Doctor Cupid Part 28

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. _As quickly as possible!_ But how quickly is that? This is the first thing to be discovered.

She goes down 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. Margaret searches for the _Bradshaw_, 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 fled?

By and by she discovers the missing volume, and sitting down, buries herself in its pages. What she had feared is realised. There is no second train for Oxford until 2.15. Three hours of forced inaction stretch before her--three hours for Prue 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, mis...o...b..ing 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 order to give herself plenty of time to walk slowly.

But she does not walk 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 const.i.tutes the station, she may not see the train sliding away without her? 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.

When the train draws up they insist upon deserting their own suite and getting in with 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 _showing off_; trying, that is, to impress by her remarks two quiet ladies who are fellow-occupants of the carriage with a sense of her importance.

'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 dest.i.tute of importance as the one from which they set off. It is that at which the little Harboroughs 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-a.s.sertions 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-s.p.a.ce 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 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, Prue is certainly like her; but, alas! it is to be not even a good imitation for which she has foregone her own woodland grace. Margaret had forgotten how pretty Betty was. How charming she looks now, with her face full of wholesome mother-love, perfectly unconscious, indifferent 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 luggage, 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, spinning 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 went 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 she speeds, under 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 w.i.l.l.y-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 pa.s.sing 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 bicentenary 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 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 pa.s.sed this way. Whither shall she now bend her steps? 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? but she draws no grain of pleasure from it now. She can take none of nature's lovely subst.i.tutes in the place of the two human objects she is pursuing. If she does not find them here, where else shall she seek them? 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 sitting side by side. At least they have not chosen any very sequestered spot. His blonde head is thrown 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 gown 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?'

'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 monosyllable, and it is so elucidated--if indeed it needed elucidation--by the handsome lightning of her eye, that Freddy's colour again changes.

'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 sorrowful silence, she adds with pa.s.sionate 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?' asks Margaret solicitously, addressing her for the first time, as she takes off her own cloak and wraps it round her.