Rupert Godwin

RIDING TO HER DOOM.

Esther Vanberg’s prophecy respecting the weather was fully realized. The sun shone with unusual and most un-English splendour upon that morning on which she had arranged to ride Devilshoof for the first time.

In spite of the pain and terror with which her hardihood inspired him, Esther’s devoted adorer presented himself in her drawing-room as the hands of the Sèvres timepiece indicated the appointed moment.

The Duke was pale and anxious-looking. He could not forget Lord Wallace’s warning with respect to the thoroughbred hunter. But the Jewess was almost as radiant as the summer sunlight which was shining into her tiny conservatory. She was walking up and down the room in high spirits, singing a gay little Swiss ballad, and slashing the trailing skirt of her riding-habit with a turquoise-handled whip.

She looked superb in her equestrian costume. The closely-fitting habit revealed the outline of her graceful figure. A tiny turban hat, adorned with a peacock’s breast of shining green and purple, was perched coquettishly upon her queen-like head. The blue-black hair was coiled in a tight mass of plaits at the back of this regal head, and secured by a small golden comb. Her head-gear might very easily have been in better taste, but it certainly could not have been more becoming, and it was the becoming rather than the correct which the strong-minded Miss Vanberg affected.

“Esther,” cried the Duke of Harlingford, “you look positively adorable!”

“I am always adorable,” answered the Jewess, gaily, “when I happen to be in a good temper, which perhaps is not very often. But to-day I am bent upon enjoying myself. You must give me a superb luncheon at the Star and Garter, Harlingford. This is the very weather for whitebait and moselle. If I were a person of fortune, I would have iced moselle laid on all over my house, like the water-service, and a cistern of Badminton on the roof. O, how I long for a canter over the greensward of Richmond Park! Devilshoof has been saddled for the last ten minutes. Look at him!—did you ever see a greater beauty?” exclaimed Esther, pointing to the open window.

The young Duke looked out, and in the street below he saw the thoroughbred chestnut in charge of a groom, who seemed to have some little difficulty in keeping the animal quiet.

Certainly, the horse was a superb creature; but as certainly he was an animal that few women would have cared to ride.

“How do you like his looks?” asked the Jewess.

“Not at all,” answered the Duke, gravely.

Then, after a pause, he said earnestly:

“Esther, I have some little claim upon your affection. You know how devotedly I have loved you. You know that I am even ready to break with all my family for your sake—to snap my fingers at the prejudices of the world in which I live, in order that I may make you my wife. You know this, Esther! I do not boast of my love, or make any merit of my devotion; for I am so weak where you are concerned that I cannot help loving you, in spite of my better reason. I never refused to gratify any whim of yours; and I have not received much kindness in return for my obedience to your fancies. For the first time in my life I ask you a favour. Do not ride that horse.”

There was a tender earnestness in the Duke’s tone that for a moment almost melted the stubborn heart of Esther Vanberg; but in the next instant she drew herself up proudly, and met her lover’s entreating look with a defiant smile.

“My dear Harlingford,” she said, “I think I must have the blood of a warrior in my veins, for I have a horror of showing the white feather. I have set my heart upon proving the folly of Lord Bothwell Wallace’s warning. Come, Devilshoof is getting impatient.”

“Very well, Esther,” the young nobleman replied sadly; “I have been refused the first and the last favour that I shall ever ask at your hands.”

The Jewess turned to look at him wonderingly.

“You are offended with me, Harlingford?” she said.

“No, Esther; only grieved.”

No more was said until the Jewess and her companion were mounted. They rode through the Park to the Kensington-road, crossed Hammersmith-bridge, and went through Barnes. Devilshoof seemed quiet and tractable enough under the light hand of his new mistress; and, after watching the animal intently for some little time, the Duke began to recover his spirits. Perhaps, after all, Bothwell Wallace had been mistaken about the horse.

Esther was in her gayest humour, and at such a time the brilliant Jewess could be marvellously fascinating. She talked a good deal of nonsense, perhaps; but what is more delightful than nonsense from the lips of a beautiful woman who is not quite a fool? The Duke forgot all his fears, bewitched and delighted by his companion’s vivacity.

They rode thus gaily onward to Richmond. During the whole of the journey Devilshoof had behaved splendidly, and Esther was loud in her praises of him.

At the Star and Garter they dismounted, and left their horses to be refreshed under the watchful care of Esther’s groom. An obsequious attendant ushered the young nobleman and his lovely companion into one of the pretty little garden rooms, which the ruthless hand of that seven-league-booted giant, Limited Liability, has swept off the face of the earth. The Duke ordered the whitebait and moselle which his idol affected, with such accompanying delicacies as the taste of an accomplished German waiter might suggest.

“Pray let the luncheon be served quickly,” Esther exclaimed, as she removed her hat, and threw aside her whip and gloves. “I am longing for that canter in the Park, Harlingford. I suppose you are reconciled to Devilshoof now?”

“Well, darling, I begin to think that Wallace must have exaggerated his vices. But I shall never feel easy while you insist on riding him. However, perhaps when you have sustained your reputation for pluck by a canter or two, you’ll let me send the brute down to Leicestershire.”

The luncheon was served very speedily. The Duke of Harlingford was well known at the Star and Garter, and swift are the feet and dexterous are the hands which perform the bidding of a ducal guest.

The cook had done his best, the perfume of the moselle was delicious, and the Jewess drank several glasses of the sparkling beverage.

“Here is to the health of my glorious hunter, Devilshoof!” she said gaily, lifting the glass above her head.

Never had the Duke beheld her so bewitching. He was fascinated by her—intoxicated far more by the splendour of her dark eyes than by the pale ambrosia of Rhineland.

It was nearly four o’clock when Miss Vanberg rose from the table, and adjusted her coquettish little hat before the glass over the mantelpiece. Four o’clock, and a radiant summer afternoon. Richmond Hill was looking its gayest as the Duke and his companion mounted their horses before the portico of the Star and Garter. Carriages were passing to and fro; loungers were strolling on the broad terrace; dinner-eaters were beginning to arrive at the hotel; and in the distance a band was playing a German waltz, whose pensive strain mingled with the shrill happy voices of little children playing under the elms.

“I never felt in higher spirits,” cried Esther, as she sprang lightly into the saddle. “Come, Vincent, now for our gallop in the Park!”

As she lifted her habit, and put her little foot into the groom’s hand before mounting her horse, the Duke perceived for the first time a slender steel spur glittering at the heel of her patent leather boot. When she had adjusted herself in the saddle he turned to her with an anxious face. “Good heavens, Esther!” he exclaimed, as they rode away from the hotel, “you surely cannot be so mad as to intend using a spur with that horse?”

“And why should I not, you most fidgety man?” asked the Jewess, with a saucy laugh.

“Because, if there is any truth in what Wallace says, the animal has a devil of a temper, and a touch from a spur may send him half mad. For mercy’s sake, Esther, be prudent!”

“Bah!” cried the haughty girl, with a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders; “one would think I was some school-girl who had only had half-a-dozen lessons in a riding-school. You forget that I have hunted in Leicestershire, and been in at the death after many a ride across the stiffest country in England. Come, Vincent! Hurrah for the horse that can carry me with the speed of a lightning-flash across hill and dale!”

She flung her arm above her head, waving the tiny riding-whip with a triumphant flourish.

They were in the heart of the Park by this time, on a broad open expanse of greensward, a sunny sky above them, the purple woodlands stretching far around, the birds singing merrily under that cloudless sky.

Devilshoof held his head high, his nostrils dilated as they scented the air sweeping across the broad expanse. He was going at a swinging canter, when Esther, delighting in her companion’s anxiety, suddenly shouted the loud view-halloo of the hunting-field, and planted her spur in the animal’s side. That one touch seemed to act like magic. In the next moment Lord Bothwell Wallace’s opinion of the horse was fully confirmed.

Away flew Devilshoof, scudding across the grassy expanse swift as the wind, uprooting little patches of grass with his flying hoofs as he tore along. At first the Jewess laughed gaily, pleased with the animal’s spirit. She turned round to look at the Duke with a smile upon her face, and waved her whip above her head as a signal to him to follow her.

But all at once this daring and obstinate woman began to be conscious of her folly. Danger lay before her—a danger whose extent she could not estimate.

The grassy expanse sloped suddenly downward; and at the bottom of the slope there was a rugged timber fence, about eight feet high, dividing the Park from the enclosed lands beyond.

On the other side of this fence the ground sloped abruptly upward, stony, rugged, and steep.

Towards this danger, hidden until now, Devilshoof was flying at the speed of a racehorse.

In vain the Jewess tried to pull him up. The animal had got the bit between his teeth, and held it locked as if in an iron vice.

Esther Vanberg’s face grew deadly white, but to the last her dauntless spirit defied danger. She was a first-rate horsewoman, and held herself as firmly in the saddle as if she had been a part of the animal she rode.

But the danger was close upon her now. Devilshoof went madly at the fence, cleared it with his fore-feet, but caught his hind-legs in the topmost rail, and fell crashing down against the rugged slope beyond.

The Duke of Harlingford, riding his hardest to overtake the Jewess, arrived only in time to see the catastrophe. The groom came behind him. Both men were white to the very lips, and breathless with terror. They knew the extent of the danger that had been seen only when too late.

They dismounted on the near side of the fence, tied up their horses, and clambered over the wooden boundary. It was the work of but a few moments; those few moments, however, seemed an eternity of agonized suspense to the Duke of Harlingford.

Between them, the two men contrived to drag the horse away from the motionless form of his rider. The animal’s shoulder was broken.

“Take him away!” exclaimed the Duke in hoarse gasping accents. “Take the cursed brute from my sight, and blow out his brains; he has killed the only woman I ever loved.”

“God grant it mayn’t be quite as bad as that, your grace; let us hope for the best,” said the groom, as he took the bridle and led the horse away.

The young man knelt down on the rugged slope beside the Jewess. Esther Vanberg was lying on her back, with her face looking upward to the afternoon sky. Her beauty was unblemished—no scratch disfigured the pale olive skin. The still face, with its closed eyes and long drooping lashes, looked as calm as the face of a statue.

Presently the eyelids were raised, very slowly, and the glorious dark eyes looked with a strange languid gaze at the face of the Duke.

“Esther!” he exclaimed, with a wild cry of rapture. “You are not dead! O, thank Heaven! thank Heaven!”

The strong man’s face sank upon his clasped hands, and he sobbed aloud. The revulsion of feeling had been even more difficult to bear than the agony that had preceded it.

The Jewess looked at her lover with a languid smile.

“Why, you dear, affectionate goose, who said I was dead? I never saw such a man—to be frightened about a trifle of a spill. That animal has thrown me, I suppose? Well, well, Vincent; you and your friend are right after all, I daresay; and I’ve been fairly punished for my obstinacy. I scarcely knew where I was just now. I fainted, I suppose?”

“Yes, darling; you were unconscious for a few moments. O, Esther, what an age of agony it seemed! I thought you were dead.”

“Dead! Why, I’m not even hurt. I only feel a kind of numbness—just as if I hadn’t any sense in my limbs. The shock, you know, and that kind of thing.”

“My own darling, where can I take you? The nearest lodge must be upwards of a mile from here; but I’ll carry you in my arms, if you feel fit to come.”

“Fit to come? Of course I am! I daresay I shall be able to walk when this numbness goes off. But perhaps you’d better carry me at first.”

The Duke lifted the light burden in his arms. Alas for that slender form! It hung as inertly in his arms as though it had been a corpse. There was no spring, no elasticity; it was a deadweight which the Duke carried.

He called to the groom, who left Devilshoof tied to the fence at some distance, while he came to render service to his mistress.

“Thank God for this escape, your grace!” the man said earnestly.—“We’ve had a rare fright about you, ma’am.”

Esther Vanberg was a liberal mistress, and her servants were attached to her, in spite of her violent temper. The Duke intrusted his beloved burden to the groom, while he himself mounted his horse. Then the groom placed Esther in the young man’s arms, and he seated her in front of him on the saddle, and walked his horse gently away.

“We shall meet a carriage before long, I daresay, my darling,” he said; “and I will get you a more comfortable mode of conveyance.”

The Jewess was very pale. Her large dark eyes were fixed on the face of the Duke with a strangely anxious and inquiring gaze. They looked unnaturally large now, those dark eyes, and all their lustrous brilliancy had faded.

“Do you think I am much hurt, Vincent?” she asked very earnestly. “I don’t suffer any pain; but this numbness in my limbs is so strange. There seems no life in me below my shoulders. What if the life should never come back?”

The Duke looked at her with his face blanched by a new terror. The revulsion of feeling upon finding her alive and conscious had been so great, that Vincent had imagined all serious danger to be past. But now an icy horror crept through his veins.

“I remember a man being thrown from his hunter down in Leicestershire,” said the Jewess, in a low faint voice, watching the Duke’s face anxiously as she spoke. “At first he didn’t seem hurt at all; but he was just like me—he couldn’t move a bit; and when they carried him home, the surgeon found that his back was broken. He died before it was dark that night. O, Vincent, do you think I am going to die?”

“Going to die!” cried the Duke. “What, darling, when I hold you in my arms—your own bright self, with your eyes looking into mine? Why, Esther, this is foolish; my brave girl’s proud spirit has gone all at once!”

“Yes, Vincent, the proud spirit has gone. It will never come back again. I’m afraid it was a wicked spirit, and led me into many evil deeds. I hope I am not dying, Vincent,” she said very slowly; and then added, in a still lower voice, “for I do not think I am fit to die.”

“You shall not die!” cried the Duke, with an almost savage energy. “How can you talk of dying, Esther, when you know that I would give the last drop of my heart’s best blood to save you? I tell you you shall not die. All the greatest surgeons in London shall be summoned. Science can do marvellous things, and it shall save you. I will give them every penny of my fortune, but, I say, they shall save you! Fear nothing, my own darling. You shall know the power of a devoted love.”

He drew her closer to him with his strong right arm, while his left hand held the reins.

At this moment carriage-wheels sounded on the road. The Duke looked round, and saw a plain brougham, drawn by one horse, which was approaching at a smart pace.

“A doctor’s brougham, I’ll lay my life!” cried the young man. “Nothing could be more providential. Cheer up, Esther darling; if there is a medical man in that carriage, he’ll soon laugh your fears out of you.”

The Duke drew up his horse, and waited for the advancing vehicle. He made a sign to the coachman as it approached, and the man stopped. Vincent rode up to the carriage-window.

The glass was down; an elderly, gray-haired gentleman, with a cheery, pleasant face, looked out.

“Is there anything the matter?” he asked, looking with quick observant eyes at Esther’s pale face, and the slender form leaning so languidly against the Duke’s shoulder.

“Yes. This lady has met with an accident, and I have been on the look-out for a carriage in order to beg a lift for her. Are you a medical man, sir?”

“I am.”

“Thank God for that! Will you assist me to place the lady in your carriage, and see her conveyed to the Star and Garter?”

“Most certainly.”

The doctor was an active little man. He arranged the cushions on the seat of the brougham, and then skipped lightly out of the vehicle, and took Esther Vanberg in his arms.

“Any bones broken?” he asked, as cheerily as though a few fractured bones were of very little consequence when he was by to set them.

“No, thank Providence!” answered the Duke. “Miss Vanberg only complains of numbness in the limbs—nothing else; she is suffering no pain.”

All at once the doctor’s face changed. Its cheerful expression gave place to a very grave and earnest look.

Esther had been watching the medical man’s countenance very intently.

As she saw the change, a low cry of terror broke from her pale lips.

“I knew that it was so!” she said. “I am going to die!” And then, in low mournful accents, she murmured:

“So unfit to die! so unfit to die!”

The doctor recovered his professional presence of mind in a moment.

“My dear young lady,” he said, “I must not have any foolish alarm of this kind. As yet we do not know that there is danger. The sensation you complain of may be only the effect of the shock—the severe shaking, the——”

“You are deceiving me, doctor!” cried Esther angrily. “But it is no use. Your face told me the truth just now.”

The medical man saw that his thoughts had been read by those anxious eyes.

“I did not quite like that symptom of the numbness,” he said; “that was all. There may be nothing in it. Was it a very bad fall? Don’t talk, my dear young lady; your friend will tell me all about it.”

The doctor had placed himself on a little seat with his back to the horse. Esther was lying opposite to him. The Duke rode by the side of the carriage, as the vehicle drove slowly towards the principal gates of the Park—those gates which Esther Vanberg had entered so joyously less than an hour before.

The Duke of Harlingford related the circumstances of the accident. The medical man listened attentively; but while he listened he kept his eyes fixed on Esther’s white face, and his fingers on her pulse. He tried to conceal his anxiety; but the brisk cheerfulness of manner that was common to him had quite forsaken him. He was very grave—very watchful, like a man who feels that danger is at hand.

“Shall we take her to the Star and Garter?” asked the Duke.

“You could not take her to a better place. You will telegraph for some female relations, I suppose—her mother, perhaps?”

“She has no mother. She is an orphan.”

“Your sister, I conclude?”

“No,” answered the Duke, looking at Esther with inexpressible affection; “she is a lady whom I hope to make my wife.”

Esther returned his look, and the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. O, what a noble heart this was, which she had so often trampled upon and spurned in her pride and folly! What a devoted love! What a self-sacrificing affection, which she had trifled with and imposed upon in the haughty recklessness of her stubborn nature! But now that nature seemed melted all at once.

“Heaven have pity upon me!” she thought. “I believe I have been a demon until to-day. And now I seem transformed into a woman, with womanly feelings—womanly tears! But the change comes too late!—too late, too late!”