Vixen

"How tired you look, papa," said Vixen, as they rode quietly homewards.

"A little done up, my dear, but a good dinner will set me all right again. It was a capital run, and your horse behaved beautifully. I don't think I made a bad choice for you. Rorie and his cousin were miles behind, I daresay. Pretty girl, and sits her horse like a picture--but she can't ride. We shall meet them going home, perhaps."

A mile or two farther on they met Roderick alone. His cousin had gone home with her father.

"It was rather a bore losing the run," he said, as he turned his horse's head and rode by Vixen, "but I was obliged to take care of my cousin."

One of the Squire's tenants, a seventeen-stone farmer, on a stout gray cob, overtook them presently, and Mr. Tempest rode on by his side, talking agricultural talk about over-fed beasts and cattle shows, the last popular form of cruelty to animals.

Roderick and Violet were alone, riding slowly side by side in the darkening gray, between woods where solitary robins carolled sweetly, or the rare gurgle of the thrush sounded now and then from thickets of beech and holly.

A faint colour came back to Vixen's cheek. She was very angry with her playfellow for his want of confidence, for his unfriendly reserve. Yet this was the one happy hour of her day. There had been a flavour of desolateness and abandonment in all the rest.

"I hope you enjoyed the run," said Rorie.

"I don't think you can care much whether we did or didn't," retorted Vixen, shrouding her personality in a vague plural. "If you had cared you would have been with us. Sultan," meaning the chestnut "must have felt cruelly humiliated by being kept so far behind."

"If a man could be in two places at once, half of me, the better half of me, would have been with you, Vixen; but I was bound to take care of my cousin. I had insisted upon her coming."

"Of course," answered Vixen, with a little toss of her head; "it would have been quite wrong if she had been absent."

They rode on in silence for a little while after this. Vixen was longing to say: "Rorie, you have treated me very badly. You ought to have told me you were going to be married." But something restrained her. She patted her horse's neck, listened to the lonely robins, and said not a word. The Squire and his tenant were a hundred yards ahead, talking loudly.

Presently they came to a point at which their roads parted, but Rorie still rode on by Vixen.

"Isn't that your nearest way?" asked Vixen, pointing down the cross-road with the ivory handle of her whip.

"I am not going the nearest way. I am going to the Abbey House with you."

"I wouldn't be so rude as to say Don't, but I think poor Sultan must be tired."

"Sultan shall have a by-day to-morrow."

They went into an oak plantation, where a broad open alley led from one side of the enclosure to the other. The wood had a mysterious look in the late afternoon, when the shadows were thickening under the tall thin trees. There was an all-pervading ghostly grayness as in a shadowy under-world. They rode silently over the thick wet carpet of fallen leaves, the horses starting a little now and then at the aspect of a newly-barked trunk lying white across the track. They were silent, having, in sooth, very little to say

Vixen was nursing her wrathful feelings; Rorie felt that his future was confused and obscure. He ought to do something with his life, perhaps, as his mother had so warmly urged. But his soul was stirred by no ambitious promptings.

They were within two hundred yards of the gate at the end of the enclosure, when Vixen gave a sudden cry:

"Did papa's horse stumble?" she asked; "look how he sways in his saddle."

Another instant, and the Squire reeled forward, and fell headforemost across his horse's shoulder. The fall was so sudden and so heavy, that the horse fell with him, and then scrambled up on to his feet again affrighted, swung himself round, and rushed past Roderick and Vixen along the plashy track.

Vixen was off her horse in a moment, and had flown to her father's side. He lay like a log, face downwards upon the sodden leaves just inside the gate. The farmer had dismounted and was stooping over him, bridle in hand, with a frightened face.

"Oh, what is it?" cried Violet frantically. "Did the horse throw him?--Bullfinch, his favourite horse. Is he much hurt? Oh, help me to lift him up--help me--help me!"

Rorie was by her side by this time, kneeling down with her beside the prostrate Squire, trying to raise the heavy figure which lay like lead across his arm.

"It wasn't the horse, miss," said the farmer. "I'm afraid it's a seizure."

"A fit!" cried Vixen. "Oh, papa, papa----darling--darling----"

She was sobbing, clinging to him, trembling like a leaf, and turning a white, stricken face up towards Roderick.

"Do something to help him--for G.o.d's sake--do something," she cried; "you won't let him lie there and die for want of help. Some brandy--something," she gasped, stretching out her trembling hand.

The farmer had antic.i.p.ated her thought. He had taken his flask from the saddle pocket, and was kneeling down by the Squire. Roderick had lifted the heavy head, and turned the ghastly face to the waning light. He tried to force a little brandy between the livid lips--but vainly.

"For G.o.d's sake get her away," he whispered to John Wimble, the farmer.

"It's all over with him."

"Come away with me, my dear Miss Tempest," said Wimble, trying to raise Violet from her knees beside the Squire. She was gazing into that awful face distractedly--half divining its solemn meaning--yet watching for the kind eyes to open and look at her again. "Come away with me, and we'll get a doctor. Mr. Vawdrey will take care of your father."

"You go for the doctor," she answered firmly. "I'll stay with papa.

Take my horse, he's faster than yours. Oh, he'll carry you well enough.

You don't know how strong he is--go, quick--quick--Dr. Martin, at Lyndhurst--it's a long way, but you must get him. Papa will recover, and be able to ride home, perhaps, before you can get back to us, but go, go."

"You go for the doctor, miss; your horse will carry you fast enough.

He'd never carry such a heavy weight as me, and my cob is dead beat.

You go, and Mr. Vawdrey will go with you. I'll take care of the Squire."

Violet looked from one to the other helplessly.

"I'd rather stay with papa," she said. "You go--yes--go, go. I'll stay with papa."

She crouched down beside the prostrate figure on the damp marshy ground, took the heavy head on her lap, and looked up at the two men with a pale set face which indicated a resolve that neither of them was strong enough to overrule. They tried their utmost to persuade her, but in vain. She was fixed as a new Niobe--a stony image of young despair.

So Roderick mounted his horse and rode off towards Lyndhurst, and honest Jack Wimble tied the other two horses to the gate, and took his stand beside them, a few paces from those two motionless figures on the ground, patiently waiting for the issue of this bitter hour.

It was one of the longest, weariest, saddest hours that ever youth and hope lived through. There was an awful heart-sickening fear in Violet's mind, but she gave it no definite shape. She would not say to herself, "My father is dead." The position in which he was lying hampered her arms so that she could not reach out her hand to lay it upon his heart.

She bent her face down to his lips.

Oh G.o.d! not a flutter stirred upon her soft cheek as she laid it against those pallid lips. The lower jaw had fallen in an awful-looking way; but Violet had seen her father look like that sometimes as he slept, with open mouth, before the hall fire. It might be only a long swoon, a suspension of consciousness. Dr. Martin would come presently--oh, how long, how long the time seemed--and make all things right.

The crescent moon shone silver pale above that dim gray wood. The barked trunks gleamed white and spectral in the gathering dark. Owls began to hoot in the distance, frogs were awaking near at band, belated rabbits flitted ghost-like across the track. All nature seemed of one gray or shadowy hue--silvery where the moonbeams fell.

The October air was chill and penetrating. There was a dull aching in Violet's limbs from the weight of her burden, but she was hardly conscious of physical pain. It seemed to her that she had been sitting there for hours waiting for the doctor's help. She thought the night must have nearly worn itself out.

"Dr. Martin could not have been at home," she said, speaking for the first time since Roderick rode away. "Mr. Vawdrey would fetch someone else, surely."

"My dear young lady, he hasn't had time to ride to Lyndhurst yet."

"Not yet," cried Vixen despairingly, "not yet! And it has been so long.

Papa is getting so cold. The chill will be so bad for him."

"Worse for you, miss. I do wish you'd let me take you home."

"And leave papa here--alone--unconscious! How can you be so cruel as to think of such a thing?"