Mrs. Mountain’s scream rang through the house, and startled every soul within it, except that marble figure on the bed. Hurried steps came up the stairs, the heavy tread of a man, the light patter of women’s feet, and the room filled as if by magic.
‘Fetch a doctor,’ screamed Mrs. Jenny; ‘Julia’s a-dyin’!’
Samson Mountain stood for one moment with his hands aloft and his eyes glaring at his daughter. Then he dropped with a sobbing groan into a chair, with his head in his hands. There was a general scream from the women. One, more serviceable than the rest, called from the window to a gaping yokel below in the yard, and bade him ride for help. Her face and voice froze him for a moment, but he caught the words ‘Miss Julia,’ and two minutes after he was astride a broad-backed plough-horse, making for the distant village.
Samson Mountain sat with his face hidden and spoke no word; at the sight of him his wife’s face had turned to sudden rage, and she stood over him like a ruffled hen, and clacked commination of masculine imbecility, intermixed with wild plaints for her child.
Julia slept through the tumult as she had slept through the calm, and Mrs. Jenny, kneeling beside her with her face in the bedclothes, moaned love and penitent despair. Samson raised his head at last, and looked with a dazed stare first at his daughter and then at his wife, and left the room without a word, pursued by a hailstorm of reproach. He went into the yard and pottered aimlessly about, looking old and broken on a sudden. The sound of horses’ hoofs roused him; it was the rustic messenger returning. ‘Where’s the doctor?’ demanded Samson. ‘Gone to Heydon Hey. What am I to dew?’ ‘Follow him an’ fetch him back. Hast not gumption enough to know that?’ asked Samson wearily. The man started again, and Samson began once more his purposeless wanderings about the yard. He had no sense of time or place, only a leaden weight on heart and limb, which in all his life he had never known before. He leaned his elbows on the fence of the fold yard, and became conscious of a running figure which neared him rapidly. He watched it stupidly, and it was within twenty yards of him before he recognised it—Dick Reddy, dust and mud to the collar, hatless, and panting.
‘Julia!’ he gasped. ‘Tell me, is it true?’ ‘Julia’s dyin,’ said Samson. ‘My God!’ he cried, with sudden passion, as if his own voice had unlocked the sealed fountain of his grief, ‘my little gell’s a-dyin’!’
‘Mr. Mountain,’ said Dick, ‘I love her, you know I love her. Let me see her.’ His voice, broken with fatigue and emotion, his streaming eyes, his outstretched hands, all pleaded with his words.
‘It’s all one who sees her now,’ said Samson, and leaned his elbows on the fence again. Dick took the despairing speech for a permission, and entered the house. At the bottom of the stairs, in the otherwise deserted hall, he met Mrs. Jenny, a very moving statue of terror.
‘Dick,’ she said, clutching the young man by the arm, ‘I can’t abear it any longer. Come in here wi’ me.’ She pulled him into a side room, and sitting down, abandoned herself to weeping, wringing her hands, and moaning.
‘I can’t abear it any longer,’ she repeated. ‘I must tell somebody, an’ I’ll tell you. It’s all my wicked cruel fault.’