TO THE RESCUE
Stubbs was the first to collect himself, but a minute elapsed before he
spoke. Then, “He must be mad,” he cried, “mad, to expose himself to the
weather at his age. If I had not seen it, I couldn’t believe it!”
“I suppose it is John Audley?”
“Yes.” Then raising his voice, “My lord! I don’t think I would go to
him now!”
But Audley was already striding across the lawn towards the gate. The
lawyer hesitated, gave way, and followed him.
They were within twenty paces of the silent watcher when he moved—up to
that time he might have been a lay figure. He shook one hand in the
air, as if he would beat them off, then he turned and walked stiffly
away. Half a dozen steps took him out of sight. The Yew Walk swallowed
him.
But, quickly as he vanished, the lawyer had had time to see that he
staggered. “I fear, my lord, he is ill,” he said. “He will never reach
the Gatehouse in that state. I had better follow him.”
“Why the devil did he come here?” Audley retorted savagely. The
watcher’s strange aspect, his face, white against the dark yews, his
stillness, his gesture, a something ominous in all, had shaken him. “If
he had stopped at home——”
“Still——”
“D—n him, it’s his affair!”
“Still we cannot leave him if he has fallen, my lord,” Stubbs replied
with decision. And without waiting for his employer’s assent he tried
the gate. It was locked, but in a trice he found the key on his bunch,
turned it, and pushed back the gate. Audley noticed that it moved
silently on its hinges.
Stubbs, the gate open, began to feel ashamed of his impulse. Probably
there was nothing amiss after all. But he had hardly looked along the
path before he uttered a cry, and hurrying forward, stooped over a
bundle of clothes that lay in the middle of the walk. It was John
Audley. Apparently he had tripped over a root and lain where he had
fallen.
Stubbs’s cry summoned the other, who followed him through the gate, to
find him on his knees supporting the old man’s head. The sight recalled
Audley to his better self. The mottled face, the staring eyes, the
helpless limbs shocked him. “Good G—d!” he cried, “you were right,
Stubbs! He might have died if we had left him.”
“He would have died,” Stubbs answered. “As it is—I am not sure.” He
opened the waistcoat, felt for the beating of the heart, bent his ear
to it. “No, I don’t think he’s gone,” he said, “but the heart is
feeble, very feeble. We must have brandy! My lord, you are the more
active. Will you go to the Gatehouse—there is no nearer place—and get
some? And something to carry him home! A hurdle if there is nothing
better, and a couple of men?”
“Right!” Audley cried.
“And don’t lose a minute, my lord! He’s nearly gone.”
Audley stripped off his overcoat. “Wrap this about him!” he said. And
before the other could answer he had started for the Gatehouse, at a
pace which he believed that he could keep up.
Pad, pad, my lord ran under the yew trees, swish, swish across the
soaking grass, about the great Butterfly. Pad, pad, again through the
gloom under the yews! Not too fast, he told himself—he was a big man
and he must save himself. Now he saw before him the opening into the
park, and the light falling on the pale turf. And then, at a point not
more than twenty yards short of the open ground, he tripped over a
root, tried to recover himself, struck another root, and fell.
The fall shook him, but he was young, and he was quickly on his feet.
He paused an instant to brush the dirt from his hands and knees; and it
was during that instant that his inbred fear of John Audley, and the
certainty that if John Audley died he need fear no more, rose before
him.
Yes, if he died—this man who was even now plotting against him—there
was an end of that fear! There was an end of uneasiness, of anxiety, of
the alarm that assailed him in the small hours, of the forebodings that
showed him stripped of title and income and consequence. Stripped of
all!
Five seconds passed, and he still stood, engaged with his hands. Five
more; it was his knees he was brushing now—and very carefully. Another
five—the sweat broke out on his brow though the day was cold. Twenty
seconds, twenty-five! His face showed white in the gloom. And still he
stood. He glanced behind him. No one could see him.
But the movement discovered the man to himself, and with an oath he
broke away. He thrust the damning thought from him, he sprang forward.
He ran. In ten strides he was in the open park, and trotting steadily,
his elbows to his sides, across the sward. The blessed light was about
him, the wind swept past his ears, the cleansing rain whipped his face.
Thank God, he had left behind him the heavy air and noisome scent of
the yews. He hated them. He would cut them all down some day.
For in a strange way he associated them with the temptation which had
assailed him. And he was thankful, most thankful, that he had put that
temptation from him—had put it from him, when most men, he thought,
would have succumbed to it. Thank God, he had not! The farther he went,
indeed, the better he felt. By the time he saw the Gatehouse before
him, he was sure that few men, exposed to that temptation, would have
overcome it. For if John Audley died what a relief it would be! And he
had looked very ill; he had looked like a man at the point of death.
The brandy could not reach him under—well, under half an hour. Half an
hour was a long time, when a man looked like that. “I’ll do my best,”
he thought. “Then if he dies, well and good. I’ve always been afraid of
him.”
He did not spare himself, but he was not in training, and he was well
winded when he reached the Gatehouse. A last effort carried him between
the Butterflies, and he halted on the flags of the courtyard. A woman,
whose skirts were visible, but whose head and shoulders were hidden by
an umbrella, was standing in the doorway on his left, speaking to some
one in the house. She heard his footsteps and turned.
“Lord Audley!” she exclaimed—for it was Mary Audley. Then with a
woman’s quickness, “You have come from my uncle?” she cried. “Is he
ill?”
Audley nodded. “I am come for some brandy,” he gasped.
She did not waste a moment. She sped into the house, and to the
dining-room. “I had missed him,” she cried over her shoulder. “The
man-servant is away. I hoped he might be with him.”
In a trice she had opened a cellarette and taken from it a decanter of
brandy. Then she saw that he could not carry this at any speed, and she
turned to the sideboard and took a wicker flask from a drawer. With a
steady hand and without the loss of a minute—he found her presence of
mind admirable—she filled this.
As she corked it, Mrs. Toft appeared, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Dear, dear, miss,” she said, “is the master bad? But it’s no wonder
when he, that doesn’t quit the fire for a week together, goes out like
this? And Toft away and all!” She stared at his lordship. Probably she
knew him by sight.
“Will you get his bed warmed, Mrs. Toft,” Mary answered. She gave Lord
Audley the flask. “Please don’t lose a moment,” she urged. “I am
following—oh yes, I am. But you will go faster.”
She had not a thought, he saw, for the disorder of her dress, or for
her hair dishevelled by the wind, and scarce a thought for him. He
decided that he had never seen her to such advantage, but it was no
time for compliments, nor was she in the mood for them. Without more he
nodded and set off on his return journey—he had not been in the house
three minutes. By and by he looked back, and saw that Mary was
following on his heels. She had snatched up a sun-bonnet, discarded the
umbrella, and, heedless of the rain, was coming after him as swiftly
and lightly as Atalanta of the golden apple. “Gad, she’s not one of the
fainting sort!” he reflected; and also that if he had given way to that
d—d temptation he could not have looked her in the face. “As it is,”
his mind ran, “what are the odds the old boy’s not dead when we get
there? If he is—I am safe! If he is not, I might do worse than think of
her. It would checkmate him finely. More”—he looked again over his
shoulder—“she’s a fine mover, by Gad, and her figure’s perfect! Even
that rag on her head don’t spoil her!” Whereupon he thought of a
certain Lady Adela with whom he was very friendly, who had political
connections and would some day have a plum. The comparison was not, in
the matter of fineness and figure, to Lady Adela’s advantage. Her lines
were rather on the Flemish side.
Meanwhile Mary was feeling anything but an Atalanta. Wind and rain and
wet grass, loosened hair and swaying skirts do not make for romance.
But in her anxiety she gave small thought to these. Her one instinct
was to help. With all his oddity her uncle had been kind to her, and
she longed to show him that she was grateful. And he was her one
relative. She had no one else in the world. He had given her what of
home he had, and ease, and a security which she had never known before.
Were she to lose him now—the mere fancy spurred her to fresh exertions,
and in spite of a pain in her side, in spite of clinging skirts, and
shoes that threatened to leave her feet, she pushed on. She was not far
behind Audley when he reached the Yew Walk.
She saw him plunge into it, she followed, and was on the scene not many
seconds later. When she caught sight of the little group kneeling about
the prostrate man, that sense of tragedy, and of the inevitable, which
assails at such a time, shook her. The thing always possible, never
expected, had happened at last.
Then the coolness which women find in these emergencies returned. She
knelt between the men, took the insensible head on her arm, held out
her other hand for the cup. “Has he swallowed any?” she asked, taking
command of the situation.
“No,” Toft answered—and she became aware that the man with Lord Audley
was the servant.
She waited for no more, she tilted the cup, and by some knack she
succeeded where Toft had failed. A little of the spirit was swallowed.
She improvised a pillow and laid the head down on it. “The lower the
better,” she murmured. She felt the hands and began to rub one. “Rub
the other,” she said to Toft. “The first thing to do is to get him
home! Have you a carriage? How near can you bring it, Lord Audley?”
“We can bring it to the park at the end of the walk,” he answered. “My
agent has gone to fetch it.”
“Will you hasten it?” she replied. “Toft will stay with me. And bring
something, please, on which you can carry him to it.”
“At once,” Audley answered, and he went off in the direction of the
Great House.
“I’ve seen him as bad before, Miss,” Toft said. “I found that he had
gone out without his hat and I followed him, but I could not trace him
at once. I don’t think you need feel alarmed.”
Certainly the face had lost its mottled look, the eyes were now shut,
the limbs lay more naturally. “If he were only at home!” Mary answered.
“But every moment he is exposed to the cold is against him. He must be
wet through.”
She induced the patient to swallow another mouthful of brandy, and with
their eyes on his face the two watched for the first gleam of
consciousness. It came suddenly. John Audley’s eyes opened. He stared
at them.
His mind, however, still wandered. “I knew it!” he muttered. “They
could not be there and I not know it! But the wall! The wall is
thick—thick and——” He was silent again.
The rambling mind is to those who are not wont to deal with it a most
uncanny thing, and Mary looked at Toft to see what he made of it. But
the servant had eyes only for his master. He was gazing at him with an
absorbed face.
“Ay, a thick wall!” the sick man murmured. “They may look and look,
they’ll not see through it.” He was silent a moment, then, “All bare!”
he murmured. “All bare!” He chuckled faintly, and tried to raise
himself, but sank back. “Fools!” he whispered, “fools, when in ten
minutes if they took out a brick——”
The servant cut him short. “Here’s his lordship!” he cried. He spoke so
sharply that Mary looked up in surprise, wondering what was amiss. Lord
Audley was within three or four paces of them—the carpet of yew leaves
had deadened his footsteps. “Here’s his lordship, sir!” Toft repeated
in the same tone, his mouth close to John Audley’s ear.
The servant’s manner shocked Mary. “Hush, Toft!” she said. “Do you want
to startle him?”
“His lordship will startle him,” Toft retorted. He looked over his
shoulder, and without ceremony he signed to Lord Audley to stand back.
“Bare, quite bare!” John Audley muttered, his mind still far away. “But
if they took out—if they took out——”
Toft waved his hand again—waved it wildly.
“All right, I understand,” Lord Audley said. He had not at first
grasped what was wanted, but the man’s repeated gestures enlightened
him. He retired to a position where he was out of the sick man’s sight.
The servant wiped the sweat from his brow. “He mustn’t see him!” he
repeated insistently. “Lord! what a turn it gave me. I ask your pardon,
Miss,” he continued, “but I know the master so well.” He cast an uneasy
glance over his shoulder. “If the master’s eyes lit on him once, only
once, when he’s in this state, I’d not answer for his life.”
Mary reproached herself. “You are quite right, Toft,” she said. “I
ought to have thought of that myself.”
“He must not see any strangers!”
“He shall not. You are quite right.”
But Toft was still uneasy. He looked round. Stubbs and a man who had
been working in the neighborhood were bringing up a sheep-hurdle, and
again the butler’s anxiety overcame him. “D—n!” he said: and he rose to
his feet. “I think they want to kill him amongst them! Why can’t they
keep away?”
“Hush! Toft. Why——”
“He mustn’t see the lawyer! He must not see him on any account.”
Mary nodded. “I will arrange it!” she said. “Only don’t excite him. You
will do him harm that way if you are not careful. I will speak to
them.”
She went to meet them and explained, while Stubbs, who had not seen her
before, considered her with interest. So this was Miss Audley, Peter
Audley’s daughter! She told them that she thought it better that her
uncle should not find strangers about him when he came to himself. They
agreed—it seemed quite natural—and it was arranged that Toft and the
man should carry him as far as the carriage, while Mary walked beside
him; and that afterwards she and Toft should travel with him. The
carriage cushions were placed on the hurdle, and the helpless man was
lifted on to them. Toft and the laborer raised their burden, and slowly
and heavily, with an occasional stagger, they bore it along the sodden
path. Mary saw that the sweat sprang out on Toft’s sallow face and that
his knees shook under him. Clearly the man was taxing his strength to
the utmost, and she felt some concern—she had not given him credit for
such fidelity. However, he held out until they reached the carriage.
Babbling a word now and again, John Audley was moved into the vehicle.
Mary mounted beside him and supported his head, while Toft climbed to
the box, and at a footpace they set off across the sward, the laborer
plodding at the tail of the carriage, and Lord Audley and Stubbs
following a score of paces behind. The rain had ceased, but the clouds
were low and leaden, the trees dripped sadly, and the little procession
across the park had a funereal look. To Mary the way seemed long, to
Toft still longer. With every moment his head was round. His eyes were
now on his master, now jealously cast on those who brought up the rear.
But everything comes to an end, and at length they swung into the
courtyard, where Mrs. Toft, capable and cool, met them and took a load
off Mary’s shoulders.
“He’s that bad is he?” she said calmly. “Then the sooner he’s in his
bed the better. ’Truria’s warming it. How will we get him up? I could
carry him myself if that’s all. If Toft’ll take his feet, I’ll do the
rest. No need for another soul to come in!” with a glance at Lord
Audley. “But if they would fetch the doctor I’d not say no, Miss.”
“I’ll ask them to do that,” Mary said.
“And don’t you worrit, Miss,” Mrs. Toft continued, eyeing the sick man
judicially. “He’s been nigh as bad as this before and been about within
the week. There’s some as when they wool-gathers, there’s no worse
sign. But the master he’s never all here, nor all there, and like a
Broseley butter-pot another touch of the kiln will neither make him nor
break him. Now, Toft, wide of the door-post, and steady, man.”
Lord Audley and Stubbs had remained outside, but when they saw Mary
coming towards them, the young man left Stubbs and went to meet her.
“How is he?” he asked.
“Mrs. Toft thinks well of him. She has seen him nearly as ill before,
she says. But if he recovers,” Mary continued gratefully, “we owe his
life to you. Had you not found him he must have died. And if you had
lost a moment in bringing the news, I am sure that we should have been
too late.”
The young man might have given some credit to Stubbs, but he did not;
perhaps because time pressed, perhaps because he felt that his virtue
in resisting a certain temptation deserved its reward. Instead he
looked at Mary with a sympathy so ardent that her eyes fell. “Who would
not have done as much?” he said. “If not for him—for you.”
“Will you add one kindness then?” she answered. “Will you send Dr.
Pepper as quickly as possible?”
“Without the loss of a minute,” he said. “But one thing before I go. I
cannot come here to inquire, yet I should like to know how he goes on.
Will you walk a little way down the Riddsley road at noon to-morrow,
and tell me how he fares?”
Mary hesitated. But when he had done so much for them, when he had as
good as saved her uncle’s life, how could she be churlish? How could
she play the prude? “Of course I will,” she said frankly. “I hope I
shall bring a good report.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Until to-morrow!”