"It's a lovely morning. It's a shame to waste it indoors. I'll go out."
The sun was fully up when she stole down through the still sleeping
house and out into the garden, now as awake as a lady in full dress at
the court of the King.
The garden gate fell to behind her, and the swing of her white skirts
went down the green lane. On such a morning who would not wear white?
She walked with the quick grace of her nineteen years, and as she went
fragments of the undigested poetry that had been her literary diet of
late swirled in her mind--
"With tears and smiles from heaven again,
The maiden spring upon the plain
Came in a sunlit fall of rain,"
and so on, though this was July, and not spring at all. And--
"A man had given all other bliss
And all his worldly work for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."
Her own lips were not perfect, yet, as lips went, they were well enough,
and, anyway, kisses would not be wasted on them.
She went down the lane, full of the anxious trembling longing that is
youth's unrecognised joy, and at the corner, where the lane meets the
high white road, she met him. That is to say, she stopped short, as the
whispering silence of the morning was broken by a sudden rattle and a
heavy thud, not pleasant to hear. And he and his bicycle fell together,
six yards from her feet. The bicycle bounded, and twisted, and settled
itself down with bold, resentful clatterings. The man lay without
moving.
Her Tennyson quotations were swept away. She ran to help.
"Oh, are you hurt?" she said. He lay quite still. There was blood on his
head, and one arm was doubled under his back. What could she do? She
tried to lift him from the road to the grass edge of it. He was a big
man, but she did succeed in raising his shoulders, and freeing that
right arm. As she lifted it, he groaned. She sat down in the dust of the
road, and lowered his shoulders till his head lay on her lap. Then she
tied her handkerchief round his head, and waited till someone should
pass on the way to work. Three men and a boy came after the long half
hour in which he lay unconscious, the red patch on her handkerchief
spreading slowly, and she looking at him, and getting by heart every
line of the pale, worn, handsome face. She spoke to him, she stroked his
hair. She touched his white cheek with her finger-tips, and wondered
about him, and pitied him, and took possession of him as a new and
precious appanage of her life, so that when the labourers appeared, she
said--
"He's very badly hurt. Go and fetch some more men and a hurdle, and the
boy might run for the doctor. Tell him to come to the White House. It's
nearest, and it may be dangerous to move him further."
"The 'Blue Lion' ain't but a furlong further, miss," said one of the
men, touching his cap.
"It's much more than that," said she, who had but the vaguest notion of
a furlong's length. "Do go and do what I tell you."
They went, and, as they went, remorselessly dissected, with the bluntest
instruments, her motives and her sentiments. It was not hidden from
them, that wordless whisper in the shadowy inner chamber of her heart.
"Perhaps the 'Blue Lion' isn't so very much further, but I can't give
him up. No, I can't." But it was almost hidden from _her_. In her mind's
outer hall she said--
"I'm sure I ought to take him home. No girl in a book would hesitate.
And I can make it all right with mother. It would be cruel to give him
up to strangers."