"Are you going to take him to Fontenoy?" asked the younger Cary.
"Why not?" flashed Miss Dandridge. "Would you leave him to bleed to death by the roadside? 'My enemy's dog—' and so forth. Hurry, Joab!"
The negro mounted his horse that had been grazing by the papaw bushes, and was off at a gallop, leaving Unity and Cary with the luckless rider. Cary brought water from the brook that brawled at the foot of the steep hillside, and Unity wet the brow and lips of the unconscious man, but he had given no sign of life when the relief party arrived from Fontenoy. This consisted of four stout negroes bearing the litter, and of Colonel Dick Churchill and Mr. Ned Hunter.
"Tut, tut!" cried Colonel Dick. "What's this? what's this? Damn this place! My mare Nelly threw me here thirty years ago!—I was coming home from a wedding. Senseless and cut across the head!—and I don't like the way that arm's bent.—Ned Hunter, you take Big Jim's corner of the litter for a minute. Now, Big Jim, you lift Mr. Rand.—So! we'll have him at Fontenoy in a jiffy, and in bed in the blue room. Run ahead, Unity, and tell Jacqueline and Mammy Chloe to make ready. His boy's gone for Gilmer. Easy now, men! Yes, 'twas at this very spot my mare Nelly threw me!—it was Maria Erskine's wedding."
The sun was low in the heavens when the good Samaritans and the unconscious man arrived at the foot of the wide, white-pillared Fontenoy porch. The arrival had many witnesses; for on hearing of the accident the large party assembled for the dancing class had at once dropped all employment and flocked to various coigns of vantage. A bevy of young girls looked from one parlour window, and another framed Mr. Pincornet's face and wig and flowered coat. In the hall and on the porch the elders gathered, while on the broad porch steps young men in holiday dress waited to see if they might be of help. Around the corner of the house peered the house negroes, pleasurably excited by any catastrophe and any procession, even that of a wounded man borne on a litter.
The cortège arrived. In the midst of much ejaculation, and accompanied by a fire of directions from Colonel Dick, Lewis Rand was borne up the steps and across the porch into the cool, wide hail. Here the litter was met by Jacqueline Churchill. She came down the shadowy staircase in a white gown, with a salver and a glass in her hand. "The room is ready, Uncle Dick," she said, in a steady voice. "The blue room. Aunt Nancy says you must make him take this cordial. I have lint and bandages all ready. This way, Big Jim. Mind the wall!"
She turned and preceded the men up the stair, along a hallway and into a pleasant chamber hung with blue and white. "Turn down the sheet, Mammy Chloe," she directed a negro woman standing beside the bed. "Quick! quick! he is bleeding so."
Rand was laid upon the bed, and as the men drew their arms from beneath him, he moved his head, and his lips parted. A moment later he opened his eyes. Colonel Dick heaved a sigh of relief. "He'll do now! Gilmer shall come and bleed him, and he'll be out again before you can say Jack Robinson! I'll have that place in the road mended to-morrow. Yes, yes, Mr. Rand, you've had an accident. Lie still! you're with friends. Hey, what did you say?"
Rand had said nothing articulate. His eyes were upon Jacqueline, standing at the foot of the bed. The room was in the western wing of the house, and where she stood she was bathed in the light of the sinking sun. It made her brown hair golden and like a nimbus. Rand made a straying motion with his hand. "I did not believe in heaven," he muttered. "If I have erred—"
"Lie still, lie still!" said Jacqueline. In a moment she turned, left the room, and went downstairs. "He is better," she told her cousin Unity, who with Fairfax Cary was waiting in the lower hall; then went on to the library, opened the door, and closed it softly behind her.