Peggy dear, will not you believe in me % Will not you trust me a little % Will not you wait — wait till I have taken my degree % Then you shall see !' In his eagerness he has seized her hand, unmindful of the publicity of the place ; and she, unmindful of it also, is poring in disconsolate anxiety upon his features to see if they look as if he were for once speaking the truth. ' See wlmt i ' she asks drily ; but he apparently does not hear the direct question. 'And you will not let the Red House?' he pursues coaxingly. ' That was only a threat, was not it ? Of course, I can perfectly understand your irritation ; but you will not let it ? Dear little house ! if you only knew what a sacred spot it is to me ! And you yourself, Peggy — why, you are like a limpet on your rock. You would be miser- able anywhere else.' ' Thanks to you, I am miserable there too,' replies she bitterly. She has withdrawn her hand sharply from him ; and they now again walk side by side along the platform, begun to be lit up for the evening traffic. DOCTOR CUPID 177 'I think,' says Freddy reproachfully, 'that if you at all gauged the amount of pain that those sort of speeches inflicted, you would be less lavish of them.' As she makes no sort of rejoinder, he continues, with a heavy sigh, ' Where shall you go % Where shall you take her V 'That can be no concern of yours,' replies she brusquely. 'It will at all events be beyond your pursuit.' The moment that the word is out of her mouth she sees that it is an unfortunate one ; and, by the light of a gas- lamp which they are at that moment passing, she detects on Freddy's face a curious smile, which denotes the per- ception in him of a certain humorousness in the present employment of that particular noun. In this case it is certainly not he that is the pursuer. The station is growing fuller ; a train must be expected ; not Peggy's, unfortunately, which is still not nearly due. A good many undergraduates have appeared on the plat- form ; several recognise Freddy, and look curiously at his companion. Whether it be their scrutiny that annoys her, or the consciousness of the unlucky character of her last phrase that gives added bitterness to her tone, it is with some asperity that she makes her next observation : ' I hope you are not going to stay to see me ofl' ! I had very much rather that you did not.' 'Of course I will not force my society upon you,' replies Freddy in a melancholy voice, under which, how- ever, Margaret fancies that she detects a lurking alacrity ; ' however much it may cost me, I will go at once, if you bid me.' 'Then I do bid you,' she answers curtly. 'And you — you will not do anything rashi' he says, looking extremely Avheedling, and sinking his voice to a coaxing whisper. ' You will let things go on just as they are for a— for a little while ? You— you will trust mo V Her only answer is a derisive laugli. 12 lyS DOCTOR CUPID * You — you will not decide in a hurry ; you will take time to consider 1' he pursues, with an agitation that seems genuine, following her, for she has already begun resolutely to walk away from him towards the waiting-room. * You will — you will do nothing rash f ' I do not know what you call rash. I shall write to the agent to-morrow.' ' You will not ! ' cries he, keeping up with her, and trying to retard her progress. ' You could not be so in- human. I know that it is a matter of absolute indifference to you what suffering you inflict upon me, but,' with a tremble in his voice, ' you cannot, you must not hurt Prue !' Again she gives that withering laugh. ' No, certainly not ! I should not think of it ; I leave that to you ! Good-bye !' So saying she disappears determinedly from his vision within the waiting-room door. There is nothing left for him but to take the tears out of his smile and the tremor out of his voice, and walk away. ♦ ••••• Peggy is as good as her word. On the very next morning she writes, as she had announced that she would, to the local house-agent, putting the dear little Eed House into his hands. The deed is done. The letter lies with others in the bag, awaiting the postman ; and Peggy goes out of doors to try and dissipate the deep sadness in which her own deed, and much more its causes, have steeped her. Into the garden first, but she does not remain there long. It is too full of pain. Though it is mid-October, the frost has still spared many flowers. There is still lingering mignonette; plenty of Japanese anemones, their pure white faces pearled with the heavy autumn dew; single dahlias also, variously bright. It would have been easier to walk among them with that farewell feeling had the mignonette lain sodden and dead, and the dahlias been DOCTOR CUPID 179 frost-shrivelled up into black sticks. But no ! they still lift their gay cheeks to the kiss of the crisp air. How much longer Ave lure our flowers into staying Avith us than Ave did twenty years ago ! Perhaps by and by we shall wile them into not leaving us at all. To distract her thoughts from her sad musings Peggy begins to talk to Jacob ; but even he adds his unconscious stab to those already planted in her heart. He can talk of nothing but next summer. To escape from him she leaves the garden, and passes out into the road. She Avalks purposelessly about the lanes, careless of the splen- dour of their brambles. She meets a detachment of Evanses blackberry-laden, their plain faces smeared with blackberry juice. They stop her to brag of their booty, and tell her that she must come blackberrying with them next year. Nedi year indeed ! She throws a friendly Avord of greeting across the hedge to a cottager digging up his potatoes. He tells her they are very bad, but he hopes she will see them better next year. She looks in at a farm to ' change the weather ' Avith a civil farmer's Avife, who shows her her chicken-yard, and volunteers a neighbourly hope that she will be able to give her a setting of game-foAvl's eggs next summer. They seem to have se donni le mot to tease her Avith their ' next summer.' She strays disconsolately home again to the little spoilt house, only six months ago so innocently gay, so serenely content, before Freddy came to lay its small joys in ashes. Can it be l)ecause she is thinking of him that she seems to see his wavy-haired head lying back in its old attitude on the bench under the Judas-tree, with another head in close I)roximity to it ? She quickens her steps, but long before she can reach the rustic seat Pme has fled to meet her witli a cry of joy. At this noAV unfamiliar sign of Avclcoming i)0ur Peggy's i8o DOCTOR CUPID heart leaps for a moment up. Can it indeed be she that Prue is so glad to seel But is this indeed Pruel this radiant, transfigured creature, laughing, though her eyes are brimming with divinely happy tears ? 'Oh, Peggy, where have you been?' cries the young girl, throwing her arms almost hysterically round her sister's neck ; ' I thought you were never coming ! I have been longing to tell you ! Who was right % "Who knew him best ? Did not I say it would be all right % No ! do not keep me ! He will tell you !' And away she speeds into the house, with Mink yapping his congratulations at her heels, and the parrot rapping out a friendly oath in Sarah's voice at her from the hall window as she passes him. In an agitation hardly inferior to Prue's Margaret advances to meet the young man, who has risen gracefully from his lounge, and is coming to meet her. 'What does she mean by saying it is all right f asks Margaret sternly, and breathing quickly. ' It is very kind of dear Prue to put it that way,' replies he quietly. ' I suppose she means that I have asked her to be my wife. I have run over from Oxford on purpose, without leave, and shall probably be sent down for it. There is something a little comic, is not there, Peg,' break- ing into an ungovernable smile, ' in the idea of my having a wifel Does it remind you at all of "Boots at the Holly- Tree Inn " % Well, dear ! ' lapsing into a pensive and quasi reproachful gravity, ' you see, you might have trusted me ! Be not afraid; only beheve!' CHAPTER XX The autumn is throwing clown its red and amber tributes before other feet besides Margaret's ; before Betty's, before Talbot's. It does not, however, rain the same shower on both. Betty's famed chestnuts supply no leaf for Talbot's tread. For the first time for five years Harborough Castle gets no share in John Talbot's autumn holiday. This is more tlirough his misfortune than his fault, as Betty, though with angry, thwarted tears, is compelled to allow. From the visit to which after leaving the Manor he had betaken himself, he had been recalled to London with peremptory premature- ness by a telegram. A crisis in public affairs — an unlooked- for and unpleasant turn in foreign politics has reft his chief — to that great man's unaffected disgust — from his thymy forest and his amethyst moor back to the barren solitudes of Downing Street. It has kept, if not the big, at least the lesser man bound hand and foot there until the opening of the autumn session, which in any case, even if he had not been defrauded of his legitimate playtime, Avould have summoned him back to harness. So that Talbot sees no red leaves except those which St. James's Park can show him. To a country-hearted man you would think that this would Ijc a great privation ; but this year John is glad of it. To him the country must henceforth mean Harborough. If he has no holiday, he need not, he cannot go to Har borough ; and in his heart he says tliat the loss is well bought by the gain. It is true that Betty has, on various 1 82 DOCTOR CUPID pretexts, run up several times to see him ; that he has had to take her to the j^lay ; to give his opinion upon her new clothes ; to sit on the old low seat beside the old sofa, in the old obscurity of the boudoir, without the old heart. She has even, contrary to his advice, and very much against his wishes, insisted on coming to tea with him in his rooms in Bury Street ; and, as a matter of course, has expected him to see her off at Paddington. But on the whole he feels, as he speeds back in a hansom — this last duty punctually done — drawing an unintentional sigh of relief as he does so, that he has got through it pretty well. He has provoked not much anger, and, thank God, no tears. Thank God a hundred times more, too, that he has been miraculously spared any fleers at that other woman, towards whom, perhaps, the completeness of his lady's victory may have rendered her magnanimous. And that other woman ! Well, he lets her image tease him as little as he can help it. Whether that is much or little, he himself scarcely knows. Sometimes again he does know, knows that it is infinitely much. But that is only now and then, when some trifling accident has given him a tiny momentary glimpse, such as outsiders often catch, at some keen happiness h deux ; some two happy souls together blent, * As the rose Blendeth in odour with the violet ; Sohition sweet.' Then, indeed, he catches his breath with the sharpness of the pain that runs through his lonely heart, saying to him- self, before his will can arrest and strangle the lovely, useless thought, 'That might have been Peggy and I.' But this, as I have said, is only now and again. As a matter of fact, his life is too full of genuine continuous hard work, too throbbing with great excitements, too full of the large fever of to-day's hot politics, to have much space for the cherishing of any merely personal ache. DOCTOR CUPID 183 Sometimes for a ^vllole Jay together he keeps his heart's door triumphantly barred against her. For a day — yes; but at night, willy-nilly, she lifts the latch, and cool and tall walks in. In the night she has her revenge. In the day he may think of nations clashing, of party invectives, of discordant Cabinets, and Utopian Reforms ; but at night he thinks of Mink, and of the little finches swinging and twittering on K\s ladder; of the mowing-machine's whir, and the pallid sweet lavender bush. As the winter nears, and such considerable and growing portion of the world as spend some part at least of the cohl season in London, refill their houses, he goes a good deal into society, and when there he seems to enjoy himself. How can each woman to whom he offers his pleasant, easy civilities know that he is saying to his own heart as he looks at her : ' Your skin is not nearly so fine grained as Peggy's ; 3'our ear is double the size of hers ; your smile comes twice as often, but it is not nearly so worth having when it does come"! And so he seems to enjoy himself, and to a certain extent really does so. It is quite possible not only to do a great deal of good and thorough work, but to have a very tolerable amount of real, if surface pleasure, with a dull ache going on in the back of your heart all the time. He has as little nourishment on which to feed his remembrance of her as she has hers of him ; nay, less, for he has about him no persistent little Harborough voices to ask him whether he would not like Peggy to come and live witli him always. Sometimes it strikes him with an irrational surprise that no one should ever mention her name to him ; though a moment later reason points out to him that it would be far more strange if they did, since her very existence is absolutely unknown to all those who compose his surroundings. Of no one were Word.swortli's lines ever ti'uer than of her : i84 DOCTOR CUPID ' A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love.' One day he meets Freddy at Boodle's, and rushes at him with a warmth of affectionate delight that surprises that easy-going young gentleman. However, as Freddy is himself always delighted to see everybody, he is delighted to see Talbot now ; and immediately gives him a perfectly sincere, even if the next moment utterly forgotten, in'vata- tion to spend Christmas at the Manor. He has forgotten it, as I have said, next half-hour ; he does not in the least perceive the lameness of his friend's stuttered excuses, and he would be thunderstruck were he to conjecture the tempest of revolt, misery, and starved longing that his few careless words, ' Could not you run down to us for Christ- mas "? no party, only ourselves and the Lambtons,' have awoke in that unhappy friend's breast. Christmas ! yes, Christmas is drawing near — Christmas, the great feast that looses every galley-slave from his oar. With how sinking a heart does one galley-slave watch its approach ! How much he prefers pulling at his oar, with all the labour and sweat it entails, to the far worse bondage to which his emancipation from it will consign him ! There will be no shirking it this time. To all humanity Christmas brings its three or four days of liberation ; and these three or four days he must — unless the earth open or the heaven fall between this and then to save him — spend at Har- borough. He will have to decorate Betty's church ; light the candles on Betty's Christmas-tree; have Betty's children hanging about his neck, and Betty's husband reproaching him for his long absence. Betty herself accepting his present, thanking him for it, manoeuvring to get him alone. Her present ! He must be thinking about it. He has not yet bought it. He will have to make time to go and choose it. He yawns. When you are in the habit of giving a person a great many DOCTOR CUPID 185 presents, it is extremely difficult to A'ary them judiciously. If it were a first gift now, how much simpler it would be ! Certainly qixite without his consent, the thought darts across him that he has never given Peggy a present. How easy, how delightful, how enthralling it would be to make her some little offering ! something slight and comparatively valueless that it would not hurt her pride to accept, but that yet would be worth thanking him for. He feels sure that Peggy has not received many presents in her life. He hears her — his sweetheart — thanking him for that ungiven, never-to-be-given fairing ; and at the same moment his eye, falling accidentally upon Betty's last letter lying on the table before him, recalls to his mind that it is not Margaret whom it is now a question of endowing with a Christmas gift. His yawn is exchanged for a sigh. Poor Betty ! He undoubtedly does not grudge her her present ; but how very much it would simplify matters if she could be induced to choose it for herself. So reflecting he takes his hat, and repairing to the great jewellers', turns over Hunt and Roskell's newest trinkets in dubious half-hearted efforts at selection. Betty is not altogether of the mind of those present- receivers who hold that the cost of the gift is as nothing ; the giver's intention everything. Betty likes both ; she likes something rather valuable, but that yet has a senti- ment attached to it — something that tells of love, and thought, and love's cunning. To Talbot, a year, still more two years ago, nothing had seemed easier than this combination. To-day, more than two hours elapse before he can cudgel out of his dull heart and fagged brain something that may, if not too closely scanned, bear the semblance of a fond invention. Christmas is now but a week off; but a week, as eager schoolboys, and pale clerks, and worn seamstresses tell themselves. Perhaps it may be because she knows that they will soon J 86 DOCTOR CUPID meet, that Betty's daily letter to Talbot has now for two whole days been intermitted. It is a lapse that has never before occurred, so far as he can recall, in the whole five years of their connection ; her billets appearing as regularly as the milkman. Is it possible that she may have conceived some occult offence against him ? That he may have un- wittingly committed some mysterious sin against love's code % This thought darts across his mind, presenting itself first as a hope, and then as a dread. When it comes as a hope, it suggests that in the case of her having taken umbrage at any of his doings, or non-doings, she may show her resentment by excluding him from her Christmas gaieties ; but this idea does not live beyond a moment. It is not much sooner conceived than it is transmogrified into a fear. If they have quarrelled they will have to make it up again. Perhaps even his laboriously chosen love-gift will not be held a sufiicient peacemaker. Perhaps he will have to expend himself in those expletives and asseverations that used once to come so trippingly, nay burningly, from his tongue, but that now have to be driven by main force from his lips, slow and cold and clogged. A third morning has dawned. Again no letter. It is certainly very strange. Talbot walks to Downing Street, pondering gravely what can be the cause of this unprecedented silence. Can it be that she is ill % She must be ill indeed not to write to him ! A flash of distorted remorse — distorted, since it is for being unable better to return the tenderness of another man's wife — crosses his mind at the thought of her great love for him. No, if she had been ill, too ill to write, Harborough would certainly have sent him word of it, since no one is ever half so anxious to give him tidings of Betty, to further their meetings and impede their partings, as Betty's worthy, blockhead husband. It is most unlikely DOCTOR CUPID 187 that the post, which indeed strangely seldom misbehaves itself, should have erred three times running. He has reached Downing Street before any solution of the problem has occurred to him. In the course of the day he goes very nigh to forgetting it in the absorption of his work. That work is, on this particular day, specially pressing — specially monopolising. From morning to night he has not a moment that he can call his own. He does not even return home to dress for dinner, but snatches a hasty mouthful of food at the House of Commons, whither he has to accompany his chief, who is to speak on a subject at that moment engaging both House and nation's most passionate attention. The House is thronged to hear the great man. He is for three hours on his legs; and his speech is followed by a hot debate, adorned by the usual accompaniments of senseless obstruction, indecent clamour, and Irish Billingsgate. It is half-past two in the morning before Talbot finds himself turning the key in his Bury Street door. The whole household has apparently gone to bed ; but in his sitting-room the fire has been made up. A touch of the poker upon the coals makes them leap into a blaze, and he sits down in an arm-chair to finish his cigar, and cast an eye over the notes and telegrams that have come for him dui'ing his absence. Of the former there are several; of the latter only one. He looks at the addresses of the let ters first, to see whether any one of them may be in Lady Betty's hand-writing; but such not being the case, he lays them down, and tears open the telegram. He does it without any special excitement. In all our lives tele- grams are daily, in his they arc half-hourly, occurrences. But not such telegrams as this one. He has been too lazy to light his candles; and now reads it by the firelight that frolics redly over the thin pink paper and the clerkly writing : 1 88 DOCTOR CUPID ' From Lady Betty Hakborough, Harborough Castle, shire. To John Talbot, Bury Street, St. James's, Londou, W. ' Come at once, and without a moment's delay, on receipt of this.' When the contents of a missive that we receive, oi- af a speech addressed to us, diverge very widely from anything that we have been at all expecting, it is some time before the meaning of the words, however simple, succeeds in reaching our brain. Such is Talbot's case. He reads the telegram three times before he fully grasps its significa- tion ; and it is quite two minutes before it occurs to him to look at its date. 'Sent out at 11.10 A.m. Eeceived at 11.35.' It has been lying waiting for him for fourteen hours and more. He reads it a fourth time. 'Come at once, and without a moment's delay, on receipt of this.' What does it — what can it mean % To obey it now, in the sense in which it meant to be obeyed, is as impossible as to 'call back yesterday out of the treasures of God.' It is true that he can set off, without a moment's delay, on the receipt of it. But as that receipt has been delayed fourteen hours longer than its sender calculated upon, his obedience will be a virtual disobedience. Why has she sent for him % In any case she would have seen him in five days. What can she have to say to him of such surpassing urgency as cannot brook that short delay % His eye rests doubtfully on the vague yet pressing Avords. In the mouth and from the hand of any one save Betty, they would certainly imply some grave crisis — some imminent or already fallen catastrophe. In Betty's they may mean nothing. More than once before, during the past five years, has she telegraphed for him with the same indefinite peremptori- ness ; and when — always at great personal inconvenience, once gravely offending his chief, and seriously imperilling DOCTOR CUPID 189 his future prospects — he has made shift to obey her summonses, he has discovered that it had been prompted merely by some foolish whim. Once the broken-haired terrier, which he had given her, had had a fit ; once Mr, Harborough had spoken sharply to her before the servants ; once she had felt so low that she could not get through the day without seeing him. These recollections combine together to form his resolution. He lays down the paper. He will not go. Accident has made him disobedient; intention shall make him further so. Had she known at what an hour her message would reach him, even she could not have expected compliance with it. So thinking, his cigar being by this time finished, he rises, and lighting his bedroom candle, turns to go to bed. Only, just as he is leaving the room, some impulse prompts him to read the telegram yet a fifth time. The words have certainly not changed since he last glanced at them ; and yet they seem to him to have a more compelling look. Why can't he force them to be more explicit % He pauses ; telegram in one hand and candle in the other. What can she want Avith him'? It is just within the bounds of possibility that she may really need his presence ; how or why, he is unable to hazard the faintest conjecture. But it is just within the limits of the possible that she ma3\ Various suggestions of what shape that possible may take flit across his puzzled brain. Can it be that her husband has at length made the discovery of Avhat for five years has been the open secret of all his acquaintance % In that case, as he, Talbot, has long known — known at first with leaping pulses, latterly with the cold sweat of an unspeak- able dread, she Avould not have waited for him to conic to her — she would have fled to him. It cannot, then, be that. Various other conjectures suggest themselves, but are dismissed as impracticable ; but though they arc dismissed, I90 DOCTOR CUPID the fact remains that the woman to whom he once swore — once^ naj'-, millions of times swore a love eternal, unalterable, exclusive — has sent him an imperative summons to her side; and he is preparing entirely to neglect it. He sets down the candlestick, and takes up an 'ABC lying on the table, as if officiously close at hand. He will just look to see if there is a train that would take him to her. If there is not, that Avill settle the matter. He turns to the name of the small station at which travellers to Harborough get out. Of course not. Nothing stops at that little wayside place before eleven o'clock. By that time he will be installed in Downing Street for the day, with his chief's correspondence before him. He heaves a sigh of relief; and once more turns bedward. But before he has reached the door another thought has arrested him. Though there is no train which could take him to the little station close to her gate, yet there may easily be one which would carry him to Oxford, only five miles away from her. Again he picks up the 'ABC,' and runs his finger and his eye down the page from the Paddington that heads it. Paddington 5.30; arrives at Oxford 7.40. Yes, there is one. It is, for the last ten miles of its course, a slow crawler; but, if up to its time, reaches Oxford at 7.40. A good hansom would convey him to Harborough in half an hour. He would have twenty minutes in which to learn her will ; a second half-hour's drive would take him back to Oxford, to catch the nine o'clock up-train, which would land him in London in time for his day's work. It is possible, then — quite possible. The question is, shall he embrace that bare possibility % Shall he pick out the one chance for, out of the ninety-nine against, there being any real meaning in her message, to build upon it this fool's errand. At all events, he has plenty of time in which to DOCTOR CUPID 191 think it over. It is only three o'clock. There are two good hours before he need set off. He sits down again in his arm-chair, replenishes the fire, and lights another cigar. A year ago he would have gone without hesitation. Two years ago he would have stood on his head with joy at having the chance of going ; but this year Well, it is true that it is no longer the voice of the passionately loved woman calling to him — a voice before whose sound obstacles vanish, space shrivels, time contracts ; but it may be the voice of a fellow-creature in distress. A fellow-creature in distress ! He laughs to him- self at the flat pomposity of the phrase. What kind of distress the fellow-creature's can be — a fellow-creature so lapped in cotton-wool, so apparently beyond the reach of most of life's ennuis — he is absolutely at a loss to con- jecture ! He spends two hours, and smokes three cigars in conjecturing ; and at the end, being as wise as he was at the beginning, knocks up his servant, puts on his fur coat, arms himself with as many wraps as he can muster, jumps into a hansom, and through the murkiness — black as midnight — of a hideous December morning, has himself driven to the Paddington Departure Platform ; where, for three minutes, he stamps about, telling himself that no such fool as he Avalks, has ever walked, or, as far as he knows, will ever walk upon God's earth ; and is then whirled away. CHAPTER XXI There are not so many passengers by the 5.30 train as to hinder its being punctual. It is almost faithful to its minute. So far — it can't be said to be very far — fortune favours the one of its occupants with whom we have any concern. He rolls out, cross and furry, still repeating to himself with an even greater intensity of inward emphasis than he had employed at Paddington, that unflattering opinion of his own wisdom with which he had embarked on his present venture. If it had appeared a fool's errand when looked forward to dispassionately from the warmth and ease of his own fireside, what does it appear now? Now that, having picked out the most promising-looking of the few sleepy hansoms awaiting unlikely passengers, and bidden the mufflered purple-nosed driver take him as fast as his horse can lay legs to the ground to Harborough Castle, he finds himself spinning through the Oxford suburbs out into the flat country beyond— ugly as original ugliness, further augmented by a December dawning and a black and iron frost, can make it. At each mile that carries him nearer and nearer his goal, his own unreason looms ever immenser and yet immenser before him. By such a gigantic folly as this even Betty herself may be satisfied. At every echoing step the horse takes on the frozen ground it seems to him less and less likely that Betty has had any real reason for sending for him, any reason that may at all account for or palliate his appearance DOCTOR CUPID 193 at this unheard-of hour. Even Betty herself has asked no such insanity of him as this. She had reckoned upon her telegram reaching him at mid-day, and upon his arriving in obedience to it sometime in the afternoon, an hour at which any one may arxive at a friend's house Avithout provoking special comment. But now % At the spanking pace at which, in accordance with his own directions, he is getting over the ground, he will reach the Castle by eight o'clock, just as the housemaids are beginning to open the shutters and clean the grates. When the door is unbarred to him by an astonished footman struggling into his coat, whom shall he ask fori What shall he say'? Lady Betty? Impossible ! At eight o'clock in the morning ! Mr. Har- borough % Neither is he, any more than his mfe, an early riser; and if, in answer to his, Talbot's, astounding summons, he should drag himself from his couch, and come in sleepy dislicibilU to meet him, what has lie, Talbot, to say to him? A^Tiat does he want with him ? How can he explain his own appearance ? Had he better ask for no one, then % — ■ say nothing, but just slip in, trusting to the thoroughness of the Harborough servants' acquaintance with his appear- ance to save him from any inconvenient questions ? Shall he wait in some cold sitting-room in process of dusting, with its chairs standing on their heads, and the early besom making play on its carpet until his half-hour is up, and he can return whence he came, having at least done what he was bidden to do ? He laughs derisively at himself. And meanwhile lioio cold he is ! He has been up all night, in itself a chilly thing ; a hansom is by no means a warm vehicle, at least to one to whom any nipping air is prefer- able to having the glass let chokily down within a half-inch of his nose. The dawn is being blown in by a small wind — small, but full of knife-blades — and the griding frost that holds all earth and water in the rigidity of death's ugly sleep, has i)icrced into his very bones. In his life he 13 194 DOCTOR CUPID has seldom taken a colder drive, and yet lie dreads its being over. What shall he say to Harborough % The chance of his seeing him is indeed remote ; but remote chances do sometimes become facts. If this becomes fact, what is he to say to him"? Even through Harborough's hippopotamus-hide there must be some arrow that will penetrate. If anything can open the stupid eyes, so miraculously sealed through five years, surely this insane apparition of his will do it. They have reached the park gates. The lodge-keeper at least is up and dressed, and runs out with alacrity. She need not have been in such a hurry. He would have been much more obliged to her if she had crawled, and bungled, and delayed him a little. Now he is rolling through the park, by the dead white grass and the pinched brown bracken ; under the black arms of the famous chestnuts, beneath which he and Betty have so often strayed ; through half a dozen more gates ; through a last gate, on leaving which behind them, turf more carefully trimmed, flower-beds now hard and empty, clumps of laurustinus and rhododendron tell of his neighbourhood to the house, which a turn in the approach now gives to his view. His eye flies anxiously, though with little hope, to the front. Does it look at all awake % Are there any blinds up % It would be ludicrous to hope that Betty's could be ; Betty who is never seen a moment before eleven o'clock, and very often not for many moments after. He looks mechanically, though quite hopelessly, up at her windows — the three immediately above the portico — and so looking, starts, and gives utterance to an involuntary ejaculation. In the case of all three, shutters are open and blinds up. What can have happened? What can so flagrant a departure from the habits of a lifetime imply ? He has reached the door by now, and, jumping out, rings the bell. He will probably have long to wait before it is answered, the servants, DOCTOR CUPID 195 expecting no sucli summons, being jirobably dispersed to other quarters of the house. But, as in the case of the lodge-keeper, he is mistaken. With scarce any delay the great folding-doors roll back ; nor is there in the faces of the couple of footmen who appear any of that blank astonishment which he had been schooling himself to meet. There is no surprise that he can detect upon their civil features, any more than there would have been had he and his portmanteau walked in at five o'clock in the afternoon. ' Of — of course no one is up yet % ' he says, with an air that he, as he feels, in vain tries to make easy and dis- engaged. ' Oh yes, sir ; her ladyship is up ! Her ladyship has been up all night.' Uj) all nigJit ! Then some one must be ill ! Is it Harborough % Harborough ill % Will he die % In one thought-flash these questions, with all that for him and his future life an answer in the affirmative would imply, dart through his mind — dart with such a sickening dread that he can scarcely frame his next and most obvious question. ' Is any one ill, then % ' For the first time the servant looks a little surprised. If it is not on account of the illness in the house why has Mr. Talbot presented himself at this extraordinary hour 'i ' Yes, sir ; Master Harborough has been very ill for two days. Sir Andrew Clark and Dr. liidge Jones came down yesterday to see him, and he was hardly expected to live through the night.' Master Harljorough ! Not expected to live through the night ! At this news, so entirely unlocked for — since, amongst all the possibilities whose faces he has been scanning, that of something having happened to the children has never once presented itself — Talljot stands stock-still, rooted to the spot, in sad amazement. Poor little Master Harborough ! 196 DOCTOR CUPID 111 a moment he is seeing him again as he had last seen him — seen the httle sturdy figure that, in its rosy vigour, seemed to be shaking its small fist in defiance at age, or decay, or death. Yes ; he sees him again — sees, too, his mother, laughing at his naughtiness, bragging of his strength, smothering him with her kisses. Poor, poor Betty ! A great rush of compassionate tenderness floods his heart towards the woman against whom he had just been harshly shutting that heart's doors; discrediting her truth; grudging the service she has asked of him ; crediting her even in his thoughts with the indecency of summoning him to her husband's death-bed. Oh, poor Betty ! On his heart's knees he begs her pardon. His agitation is so great and so overcoming that, for the moment, he can ask no more questions, but only follows the butler, who by this time has appeared on the scene, in silent compliance with his request to him to come upstairs — a request accompanied by the remark that he will let her ladyship know that he is here. Having led him to Betty's boudoir, the servant leaves him to look round, with what heart he may, on all the objects of that most familiar scene. How familiar they are — all her toys and gewgaws ! Many he himself has given her ; some they had chosen together ; over others they had quarrelled; over others, again, they had made up — but how well he knows them, one and all ! He looks round on them with a triple sorrow — the sorrow of his past love and present pity for her joining hands, in melancholy triad, with his deep and abiding self-contempt. He looks round on the countless fans — fans everywhere — open, half-open ; on the great Japanese umbrella, stuck up, in compliance with one of the most senseless fashions ever introduced, in the middle of the room, with Liberty silk handkerchiefs meaninglessly draped about its stem ; on the jumping frogs and mechanical mice ; on the banjo she has often thrummed to him ; on the mandoline she has tried to DOCTOR CUPID 197 Avhcedle him iuto learning to play, that he may sing her Creole love-songs to it. He turns away from them all with a sick impatient sigh. How hideously out of tune they and all the fooleries they recall seem with this soul-and-bodj'-bitiug December daM'ning — with ' ]\Iaster Harborough not expected to live through the night ! ' He has never seen Betty in the grasp of a great grief. He is as much at a loss to picture how she will bear it as he would be to fancy a butterfly drawing a load of coals. How will she take it % How will she look % What shall he say % How shall he comfort her ? That she has had any other motive in sending for him than the child's impulse to show the cut finger or the barked shin to a friend never occurs to him. His poor Betty ! No selfish regret enters his mind at having been summoned through the midwinter night helplessly to see a little child die. He can think of nothing but how best to console her. He is very far from being ready with any consolations that even to himself appear at all consoling, when the door opens, and she enters. At the sound of the turning handle he has gone to meet her, with both hands out as if to draw her and her misery to that breast whose doors are thrown wider to her than they have been for many months ; but no answering hands come to meet them. Some gesture of hers tells him that she does not wish him to approach her. ' How late you are ! ' she says. If he were not looking at her, and did not sec with his own eyes that the words proceeded out of her mouth, he would never have recognised her voice. By that voice, and T)y her whole appearance, he is so shocked, that for a moment he cannot answer. Even upon the face of a girl in the first flush of youth, and whose only ornamentings come from the Hand of God, two long nights' vigils, extra- vagant weeping, the careless dishcvelment of heart-rending 198 DOCTOR CUPID anguish, write themselves in terrible characters. What, then, must tlicy do to a woman like Betty, whose Avhole beauty is a carefully built-up fabric, on which no sun must look, and no zephyr blow too inquisitively ? For the first time in his life Talbot fully realises what a l)uilt-up fabric it is. Through his mind flashes the doubt, whether, if without expecting to meet her, he had come across her in the street, he should have recognised her. She looks fifty years old. Her hair is in damp disorder ; at the top all rough and disturbed, where it has evidently been desperately buried in a little counterpane. She is not now crying ; but her unnumbered past tears have partially washed the rouge off her cheeks. A dreadful impression of the ludicrous, inextricably entangled with his unspeakable compassion — an impression for which he tells himself that he ought to be flayed alive — conveys itself to Talbot from her whole appearance. But though he ought to be flayed alive for receiving it, still it is there. And meanwhile she has spoken to him a second time. He must say something to her ; not stand staring with stupid cruelty at her in her ruin and abasement. 'I expected you all yesterday,' she says in that same strange, dreadful voice. He gives a sort of gasp. Can that indeed be the voice whose pretty treble has so often run with rippling laughter into his ears ? the voice that sang him comic songs to that very banjo — now Ijang in its irony beside him — almost the last time that he heard its tones % His head is in a grisly whirl between that Betty and this. Which is the true one? Is this only a hideous nightmare % It seems at least to have the suffocating force of one; a force through which it is only by the strongest self-compulsion that he can break to answer her. ' I came as soon as I got your telegram.' Her eyes, washed away to scarcely more than half their DOCTOR CUPID 199 size, are resting upon him ; and yet it seems by her next speech as if she had cither not heard or not heeded his answer. 'You might have come quicker,' she says. 'But indeed I coukl not,' cries he, genuine distress lending him at last fluent speech. ' I was at the House till two in the morning; I never received it until I got home to Bury Street ; I came by the very next train. Oh, Betty, how could you doubt that I should'?' As he speaks an arrow of self-reproach shoots through his heart at the thought of how near a chance the poor soul's cry for help had run of being altogether disregarded. ' I wanted to speak to you,' she says, a spark of fever brightening the chill wretchedness of her look. ' I have something to say to you ; that was why I sent for you.' 'Of course, of course!' he answers soothingly. 'I was delighted to come.' 'I can't stay more than a minute,' she says restlessly. ' I must go back to him ; I have never left him for eight and forty hours. He is asleep now — only under opiates — but an opiate sleep is better than none, is it nof?' consult- ing his face with a piteous appeal. ' Much — much better,' replies Talbot earnestly. ' You have heard — they have told you — how ill he is V A sort of hard break makes itself heard in her voice ; but she masters it impatiently. ' Yes, they have told me.' ' What have they told you V asks she sharply. ' I dare- say that they have told you a great deal more than the truth. If they have told yon that there is no hope, they have told you wrong. They had no right to say so ; there is hope ! ' 'They never told me that there was not,' replies he, stijl more soothingly tlian before ; for it seems to liim that no finger can be laid too gently on that terrible mother-ache. 200 DOCTOR CUPID ' It all came so suddenly,' says she, putting her hand up with a bewildered air to her damp forehead and disordered hair. ' And yet now it seems centimes since he was running about. How he ran and jumped, did not he % There never was such an active child. And now it seems cmturk& that he has been lying in his little bed.' For a moment she breaks down entirely, but fights her way on again. ' It was only a cold at first — quite a slight cold ! He was not the least ill with it, and I thought nothing of it ; and then on Tuesday there came an acrobatic company to Darnton' — the little neighbouring market-town — 'and he was so excited about them, and begged so hard to be allowed to go and see them, that I took him ; and he was so delighted with them — he clapped and applauded more than anybody in the house ; and all the evening afterwards he was trying to do the things he had seen them do — you know how clever he always is in imitating people — and telling nurse about them. Nurse and I agreed that we had never seen him in such spirits. But he did not sleep well ; he was always dream- ing about them, and jumping up; and next morning he was in a high fever, and I sent for the doctor, and he has been getting worse ever since ; and now ' Again she breaks down, but again recovering herself, goes on rapidly : ' But it is not the same as if it were a grown-up person, is it? Children have such wonderful recovering power, have not they % — down one day and uj) the next. They pull through things that would kill you or me, do not they % He vM pull through, won't he % You think that he will pull through?' ' I am sure that he will,' replies Talbot earnestly. It is, of course, an answer absolutely senseless, and in the air ; but Avhat other can he give, with those miserable eyes fastened in such desperate asking upon his % DOCTOR CUPID 20I ' Oh, if you knew what it has been,' she says, her arms falling Avith a gesture of measureless tired woe to her sides as she spealcs, 'to have been kneeling by him all these tAvo days, hearing him moan, and seeing him try to get his breath ! — he does not understand what it means ; he has never been ill before. He thinks that I can help him. God ! he thinks I can help him, and that I don't ! He turns to me for everything. You knoAV that he always did when he Avas Avell, did not he % He is always asking me Avhen the pain Avill go away % Asking me Avhether he has been naughty, and I am angry Avith himi Angry Avith him ! I anrjry Avith him ! O God ! God !' Her excitement and her grief have been gaining upon her at each fresh clause of her speech, and at the end she flings herself doAvn on the ground and buries her face in the cushion of a low chair, Avhile dry, hard sobs shake her from head to foot. What is he to say to her % Nothing. He Avill not insult such a sorroAV by the futility of his Avretched Avords. He can only stoop over her, and lay his hand no harshlier than her mother would have done, no harshlier than she herself Avould have laid hers upon her little dying boy, on her heaving shoulder. But she shakes off his light touch, and raising her distorted face, again tries to address hira. But the rending sobs that still convulse her make her utterance difficult ; and her words, Avhen they come, scarcely intelligible. ' Do not touch me ! leave me — leave me — alone ! I — I have not yet said Avhat — Avhat I had to say to you. That — that was not Avhat I had to say to you ! I — I — must say Avhat I — sent for you — to say.' She pauses, gasping. It seems as if the task she had set herself was beyond her present strength. ' Do not tell me,' he says most gently ; * if it is anything that hurts you, do not tell mc now; Avait and tell mo by and by.' 202 DOCTOR CUPID Ho has withdrawn at lier bidding his hand from her shoulder, but has knelt down in his deep pity beside her, and tried to take in his her cold and clammy fingers. But she draws them sharply away. 'Did not I tell you to leave mo alone!' she cries in a thin voice. 'Let me — let mo say what I have to say to you, and have done with it. I will say it now ! I mud say it now ! What business have you,' turning with a pitiful fierceness upon him, 'to try and hinder mef 'I do not — I do not!' speaking in the tenderest tone. ' Tell it me of course, whatever it is, if it Avill give you the least relief.' ' I sent for you to tell you that it is all over — all over between us,' she says, having now mastered her sobs, and speaking with great rapidity and distinctness; 'that is what I sent for you to tell you. I wanted you to come at once, that I might tell you. Why did not you come at once % I have been a very wicked woman ' ' No, dear, no ! indeed you have not ! ' he interrupts with an accent of excessive pain and protest. But she goes on without heeding him : ' Or if I have not, it has been no thanks to me ; it has been thanks to you, who have saved me from myself ! But whatever there has been betw^ecn us, it is over now. That is what I sent for you to tell you. Ovv/r ! do you understand 'J Gon& ! done icith f Do you understand? Why do not you say something ? Do you hear ? Do you understand ? ' 'I hear,' he answers in a mazed voice; 'but I — I do not understand ! I do not understand Avhy, if you want to tell me this, you should tell it me noiv of all times.' ' It is noio of all times that I want to tell you— that I must tell you !' cries she wildly. 'Cannot you see that it DOCTOR CUPID 203 is on accouut of Kim .? Oh, cannot you think what it has been kneeling beside him with his little hot hand in mine ! You do not know how fiery hot his hand is ! Last night his pulse was so quick that the doctor could scarcely count the beats — it was up to 120; and while I was kneeling beside him the thought came to me that perhaps this had happened to him on — on — accouut of — us ! that it was a judgment on me !' She pauses for a minute, and he tries to put in some soothing suggestion, but she goes on without heeding him. ' You may call it superstition if you please, but it came to me — oh, it seems years ago now ! — it must have been the night before last ! — and as the night went on, it kept getting worse and worse, as he got worse and worse ; and in the morning I could not bear it any longer, and I sent for you ! I thought that you would have been here in a couple of hours.' ' So I would ! So I would ! Heaven knows so I would, if it had been possible !' 'And all yesterday he went on growing worse — I did not think that he could have been Avorse than he was in the night, and live — but he was. All day and all last night again he was struggling for breath ! — think of having to sit by and see a little child struggling for his breath !' She stops, convulsed anew by that terrible dry sobbing, that is so much more full of anguish than any tears. ' Poor little chap ! poor Betty !' ' I have been listening all night for you ! I could not have believed that you Avould have been so long in coming ; it is such a little way off! I knew — I had a feeling that ho would never get better until you had come — until I had told you that it was all over between us ; but I have told you now, have not I] I have done all that I coulil ! One 204 DOCTOR CUPID cannot recall the past; no one can, not even God! He cannot expect that of me ; but I have done what I could — all that is left me to do, have not I % ' There is such a growing wildness in both her eye and voice that he does not know in Avhat terms to answer her ; and can only still kneel beside her, in silent, pitying distress. 'I see that you think I am out of my wits !' she says, looking distrustfully at him ; ' that I must be out of my wits to talk of sending you away — you who have been everything to me. Cannot you see that it is because I love you that I am sending you away 1 if I did not love you it would be nothing — no sacrifice ! — it would be no use ! But perhaps if I give up everything— everything I have in the world except him ' (stretching out her hands, with a despairing gesture of pushing from herself every earthly good) — 'perhaps then — then — God will spare him to me ! perhaps He will not take him from me ! It may be no good ! He may take him all the same ; but there is just the chance ! say that you think it is a chance ! ' But he cannot say so. There are very few words that he would not try to compel his lips to utter ; but he dares not buoy her up with the hope that she can buy back her child by a frantic compact with the Most High. Her eyes drop despairingly from his face, not gaining the assent they have so agonisedly asked for; and she struggles dizzily to her feet. 'That is all — I had — to — tell you!' she says fiercely. ' I have nothing more to say ! — nothing that need — need detain you here any longer. I must go back to him ; he may be asking for me ! — asking for me, and I not there ! But you understand — you are sure tJiat you understand 1 I have often sent you away before in joke, but I am not joking now' (poor soul ! that, at least, is a needless asser- tion) ; ' I am in real earnest this time ! I am not sending DOCTOR CUPID 20S you away to-day only to send for you back again to-morrow ; it is real earnest this time ; it is for ever ! — do you under- stand % For ever ! say it after me, that I may be sure that you are making no mistake — f