"You are Walter North," I said. "And what"s to do?"
His imploring eyes in their pitiful pain looked up to mine, as if he would question how I needed to ask it. Then he pulled his fustian coat aside and pointed to his side. It made me start a step back. The side was steeped in blood.
"Oh dear, what is it?--what has caused it? An accident?"
"I have been shot," he answered--and I thought his voice sounded ominously weak. "Shot from over yonder."
Looking across the field in front of us, towards which he pointed, I could see nothing. I mean, nothing likely to have shot him. No men, no guns. Off to the left, partly buried amidst its grounds, lay the old house called the Granary; to the right in the distance, Vale Farm. The little child was stretched on the ground, quiet now, her head resting on his right shoulder; it was the left side that was injured. Suddenly he whispered a few words to her; she sprang up with a sob and darted into the wood. The child, as we heard later, had been sent out by her mother to look for her father: it was in seeking for him that she had come upon our tea-party and peeped at us. Later, she found him, fallen where he was now, just after the shot which struck him was fired. In her terror she was flying off for a.s.sistance, and met me. The man"s hat lay near him, also an old drab-coloured bag, some tin basins, and a Dutch-oven.
"Can I move you, to put you easier?" I asked between his groans. "Can I do anything in the world to help you?"
"No, no, don"t touch me," he said, in a hopeless tone. "I am bleeding to death."
And I thought he was. His cheeks and lips were growing paler with every minute. The man"s diction was as good as mine; and, tramp though he was, many a gentleman has not half as nice a face as his.
"If you don"t mind being left, I will run for a doctor--old Featherston."
Before he could answer yes or no, Harry Vale, who must have espied us from their land, came running up.
"Why--what in the world----" he began. "Is it you, North? What? Shot, you say?"
"From over yonder, sir; and I"ve got my death-blow: I think I have.
Perhaps if Featherston----"
"I"ll fetch him," cried Harry Vale. "You stay here with him, Johnny."
And he darted away like a lamplighter, his long legs skimming the gra.s.s.
I am nothing but a m.u.f.f; you know that of old. And never did I feel my own deficiencies come home to me as they did then. Any one else might have known how to stop the bleeding--for of course it ought to be stopped--if only by stuffing a handkerchief into the wound. I did not dare attempt it; I was worse at any kind of surgery than a born imbecile. All in a moment, as I stood there, the young gipsy-woman"s words of the morning flashed into my mind. She had foreseen some ill for him, she said; had scented it in the air. How strange it seemed!
The next to come upon the scene was the Squire, crushing through the brambles when he heard our voices. He and Sir John, in dire wrath at our flight, had come out to look for us and to marshal us back for the start home. I gave him a few whispered words of explanation.
"What!" cried he. "Dying?" and his face went as pale as the man"s. "Oh, my poor fellow, I am sorry for this!"
Stooping over him, the Squire pulled the coat aside. The stains were larger now, the flow was greater. North bent his head forward to look, and somehow got his hand wet in the process. Wet and red. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it away with a kind of horror. The sight seemed to bring upon him the conviction that his minutes were numbered. His _minutes_. Which is the last and greatest terror that can seize upon man.
"I"m going before G.o.d now, and I"m not fit for it," he cried, a shrieking note, born of emotion, in his weakening voice. "Can there be any mercy for me?"
The Squire seemed to feel it--he has said so since--as one of the most solemn moments of his life. He took off his spectacles--a habit of his when much excited--dropped them into his pocket, and clasped his hands together.
"There"s mercy with G.o.d through the Lord Jesus always," he said, bending over the troubled face. "He pardoned the thief on the Cross. He pardoned all who came to Him. If you are Walter North, as they tell me, you must know all this as well as I do. Lord G.o.d have mercy upon this poor dying man, for Christ"s sake!"
And perhaps the good lessons that North had learnt in childhood from his mother, for she was a good woman, came back to him then to comfort him.
He lifted his own hands towards the skies, and half the terror went out of his face.
Some one once said, I believe, that by standing stock still in the Strand, and staring at any given point, he could collect a crowd about him in no time. In the thronged thoroughfares of London that"s not to be surprised at; but what I should like to know is this--how is it that people collect in deserts? They _do_, and you must have seen it often.
Before many minutes were over we had quite a levee: Sir John Whitney, William, and Featherston"s nephew; three or four labourers from Vale Farm; Harry Vale, who had met Featherston, and outrun him; and one of the tall sons of Colonel Leonard. The latter, a young fellow with lazy limbs, a lazy voice, and supercilious manner, strolled up, smacking a dog-whip.
"What"s the row here?" cried he: and William Whitney told him. The man had been shot: by whom or by what means, whether wilfully or accidentally, remained to be discovered.
"Did you do it--or your brothers?" asked Harry Vale of him in a low tone. And Herbert Leonard whirled round to face Vale with a haughty stare.
"What the devil do you mean? What should we want to shoot a tramp for?"
"Any way, you were practising with pistols at your target over yonder this afternoon."
Leonard did not condescend to reply. The words had angered him. By no possibility could a shot, aimed at their target, come in this direction.
The dog-whip shook, as if he felt inclined to use it on Harry Vale for his insolent suggestion.
"Such a fuss over a tramp!" cried Leonard to Sir John, not caring who heard him. "I dare say the fellow was caught thieving, and got served out for his pains."
But he did not well know Sir John--who turned upon him like lightning.
"How dare you say that, young man! Are you not ashamed to give utterance to such sentiments?"
"Look here!" coolly retorted Leonard.
Catching hold of the bag to shake it, out tumbled a dead hen with ruffled feathers. Sir John looked grave. Leonard held it up.
"I thought so. It is still warm. He has stolen it from some poultry-yard."
I chanced to be standing close to North as Leonard said it, and felt a feeble twitch at my trousers. Poor North was trying to attract my attention; gazing up at me with the most anxious face.
"No," said he, but he was almost too faint to speak now. "No. Tell them, sir, No."
But Harry Vale was already taking up the defence. "You are wrong, Mr.
Herbert Leonard. I gave that hen myself to North half-an-hour ago.
Some little lads, my cousins, are at the farm to-day, and one of them accidentally killed the hen. Knowing our people would not care to use it, I called to North, who chanced to be pa.s.sing at the time, and told him he might take it if he liked."
A gleam of a smile, checked by a sob, pa.s.sed over the poor man"s face.
Things wear a different aspect to us in the hour of death from what they do in l.u.s.ty life. It may be that North saw then that theft, even of a fowl, _was_ theft, and felt glad to be released from the suspicion.
Sir John looked as pleased as Punch: one does not like to hear wrong brought home to a dying man.
Herbert Leonard turned off indifferently, strolling back across the field and cracking his whip; and Featherston came pelting up.
The first thing the doctor did, when he had seen North"s face, was to take a phial and small gla.s.s out of his pocket, and give him something to drink. Next, he made a clear sweep of us all round, and knelt down to examine the wound, just as the poor gipsy wife, fetched by the child, appeared in sight.
"Is there any hope?" whispered the Squire.
"Hope!" whispered back Featherston. "In half-an-hour it will be over."
"G.o.d help him!" prayed the Squire. "G.o.d pardon and take him!"
Well, well--that is about all there is to tell. Poor North died, there as he lay, in the twilight; his wife"s arm round his neck, and his little girl feebly clasped to him.
What an end to the bright and pleasant day! Sir John thanked Heaven openly that it was not we who had caused the calamity.
"For _somebody_ must have shot him, lads," he observed, "though I dare say it was accidental. And it might have chanced to be one of you--there"s no telling: you are not too cautious with your guns."