Volume 2 — CHAPTER VII. WAS HONOR GLAD OR SORRY?

Drawing his wife’s arm gently within his own, John led her away from the spot where the surgeon was examining the condition of the injured man.

“I shall be within call if I am required,” he said; and Honor, understanding his meaning, trembled from head to foot. She longed yet dreaded to ask her husband what had passed between him and her father. Her father! The bond was such a sacred one that she could not but cling in thought, not only with love but reverence, to the being who bore that relation towards her. Instinctively, too, but grievously, did she blame herself for ingratitude towards John; for Honor turned with something like repulsion from the good and trusted friend on whose arm she leant, and who was saying, as they came uppermost, unstudied words of comfort, while his own heart was full to overflowing of anxiety and sorrow.

“It’s a bad business, my dear,” he said; “and I don’t see that you can do any good here. It would be better, it seems to me, if you and mother were to go in the trap to Gawthorpe. It would be more comfortable for you to be out of this crowd; and when anything is known, and—settled, I could come after, and let you know.”

Honor was silent. She was thinking that it would be hard to return home in such suspense about her father, thinking that it was not for John, who had been the cause of all her sorrow, to send her away at such a time as this.

“Well, what are you fretting about, Honey?” John asked, stopping short and looking earnestly into her pale face. “Is there anything you wish—anything that I can do?”

“I was feeling,” Honor said in a tone so low that he could hardly catch the words, “that I should like—if you don’t—object—to remain where my father is; to remain at least till we know what the doctor says about his wound.”

“As you like, my dear,” John answered quietly; but there was bitterness in his heart as the idea crossed his mind that Honor at that moment was thinking more of her newly-found parent than of him; “as you like: we will find mother; my head’s growing stupid, I think, with all this bother; and, Honor”—after a pause, and drawing a long breath—“I think it’s best, if anything should happen, though I begin to think it ain’t likely, to—to your father—I think it’s best, my dear, to tell you that I didn’t strike him unprovoked. The Colonel—it’s an ugly story, and one that I hardly know how to tell you—boasted, he did, and talked big; and—but I suppose it ain’t altogether right to go on this way to you about him: this I must say, though, that I couldn’t stand the heartless, horrible things he said about—about a poor unhappy girl, who—Honor!” stopping short in his walk, and grasping both her hands with a force that was almost painful—“Honor, can’t you understand? I wouldn’t hurt your feelings, pet—no, not for the world—but—”

“But you do, John,” sobbed Honor, who was growing hysterical, and whose small unpractised head was becoming bewildered by the force of contending emotions. “You do—you frighten me—I—”

“My poor darling,” John said soothingly, “I know it’s hard. You are such a child to be told such things, too; so young to learn about such wickedness. Not that she was wicked; no—no—I’ll not believe it—not if it was proved before a judge and jury—I’d not believe, Honor, that your mother—precious—the poor thing who is gone to God so long ago, was a wicked girl!”

They were quite alone—as solitary under the spreading trees, with the high bracken sending up its pungent odour beneath their tread, as if they had been walking between the high banks of the quiet lanes at home. Half in confusion of mind, and half from a desire to screen his wife from observation, John had chosen that pathless cut through a little-frequented portion of the park; and greatly, as in deep pity he witnessed her uncontrollable emotion, did he congratulate himself on the precautions he had taken.

Poor little Honor! Poor foolish, ambitious girl! The mystery that she had so earnestly yearned to fathom was at last cleared up, and she knew—what one less innocent and unworld-taught than herself might long since have surmised—that where there is concealment there is almost certain to be guilt, and that she, alas, was the child of sin and shame! Very bitter, and yet not all bitter, were the tears she shed. There was something soothing after all—and in spite of the hard things that John had said of Colonel Norcott, he was a gentleman and a man of fashion—there was something soothing in the idea that she was not utterly relationless, not completely a lone waif, cast on the waters of life fatherless and forlorn. Her poor young mother, John had given her to understand, was dead. For her there was no more sorrowing or shame; in the grave she had found rest from her great griefs, so the tears that Honor shed for the parent whom she had never known were pitying rather than regretful ones. On the whole—and in that she did not greatly differ from the generality of those who are young to suffering—Honor was selfish in her sorrow. The few minutes which she had spent, watching in agonised alarm what seemed to her inexperienced eyes the death-pangs of her father, had awakened in her breast feelings of the most powerful filial interest and love. It was not unnatural that so it should have been. Lying there at her feet wan and senseless, the peculiar elegance of his form and figure made conspicuous by the unconscious grace of the attitude into which he had fallen, every trace of ignoble passion removed from the face, which in its calm immobility looked so very like to death, what wonder was it that Honor’s heart should have swelled with emotions of tenderness and pity towards the parent so lately found, and found, perhaps, only that she might, under circumstances peculiarly painful, mourn his, to her, irreparable loss?

It was such thoughts as these—thoughts which caused the tears to rush in torrents down her pale cheeks—that filled Honor’s breast to overflowing, leaving no room in it for any recollection either of her husband’s mental anxiety or of his probable danger should the blow, which in a moment of ungovernable fury he had dealt her father, prove a fatal one.

Meantime—and while Honor, seated on a fallen tree, was receiving, without, it is to be feared, greatly valuing them, her husband’s well-intended consolations—Dr. Kempshall had pronounced his opinion on Colonel Norcott’s state, and had superintended that unfortunate gentleman’s removal from Danescourt. As a matter of course he had delivered his judgment both with caution and oracularly, refraining even, till such time as the patient could speak for himself, to express any decided opinion regarding the origin of the accident. To Lord Guernsey, who was full of curiosity and interest on the subject, and who questioned him very closely as to whether he thought it probable that an assault had been committed, Dr. Kempshall replied that appearances were decidedly in favour of such a proposition; at the same time, however, there was nothing in the nature of the injury to entirely render nugatory the idea that Colonel Norcott might have, unintentionally of course, and through the medium of a fall, cut his head open in the frightful manner which his lordship had just witnessed.

“Frightful indeed!” said Lord Guernsey; “upon my soul and honour, I shall wonder if the man gets over it, and how such an accident could have happened is wonderful to me. You think there’s no danger though, do you, doctor, in taking him to the Bell? It isn’t a hundred yards farther than it is to my house, and I own, if it comes to the same thing, I should prefer not having Colonel Norcott laid up at Danescourt. There is his wife, poor woman, to be telegraphed for (Arthur Vavasour says she is at Ryde), and Lady Guernsey hasn’t the pleasure of knowing Mrs. Norcott; and then Mr. Baker—Certainly, doctor, if it can be managed,” continued the good-natured nobleman, “and without the slightest risk—mind that—to the poor fellow himself, I should greatly prefer his being taken to the Bell.”

And to the Bell—a very comfortable, old-fashioned inn, containing many more big bedrooms, double and single, than were ever likely to be required, and an “assembly-room,” of which much varied use was made at all seasons of the year, for public dinners, balls, lectures, itinerant minstrels, and all and every of the various purposes to which such apartments have time out of mind in county towns been put—the Colonel was accordingly taken.

“He will be well cared for with Mrs. Bycroft,” Dr. Kempshall said. He was walking by the side of his patient, for whose transport to the inn at Gawthorpe a litter had been hastily improvised, and some stout men of the labouring class engaged to carry Colonel Norcott the short half-mile to the town. “He will be well cared for, and of course we shall have the Bakers over directly from Westhoe. It will be a shock to the old lady, and she has had her troubles, poor soul, without this coming upon her in her old age.”

He had scarcely ceased speaking when the face, which he had never ceased from carefully watching, began to show signs, in consequence probably of the restoratives administered, of returning colour and intelligence. Moving his head slowly, and with evident pain, a little to one side, Colonel Norcott made a sign with his hand that the bearers should stop; and then Dr. Kempshall, bending closely over him, could just catch the words:

“It was a fall—an accident. Don’t let anyone be bothered;” and having thus, with evident effort, delivered himself, the patient relapsed into insensibility.