His wife had caught him as he fell. She had uttered one cry; after that, her lips had opened only once, and only to say that she assented to her father’s proposal for the removal of her husband to Mrs. Granite’s house, and that she entreated them to find some gentle method of transportation over the rough road. For Windover was a town of many churches, but of no hospital.
Oddly, the only quite coherent thought she had was of a man she had heard about, a carpenter, who fell from a staging on the other side of the Cape. He was put into an express cart and driven home, a seven-mile gallop, over the rudest road in the State, to his wife; naturally, he was dead when he got there. Bayard had been called to see the widow.
Captain Hap stepped up (on tiptoe, as if he had been in a sick-room), and whispered to the surgeon who had been summoned to Angel Alley.
“That will do,” said the surgeon; “it has never been tried, that I know of, but it is worth trying—most modern ideas are—if practicable.”
“The fishermen hev cleared the car, the company has cleared the track, and the motor man is one of his people,” said Captain Hap; “an’ there’s enough of us to carry him from here to heaven so—so lovin’ly he’d never feel a jolt.”
The old captain made no effort to wipe the tears which rained down his wrinkled cheeks. He and Job Slip, with Mr. Bond and Bob and Tony, took hold of the stretcher; they looked about, to choose, out of a hundred volunteers, the sixth strong hand.
The Reverend George Fenton, agitated and trembling, forced his way through the parting crowd, and pleaded piteously to be allowed to offer his assistance in carrying his wounded classmate.
“I have never lifted a hand to help him since I came to Windover,” cried Fenton in the voice of a man who would rather that the whole world heard what he said and knew how he felt. “Let me have this chance before it is too late!... I’m not worthy to touch his bier,” added Fenton brokenly.
They gave way to his pleading, and it was done as he asked. Thus the wounded man was carried gently to the electric car—“the people’s carriage.” The fishermen, as the captain said, had captured it; they stood with bowed heads, as the stretcher passed through them, like children, sobbing. Throngs of them followed the slowly moving car, which carried Bayard tenderly to his own door. It was said afterwards that scores of them watched all night outside the cottage, peering for some sign of how it fared with him; but they were so still that one might hardly tell their figures from the shadows of the night.
The wind had continued to rise, but the thunder had passed on, and the shower was almost over when Bayard’s bearers lifted him across the threshold of Mrs. Granite’s door. At that moment one belated flash ran over earth and sea and sky. It was a red flash, and a mighty one. By its crimson light the fishermen saw his face for that last instant; it lay turned over on the stretcher quietly, towards his wife. The red color dyed her bridal white, and the terrible composure of her attitude was revealed; her hand was fast in his; she seemed to communicate, God knew how, with the unconscious man.