“Well!” he said, finally, “if it is to be so, we must bear it, father. We must bear it as well as we can.”
Meanwhile Mr. Charles, not knowing what to do with himself, had examined everything in the sitting-room downstairs, not because there was anything to interest him, but because, while he suffered as much as the others, he had not, like the others, a primary claim to be with the chief sufferer of all.
“Best leave them alone, best leave them alone,” he had said to himself a dozen times over. “They’re better alone with him—better alone.”
But his mind was full of malaise, anxiety, and pain. And after a while he wandered out into the yard of the inn, where still there was a great commotion, horses and dogs about, and a floating population of grooms. Mr. Charles went and looked at one or two of the slim glossy hunters which were being taken out for exercise, or which were being prepared to depart, as the hunting season approached its end. He was a man of very different tastes; yet he was country-born and country-bred, and knew the points of a horse. Poor man, this new investigation chimed in strangely with the very different thoughts in his mind. He looked at the animals with an eye that could not help seeing, but an aching heart whose attention was directed elsewhere. While he was thus standing in the middle of the yard, vaguely examining everything around him, the deformed old ostler came up to him once more.
“Beg your pardon, Sir, but do you know if they’ve sent for the bone-setter, Sir, as I spoke to you and the lady about? T’other old gentleman won’t listen to me, not on no consideration. He’s awful cut up, he is; and I ask you, Sir, as a gentleman and a scholar, is this a time to be standing on p’s and q’s, and thinking what’s most genteel and that? Job Turner ain’t genteel, but he’ll save Mr. ’Eriot’s life, soon as look at ’im. Do’ee have him, now; do’ee have ’im;” cried the old man, with tears in the strange little blear eyes which shone out of his face from among the dark puckers of his cheeks and brow like diamonds. “Them brutes would have had the breath out o’ me years and years since, if it hadn’t a-been for Job. Every bone in my body, Sir, he’s put to rights, and joined together sometime. Now, do’ee have him; do’ee now, my gentleman! he’ll mend Mr. ’Eriot like he mended me. Men is alike, just as ’osses is alike; they’ve the same bones, and flesh and blood. Nature makes no account o’ one being a gentleman and one in the stables. Oh, Lord bless you, Sir, do’ee have him, or you’ll never forgive yourself. You all know Job Turner, mates; speak up for him, for God’s sake, and let the gentleman hear what he is.”
“He’s a rare ’un for bones!” cried one of the grooms.
“He’ll work your joint back into its socket, like as it was a strayed babby!” cried another.
“Ain’t he now; don’t he now, boys!” cried the old ostler; “speak up for him, for God’s sake; it’s for young Mr. ’Eriot, as always was the pleasantest gentleman I ever see in a ’unting field, or out on’t; he gave me ten bob just for nothing at all, the last blessed morning as ever he rode out o’ this yere yard. Lord bless you, Sir, we’ll have him up and well in a week if you won’t mind his not being genteel, and send for Job.”
“Hold your nonsense!” said another man, interfering. “Job ain’t the Lord to kill and make alive. The young gentleman’s broken his back; send you for the clergyman, or some one as’ll give him good advice, Sir. They ain’t fit to die at a moment’s notice, no more nor the likes of us. Send for the clergyman, Sir, if you’ll take my advice.”
Mr. Charles stood and looked from one to the other with a certain weary bewilderment; he felt as if the family misfortune, which had thus fallen upon the Hay-Heriots, out of all precedent, a thing that never had happened before, had made him a mark at which every kind of arrow might be shot. He shook his head as he went away, pursued by the old ostler’s entreaties.