Doctor Cupid Part 44

'Perhaps you will have your wish,' he says gloomily, for the last half-hour seems to have shaken all the fabric of his prospective Elysium; 'perhaps there will not be much to hide.'

'That is a very civil suggestion on your part,' she answers, relapsing into biting sarcasm; 'so likely, too. Go on. I am cheered already: find out some more equally probable topics of consolation for me. Why do not you remind me that I still have my husband--my husband whose society _you_ have taught me so much to enjoy; my visiting-book; my--my----'

'You have your _boy_,' he interrupts sternly, goaded into anger out of compa.s.sion by her tone.

Her hands drop from his, and a light s.h.i.+ver runs over her shuddering body.

'_I--have--my--boy_,' she repeats slowly; 'so I have. G.o.d forgive me for having even for one moment forgotten him! Yes, I have him--bless him!

but for how long? Even if he lives--oh, he _will_ live! G.o.d cannot take _him_ too from me--I was a fool ever to fear it; but even if he lives to grow up, he too will go from me. People will tell him things about me; or if they do not tell him, he will pick up hints. I shall see it in his eyes, and then he--too--will--go--from me!' breaking into a long moaning sob. 'I suppose,' looking in utter revolt up to heaven, 'that _They_ will be satisfied then. I shall have nothing--_nothing_--NOTHING left!'

She has broken into a storm of frantic tears, that rain from her eyes and career unheeded down her white gown. He can only look on miserably.

'But at least,' she says deliriously, every word marking a higher stage in the rising sea of her frenzy, 'I shall always have been _first_!

Neither you nor she can take that from me. It may make you both mad to think so, but you _cannot_. I shall always--always have been there first. You may tell her so from me, if you like,' with one last burst of dreadful laughter; 'it will be no breach of confidence, for I give you leave.'

Then, in a moment, before he can divine her intention, or--even if he had the heart to do so--arrest her, she has flung her arms convulsively about his neck; and in a moment more she is gone, leaving him there dazed and staggering in the starlight, with the agony of her good-bye kiss on his lips, and his face wet with her scorching tears.

CHAPTER XXIX

If there is one hour of the day at which the little Red House looks conspicuously better than another, it is that young one when the garden gra.s.s is still wet to the travelling foot, and the great fire-rose in the east has not yet soared high enough to swallow the shadows. So Talbot thinks, as he takes his way next morning to his love's little russet-coloured home. She has promised over-night to rise betimes, to give him an early tryst before he sets off on his dusty journey back into the world without her. He is of course by much too early; and though he tries to hasten the pa.s.sage of time by looking at his watch every two minutes, yet he is compelled, if he would not be at her door long before it is opened to him, to journey towards her at a very different rate from that at which his heart is doing. He walks along, drawing in refreshment of soul and body with every breath. He has not slept all night, and his eyes are dry and feverish; but the air, moist with the tears of the dawn, beats his lids with its soft pinions, and all the lovely common sights of early morning touch healingly upon his bruised brain, and heart still jarred and aching with the ign.o.ble pain of that late encounter.

At every step he takes some sweet or gently harmonious sight or sound steals away a parcel of that ugly ache, and gives him an atom of pure joy instead. Now it is a stray wood-pigeon beginning its day-long sweethearting in the copse. Now it is a merry din of quiring finches, all talking together. Now it is a glimpse of a sprinkle of cowslips in an old pasture, shaking off their drowsiness. Now it is only a stout thrush l.u.s.tily banging its morning snail against a stone, the one instance of gross cruelty amongst the many that the scheme of nature offers, which the most tender-hearted cannot fail to admire. And now a turn of the road has given him to view her house, and the tears, cleansing as those of the morning, leap to his eyes at the sight of it.

Dear little wholesome, innocent house, giving back the sun's smile from each one of its s.h.i.+ning panes; giving it back, as _her_ mirroring face will give back his own love-look, when she comes--so soon now, oh, so soon!--across the dew-drunk daisies to his arms. With what a feeling of homecoming does his heart embrace it--he that, for so many arid years, has had no better home than Bury Street lodgings, or Betty's boudoir!

He looks eagerly to see whether, by some blessed accident, she may even now be ahead of him in time, awaiting him with suns.h.i.+ny face uplifted, and firm, fair arms resting on the top-rail of the gate. He knows how early she rises, and that no coquettish punctilio as to being first at the rendezvous will hinder her, if she is sooner ready than he. But apparently to-day she is not. There is no trace of her.

A slight misgiving as to Prue's illness, which until this moment he had indignantly dismissed from his memory as imaginary, having a more serious character than he had credited it with, makes him glance apprehensively towards the young girl's cas.e.m.e.nt. The blind is down, it is true; but over all the rest of the house there is such a cheerful air of everyday serenity, that, considering the earliness of the hour, he cannot attach much importance to the circ.u.mstance.

Prue is always--how unlike his fresh Peggy!--a lie-a-bed. Mink and the cat are standing airing themselves on the door-step, and, by the suavity of their manner, obviously invite him to enter.

The hall-door is open, and he pa.s.ses through it. It is the first time that he has had to push uninvited into her sanctuary--the first day that she has not met him at the gate. He checks the rising chill that the reflection calls forth, and hurries on into the hall; meaning to hurry through it, for surely it will be in the garden that he will find her.

Perhaps, by one of love's subtilties, she has chosen to bid him farewell under the very hawthorn-tree where he had first called her his. But he has not made two steps into the hall before he discovers that his calculations have erred. Can it be by another of love's subtilties that she is sitting here indoors, away from the morning's radiance, sitting quite idle apparently by the table; and that, on his entry, she does not even turn her head?

'Peggy!' he cries, thinking that she cannot have heard his step, though it has rung not more noiselessly than usual on the old oak boards; and that Mink, with a friendly afterthought, is firing off little shrill 'good mornings' at his heels.

There is no change of posture in the sitting figure, no movement, unless, if his eyes do not deceive him, a slight s.h.i.+ver running over it.

'Peggy!' he repeats, alarmed; and, in a second, has overleaped the intervening distance--has fallen on his knees at her feet, and grasped her hands. 'What is it? Quick--speak to me! Is Prue worse?'

There is no answer. She has averted her face, so that he can see only the outline of her cheek's oval, at his approach; and--what is this? She is drawing her hands with slow decision, not with any petulance or coquetry, but as one irrevocably resolved, out of his. Then she rises slowly to her feet, and, having put three paces between them, turns and looks full at him. Looks full at him, this tall, risen woman, who will not lend him the custody of her hand! But who is she--this woman? Not his Peggy! Nay, surely not his Peggy! His Peggy, cheeked like the dawn, with eyes made out of sapphires and morning dew--his kindly, loving Peggy--what has she in common with this pale austerity that is facing him?

'What is it?' he repeats huskily, a vague horror making his knees knock together; 'is she----'

He breaks off. The idea has flashed across him that Prue is dead! What lesser catastrophe can account for this horrible unnamed change?

'She is better,' replies Peggy hoa.r.s.ely.

'Better!--thank G.o.d for that!' drawing a long breath of relief. 'What do you mean by looking like this? You made me think--I do not know what; but,' his agony of perplexity returning in profounder flood, 'if so--if she is better, what is it?--what else? For mercy's sake answer me!--answer me quickly! Do not keep me waiting! You do not know what it is to be kept waiting like this!'

He has risen from his kneeling att.i.tude; but that unaccountable something in her face hinders him from making any effort to bridge the distance she has set between them. Across that distance comes her reply, in a voice that seems to set her continents and seas away from him:

'Are you--quite--sure--that--I--need answer you?'

'Sure that you need answer me?' repeats he bewildered, struggling against the ice that is sweeping up over his heart; 'why, of course I am! Why else should I have asked you? We must be playing at cross-purposes,' with an attempted smile. 'Of course I am sure!'--reading the disbelief in her white face--'quite sure! What can I say to a.s.severate it? As sure as that I stand here--as sure as----'

'Oh, stop!--stop!' she cries vehemently, thrusting out her hands towards him as if in pa.s.sionate prohibition, while a surge of colour coming into her face restores her to some likeness to his Peggy; 'do not--do not let me have to think that I have been the cause of your telling any more falsehoods!'

'Any _more_?' echoes he, putting up his hand to his forehead, and feeling as if she had struck him across the eyes.

'Yes,' she says, gasping, while he sees her hand go out in unconscious quest of the table-edge, as if to steady herself. 'Yes!--do not I speak plainly? Any _more_!'

Again he pa.s.ses his hand over that brow that feels cut and furrowed by the lash of her words.

'You--must--explain,' he says slowly; 'apparently I am dull this morning. What other falsehoods have I told you?'

Both her hands are clutching the table now; nor is its support unneeded, for her body sways. Only for a moment, however. In a moment she is standing firm again.

'What other?' she repeats, half under her breath; 'what other? Oh!' with a long shuddering groan, 'how many, many you must have told before you could grow to do it with a face that looks so like truth!'

But at that the insulted manhood of him awakes, goaded into life, and shakes off the paralysis engendered by his horrible astonishment.

'Come!' he exclaims, disregarding her unspoken veto, going close up to her and standing before her, with folded arms and flas.h.i.+ng eyes; 'this is intolerable!--this is more than man can bear! Let me hear what you have to say--speak your accusation; but do not tell me to my face that I am a liar, without bringing a rag of evidence to support it!'

She looks back at him, taking in, with a startled air, his changed demeanour--the command of his att.i.tude--the authority of his eyes.

Then--

'You--are--right,' she says, panting, while he sees her poor heart miserably leap under the pink cotton gown he had praised yesterday--was it yesterday, or before Noah's flood? 'I--have no right to bring vague accusations, as you say. Will you--will you--let me wait a minute?'

She sinks upon a chair as she speaks; and, resting her elbow upon the table, pa.s.ses her pocket-handkerchief once or twice over her face, wiping away the cold drops of anguish that, despite the morning's radiant warmth, are gathering upon it. He waits beside her, in a black suspense, pus.h.i.+ng away from him the fear that he refuses to formulate.

'There!' she says, after a year's interval, which the clock falsely calls sixty seconds; 'I--I--beg your pardon for keeping you waiting.'

She has banished, as far as she can, all signs of emotion, and begins in a level low voice. 'Prue got better almost immediately after you went away last night--was it really only last night?' with a bewildered look; then, immediately recovering herself, 'so decidedly better, that I thought I might safely leave her.' She pauses. 'I--I--thought I--I--would follow you.'

Another pause. It is evidently killing work to get on at all. Angry as he is with her, clearly as he now sees what is coming, he cannot help a compa.s.sionate wish to help her, and make it easier for her.

'I--did not know which way you had gone,' she resumes, after another battle with herself; 'no one had seen you. But I thought--I guessed--I fancied that it might have been to the walled garden, because--because we had--had--said good-bye there last year.' Her voice wavers so distressingly that he thinks she is about to lose all control over it; but no!--in a moment she has recovered her self-mastery, and taken up her thread again. 'As I drew near the garden, I saw that the gate was a little open, so I knew that I had guessed right. I--looked--in; I--saw--oh!' with a burst of indignant agony, 'are you going to make me tell you what I saw?'

'Yes,' he says breathlessly, 'tell me!--what?' A hope, faint, and yet tenacious, lingers in his mind that it may have been any one moment of his last night's interview except that of the supreme embrace which she had witnessed. He has not long to wait before this last prop is knocked from under him.

'I--I--saw--you holding--a woman in your arms, and, a moment after, she ran past me--and I saw--who she was!'

The answer he has insisted upon reaches him in a broken whisper; and her strained eyes are fastened upon him, as if, in the teeth of a certainty as absolute as that of her own ident.i.ty, she were nouris.h.i.+ng the hopeless hope of his uttering some impossible, yet convincing, denial.

But he attempts none such. He stands before her silent, with his arms still folded and the tide of a sh.o.r.eless despair was.h.i.+ng over his heart.

Betty has put the crowning touch to her work.