He could not quite say how it had happened. It had come so suddenly,
so suddenly. And now, a few steps behind the others, he was walking
toward the house. He had a feeling of sickness, of horror: a helpless
misery, the meaning of which he shrank from realising, darkened his
mind. Only he remembered――he could not help remembering: it was there
before him with a curious vividness――the light of the afternoon sun on
the long white road; the glare, the heat, something dark and motionless
stretched in the dust――still, very still....
Brocklehurst had been walking a few paces behind him, and close to the
hedge. He had been pulling some wildflowers――a few had been scattered
about him as he lay there on the road, so strangely quiet and white,
a thin stream of red blood creeping through his hair and widening
out, forming a little patch of mud.... And when he had lifted him, the
curious whiteness of his face!
Yet in a way he had escaped wonderfully. None of the wheels had touched
him: just that single kick a little above his left ear....
They had been walking slowly, Brocklehurst close to the hedge, he,
Graham, in the middle of the road, when the terrified horses had come
dashing round the corner, the drag swaying violently behind them, one
of the reins hanging broken and useless. He remembered jumping to one
side. His foot had slipped on something, and he had fallen. The dust,
the noise, a wheel just touching his coat as he rolled himself out of
the way.... He knew now that Brocklehurst had sprung at the horses’
heads, had given him, it might be, that one extra moment....
And now it was all over. Their long afternoon in the boat; on the
rocks; their little act of pagan worship;――all that had been _this_
afternoon, and it was over. He was walking, a few steps behind the
others, up the avenue toward the house.
X
Night at last.
Every one at length gone away; everything arranged; the house still and
solemn.
His father had left him alone for a little with the dead boy. At
last!...
His sorrow, which before the strangers he had kept swallowed down, he
need hide no longer. There was no one to hear, no one to see. And he
knelt beside the bed and stroked the smooth cold cheek. He kissed the
cold mouth and stroked the soft dark hair from which all stain had been
washed; and he put his arms about the body. And he remembered the boy
as he had stood before him that afternoon in all his wonderful beauty.
His tears fell fast and blindingly. The sobs rising to his throat
almost choked him.