Lady Connie Part 41

And Mr. Trevenen had looked up and smiled.

"Not very. I have been unusually cheered as I walked by thoughts of the Divine Love!"

The words had been so simply said; and a minute afterwards the old pale-faced parson had disappeared into the dark.

What did the words mean? Had they really any meaning?

"The Divine Love." Arthur Falloden did not know then, and did not know now. But he had often thought of the incident.

He leaned over, musing, to gather a bunch of hare-bells growing on the edge of the stream. As he did so, he was conscious again of a sharp pain in the chest. In a few more seconds, he was stretched on the moorland gra.s.s, wrestling with a torturing anguish that was crus.h.i.+ng his life out. It seemed to last an eternity. Then it relaxed, and he was able to breathe and think again.

"What is it?"

Confused recollections of the death of his old grandfather, when he himself was a child, rose in his mind. "He was out hunting--horrible pain--two hours. Is this the same? If it is--I shall die--here--alone."

He tried to move after a little, but found himself helpless. A brief intermission, and the pain rushed on him again, like a violent and ruthless hand, grinding the very centres of life. When he recovered consciousness, it was with the double sense of blissful relief from agony and of ebbing strength. What had happened to him? How long had he been there?

"Could you drink this?" said a voice behind him. He opened his eyes and saw a young man, with a halo of red-gold hair, and a tremulous, pitying face, quite strange to him, bending over him.

There was some brandy at his lips. He drank with difficulty. What had happened to the light? How dark it was!

"Where am I?" he said, looking up blindly into the face above him.

"I found you here--on the moor--lying on the gra.s.s. Are you better?

Shall I run down now--and fetch some one?"

"Don't go--"

The agony returned. When Sir Arthur spoke again, it was very feebly.

"I can't live--through--much more of that. I'm dying. Don't leave me.

Where's my son? Where's my son--Douglas? Who are you?"

The glazing eyes tried to make out the features of the stranger. They were too dim to notice the sudden s.h.i.+ver that pa.s.sed through them as he named his son.

"I can't get at any one. I've been calling for a long time. My name is Radowitz. I'm staying at Penfold Rectory. If I could only carry you! I tried to lift you--but I couldn't. I've only one hand." He pointed despairingly to the sling he was wearing.

"Tell my son--tell Douglas--"

But the faint voice ceased abruptly, and the eyes closed. Only there was a slight movement of the lips, which Radowitz, bending his ear to the mouth of the dying man, tried to interpret. He thought it said "pray,"

but he could not be sure.

Radowitz looked round him in an anguish. No one on the purple side of the moor, no one on the gra.s.sy tracks leading downwards to the park; only the wide gold of the evening--the rising of a light wind--the rustling of the fern--and the loud, laboured breathing below him.

He bent again over the helpless form, murmuring words in haste.

Meanwhile after Sir Arthur left the house, Douglas had been urgently summoned by his mother. He found her at tea with Trix in her own sitting-room. Roger was away, staying with a school friend, to the general relief of the household; Nelly, the girl of seventeen, was with relations in Scotland, but Trix had become her mother's little shadow and constant companion. The child was very conscious of the weight on her parents' minds. Her high spirits had all dropped. She had a wistful, shrinking look, which suited ill with her round face and her childishly parted lips over her small white teeth. The little face was made for laughter; but in these days only Douglas could bring back her smiles, because mamma was so unhappy and cried so much; and that mamma should cry seemed to bring her whole world tumbling about the child's ears.

Only Douglas, for sheer impatience with the general gloom of the house, would sometimes tease her or chase her; and then the child's laugh would ring out--a ghostly echo from the days before Lady Laura "knew."

Poor Lady Laura! Up to the last moment before the crash, her husband had kept everything from her. She was not a person of profound or sensitive feeling; and yet it is probable that her resentment of her husband's long secrecy, and the implications of it, counted for a great deal in her distress and misery.

The sale of the pictures, as shortly reported by Douglas, had overwhelmed her. As soon as her son appeared in her room, she poured out upon him a stream of lamentation and complaint, while Trix was alternately playing with the kitten on her knee and drying furtive tears on a very grubby pocket-handkerchief.

Douglas was on the whole patient and explanatory, for he was really sorry for his mother; but as soon as he could he escaped from her on the plea of urgent letters and estate accounts.

The August evening wore on, and it was nearing sunset when his mother came hurriedly into the library.

"Douglas, where is your father?"

"He went out for a walk before tea. Hasn't he come in?"

"No. And it's more than two hours. I--I don't like it, Duggy. He hasn't been a bit well lately--and so awfully depressed. Please go and look for him, dear!"

Douglas suddenly perceived the terror in his mother's mind. It seemed to him absurd. He knew his father better than she did; but he took his hat and went out obediently.

He had happened to notice his father going towards the moor, and he took the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet evening air, in a pa.s.sionate physical reaction against the family distress.

Five miles away, in this same evening glow, was Constance Bledlow walking or sitting in her aunts' garden? Or was she nearer still--at Penfold Rectory, just beyond the moor he was climbing, the old rectory-house where Sorell and Radowitz were staying? He had taken good care to give that side of the hills a wide berth since his return home.

But a great deal of the long ridge was common ground, and in the private and enclosed parts there were several rights of way crossing the moor, besides the one lonely road traversing it from end to end on which he had met Constance Bledlow. If he had not been so tied at home, and so determined not to run any risks of a meeting, he might very well have come across Sorell at least, if not Radowitz, on the high ground dominating the valleys on either side. Sorell was a great walker. But probably they were as anxious to avoid a casual meeting as he was.

The evening was rapidly darkening, and as he climbed he searched the hillside with his quick eyes for any sign of his father. Once or twice he stopped to call:

"Father!"

The sound died away, echoing among the fields and hollows of the moor.

But there was no answer. He climbed further. He was now near the stream which descended through the park, and its loud jubilant voice burst upon him, filling the silence.

Then, above the plas.h.i.+ng of the stream and the rising of the wind, he heard suddenly a cry:

"Help!"

It came from a point above his head. A sudden horror came upon him. He dashed on. In another minute a man's figure appeared, higher up, dark against the reddened sky. The man put one hand to his mouth, and shouted through it again--"Help!"

Douglas came up with him. In speechless amazement he saw that it was Otto Radowitz, without a coat, bareheaded, pale and breathless.

"There's a man here, Falloden. I think it's your father. He's awfully ill. I believe he's dying. Come at once! I've been shouting for a long time."

Douglas said nothing. He rushed on, following Radowitz, who took a short cut bounding through the deep ling of the moor. Only a few yards till Douglas perceived a man, with a grey, drawn face, who was lying full length on a stretch of gra.s.s beside the stream, his head and shoulders propped against a low rock on which a folded coat had been placed as a pillow.

"Father!"

Sir Arthur opened his eyes. He was drawing deep, gasping breaths, the strong life in him wrestling still. But the helplessness, the ineffable surrender and defeat of man's last hour, was in his face.

Falloden knelt down.

"Father!--don't you know me? Well soon carry you home. It's Duggy!" No answer. Radowitz had gone a few yards away, and was also kneeling, his face buried in his hands, his back turned to the father and son.