“’TWIXT THE CUP AND THE LIP.”
“Incredible! Preposterous!”
That was Dr. Paull’s mental attitude: he could not understand how that
hour, or more, had slipped away in the princess’ boudoir.
His annoyance, and his difficulty in accounting for his absence from his
post, made him half-forgetful of the princess’ expressed determination
to see him every day. Next morning, when Sir David Forwood was
announced, he had no idea of his old friend’s errand.
“No one ill, I hope?” he said, with concern; he left his consulting-room
to join his visitor in the dingy old drawing-room, a melancholy
apartment. He was fond of the Forwood children, one or two of whom were
weakly.
“No,” said Sir David, who looked as he felt, uncomfortable. “Really I am
ashamed to come on such an errand to a man like you, Paull. But you must
blame my wife and Lady Boisville, rather than myself. Lady Boisville
gives a concert to-night in honour of the young French prince, and she
has set her heart on your being there. She actually came herself about
it, and the two ladies packed me off to secure you. I am afraid you will
have to come, Paull, or I shall never be forgiven.”
Dr. Paull smiled. He remembered. His new patient evidently understood
how to carry out her whims.
“I am pledged to go, or I certainly would not. These things are not at
all in my line,” he said.
“Pledged to go?” Sir David looked astonished. “Lady Boisville must have
been mistaken, then. She said it was an afterthought of hers, and was so
afraid you would be offended at being asked so late in the day.”
“I knew nothing of the entertainment; still, I am pledged to go,” said
Hugh, amused at Sir David’s innocence. “I will be there.”
Then Sir David departed, perplexed, as he would not have been had his
wife been a society _intrigante_.
Going into the dining-room to luncheon, Hugh was startled to see Mrs.
Mervyn, without her bonnet and shawl.
“Good heavens!” he said, startled. What brings _you_ to town?”
“You, of course,” said Mrs. Mervyn, amused. “How do you think the
Pinewood is to be restored, and all that, without some one working
pretty hard? Ralph and I have our work cut out for us this next week, I
can tell you. Ralph arranged for my staying here. I won’t be in your
way, I promise you.”
“As if that were possible,” said Hugh, affectionately. He was always
glad to see poor Lilia’s “mammy.” Her round placid face and kind eyes
were dear to him. But as he presided at the luncheon table, and talked
to her and to Ralph, who appeared in the seventh heaven with delight and
importance, he hardly knew what they said, or how he answered them,
except that the words carpets, curtains, furniture, were frequently
repeated. He was wondering how he should explain his absence that
evening to “mammy,” who regarded him as an incorrigible recluse.
“I fear I must seem rude, and leave you to-night for an hour or two,” he
said, as they rose from table.
“Patients make doctors’ laws,” said Mrs. Mervyn, sagely. “I know
_that_.”
“But this is a private concert at Lady Boisville’s,” said Hugh,
uneasily. “Nothing to do with business. In an evil hour I promised to
go.”
“My dear, I am so glad that you are coming out of your shell,” said Mrs.
Mervyn, warmly. “And that reminds me. When am I to be ready to play
hostess at the Pinewood? It is necessary that I should know, to have
everything in order.”
Hugh looked at her in consternation. He had forgotten his wild, fleeting
ideas that day at the Pinewood. Evidently Mrs. Mervyn had not.
“Oh! I have not thought any more about that,” he said.
“Then I am glad I have reminded you,” said “mammy.” “And really you men
of science are so unpractical in ordinary life, that the best thing one
can do with you, I think, is to help you a bit. I suppose you mean to
ask your friends for the partridge shooting? There are plenty of birds
about; and old Cæsar has been taking pains with them since he knew for
certain you were coming down.”
Before they parted, Hugh was aware that this was before him: he was to
entertain the princess at the Pinewood. It was his own fault. When he
had persuaded himself that day in the country that he was planning to
entertain Sir David Forwood and his wife, he was deceiving himself.
“I wanted _her_ there,” he told himself, in consternation. “What
influence has that girl over me, and how in Heaven’s name did she get
it?”
He felt like some ponderous fly may feel entangled in the fine web of a
seemingly insignificant spider. That delicate creature! How came it that
he, a strong man, was subject to her will, or rather, her caprice?
“It must not be,” he told himself, sternly; “although, of course, I must
fulfil my promise. I must see her, when and how she plans for these few
days. But after that, _no more_.”
His determination seemed to him so strong, that he grew quite cheerful,
and after a pleasant chat with Mrs. Mervyn during and after dinner, he
sent her to the opera with Ralph and dressed for Lady Boisville’s
concert quite as if these new doings had been his rule of life.
Lady Boisville’s house was well known. Its tapestries, picture-gallery,
and new French ball-room were much talked of in society. When Dr. Paull
arrived, the picture-gallery was already nearly filled by a brilliant
crowd who were seated or standing about in groups, awaiting the young
French prince. Hugh took up his position in the background. He had been
forced into this gathering, he determined to remain a spectator of the
interesting living picture as much as possible. At first it seemed as if
his intention would be fulfilled. The concert began. Celebrated Italian
singers warbled delicious music. The ladies smiled and fluttered their
fans. The men conversed in snatches between the pieces, while the
Boisville ancestors frowned darkly or smiled blankly from among the
celebrated black canvases of the old Dutch painters or the gay
Canalettis for which the Boisville collection was famous. One or two men
he knew, the most celebrated portrait painter of the day, two of the
foremost members of the Cabinet, and the physician dearest to reigning
royalty, came up and talked with him. All seemed surprised to see him.
One of the statesmen, a man of constitutional vigour and renowned for
his honest joviality, told him he was taking a step in the right
direction.
“You preach at your patients not to shut themselves up,” he said. “But
hitherto you have not followed your own prescription.”
Just after that the portrait painter came up to him.
“I have just seen the loveliest woman in the world,” he said,
enthusiastically; “and Lady Boisville tells me you are her doctor. Lucky
fellow!”
And forthwith he questioned Hugh with what Dr. Paull considered
execrable taste, until at last he made some excuse and came out of his
corner to avoid the man.
Then he saw Mercedes, an exquisite picture in some silvery gossamer
stuff, with pearls round her girlish throat and a long trail of lilies
from her beautiful shoulder to the hem of her dress. Her large eyes were
travelling restlessly from face to face, her lips were apart, she was
nervously playing with her fan, yet the French prince was talking to
her, and in the knot of people around them were some of the celebrities
of the day. Their eyes met, her face lit up with pleasure, his heart
seemed to swell with some emotion. He was touched, yet was angry with
himself for being so.
“I suppose I must speak to her,” he told himself; “but that must
suffice. After that, I go home.”
He waited until the French prince moved away, then went up to her and
asked her how she was.
“Very well, _now_,” she said. “Not before, for you had not come.”
“I have been here all the evening,” said Hugh, as coolly as he could,
for her sweet face lifted to his actually stirred his steady pulses, and
he rebelled against these new, involuntary sensations. “I must go, now.
Good-bye! I am glad you are looking so well.”
“You will stay? Just a little while?” she pleaded.
“I am sorry that I cannot possibly do so,” he said. “My time is not my
own.”
Her blank look of disappointment startled him. What was this violent
fancy of hers for him? Was he wise, was he, indeed, doing right to
encourage it? He began to fear that he had taken some dangerous step on
that flowery way to destruction that he had hitherto succeeded in
avoiding.
Still, as he argued to himself walking home under the calm night sky,
why should he think there was anything approaching to danger in the
kindly feeling this young, beautiful creature entertained for him?
“I am absurdly vain to think of such a thing,” he told himself with a
scornful laugh. “I, more than middle-aged, white-haired, awkward, stupid
in women’s society, she can only feel a mixture of pity and confidence.
How absurd it is of me to make a mountain out of a molehill!”
He went to bed with a heavy heart, accusing himself of ingratitude to
the princess.
“I ought to feel flattered at it all, I suppose,” he said when he awoke,
his spirits oppressed with the feeling of something going wrong in his
life. Instead of this, he felt utterly wretched.
Had he expected to hear from Mercedes? He did not know. He only knew
that he turned over his letters with a sense of disappointment, and
although he talked with Mrs. Mervyn about the opera, and listened to her
and to Ralph’s hints of some pleasant surprise in store for him in the
arrangements at the Pinewood, he could not have given an account of the
conversation afterwards had his life depended upon it. He had hard work
to concentrate his energies upon his work that day. When he returned
home he found a letter—a letter with the Andriocchi arms on the flap of
the envelope, with his name in that graceful, sloping writing.
It lay among many others on his library table. If he had really doubted
the girl’s power over his emotions, the eagerness with which he pounced
upon it would have told him the truth.
Before he read it he locked the door. Another desperate symptom, had he
been reflecting on his own case. But he was not. He had but one feeling,
intense relief. He had been fearing he had offended her, and he had not
done so.
He opened the envelope. The enclosed sheet of notepaper contained but a
few words:
“I release you from your promise. Farewell.
“MERCEDES.”
The date; her address; those few words. No more.
In his present frame of mind, it was a shock. At first he paced the
room, his old habit when perturbed. Then after gloomy self-chidings,
during which he thought of himself as an inhuman bear who had trampled
on the generous nature of one of the sweetest women God had ever
created—he stopped short, consoled by a new thought.
“What did I do, or say?” he asked himself. “I only made excuses to get
away from a fashionable entertainment. I did not slight _her_
personally. She is a child! She has jumped to some conclusion or
another—I must write at once and disabuse her of it, whatever it is.”
He sat down, and wrote:—
“Dear Princess,—It grieves me to find that you have lost confidence in
me as your medical adviser, because I have given much consideration to
your case. Allow me to assure you that if you permit me a further
trial, you will be satisfied with the result. At the same time, if you
conclude that you are better without my advice, I sincerely hope you
will allow me to talk over your next medical adviser with you, as the
selection is a matter of importance to your health.
“I am, faithfully yours,
“HUGH PAULL.”
“Whether this is too warm, or too cold—whatever it is, _it shall go_,”
he said to himself decidedly, as he rang the bell.
“When did this letter come?” he asked of Jones, who came in response to
his summons.
“That, sir? Oh, the princess! The fair, foreign gentleman brought it. He
wanted to see you, sir. He came about two.”
“_Which_ gentleman?” asked Hugh—nettled to find that the letter had been
recognised.
“The count, sir; not the prince.”
“Send this by a hansom at once,” he directed. “And send round to the
stables. I want the brougham directly after dinner.”
He had given this order, spurred by a feeling he had not hitherto known:
he wished to conceal his movements from his own servants. Hitherto, they
might have known all that he did, and spoke, and thought, for all he
cared.
Now, the idea of his patient the princess being commented upon by any
one of his household, even by Ralph, was unbearable to him. He had
ordered his carriage to elude remark. No sooner had he done so, than he
wondered what he should do with it—where he should go.
“I will take mammy to the theatre,” he suddenly thought.
Upstairs he bounded—she was not in the drawing-room. Once more he rushed
up the stairs three steps at a time and bounced up against Mrs. Mervyn.
“My dear boy!” Mrs. Mervyn was astonished, but not disconcerted.
It did her good to see the long disconsolate widower “alive again,” as
she said afterwards to her husband.
“I came to see if you would come to the theatre, to-night,” he said, in
a low voice. “Don’t say anything before the servants—but after dinner,
we three can just go and see anything good that you would care to see.”
Mrs. Mervyn was enchanted.
“All the same, I would just as soon spend a quiet evening with you and
Ralph,” she said. “You must not fatigue yourself on my account, dear.”
“Don’t be alarmed! I am purely selfish!” he said, going off disgusted
with himself.
What had happened to him? He was unstrung—his emotions were in revolt.
He felt as if he could not sit quietly at home that evening, waiting for
a reply to his note. He must have change of scene, excitement, to
balance him. If mammy could only know! Poor “mammy!”
Perhaps “mammy” knew more than he thought. Mrs. Mervyn, finding him
changed, had certainly been on the watch these days. She had discovered
no clue to the feminine influence which, woman-like, she believed to be
the root of Dr. Paull’s alternate high spirits and absence of
mind—still, she believed that the feminine influence was _there_, and
that in time she would “know everything.”
Poor “mammy!”
Meanwhile, she enjoyed herself that evening, as she, Dr. Paull, and
Ralph sat together in a box to see a new piece, a serious comedy with
both humorous and pathetic interest which was having a steady “run” at
one of the principal theatres. Hugh exerted himself to be amusing, or,
at least, to pay the undivided attention to Lilia’s dearest friend which
he considered her due; and Mrs. Mervyn thought, more than once during
the performance, “If there really _is_ some love affair, it is going on
favorably.”
So hoped Hugh. At least, so he hoped of this new acquaintance which he
mentally designated his and Mercedes’ “friendship.” He believed his
letter had “made it all right” between him and his offended patient.
But the next day passed, and the day after that, and no answer came.
Then Mrs. Mervyn departed, with the promise that he would send her full
particulars of his house party at the Pinewood next month. She assured
him at parting that everything would be ready for next month in a few
days.
Good soul!—she journeyed home somewhat heavy-hearted on the subject of
Hugh, of whom she was genuinely fond. When he returned from the
bookstall with the newspapers he had bought to beguile her homeward
journey, she noticed that he was deadly pale and looked very ill.
“He has been overfatiguing himself for me,” she dismally thought as the
fields and hedges seemed to fly by the compartment in which she sat
alone. “Poor, dear boy! I have been very thoughtless.”
She might have spared herself her misgivings. The cause of Dr. Paull’s
pallor was a short paragraph in a society column his eyes rested upon as
he brought her the papers:
“The Prince and Princess Andriocchi, who have been making a brief stay
in the Metropolis, intend to take their departure for Madrid to-day. For
the future they will reside in the well-known palace of the Duke and
Duchess of Saldanhés, the parents of the princess, where an extensive
suite of apartments has been magnificently re-decorated for their
reception. One of the objects of the Prince Andriocchi’s recent visit to
the Palazzo Andriocchi, in Florence, is said to have been the
organisation for the removal of the most celebrated among the many
renowned works of art accumulated by his ancestors to his new abode in
the Spanish capital.”
So Mercedes had left him—without one word!