Among the laurels at the bottom of the park a fox was found, and then there was a great deal of riding about the grounds. All this was much enjoyed by the ladies who were on foot,--and by the Senator who wandered about the place alone. A gentleman"s park is not always the happiest place for finding a fox. The animal has usually many resources there and does not like to leave it. And when he does go away it is not always easy to get after him. But ladies in a carriage or on foot on such occasions have their turn of the sport. On this occasion it was nearly one before the fox allowed himself to be killed, and then he had hardly been outside the park palings. There was a good deal of sherry drank before the party got away and hunting men such as Major Caneback began to think that the day was to be thrown away. As they started off for Shugborough Springs, the little covert on John Runce"s farm which was about four miles from Rufford Hall, Sir John asked the Major to get on another animal. "You"ve had trouble enough with her for one day, and given her enough to do." But the Major was not of that way of thinking. "Let her have the day"s work," said the Major. "Do her good. Remember what she"s learned."
And so they trotted off to Shugborough.
While they were riding about the park Morton had kept near to Miss Trefoil. Lord Rufford, being on his own place and among his own coverts, had had cares on his hand and been unable to devote himself to the young lady. She had never for a moment looked up at her lover, or tried to escape from him. She had answered all his questions, saying, however, very little, and had bided her time. The more gracious she was to Morton now the less ground would he have for complaining of her when she should leave him by-and-by. As they were trotting along the road Lord Rufford came up and apologized. "I"m afraid I"ve been very inattentive, Miss Trefoil; but I dare say you"ve been in better hands."
"There hasn"t been much to do,--has there?"
"Very little. I suppose a man isn"t responsible for having foxes that won"t break. Did you see the Senator? He seemed to think it was all right. Did you hear of John Runce?" Then he told the story of John Runce, which had been told to him.
"What a fine old fellow! I should forgive him his rent."
"He is much better able to pay me double. Your Senator, Mr. Morton, is a very peculiar man."
"He is peculiar," said Morton, "and I am sorry to say can make himself very disagreeable."
"We might as well trot on as Shugborough is a small place, and a fox always goes away from it at once. John Runce knows how to train them better than I do." Then they made their way on through the straggling horses, and John Morton, not wishing to seem to be afraid of his rival, remained alone. "I wish Caneback had left that mare behind,"
said the lord as they went. "It isn"t the country for her, and she is going very nastily with him. Are you fond of hunting, Miss Trefoil?"
"Very fond of it," said Arabella who had been out two or three times in her life.
"I like a girl to ride to hounds," said his lordship. "I don"t think she ever looks so well." Then Arabella determined that come what might she would ride to hounds.
At Shugborough Springs a fox was found before half the field was up, and he broke almost as soon as he was found. "Follow me through the handgates," said the lord, "and from the third field out it"s fair riding. Let him have his head, and remember he hangs a moment as he comes to his fence. You won"t be left behind unless there"s something out of the way to stop us." Arabella"s heart was in her mouth, but she was quite resolved. Where he went she would follow. As for being left behind she would not care the least for that if he were left behind with her. They got well away, having to pause a moment while the hounds came up to Tony"s horn out of the wood. Then there was plain sailing and there were very few before them. "He"s one of the old sort, my lord," said Tony as he pressed on, speaking of the fox.
"Not too near me, and you"ll go like a bird," said his lordship.
"He"s a nice little horse, isn"t he? When I"m going to be married, he"ll be the first present I shall make her."
"He"d tempt almost any girl," said Arabella.
It was wonderful how well she went, knowing so little about it as she did. The horse was one easily ridden, and on plain ground she knew what she was about in a saddle. At any rate she did not disgrace herself and when they had already run some three or four miles Lord Rufford had nearly the best of it and she had kept with him. "You don"t know where you are I suppose," he said when they came to a check.
"And I don"t in the least care, if they"d only go on," said she eagerly.
"We"re back at Rufford Park. We"ve left the road nearly a mile to our left, but there we are. Those trees are the park."
"But must we stop there?"
"That"s as the fox may choose to behave. We shan"t stop unless he does." Then young Hampton came up, declaring that there was the very mischief going on between Major Caneback and Jemima. According to Hampton"s account, the Major had been down three or four times, but was determined to break either the mare"s neck or her spirit. He had been considerably hurt, so Hampton said, in one shoulder, but had insisted on riding on. "That"s the worst of him," said Lord Rufford.
"He never knows when to give up."
Then the hounds were again on the scent and were running very fast towards the park. "That"s a nasty ditch before us," said the Lord.
"Come down a little to the left. The hounds are heading that way, and there"s a gate." Young Hampton in the meantime was going straight for the fence.
"I"m not afraid," said Arabella.
"Very well. Give him his head and he"ll do it."
Just at that moment there was a noise behind them and the Major on Jemima rushed up. She was covered with foam and he with dirt, and her sides were sliced with the spur. His hat was crushed, and he was riding almost altogether with his right hand. He came close to Arabella and she could see the rage in his face as the animal rushed on with her head almost between her knees. "He"ll have another fall there," said Lord Rufford.
Hampton who had pa.s.sed them was the first over the fence, and the other three all took it abreast. The Major was to the right, the lord to the left and the girl between them. The mare"s head was perhaps the first. She rushed at the fence, made no leap at all, and of course went headlong into the ditch. The Major still stuck to her though two or three voices implored him to get off. He afterwards declared that he had not strength to lift himself out of the saddle.
The mare lay for a moment;--then blundered out, rolled over him, jumped on to her feet, and lunging out kicked her rider on the head as he was rising. Then she went away and afterwards jumped the palings into Rufford Park. That evening she was shot.
The man when kicked had fallen back close under the feet of Miss Trefoil"s horse. She screamed and half-fainting, fell also;--but fell without hurting herself. Lord Rufford of course stopped, as did also Mr. Hampton and one of the whips,--with several others in the course of a minute or two. The Major was senseless,--but they who understood what they were looking at were afraid that the case was very bad. He was picked up and put on a door and within half an hour was on his bed in Rufford Hall. But he did not speak for some hours and before six o"clock that evening the doctor from Rufford had declared that he had mounted his last horse and ridden his last hunt!
"Oh Lord Rufford," said Arabella, "I shall never recover that. I heard the horse"s feet against his head." Lord Rufford shuddered and put his hand round her waist to support her. At that time they were standing on the ground. "Don"t mind me if you can do any good to him." But there was nothing that Lord Rufford could do as four men were carrying the Major on a shutter. So he and Arabella returned together, and when she got off her horse she was only able to throw herself into his arms.
CHAPTER XXIII.
POOR CANEBACK.
A closer intimacy will occasionally be created by some accident, some fortuitous circ.u.mstance, than weeks of ordinary intercourse will produce. Walk down Bond Street in a hailstorm of peculiar severity and you may make a friend of the first person you meet, whereas you would be held to have committed an affront were you to speak to the same person in the same place on a fine day. You shall travel smoothly to York with a lady and she will look as though she would call the guard at once were you so much as to suggest that it were a fine day; but if you are lucky enough to break a wheel before you get to Darlington, she will have told you all her history and shared your sherry by the time you have reached that town. Arabella was very much shocked by the dreadful accident she had seen. Her nerves had suffered, though it may be doubted whether her heart had been affected much. But she was quite conscious when she reached her room that the poor Major"s misfortune, happening as it had done just beneath her horse"s feet, had been a G.o.dsend to her. For a moment the young lord"s arm had been round her waist and her head had been upon his shoulder. And again when she had slipped from her saddle she had felt his embrace. His fervour to her had been simply the uncontrolled expression of his feeling at the moment,--as one man squeezes another tightly by the hand in any crisis of sudden impulse. She knew this;--but she knew also that he would probably revert to the intimacy which the sudden emotion had created. The mutual galvanic shock might be continued at the next meeting,--and so on. They had seen the tragedy together and it would not fail to be a bond of union. As she told the tragedy to her mother, she delicately laid aside her hat and whip and riding dress, and then asked whether it was not possible that they might prolong their stay at Rufford. "But the Gores, my dear! I put them off, you know, for two days only."
Then Arabella declared that she did not care a straw for the Gores.
In such a matter as this what would it signify though they should quarrel with a whole generation of Gores? For some time she thought that she would not come down again that afternoon or even that evening. It might well be that the sight of the accident should have made her too ill to appear. She felt conscious that in that moment and in the subsequent half hour she had carried herself well, and that there would be an interest about her were she to own herself compelled to keep her room. Were she now to take to her bed they could not turn her out on the following day. But at last her mother"s counsel put an end to that plan. Time was too precious. "I think you might lose more than you"d gain," said her mother.
Both Lord Rufford and his sister were very much disturbed as to what they should do on the occasion. At half-past six Lord Rufford was told that the Major had recovered his senses, but that the case was almost hopeless. Of course he saw his guest. "I"m all right," said the Major. The Lord sat there by the bedside, holding the man"s hand for a few moments, and then got up to leave him. "No nonsense about putting off," said the Major in a faint voice; "beastly bosh all that!"
But what was to be done? The dozen people who were in the house must of course sit down to dinner. And then all the neighbourhood for miles round were coming to a ball. It would be impossible to send messages to everybody. And there was the feeling too that the man was as yet only ill, and that his recovery was possible. A ball, with a dead man in one of the bedrooms, would be dreadful. With a dying man it was bad enough;--but then a dying man is always also a living man!
Lord Rufford had already telegraphed for a first-cla.s.s surgeon from London, it having been whispered to him that perhaps Old Nokes from Rufford might be mistaken. The surgeon could not be there till four o"clock in the morning by which time care would have been taken to remove the signs of the ball; but if there was reason to send for a London surgeon, then also was there reason for hope;--and if there were ground for hope, then the desirability of putting off the ball was very much reduced. "He"s at the furthest end of the corridor,"
the Lord said to his sister, "and won"t hear a sound of the music."
Though the man were to die why shouldn"t the people dance? Had the Major been dying three or four miles off, at the hotel at Rufford, there would only have been a few sad looks, a few shakings of the head, and the people would have danced without any flaw in their gaiety. Had it been known at Rufford Hall that he was lying at that moment in his mortal agony at Aberdeen, an exclamation or two,--"Poor Caneback!"--"poor Major!"--would have been the extent of the wailing, and not the pressure of a lover"s hand would have been lightened, or the note of a fiddle delayed. And n.o.body in that house really cared much for Caneback. He was not a man worthy of much care. He was possessed of infinite pluck, and now that he was dying could bear it well. But he had loved no one particularly, had been dear to no one in these latter days of his life, had been of very little use in the world, and had done very little more for society than any other horse-trainer! But nevertheless it is a bore when a gentleman dies in your house,--and a worse bore if he dies from an accident than from an illness for which his own body may be supposed to be responsible.
Though the gout should fly to a man"s stomach in your best bedroom, the idea never strikes you that your burgundy has done it! But here the mare had done the mischief.
Poor Caneback;--and poor Lord Rufford! The Major was quite certain that it was all over with himself. He had broken so many of his bones and had his head so often cracked that he understood his own anatomy pretty well. There he lay quiet and composed, sipping small modic.u.ms of brandy and water, and taking his outlook into such transtygian world as he had fashioned for himself in his dull imagination. If he had misgivings he showed them to no bystander. If he thought then that he might have done better with his energies than devote them to dangerous horses, he never said so. His voice was weak, but it never quailed; and the only regret he expressed was that he had not changed the bit in Jemima"s mouth. Lord Rufford"s position was made worse by an expression from Sir John Purefoy that the party ought to be put off. Sir John was in a measure responsible for what his mare had done, and was in a wretched state. "If it could possibly affect the poor fellow I would do it," said Lord Rufford; "but it would create very great inconvenience and disappointment. I have to think of other people." "Then I shall send my wife home," said Sir John. And Lady Purefoy was sent home. Sir John himself of course could not leave the house while the man was alive. Before they all sat down to dinner the Major was declared to be a little stronger. That settled the question and the ball was not put off.
The ladies came down to dinner in a melancholy guise. They were not fully dressed for the evening and were of course inclined to be silent and sad. Before Lord Rufford came in Arabella managed to get herself on to the sofa next to Lady Penwether, and then to undergo some little hysterical manifestation, "Oh Lady Penwether; if you had seen it;--and heard it!"
"I am very glad that I was spared anything so horrible."
"And the man"s face as he pa.s.sed me going to the leap! It will haunt me to my dying day!" Then she shivered, and gurgled in her throat, and turning suddenly round, hid her face on the elbow of the couch.
"I"ve been afraid all the afternoon that she would be ill," whispered Lady Augustus to Miss Penge. "She is so susceptible!"
When Lord Rufford came into the room Arabella at once got up and accosted him with a whisper. Either he took her or she took him into a distant part of the room where they conversed apart for five minutes. And he, as he told her how things were going and what was being done, bent over her and whispered also. "What good would it do, you know?" she said with affected intimacy as he spoke of his difficulty about the ball. "One would do anything if one could be of service,--but that would do nothing." She felt completely that her presence at the accident had given her a right to have peculiar conversations and to be consulted about everything. Of course she was very sorry for Major Caneback. But as it had been ordained that Major Caneback was to have his head split in two by a kick from a horse, and that Lord Rufford was to be there to see it, how great had been the blessing which had brought her to the spot at the same time!
Everybody there saw the intimacy and most of them understood the way in which it was being used. "That girl is very clever, Rufford," his sister whispered to him before dinner. "She is very much excited rather than clever just at present," he answered;--upon which Lady Penwether shook her head. Miss Penge whispered to Miss G.o.dolphin that Miss Trefoil was making the most of it; and Mr. Morton, who had come into the room while the conversation apart was going on, had certainly been of the same opinion.
She had seated herself in an arm-chair away from the others after that conversation was over, and as she sat there Morton came up to her. He had been so little intimate with the members of the party a.s.sembled and had found himself so much alone, that he had only lately heard the story about Major Caneback, and had now only heard it imperfectly. But he did see that an absolute intimacy had been effected where two days before there had only been a slight acquaintance; and he believed that this sudden rush had been in some way due to the accident of which he had been told. "You know what has happened?" he said.
"Oh, Mr. Morton; do not talk to me about it!"
"Were you not speaking of it to Lord Rufford?"
"Of course I was. We were together."
"Did you see it?" Then she shuddered, put her handkerchief up to her eyes, and turned her face away. "And yet the ball is to go on?" he asked.