"What a huge fish leapt then!" said Lancelot carelessly; "and close to the bridge, too!"
Honoria looked round, and uttered a piercing scream.
"Oh, my dog! my dog! Mops is in the river! That horrid gazelle has b.u.t.ted him in, and he"ll be drowned!"
Alas! it was too true. There, a yard above the one open hatchway, through which the whole force of the stream was rushing, was the unhappy Mops, alias Scratch, alias Dirty d.i.c.k, alias Jack Sheppard, paddling, and sneezing, and winking, his little bald muzzle turned piteously upward to the sky.
"He will be drowned!" quoth the colonel.
There was no doubt of it; and so Mops thought, as, shivering and whining, he plied every leg, while the gla.s.sy current dragged him back and back, and Honoria sobbed like a child.
The colonel lay down on the bridge, and caught at him: his arm was a foot too short. In a moment the huge form of Tregarva plunged solemnly into the water, with a splash like seven salmon, and Mops was jerked out over the colonel"s head high and dry on to the bridge.
"You"ll be drowned, at least!" shouted the colonel, with an oath of Uncle Toby"s own.
Tregarva saw his danger, made one desperate bound upward, and missed the bridge. The colonel caught at him, tore off a piece of his collar--the calm, solemn face of the keeper flashed past beneath him, and disappeared through the roaring gate.
They rushed to the other side of the bridge--caught one glimpse of a dark body fleeting and roaring down the foam-way. The colonel leapt the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out along the buck-stage, tore off his coat, and sprung headlong into the boiling pool, "rejoicing in his might," as old Homer would say.
Lancelot, forgetting his crutches, was dashing after him, when he felt a soft hand clutching at his arm.
"Lancelot! Mr. Smith!" cried Argemone. "You shall not go! You are too ill--weak--"
"A fellow-creature"s life!"
"What is his life to yours?" she cried, in a tone of deep pa.s.sion.
And then, imperiously, "Stay here, I command you!"
The magnetic touch of her hand thrilled through his whole frame.
She had called him Lancelot! He shrank down, and stood spell-bound.
"Good heavens!" she cried; "look at my sister!"
Out on the extremity of the buck-stage (how she got there neither they nor she ever knew) crouched Honoria, her face idiotic with terror, while she stared with bursting eyes into the foam. A shriek of disappointment rose from her lips, as in a moment the colonel"s weather-worn head reappeared above, looking for all the world like an old gray shiny-painted seal.
"Poof! tally-ho! Poof! poof! Heave me a piece of wood, Lancelot, my boy!" And he disappeared again.
They looked round, there was not a loose bit near. Claude ran off towards the house. Lancelot, desperate, seized the bridge-rail, tore it off by sheer strength, and hurled it far into the pool.
Argemone saw it, and remembered it, like a true woman. Ay, be as Manichaean-sentimental as you will, fair ladies, physical prowess, that Eden-right of manhood, is sure to tell upon your hearts!
Again the colonel"s grizzled head reappeared,--and, oh joy! beneath it a draggled knot of black curls. In another instant he had hold of the rail, and quietly floating down to the shallow, dragged the lifeless giant high and dry on a patch of gravel.
Honoria never spoke. She rose, walked quietly back along the beam, pa.s.sed Argemone and Lancelot without seeing them, and firmly but hurriedly led the way round the pool-side.
Before they arrived at the bank, the colonel had carried Tregarva to it. Lancelot and two or three workmen, whom his cries had attracted, lifted the body on to the meadow.
Honoria knelt quietly down on the gra.s.s, and watched, silent and motionless, the dead face, with her wide, awestruck eyes.
"G.o.d bless her for a kind soul!" whispered the wan weather-beaten field drudges, as they crowded round the body.
"Get out of the way, my men!" quoth the colonel. "Too many cooks spoil the broth." And he packed off one here and another there for necessaries, and commenced trying every restorative means with the ready coolness of a practised surgeon; while Lancelot, whom he ordered about like a baby, gulped down a great choking lump of envy, and then tasted the rich delight of forgetting himself in admiring obedience to a real superior.
But there Tregarva lay lifeless, with folded hands, and a quiet satisfied smile, while Honoria watched and watched with parted lips, unconscious of the presence of every one.
Five minutes!--ten!
"Carry him to the house," said the colonel, in a despairing tone, after another attempt.
"He moves!" "No!" "He does!" "He breathes!" "Look at his eyelids!"
Slowly his eyes opened.
"Where am I? All gone? Sweet dreams--blessed dreams!"
His eye met Honoria"s. One big deep sigh swelled to his lips and burst. She seemed to recollect herself, rose, pa.s.sed her arm through Argemone"s, and walked slowly away.
CHAPTER IV: AN "INGLORIOUS MILTON"
Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone"s suspicions more completely than her sister"s utter simplicity. She cried just as bitterly about Mops"s danger as about the keeper"s, and then laughed heartily at Argemone"s solemnity; till at last, when pushed a little too hard, she broke out into something very like a pa.s.sion, and told her sister, bitterly enough, that "she was not accustomed to see men drowned every day, and begged to hear no more about the subject." Whereat Argemone prudently held her tongue, knowing that under all Honoria"s tenderness lay a volcano of pa.s.sionate determination, which was generally kept down by her affections, but was just as likely to be maddened by them. And so this conversation only went to increase the unconscious estrangement between them, though they continued, as sisters will do, to lavish upon each other the most extravagant protestations of affection--vowing to live and die only for each other--and believing honestly, sweet souls, that they felt all they said; till real imperious Love came in, in one case of the two at least, shouldering all other affections right and left; and then the two beauties discovered, as others do, that it is not so possible or reasonable as they thought for a woman to sacrifice herself and her lover for the sake of her sister or her friend. Next morning Lancelot and the colonel started out to Tregarva"s cottage, on a mission of inquiry. They found the giant propped up in bed with pillows, his magnificent features looking in their paleness more than ever like a granite Memnon. Before him lay an open Pilgrim"s Progress, and a drawer filled with feathers and furs, which he was busily manufacturing into trout flies, reading as he worked. The room was filled with nets, guns, and keepers" tackle, while a well- filled shelf of books hung by the wall.
"Excuse my rising, gentlemen," he said, in his slow, staid voice, "but I am very weak, in spite of the Lord"s goodness to me. You are very kind to think of coming to my poor cottage,"
"Well, my man," said the colonel, "and how are you after your cold bath? You are the heaviest fish I ever landed!"
"Pretty well, thank G.o.d, and you, sir. I am in your debt, sir, for the dear life. How shall I ever repay you?"
"Repay, my good fellow? You would have done as much for me."
"May be; but you did not think of that when you jumped in; and no more must I in thanking you. G.o.d knows how a poor miner"s son will ever reward you; but the mouse repaid the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you. By the bye, gentlemen, I hope you have brought up some trolling-tackle?"
"We came up to see you, and not to fish," said Lancelot, charmed with the stately courtesy of the man.
"Many thanks, gentlemen; but old Harry Verney was in here just now, and had seen a great jack strike, at the tail of the lower reeds.
With this fresh wind he will run till noon; and you are sure of him with a dace. After that, he will not be up again on the shallows till sunset. He works the works of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his deeds are evil."
Lancelot laughed. "He does but follow his kind, poor fellow."
"No doubt, sir, no doubt; all the Lord"s works are good: but it is a wonder why He should have made wasps, now, and blights, and vermin, and jack, and such evil-featured things, that carry spite and cruelty in their very faces--a great wonder. Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the Garden of Eden?"
"You are getting too deep for me," said Lancelot. "But why trouble your head about fishing?"
"I beg your pardon for preaching to you, sir. I"m sure I forgot myself. If you will let me, I"ll get up and get you a couple of bait from the stew. You"ll do us keepers a kindness, and prevent sin, sir, if you"ll catch him. The squire will swear sadly--the Lord forgive him--if he hears of a pike in the trout-runs. I"ll get up, if I may trouble you to go into the next room a minute."
"Lie still, for Heaven"s sake. Why bother your head about pike now?"