“’Twould be dangerous to move him far,” said he. “‘Twill increase the hemorrhage.”
“My men shall carry him across to Stretton House,” said Lord Ostermore. “Lend a hand here, you gaping oafs.”
The footmen advanced. The crowd, which was growing rapidly and was watching almost in silence, awed, pressed as close as it dared upon these gentlemen. Mainwaring procured a couple of cloaks and improvised a stretcher with them. Of this he took one corner himself, Gascoigne another, and the footmen the remaining two. Thus, as gently as might be, they bore the wounded man from the enclosure, through the crowd that had by now assembled in the street, and over the threshold of Stretton House.
A groom had been dispatched for a doctor, and his Grace of Wharton had compelled Rotherby to accompany them into his father’s house, sternly threatening to hand him over to a constable at once if he refused.
Within the cool hall of Stretton House they were met by her ladyship and Mistress Winthrop, both pale, but the eyes of each wearing a vastly different expression.
“What’s this?” demanded her ladyship, as they trooped in. “Why do you bring him here?”
“Because, madam,” answered Ostermore in a voice as hard as iron, “it imports to save his life; for if he dies, your son dies as surely — and on the scaffold.”
Her ladyship staggered and flung a hand to her breast. But her recovery was almost immediate. “’Twas a duel—” she began stoutly.
“’Twas murder,” his lordship corrected, interrupting— “murder, as any of these gentlemen can and will bear witness. Rotherby ran Mr. Caryll through the back after Mr. Caryll had spared his life.”
“’Tis a lie!” screamed her ladyship, her lips ashen. She turned to Rotherby, who stood there in shirt and breeches and shoeless, as he had fought. “Why don’t you say that it is a lie?” she demanded.
Rotherby endeavored to master himself. “Madam,” he said, “here is no place for you.”
“But is it true? Is it true what is being said?”
He half-turned from her, with a despairing movement, and caught the sharp hiss of her indrawn breath. Then she swept past him to the side of the wounded man, who had been laid on a settle. “What is his hurt?” she inquired wildly, looking about her. But no one spoke. Tragedy — more far than the tragedy of that man’s possible death — was in the air, and struck them all silent. “Will no one answer me?” she insisted. “Is it mortal? Is it?”
His Grace of Wharton turned to her with an unusual gravity in his blue eyes. “We hope not, ma’am,” he said. “But it is as God wills.”
Her limbs seemed to fail her, and she sank down on her knees beside the settle. “We must save him,” she muttered fearfully. “We must save his life. Where is the doctor? He won’t die! Oh, he must not die!”
They stood grouped about, looking on in silence, Rotherby in the background. Behind him again, on the topmost of the three steps that led up into the inner hall, stood Mistress Winthrop, white of face, a wild horror in the eyes she riveted upon the wounded and unconscious man. She realized that he was like to die. There was an infinite pity in her soul — and, maybe, something more. Her impulse was to go to him; her every instinct urged her. But her reason held her back.
Then, as she looked, she saw with a feeling almost of terror that his eyes were suddenly wide open.
“Wha — what?” came in feeble accents from his lips.
There was a stir about him.
“Never move, Justin,” said Gascoigne, who stood by his head. “You are hurt. Lie still. The doctor has been summoned.”
“Ah!” It was a sigh. The wounded man closed his eyes a moment, then re-opened them. “I remember. I remember,” he said feebly. “It is — it is grave?” he inquired. “It went right through me. I remember!” He surveyed himself. “There’s been a deal of blood lost. I am like to die, I take it.”
“Nay, sir, we hope not — we hope not!” It was the countess who spoke.
A wry smile twisted his lips. “Your ladyship is very good,” said he. “I had not thought you quite so much my well-wisher. I — I have done you a wrong, madam.” He paused for breath, and it was not plain whether he spoke in sincerity or in sarcasm. Then with a startling suddenness he broke into a soft laugh and to those risen, who could not think what had occasioned it, it sounded more dreadful than any plaint he could have uttered.
He had bethought him that there was no longer the need for him to come to a decision in the matter that had brought him to England, and his laugh was almost of relief. The riddle he could never have solved for himself in a manner that had not shattered his future peace of mind, was solved and well solved if this were death.
“Where — where is Rotherby?” he inquired presently.
There was a stir, and men drew back, leaving an open lane to the place where Rotherby stood. Mr. Caryll saw him, and smiled, and his smile held no tinge of mockery. “You are the best friend I ever had, Rotherby,” he startled all by saying. “Let him approach,” he begged.
Rotherby came forward like one who walks in his sleep. “I am sorry,” he said thickly, “cursed sorry.”
“There’s scarce the need,” said Mr. Caryll. “Lift me up, Tom,” he begged Gascoigne. “There’s scarce the need. You have cleared up something that was plaguing me, my lord. I am your debtor for — for that. It disposes of something I could never have disposed of had I lived.” He turned to the Duke of Wharton. “It was an accident,” he said significantly. “You all saw that it was an accident.”
A denial rang out. “It was no accident!” cried Lord Ostermore, and swore an oath. “We all saw what it was.”
“I’faith, then, your eyes deceived you. It was an accident, I say — and who should know better than I?” He was smiling in that whimsical enigmatic way of his. Smiling still he sank back into Gascoigne’s arms.
“You are talking too much,” said the Major.
“What odds? I am not like to talk much longer.”
The door opened to admit a gentleman in black, wearing a grizzle wig and carrying a gold-headed cane. Men moved aside to allow him to approach Mr. Caryll. The latter, not noticing him, had met at last the gaze of Hortensia’s eyes. He continued to smile, but his smile was now changed to wistfulness under that pitiful regard of hers.
“It is better so,” he was saying. “Better so!”
His glance was upon her, and she understood what none other there suspected — that those words were for her alone.
He closed his eyes and swooned again, as the doctor stooped to remove the temporary bandages from his wound.
Hortensia, a sob beating in her throat, turned and fled to her own room.
CHAPTER XII. SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
Mr. Caryll was almost happy.
He reclined on a long chair, supported by pillows cunningly set for him by the deft hands of Leduc, and took his ease and indulged his day-dreams in Lord Ostermore’s garden. He sat within the cool, fragrant shade of a privet arbor, interlaced with flowering lilac and laburnum, and he looked out upon the long sweep of emerald lawn and the little patch of ornamental water where the water-lilies gaped their ivory chalices to the morning sun.
He looked thinner, paler and more frail than was his habit, which is not wonderful, considering that he had been four weeks abed while his wound was mending. He was dressed, again by the hands of the incomparable Leduc, in a deshabille of some artistry. A dark-blue dressing-gown of flowered satin fell open at the waist; disclosing sky-blue breeches and pearl-colored stockings, elegant shoes of Spanish leather with red heels and diamond buckles. His chestnut hair had been dressed with as great care as though he were attending a levee, and Leduc had insisted upon placing a small round patch under his left eye, that it might — said Leduc — impart vivacity to a countenance that looked over-wan from his long confinement.
He reclined there, and, as I have said, was almost happy.
The creature of sunshine that was himself at heart, had broken through the heavy cl
ouds that had been obscuring him. An oppressive burden was lifted from his mind and conscience. That sword-thrust through the back a month ago had been guided, he opined, by the hand of a befriending Providence; for although he had, as you see, survived it, it had none the less solved for him that hateful problem he could never have solved for himself, that problem whose solution, — no matter which alternative he had adopted — must have brought him untold misery afterwards.
As it was, during the weeks that he had lain helpless, his life attached to him by but the merest thread, the chance of betraying Lord Ostermore was gone, nor — the circumstances being such as they were — could Sir Richard Everard blame him that he had let it pass.
Thus he knew peace; knew it as only those know it who have sustained unrest and can appreciate relief from it.
Nature had made him a voluptuary, and reclining there in an ease which the languor born of his long illness rendered the more delicious, inhaling the tepid summer air that came to him laden with a most sweet attar from the flowering rose-garden, he realized that with all its cares life may be sweet to live in youth and in the month of June.
He sighed, and smiled pensively at the water-lilies; nor was his happiness entirely and solely the essence of his material ease. This was his third morning out of doors, and on each of the two mornings that were gone Hortensia had borne him company, coming with the charitable intent of lightening his tedium by reading to him, but remaining to talk instead.
The most perfect friendliness had prevailed between them; a camaraderie which Mr. Caryll had been careful not to dispel by any return to such speeches as those which had originally offended but which seemed now mercifully forgotten.
He was awaiting her, and his expectancy heightened for him the glory of the morning, increased the meed of happiness that was his. But there was more besides. Leduc, who stood slightly behind him, fussily, busy about a little table on which were books and cordials, flowers and comfits, a pipe and a tobacco-jar, had just informed him for the first time that during the more dangerous period of his illness Mistress Winthrop had watched by his bedside for many hours together upon many occasions, and once — on the day after he had been wounded, and while his fever was at its height — Leduc, entering suddenly and quietly, had surprised her in tears.
All this was most sweet news to Mr. Caryll. He found that between himself and his half-brother there lay an even deeper debt than he had at first supposed, and already acknowledged. In the delicious contemplation of Hortensia in tears beside him stricken all but to the point of death, he forgot entirely his erstwhile scruples that being nameless he had no name to offer her. In imagination he conjured up the scene. It made, he found, a very pretty picture. He would smoke upon it.
“Leduc, if you were to fill me a pipe of Spanish—”
“Monsieur has smoked one pipe already,” Leduc reminded him.
“You are inconsequent, Leduc. It is a sign of advancing age. Repress it. The pipe!” And he flicked impatient fingers.
“Monsieur is forgetting that the doctor—”
“The devil take the doctor,” said Mr. Caryll with finality.
“Parfaitement!” answered the smooth Leduc. “Over the bridge we laugh at the saint. Now that we are cured, the devil take the doctor by all means.”
A ripple of laughter came to applaud Leduc’s excursion into irony. The arbor had another, narrower entrance, on the left. Hortensia had approached this, all unheard on the soft turf, and stood there now, a heavenly apparition in white flimsy garments, head slightly a-tilt, eyes mocking, lips laughing, a heavy curl of her dark hair falling caressingly into the hollow where white neck sprang from whiter shoulder.
“You make too rapid a recovery, sir,” said she.
“It comes of learning how well I have been nursed,” he answered, making shift to rise, and he laughed inwardly to see the red flush of confusion spread over the milk-white skin, the reproachful shaft her eyes let loose upon Leduc.
She came forward swiftly to check his rising; but he was already on his feet, proud of his return to strength, vain to display it. “Nay,” she reproved him. “If you are so headstrong, I shall leave you.”
“If you do, ma’am. I vow here, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, that I shall go home to-day, and on foot.”
“You would kill yourself,” she told him.
“I might kill myself for less, and yet be justified.”
She looked her despair of him. “What must I do to make you reasonable?”
“Set me the example by being reasonable yourself, and let there be no more of this wild talk of leaving me the very moment you are come. Leduc, a chair for Mistress Winthrop!” he commanded, as though chairs abounded in a garden nook. But Leduc, the diplomat, had effaced himself.
She laughed at his grand air, and, herself, drew forward the stool that had been Leduc’s, and sat down. Satisfied, Mr. Caryll made her a bow, and seated himself sideways on his long chair, so that he faced her. She begged that he would dispose himself more comfortably; but he scorned the very notion.
“Unaided I walked here from the house,” he informed her with a boastful air. “I had need to begin to feel my feet again. You are pampering me here, and to pamper an invalid is bad; it keeps him an invalid. Now I am an invalid no longer.”
“But the doctor—” she began.
“The doctor, ma’am, is disposed of already,” he assured her. “Very definitely disposed of. Ask Leduc. He will tell you.”
“Not a doubt of that,” she answered. “Leduc talks too much.”
“You have a spite against him for the information he gave me on the score of how and by whom I was nursed. So have I. Because he did not tell me before, and because when he told me he would not tell me enough. He has no eyes, this Leduc. He is a dolt, who only sees the half of what happens, and only remembers the half of what he has seen.”
“I am sure of it,” said she.
He looked surprised an instant. Then he laughed. “I am glad that we agree.”
“But you have yet to learn the cause. Had this Leduc used his eyes or his ears to better purpose, he had been able to tell you something of the extent to which I am in your debt.”
“Ah?” said he, mystified. Then: “The news will be none the less welcome from your lips, ma’am,” said he. “Is it that you are interested in the ravings of delirium, and welcomed the opportunity of observing them at first hand? I hope I raved engagingly, if so be that I did rave. Would it, perchance, be of a lady that I talked in my fevered wanderings? — of a lady pale as a lenten rose, with soft brown eyes, and lips that—”
“Your guesses are all wild,” she checked him. “My debt is of a more real kind. It concerns my — my reputation.”
“Fan me, ye winds!” he ejaculated.
“Those fine ladies and gentlemen of the town had made my name a by-word,” she explained in a low, tense voice, her eyelids lowered. “My foolishness in running off with my Lord Rotherby — that I might at all cost escape the tyranny of my Lady Ostermore” (Mr. Caryll’s eyelids flickered suddenly at that explanation)— “had made me a butt and a jest and an object for slander. You remember, yourself, sir, the sneers and oglings, the starings and simperings in the park that day when you made your first attempt to champion my cause, inducing the Lady Mary Deller to come and speak to me.”
“Nay, nay — think of these things no more. Gnats will sting; ’tis in their nature. I admit ’tis very vexing at the time; but it soon wears off if the flesh they have stung be healthy. So think no more on’t.”
“But you do not know what follows. Her ladyship insisted that I should drive with her a week after your hurt, when the doctor first proclaimed you out of danger, and while the town was still all agog with the affair. No doubt her ladyship thought to put a fresh and greater humiliation upon me; you would not be present to blunt the edge of the insult of those creatures’ glances. She carried me to Vauxhall, where a fuller scope might be given to the pursuit of my shame and mortification. Instead
, what think you happened?”
“Her ladyship, I trust, was disappointed.”
“The word is too poor to describe her condition. She broke a fan, beat her black boy and dismissed a footman, that she might vent some of the spleen it moved in her. Never was such respect, never such homage shown to any woman as was shown to me that evening. We were all but mobbed by the very people who had earlier slighted me.
“’Twas all so mysterious that I must seek the explanation of it. And I had it, at length, from his Grace of Wharton, who was at my side for most of the time we walked in the gardens. I asked him frankly to what was this change owing. And he told me, sir.”
She looked at him as though no more need be said. But his brows were knit. “He told you, ma’am?” he questioned. “He told you what?”
“What you had done at White’s. How to all present and to my Lord Rotherby’s own face you had related the true story of what befell at Maidstone — how I had gone thither, an innocent, foolish maid, to be married to a villain, whom, like the silly child I was, I thought I loved; how that villain, taking advantage of my innocence and ignorance, intended to hoodwink me with a mock-marriage.
“That was the story that was on every lip; it had gone round the town like fire; and it says much for the town that what between that and the foul business of the duel, my Lord Rotherby was receiving on every hand the condemnation he deserves, while for me there was once more — and with heavy interest for the lapse from it — the respect which my indiscretion had forfeited, and which would have continued to be denied me but for your noble championing of my cause.
“That, sir, is the extent to which. I am in your debt. Do you think it small? It is so great that I have no words in which to attempt to express my thanks.”
Mr. Caryll looked at her a moment with eyes that were very bright. Then he broke into a soft laugh that had a note of slyness.
“In my time,” said he, “I have seen many attempts to change an inconvenient topic. Some have been artful; others artless; others utterly clumsy. But this, I think, is the clumsiest of them all. Mistress Winthrop, ’tis not worthy in you.”
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