Under the Mendips Part 23

"Oh, father! oh, father!" Joyce murmured.

"There's a lot of folks come to see after him. Mr. Paget and Squire Bennett, and the Bishop's son from Wells; and there's no want of help; and they'll try and hunt him out."

"Hunt who out?"

"Why, the brute that caused the master to fall off Mavis's back, of course. I never did hold with master being so free riding over the Mendips at late hours. I've said so scores of times--_scores_. But there, he had the heart of a lion, he had."

_Had! had!_ How the word smote on Joyce's ear.

"_Has_ father--_has_--" she murmured, "he cannot, cannot be--dead!"

After this Joyce said no more. They went at a fair pace along the lonely lanes; they pa.s.sed through villages where the men were smoking pipes at the cottage doors, the women standing by with babies in their arms, while dusty, dirty little urchins played at "cross sticks" under the very nose of the old horse. Once they pa.s.sed a small farm where a mother, neatly dressed, was standing at the gate, and a girl of fourteen ran out to meet a man with her baby brother in her arms, who stretched out his hands as the girl said:

"Yes, there's daddy! Go to daddy; welcome, daddy!"

Ah! how often had Joyce watched for her father at the gate! How her heart had thrilled with joy as she ran to meet him; and now!

A low cry escaped her, which made Thomas turn his head, which he had hitherto kept steadily to the front, as if everything depended on his staring straight between the ears of the horse, and never looking to the right hand, or the left.

Thomas was a hard featured man, who had served the old squire, and to whom Mr. Falconer was still "Master Arthur." "Doan't ee fret, my dear Miss Joyce. It's the hand of the Almighty."

Ah, _was_ it the hand of Almighty Love, the G.o.d that had so lately revealed Himself to her in Christ, the All-loving as well as the All-mighty--was it possible He could take away 'the master from her head that day'?

The old servant's voice quavering with sympathy made Joyce feel that she was also trembling on the brink of tears.

"Thomas, I want to be brave, for I shall have to comfort him and mother."

Then there was silence again. The even jog trot of the horse's heavy hoofs kept up a continuous rhythm:

"Home, home again; home, home again--this seemed the burden of the strain--home, home again, but the same home never, never again."

The evening shadows were lying across the turf where the daisies had closed their golden eyes for the night, when the gig turned into the familiar road and drew up at the door.

The door was open, but there was no one there. Joyce sprang down and pa.s.sed in, throwing off her large bonnet, and unfastening the clasp of her cloak, which seemed like to choke her.

In the supreme moments of life the most trivial things always seem to fasten upon the outward senses, as if to show, by force of contrast, the enormous proportions of the great trouble--or the great joy, it may be--which is at the time overshadowing us.

So Joyce, as she stood in the hall, noticed that one of the stag's gla.s.s eyes had dropped out and lay upon the bench upon which Gilbert Arundel had sat on the night of their adventure on the moor. She saw, too, lying there, a large pair of scissors, and a roll of lint lay on the window-seat, with a basin in which the water was coloured a pale crimson. "They bandaged his head here," she thought,--and she was going upstairs, when slow, heavy, jerky footsteps were heard, and Duke came down, and, putting his nose into her hand, whined a low, piteous whine.

"Oh! Duke, Duke, where is he?"

As if he understood her human speech--as, indeed, he did, Duke turned to precede her upstairs.

On a bench in the long corridor two maid servants were seated, crying bitterly. But Joyce did not speak to them, she dared not; even the question she had asked Duke died on her lips.

The door of her father's room was ajar; and as Duke pushed it open with his nose, Joyce could see the great four-post bed, her mother sitting by it, and curled up in the window-seat was Piers.

The friends who had been there in the early part of the day were gone; they could do no more at Fair Acres. And Mr. Paget's aim was to set the constables to work to find the man who must have hurled a sharp stone at Mr. Falconer's head. The Wells doctor, too, was gone. He had a pressing case near Wells upon his hands, but he was to return at eight o'clock, when, it was hoped the doctor greater than himself, who had been summoned from Bristol, would have arrived.

In those days help in emergency was slow to obtain. Telegrams were not dreamed of, and horsepower performed the part which steam was soon to take up; to be followed by the marvellous electric force, which now sends on the wings of the wind messages all over the world, multiplied, on the very day on which I write, to an enormous extent, by the introduction of sixpenny telegrams, which will send a call for help, or strike a note of joy, and win an immediate response from thousands.

But there were no electric messages possible to get medical help for the squire, nor, indeed, would any help avail.

With a great sigh, Duke resumed his watch at the foot of the high bed; and Joyce, crossing over, kissed her mother and Piers, and then gazed down upon her father.

"Dear dad!" she said, inadvertently using the familiar name.

"He has not spoken nor opened his eyes since we laid him here," Mrs.

Falconer said. "He knows no one--no one----"

"Did he tell how it happened?"

"No."

"It might have been that he was thrown from--from--Mavis."

"No," Mrs. Falconer said again, "that could not be, they think; besides, they found a heavy stick and a tinder box close by."

Presently Piers came down from his place, and Joyce put her arms round him. The boy was very calm, but great tears fell upon Joyce's hand as she pressed him close.

The silent watch went on. Duke lay motionless, but his eyes were on the alert. The servants looked in sometimes, and brought Joyce and her mother some tea and cake. Joyce swallowed a cup of tea, but ate nothing.

Could this be the evening of the day which dawned so brightly?--the Wrington bells chiming, the village children singing hymns, joyousness and gladness everywhere. The guests gathered round Mrs. More; the bright, intelligent conversation to which she was listening; then her own narrative of the Mendip adventure;--and this brought her to the present from the past!

If her father had been a.s.sailed by a malicious miner on Mendip, that a.s.sailant was Bob Priday; of this she felt no doubt.

The Bristol doctor came, and the Wells doctor and they held a consultation. But there was nothing to be done; the injury Mr. Falconer had received was mortal.

"Will he give no sign, no word that he knows us?" Mrs. Falconer asked.

"Oh, for one word!"

"We do not think there will be any return of consciousness," the doctors said, "but we cannot tell."

No; no one could tell. And so the sad hours of the night pa.s.sed, and the dawn broke over the familiar fields, and Fair Acres smiled in the first bright rays of the morning.

Piers had slept curled up in his window-seat, worn out with grief. Mrs.

Falconer, too, had slept in an upright position, her head resting against the back of the chair, sleeping for sorrow.

But Joyce did not sleep; she kept watch, hoping, praying for one word of farewell.

As the first sunbeam slanted through the cas.e.m.e.nt, her father opened his eyes, and fastened them on Joyce. "Sunshine," he said, with a faint smile. "Dear child."

"Dearest father, dear father!"

"I hope my little girl will be named after my mother, _Joyce_. Yes, it is an old-world name, but I fancy it; name her Joyce."

The sound of his master's voice roused Duke, who p.r.i.c.ked his ears and came to the bedside. Mrs. Falconer also started and awoke.