Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878. Various
she said, "I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?"
"Not if anything you and I can do will save her—will she, Edith?" and Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one—a lady's horse, a chestnut—and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek for a moment against the chestnut's neck. The boy thought it was a rum go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his terrible errand.
Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him. Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy, rose darkly above him—too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass, every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite. Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain did he leave the spot.
By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by, her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.
Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin. Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. "How is she?" he said at last.
"I don't know."
"Why do you look at me like that?" said the boy desperately.
Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more strongly on his face. "I don't ever want to look at you again," he said with quiet emphasis. "You've done mischief enough to last your lifetime if you lived a thousand years."
"It wasn't my fault! Ray, it wasn't!"
"Whose, then?" said Fothergill. "Possibly you think it would have happened if I had been there?"
"They said that wall—" the young fellow began.
"They didn't. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole place. And she didn't even know where the refectory was."
Carroll groaned: "Don't, Ray: I can't bear it! I shall kill myself!"
"No, you won't," said Fothergill. "You'll go safe home to your people at the rectory. No more of this."
Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious. From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope—a hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed it.
His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl—cared for her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring—and he felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over. Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.
And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy's death would hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing, but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been something higher and missed it. That was all.
Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. "Walter," she said, "you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot stay here, and I cannot send them back without you." Latimer refused, protested, yielded. "Mother," he said, as he turned to go, "you don't know—" His voice suddenly gave way.
"I do know. Oh, my poor boy!" She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood, and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry Hardwicke has gone for her."
This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.
He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though, unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of a hopeless hell.
CHAPTER L.
THROUGH THE NIGHT
The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the faintest idea of the agony