Doctor Cupid Part 26

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 neighbourhood of the Harboroughs; she saw Prue.'

'Did you indeed?' cries Peggy, turning with anxious interest to the new comer. 'Was she well? Did she look well?'

'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, addressing 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, _Prue_! 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 people, does not it?'

Peggy's answer is a slight a.s.senting motion of the head, but her words are not ready. Her eyes seem fixed attentively 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 Mrs. Evans cheerfully, '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 indoors,' 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 Roupell.'

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--_her Prue_--shouting, smoking, making apple-pie beds!

Her worry of mind must have written itself upon her face, for no sooner has she joined milady, whom she finds out in the shrubberies leaning on her spade, like Hercules 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 now?' 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?'

'Pish!' rejoins the other in a fury; '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 Clanra.n.a.ld there still?'

'No, she is gone,' replies milady shortly, digging her weapon into a dandelion. 'She could not stand it. Betty is an a.s.s!'

_Could not stand it!_

In a dismayed silence Margaret awaits further explanation, 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 billyc.o.c.k hat on the top of the cap from which her stooping att.i.tude has nearly dismounted it; 'have her home, and do it as quickly as possible.'

Beyond this piece of short but very definite advice, nothing is to be got out of her. She will explain neither why Lady Clanra.n.a.ld took flight nor why Betty is an a.s.s.

In an uneasiness all the deeper for the vagueness of milady's implications, Peggy takes her way home to her little solitary Red 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, gardening, 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.

'Oh, Prue! how nice it is to have you back! How are 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