HOW THE SUN ROSE IN GLADNESS, AND SET IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF
DEATH.
The Wednesday which was so white a day for Judith and Percival had
dawned brightly at Fordborough. Sissy, opening her eyes on the radiant
beauty of the morning, sprang up with an exclamation of delight. The
preceding day had been gray and uncertain, but this was golden and
cloudless. A light breeze tossed the acacia-boughs and showed flashes of
blue between the quivering sprays. The dew was still hanging on the
clustered white roses which climbed to her open window, and the birds
were singing among the leaves as if they were running races in a
headlong rapture of delight. Sissy did not sing, but she said to
herself, "Oh, how glad the Latimers must be!"
She was right, for at a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been
flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless,
joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the
sum of their conversation was simply this: "Oh, what a day! what a
glorious day!" Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last
one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown and with
her hair hanging loose, flew down the long oak-panelled corridor and
knocked with might and main at her brother's door: "Walter! Walter!
wake up! do! You said it would rain, and it doesn't rain! It is a
_lovely_ morning! Oh, Walter!"
Walter responded briefly to the effect that he had been awake since half
after three, and was aware of the fact.
Henry Hardwicke, who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to
discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields.
The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom,
made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was,
added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the
effect that it was a fine day.
Captain Fothergill had no particular view from his window, but he
inquired at an early hour what the weather was like.
Ashendale Priory was a fine old ruin belonging to the Latimers, and
about six miles from Latimer's Court. Sissy Langton had said one day
that she often passed it in her rides, but had never been into it.
Walter Latimer was astonished, horrified and delighted all at once, and
vowed that she must see it, and should see it without delay. This
Wednesday had been fixed for an excursion there, but the project was
nearly given up on account of the weather. As late as the previous
afternoon the question was seriously debated at the Court by a council
composed of Walter and three of his sisters. One of the members was sent
to look at the barometer. She reported that it had gone up in the most
extraordinary manner since luncheon.
The announcement was greeted with delight, but it was discovered late
that evening that Miss Latimer had had a happy thought. Fearing that the
barometer would be utterly ruined by the shaking and tapping which it
underwent, she had screwed it up to a height at which her younger
brothers and sisters could not wish to disturb it, had gone into the
village, and had forgotten all about it. There was general dismay and
much laughter.
"It will rain," said Walter: "it will certainly rain. I thought it was
very queer. Well, it is too late to do anything now. We must just wait
and see what happens."
And behold the morrow had come, the clouds were gone, and it was a day
in a thousand, a very queen of days.
The party started for Ashendale, some riding, some driving, waking the
quiet green lanes with a happy tumult of wheels and horse-hoofs and
laughing voices. Captain Fothergill contrived to be near Miss Langton,
and to talk in a fashion which made her look down once or twice when she
had encountered the eagerness of his dark eyes. The words he said might
have been published by the town-crier. But that functionary could not
have reproduced the tone and manner which rendered them significant,
though Sissy hardly knew the precise amount of meaning they were
intended to convey. She was glad when the tower of the priory rose above
the trees. So was Walter Latimer, who had been eying the back of
Fothergill's head or the sharply-cut profile which was turned so
frequently toward Miss Langton, and who was firmly persuaded that the
captain ought to be shot.
Ashendale Priory was built nearly at the bottom of a hill. Part of it,
close by the gateway, was a farmhouse occupied by a tenant of the
Latimers. His wife, a pleasant middle-aged woman, came out to meet them
as they dismounted, and a rosy daughter of sixteen or seventeen lingered
shyly in the little garden, which was full to overflowing of
old-fashioned flowers and humming with multitudes of bees. The hot sweet
fragrance of the crowded borders made Sissy say that it was like the
very heart of summer-time.
"A place to recollect and dream of on a November day," said Fothergill.
"Oh, don't talk of November now! I hate it."
"I don't want November, I assure you," he replied. "Why cannot this last
for ever?"
"The weather?"
"Much more than the weather. Do you suppose I should only remember that
it was a fine day?"
"What, the place too?" said Sissy. "It is beautiful, but I think you
would soon get tired of Ashendale, Captain Fothergill."
"Do you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her with the eyes which
seemed to draw hers to meet them. "Try me and see which will be tired
first." And, without giving her time to answer, he went on: "Couldn't
you be content with Ashendale?"
"For always? I don't think I could--not for all my life."
"Well, then, the perfect place is yet to find," said Fothergill. "And
how charming it must be!"
"If one should ever find it!" said Sissy.
"One?" Fothergill looked at her again. "Not _one_! Won't you hope we may
both find it?"
"Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise," said Sissy
hurriedly. "Look! they are going to the ruins." And she hastened to join
the others.
Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit
Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To
his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for
himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen,
curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor's delight in flirtation
and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary
affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory.
To Latimer's great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two
went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some
old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and
when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a
little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale.
The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and
were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs.
Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the
unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos
and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded
readiness to help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them
to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She
was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or
hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked
nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day.
People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came
into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as
unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing
as an afterthought about the whole affair.
Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived.
For--thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so
clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself--it was not
possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it
been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll--no! Therefore she used the one
cousin merely to avoid the other. But why did she wish to avoid him? He
remembered her blushes, her shyness, the eyes that sank before his own,
and he answered promptly that she feared him. He triumphed in the
thought. He had contended against a gentle indifference on Sissy's part,
till, having heard rumors of a bygone love-affair, he had suspected the
existence of an unacknowledged constancy. Then what did this fear mean?
It was obviously the self-distrust of a heart unwilling to yield,
clinging to its old loyalty, yet aware of a new weakness--seeking safety
in flight because unable to resist. Fothergill was conscious of power,
and could wait with patience. (It would have been unreasonable to expect
him to spend an equal amount of time and talent in accounting for Miss
Langton's equally evident avoidance of young Latimer. Besides, that was
a simple matter. He bored her, no doubt.)
When the business of eating and drinking was drawing to a close, little
Edith Latimer, the youngest of the party, began to arrange a lapful of
wild flowers which she had brought back from her ramble. Hardwicke, who
had helped her to collect them, handed them to her one by one.
A green tuft which he held up caught Sissy's eye. "Why, Edie, what have
you got there?" she said. "Is that maiden-hair spleenwort? Where did
you find it?"
"In a crack in the wall: there's a lot more," the child answered; and at
the same moment Hardwicke said, "Shall I get you some?"
"No: I'll get some," exclaimed Archie, who was lying at Sissy's feet.
"Miss Langton would rather I got it for her, I know."
Sissy arched her brows.
"She has so much more confidence in me," Archie explained. "Please give
me a leaf of that stuff, Miss Latimer: I want to see what it's like."
"My confidence is rather misplaced, I'm afraid, if you don't know what
you are going to look for."
"Not a bit misplaced. You know very well I shall have a sort of instinct
which will take me straight to it."
"Dear me! It hasn't any smell, you know," said Sissy with perfect
gravity.
"Oh, how cruel!" said Carroll, "withering up my delicate feelings with
thoughtless sarcasm! Smell? no! My what-d'ye-call-it--sympathy--will
tell me which it is. My heart will beat faster as I approach it. But
I'll have that leaf all the same, please."
"And it might be as well to know where to look for it."
"We found it in the ruins--in the wall of the refectory," said
Hardwicke.
Sissy looked doubtful, but Carroll exclaimed, "Oh, I know! That's where
the old fellows used to dine, isn't it? And had sermons read to them all
the time."
"What a bore!" some one suggested.
"Well, I don't know about that," said Archie. "Sermons always are awful
bores, ain't they? But I don't think I should mind 'em so much if I
might eat my dinner all the time." He stopped with a comical look of
alarm. "I say, we haven't got any parsons here, have we?"
"No," said Fothergill smiling. "We've brought the surgeon, in case of
broken bones, but we've left the chaplain at home. So you may give us
the full benefit of your opinions."
"I thought there wasn't one," Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy,
"because nobody said grace. Or don't you ever say grace at a picnic?"
"I don't think you do," Sissy replied. "Unless it were a very Low Church
picnic perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure."
"Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose," said Archie,
examining the little frond which Edith had given him. "And this is what
you call maiden-hair?"
"What should you call it?"
"A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden--hair, indeed! Why, I can see
some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with
this? _You_ can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's
the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little
ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before,
and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine--oh, don't move your
head!--and looks like a golden glory--"
"Dear me!" said Sissy. "Then I'm afraid it's very rough."
"--And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish."
"Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get."
"Of course it is," said Archie. "But exchange is no robbery, they say.
Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don't you think--remembering that
I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from 'England, home and
beauty,' and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next
voyage--don't you think--"
"I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload
of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence."
"A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do
with it all?"
"Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it."
"There now!" said Archie. "And I could tell you in a moment what I would
do with mine if you gave it me."
"Oh, but I could tell you that."
"Tell me, then."
"You would fold it up carefully in a neat little bit of paper, but you
would not write anything on it, because you would not like it to look
business-like. Besides, you couldn't possibly forget. And a few months
hence you will have lost your heart to some foreign young lady--I don't
know where you are going--and you would find the little packet in your
desk, and wonder who gave it to you."
"Oh, how little you know me!" Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the
turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and
sat up again. "There _was_ a bit once," he said confidentially, "and for
the life of me I couldn't think whose it could be. There were two or
three girls I knew it couldn't possibly belong to, but that didn't help
me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have
such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and
I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself,
'I don't care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I'm
sure she wouldn't like to think that she bothered me in this way.' So I
consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I
can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I'd have
sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company's sake. But I'd
had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn't."
"You tell that little story very nicely," said Sissy when he paused. "Do
you always mention it when you ask--"
"Why, no," Archie exclaimed. "I thought _you_ would take it as it was
meant--as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose
it's my destiny to be misunderstood. Don't you see that I _couldn't_
tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much
higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up
with anybody else in my mind?"
"She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair
too," said Sissy. "Don't you think it would be safer?"
"Oh, this is too much!" he exclaimed. "It's sport to you, evidently, but
you don't consider that it's death to me. I say, come away, and we'll
look for this green stuff."
Fothergill smiled, but Latimer's handsome face flushed. He had made a
dozen attempts to supplant Carroll, and had been foiled by the laughing
pair. What was the use of being a good-looking fellow of six-and-twenty,
head of one of the county families and owner of Latimer's Court and
Ashendale, if he were to be set aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did
Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where
they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long
strides to make violent love to the farmer's rosy little daughter. He
knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor
child's head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed
especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man
who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had
held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly
even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were
ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse:
what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing
it _because_ it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and,
as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own
sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious
of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad
bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer's heart was
full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could
he.
But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She
had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of
danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did
not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at
Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair
spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.
"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the
refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think
what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it
all!"
"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you
hadn't had enough to eat."
"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of
sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to
smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well
be the chapel."
Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I
never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down
into this place."
"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say
they were just alike?"
"Well, I can easily get up there," she said. "And you may stay down here
if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner." And,
laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when
she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side
directly, helping her. "Why, this is prettier than where we went this
morning," she said when they reached the top: "you see the whole place
better. But it's narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn't it? Oh,
Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!"
"I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop," said the boy:
"it would stay up there a good long time."
There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked
down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his
eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.
"Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn't it look as if a giant had taken a
great bite out of it?" Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he
called after her, "Is this right, Miss Langton?"
She turned her head, and for a second's space he saw her bright face,
her laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched
hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which
slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself
with an effort. There was blank space before him--and what below?
Archie Carroll half scrambled down by the help of the ivy, half slid,
and reached the ground. Thus, at the risk of his life, he gained half a
minute, and spent it in kneeling on the grass--a yard away from that
which he dared not touch--saying pitifully, "Miss Langton! Oh, won't you
speak to me, Miss Langton?"
He was in the shadow, but looking across the enclosure he faced a broken
doorway in the south-east corner. The ground sloped away a little, and
the arch opened into the stainless blue. A sound of footsteps made
Carroll look up, and through the archway came Raymond Fothergill. He had
heard the cry, he had outrun the rest, and, even in his blank
bewilderment of horror, Archie shrank back scared at his cousin's
aspect. His brows and moustache were black as night against the
unnatural whiteness of his face, which was like bleached wax. His eyes
were terrible. He seemed to reach the spot in an instant. Carroll saw
his hands on the stone which had fallen, and lay on her--O God!--or only
on her dress?
Fothergill's features contracted in sudden agony as he noted the
horribly twisted position in which she lay, but he stooped without a
moment's hesitation, and, lifting her gently, laid her on the turf,
resting her head upon his knee. There was a strange contrast between the
tenderness with which he supported her and the fierce anger of his face.
Others of the party came rushing on the scene in dismay and horror.
"Water!" said Fothergill. "Where's Anderson?" (Anderson was the young
doctor.) "Not here?"
"He went by the fish-ponds with Evelyn," cried Edith suddenly: "I saw
him." Hardwicke darted off.
"Curse him! Playing the fool when he's wanted more than he ever will be
again.--Mrs. Latimer!"
Edith rushed away to find her mother.
Some one brought water, and held it while Fothergill, with his
disengaged hand, sprinkled the white face on his knee.
Walter Latimer hurried round the corner. He held a pink rosebud, on
which his fingers tightened unconsciously as he ran. Coming to the
staring group, he stopped aghast. "Good God!" he panted, "what has
happened?"
Fothergill dashed more water on the shut eyes and bright hair.
Latimer looked from him to the others standing round: "What has
happened?"
A hoarse voice spoke from the background: "She fell." Archie Carroll had
risen from his knees, and, lifting one hand above his head, he pointed
to the wall. Suddenly, he met Fothergill's eyes, and with a
half-smothered cry he flung himself all along upon the grass and hid his
face.
"Fothergill! is she much hurt?" cried Latimer. "Is it serious?"
The other did not look up. "I cannot tell," he said, "but I believe she
is killed."
Latimer uttered a cry: "No! no! For God's sake don't say that! It can't
be!"
Fothergill made no answer.
"It isn't possible!" said Walter. But his glance measured the height of
the wall and rested on the stones scattered thickly below. The words
died on his lips.
"Is Anderson never coming?" said some one else. Another messenger
hurried off. Latimer stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after him.
All at once he noticed the rose which he still held, and jerked it away
with a movement as of horror.
The last runner returned: "Anderson and Hardwicke will be here directly:
I saw them coming up the path from the fish-ponds. Here is Mrs.
Latimer."
[Illustration: "FOTHERGILL! IS SHE MUCH HURT?"--Page 682.]
Edith ran through the archway first, eager and breathless. "Here is
mamma," she said, going straight to Raymond Fothergill with her tidings,
and speaking softly as if Sissy were asleep. A little nod was his only
answer, and the girl stood gazing with frightened eyes at the drooping
head which he supported. Mrs. Latimer, Hardwicke and Anderson all
arrived together, and the group divided to make way for them. The first
thing to be done was to carry Sissy to the farmhouse, and while they
were arranging this Edith felt two hands pressed lightly on her
shoulders. She turned and confronted Harry Hardwicke.
"Hush!" he said: "do not disturb them now, but when they have taken her
to the house, if you hear anything said, tell them that I have gone for
Dr. Grey, and as soon as I have sent him here I shall go on for Mrs.
Middleton. You understand?" he added, for the child was looking at him
with her scared eyes, and had not spoken.
"Yes," she said, "I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?"
"Not if anything you and I can do will save her--will she, Edith?" and
Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who
saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the
gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one--a lady's horse, a
chestnut--and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek
for a moment against the chestnut's neck. The boy thought it was a rum
go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his
terrible errand.
Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was
helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet
secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him.
Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she
could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short
distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering
group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll
lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy,
rose darkly above him--too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He
sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the
turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting
there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one
hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the
crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass,
every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The
breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot
stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there
was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite.
Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel
stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him
from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing
by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain
did he leave the spot.
By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by,
her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at
Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the
innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would
not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by
conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be
called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter
felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he
had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he
had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that
she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.
Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow
of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the
path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin.
Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was
obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. "How
is she?" he said at last.
"I don't know."
"Why do you look at me like that?" said the boy desperately.
Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more
strongly on his face. "I don't ever want to look at you again," he said
with quiet emphasis. "You've done mischief enough to last your lifetime
if you lived a thousand years."
"It wasn't my fault! Ray, it wasn't!"
"Whose, then?" said Fothergill. "Possibly you think it would have
happened if I had been there?"
"They said that wall--" the young fellow began.
"They didn't. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole
place. And she didn't even know where the refectory was."
Carroll groaned: "Don't, Ray: I can't bear it! I shall kill myself!"
"No, you won't," said Fothergill. "You'll go safe home to your people at
the rectory. No more of this."
Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill
retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the
shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where
Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious.
From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a
senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she
was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope--a
hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed
it.
His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl--cared for
her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring--and he
felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment
doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but
Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over.
Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who
robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer
no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury
was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a
bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter
who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.
And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy's death would
hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best
chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or
that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing,
but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been
before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been
something higher and missed it. That was all.
Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that
inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had
moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little
hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was
certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. "Walter," she
said, "you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot
stay here, and I cannot send them back without you." Latimer refused,
protested, yielded. "Mother," he said, as he turned to go, "you don't
know--" His voice suddenly gave way.
"I do know. Oh, my poor boy!" She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood,
and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather
you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry
Hardwicke has gone for her."
This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and
with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows
of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels
and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees
hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm
turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.
He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and
sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked
back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of
horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into
eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a
nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though,
unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had
their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his
life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance
the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and
terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And
the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But
Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he
should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of
a hopeless hell.