Carrying her softly and carefully on a gate to her place of shelter, it looked as if they formed a funeral procession, of which the General seemed chief-mourner.
His bearing was stern and composed, his step never faltered, nor did his hand shake; but he who wrestled with the angel of old, and prevailed against him, could scarcely have out-done this loving, longing heart in earnestness of purpose and passionate pleading of prayer.
"But once more!" was his petition. "Only that she may know me, and look on me once more!" and it was granted.
For two days Blanche Douglas never spoke nor stirred. Mrs. Walters constituted herself head-nurse, and never left her pillow. The General remained the whole time at the threshold of her chamber.
The surgeon, a country practitioner of high repute, who saw her within an hour of her accident, committed himself to no opinion by word or sign, but shook his head despondingly the moment he found himself alone. The famous London doctor, telegraphed for at once, preserved an ominous silence. He, too, getting into the fly that took him back to the station, looked grave and shook his head. The hospitable yeoman, who placed his house and all he had freely at the sufferer's disposal, packing off the very children to their aunt's, at the next farm, felt, as he described it, "Down-hearted—uncommon." His kindly wife went about softly and in tears. Daisy and Bill hurried to and fro, in every direction, as required, by night and day; while Norah, watching in the darkened room, tried to hope against hope, and pray for that which she dared not even think it possible could be granted.
The General looked the quietest and most composed of all. Calm and still, he seemed less to watch than to wait. Perhaps some subtler instinct than theirs taught him the disastrous certainty, revealed to him the inevitable truth.
Towards evening of the second day Norah came into the passage and laid her hand on his shoulder, as he sat gazing vacantly from the window, over the fields and orchards about the farm. They loomed hazy and indistinct in the early winter twilight, but the scene on which he looked was clear enough—a bright sunny slope, a golden gleam in the sky above, and on earth a dark heap, with a trailing habit, and a slender riding-whip clenched in a small gloved hand.
"She has just asked for you," whispered Norah. "Go to her—quick! God bless you, General! Try and bear it like a man!"
The room was very dark. He stole softly to her bedside, and felt his fingers clasped in the familiar clinging touch once more.
"My darling!" he murmured, and the strong man's tears welled up, thick and hot, like a child's.