Noiselessly turned the wheels in the grass. We were descending the hill.
A jolt, and we were in the road. A hedgerow shut us out from the two
shrouded watchers by the tent. The braying music fainted away; and apart
from the trotting hoofs and the grinding of the wheels in the dust, the
only sound I heard was an occasional lofty crackle in space, as a
rocket--our last greeting from the circus--stooping on its fiery course,
strewed its coloured stars into the moonlight. Then the rearing
hill-side shut us out.
Speechlessly, from the floor of the cart, I watched the stooping figure
above me. Ever and again, at any sudden lurch against a stone, he shrank
down, then slowly lifted himself, turned his head and smiled.
"That's the tune, sir; that's the tune, sir." The words aimlessly
repeated themselves in my brain, as if bringing me a message I could not
grasp or understand. "What was I thinking about?" a voice kept asking
me. A strange, sluggish look dwelt in the dilated pupils under the
drooping lids when the moonbeams struck in on us from between the
branches. His right hand hung loosely down. I clasped it--stone-cold.
"Listen, tell me," I entreated, "you fell? I heard them calling,
and--and the clapping, what then?" I could speak no louder, but he
seemed scarcely able to hear me.
"My shoulder," he answered thickly, as if the words came sluggishly and
were half-strange to him. "I fell.... Nothing: nothing. Only that I love
you."
The breath sighed itself away. I leaned my cheek against the unanswering
hand, and chafed it with mine. Where now? Where now?
"We must keep awake," I called beguilingly into the slumbrous face,
after a long silence, as if to a child. "Awake!"
A sigh, as he smiled in answer, shook him from head to foot.
"You are thirsty? What's this on your coat? Look, there is a gate. I'll
creep through and get help." I scrambled up, endeavouring in vain to
clutch at the reins.
But no; his head stirred its No; the left hand still held them fast.
"Only ... wait."
_Was_ it "wait"--that last faint word? It fell into my mind like a leaf
into a torrent, and before I could be sure of it, the sound was gone.
Instinct, neither his nor mine, guided us on through the winding lanes,
up hill and down, along the margin of sleeping wood and light-dappled
stream, over a level crossing whose dew-rusted rails gleamed in the
moon, then up once more, the retreating hill-side hollowly echoing to
every clap of hoof against stone. There was no strength or will left in
me, only thoughts which in the dark within, between waking and sleeping,
seemed like hovering flies to veer and dart--fantasies, fragments of
dream, rather than thoughts.
I realized how sorely he was hurt, yet not then in my stupidity and
horror--or is it that I refused to confess it to myself?--that his hurt
was mortal. Morning would come soon. I grasped tight the hand in mine.
Then help. In this monotony and weariness of mind and body, the passing
trees seemed to dance and gesticulate before my eyes. A torturing
drowsiness crept over me which in vain, thrusting up my eyelids with my
fingers, beating my senseless feet on the floor of the cart, I tried to
dispel. Once, I remember, I rose and threw my cape over his shoulder. At
last I must have slept.
For the next thing I became conscious of was that the cart was at a
standstill, and that the pony stood cropping the thyme-sweet turf by the
wayside. I touched the cold dark hand. "Hush, my dear, we are here!"
But I expected no answer. The head was sunken between the heavy
shoulders; the pallid features were set in an empty stare. There wasn't
a sound in the whole world, far or near. "Oh, but you haven't said a
single word to me!" It was the only speech in my mind--a reproach. It
died on my lips; I drew away. What was this?--a dreadful fear plucked at
my sleeve, fear of the company I was in, of a solitude never so much as
tasted before. I leapt out of the cart, stood up in the dust, and in the
creeping light stared about me.
Every window of the creeper-hung cottage was shrouded, its gate
latched. I struggled to climb the fence, to fling a stone through the
casement. The moon shone glassily in the cold skies, but daybreak was in
the east; I must wait till morning. With eyes fixed on the motionless
head I sat down in the grass by the wayside. Ever and again, after
solemnly turning to survey me, the pony dragged the cart on a foot or
two under the willows, nibbling the dewy grass.
Roused suddenly from stupor by the howling of a dog, I leapt up. Who
called? Where was I? What had I forgotten? In renewed and dreadful
recognition I looked vacantly around me. A strangeness had come. His
company was mine no longer.
Dawn brightened. The voice of a thrush pealed out of the orchard beyond
the stone wall--wild and sweet as in Spring. I crouched on the ground,
elbows on knees, and now kept steady watch upon those night-hung upper
windows. At last a curtain was drawn aside. An invisible face within
must have looked down upon us in the lane. The casement was unlatched
and thrust open, and a grey, tousled head pushed out as if in alarm into
the keen morning. At sight of it a violent hiccoughing seized me, so
that when an old woman appeared at her door and hobbled out to the cart,
I could not make myself understood. Her sleep-bleared, faded eyes
surveyed me with horror and suspicion--as if in my smallness there I
looked scarcely human. She shook her crooked fingers at me, to scare me
off; then stooping, put her head into the cart. I cried out, and ran----