Chapter Nine.
For the first minutes Claudia could realise nothing but confusion, and a dreadful sense of terror; for the shock to herself had been so great as to set her head whirling, and prevent her instant understanding of what had happened. She slowly gathered herself up, while the driver, who was not quite sober, jumped off, swore loudly, and ran to his horses’ heads. In his excitement he would have jerked them back, so that the wheel would again have passed over Fenwick, if Charlie Carter had not caught his arm.
“Stop, you fool!” he said. “Can’t you see what you’re doing?”
The driver swore another great oath, and rubbed his arm across his wet forehead.
“’Twern’t no fault o’ mine,” he protested. “Why didn’t you look ahead?”
“Shut up!” said Charlie tersely, “and hold these brutes of yours quiet while I get him out.”
Claudia, white as a ghost, came to his side.
“I can help,” she said.
“Can you?” said the boy, looking distrustfully at her. “You won’t faint, or anything?”
“No.”
“It’s all got awfully mixed up, you see. However, here goes! we can’t leave him there. I say, I’ll hand all I can out to you first before we move him.”
He was under the cart as he spoke, disentangling the wheels very handily, for the smash had been so complete that they were knotted and twisted in an extraordinary manner. Flies were making the horses fidgety, and a great cart-wheel was very close. At last, as part of the machinery was drawn from under Fenwick, there came a groan.
“Oh, take care!” cried Claudia.
“All right!” said the boy, more cheerily, for all this time he had been working with a deadly fear in his heart. “I think it must be his leg that’s hurt.” He emerged the next moment, and stood looking from Claudia to Fenwick, and back again.
“Well?” she said, drawing a long breath. He nodded in the direction of the driver, who stood stupidly staring.
“That ass of a fellow could lift him if he had the sense, but if any bones are broken he might make bad worse. I say, do you think you’re strong enough to pull, or could you get under and keep his leg quiet while I draw him out?”
“Give me the man’s whip. I know how to make a splint.”
She was under the cart the next moment, and between them they managed the business by tearing their handkerchiefs into strips. The next thing was to draw him out as smoothly and easily as they could, but it seemed endless, Fenwick groaning heavily, and when the operation was over, Claudia, who prided herself upon her nerve, was disgusted to find herself shaking in every limb. The cart lumbered off, the man, who was really not to blame, but who was sufficiently muddled to be doubtful on the point, glad to escape, and Claudia and Charlie were left staring at each other.
“You can stop here with him, can’t you?” said the boy. “I must go and fetch a doctor or a carriage or something. That fellow would have been all day about it.”
“Of course I can stop. You’d better go to the Hall, and send a man for the doctor. Make them be quick.”
He flung a doubtful look at her, but there was no help for it, and great need for haste. He got on his bicycle and rode away, and Claudia was left with the unconscious Fenwick, and her own reflections.
They were sufficiently miserable. Her foolhardiness, or, at any rate, her attempt to escape from an embarrassing situation, had undoubtedly caused the accident, while, to make matters worse, she, who ought to have been the sufferer, had been saved by Fenwick, perhaps at the expense of his own life or limb, for she could not but see that he was seriously hurt. To Claudia, apt to pride herself upon her independence, and power of going her own way, this alone would have been humiliating enough; add to it that the man loved her, for the ring of the one word “Claudia!” which was still in her ears, told her so much beyond a doubt.
And here she was, helpless. Before Charlie Carter had been gone ten minutes, she had jumped up and run a little way along the road, feeling as if hours had passed, and help must be near. Then, blaming herself for leaving Fenwick, who might revive to find himself alone, she hurried back to his side, and tried to smooth the jacket which they had folded under his head, wishing meanwhile that she could have gone for help herself, for she was certain she would have been quicker.
As it happened, matters had turned out extraordinarily well, for Charlie, on his way to the Hall, met a young surgeon well known to the Wilmots, who at once drove on to the scene of the accident, while the boy fetched a carriage; so that Claudia had not the length of time to wait that she imagined for herself. Moreover, the young man arrived having been told all particulars, and requiring no such explanations from her as she might have found it difficult to give. Indeed, when he glanced at her he saw that she was in no condition to be asked questions, and applied himself to the patient, who was beginning to recover consciousness. But when he got up he looked serious.
“Is he very much hurt?” asked Claudia, trembling.
“I hope not. I can hardly tell as yet,” he answered evasively. “His leg is broken, and you have done all that was possible. Now will you allow me to offer you a little advice? You have also had a fall, I understand?”
“Oh, not to hurt.” She pulled her hair impatiently over a bruise on her temple.
“You can do no more good here,”—Claudia was grateful for the “more”—“and the carriage will very soon arrive from the Hall. If you wouldn’t object to my man driving you and your bicycle back, you can see that all is ready for us there.”
“Must I go?” said poor Claudia piteously. But she added at once, “Yes, yes, I see.” The suggestion of overlooking the old housekeeper’s preparations was a pious fraud, for there was nothing to be done except to answer a hundred questions, and to drink a certain decoction on which Mrs Graham prided herself, and which in more self-contained moments she would certainly have rejected. This gone through, walking up and down her own room, where she had been banished, she could no longer defend herself against a returning rush of remorse.
“Why, why was I such a fool! As if I could not have let him speak and have done with it, instead of plunging off in that idiotic fashion! And then, if only he had left me alone! I should not in the least have minded a broken leg myself, or even worse.” She dropped her hands, and stood at the window looking gravely out, for Claudia was at the age when living has not become so strong a habit, and death is not so much shrunk from. “But to see him lying there, and to know that it was all one’s own fault—I don’t think there could be a more horrid situation. And then it was very plucky, the most plucky thing he could have done, and just when I had been so nasty to him! Oh, Claudia, Claudia, a fine muddle you have made of it! As if you couldn’t have kept your head, told him quietly you didn’t care for him, and not behaved so altogether idiotically, and landed yourself in such a hateful position! I wish,”—she paused—“yes, I do wish that Anne was here, for there isn’t a soul to whom to turn. Even Harry Hilton. If Harry had done it—he wouldn’t have been quick enough, but if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered half so much, because he would have taken it as a matter of course, and never thought about it afterwards. But now,”—another pause—“I wonder if he does like me very much? Miss Arbuthnot saw, I suppose, when I didn’t, and she implied that he was spoilt—I don’t know, I think she might be jealous, and he must have cared a good deal to dash in like that. Oh, why, why was I such a fool as to put myself under such an obligation to any man! Perhaps it’s not so bad, perhaps— Oh, there are the wheels. Now I shall know something, and anything, anything must be better than this dreadful uncertainty!”
But the uncertainty continued. The leg was set, the patient had recovered consciousness, and had immediately asked for Claudia. But the doctor was still in the house, and had sent for a nurse. More, Claudia could not make out. She had come down, looking very white, and was giving Charlie Carter tea, and a great deal of tea-cake, after which he proposed, as he expressed it, to joggle over towards Barton Towers, expecting to meet and explain matters to Lady Wilmot. He had become more confidential towards Claudia, but also more contemptuous.
“I say, how could you be such a duffer?” he demanded. “Didn’t you hear me call out to you to look out for that turn?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said meekly. “I wasn’t attending.”
“Then you ought to attend, or you’ll always be coming to grief. There’s where Carry gets a pull over you.”
“Who’s Carry?”
“She’s my sister, don’t you know? The eldest of the lot. You and she go along much of a muchness, only she doesn’t lose her head.”
“Oh!” murmured Claudia, too conscious that she deserved the reproach to defend herself.
“I never saw any one get such a cropper before,” he went on, “and it’s an awful pity about that wheel of his. It’s utterly and entirely done for.”
She plucked up spirit.
“I wish to goodness he had left me alone!”
“Me couldn’t, of course, because you’re a girl. I’m not sure that girls ought to ride at all,” said Charlie, helping himself to more tea-cake. “Otherwise, I bet he’d have got out of the way fast enough. I never knew any one cut in as sharply as he did. I couldn’t have done it myself.”
“You! Of course you couldn’t, a boy like you!” She was stung to retort. “I wish you’d finish your tea and go. They’ll all be wondering what has become of us.”
“I’ll go. But I never saw such a beastly tea as old Fuller has brought in,” he remarked, mournfully regarding the empty dish.
“Charlie!”
“Well?”
“You go and ask Mrs Graham how Captain Fenwick is going on, and I’ll order in a second tea-cake.”
“You won’t dare.”
“Won’t I?”
“Oh, I shan’t go up again.”
“You must. You must take the last, the very last news to Barton Towers. Sometimes five minutes makes a difference.”
“What rot! However, all right. I’ll ring for old Fuller, if you’re sure you can tackle him.”
Claudia was glad to get rid of the boy who seemed so certain that she and she only was to blame, that he served to accentuate her own self-reproach. Still, for the first time in her life, solitude was insupportable, and her thoughts turned longingly again and again to the kindly cousins at Elmslie. Should she telegraph and go back to them the next day, throwing up her work? The idea came weighted with longing, but she rejected it as cowardly; for in spite of the pain and perplexity of her position, she hated to give up what she had begun, conscience telling her that it was unfair to her employers. She flushed and paled too, as she reflected that it would be heartless to leave Huntingdon while Captain Fenwick lay there in a condition for which she might be held responsible, considering that it had been brought about by her own folly. Hateful reflection, which yet served to keep her mind fixed upon the sufferer. Never in her life had she passed such miserable hours. Never had her career seemed so unsatisfying.
Nor was it much better when the others appeared. True it was that no one blurted out Charlie’s exceedingly downright reproaches, but she had an immediate conviction that he had related the story in such a manner that all the blame rested upon her, while she was so handicapped that it was impossible to excuse herself by explaining the circumstances of the case. She held her head high and looked defiant when, after largely commiserating Captain Fenwick, Lady Bodmin, who had always considered Claudia unduly forward, remarked that she had been given to understand that only the most skilful of cyclists should venture into such stony roads. Claudia, who felt herself skilful, could not say so; but Lady Wilmot dashed to her rescue.
“It was all the fault of that corner. It is most dreadfully dangerous, and I am always telling Peter that he must make a fuss about it. Think of Marjory,”—Marjory was the baby—“killing herself there some day!”
“Happily Miss Hamilton has not killed herself,” said Lady Bodmin sweetly, with a long drag on the last word.
Claudia was accustomed to pride herself upon indifference to these pin-pricks, for they had been exercised upon her before. To-day, however, they were stabs, deadly stabs; she shivered as they came, and imagined them even when they did not exist. Her head ached from its severe bruise, and she had sprained her wrist, but not a word of complaint would she utter. Nor could she fail to see that, although both Lady Wilmot, and Sir Peter when he came back, were as kind and comforting as possible, and tried to make light of the disaster, they were uneasily anxious. Some words which she caught made her think that they were discussing sending for Mrs Leslie, Fenwick’s married sister, and although Lady Wilmot evidently opposed the project, whatever it was, Claudia’s heart stood still at what it might not portend. The evening passed in a strange disjointed fashion. Generally they all played billiards, to-night only Sir Peter and Charlie went off. Once Claudia stepped out on the terrace, thankful to find herself alone, with the great night about her. The sweep of the park lying in broad outline under a full moon, took a mysterious beauty which was wanting by day, and was inexpressibly soothing. She stood still for a little while and drank it in, then her eye fell upon a corner of the house from which through the open window a light darted out. As she looked, a dark shadow crossed it, and she remembered that it was the window of Fenwick’s room. All her unrest returned. She walked down until she was underneath it, and stopped, vividly picturing the suffering which he was enduring, and she had caused. As she stood, another window was thrown open, and she heard voices. Evidently the doctor and some one else, the nurse or Lady Wilmot, had gone into the adjoining room, and in the still night the doctor’s low words fell distinctly on her ears.
“I must not conceal from you,” he said, “that his condition is very grave.”