Then for the watcher another deadly doze, of jerks and nightmares. And then another waking to the sound of the little patient's voice, curiously full of life this time.
"When I'm took home to my Daddy, Teacher, where Mrs. Forks is...."
"Yes, dear!"
"Shall the children go on digging and spaddle in the water, just the same like now?"
"Yes, darling, just the same, till it's too cold. Then they'll go home and go to school."
"And fish for sprawns just the same?"
"Just the same."
"And when they've gone to school and no one's on the beach to see, will there be high water?"
"High water? Yes, of course, dear—every day, just the same as now ... what?"
"And low water?"
"And low water too."
"Like when my Daddy went sea-viyages?"
"Like when your Daddy went sea-voyages." But this has been a long talk, and has gone slowly against obstacles of speech. So when Lizarann ends with a half-inaudible, "I sould tell my Daddy that," the torpor is returning, and it may be she really sleeps, for all that the breathing is so difficult. She has persisted that she suffers no pain; so Miss Fossett tries for satisfaction on that score. But the fear is that having no pain may only mean that the pain eludes description. Still, there is room for hope, of a sort.
"I've heard many cases talk like that, quite brightly, just before," says Miss Jane, standing by the bed. She has come to relieve guard, and has heard her friend's report of her night's watching. Lizarann has not moved since she spoke last, an hour ago, and still lies in what may be sleep, breathing heavily. The jerks in the breathing do not wake her, strangely.
"She was almost chattering, one time," says Miss Fossett. "Poor little darling!"
"About her Daddy?"
"Yes, and about the high and low tides, and how he went sea-voyages."
"Fancy that! The little soul! But no delirium?"
"I think none. Just a little feverishness—in the half-waking. Not delirium."
"You go to bed now. I'll call you if there is anything."
"Promise to!" A nod satisfies the speaker, who goes away to lie down. As she looks out, from a window on her way, across a sea without a ripple, she understands why the tide was unheard. Even now, scarcely a sound! She pauses a little to look at the planet blazing above the offing, and its long path of light upon the water—wonders is it Venus or Jupiter?—and passes on to rest. How callous is the bed one lies down on in one's clothes, with something over one, to get a few hours' sleep! And how hard they are to get, sometimes!
Adeline Fossett had had over three hours when she waked with a start in response to a hand on her shoulder. "I should like you to come," said Miss Jane, who then returned at once.
Lizarann, or the shadow that had been she, was propped up with pillows on the bed when Miss Fossett followed her friend two minutes later. "Is that Teacher?" was what she seemed to say. But speech was very faint indeed.
"I don't think she sees you," said Miss Jane.
"Can you hear what I say, darling?" Yes, apparently; and knows it is Teacher who speaks. What is it we can get for her? For the feverish movement of the hands, and the constant effort to articulate, have all the usual effect of baffled speech, with much to say.
Miss Fanshawe's wider hospital experience makes her less receptive of the idea. She waited, silent, while Miss Fossett asked the question more than once, before any intelligible answer came.
Then speech came suddenly to Lizarann. She wanted to get up now, and go to her Daddy. Yes!—she sould like to have her new flock on and go to her Daddy. Mustn't she go, Teacher? To which Teacher replied: "Yes, darling, you shall go, very soon. But it's night now, and Daddy's in bed."
"But I shall go?"
"Yes—indeed you shall! Very soon." Then Miss Fossett looked up at Miss Jane, who merely said, "Not very long now." But how strong the voice was for a moment! Yes—that would be so sometimes—sometimes even louder than that. Wasn't she speaking now?
Miss Fossett stooped to listen again. "I shall see my Daddy," is all she hears. Yes—Lizarann shall see her Daddy—it's a promise! What is that she's saying now? Be quiet and listen!
"When I see my Daddy—when I see my Daddy...."
"Yes—darling! What?"
"When I see my Daddy I shall call out, 'Poy-lot!'"
CHAPTER XLVIII
HOW JIM ADDED STORIES TO HIS AIR-CASTLE, AND SMOKED HIS LAST PIPE. HOW HE KNEW CHALLIS'S VOICE AGAIN. WHO HAD TO BE AT THE PARK GATE BY NINE. HOW JIM HEARD THE MOTOR COMING BACK, AND LIZARANN'S VOICE. HOW ATHELSTAN TAYLOR ARRIVED WITHOUT HER. OF JIM'S DEATH AND HERS
Athelstan Taylor and Aunt Bessy were at breakfast when the telegram came to say all was "over unexpectedly; writing." It was opened by the Rector, who rose and handed it to his sister-in-law; then passed on to the door in time to stop an incursion of Phœbe and Joan with "Aunty's coming directly, chicks. Run away now." But not in time to prevent Joan having good grounds for asking Phœbe why Aunt Bessy was crying.
Aunt Bessy was, no doubt. And the Rector was completely upset, too, for the moment. He had not the least expected anything so soon. But his work was cut out for him now. "I must go to poor Jim at once," he said.
"Oh, Athel, Athel!" said Aunt Bessy through her sobs. "You know, don't you, dear, that Jim would have been told before if I had had my way?" It was what Athelstan himself afterwards spoke of to Adeline Fossett as "poor Bessy's I-told-you-so consolation." The Rector was grieved for her grief, and knew that this expedient would really help her to bear it, so he was not going to grudge her all she could get from it.
"I know, Bess," said he. "Perhaps I was wrong. However, I didn't see quite what else to do. And I never imagined anything so sudden as this. Poor Jim!"
But it was only an easement, to be used and discarded. Miss Caldecott was ready to surrender the point—certainly wouldn't rub it in. "P-perhaps you were right, after all!" said she. Her grief for Lizarann was very real. And how was she to tell Phœbe and Joan?
"You may trust me to do whatever can be done for poor Jim, Bess. I shall go to him at the Well at once. He won't be absolutely unprepared by the time I tell him, because he knows my foot on the road a long way off, and he will know something has happened by my coming so early. It's not half-past eight yet. I shall be with him soon after nine."
"Won't he think you're bringing her with you? She was to have come here first, you know. That was the arrangement."
"Oh no! He never used to expect her till he heard her call, 'Pilot.' You know?"
"Oh, I know! Poor little Lizarann!"
And all those weary hours of the watchers by the bedside of his dying child, Jim had slept sound, treasuring in the heart of his dreams the inheritance of that last lucky memory of overnight. Old David's tale of how he was condemned in boyhood, to live after all into his hundredth year, stayed by Jim as a pledge of a sure Lizarann in the days to come—a very sure one in that St. Augustin's summer that was all but due now. Jim had slept sound, and the story does not grudge him his sweet delusions. The heart-tonic of that false diagnosis of eighty years ago took a variety of dream-forms before the morning, but never lost its savour. By turns it would be a thing and an incident. Jim had hardly time to appreciate the draught of nectar it became, when it had changed, even as it touched his lips, to a triumphant arrival in a glorious port, after stormy seas, with a wreck in tow, called the Lizarann. Jim would fain have kept that dream, to see that wreck refitted ready for sea. But then of a sudden, the wreck was no wreck, but a tree, and Lizarann was up in the tree. And Jim was just thinking now that he would see what Lizarann was really like, without any wonderment why she was never visible before, when the tree changed its identity and became old David himself, or his story; Jim was not clear which. But through these dreams, and others, the interwoven warmth of joy was always the same—the reinforced hope the old chap's yarn had left behind.
Nevertheless, when Jim woke he found it hard to remember where on 'arth he was; and didn't remember, at first. But he knew that when he did it would be nice. And so it was. It was old Margy's cottage, and Lizarann was coming back to it. Jim noticed that everything said so to him. A voluble hen, however anxious she was he should know about her egg, made frequent reference to Lizarann's return. A blackbird conversed with a family of wrens about it, and a linnet endorsed their view, that Lizarann was certainly coming back. A herd of cows, going leisurely to pasture, lowed a great deal about it, and repeated to each other again and again, "Lizarann is coming back," as they died away in the distance musically. And Jim knew that, far afield, a thousand larks were all of a tale, above the shorn crops in the blue heaven, telling each other Lizarann was on the road—was coming back once more to her Daddy. His little dog especially was clear about it, but was also clear that it would never do to neglect official obligations, and dragged Jim to the well-head with all his wonted enthusiasm. He was perfectly competent to give due notice of her arrival, but business was business.
The essentials of Jim's breakfast, arranged overnight, scarcely brought him in contact with human converse, because the very little girl, who came with milk, and took ba'ack t'yoother joog, was so absorbed in her task as to be able to think of nothing else, and speechless. Besides, she had misgivings that the little dog wanted her blood, and made her visit as short as possible. But when Jim arrived at his well-head, he soon got a chance to speak of his hopes to a fellow-creature, although it was a young one—too young to talk the matter out with. It was not always easy to identify these youngsters, as they made no allowance for blindness; only nodding affirmatives when asked their names right. Jim had to impute wrong names, and provoke corrections.
"You're little Billy Lathrop, young man, I take it?"
"No-ah be-ant. Oy be Ma-atthew Ree-ad doon th' la-an—two dower off Lathrop's."
"I reckoned you might be. It's your brother Jack I've to thank for the loan of this young tyke. He'll be wanting to see him back. Suppose you was to tell him he may have him back to-morrow. Or next day at farthest. A smart young character like you can begin larnin' to carry messages."
"Oy'll tell un."
"Because Lizarann's coming back—that's what you've got to tell. Who is it's a-coming back, hey?"
"L'woyzara-ann."
"My little maid, d'ye see?"
"Yower little may-ud."
"That's a likely young customer. Now mind you tell your brother Jack just that and nothing else, Matthew Read." And Matthew Read departed with his pails, leaving Jim all the happier for having, as it were, substantialized and filled out his hopes by this little performance.
The pipe Jim lighted with a vesuvian after discharging a few more water-claims, now and then recurring to the subject nearest his heart with the more talkworthy claimants, was as happy a pipe as he had ever smoked. As the sun rose higher, a full-blooded southern Phœbus with no stint of heat in his veins, he could rejoice in the evident influence of this mysterious St. Augustin, of whom he had never heard before, but who clearly could make a summer for him and his little lass. It was coming, and so was she. She would not, maybe, be her old self for a bit. But, then, no more had old David been. And that was eighty-four years ago—over half a century before Jim was born! Any number of glorious expectations might entrench themselves behind such a precedent—making a fortress in his soul against Despair.
Who says tobacco cannot be enjoyed in the dark? Jim had heard that story, and thought to himself as he cleared his pipe of ashes that he could tell another tale. But what was that pipe to the pipes he would smoke when his little lass was back, to make all this caution in lighting them needless? It was as good as having eyes himself to have the child beside him. But suppose now he had been blind from birth! Think of what it would have been like to have never a tale to tell to his little lass! He had so lost himself in his love for the child that this little bit of optimism came spontaneously, without a shade of bitter comment about being thankful for small mercies.
It was curious to him now—admittedly so—that he had shrunk from hearing again the sound of the waves, seeing he was actually looking forward to hearing Lizarann tell of them. It was on one account a disappointment to him, that since she was taken away to Chalk Cliff the weather had been so calm. It was true that the one letter she had written him—just at the time of that slight fluctuation upwards in the first week of her stay—had told of a rough sea, with such big waves; but then it had told also of how a pleasure-boat had been shoved off and a lady got wet through. Would that rough sea help him to tell her, better than before, what the waves were like when he was on that steamer in the China seas, and a typhoon swept the decks clear?
Talking was going on, down the road. Somebody was referring to the Rectory, speaking of it as the parsonage. Jim listened. Pa'arson had coom whoam yesterday. That was all right, but had no one else come to the Rectory? Yesterday was exactly six weeks and a day since Lizarann's departure. But Jim had hedged against despair with constant self-reminders that her not having come need mean nothing. So he could ask questions, equably.
"News of th' Master, belike, Jarge?" He affected great ease of speech—a chatty nonchalance—as he awaited the arrival of the voice he had recognized at the road-end of the avenue to his Well. He had stumped along it quick, though, for a wooden leg and a stick.
"Nowt amiss has gotten t' Maister," said the bee-tender, taking time. "Not for to reach my ears, this marn'n."
"Thought I heard some guess-chap give him his name, Jarge. Yonder along, a good cast down the road. Who might you have been talking to?"
"Po-ast."
"Ah!—and what said the Post?"
Jarge took more time, during which Jim urged him to fix his mind firmly on the Rector. Jarge had understood that the Rector had come home, and that the Post's son had just gone off to him with a telegram when the Post left home. This was as much as Jarge could be expected to know all at once, outside bee-craft; so Jim spared him further catechism. "Thank 'ee kindly, Jarge!" said he. "What o'clock might you make it?" Jarge made it a qwoo-aater to eight-yut by th' soon, and Jim thanked him again, and stumped back to the well-head.
In his sanguine mood, he took a rose-coloured view of that telegram. Lizarann and Teacher had not come back yet, but it heralded their coming. Why!—what else could it be, unless it was no consarn of his, anyhow? He lit another pipe, and gave himself to happy anticipations; for the influence of old David's early experience was strong on him. Being alone, he talked to his little dog, to whom he could speak freely; for with his keen hearing he could be sure he was alone, even if the young pup's quiescence had been no proof. It wouldn't be but a day, or two at most—so Jim told that pup—before Jack Read could reclaim his property; if, indeed, he hadn't got a better little tyke by now, as very like was the case; a superior article altogether, to whom Keating was unknown, and who especially never ran after chickens. However, it wouldn't do to make too sure, because maybe the little lass wouldn't, just yet awhile, be allowed out by the doctor on cold mornings, in which case things would have to remain as they were for a bit of time. But a day would come when little tykes would be superfluities, and Jack Read might have this one back, and see what he could do towards larning him better manners in the house. The object of these remarks misconceived the drift of them altogether, and, taking them for recognition of his own merits, heaved a sigh over the shortcomings of other little dogs, and fell asleep in the sun.
Jim sat again alone and smoked, and listened to the growing sounds of the day, the insect life stirring in the sunshine, the birds that meant to sing the summer out; growing fewer now, but revived by St. Augustin, evidently. He could hear, at the interval of each new furrow, the team of horses in an old-world plough swing round; and the ploughman's voice, now near and clear, now at the far hedge of his field, and dim. Somewhere a long way off a threshing-machine was droning, and as the sound of it came and went, and rose and fell with the wind, Jim thought of his little lass; and how that one letter of hers old Margy had re-read to him so often had told how she had heard the sea sound so through the night, now more, now less. If she had not come back to the Rectory yesterday, as he hoped, was she up now and out on the beach?... but no—hardly! It was barely eight o'clock. Yes—there went the church-bells! But he could not count the strokes for the noise some hedge-sparrows made suddenly, almost close to his ear.
That was a harvest cart with a many horses, Jim supposed, and every horse with bells. Going to load up, at a guess; for it was soon gone by, and its bells a memory. Then another sound of wheels stole in, and grew. Not a cart; carts rattle. Some sort of carriage, coming from Furnival Station. Not indigenous to this village; Jim had learned every native wheel by heart. Not a very dashing carriage neither! It went slow, and the horse seemed to think of every step. A hired fly from the station, of course! Why didn't Jim spot that before?
Now, suppose it had been eight in the evening, it might have been Teacher bringing Lizarann from the station. At this time in the morning ridiculous, of course! Still, the thought was nice.
That fly had pulled up on the road, and not so far off. Jim could hear interchanges between the driver and his fare, evidently male and English. Did Jim know that voice?
"All right—pull up here! I'll get down and walk the rest of the way. How far is it?"
"For to step it afut? Twenty minutes, easy."
"Which does 'easy' mean?"
"Easy for time, mister. You'll have to be a bit brisk to do it in twenty minutes. Give you twenty-three, to do it without idlin'."
A foot on the road, a coach-door that wouldn't hasp, a discovery that the driver has only one and elevenpence change for half-a-sovereign, and then the half-sovereign is on its way back to Furnival, and the fare has started on his twenty-three minutes' walk, with some of the change in his pocket. But he is not going to do it without idling, it seems.
Jim heard him approach the well-gap, and come to a stand. Then he turned up the brick pathway. Now, who was this chap going to be?
"Well, Jim Coupland! Where's Lizarann? I've come to pay her a visit. And you too!"
Jim knew Challis again the moment he heard his voice close. "Aha!" he exclaimed joyfully. "You're the gentleman. Came with the Master nigh a month agone!" And the cordiality of Blind Samson's big right hand was all the greater that it was welcoming, not only a friend, but what was in a sense the dawn of Lizarann. For this gentleman, whose name had slipped Jim's memory, would never have asked for her on insufficient grounds. In a flash of his mind, Jim had inferred that his visitor, on his way to the Rectory, had decided—from information received—that his lassie, due there the day before, would be, or might be, already with her father at the Abbey Well. A very reasonable view! It was almost an assurance that his child had arrived, that this gentleman should speak of her thus.
Challis left his hand in Jim's, while he said, "But where's the kid?"
Said Jim, with confidence, "If you'd come another half-hour later, I lay you'd have found her, back with her Daddy. Six martal weeks she's been away. But you'll find her at the Master's, I take it, or meet on the road."
Challis's voice hung fire a little as he answered, "I'm not on my way to the Rectory now. I shall have to pay my respects to Miss Coupland later. Jolly glad she's back, though, Jim, for your sake! How's she coming on? All the better for the sea, I'll answer for it." Jim was not the one to be behindhand in optimism. "Done her a warld o' good, I'm told! Only, ye see, I haven't set eyes on the Master this week past, and I have to put my dependence on the two little ladies, seeing the old mother at the cottage has gone to London."
At this point Jim saw his way to still further flattering his certainty of Lizarann's return by sending a message about her to his sister, so he let Aunt Stingy into the conversation provisionally. He worded a couleur de rose account of his invalid, subject to reserves, and asked Challis to be the bearer of it.
"What's that, Jim?... Ah, to be sure; I had forgotten that. Mrs. Steptoe's your sister. Yes—I'll tell her." His manner was unsettled, tense, exalté, but not that of a man preoccupied with any but pleasant thoughts. Jim felt that some inquiry after this relative of his would not be out of place. He hoped she was giving satisfaction to "the mistress," and half suggested that her cooking was what he was asking about. His shrewd hearing detected discomfort in Challis's reply: "Oh aye—yes! Very good wholesome cooking!" Had he touched a sore subject? He decided that he had, and was sorry when the gentleman said abruptly: "That's all right enough. Can't stop now! Got to get to the Park Gate by nine. How far do you make it out to the Park Gate?" Jim gave what information he had to give; but Challis remembered quite enough of the ground to know that the fly-driver's estimate was a low one; in fact, it had been the interest of the latter to minimize the distance, in order to get away as soon as he could. "I shall have to look alive," said Challis. He shook Jim's hand cordially, and started.
In the accident of passing words it had so chanced that if either of these two men had been asked—how came he to know that Lizarann had returned to the Rectory?—he would have referred to the other as an authority. Challis's confidence that he would find Lizarann at the Well was only the echo of some words of the Rector's three weeks previously, fixing the date of her return; while Jim's assurance that she was at the Rectory was based on Challis's way of taking her presence at the Well for granted. Certainly when they parted, each had an image in his mind of the invalid back again, much improved, and looking forward to her meeting with her Daddy.
Such serene unconsciousness of the truth as Jim's was at this moment strikes harshly on one's sense of probability; but, probable or no, it was actual. Jim had not experienced such happiness since his child left him to live, during her absence, on hopes of her return in renewed health. She was coming now; not a doubt of it! She was actually near at hand; so near that, with a guide, he could almost have walked the distance on his wooden leg. She was coming....
Then a gust of disbelief that anything so good could be his, so soon, seized on his faculties, and made his judgment dizzy. He must be silent and patient, and wait.
But with this added assurance of Lizarann, pending or near at hand, Time got a quality of tediousness. The half-hour that followed on Challis's invasion seemed longer than all the previous half-hours of the morning added together. Till then Jim had been making all allowance for the chance that Lizarann was not due till to-morrow, or even next day. The question was an open one. Challis had managed to leave behind him an implication that she had arrived. How the sluggard minutes would crawl now, till she came! Well—patience!
Why was the gentleman going to the Park, not the Rectory? Pending Lizarann, Jim thought it worth while to wonder at this; or, indeed, at any other trifle that would hold his mind for a moment, and help his patience. He had hardly noticed Challis's distrait manner at the time, but it came back to him now. Yes—why was the gentleman not going to the Rectory? Of course, he was only known to him as a guest there; might have been a perfect stranger at the Hall, for anything that appeared to the contrary. But it was the way he had disclaimed the Rectory that clashed with Jim's slight knowledge of him. "Not on his way" there now! "However, it was no concern of Jim's, anyhow! Think of Lizarann again—only Lizarann!"
His mind ran back to the old match-selling days in Bladen Street. There was the terrible January night again, no darker than his day was now, for all he felt St. Augustin's sun on his hands and face; for all he knew at a guess how the white road would have glared on the eyes he had lost, even as his last memory of daylight blazed on them still, leagues away in Africa. There was he again!—a spot in the darkness that was his lot for ever; a something made of sick torture, borne in a litter; and then the voice of his little lass, and the touch of her lips as he lay.... Well!—at least he had a man's heart in him then, and, crushed as he was, made light of his agony, to spare her. That was a consolation to him now.
His lot for ever! His lot, that is, so long as he himself should live to bear it. His lot, till what was left of what was once a man was laid by what once was Dolly, in a grave! Then touch and hearing would be gone too, and he and Dolly alike forgotten in the black void of the time to come.... What did he matter? He flung the unconsidered unit, himself, aside, in view of a new terror that came suddenly—an image of his little lass without her Daddy. That was too much pain to bear. To think of the lassie left alone!
But why think of it at all, yet awhile? Might not he see her again within the hour? Was it not a chance that even now she was on her way, coming——coming?...
What was that? A dog's bark he knew quite well—the Rector's dog—somewhere over by the Rifle Butts. Near a mile off—yes!—but clear to the sharpened hearing of a blind man. Equally clear to his dog too, asleep in the sun, and calling for prompt action. The little tyke started up, barking in reply, and scoured away to make his presence felt elsewhere. Jim's thought stopped, that he might listen for a distant step on the road, a step he knew well. A great swinging stride unlike any other man's in those parts—how mistake it? But another quarter of an hour must pass before either could have articulate speech of the other, mere shouting apart. Jim was just on the very verge of his release from suspense, and could not bear to wait a moment longer, patience or no! He started along the paved way that led to the road, guiding himself, as he could well do, by touching the curb with his stick. It was all plain sailing to him, so far, and no guide was needed.
He stood and listened, waiting for the approaching footsteps. He could hear his own little deserter's bark, no great distance down the road; and through it, at intervals, the bark of the other dog, coming slowly nearer. But otherwise, nothing outside the sum of noises he could know the day by from the night, a monotone with here and there a special sound of beast or bird or insect. Yes!—there was another sound, some way off still; the motor-car that had passed the cottage last night, coming from the Hall. Jim knew its special hoot of old; could have sworn to it among a dozen others.
An old turf-cutter was near enough to see Jim at this moment, and, after, told what he saw. This man was some way off, trimming the roadside turf; but his eyes were good, though he was deaf as any post.
He saw Jim—so his tale ran—standing where the path began, close against the road. He seemed to be listening for something. Quite unexpectedly he saw him throw up his arms as though surprised or delighted; but of this the old man, hearing nothing, could not speak with certainty. He had somehow an impression, though, that Jim was "raising a great shouting." Then he saw him step suddenly into the road, and limp with his stick, but with wonderful activity, towards the twist in its course that it makes round the clump of thorn-trees that shuts in the Abbey Well. The old turf-cutter saw him last just as he turned that corner.
Immediately after, a motor-car, going at a mad speed, tore along the road from the Park. Whether this car was sounding its trumpet the deaf man could not say. All he knew was that it followed without slacking down round the corner Jim had been last seen at. It vanished in a thick cloud of its own dust. The deaf man "misdoubted something had gone wrong," not from any noise, of course, but because he "watched along the road" for the dust-cloud, and none came. He suspected nothing, however, beyond some hitch in the car's working-gear, until some ten minutes later, when the motor came back, slowly—or relatively slowly. Then he saw that it contained a young lady, who looked, he said, "all mazed and staring like"; a gentleman, who lay back with blood running down his face, and seemed "no ways better than dead," and the chauffeur. Then a little dog came barking down the road, and went after the motor-car. He could see it was barking. That was all he could tell. He laid his turf-spud aside, and went along the road to find Jim and learn what he could of the mishap.
Athelstan Taylor left the Rectory, with a heavy heart, shortly before nine o'clock. He knew he should find Jim at the Abbey Well, and he wanted to make sure the news should not reach him through any other channel. It would inevitably leak out now. He knew well how things of the kind will travel, contrary to all calculations.
It occurred to him just as he was starting that if he took his dog with him, Jim's prevision of something wrong, which he looked to as likely to make his task easier, would have time to mature before his arrival. Jim would hear the dog's bark, and recognize it, long before his own footsteps could reach his ears. He had not at first intended to have the animal with him, but he now went back and released him, and felt that the idea was a good one. He could cover the ground, going by the short-cut near the Rifle Butts, in less than half-an-hour. He might be hindered on the way, but at least he would be as quick as he could. No one should be beforehand with Jim, if he could help it.
The hindrances were few and slight. Two or three colloquies of as many minutes each, ending with apologies for their brevity, made up the total of delay. Twenty-five minutes may have passed since Challis left Jim to keep his appointment, when the Rector reached the Rifle Butts and took the path that goes across from them to the Abbey Well; it branches off from the path Lizarann and Joan followed to go to the cottage.
What ensued does not explain itself, unless it is made quite clear that the curve in the road round the Abbey Well was no mere kink, but a full curve, like the letter U. One side of this U looked towards the Hall, the other to the village; and beyond it the turning for Thanes Castle, along which the motor-car came last night. The point to keep in mind is that the entrance to the Abbey Well gave towards the Hall, not the village. Nevertheless, the Well was visible from the Rifle Butts through a gap in the trees, which grew thicker on each side of the curve of the road, concealing a portion of it very completely. It was into this the motor-car vanished from the eyes of the deaf turf-cutter.
Athelstan Taylor, half broken-hearted as he thought of the task before him, had a struggle with himself not to flinch from it, and slacken the speed that was bringing it so near. He could see, shortly after passing the Rifle Butts, the figure of Lizarann's Daddy, and could picture to himself his unsuspicious ignorance. How sick he felt! How glad he would be when it was over!
He saw Jim rise from his seat and make for the entrance, and conjectured that his own footstep was the cause. He saw him stop and wait when he reached the road, and then lost sight of the entry for a moment. But he thought he heard Jim shout, as he had heard him often shout before now, in answer to little Lizarann's call of "Pilot." When he next saw the entry there was no Jim.
He had to go only the length of the curve to get to the place where he saw Jim last. He was within five minutes of it now. Courage!
That was the motor-car from the Hall making that hideous noise. Louis Rossier, the chauffeur, going by himself, of course! He always broke out of bounds when alone, and that speed was something awful. The Felixthorpes must have stayed at Thanes. Bess had said they were there; and now M. Louis was going to fetch them. Would he never slacken down at that bend in the road? Apparently not. A terrible corner that, to whirl a motor round at sixty miles an hour! He could hear Jim's little dog bark in answer to his own, but he was still some minutes' walk from the road....
What was that cry? What were those cries, rather—cries of panic or of warning, with a woman's shriek above them? And what was that terrible cry in a voice he knew?—Jim's voice!
Then he was conscious, in spite of distance, of rapid, panic-stricken interchange of speech. Two voices, a man's and a woman's, mixed with the pulsations of the shut-off machinery of the car, checked in its course. Then of alternations of the sounds of the working-gear, which he knew meant the turning of the car in the narrow space. Then, as he reached the spot, the sound of its resumed movement, and its trumpet-signal again. When he arrived it was vanishing, but he took little heed of it or its contents. All his thought was for the man who lay, crushed and groaning, on the bare road in the sun. Would his message need to be given now?
"Twice over's soon told, Master, and there an end!" Those seemed to be Jim's words to the man who kneeled over him, not daring to touch him yet till he should know more. Should he examine him where he lay, or try at once to move him off the road?
"Oh, Jim—Jim Coupland—who has done this?" He raised the head that lay in the dust with cautious strength, fearing that any touch might only be so much more needless pain. But there was no appearance of flinching; and he raised him further yet, to rest against his knee; then carefully wiped the forehead, red with blood from a cut on the temple, but still there was no sign of flinching from his touch. "Can you bear to be lifted, Jim?... Say if I hurt you."
"Ah!—get me up out of the gangway. I'm a job for the doctor, I take it...." His voice became inaudible, but not before the word "Water!" had passed his lips. The old turf-cutter was coming slowly. If he could be raised and moved to a safe place by the roadside, for the moment, further help could be got. The Rector knew the old man would not hear if he spoke at his loudest, but he contrived to make him understand. Between them they raised poor Jim gently, and got him out of the blazing sun. His fortitude was great to utter no sound—or, was he injured to death, and half insensible? The Rector recalled what he had heard of him in that old accident, and thought the former.
No, he was not insensible! For when they had laid him on some soft bracken a little way off the road, and the old man had gone for assistance to the nearest cottage—for he himself did not dare to leave him—Jim tried again to speak.
"What, Jim? Say it again!" The Rector put his ear close to catch the words.
"Make the best of me, and let my lassie come!" He was wandering, clearly. But it was easy to see his meaning—that he wished to seem as little hurt as might be to his child, whom he imagined near at hand. Easier still when he added, "She came afore. Let her come now!"
"Lizarann is not here now, Jim." The speaker's voice half choked him. But why was this worse than the other telling would have been?
He was speaking again. It was only repetition. "She came afore. Let her come now!" His voice was all but inaudible, and the Rector's words had been lost upon him.
The deaf old man had done his errand well. The daughter of the little roadside inn, quicker of foot than he, came bringing water, and, what was needed too, brandy. Speech came again after a mouthful, swallowed with difficulty.
"Am I a bad sight, master? Let the lassie come! Never you fear for her! She's used to her Daddy." He spoke so naturally, all allowance made for pain resolutely kept at bay, that his only hearer—for the girl from the inn heard nothing—was quite at a loss. A bald truth was safe for the moment, though.
"Lizarann is not here, Jim. She cannot come to you now." The last words almost said why as well! Then both Jim's hearers heard what came quite distinctly from his lips: "What's got the lassie, Master, my lassie? I tell ye, I heard her sing out 'Pi-lot!' Aye!—once and again, 'Pi-lot!' when you was coming across the common yonder!"
But whether he himself heard the only reply Athelstan Taylor could force his lips to—"Not with me, Jim; Lizarann was not with me"—no one ever knew. For all he said was, "My little lass!" and never spoke again.
His shattered body was carried to old Margy's cottage, but the moment of death was hard to determine. All that came to light from the post-mortem examination was that the spine was injured beyond all hope of recovery, and that this was only one of several injuries, any of which might have caused death.
The windows of the ward at the Nursing Home at Chalk Cliff stand wide to allow the sweet air from the sea to come and go at will. All has been done that Death has left to do for Lizarann Coupland. Her end and its cause are certified by medical authority, and registered officially, and a little coffin has been ordered, in which the tiny white thing, like an image well carved in alabaster, that Adeline Fossett and her friend Miss Jane know is under that sheet on the bed, is to be interred shortly, as soon as its Daddy's wishes are known. They never will be, but neither lady knows that yet.
"Poor little darling!" said Miss Fossett. "Do you recollect, Jane, those very last words she said?"
"About the Pilot?"
"No, no—after that. I wasn't sure you heard. I had tried to tell her what ... what it was ... and I couldn't find words. But I fancy the little thing half understood, too. What she said was—quite clearly—'But who's a-going to tell my Daddy?'" It was so like herself. The speaker breaks down; but then, you see, she had taken Lizarann to her heart so thoroughly—was thinking she would never have another child she should be so fond of. Miss Jane is used to these things, and affects strength.
"I think it will be ready for the flowers now," she says, and removes that sheet. Yes, the handkerchief round the face may come away. The two ladies place flowers round the little alabaster head. It is the head, one would say, of a sweet little girl, and the mouth is not too large for beauty now, although that line of black is in the lips.
So it came to pass that neither Lizarann nor her Daddy lived to mourn the loss of the other. The child was never an orphan, and the father only childless an hour or so. And Lizarann never knew what his employment had been, but cherished to the last an untainted memory of those happy days when she led him home, blind but otherwise uninjured, from the honourable fulfilment of some mysterious public service. And yet, had she known, would she have thought it other than right? For, was it not Daddy?
CHAPTER XLIX
JUDITH'S VAGARIES. HOW SHE BROUGHT SIR ALFRED CHALLIS, INSENSIBLE, TO ROYD HALL IN A MOTOR. A MESSAGE PER MR. BROWNRIGG TO THE RECTOR. HOW TO PROBE THE MYSTERY. JUDITH'S RESERVE. PUBLIC IMPATIENCE. THE CHAUFFEUR'S TESTIMONY
Royd Hall was at its quietest that morning when the young man Samuel answered the bell from his master's bedroom, and found the Baronet still in bed, at a few minutes after nine. The old gentleman must have dozed off again after ringing it, because Samuel had to knock twice before he said "Come in."
"I thought you rang, sir," said Samuel.
"I did ring. Who was that went away in the motor five minutes ago?"
Samuel was not going to admit that the motor had been gone a full quarter of an hour. It would have been disrespectful to suggest that his master had been asleep unawares, so he accepted the five-minute estimate. "I believe it was Miss Judith, sir; but I couldn't say, to be certain."
"Just ask. What o'clock is it?"
"It's gone nine, some minutes, sir."
"This coffee's cold ... never mind!... I suppose I went to sleep again.... Oh, Samuel!..." Samuel, departing, paused. "See that the cold douche is cold. It was neither one thing nor the other yesterday."
"Sure to be cold, sir, now! Because both the other gentlemen's run it on." To those acquainted with the heating gear of bathrooms the way the old supply proves lukewarm, and nothing bracing comes to pass, is well known. The Baronet referred to it again as he met Samuel returning on his way to the bath. Was he sure it was cold? Yes, Samuel was; and that was Miss Judith, he found, that had gone off in the motor, after breakfasting early in her own room. As witness Mr. Elphinstone and Miss Judith's maid Tilley.
Sir Murgatroyd never wondered much at anything his family did. He had a beautiful faith that everything was all right always, and asked few or no questions. Still, he would wonder a little, tentatively, at rare intervals. Only he strained at gnats and swallowed camels. This time he swallowed the camel of Judith's early departure after a solitary breakfast. That was all right—it was some appointment with the Duchess, "or something." But he strained at the gnat of her having left her little attendant behind. He had a superstition that the absence of any two persons, known to be together, was never a thing to cause anxiety; but he was liable to fidgeting about any of his family unaccounted for, if he supposed them to be alone. There may be other people like him.
It was this superstition that caused Sir Murgatroyd to say to Lady Arkroyd—through a door between their rooms that he opened on purpose, having become aware of the departure of her ladyship's maid—"What has Judith gone out so early for?" To which the reply was: "You must speak plainer. I can't hear you while you shave." For during shaving the shaver's attention cannot be fully given to speech, owing to the interdependence of razor, eye, and jaw in a delicate relation to one another, to say nothing of the care needed to preserve a soapless mouth.
So Sir Murgatroyd wound up his shave before he spoke again, adding to his first question the words, "In the motor."
"How do you know she went in the motor?"
"Samuel said so. Besides, I heard it go."
"I suppose I was asleep.... Oh no!—I can't account for Judith's vagaries. She goes her own way. I suppose she's taken the child with her—her maid, I mean?"
"Why, no, she hasn't! That's just it...."
"I didn't mean that. I meant that if she hadn't, Cintilla would know." That is to say, her ladyship washed her hands of any complicity in the Bart.'s superstition spoken of above. She always, in talking of her husband, to the Duchess for instance, affected a Spartan stolidity; saying that no one who did not know him as she did would ever suspect Murgatroyd of being such an hysterical character.
Nevertheless, she felt curiosity about Judith, and bade Mrs. Cream, her own lady's-maid, summon Cintilla to give evidence. Only first she closed the door into her husband's room, not to be open to any imputation of hysteria. The Baronet accepted his exclusion the more readily that he had just rung for Samuel. For his relation towards that young man, who was officially his valet, was that he allowed him to help him on with his coat as soon as he himself was otherwise complete. He had to, or Samuel wouldn't have been his valet.
It was nearly a quarter to ten when her ladyship said to her son-in-law and Mr. Brownrigg, the only guest outside the family, that we were frightfully late at breakfast. She said it on the long terrace the breakfast-room opens on, where the two gentlemen had been for some time wondering whether they were to have any. A peacock shrieked a condemnation of late breakfast; and the Baronet, appearing last, took the sins of the congregation on his shoulders. His lateness eclipsed all previous lateness.
But he must needs make matters worse; for after communications about Sibyl, and record of her husband's conviction that that young lady would pay attention to her medical adviser, and not appear at breakfast, he inquired about Judith's escapade, as a Baronet inquires when he really wants to know, not as mere passing chat. To which her ladyship replied, as one whose patience is tried by an inopportune husband: "There, my dear, Judith is all right if you'll only leave her alone. I know all about her. She's gone to go somewhere with Thyringia, and won't be back till I don't know when. Now don't hinder, and do let's have breakfast.... No, Elphinstone, don't sound the gong on my account. We's all here. I do hate that banging." For her husband, the fidget, had suggested absurdly that perhaps Judith was back, and didn't know breakfast was ready. "Besides, she had breakfasted, anyhow!" adds her ladyship.
Lord Felixthorpe has a word of illumination for the Baronet, who acquiesced in the will of a senior officer. It causes him to recur to the subject again, saying, "Frank says Judith asked for the car yesterday ..." and to be again extinguished with an impatient, "My dear!—do you suppose I don't know all about it?" from her ladyship.
When that scanty gathering of four persons sat down to breakfast at the table where last year this story told of so large an assemblage, Royd Park and mansion alike seemed a haven of serenest peace, sheltered from impact with the outer world, and unconscious of its turmoil. Every sound of living creatures was as good as silence—articulate with its denials of discord. Even the peacock's screech upon the lawn fell in with the music of the wood-doves in the beech-woods—just a high staccato note; no more!—and the gobble of a turkey from the stable-yard, across the big red wall there, was modulated to its place as an instrument the composer should not use too freely, though full of spirit. A million undertones of insects; a perspective of scattered voices afar, each fainter than the last; the sound of the manger-chain of a horse in the groom's hands—all agreed that whatever that railway-whistle might mean about the world a league and more away, here in this sacred enclosure was peace—peace guaranteed by a bygone peace of vanished years, and a security of entail. Peace without end, Amen!
So much so that when the motor-trumpet was suddenly audible, but unmistakably, beyond the Park Gate on the road from the village, each of the four at breakfast looked at some other, and said—there it was! But they were undisturbed in their minds, and gave various consideration to Yorkshire ham and filleted plaice and potted beef and Keiller, and all that one associates with clean damask and steaming urns. The Baronet only said, with apparent sense of relief: "I thought she could hardly have gone for the whole day." To which his wife replied: "Oh, my dear, how funny you are! Don't you know Judith?" And then they talked current topics of the day—Raisuli and Employer's Liability.
The motor-trumpet close at hand, and wheels! Now we shall know. But not so soon that we need leave Morocco for a moment. And Mr. Brownrigg will take half a cup more coffee.
What is that, Elphinstone? May Mr. Elphinstone speak to her ladyship? He may; so he does, in an undertone. Her ladyship says, "I'll come," and then to Mr. Brownrigg, "The milk's beside you," and follows the butler from the room. All the three men look at each other. "Something wrong!" says Lord Felixthorpe. He and the Baronet look the inquiry at one another, "Ought we not to follow?" and both answer, "Yes!" at once, aloud. Mr. Brownrigg neglects his coffee and follows, looking concerned and apprehensive.
There is a lobby between the dining-room and the entrance-hall to the house, and her ladyship meets them in it, returning. She says to her husband: "Oh, my dear!—you will have to come, about this." She is looking ashy white, and when she has spoken sinks down on a wall-seat in a recess, saying: "Oh dear! Do go out and see." She is quite overcome by something.
A new identity comes suddenly on Sir Murgatroyd. "See to her, Frank," he says. "Is Mrs. Cream there—yes?—See to your mistress, Cream." And goes out.
The butler is just beyond the lobby, and the firm voice of the Baronet is audible above his terrified undertone. "Who is it?... Sir Alfred Challis?... Badly?" The speaker then passes out of hearing, going to the entrance-hall.
Mrs. Cream has come, and finds that her mistress has not fainted away, though not far short of it. Her ladyship rallies, saying to her son-in-law: "Never mind me, Frank!" Whereupon Lord Felixthorpe says: "You'll excuse me, Brownrigg, but I must see to my wife. She'll be frightened if I don't." And goes three steps at a time up a side-staircase, leaving Mr. Brownrigg embarrassed, and feeling in the way.
When Sir Murgatroyd set foot outside his house, the first thing he saw was the face of his daughter, still seated in the car, supporting the head of the man who was with her, but shrinking from it, covered as it was with some shawl or cloth, in terror. The first words he heard, above the drumming beat of the stationary car's machinery and the hysterical excitement of the chauffeur, dismounted from his seat, were a relief to him. His daughter, at any rate, was uninjured, or only shaken at the worst. "I am not the least hurt," she said, with perfect self-command, though in a bewildered, stony way. Her dress was not soiled or seriously disordered, so she could not have been thrown from the car.
His hearers at first thought M. Louis incoherent. "C'était la faute de ce sacré aveugle—qui m'y trouvera à redire—moi? Qu'ai-je pu faire, moi?—c'est l'arbre du frein qui m'a trompé. J'ai tiré la manivelle—oui!—et elle m'a trompé. Peste soit de cet aveugle...." And so on. He was understood by no one.
"Get this man out of the way; he's no use. Where's Bullett?" Thus the Baronet. "Now, Elphinstone, get that deck-chair—the long one, you know—look sharp about it!" Elphinstone departed, as Bullett, the model groom, came running. "The roan, in the dogcart," said his master; and then: "Yes, my dear, you shall tell me directly." For Judith was beginning: "It has not been my fault...." She was speaking like a woman in a dream, or one half waking from one.
Her father only glanced at the white face with the blood on it, then covered it again. "He might be able to get some brandy down," said he. He stood with his finger on Challis's pulse till it came, and then tried to get him to swallow some, but without success. "We must get him in," he said. "Where's Frank?" Samuel testified that his lordship was just coming downstairs. The fact was that his lordship, although his solicitude for his wife had been appreciated, had been told not to be absurd, but to go away and make himself useful.
He arrived just as the long deck-chair was brought—one such as one sees on passenger boats for India and China—and assisted in transporting the man who lay absolutely insensible on it to the room he had occupied when he had visited the house as a guest—the room where he missed that postscript of Marianne's, and probably sowed the seeds of all this mischief. It was easy for three to carry the chair—one on either side and one behind—so the Baronet left it to his son-in-law and Elphinstone and Samuel, and went to speak to Bullett, who had just arrived with the dogcart. On his way, coming from the lobby, he met Mr. Brownrigg, looking horribly shocked.
"Is it Challis?" said that gentleman. The Baronet nodded.
"It's the author," said he. "Is my wife still there?" He pointed to the lobby.
"She has gone upstairs to Lady Felixthorpe, I think. Can I be of any service?"
"A thousand thanks! I don't know of anything.... Yes, I do, though. My groom is just going to bring the doctor. Will you ride with him and call at the Rectory?—tell Taylor of this, and get him to come at once. He and Mr. Challis—Sir Alfred Challis I should say—were great friends. He'll come."
"I will go with pleasure," said Mr. Brownrigg. He went with pleasure, evidently. It is, of course, a great satisfaction to be of use in any painful crisis.
Sir Murgatroyd, as he turned to the entrance-door again, met Judith, who was accompanied by her little maid, terrified beyond measure, but behaving well. She gave an inanimate face to her father to kiss, saying collectedly, but in the same stony way: "There really is no occasion for anxiety about me. I am perfectly safe. Only don't ask me to talk about it now." Her father followed her in silence to the door of her room, when she turned and spoke again, after a visible effort that failed. "Is he killed?" she said, forcing the word out.
"Oh no!—no, no!—no such thing! Stunned—contused—that sort of thing! I've sent Bullett for Pordage. I should have sent the car, but Monsieur Louis isn't in a state to manage it. There would have been another accident.... What?"
"Tell them—mamma and Sibyl—not to disturb me. I will tell you after.... No! When the doctor has seen him, tell my little maid here. She will bring me word." And then Judith, whose beauty had lost nothing by the shock she has sustained—if anything, the reverse—vanishes into her room, and her father hears the key in the lock turned significantly. In the old Baronet's look now, roused as he is from his easy-going homeliness, and with a certain resolve growing on him, one sees that that beauty is not inherited from her mother alone. He goes straight to the room where the injured man lies, still insensible and motionless, still with a low pulse that neither gains nor loses. The doctor cannot be very long, if Bullett finds him at home. His practice is to remain at home in the morning.
"Do you know anything of all this?" Sir Murgatroyd asks the question of his wife and younger daughter in the bedroom of the latter, where he has found them, white and frightened—talking in a nervous undertone, but quickly, and as folk talk who can tell things.
"She has been seeing him. Sibyl says so."
"Seeing Challis?"
"Of course. But she hasn't spoken of him to me for a month—quite a month." This was her ladyship.
"I told you it would be no use, madre," says Sibyl. "But you wouldn't listen to me."
"My dear—how unreasonable you are! How was it possible for your father and me to allow it to go on? You may say what you like, but he is a married man...."
"All I say is, you made matters worse."
"Never mind that now!" said the Baronet. "What I want to hear is—how did Sib know this was going on?"
Sibyl is quite clear on that point. "Judith met him in the Park the day before we came, last month. Old Mrs. Inskip saw them together, behaving like a couple of—like lovers." Her tone is one of reprobation and disgust. She goes on to tell how she had interviewed the centenarian on the subject, and been fully enlightened.
"That is all at an end now, anyhow." So says the Baronet, but when his wife says "Why?" he does not answer, but goes on as to another point reflectively. "Judith must have met him on her way to Thanes.... Where did he join her—this morning, I mean?"
Both ladies strike a new clue. "Was she going to Thanes at all?" And Sibyl adds: "I don't believe she was."
"You said you knew she was, Therèse," says Sir Murgatroyd, addressing his wife by her name—a thing that always means, with him, a definite attitude of some sort. She is on her mettle directly, for expostulation or defence.
"My dear, I never said anything of the sort. She talked yesterday of going to-day, and, of course, I supposed she had. That little girl of hers only said she said she might not be back to lunch." Her ladyship exonerates herself at some length, denying what she had said plainly an hour before at breakfast.
Her husband treats the point as an open one, to avoid indefinite discussion of it. "I see," he says. "It was only your inference. I wonder if that crazy French chap has come to his senses. It's no use my talking to him. I can't understand three words he says." Then, at Sibyl's suggestion, he went away to his son-in-law, who was still with the injured man, to get him to interview the bewildered chauffeur, and see what could be made of his testimony. During Lord Felixthorpe's absence he remained by Challis, still perfectly insensible on the bed, but apparently only stunned, like a man in a deep sleep. He breathed regularly, and though his pulse dragged a little, it was quite steady. Sir Murgatroyd felt only moderate uneasiness about him. He had himself been thrown from his horse in the hunting-field, and remained insensible till next day.
Lord Felixthorpe returned. The chauffeur's account of the thing, now that his mind was more settled, was that, in order to avoid a collision with a man in the road, he had swerved at a sharp corner. Challis started to his feet at the moment, and was thrown over the edge of the car, falling on his head in the road. "Mademoiselle"—so ran M. Louis' testimony—"était terriblement épouvantée, mais elle ne s'est pas évanouie," Lord Felixthorpe translated, for the benefit of the Baronet. "Alors," said M. Louis, "nous avons soulevé le corps, nous deux, dans l'automobile, et Mademoiselle m'a crié—en avant, vite, vite! Et moi, j'ai retourné vite, vite! Qu'est ce qu'on aurait voulu de plus?" Questioned as to where Challis had got into the car, he replied—at the Park Gate; as to what he understood its destination to be, that he did not know anything except that it was about forty miles off, but that Monsieur had a map with the route marked; as to when Miss Arkroyd had requisitioned the car, that she had spoken about it to him overnight. Milord had instructed him that it would not be required during the day, as he himself should monter à cheval, and Miladi would remain at home. It was to be at Mademoiselle's disposal, or Miladi Arkroyd's. "Effectivement," said he, in an injured tone, "j'ai suivi mes renseignements, et je ne suis pas à blâmer." His lordship had then explained to him that he need not be so touchy; no one was blaming him. There was another point. Who was the man who caused the car to swerve, and was he hurt? Monsieur Louis replied with the Frenchest of shrugs, "Mais je ne sais pas! Comment voulez-vous que je sache?—quelque vagabond—quelque mendiant!" He turned the conversation to the damage done to a tyre.
Had Lord Felixthorpe heard the chauffeur's words on his first arrival, a suspicion he now felt that M. Louis was keeping something back would have been greatly strengthened. Sir Murgatroyd may have noticed the discrepancy, but he said nothing at the time. His only remark was, "We shall know more of this soon."
Presently Lord Felixthorpe said: "It certainly does occur to me that my sister-in-law would be able to contribute some valuable information, and I do not understand that she is any the worse for this mishap, fright apart. Why should we not...?" He stopped short; for his father-in-law had touched him with his finger, saying only, "Frank!" The manner of it made him end with, "Why—do you know anything?"
"When was that Bill to go into Committee—the Deceased Wife's Sister—you know?"
"What's to-day? Saturday? It was yesterday, Friday. Why?... Do you suppose...?"
"It may have something to do with this—mind you, I only say may have!... I suppose the Times has come?"
"I'll see." He went out and spoke to Elphinstone over the great staircase, and returned. "I've told him to bring the papers here."
"Yes—here we are!" said the Baronet, five minutes after, controlling an outspread sheet of last night's Debates. He went on, reading scrapwise: "'Lord Shaftesbury moved amendment to remove from Bill retrospective character ... very indistinctly heard in gallery ... no real hardship would be inflicted by amendment ... persons who had contracted these marriages fully conscious of legal consequences involved' ... hm-hum!" and so on. "Where's the end of it? ... oh—here! 'Amendment withdrawn.' Yes, Frank, that may have something to do with it—may have a great deal!"
"I'm not sure that I follow. Has it to do with...?" He dropped his voice, and looked towards the motionless figure on the bed.
"Of course it has ... he won't hear—you needn't be uneasy. I was just like that.... Well!—we'll talk outside if you like.... Yes, look at this, Frank: Prorogation is next Wednesday, when this Bill will receive the Royal Assent, and become law. Until next Wednesday at midday, or thereabouts, Challis's wife isn't his wife, and any woman he marries on Monday or Tuesday is. He couldn't even be convicted of bigamy unless his first marriage was held legal, and that would be rather discourteous to the Royal Assent on Wednesday. Now do you see?"
"Surely you never can imagine...."
"Well!"
"Surely you never can imagine that Sir Challis and Ju were going to make a runaway match of it, to outwit the action of this Bill...."
"I can only see this," says the Baronet: "that if they did not do so, they were losing the only chance they had left of making an honourable match of any sort or kind. Isn't that the doctor?"
It is the footstep of the roan, unmistakable, and the wheels of the dogcart, at speed. It is poor little Lizarann's friend, Dr. Sidrophel. But all his old look has left him—a look as though he was born to be amused, and found his patients diverting—as he comes quickly to Challis's room, meeting the two gentlemen on the way, to whom he speaks very little. He nods once or twice, in reply to a brief abstract of the accident, saying only, "Let's have a look at him!" He finds time to say that the Rector could not come, but would come later. There was a good deal to be done. The Baronet did not seem to understand this.
The household has fought shy of touching an insensible patient, pending a doctor on the way, especially as there is no visible hæmorrhage. The blood from a cut on the temple was not renewed when the face was wiped with a sponge on his first arrival at the house. The doctor makes a very rapid examination. "You wish him to remain here, Sir Murgatroyd?" he says.
"To remain here? Of course I do."
"Then I must have his clothes off first. The cut's nothing on the forehead. That can wait."
The coat must be sacrificed, but it can't be helped. Slit up the sleeves, and off with it! Better than jarring him about in his present state. Once wardrobe-saving is discarded, it is easy work to get the author in trim for a careful overhauling. No bones broken, is the verdict. All the worse! His head took most of his weight, and bore the shock. A broken knee-joint might have spared his brain. As it is, Dr. Pordage seems to think the net volumes may come slower in the future. Besides, you never can tell at first about the spine in cases of this sort.
For the present, concession must be made to treatment. It never does to do absolutely nothing. So let's have mustard and hot water to the feet, and ammonia to the nostrils, and try to get a little brandy down his throat. But quiet is the thing. Presently, all that seems feasible has been done, and quiet is to have its opportunity. Still, quite insensible!
Ought not Mrs. Challis, or Lady Challis, whichever she is, to be communicated with? The question is a joint-stock one in which Lady Arkroyd and Sibyl have shares, having come into conference. Of course, they were not on terms—her ladyship says this—but is that our concern?
"I shouldn't put it on that, Lady Arkroyd," says the doctor. "He'll probably be conscious in a few hours. Better not alarm her needlessly. If he continues unconscious for twenty-four hours ... why, then we might think about it. But I don't suppose him to be in any danger." The speaker's serious manner, unlike himself, seemed out of keeping with his light estimate of Challis's danger.
"We haven't got her address, so we can't, and there's no use talking about it. Unless Judith knows. Only it seems she's not to be got at." This is Sibyl, not without asperity.
"How is Miss Arkroyd?" says the doctor, whose emphasis on the verb means, "I am conscious that I ought to have asked before, and my doing it now is rather a formality." Lady Arkroyd testifies that Judith is in her room lying down, but was all right when she spoke to her through the door—oh yes!—she seemed perfectly right, but had locked herself in, and wanted to be quiet. The Baronet says, to his wife only, "Perhaps we had better leave her alone, Therèse." And Therèse replies, "Oh, I'm sure I don't want to meddle with her." Impatience with Miss Arkroyd is in the air. She is credited with being the underlying cause of all this disturbance.
There is a surprise in the bush for her father; only half-informed, so far. For the doctor, departing, pauses and says gravely, hesitatingly: "I believe—but I don't know—that the inquest will be on Monday, or Tuesday."
"The inquest!—Why inquest? What inquest?" The Baronet is absolutely in the dark about everything but Challis's mishap. His wife, better informed by the groom during the doctor's visit to his patient, touches him on the arm, saying, "My dear, Dr. Pordage is referring to the man ..." and falters.
"There was a man killed," says Sibyl abruptly. "We supposed you knew."
"A man killed! Good God! I knew nothing. What man?"
Sibyl's husband overhears, and comes quickly. "What is that about a man killed?" he says. He also is completely taken aback.
Then Lady Arkroyd says again. "We thought you knew." And the doctor follows, saying collectedly, "Jim Coupland, the man at the Abbey Well, was struck by the motor-car and killed. The Rector found him lying dead in the road. That is why Mr. Taylor did not accompany me. He will be here shortly, and will tell you more than I can."
Sir Murgatroyd gazes from one to the other, shocked and speechless. Lord Felixthorpe, nearly as much concerned, says below his breath, "That miscreant Rossier never said a word to me of this." But he is preoccupied and ill-at-ease about his wife, who will be none the better just now for upsets and tragic surprises. He persuades her to go back to the quiet of her room, in spite of her protests that he is nonsensical, saying as he goes away with her, "We'll have that French scoundrel up when I come back. I won't be three minutes." But he was a little longer, and when he returned, the doctor, who was wanted elsewhere, was on his way back. He found his father-in-law alone in the library, sitting with his head on his hand, as though completely oppressed and stunned with what he had heard. "Oh, Frank," said the old gentleman, "this is horrible!" He had made sure that the patient upstairs was properly looked to, and had sat down to rest and be quiet until Athelstan Taylor's arrival. But the chauffeur might be sent for.
A female servant, told off to mount guard over the patient, and report any change or movement, had been at her post about a quarter of an hour, when Miss Arkroyd opened the door and came into the room. "Don't go, Hetty," was all she said. She looked as white—so Hetty reported afterwards—as the clean wristband that young woman made use of in illustration. Also, her hair was all coming down. She stood at the bedside maybe a minute, maybe two—Hetty couldn't say—then touched the inanimate hand on the coverlid. "Oh no; she never took hold," said Hetty. "Touched and drew back like!" Then she turned to the girl and said, "Have you heard what the doctor said?" rather as if she took scanty information for granted. "But, of course, I could tell her all right," said Hetty, who had been taking notice. "Only she didn't any more than just stop to hear, but went. My word!—she was looking bad."