THE RED STREAK.
BARBARA was not a girl to allow precious moments to be lost; instead
of giving way to emotion and exclamations, she knelt and tore off her
father’s waistcoat, ripped his shirt, and found a gash under the rib;
tearing off her kerchief she ran, sopped it in cold water, and held it
tightly to the wound.
‘Run, Eve, run, summon help!’ she cried. But Eve was powerless to be of
assistance; she had turned white to the lips, had staggered back to the
door, and sent the Jack rolling over the turf to her father’s feet.
‘I am faint,’ gasped poor Eve. ‘I cannot see blood.’
‘You must,’ exclaimed Barbara, ‘command yourself. Ring the alarm bell:
Jasper—someone—will hear.’
‘The power is gone from my arms,’ sobbed Eve, shivering.
‘Call one of the maids. Bid her ring,’ ordered the elder.
Eve, holding the sides of the door to prevent herself from falling,
deadly white, with knees that yielded under her, staggered into the
house.
Presently the old bell hung in a pent-house over the roof of the chapel
began to give tongue.
Barbara, kneeling behind her father, raised his head on her bosom,
and held her kerchief to his side. The first token of returning
consciousness was given by his hands, which clutched at some grass he
had cut. Then he opened his eyes.
‘Why is the bell tolling?’
‘Dear papa! it is calling for help. Yon must be moved. You are badly
hurt.’
‘I feel it. In my side. How was it? I do not remember. Ah! the scythe.
Has the blade cut deep?’
‘I cannot tell, papa, till the doctor comes. Are you easier now?’
‘You did it. Interfering with me when I was mowing. Teasing me. You
will not leave me alone. You are always watching me. You wanted to
take the scythe from me. If you had left me alone this would not have
happened.’
‘Never mind, darling papa, how it happened. Now we must do our best to
cure you.’
‘Am I badly hurt? What are these women coming crowding round me for? I
do not want the maids here. Drive them back, Barbara.’
Barbara made a sign to the cook and house and kitchen maids to stand
back.
‘You must be moved to your room, papa.’
‘Am I dying, Barbara?’
‘I hope and trust not, dear.’
‘I cannot die without speaking; but I will not speak till I am on the
point of death.’
‘Do not speak, father, at all now.’
He obeyed and remained quiet, with his eyes looking up at the sky. Thus
he lay till Jasper arrived breathless. He had heard the bell, and had
run, suspecting some disaster.
‘Let me carry him, with one of the maids,’ said Jasper.
‘No,’ answered Barbara. ‘You shall take his shoulders, I his feet. We
will carry him on a mattress. Cook and Jane have brought one. Help me
to raise him on to it.’
Jasper was the man she wanted. He did not lose his head. He did not
ask questions, how the accident had happened; he did not waste words in
useless lamentation. He sent a maid at once to the stable to saddle the
horse. A girl, in the country, can saddle and bridle as well as a boy.
‘I am off for the doctor,’ he said shortly, as soon as he had seen Mr.
Jordan removed to the same downstairs room in which he had so recently
lain himself.
‘Send for the lawyer,’ said Mr. Jordan, who had lain with his eyes shut.
‘The lawyer, papa!’
‘I must make my will. I might die, and then what would become of Eve?’
‘Ride on to Tavistock after you have summoned Mr. Coyshe,’ said Barbara.
When Jasper was gone, Eve, who had been fluttering about the door, came
in, and threw herself sobbing on her knees by her father’s bed. He put
out his hand, stroked her brow, and called her tender names.
She was in great distress, reproaching herself for having asked him to
mow the grass for her; she charged herself with having wounded him.
‘No—no, Eve!’ said her father. ‘It was not your fault. Barbara would
not let me alone. She interfered, and I lost my balance.’
‘I am so glad it was not I,’ sobbed Eve.
‘Let me look at you. Stand up,’ he said.
She rose, but averted her face somewhat, so as not to see the blood on
the sheet. He had been caressing her. Now, as he looked at her, he saw
a red streak across her forehead.
‘My child! what is that? You are hurt! Barbara, help! She is bleeding.’
Barbara looked.
‘It is nothing,’ she said; ‘your hand, papa, has left some of its
stains on her brow. Come with me, Eve, and I will wash it clean.’
The colour died completely out of Eve’s face, and she seemed again
about to faint. Barbara hastily bathed a napkin in fresh water, and
removed all traces of blood from her forehead, and then kissed it.
‘Is it gone?’ whispered Eve.
‘Entirely.’
‘I feel it still. I cannot remain here.’ Then the young girl crept out
of the room, hardly able to sustain herself on her feet.
When Barbara was alone with her father, she said to him, in her quiet,
composed tones, ‘Papa, though I do not in the least think this wound
will prove fatal, I am glad you have sent for Lawyer Knighton, because
you ought to make your will, and provide for Eve. I made up my mind to
speak to you when I was on my way home from Ashburton.’
‘Well, what have you to say?’
‘Papa! I’ve been thinking that as the money laid by for Eve is gone for
ever, and as my aunt has left me a little more than sixteen hundred
pounds, you ought to give Morwell to Eve—that is, for the rest of your
term of it, some sixty-three years, I think. If you like to make a
little charge on it for me, do so, but do not let it be much. I shall
not require much to make me happy. I shall never marry. If I had a good
deal of money it is possible some man would be base enough to want
to marry me for it; but if I have only a little, no one will think
of asking me. There is no one whom I care for whom I would dream of
taking—under no circumstances—nothing would move me to it—nothing. And
as an old maid, what could I do with this property? Eve must marry.
Indeed, she can have almost anyone she likes. I do not think she cares
for the doctor, but there must be some young squire about here who
would suit her.’
‘Yes, Barbara, you are right.’
‘I am glad you think so,’ she said, smiled, and coloured, pleased with
his commendation, so rarely won. ‘No one can see Eve without loving
her. I have my little scheme. Captain Cloberry is coming home from the
army this ensuing autumn, and if he is as nice as his sisters say—then
something may come of it. But I do not know whether Eve cares or does
not care for Mr. Coyshe. He has not spoken to her yet. I think, papa,
it would be well to let him and everyone know that Morwell is not to
come to me, but is to go to Eve. Then everyone will know what to expect.
‘It shall be so. If Mr. Knighton comes, I will get the doctor to be in
the room when I make my will, and Jasper Babb also.’ He considered for
a while, and then said, ‘In spite of all—there is good in you, Barbara.
I forgive you my wound. There—you may kiss me.’
As Barbara wished, and Mr. Jordan intended, so was the will executed.
Mr. Knighton, the solicitor, arrived at the same time as the surgeon;
he waited till Mr. Coyshe had bandaged up the wound, and then he
entered the sick man’s room, summoned by Barbara.
‘My second daughter,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘is, in the eye of the law,
illegitimate. My elder daughter has urged me to do what I likewise feel
to be right—to leave my title to Morwell estate to Eve.’
‘What is her surname—I mean her mother’s name?’
‘That you need not know. I leave Morwell to my daughter Eve, commonly
called Eve Jordan. That is Barbara’s wish.’
‘I urged it on my father,’ said Barbara.
Jasper, who had been called in, looked into her face with an expression
of admiration. She resented it, frowned, and averted her head.
When the will had been properly executed, the doctor left the room with
Jasper. He had already given his instructions to Barbara how Mr. Jordan
was to be treated. Outside the door he found Eve fluttering, nervous,
alarmed, entreating to be reassured as to her father’s condition.
‘Dear Barbie disturbed him whilst he was mowing,’ she said, ‘and he
let the scythe slip, and so got hurt.’ She was readily consoled when
assured that the old gentleman lay in no immediate danger. He must,
however, be kept quiet, and not allowed to leave his bed for some time.
Then Eve bounded away, light as a roe. The reaction set in at once. She
was like a cork in water, that can only be kept depressed by force;
remove the pressure and the cork leaps to the surface again.
Such was her nature. She could not help it.
‘Mr. Jasper,’ said the surgeon, ‘I have never gone over this property.
If you have a spare hour and would do me a favour, I should like to
look about me. The quality of the land is good?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Is there anywhere a map of the property that I could run my eye over?’
‘In the study.’
‘What about the shooting, now?’
‘It is not preserved. If it were it would be good, the cover is so
fine.’
‘And there seems to be a good deal of timber.’
After about an hour Mr. Coyshe rode away. ‘Some men are Cyclopses, as
far as their own interests are concerned,’ said he to himself; ‘they
carry but a single eye. I invariably use two.’
In the evening, when Barbara came to her sister’s room to tell her that
she intended to sit up during the night with her father, she said:
‘Mr. Jasper is very kind. He insists on taking half the watch, he will
relieve me at two o’clock. What is the matter with you, Eve?’
‘I can see nothing, Barbie, but it is there still.’
‘What is?’
‘That red mark. I have been rubbing, and washing, and it burns like
fire.’
‘I can see, my dear Eve, that where you have rubbed your pretty white
delicate skin, you have made it red.’
‘I have rubbed it in. I feel it. I cannot get the feel away. It stains
me. It hurts me. It burns me.’