Diana Tempest Volume Iii Part 2

And he did so; for as she rushed up to John, and in spite of the strength with which he pushed her from him, caught him in her arms and held him tightly to her, there was a second report, and the m.u.f.f hopped and ripped in her hand.

She screamed again. Surely some one would come! She could hear the ringing of skates and voices. Torches were wheeling towards her.

Lanterns were running along the edge. Good G.o.d! how slow they were!

"Go back--go back!" gasped John, and his head fell forward on her breast. He seemed slipping out of her arms, but she upheld him clasped convulsively to her with the strength of despair.

"Where?" shouted voices, half-way up the lake.

She tried to shriek again, but only a harsh guttural sound escaped her lips.

The man had not gone away. She had her back to him, but she heard him run a few steps along the frost-bitten bank, and she knew it was to make his work sure.

John became a dead weight upon her. She struggled fiercely with him, but he dragged her heavily to her knees, and fell from her grasp, exposing himself to full view. There was a click.

With a wild cry she flung herself down upon his body, covering him with her own, her face pressed against his.

"We will die together! We will die together!" she gasped.

She heard a low curse from the bank. And suddenly there was a turmoil of voices, and a rushing and flaring of lights all round her, and then a sharp cry like the fire-engines clearing the London streets.

"I must get him to the side," she said to herself, and she beat her hands feebly on the ice.

Away in the distance, in some other world, the band struck up, "He's a fine old English gentleman."

Her hands touched something wet and warm.

"The thaw has come at last," she thought, and consciousness and feeling ebbed away together.

CHAPTER III.

"And dawn, sore trembling still and grey with fear, Looked hardly forth, a face of heavier cheer Than one which grief or dread yet half enshrouds."

SWINBURNE.

When Di came to herself, it was to find that she was sitting on the bank supported by Miss Crupps' trembling arm, with her head on Miss Crupps'

shoulder. Some one, bending over her--could it be Lord Hemsworth with that blanched face and bare head?--was wiping her face with the gentleness of a woman.

"Have I had a fall?" she asked dizzily. "I don't remember. I thought it was--Miss Crupps who fell."

"Yes, you have had a fall," said Lord Hemsworth, hurriedly; "but you will be all right directly. Don't be all night with that brandy, Lumley."

Di suddenly perceived Mr. Lumley close at hand, trying to jerk something out of a little silver lamp into a tumbler. She had seen that lamp before. It had been handed round with lighted brandy in it with the mince-pies. No one drank it by itself. Evidently there was something wrong.

"I don't understand," she said, beginning to look about her. A confused gleam of remembrance was dawning in her eyes which terrified Lord Hemsworth.

"Drink this," he said quickly, pressing the tumbler against her lip.

Her teeth chattered against the rim. Miss Crupps was weeping silently.

Di pushed away the gla.s.s and stared wildly about her.

What was this great crowd of eyes kept back by a chain of men? What was that man in a red uniform with a trumpet, craning forward to see? There was a sound of women crying. How dark it was! Where was the moon gone to?

"What is it?" she whispered hoa.r.s.ely, stretching out her hands to Lord Hemsworth, and looking at him with an agony of appeal. "What has happened?"

But he only took her hands and held them hard in his. If he could have died to spare her that next moment he would have done it.

"When I say three," said a distinct voice near at hand. "Gently, men.

One, two, _three_. That's it."

Di turned sharply in the direction of the voice. There was a knot of people on the ice at a little distance. One was kneeling down. Another knelt too, holding a lantern ringed with mist. As she looked, the others raised something between them in a fur rug, something heavy, and began to move slowly to the bank.

Her face took a rigid look. She remembered. She rose suddenly to her feet with a voiceless cry, and would have fallen forward on her face had not Lord Hemsworth caught her in his arms. He held her closely to him, and put his shaking blood-stained hand over her eyes. Miss Crupps sobbed aloud. Mr. Lumley sat down by her, telling her not to cry, and a.s.suring her that it would all be all right; but when he was not comic he was not up to much.

There was no need to keep the crowd off any longer. Their whole interest centred in John, and they broke away in murmuring ma.s.ses along the bank, and down the ice, in the wake of the little band with the lantern.

Now that the lantern had gone, the place was wrapped in a white darkness. The other lights had apparently gone out, except the red end of a torch on the bank. The mist was covering the valley.

"Is he dead? Is he dead?" gasped Di, clinging convulsively to the friend who had loved her so long and so faithfully.

"No, Di, no," said Lord Hemsworth, speaking as if to a child; "not dead, only hurt. And the doctor is there. He was on the ice when it happened.

He was with you both almost as soon as I was. I am going to take off your skates. Can you walk a little with my help? Yes? It will be better to be going gently home. Put your hands in your m.u.f.f. Here it is. You must put in the other hand as well. The bank is steep here. Lean on me."

And Lord Hemsworth helped her up the bank, and guided her stumbling feet towards the dwindling constellation of lights at the further end of the lake.

A party of men pa.s.sed them in the drifting mist. One of them turned back. It was Archie, his face streaming with perspiration.

"Did you get him?" asked Lord Hemsworth.

"Get him? Not a chance," said Archie. "He stood on the bank till Dawnay and I were within ten yards of him, and then laughed and ran quietly away. He knew we could not follow on our skates, though we made a rush for him, and by the time we had got them off he was out of sight, of course. I expect he has doubled back, and is watching among the crowd now."

"Would you know him again?"

"No; he was masked. He would never have let me come so close to him if he had not been. I say, how is John?"

Lord Hemsworth glared at Archie, but the latter was of the species that never takes a hint, like his father before him, who was always deeply affronted if people resented his want of tact. He called it "touchiness"

on their part. The "touchiness" of the world in general affords tactless persons a perennial source of offended astonishment.

"What are you frowning at me about?" said Archie, in an injured voice.

"What has become of John? Hullo! what's that? Why, it's the omnibus.

They have been uncommonly quick about getting it down. My word, the horses are giving trouble! They can't get them past the bonfires."

"Go on and say Miss Tempest and Miss Crupps are coming," said Lord Hemsworth, "and keep places for them."

He knew the omnibus had not been sent for for them, but he did not want Di to realize for whom it was required. Archie hurried on. Miss Crupps and Mr. Lumley pa.s.sed at a little distance.

"You are deceiving me," gasped Di. "You mean it kindly, but you are deceiving me. He is dead. Did not Archie say he was dead? It is no good keeping it from me."