It was a singular piece of good luck that the two children with the
milk-can should have met Dr. Hallahan riding homewards down a lane after
an ineffectual search for the hounds. It was also fortunate that it
being, so to speak, but the third hour of the day, he was perfectly,
almost dismally sober. It was barely a quarter of an hour before he was
unfastening Hugh’s waistcoat and feeling him all over, while Lady Susan
stood silently by. She had found water in a ditch, and brought it in her
hat; she stood motionless, with her fashionable head bare to the mist,
and when Dr. Hallahan looked up at her he was aware that a handsomer and
more haggardly-set face had never waited for his verdict.
“He’s badly hurt, Lady French,” he said, his brogue rough with
compassion for her; “he seems to have a couple of ribs broken, and
there’s probably concussion too, and it might be a bit of a crush under
the horse.”
“Oh!” said Lady Susan stonily. Then, her brain travelling slowly on,
“Can we carry him between us? He only weighs nine six.”
As she spoke she saw that Bunbury, Slaney, and others were hurrying
towards them; it did not surprise her, everything seems to be drawn
naturally into the suction of disaster.
Afterwards she realized that it was a long time before a messenger
returned with a blue counterpane, and other messengers with a couple of
rails from a wooden paling. A species of hammock was made, and Hugh was,
with utmost care, laid in it; she noticed that Dr. Hallahan told the
bearers not to walk in step. Then Bunbury led up Slaney’s horse, and
told her she must get on to it, that she was not able to walk. Bunbury
was white and silent; Slaney’s eyes were moist, and her voice unsteady.
She seemed to Lady Susan extraordinarily kind.
They made her drink some whisky out of his flask, and she rode on after
the hammock down a sheep-track, along a bohireen that was like the bed
of a rocky stream, into yet another endless bohireen. Slaney walked
beside her; they did not speak, but she knew that Slaney was sorry for
her. It made her quite sure that Hugh was dying.
“Where are the hounds?” she said suddenly. “Are they killed too?”
“Dan’s got them,” Bunbury answered; “the fox went down one of the clefts
in that field, and Fisherman and Mexico went after him. The others are
all right.”
Lady Susan rode on in silence, and Bunbury, leading his horse, walked by
Slaney. It was quite unnecessary that he should walk, yet Slaney
understood.
They neared at length a white house with fir-trees round it; there was a
back entrance into the lane, and the hammock was carried into a yard
where strange lumber lay about; a broken pumping-engine, signal-posts,
long white gates.
“Mr. Glasgow’s house was nearest,” said Slaney, with her eyes on the
ground. “Dr. Hallahan is afraid to take him farther.”
The back door of the house was open, and they went in, finding
themselves in the kitchen.
“Nobody in,” said Dr. Hallahan, exploring the back premises rapidly,
“and no one here either,” opening and shutting the door of Glasgow’s
office. “Carry him up. I know the house.”
The hammock, with its light burden, was engineered up a narrow
staircase; as Lady Susan followed, she noticed Glasgow’s gloves on the
hall-table, his hunting-crop in a rack. They reminded her of all that
was now so very far away, they added inconceivably to his reality and
yet to his remoteness. Meeting him again would be more difficult than
she had thought.
Dr. Hallahan opened the door of a room on the landing.
“This is a spare room, I think----” he said, and stopped short.
A woman started up from a table at which she was writing, and stared at
them. Her hair was straw-coloured, and drooped in nauseous
picturesqueness over her coal-black eyebrows; her face was fat and
white, her dress was a highly-coloured effort at the extreme of the
latest fashion but one; the general effect was elderly.
“I beg your pardon,” said Dr. Hallahan, recovering himself; “we’ve
brought Captain French here, he’s very badly hurt, and I can’t take him
any farther. Perhaps you could show us where to put him--or ask Mr.
Glasgow?”
“Mr. Glasgow has left;” the voice was nasal and cockney. “You can take
the gentleman into his room for the present, but I’m going to have an
auction of this furniture in less than a week. I’m just taking an
inventory now.”
Sheets of foolscap paper were scattered on the table, the list of the
furniture sprawled over them in large, black, irregular writing. Slaney
had seen that writing before; she felt as if she were in a bad dream--a
dream that she had dreamt before, one that was both tragic and
ridiculous.
“Had I arrived lawst evening things might have been different,” went on
the yellow-haired lady; “but I missed my train.”
Then, with an air that irresistibly suggested the footlights, she moved
from behind the table into a clear space in the room. The bad dream
culminated; Slaney knew what was coming.
“Perhaps I had better introduce myself,” said the yellow-haired
lady,--“I am Mrs. Glasgow.”