Heriot's Choice Part 69

Heriot--' but here she stopped.

'Well,' he returned, encouragingly; and for the second time he noticed the exceeding beauty of Mildred's eyes, as she fixed them softly and beseechingly on his face.

'Do you think it would hurt me to go that little distance, just to see Rachel?'

'What, in this bitter wind!' he remonstrated. 'Wait until to-morrow, and I will drive you over.'

'There may be no to-morrows for Rachel,' she returned, with gentle persistence. 'I am afraid I shall fret sadly if I do not see her again; she was my best Sunday scholar. The wind will not hurt me; if you knew how I long to be out in it; just before you came in I was wishing I were on the top of one of those fells, feeling it sweep over me.'

'Ministers of grace defend me from the soft pleading of a woman's tongue!' exclaimed Dr. Heriot, impatiently, but he laughed too; 'you are a most troublesome patient, Miss Lambert; but I suppose you must have your way; but you must take the consequences of your own wilfulness.'

Mildred quietly seated herself.

'No, I am not wilful; I have no wish to disobey you,' she returned, in a low voice.

He drew near and questioned her face; evidently it dissatisfied him.

'If I do not let you go, you will only worry yourself the whole day, and your lungs are sound enough,' he continued, brusquely; but Mildred's strange unreasonableness tried him. 'Wrap yourself up well. Polly is going with me, but there is plenty of room for both. I will pay my visit, and leave you with Rachel for an hour, while I get rid of some of my other patients.'

Mildred lost no time in equipping herself, and though Dr. Heriot pretended to growl the greater part of the way, he could not help noticing how the wind--bleak and boisterous as it was--seemed to freshen his patient, and bring back the delicate colour to her cheeks.

'What a hardy north-country woman you have become,' he said, as he lifted her down from the phaeton, and they went up the path to the house.

'I feel changed already; thank you for giving me my way in this,' was the grateful answer.

When Dr. Heriot had taken his departure, she went up to the sickroom, and sat for a long time beside her old favourite, reading and praying with her, until Rachel had fallen into a doze.

'She will sleep maybe for an hour or two; she had a terrible night of pain,' whispered Mrs. Sowerby, 'and she will sleep all the sweeter for your reading to her. Poor thing! she was set on seeing her dear Miss Lambert, as she always calls you.'

'I will come again and see her to-morrow, if Dr. Heriot permits it,' she replied.

When Mrs. Sowerby had gone back to her daughter's room, she went and sat by herself at a window looking over Stenkrith; the rocks and white foaming pools were distinctly visible through the leafless trees; a steep flight of steps led down to the stream and waterfall; the steps were only a few yards from the Sowerbys' house. As Mildred looked, a strange longing to see the place again took possession of her.

For a moment she hesitated, as Dr. Heriot's strictures on her imprudence recurred to her memory, but she soon repelled them.

'He does not understand--how can he--that this confinement tries me,'

she thought, as she crept softly down the stairs, so as not to disturb Rachel. 'The wind was delicious. I feel ten times better than I did in that hot room; he will not mind when I tell him so.'

Mildred's feverish restlessness, fed by bitter thought, was getting the better of her judgment; like the skeleton placed at Egyptian feasts to remind the revellers that they were mortal, so Mildred fancied her courage would be strengthened, her resolution confirmed, by a visit to the very spot where her bitterest wound had been received; she remembered how the dark churning waters had mingled audibly with her pain, and for the moment she had wished the rushing force had hurried her with it, with her sweet terrible secret undisturbed, to the bottom of that deep sunless pool.

And now the yearning to see it again was too strong to be resisted.

Polly had accompanied Dr. Heriot. Mrs. Sowerby was in her daughter's room; there was no one to raise a warning voice against her imprudence.

The whole place looked deserted and desolate; the sun had hidden its face for days; a dark moisture clung to the stones, making them slippery in places; the wind was more boisterous than ever, wrapping Mildred's blue serge more closely round her feet, and entangling her in its folds, blowing her hair wildly about her face, and rendering it difficult with her feeble force to keep her footing on the slimy rocks.

'I shall feel it less when I get lower down,' she panted, as she scrambled painfully from one rock to another, often stopping to take breath. A curious mood--gentle, yet reckless--was on her. 'He would be angry with her,' she thought Ah, well! his anger would only be sweet to her; she would own her fault humbly, and then he would be constrained to forgive her; but this longing for freedom, for the strong winds of heaven, for the melody of rushing waters, was too intense to be resisted; the restlessness that devoured her still led her on.

'I see something moving down there,' observed Polly, as Dr. Heriot's phaeton rolled rapidly over the bridge--'down by the steps, I mean; it looked almost like Aunt Mildred's blue serge dress.'

'Your eyes must have deceived you, then,' he returned coolly, as he pulled up again at the little gate.

Polly made no answer, but as she quickened her steps towards the place, he followed her, half vexed at her persistence.

'My dear child, as though your Aunt Milly would do anything so absurd,'

he remonstrated. 'Why, the rocks are quite unsafe after the rain, and the wind is enough to cut one in halves.'

'It is Aunt Milly. I told you so,' returned Polly, triumphantly, as she descended the step; 'there is her blue serge and her beaver hat. Look!

she sees us; she is waving her hand.'

Dr. Heriot suppressed the exclamation that rose to his lips.

'Take care, Polly, the steps are slippery; you had better not venture on the stones,' he said, peremptorily. 'Keep where you are, and I will bring Miss Lambert back.'

Mildred saw him coming; her heart palpitated a little.

'He will think me foolish, little better than a child,' she said to herself; he will not know why I came here;' and her courage evaporated.

All at once she felt weak; the rocks were certainly terribly slippery.

'Wait for me; I will help you!' he shouted, seeing her indecision; but either Mildred did not hear, or she misunderstood him; the stone was too high for her una.s.sisted efforts; she tried one lower; it was wet; her foot slipped, she tried to recover herself, fell, and then, to the unspeakable horror of the two watching her above, rolled from rock to rock and disappeared.

Polly's wild shriek of dismay rang through the place, but Dr. Heriot never lost his presence of mind for a moment.

'Stay where you are; on your peril disobey me!' he cried, in a voice of thunder, to the affrighted girl; and then, though with difficulty, he steered his way between the slippery stones, and over the dangerous fissures. He could see her now; some merciful jag in the rocks had caught part of her dress, and arrested her headlong progress. The momentary obstacle had enabled her, as she slipped into one of the awful fissures that open into Coop Kernan Hole, to s.n.a.t.c.h with frantic hands at the slimy rock, her feet clinging desperately to the narrow slippery ledge.

'John, save me!' she screamed, as she felt herself slipping into the black abyss beneath.

'John!'

John Heriot heard her.

'Yes, I am coming, Mildred; hold on--hold on, another minute.' The drops of mortal agony stood on his brow as he saw her awful peril, but he dared not, for both their sakes, venture on reckless haste; already he had slipped more than once, but had recovered himself. It seemed minutes to both of them before Polly saw him kneeling on one knee beside the hole, his feet hanging over the water.

'Hush! do not struggle so, Mildred,' he pleaded, as he got his arm with difficulty round her, and she clung to him almost frantically; the poor soul had become delirious from the shock, and thought she was being dashed to pieces; her face elongated and sharpened with terror, as she sank half fainting against his shoulder. The weight on his arm was terrible.

'Good Heavens! what can I do?' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as he felt his strength insufficient to lift her. His position was painful in the extreme; his knee was slipping under him; and the dripping serge dress, heavy with water, increased the strain on the left arm; a false movement, the slightest change of posture, and they must both have gone. He remembered how he had heard it said that Coop Kernan Hole was of unknown depth under the bridge; the dark sluggish pool lay black and terrible between the rocks; if she slipped from his hold into that cruel water, he knew he could not save her, for he had ever been accounted a poor swimmer, and yet her dead-weight was already numbing his arm.

'Mildred, if you faint we must both die!' he cried in despair.

His voice seemed to rouse her; some instinct of preservation prompted her to renewed effort; and as he held her more firmly, she managed to get one hand round his neck--the other still clutched at the rock; and as Polly's cries for help reached a navvy working at some distance, she saw Dr. Heriot slowly and painfully lift Mildred over the edge of the rock.

'Thank G.o.d!' he panted, and then he could say no more; but as he felt the agonised shuddering run through Mildred's frame, as, unconscious of her safety, she still clung to him, he half-pityingly and half-caressingly put back the unbound hair from the pale face, as he would have done to a child.

But he looked almost as ghastly as Mildred did, when, aided by the navvy's strong arms, they lifted her over the huge ma.s.ses of rocks and up the steep steps.

Polly ran to meet them; her lover's pale and disordered appearance alarmed her almost as much as Mildred's did.

'Oh, Heriot!' cried the young girl, 'you are hurt; I am sure you are hurt.'

'A strain, nothing else,' he returned, quickly; 'run on, dear Polly, and open the door for us. Mrs. Sowerby must take us in for a little while.'