John Moseley returned from L---- within a week, and appeared as if his
whole delight consisted in knocking over the inoffensive birds. His
restlessness induced him to make Jarvis his companion; for although he
abhorred the captain's style of pursuing the sport, being in his opinion
both out of rule and without taste, yet he was a constitutional fidget,
and suited his own moving propensities at the moment. Egerton and
Denbigh were both frequently at the hall, but generally gave their time
to the ladies, neither being much inclined to the favorite amusement of
John.
There was a little arbor within the walls of the park, which for years
had been a retreat from the summer heats to the ladies of the Moseley
family; even so long as the youth of Mrs. Wilson it had been in vogue,
and she loved it with a kind of melancholy pleasure, as the spot where
she had first listened to the language of love from the lips of her late
husband. Into this arbor the ladies had one day retired, during the
warmth of a noon-day sun, with the exception of Lady Moseley, who had
her own engagement in the house. Between Egerton and Denbigh there was
maintained a kind of courtly intercourse, which prevented any
disagreeable collision from their evident dislike. Mrs. Wilson thought,
on the part of Denbigh, it was the forbearance of a principled
indulgence to another's weakness; while the colonel's otherwise uniform
good breeding was hardly able to conceal a something amounting to very
near repugnance. Egerton had taken his seat on the ground, near the feet
of Jane; and Denbigh was stationed on a bench placed without the arbor
but so near as to have the full benefit of the shade of the noble oak,
branches of which had been trained so as to compose its principal
covering. It might have been accident, that gave each his particular
situation; but it is certain they were so placed as not to be in sight
of each other, and so placed that the colonel was ready to hand Jane her
scissors, or any other little implement that she occasionally dropped,
and that Denbigh could read every lineament of the animated countenance
of Emily as she listened to his description of the curiosities of Egypt,
a country in which he had spent a few months while attached to the army
in Sicily. In this situation we will leave them for an hour, happy in
the society of each other, while we trace the route of John Moseley and
his companion, in their pursuit of woodcock, on the same day.
"Do you know, Moseley," said Jarvis, who began to think he was a
favorite with John, now that he was admitted to his menus plaisirs,
"that I have taken it into my head this Mr. Denbigh was very happy to
plead his morals for not meeting me. He is a soldier, but I cannot find
out what battles he has been in."
"Captain Jarvis," said John, coolly, "the less you say about that
business the better. Call in Rover."
Now, another of Jarvis's recommendations was a set of lungs that might
have been heard half a mile with great ease on a still morning.
"Why," said Jarvis, rather humbly, "I am sensible, Mr Moseley, I was
very wrong as regards your sister; but don't you think it a little odd
in a soldier not to fight when properly called upon?"
"I suppose Mr. Denbigh did not think himself properly called upon, or
perhaps he had heard what a great shot you were."
Six months before his appearance in B----, Captain Jarvis had been a
clerk in the counting-room of Jarvis, Baxter & Co., and had never held
fire-arms of any kind in his hand, with the exception of an old
blunderbuss, which had been a kind of sentinel over the iron chest for
years. On mounting the cockade, he had taken up shooting as a martial
exercise, inasmuch as the burning of gunpowder was an attendant of the
recreation. He had never killed but one bird in his life, and that was
an owl, of which he took the advantage of daylight and his stocking feet
to knock off a tree in the deanery grounds, very early after his
arrival. In his trials with John, he sometimes pulled trigger at the
same moment with his companion; and as the bird generally fell, he
thought he had an equal claim to the honor. He was fond of warring with
crows and birds of the larger sort, and invariably went provided with
small balls fitted to the bore of his fowling-piece for such accidental
rencontres. He had another habit, which was not a little annoying to
John, who had several times tried in vain to break him of it--that of
shooting at marks. If birds were not plenty, he would throw up a chip,
and sometimes his hat, by way of shooting on the wing.
As the day was excessively hot, and the game kept close, John felt
willing to return from such unprofitable labor. The captain now
commenced his chip firing, which in a few minutes was succeeded by his
hat.
"See, Moseley, see; I have hit the band," cried the captain, delighted
to find he had at last wounded his old antagonist. "I don't think you
can beat that yourself."
"I am not sure I can," said John, slipping a handful of gravel in the
muzzle of his piece slily, "but I can do, as you did--try."
"Do," cried the captain, pleased to get his companion down to his own
level of amusements. "Are you ready?"
"Yes; throw."
Jarvis threw, and John fired: the hat fairly bounced.
"Have I hit it?" asked John, while reloading the barrel he had
discharged.
"Hit it!" said the captain, looking ruefully at his hat. "It looks like
a cullender; but, Moseley, your gun don't scatter well: a dozen shot
have gone through in the same place."
"It does look rather like a cullender," said John, as he overlooked his
companion's beaver, "and, by the size of some of the holes, one that has
been a good deal used."
The reports of the fowling-pieces announced to the party in the arbor
the return of the sportsmen, it being an invariable practice with John
Moseley to discharge his gun before he came in; and Jarvis had imitated
him, from a wish to be what he called in rule.
"Mr. Denbigh," said John, as he put down his gun, "Captain Jarvis has
got the better of his hat at last."
Denbigh smiled without speaking; and the captain, unwilling to have
anything to say to a gentleman to whom be had been obliged to apologize,
went into the arbor to show the mangled condition of his head-piece to
the colonel, on whose sympathies he felt a kind of claim, being of the
same corps. John complained of thirst, and went to a little run of water
but a short distance from them, in order to satisfy it. The interruption
of Jarvis was particularly unseasonable. Jane was relating, in a manner
peculiar to herself, in which was mingled that undefinable exchange of
looks lovers are so fond of, some incident of her early life to the
colonel that greatly interested him. Knowing the captain's foibles, he
pointed, therefore, with his finger, as he said--
"There is one of your old enemies, a hawk."
Jarvis threw down his hat, and ran with boyish eagerness to drive away
the intruder. In his haste, he caught up the gun of John Moseley, and
loading it rapidly/threw in a ball from his usual stock; but whether the
hawk saw and knew him, or whether it saw something else it liked better,
it made a dart for the baronet's poultry-yard at no great distance, and
was out of sight in a minute. Seeing that his foe had vanished, the
captain laid the piece where he had found it, and, recovering his old
train of ideas, picked up his hat again.
"John," said Emily, as she approached him affectionately, "you were too
warm to drink."
"Stand off, sis," cried John, playfully, taking up the gun from against
the body of the tree, and dropping it towards her.
Jarvis had endeavored to make an appeal to the commiseration of Emily in
favor of the neglected beaver, and was within a few feet of them. At
this moment, recoiling from the muzzle of the gun, he exclaimed, "It is
loaded!" "Hold," cried Denbigh, in a voice of horror, as he sprang
between John and his sister. Both were too late; the piece was
discharged. Denbigh, turning to Emily, and smiling mournfully, gazed for
a moment at her with an expression of tenderness, of pleasure, of
sorrow, so blended that she retained the recollection of it for life,
and fell at her feet.
The gun dropped from the nerveless grasp of young Moseley. Emily sank in
insensibility by the side of her preserver. Mrs. Wilson and Jane stood
speechless and aghast. The colonel alone retained the presence of mind
necessary to devise the steps to be immediately taken. He sprang to the
examination of Denbigh; the eyes of the wounded man were open, and his
recollection perfect: the first were fixed in intense observation on the
inanimate body which lay at his side.
"Leave me, Colonel Egerton," he said, speaking with difficulty, and
pointing in the direction of the little run of water, "assist Miss
Moseley--your hat--your hat will answer."
Accustomed to scenes of blood, and not ignorant that time and care were
the remedies to be applied to the wounded man, Egerton flew to the
stream, and returning immediately, by the help of her sister and Mrs.
Wilson, soon restored Emily to life. The ladies and John had now begun
to act. The tenderest assiduities of Jane were devoted to her sister;
while Mrs. Wilson observing her niece to be uninjured by anything but
the shock, assisted John in supporting the wounded man.
Denbigh spoke, requesting to be carried to the house; and Jarvis was
despatched for help. Within half an hour, Denbigh was placed on a couch
in the house of Sir Edward, and was quietly waiting for that
professional aid which could only decide on his probable fate. The group
assembled in the room were in fearful expectation of the arrival of the
surgeons, in pursuit of whom messengers had been sent both to the
barracks in F---- and to the town itself. Sir Edward sat by the side of
the sufferer, holding one of his hands in his own, now turning his
tearful eyes on that daughter who had so lately been rescued as it were
from the certainty of death, in mute gratitude and thanksgiving; and now
dwelling on the countenance of him, who, by bravely interposing his
bosom to the blow, had incurred in his own person the imminent danger of
a similar fate, with a painful sense of his perilous situation, and
devout and earnest prayers for his safety. Emily was with her father, as
with the rest of his family, a decided favorite; and no reward would
have been sufficient, no gratitude lively enough, in the estimation of
the baronet, to compensate the protector of such a child. She sat
between her mother and Jane, with a hand held by each, pale and
oppressed with a load of gratitude, of thanksgiving, of woe, that almost
bowed her to the earth. Lady Moseley and Jane were both sensibly touched
with the deliverance of Emily, and manifested the interest they took in
her by the tenderest caresses, while Mrs. Wilson sat calmly collected
within herself, occasionally giving those few directions which were
necessary under the circumstances, and offering up her silent petitions
in behalf of the sufferer. John had taken horse immediately for F----,
and Jarvis had volunteered to go to the rectory and Bolton. Denbigh
inquired frequently and with much anxiety for Dr. Ives; but the rector
was absent from home on a visit to a sick parishioner, and it was late
in the evening before he arrived. Within three hours of the accident,
however, Dr. Black, the surgeon of the ----th, reached the hall, and
immediately proceeded to examine the wound. The ball had penetrated the
right breast, and gone directly through the body; it was extracted with
very little difficulty, and his attendant acquainted the anxious friends
of Denbigh that the heart certainly, and he hoped the lungs, had escaped
uninjured. The ball was a very small one, and the principal danger to be
apprehended was from fever: he had taken the usual precautions against
that, and should it not set in with a violence greater than he
apprehended at present, the patient might be abroad within the month.
"But," continued the surgeon, with the hardened indifference of his
profession, "the gentleman has had a narrow chance in the passage of the
ball itself; half an inch would have settled his accounts with this
world."
This information greatly relieved the family, and orders were given to
preserve a silence in the house that would favor the patient's
disposition to quiet, or, if possible, sleep.
Dr. Ives now reached the hall. Mrs. Wilson had never seen the rector in
the agitation, or with the want of self-command he was in, as she met
him at the entrance of the house.
"Is he alive?--is there hope?--where is George?"--cried the doctor, as
he caught the extended hand of Mrs. Wilson. She briefly acquainted him
with the surgeon's report, and the reasonable ground there was to expect
Denbigh would survive the injury.
"May God be praised," said the rector, in a suppressed voice, and he
hastily withdrew into another room. Mrs. Wilson followed him slowly and
in silence; but was checked on opening the door with the sight of the
rector on his knees, the tears stealing down his venerable cheeks in
quick succession. "Surely," thought the widow, as she drew back
unnoticed, "a youth capable of exciting such affection in a man like Dr.
Ives, cannot be unworthy."
Denbigh, hearing of the arrival of his friend, desired to see him alone.
Their conference was short, and the rector returned from it with
increased hopes of the termination of this dreadful accident. He
immediately left the hall for his own house, with a promise of returning
early on the following morning.
During the night, however, the symptoms became unfavorable; and before
the return of Dr. Ives, Denbigh was in a state of delirium from the
height of his fever, and the apprehensions of his friends were renewed
with additional force.
"What, what, my good sir, do you think of him?" said the baronet to the
family physician, with an emotion that the danger of his dearest child
would not have exceeded, and within hearing of most of his children, who
were collected in the ante-chamber of the room in which Denbigh was
placed.
"It is impossible to say, Sir Edward," replied the physician: "he
refuses all medicines, and unless this fever abates, there is but little
hope of recovery."
Emily stood during this question and answer, motionless, pale as death,
and with her hands clasped together, betraying by the workings of her
fingers in a kind of convulsive motion, the intensity of her interest.
She had seen the draught prepared which it was so desirable that Denbigh
should take, and it now stood rejected on a table, where it could be
seen through the open door of his room. Almost breathless, she glided
in, and taking the draught in her hand, she approached the bed, by which
sat John alone, listening with a feeling of despair to the wanderings of
the sick man. Emily hesitated once or twice, as she drew near Denbigh;
her face had lost the paleness of anxiety, and glowed with another
emotion.
"Mr. Denbigh--dear Denbigh." said Emily, with energy, unconsciously
dropping her voice into the softest notes of persuasion, "will you
refuse me?--me, Emily Moseley, whose life you have saved?"
"Emily Moseley!" repeated Denbigh, and in those tones so remarkable to
his natural voice. "Is she safe? I thought she was killed--dead." Then,
as if recollecting himself, he gazed intently on her countenance--his
eye became less fiery--his muscles relaxed--he smiled, and took, with
the docility of a well-trained child, the prescribed medicines from her
hand. His ideas still wandered, but his physician, profiting by the
command Emily possessed over his patient, increased his care, and by
night the fever had abated, and before morning the wounded man was in a
profound sleep. During the whole day, it was thought necessary to keep
Emily by the side of his bed; but at times it was no trifling tax on her
feelings to remain there. He spoke of her by name in the tenderest
manner, although incoherently, and in terms that restored to the
blanched cheeks of the distressed girl more than the richness of their
native color. His thoughts were not confined to Emily, however: he
talked of his father, of his mother, and frequently spoke of his poor
deserted Marian. The latter name he dwelt on in the language of the
warmest affection, condemned his own desertion of her, and, taking Emily
for her, would beg her forgiveness, tell her her sufferings had been
enough, and that he would return, and never leave her again. At such
moments his nurse would sometimes show, by the paleness of her cheeks,
her anxiety for his health; and then, as he addressed her by her proper
appellation, all her emotions appeared absorbed in the sense of shame at
the praises with which he overwhelmed her. Mrs. Wilson succeeded her in
the charge of the patient, and she retired to seek that repose she so
greatly needed.
On the second morning after receiving the wound, Denbigh dropped into a
deep sleep, from which he awoke refreshed and perfectly collected in
mind. The fever had left him, and his attendants pronounced, with the
usual cautions to prevent a relapse, his recovery certain. It were
impossible to have communicated any intelligence more grateful to all
the members of the Moseley family; for Jane had even lost sight of her
own lover, in sympathy for the fate of a man who had sacrificed himself
to save her beloved sister.