“And you mounted again, and won the race, with your arm broken!” exclaimed Lord Alfred. “Why, it’s the most gallant, noble—but you are suffering dreadfully! Oh, what am I to do for you? why did I ever let you ride that vicious, dangerous brute!”
“There, don’t make a fuss,” returned Coverdale; “let us get out of this crowd; find me a glass of wine, for I’ve a sort of faintness comes over me every now and then, and when I’ve drank that I shall do well enough until we can get a surgeon to set my arm; don’t worry about it—when I put the horse at that wall I fully expected to break my neck.”
Five minutes’ rest, and a couple of glasses of old Sherry, restored Coverdale sufficiently to enable him to announce his readiness to proceed, though he refused to leave the ground until the Honourable Billy Whipcord had undertaken to see that the winner was defrauded of none of his rights; and then, and not till then, did Harry accept Lord Alfred’s offer to accompany him to town in a Hansom’s cab, which a gentleman who had engaged it for the day obligingly gave up the moment he learned for what purpose it was required.
The conversation of the two friends during the drive to London afforded a curious illustration of character. Lord Alfred grieved and shocked beyond measure at the accident which had occurred to his old schoolfellow in his service, was engaged the whole time in pouring forth unavailing lamentations and self-accusings; while Coverdale, although suffering the most excruciating anguish from every motion of the cab, was so touched by the evidence of feeling shown by his companion, that he not only repressed all outward signs of pain, but used his best endeavours to comfort and console Lord Alfred. On their way to Lord Alfred’s lodgings, where he insisted Coverdale should take up his abode until he should be well enough to travel, they called at the house of a surgeon celebrated for his skill in cases of fracture, and were fortunate enough to find him at home. On learning the nature of the accident, he provided himself with the necessary apparatus, reached the lodgings as soon as his patient, and, within an hour of the time at which the injury was inflicted, Coverdale’s arm was set, and the fracture pronounced to be not a very serious one.
“And now for my poor Alice,” was Harry’s first exclamation, when, with strict injunctions to go to bed and keep his arm quiet, Mr. B——— had departed; “how am I to act about her? If I write her word I’ve met with an accident, she’ll be frightened out of her wits; and yet if I don’t, she may hear of it some other way (those confounded newspapers are sure to get hold of the affair), and fancy I am killed, or some such notion; I’d better write—give me the tools, there’s a good fellow.”
“But, really you ought not to exert yourself to do it, remember——” began Lord Alfred, deprecatingly.
“I remember, sir, that my wife is alone, and anxious about me already, and that if I can spare her any shock or alarm, I will do so as long as I can hold a pen,” was Coverdale’s positive and somewhat snappish answer; for which he must be held excused, as severe bodily pain does not tend to improve the temper.
Lord Alfred, seeing it was useless to contend the point, gave him pen, ink, and paper; and, unfit as he was for such exertion, Coverdale wrote Alice a full account of his day’s adventures, only concealing the nature and extent of his accident. The letter was most kind and judicious, and well calculated to soothe and console her to whom it was addressed, and no doubt would have succeeded in so doing, but for the following untoward events.
Alice, left to herself, had grown desperately frightened as to the possible upshot of her husband’s rash expedition to London; and, as the reader is already aware, had dispatched after him Lord Alfred’s letter, and her own reasons for so doing, fairly written upon two sheets of scented note-paper. But, although she rightly considered this the best thing she could do, yet it by no means afforded her lasting comfort, and she remained restless and unhappy until, on the evening of the day on which the steeple-chase occurred, she worked herself up to such a pitch of nervous anxiety, that she was becoming quite ill, when the idea struck her that perhaps Harry, having received her letter, might set off at once, and arrive by a train which got in about seven, p.m. On the chance of this she dispatched, to meet the aforesaid train, a groom and a dog-cart. Now, as the reader knows, it was impossible Harry could arrive by that train, because at the time it started, he—having written to Alice—had just been undressed by Lord Alfred Courtland’s valet, and gone to bed, which, no one can doubt, was by far the best place for him. But though he did not come by that train, a young farmer did, who was one of Harry’s tenants, and who, as ill luck would have it, had been at the steeple-chase, witnessed Coverdale leap and fall, and heard afterwards an exaggerated account of the injuries he had received. Thus, when the groom inquired if he had seen his master get into the train, he favoured that equine servitor with a graphic history of the morning’s proceedings, illustrated and embellished by the narrator’s imaginative powers; which recital producing much grief and consternation in the mind of the faithful fellow, who was much attached to his master, induced him to drive home as fast as the trotting mare could step, to destroy his mistress’s peace of mind, by imparting to her these disastrous tidings. Having great and, as the sequel proved, unfounded reliance on his own tact and eloquence, he, on his arrival, would by no means allow Wilkins to be his mouthpiece; on the contrary, nothing would serve him but to be shown into his mistress’s presence, and, as he termed it, “break it to her easy-like” himself—which judicious intention he carried out thus:—“If you please, Mrs. Coverdale, ma’am, I’m sorry to say somethin’ dreadful’s been and happened, which I thought p’raps you might like to ’ear; so, not to frighten you, I made bold to come and break it to you myself!” Poor Alice! all the blood seemed to rush to her heart, while a choking sensation in her throat totally deprived her of the power of speech. After a moment, she contrived to gasp out interrogatively, “A railroad accident? your master——”
Answering her idea rather than her words, the man replied, “If you please, ma’am, it wasn’t on the railway as poor master met with his accident!”