AN ACCIDENT
It was a wild wet day in late October. A terrific gale had swept over
the country the night before, and strewn the coasts of England with
wreckage. It had done great damage at Abington, and when Caroline looked
out of her bedroom window in the morning she saw evidence of it in great
trees lying prone here and there in the park, and the drift of leaves
and branches scattered everywhere. The wind was still raging, though it
had abated some of its fury, and even as she looked she saw a high elm
that had towered above the beeches with which the slopes of the park
were mostly planted come crashing to the earth.
After breakfast she went out to see what damage had been done. The wind
was blowing over the house to the front, and when she got out of its
shelter she was seized as if in the grip of something tangible, and held
for a moment struggling. She laughed and went on, enjoying it, but had
to hold on to her hat to prevent its being wrenched off her head; and
her thick tweed skirt was blown all about her. In her young strength and
resiliency she seemed as much at home in this wild weather as in days of
blue sky and soft airs. She was no fair-weather girl, and the rain which
drove against her fretted her as little as the wind.
As she made her way across the park she saw the figure of a man making
his way towards the spot where the most havoc had been done, and
recognised it for that of Maurice Bradby. He saw her and came towards
her. When they met they laughed at one another. "Isn't it glorious?" she
said. "I thought you'd be out to enjoy it."
Her face was wet with the rain. Her hair, where it showed under her
close-fitting felt hat, was pearled with it. She had never looked more
lovely, to him, than then as she smiled up to him. His rugged, rather
unkempt strength also showed to advantage in this battle of the
elements. He had gained the country look, which is not affected by
chances of weather, but shows a spirit attuneable to expressions of all
nature's moods.
"I've come out to see what damage has been done," he said; and they went
on together.
In the shelter of the trees progression was easier, but the gale still
roared and shrieked above them, and twigs and small branches were being
torn off and falling all about. Once a branch of considerable size
cracked and fell within a few yards of them, and Bradby looked anxiously
at her, and suggested that it would be safer in the open. But he was
keen on the work he had come out for, and she was interested in it too.
So they went on.
He was noting the trees that had fallen and measuring them with his eye
for their timber. He seemed to her to be doing it with a wonderful
sureness and competence, as he did everything in connection with his
work, and she tested herself as to her own understanding of the matter
in hand, and received congratulations from him on her eye for timber.
This pleased her. It was more interesting, doing things, than just
walking and talking, and to do them with him was to do them with some
one who could teach her a lot of what she liked knowing about. And she
liked helping him, too. He had a master mind in all that had to do with
the commodities of nature; she had long since come to recognise that. In
all outward aspects her inferior, here he was on a plane which put her
at his feet, and he exercised his knowledge with a quiet assurance that
made his mastery evident. It was worth while to work with him; and to
gain his commendation brought a thrill.
They went to where the great elm had fallen. It was the tallest of a
group of three standing among the beeches on the highest point to be
seen from the Abbey. It had been a magnificent tree, but had passed its
age of healthy growth, and the amount of sound timber to be reckoned
with was difficult to gauge. They interested themselves deeply in it,
while the gale, which seemed to have increased in violence again, raged
all about them.
They were standing by the uprooted hole, wondering at the exposed roots,
which seemed to have so little to anchor such a giant to the earth, when
suddenly Bradby seized Caroline and threw her violently into the hollow
from which the tree had been uprooted. She fell and lay in a puddle of
water, and was instantly overwhelmed by the branches and twigs of a
great bough, some of which whipped her in the face, drawing blood, and
one more solid hit her heavily on the arm and drove it into her side.
When she had recovered a little from the fright and shock she wriggled
herself free from it. If it had been set ever so little more at an angle
it must have crushed her body, for the bough that had been torn from one
of the elms still standing was of great size and weight, and this was
one of its biggest branches.
She raised herself with difficulty through the mass that was hemming her
in, and called to Bradby. But there was no answer; only the wind and the
driving rain.
With her heart in her mouth she clambered out of the hollow and then saw
him lying half in and half out of it, with his face white and dead, and
his body underneath the heavy branch that had struck her down.
She found herself struggling with all her might to lift the weight from
him, and then came suddenly to herself and ran as fast as she could down
the hill to get help. Her face was bruised and bleeding, and her arm
hung by her side useless, though she knew that it was not broken. She
was hurt, too, where it had been pressed into her body, and every breath
she drew was a sharp twinge. But she ran the whole way to the house, and
managed to give clear and quick instructions to the men she found in the
stables. She would have gone up with them, but Miss Waterhouse, who had
seen her running across the park, came out and insisted upon her coming
in. When she got indoors she collapsed, for she was rather badly hurt.
Bradby was hurt very seriously. He had seen the bough crack and begin to
fall, directly towards where they were standing. Caroline was standing
with her back towards it. He might have got out of the way himself, but
there would have been no time to warn her, or even drag her out of
danger. To throw her into the hollow was the only chance, and the bough
caught him before he could jump in after her. The fallen trunk
fortunately took the weight of the great bough, which if it had fallen
to the ground must have killed them both. But the branch, an elbow of
which had crushed Caroline, had struck Bradby down. It had broken both
his thighs, and he had ribs broken besides, and internal injury which
made his life hang in the balance for as long as Caroline took to
recover from her lesser hurt.
He was said to be just out of danger when she was well enough to leave
her room, and in two days, when she had practically recovered and could
go out again, he was said to be going to get quite well, though he would
have to lie up for many weeks yet.
He had been moved down to the Abbey, and was installed there with a
couple of nurses, one of whom was able to leave him in a week. When
Caroline first saw him he had altered so as to give her a shock of
dismay. He was thin and gaunt and pale, but his great dark eyes stood
out of his face in such a way as to bring out its essential refinement.
The immaturity of his features seemed to have been wiped out; he was
almost handsome, with his shock of dark hair spread over his pillow, and
his long, pale, thin face with the fine eyes.
His mother was with him--a gentle sweet-faced woman, with the same
beautiful eyes, but no other resemblance to this ugly duckling of a son.
He must have inherited his strength and ruggedness from his father, of
whom a photograph stood on his mantelpiece. There were photographs of
his brothers and sisters too--good-looking men and girls, more like
their mother than he was. His father had come when he was at his worst,
but had gone back to his parish, and Caroline had not seen him.
Caroline knew he had saved her life, but found herself unable to say so,
or to thank him. And she knew that he didn't want her to. They said very
little at her first visit, but it was plain what healing it brought him.
She told Mrs. Bradby what he had done. "It was his quickness that saved
me," she said, "and not thinking about himself. Very few people would
have been able to think of what to do, and do it, in that fraction of
time. The instinct _must_ have been to get out of the way."
His mother must have known his secret. An instinct stronger than that of
self-preservation had been at work, and Caroline owed her life to it,
and he his injuries.
She looked rather sadly at the beautiful girl sitting with her. They
were in the Long Gallery, in which all the circumstances of this kindly
hospitable family were expressed. She had been taken in just as if she
belonged to all the wealth and ease, and the wide relationships,
herself, and her son was being treated as if he were of it too. But his
lot, and hers, were cast in very different places from that of the
people who inhabited rooms of this sort, and had the relationships
indicated by the photographs that were set about. They were of two
different worlds--the world of work and the world of wealth, which never
entirely coalesce, though contact is formed here and there between them.
She looked at Caroline and saw her more in the light of the state of
life to which she belonged than in that of her essential character. It
was the first time that they had met, and though she was strongly
attracted to her she had not yet gauged her fine true spirit. It was
natural that she should be affected by her outward appearance, which
betokened her birth and her station, and seemed to put her altogether
out of reach of a young man who had enjoyed none of the advantages of
wealth, and had none of the elasticity which enables some to climb up
from rungs of the social ladder a good deal lower than that from which
he had started.
But before she left Abington, which she did two days after she first saw
Caroline, she came to look at her son with new eyes, and it was Caroline
who opened them for her.
It is not every mother who loves her ugly duckling better than the
handsome ones. Mrs. Bradby took more pride in her other sons than in
Maurice, who, until he had made his new start at Abington, had been
looked on in his home as something of a failure. Even now, though his
new start had seemed to promise success, neither his father nor mother
had taken it as anything more than a fortunate finding of the right path
for him. There was indeed no more to be seen in it than that. Land
Agency is hardly a career in itself. At the best he would live the life
that suited him, and gain in time a situation which would enable him to
marry. He could never expect more than a modest income and a modest
home. He would bring satisfaction to his parents if he worked up to
that, but not pride, as their other sons were in the way of doing.
But this beautiful, sweet, clever girl saw a great deal beneath the not
very attractive exterior. He might do nothing in the world that would be
counted as success. He was hardly in the way of doing anything, and yet
she spoke of what he was doing as if it went much deeper than the work
in which he was spending his days, and by which he was about to earn his
living. He was in his right place in the world, and in tune with big
things. This was more than to make the sort of success that his brothers
might make in their several careers. If his mother did not think it was
more, she at least saw that Maurice was not to be judged by the
standards applied to them, and her heart went out to the girl who had
found more in him than she had.
It may be supposed that she was on the alert for any sign that Caroline
was attracted towards her son in the way that she had divined he was
towards her. She was not sure, at the end of her visit that she wasn't;
but she was sure that if she was she didn't know it yet, or she would
not have spoken of him with that unfettered admiration for his fine
qualities. It was natural that she should show warmth of feeling towards
him, when he was lying battered and broken by having saved her from the
same or from worse injury; but that warmth also was expressed frankly
and without reserve. His mother thought, rather sadly, that if Caroline
had thought of him as of a young man with whom it was possible to fall
in love, she wouldn't have praised him so freely. She was what her
surroundings had made her; he was something quite different. She would
accept the difference as putting a barrier between them, and from behind
that barrier she could give him her liking and admiration and
understanding.
So it seemed to Mrs. Bradby, as she drove away from the Abbey, with
gratitude for all that she had received there warm in her heart. She had
come to see in Caroline, as Caroline saw in Maurice, something deeper
than what was shown on the surface, something deeper even than the
kindness and goodness that was there for all to see. If Maurice had been
older, more sure of himself, it seemed to her in her new view of him
that he might have aspired to this girl, in spite of the differences
between them. She would not think that they would matter; she was too
fine to base herself upon the accidents of her upbringing. She would
take a man for what he was, not for his outward seeming. But Maurice was
still immature; he would not himself think that he had enough to offer a
girl such as Caroline, nor be able to impress her to step out of the
conventions that hemmed her round.
It was just as well. Nothing but trouble, it seemed to her, could come
from a love declared and returned. Maurice had done so well that he was
to be paid as Sub-Agent to the Abington property from the beginning of
the year. Mr. Grafton, she knew, had arranged that, who was always so
kind. But his kindness could hardly be expected to stand the test of
giving his daughter to a young man who would be making barely enough
money to keep himself, and was quite outside the circle in which
marriages were formed for her and her like. It was, perhaps, something
of a comfort to be convinced that Maurice, whatever he might feel
towards Caroline, would be too diffident to bring on that complication,
and that she would not lend herself to it.
But she had reckoned without the impulsions of youth, of dependence upon
one side and of gratitude and pity on the other.
Maurice had been moved on to a sofa by the open window, and Caroline was
sitting by his side talking to him, as she had sat and talked for days
past. By and bye--she never afterwards remembered quite how--her hand
was lying in his, and they were looking into one another's eyes, with a
meaning infinitely tender and trustful. There was nobody in the world
but their two selves, and they both knew it, without any necessity for
words. Caroline's time had come. She had not known it until that moment,
but she knew it now without the shadow of a doubt, and accepted it with
complete surrender.