Doctor Cupid: A Novel. Broughton Rhoda
I?'
'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 uncanonical 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 written, though the words do not actually pass her lips, that least reassuring of salutations, 'To what are we indebted for the honour of this visit?'
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 of very much effrontery, since the austerity of so young an eye strikes him dumb.
The only person who shows him any civility 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 Roupell had asked you to leave a message with me about it. It is not that, then?'
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 explanation 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.'
She does not say that she is glad he did not; she does not say anything civil. She only asks him to sit down, which, 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?' 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 absently bent upon the sward, to-day not shorn to quite its usual pitch of velvet nicety. 'So we do, indeed. But Jacob has unluckily 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.
'Why should not I mow?' asks he at last.
'You?'
'Yes, I; and you lead the pony.'
She looks at him, half inclined to be angry.
'Is that a joke?'
'A joke – no! Will you tell me where the pony is? May I harness it?'
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 —marbleing, 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 drops 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 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 ill?'
'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?' returns she playfully.
'From the Foreign Office?'
'Was it the Foreign Office?' with a momentary impulse of curiosity