HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WALKED OVER TO THE VERDERER'S
HALL. HOW ACHILLES KNEW BETTER THAN THE DOCTORS. THE ACCIDENT WAS
NOT A FATAL ACCIDENT. AN OLD GENERAL WHO MADE A POOR FIGURE AS A
CORPSE. HOW THE WOUNDED MAN'S FATHER AND SISTER CAME, AND HOW HE
HIMSELF WAS TO BE CARRIED TO THE TOWERS
There was no need for a reason why Lady Gwendolen and her mother should
take the first opportunity of walking over to the Lodge, where this man
lay either dead or dying; but one presented itself to the Countess, as
an addendum to others less defined. "We ought to go," said she, "if only
for poor old Stephen's sake. The old man will be quite off his head with
grief. And it was such an absolute accident."
This was on the way, walking over the grassland. Aunt Constance felt a
little unconvinced. He who sends a bullet abroad at random may hear
later that it had its billet all along, though it was so silent about
it. As for the girl, she was in a fever of excitement; to reach the
scene of disaster, anyhow--to hear some news of respite, possibly. No
one had vouched for Death so far.
Sir Coupland was already on the spot, having only stayed long enough to
give particulars of the catastrophe to the Earl; but he was not by the
bedside. He was outside the cottage, speaking with Dr. Nash, the local
doctor from Grantley Thorpe, who had passed most of the night there.
There was a sort of conclusiveness about their conference, even as seen
from a distance, which promised ill. As the three ladies approached, he
came to meet them.
"Is there a chance?" said the Countess, as he came within hearing.
Only a shake of the head in reply. It quenches all the eagerness to hear
in the three faces, each in its own degree. Aunt Constance's gives place
to "Oh dear!" and solicitude. Lady Ancester's to a gasp like sudden
pain, and "Oh, Sir Coupland! are you quite, _quite_ sure?" Her
daughter's to a sharp cry, or the first of one cut short, and "Oh,
mamma!" Then a bitten lip, and a face shrinking from the others' view as
she turns and looks out across the Park. That is Arthur's Bridge over
yonder, where last evening she spoke with this man that now lies dead,
and took some note of his great dark eyes in the living glory of the
sunset.
As the world and sky swim about her for a moment, even she herself
wonders why she should be so hard hit. A perfect stranger! A man she had
never before in her life spoken to. And then, for such a moment! But the
great dark eyes of the man now dead are upon her, and she does not at
first hear that her mother is speaking to her.
"Gwen dear!... Gwen darling!--you hear what Sir Coupland says? We can do
no good." She has to touch her daughter's arm to get her attention.
"Well!" The girl turns, and her tears are as plain on her face as its
beauty. "That means go home?" says she; and then gives a sort of
heart-broken sigh. "Oh dear!" Her lack of claim to grieve for this man
cuts like a knife.
"We can do no good," her mother repeats. "Now, can we?"
"No, I see. Suppose we go." She turns as though to go, but either her
intention hangs fire, or she only wishes her face unseen for the moment;
for she pauses, saying to her mother: "There is old Stephen. Ought we
not to see him--one of us?"
"Yes!" says her ladyship, decisive on reflection. "I had forgotten about
old Stephen. But _I_ can go to him. You go back!... Yes, dear, you had
better go back.... What?"
"I am not going back. I want to see the body--this man's body. I want to
see his face.... No; I am not a child, mamma. Let me have my way."
"If you must, darling, you must. But I cannot see what use it can be.
See--here is Aunt Constance! _She_ does not want to see it...." A
confirmatory head-shake from Miss Dickenson. "Why should _you_?"
"Aunt Constance never spoke to him. I did. And he spoke to me. Let me
go, mamma dear. Don't oppose me." Indeed, the girl seems almost
feverishly anxious, quite on a sudden, to have this wish. No need for
her mother to accompany her, she adds. To which her mother replies:--"I
would if you wished it, dear Gwen"; whereupon Aunt Constance, perceiving
in her heart an opportunity for public service tending to distinction,
says so would she. Further, in view of a verdict from somebody somewhere
later on, that she showed a very nice feeling on this occasion, she
takes an opportunity before they reach the cottage to say to Lady
Gwendolen in an important aside:--"You won't let your mother go into the
room, dear. Anything of this sort tells so on her system." To which the
reply is rather abrupt:--"You needn't come, either of you." So that is
settled.
The body had not been carried into a room of the cottage, but into what
goes by the name of the Verderer's Hall, some fifty yards off. That much
carriage was spared by doing so. It now lies on the "Lord's table," so
called not from any reference to sacramental usage, but because the Lord
of the Manor sat at it on the occasions of the Manorial Courts. Three
centuries have passed since the last Court Baron; the last landlord who
sat in real council with his tenantry under its roof having been Roger
Earl of Ancester, who was killed in the Civil War. But old customs die
hard, and every Michaelmas Day--except it fall on a Sunday--the Earl or
his Steward at twelve o'clock receives from the person who enjoys a
right of free-warren over certain acres that have long since harboured
neither hare nor rabbit, an annual tribute which a chronicle as old as
Chaucer speaks of as "iiij tusshes of a wild bore." If no boars' tusks
are forthcoming, he has to be content with some equivalent devised to
meet their scarcity nowadays. Otherwise, the old Hall grows to be more
and more a museum of curios connected with the Park and outlying
woodlands, the remains of the old forest that covered the land when even
Earls were upstarts. A record pair of antlers on the wall is still
incredulously measured tip to tip by visitors unconvinced by local
testimony, and a respectable approach to Roman Antiquities is at rest
after a learned description by Archaeology. The place smells sweet of an
old age that is so slow--that the centuries have handled so
tenderly--that one's heart thinks of it rather as spontaneous
preservation than decay. It will see to its own survival through some
lifetimes yet, if no man restores it or converts it into a Studio.
Is his rating "Death" or not, whose body is so still on its extemporised
couch--just a mattress from the keeper's cottage close at hand? Was the
doctor's wording warranted when he said just now under his
breath:--"_It_ is in here"? Could he not have said "He"? What does the
dog think, that waits and watches immovable at _its_ feet? If this is
death, what is he watching for? What does the old keeper himself think,
who lingers by this man whom he may have slain--this man who _may_ live,
yet? He has scarcely taken his eyes off that white face and its
strapped-up wound from the first moment of his sight of it. He does not
note the subdued entry of Lady Gwendolen and the two doctors, and when
touched on the shoulder to call his attention to the presence of a
ladyship from the Castle, defers looking round until a fancy of his
restless hope dies down--a fancy that the mouth was closing of itself.
He has had such fancies by scores for the last few hours, and said
farewell to each with a groan.
"My mother is at the cottage, Stephen," says Gwen. "She would like to
see you, I know." Thereon the old man turns to go. He looks ten years
older than his rather contentious self of yesterday. The young lady says
no word either way of his responsibility for this disaster. She cannot
blame, but she cannot quite absolve him yet, without a grudge. Her
mother can; and will, somehow.
The dog has run to her side for a moment--has uttered an undertone of
bewildered complaint; then has gone back patiently to his old post, and
is again watching. The great surgeon and the girl stand side by side,
watching also. The humbler medico stands back a little, his eyes rather
on his senior than on the body.
"It is absolutely certain--this?" says Lady Gwen; questioning, not
affirming. She is wonderfully courageous--so Sir Coupland thinks--in the
presence of Death. But she is ashy white.
He utters the barest syllable of doubt; then half-turns for courtesy to
his junior, who echoes it. Then each shakes his head, looking at the
other.
"Is there no sound--nothing to show?" Gwen has some hazy idea that there
ought to be, if there is not, some official note of death due from the
dying, a rattle in the throat at least.
Sir Coupland sees her meaning. "In a case of this sort," says he, "sheer
loss of blood, the breath may cease so gradually that sound is
impossible. All one can say is that there _is_ no breath, and no action
of the heart--so far as one can tell." He speaks in a business-like way
that is a sort of compliment to his hearer; no accommodation of facts as
to a child; then raises the lifeless hand slightly and lets it fall,
saying:--"See!"
To his surprise the girl, without any comment, also raises the band in
hers, and stands holding it. "Yes--it will fall," says he, as though she
had spoken questioning it. But still she holds it, and never shrinks
from the horror of its mortality, somewhat to the wonder of her only
spectator. For the other doctor has withdrawn, to speak to someone
outside.
Of a sudden the dog Achilles starts barking. A short, sharp, startled
bark--once, twice--and is silent. The girl lays the dead hand gently
down, not dropping it, but replacing it where it first lay. She does not
speak for a moment--cannot, perhaps. Then it comes with a cry, neither
of pain nor joy--mere tension. "Oh, Dr. Merridew ... the fingers closed
... They closed on mine ... the fingers _closed_.... I know it. I know
it ... The fingers _closed_!..." She says it again and again as though
in terror that her word might be doubted. He sees as she turns to him
that all her pride of self-control has given way. She is fighting
against an outburst of tears, and her breath comes and goes at will, or
at the will of some power that drives it. Sir Coupland may be
contemplating speech--something it is correct to say, something the
cooler judgment will endorse--but whatever it is he keeps it to himself.
He is not one of those cheap sages that has _hysteria_ on his tongue's
tip to account for everything. It _may_ be that; but it may be ...
Well--he has seen some odd cases in his time.
So, without speaking to the agitated young lady, he simply calls his
colleague back; and, after a word or two aside with him, says to
her:--"You had better leave him to us. Go now." It gives her confidence
that he does not soothe or cajole, but speaks as he would to a man. She
goes, and as she walks across to the Keeper's Lodge makes a little peace
for her heart out of small material. Sir Coupland said "him" this
time--look you!--not "it" as before.
The daughter finds the mother, five minutes later, trying a well-meant
word to the old keeper; to put a little heart in him, if possible. It
was no fault of his; he only carried out his orders, and so on. Gwen is
silent about her experience; she will not raise false hopes. Besides,
she is only half grieved for the old chap--has only a languid sympathy
in her heart for him who, tampering with implements of Death, becomes
Cain unawares. If she is right, he will know in time. Meanwhile it will
be a lesson to him to avoid triggers, and will thus minimise the
exigencies of Hell. Also, she has recovered her self-command; and will
not show, even to her mother, how keen her interest has been in this man
in the balance betwixt life and death.
As to the older lady, who has fought shy of seeing the body, the affair
is no more than a casualty, very little coloured by the fact that its
victim is a "gentleman." This sort of thing may impress the groundlings,
while a real Earl or Duke remains untouched. A coronet has a very
levelling effect on the plains below. Your mere baronet is but a
hillock, after all. Possibly, however, this is a proletariate view,
which always snubs rank, and her ladyship the Countess may never have
given a thought to this side of the case. Certainly she is honestly
grieved on behalf of her old friend Stephen, whom she has known for
thirty years past. In fact, of the two, as they walk back to the Towers,
the mother shows more than the daughter the reaction of emotion.
Says her daughter to her as they walk back--the three as they came--"I
believe he will recover, for all that. I believe Dr. Merridew believes
it, too. I am certain the fingers moved." Her manner lays stress on her
own equanimity. It is more self-contained than need be, all things
considered.
"The eyesight is easily deceived," says Miss Dickenson, prompt with the
views of experience. She always holds a brief for common sense, and is
considered an authority. "Even experts are misled--sometimes--in such
cases...."
Gwen interrupts:--"It had nothing to do with eyesight. I _felt_ the
fingers move." Whereupon her mother, roused by her sudden emphasis,
says:--"But we are so glad that it _should_ be so, Gwen darling." And
then, when the girl stops in her walk and says:--"Of course you are--but
why not?" she has a half-smile as for petulance forgiven, as she
says:--"Because you fired up so about it, darling; that's all. We did
not understand that you had hold of the hand. Was it stiff?" This in a
semi-whisper of protest against the horror of the subject.
"Not the least. Cold!--oh, how cold!" She shudders of set purpose to
show how cold. "But not _stiff_."
The two other ladies go into a partnership of seniority, glancing at
each other; and each contributes to a duet about the duty of being
hopeful, and we shall soon know, and at any rate, the case could not be
in better hands, and so on. But whereas the elder lady was only working
for reassurance--puzzled somewhat at a certain flushed emphasis in this
beautiful daughter of hers--Miss Smith-Dickenson was taking mental
notes, and looking intuitive. She was still looking intuitive when she
joined the numerous party at lunch, an hour later. She had more than one
inquiry addressed to her about "this unfortunate accident," but she
reserved her information, with mystery, acquiring thereby a more defined
importance. A river behind a _barrage_ is much more impressive than a
pump.
* * * * *
Sir Coupland Merridew's place at table was still empty when the first
storm of comparison of notes set in over the events and deeds of the
morning. A conscious reservation was in the air about the disaster of
last night, causing talk to run on every other subject, but betrayed by
more interest in the door and its openings than lunch generally shows.
Presently it would open for the overdue guest, and he would have news
worth hearing, said Hope. For stinted versions of event had leaked out,
and had outlived the reservations and corrections of those who knew.
Lunch was conscious of Sir Coupland's arrival in the house before he
entered, and its factors nodded to each other and said: "That's him!"
Nice customs of Grammar bow before big mouthfuls. However, Miss
Smith-Dickenson did certainly say: "I believe that _is_ Sir Coupland."
It was, and in his face was secret content and reserve. In response to a
volley of What?--Well?--Tell us!--and so forth, he only said:--"Shan't
tell you anything till I've had something to eat!" But he glanced across
at Lady Gwen and nodded slightly--a nod for her exclusive use.
Lunch, liberated by what amounted to certainty that the man was not
killed, ran riot; almost all its factors taking a little more, thank
you! It was brought up on its haunches by being suddenly made aware that
Sir Coupland--having had something to eat--had spoken. He had to repeat
his words to reach the far end of the long table.
"Yes--I said ... only of course if you make such a row you can't
hear.... I said that this gentleman cannot be said to have recovered
consciousness"--here he paused for a mistaken exclamation of
disappointment to get nipped in the bud, and then continued--"yet a
while. However, I am glad to say I--both of us, Dr. Nash and myself, I
should say--were completely mistaken about the case. It has turned out
contrary to every expectation that...." Nobody noticed that a pause here
was due to Lady Gwen having made "No!" with her lips, and looked a
protest at the speaker. He went on:--"Well ... in short ... I would have
sworn the man was dead ... and he isn't! That's all I have to say about
it at present. It might be over-sanguine to say he is alive--meaning
that he will succeed in keeping so--but he is certainly not _dead_."
Miss Dickenson lodged her claim to a mild form of omniscience by saying
with presence of mind:--"Exactly!" but without presumption, so that only
her near neighbours heard her. Self-respect called for no more.
Had the insensible man spoken?--the Earl asked pertinently. Oh dear, no!
Nothing so satisfactory as that, so far. The vitality was almost _nil_.
The Earl retired on his question to listen to what a Peninsular veteran
was saying to Gwen. This ancient warrior was one who talked but little,
and then only to two sorts, old men like himself, with old memories of
India and the Napoleonic wars, and young women like Gwen. As this was
his way, it did not seem strange that he should address her all but
exclusively, with only a chance side-word now and then to his host, for
mere courtesy.
"When I was in Madras in eighteen-two--no--eighteen-three," he said, "I
was in the Nineteenth Dragoons under Maxwell--he was killed, you
know--in that affair with the Mahrattas...."
"I know. I've read about the Battle of Assaye, and how General Wellesley
had two horses shot under him...."
"That was it. Scindia, you know--that affair! They had some very good
artillery for those days, and our men had to charge up to the guns. I
was cut down in Maxwell's cavalry charge, and went near bleeding to
death. He was a fine fellow that did it...."
"Never mind him! You were going to tell me about yourself."
"Why--I was given up for dead. It was a good job I escaped decent
interment. But the surgeon gave me the benefit of the doubt, and stood
me over for a day or two. Then, as I didn't decay properly...."
"Oh, General--don't be so horrible!" This from Miss Smith-Dickenson
close at hand. But Gwen is too eager to hear, to care about delicacies
of speech, and strikes in:--
"Do go on, General! Never mind Aunt Constance. She is so fussy. Go
on--'didn't decay properly'...."
"Well--I was behindhand! Not up to my duties, considered as a corpse!
The doctor stood me over another twenty-four hours, and I came to. I was
very much run down, certainly, but I _did_ come to, or I shouldn't be
here now to tell you about it, my dear. I should have been sorry."
A matter-of-fact gentleman "pointed out" that had General Rawnsley died
of his wounds, he would not have been in a position to feel either joy
or sorrow, or to be conscious that he was not dining at Ancester. The
General fished up a wandering eyeglass to look at him, and said:--"Quite
correct!" Miss Smith-Dickenson remarked upon the dangers attendant on
over-literal interpretations. The Hon. Mr. Pellew perceived in this that
Miss Dickenson had a sort of dry humour.
"But you _did_ come to, General, and you _are_ telling me about it,"
said Lady Gwen. "Now, how long was it before you rejoined your
regiment?"
"H'm--well! I wasn't good for much two months later, or I should have
come in for the fag-end of the campaign. All right in three months, I
should say. But then--I was a young fellah!--in those days. How old's
your man?"
"This gentleman who has been shot?" says Gwen, with some stiffness. "I
have not the slightest idea." But Sir Coupland answered the question for
her. "At a guess, General, twenty-five or twenty-six. He ought to do
well if he gets through the next day or two. He may have a good
constitution. I can't say yet. Yours must have been remarkable."
"I had such a good appetite, you know," says the General. "Such a devil
of a twist! If I had had my way, I should have been at Argaum two months
later. But, good Lard!--they wouldn't let me out of Hospital." The old
soldier, roused by the recollection of a fifty-year-old grievance, still
rankling, launched into a denunciation of the effeminacy and timidity of
Authorities and Seniors, of all sorts and conditions. His youth was back
upon him with its memories, and he had forgotten that he too was now a
Senior. His torrent of thinly disguised execrations was of service to
Lady Gwen; as the original subject of the conversation, just shot, was
naturally forgotten. She had got all the enlightenment she wanted about
him, and was cultivating an artificial lack of interest in his accident.
She was, however, a little dissatisfied with her own success in this
branch of horticulture. Her anxiety had felt itself fully justified till
now by the bare facts of the case. Her longing that this man should not
die was so safe while it seemed certain that he could not live, that she
felt under no obligation to account to herself for it. Analysis of
niceties of feeling in the presence of Death were uncalled for, surely.
But now, with at least a chance of his recovery, she felt that she ought
to be able to think of something else. So she talked of Sardanapalus and
Charles Keane at the Princesses' Theatre--the first a play, the second a
player--and the General, declining more than monosyllables to the
matter-o'-fact gentleman, subsided into wrathful recollection of an
exasperated young Dragoon chafing under canvas beneath an Indian sun,
and panting for news of his regiment in the north, fifty years before.
But such intermittent conversation could not prevent her seeing that
Norbury the butler had handed a visiting-card, pencilled on the back, to
her father, and had whispered a message to him with a sense of its
gravity, and that her father had replied:--"Yes, say I will be there
presently." Nor that--in response to remote inquiry from his Countess
at the end of an avenue of finger-glasses--he had thrown the words
"Hamilton Torrens and the daughter--mother too ill to come--won't come
up to the house until he's fit to move!" all the length of the table.
That her mother had said:--"Oh yes--you know them," perhaps because of
an apologetic manner in her husband for being the recipient of the
message. Also that curiosity and information were mutual in the avenue,
and that next-door neighbours but one were saying:--"What's that?" and
getting no answer.
However, the Intelligence Department did itself credit in the end, and
everyone knew that, immediately on the receipt of sanction from
headquarters, Tom Kettering the young groom had mounted the grey mare--a
celebrity in these parts--and made a foxhunter's short cut across a
stiff country to carry the news of the disaster to Pensham Steynes, Sir
Hamilton Torrens's house twenty miles off, and that that baronet and his
daughter Irene Torrens had come at once. "I hope he hasn't killed the
mare," said the Earl apprehensively. But his wife summoned Norbury to a
secret confidence, saying after it:--"No--it's all right--he came on the
box--didn't ride." From which the Earl knew--if the avenue didn't--that
Tom Kettering the groom, after an incredible break across country,
stabled the mare at Pensham Steynes, and rode back with the carriage.
The whole thing had been negotiated in less than three hours.
All these things Gwendolen comes to be aware of somehow. But all of us
know how a chance word in a confused conversation stays by the hearer,
who is forced to listen to what is no elucidation of it, and is
discontented. Such a word had struck this young lady; and she watched
for her father, as lunch died away, to get the elucidation overdue. She
was able to intercept him at the end of a long colloquy with Sir
Coupland. "What did you mean, papa dearest, just now?..."
"What did I mean, dear?... When?"
"By 'until he's fit to move'?"
"I meant until Sir Coupland says he can be safely brought up to the
house."
"_This_ house, my dear?" It is not Gwen who speaks, but her mother, who
has joined the conversation.
"Certainly, my love," says the Earl, with a kind of appealing
diffidence. "If you have no very strong objection. He can be carried,
Sir Coupland says, as soon as the wound is safe from inflammation. Of
course he must not be left at the Hall."
"Of course not. But there are beds at the Lodge...." However, the Earl
says with a meek self-assertion:--"I think I would rather he were
brought here. His father and George were at Christ Church together...."
Before which her ladyship concedes the point. His lordship then says he
shall go at once to the Hall to see Sir Hamilton, and Gwen suggests that
she shall accompany him. She may persuade Miss Torrens to come up to the
Towers.
This assumption that the wounded man could be moved, after conversation
between the Earl and Sir Coupland, was so reassuring, that Gwendolen
felt it more than ever due to herself to cultivate that indifference
about his recovery. However, she could not easily be too affectionate
and hospitable to his sister under the circumstances.
By-the-by, it was rather singular that she had never seen this Irene
Torrens, when they were almost neighbours--only eighteen miles by road
between them. And Irene's father had been her Uncle George's great
friend at Oxford; both at Christ Church! This uncle, who, like his
friend Torrens, had gone into the army, was killed in action at Rangoon,
long before Gwendolen's day.
It all takes so long to tell. The omission of half would shorten the
tale and spare the reader so much. What a very small book the History of
the World would be if all the events were left out!