“Hush, my dear Annie,” observed Leicester soothingly. “Arundel might not be able to prevent this accident—you are too hasty.”
“No, no!” returned Lewis in a low, broken voice, “I deserve her reproaches. I ought never to have quitted him, and yet I did so believing that I left him in perfect safety. I could not bear to stand inactive when other men were about to face danger; besides, I had pledged myself to assist in capturing this poacher.” He paused, then added, “I have been to blame, Miss Grant, but I am not quite the poltroon you imagine me. I did indeed leave your father that I might accompany the attacking party into the wood, but I strained every nerve to come up with Hardy before General Grant encountered him; and although that was impossible, I arrived in time to prevent him from forcing the horse to trample the life out of the fallen man, and wounded as I am, I engaged with and captured, at the risk of my own life, the ruffian who had injured your father; nor should I have been here now, but that it was necessary for some one to procure assistance and summon a surgeon, and I rode back at speed to my own injury, that I might leave a more efficient man with the General.”
As he ceased speaking the butler entered the room, bearing in his hand a lamp, and for the first time the light fell upon Lewis’s figure. Leicester, as he beheld him, uttered an exclamation of surprise and horror, which his appearance was well calculated to call forth. His face was deadly pale, save a red line across the forehead, where some bramble had torn the skin; his dark hair, heavy with the night dew, clung in wild disorder around his temples; and his clothes, stained with mud, bore traces of the severity of the struggle in which he had been engaged; the sleeve of his left arm, which still rested on the table, was soaked with gore, while the momentary excitement which had animated him as he spoke had given way to a return of the faintness produced by the loss of blood, which was by this time very considerable. As this ghastly figure met her sight Annie uttered a slight shriek—then a sense of the cruel injustice of her own reproaches banished every other consideration, and springing towards him, she exclaimed—
“Oh, Mr. Arundel, what can we do for you? how shocked, how grieved I am!—will you, can you forgive me?”
Lewis smiled and attempted to reply, but the words died away upon his lips, and completely overcome by faintness, he would have fallen from the chair had not Leicester supported him. Fortunately, at this moment the surgeon arrived, and Annie quitting the apartment, Lewis’s sleeve was cut open, his wound temporarily bound up, and his temples bathed with some stimulating essence which dispelled his faintness, before the surgeon’s services were required for General Grant. The latter gentleman had recovered consciousness ere he reached Broadhurst, and though suffering acute pain from his broken arm, appeared cool and collected. His first question had been “whether Hardy had escaped,” and he seemed to revive from the moment he was informed of his capture. His next inquiry was who had taken him, and on learning it was Lewis, he was much pleased, muttering, “Brave lad, brave lad! pity he’s not in the army.” He recognised Annie and spoke kindly to her, gave orders for the safe custody of Hardy, demanded of the surgeon who examined his arm whether he wished to amputate it, as he felt quite equal to the operation, and in short, under circumstances which would have overpowered any man of less firmness of character, behaved like a gentleman and a brave old soldier, as he was. Fortunately the surgeons (for a second, attracted by the rumour of an accident, as vultures are if a camel dies in the desert, had come to test the truth of the old proverb that two heads are better than one) succeeded in setting the arm, pronounced amputation unnecessary, and after careful examination, gave it as their opinion that, with the exception of a few contusions of little consequence, the General had sustained no further injury. Having come to this satisfactory conclusion, they found time to direct their attention to Lewis. After much whispered consultation and considerable exchange of learned winks and profound nods, they informed him that he had been wounded by a shot from a pistol (which, by the way, he could have told them), and that they had very little doubt that the ball remained in the wound, in which case it would be necessary to extract it. To this Lewis replied, “The sooner the better.” Accordingly they proceeded to put him to great agony by probing the wound to find the ball, after which they hurt him still more in extracting it, performing both operations with such easy cheerfulness of manner and utter disregard of the patient’s feelings, that a bystander would have imagined they were carving a cold shoulder of mutton rather than the same joint of live humanity. But surgeons, like fathers, have flinty hearts, unmacadamised by the smallest grain of pity for the wretched victims of their uncomfortable skill; their idea of the “Whole Duty of Man” being that he should afford them “an interesting case” when living, and become a “good subject” for them when he has ceased to be one to the Queen. After the ball was extracted, Lewis requested it might be handed to him; it was small, and from its peculiar shape he perceived that it must have been discharged from a pistol with a rifle barrel.
“If you will allow me,” he said, “I shall keep this bit of lead as a memorial of this evening’s entertainment.”
“Oh, certainly,” replied the most cheerful surgeon, “by all means; if it had but gone an eighth of an inch farther,” he added, rubbing his hands joyously, “only an eighth of an inch, it would have injured the spinal cord, and you would have been—droll how these things occur sometimes—you’d have been paralysed for life.”
Lewis shuddered, and wished devoutly he were for the time being Caliph Haroun Al’Raschid, in which case the facetious surgeon would have added a practical acquaintance with the effects of the bastinado on the sole of the human foot to his other medical knowledge.
“I don’t think,” resumed the doctor meditatively, “I don’t think you need apprehend any very unpleasant result, as far as I can as yet see into the case. Of course,” he continued with hilarity, “erysipelas might supervene, but that is seldom fatal, unless it affects the brain; and I should hope the great effusion of blood will prevent that in the present instance. You feel very weak, don’t you?”
Lewis replied in the affirmative, and his tormentor continued—