Doctor Cupid Part 39

'I have not that honour.'

'At the Evanses'? No! impossible! I cannot imagine any one in their right mind staying at the Evanses'.'

'I do not know whether I am in my right mind, but I am not at the Evanses'.'

'Where _can_ you be then?'

'I am at the Roupell Arms.'

'The little inn in the village? Not really?'

He makes an affirmative sign. Surely, if the girl is not a perfect fool, she will understand, she will efface herself, she will take herself off, and leave them to themselves, as Peggy has so often left her and her Freddy to themselves. But to a person whose whole being is habitually permeated by one idea, other ideas are slow in penetrating.

Prue has not the least intention of effacing herself. Her curiosity--always, save on one theme, a languid emotion--satisfied, she prepares to replace herself on her settle.

'The Roupell Arms!' repeats she; 'what a funny idea! I never heard of any one staying at the Roupell Arms; I am afraid you will be very uncomfortable. Peggy, would you mind covering me again with this shawl?

I do not know what any one else feels, but I feel chilly.'

It is clear that to no member of her household has it ever occurred to efface herself for Peggy. Presently the luncheon-bell rings, and the children come bouncing in, delighted at the prospect of dining without pinafores, and the consequent opportunity for bes...o...b..ring their best clothes. Talbot's chance of a _tete-a-tete_ seems to be retreating into a distance to which his eye cannot follow it. But at least his eye can follow her, as she tries to coax Prue's sickly palate, as she cuts up Franky's dinner. Into this last occupation Lily manages to introduce a slight element of awkwardness.

'When I was little John Talbot used to cut up my dinner sometimes,' says she narratively--'sometimes he cut it up, and sometimes mammy did; but before I was as old as Franky I could cut it myself.'

'You are a very wonderful little girl,' says Talbot angrily, losing his temper at the consciousness that he is reddening, 'we all know that; but suppose that we do not hear any more about you just at present.'

After luncheon they are all dragged out by the children to see the wonders of the stable-yard. It is true that the hayloft kittens have, to Franky's surprise, expanded into sad and sober cats; but this not wholly unexpected metamorphosis has not found Alfred unprepared. He has brought instead, out of his treasure, ferrets new and old; and to see these interesting animals lift their pale noses and hands, and their red topaz eyes out of their box, Talbot has again indefinitely to defer the possession of his love's sole company. Franky is warmly clasping his hand, and Lily is hanging heavily on Margaret's arm.

'How red Alfred's ears are!' says she, in a stage aside; 'and how they stick out!'

Alfred becomes purple.

'Lily,' cries Peggy reprovingly, 'how can you be so rude? You ought never to make personal remarks.'

Lily tosses her head and giggles, and Franky giggles too, simply because he has a faint delighted sense that he ought not. There is an atmosphere of rising naughtiness about them both. Oh that they would but commit some sin big enough to justify their being sent to bed, or packed off home in charge of Sarah! But no. They are wily enough to keep on the hither side of any great iniquity. They are just naughty enough to prevent attention from being ever for more than a moment withdrawn from them; but they avoid incurring any guilt so great as to call down special vengeance on their heads.

Prue has long ago sauntered back to the settle and her rhyme-book. But for these imps he would have Peggy all to himself. He has several times begun eager speeches to her, which have met with interruptions such as these: 'Do you think that they can have fallen into the swill-tub?'

'What _can_ they be doing to the parrot to make him swear so dreadfully?' 'They will pull out poor Minky's tail!'

By the end of an hour, Talbot, genuine child-lover as he is, is beginning to feel leniently towards Herod the Great. However, the French proverb says that everything comes to him who knows how to wait. It may be true, though some have to carry their waiting into the dark grave with them. Talbot has not to carry his quite so far. Just in time to save him from such an outrage to chivalry as would be implied by boxing Miss Harborough's ears, appear upon the scene, though late, yet better than never--G.o.ds out of the machine--the Harborough nurses. They sweep off both culprits, despite their earnest and sincerely believed-in a.s.severations that Miss Lambton wants them to stay all day. Franky, indeed, is borne away dissolved in bitter tears at being torn from the friends who, as he honestly thinks, have been so thoroughly enjoying his society. Franky's naughtiness is of a wholly imitative character; but his little warm heart is his own.

Lily, on the other hand, trips away with her head up, having poured one last stage whisper into Peggy's ear: 'Would it be a personal remark if I were to tell John Talbot that I think him handsome?'

The object of this flattering inquiry watches the maker of it with a poignant anxiety, until she, her brother, and her attendants have turned the corner, and are really and entirely out of sight. Then he heaves a sigh of profound relief.

'At last!' he says, sweeping a look round the horizon.

It is quite clear. There is not a living soul in sight. Being Sunday, not even Jacob. Everything comes to him who knows how to wait. He has known how to wait, and now his moment has come.

'Let us sit under the Judas-tree,' he says, and she acquiescing pa.s.sively, they turn their steps thither.

But before they have gone three yards, there is a light foot on the turf behind them. Prue has fled across the sward from the open window-door, and is whispering something in Peggy's ear. Almost before he has had time to feel aghast at this new interruption, she has fled back again.

He looks after her with an irritated inquiry, born of his long tantalisation.

'Well, what is it now?' he asks angrily; 'anything fresh that you are to do or leave undone?'

Peggy reddens.

'It was only that she asked us not to sit under the Judas-tree; she cannot bear any one to sit there--any one else.'

'Any one else!' he repeats, his brief and surface wrath dying away into a smile of pa.s.sionate happiness; 'any other lovers, you mean. You may blink the _word_, Peggy; but you cannot blink the _thing_: we _are_ lovers.'

Peggy does not answer. She has sat down on a seat, above which a great old thorn is just breaking into a foam of blossom. She has taken up this position in all unconsciousness of the advantages it presents, but of which Talbot's eager eye has instant cognisance. The thorn, now thick with flowers, effectually masks all sitters on that seat from the view of any eyes darted at them from the house, the only point whence observation need be dreaded; for what lover minds the robin's round bright eye, or the chaffinch's surveillance?

'We _are_ lovers!' he repeats, sitting down resolutely beside her.

The thorn, leaning as old trees will, projects so far beyond their heads as to make a natural arbour for them, and tosses down now and again whiffs of its pungent perfume, which some strange persons affect to dislike.

'Are we?' she says, the words travelling softly out on a long sigh. 'You will think me very stupid'--the red rose of Lancaster for the moment chasing her pale sister of York out of her face--'but, old as I am--twenty-three next birthday--I do not know what love--that kind of love--feels like. I--I--have never had any opportunity of knowing.'

He stares at her in an enraptured astonishment. For such a confession as this, his apprenticeship to Betty has certainly not prepared him. Can it be conceivable that he is the first--the very first--to reap the flowers of this fairest field?

'Do you mean to say,' he inquires, almost with incredulity, 'that you have never given back one small grain of love to any one of the many men who must have showered it upon you?'

'But they have not,' returns she, a slight humorous smile pushing its way through her blushes. 'You are determined that I have had so many lovers, and I have had scarcely any. Two or three people have wanted to marry me--not many. Oh, not at all many! You could count them on one hand, with several fingers to spare; and I do not think that they loved me. They did not give me that impression. They thought I should be a useful wife, strong and active; but love--love--love,' repeating the word dreamily--'no,' shaking her head. 'There are not many women of twenty-three who can say so, I suppose; and I see that you have a difficulty in believing me; but love has never come near me.'

'And are you resolved that it never shall?' he asks, under his breath.

She pauses a moment before answering, while her eyes escape from the tyranny of his, and fix themselves on a row of tulips, rearing their striped and colour-splashed cups upon their strong, straight stalks, in the border before her. With the potent light smiting through them, they look as if they were cut out of some hard precious stone--sardonyx, or beryl, or bdellium--goblets to be filled with fairy wine at the feast of some mage-king.

'I do not know,' she says, with her lips trembling; 'I am not sure. When I see Prue--when I know that it has brought all the pain she has suffered--and she has suffered a good deal--more than you would think, to look at her, that she could bear--into her life--my one prayer is to keep clear of it; and yet--and yet'--with a yearning in her voice--'one would not like to die having quite missed it. Oh, tell me'--with a change in her tone to one of compelling entreaty, bringing back the eyes but now so sedulously averted from him, and plunging them into his under the shade of the hawthorn bough--'were you really speaking truth when you said you had come down from London only to see me? Are you quite sure--quite--that that was your real motive?'

'Quite.'

'n.o.body would believe it,' she says, with a sort of wonder in her voice; 'n.o.body thinks so. They all'--faltering a little--'they all think something quite different.'

'What does it matter what they think?' he cries hotly, the colour which unluckily is equally the livery of brazen guilt and oppressed innocence again mantling his face. 'What have we to do with their blatant suppositions? Are you going to let _them_ come between us?'

'You will think me very suspicious,' she says tremulously--'very hard to be convinced of what most women would find it easy enough to believe--but--but--I care for very few people,' she goes on, beginning a fresh sentence without finishing the former one; 'but when I do care, I care very badly. Do not be angry with me if I say that I have a sort of dread of caring very badly about you.' If he had had his will, the conclusion of that sentence would have found her in his arms; but she holds herself gently aloof. 'If I once let myself love you,' she says, the tears stealing afresh into her eyes, 'I know that I could never unlove you again--never while I lived, try as I might; and if afterwards I found out----'

'Found out what?' breathlessly.

'You know,' she goes on, trying to speak firmly--'I am sure you must know--that when first I saw you, I had heard nothing but what was bad of you. That was my only excuse for the way in which I behaved to you. I had heard things about you--no; do not be afraid,' a writhing motion on his part conveying to her what her words are making him suffer. 'I am not going to ask you whether they were true. I have no business with your past; but what I _must_ ask you--what I shall never have any peace until I _have_ asked you,' her agitation deepening--'is whether if people said them now they would still be true?'

There is a moment's stillness before he answers--a moment long enough for the hawthorn's perfume to be for ever after wedded in her memory to that pregnant pause. It is almost in a whisper that she has put her question, and it is quite in a whisper that his answer comes:

'If they would be true, should I be here now, Peggy?'

She heaves a deep, long sigh, as one off whose heart a great stone's weight had rolled; and the over-br.i.m.m.i.n.g drops roll soft and hot over her cheeks.

'And will they never be true again?' she asks, still under her breath; 'are you sure--quite sure of it? I will believe you if you tell me so.

Oh, I _want_ to believe you! Dog with a bad name as you are,' breaking into an unsteady laugh--'angry as I was at being sent in to dinner with you--I _want_ to believe you.'