"I don't know. I don't care. I only care for you, about you, and here I have distressed you, shocked you. It is horrible. You feared to stay lest the Nigger should use strong language, and now it is I, your protector, who offends against good manners and good morals, and outrages your ears!" He had drawn her close to him by the hand that lay on his arm and was pouring his words in a low voice into her ears, his eyes blazing with earnestness, his face working with solicitude and remorse.
"There, Jack, it is all over and forgiven long ago. If you want to please me, let the matter rest. I am much interested in the performance. I never saw anything like it before. Tell me what he is doing now? I cannot make out. What does he mean by throwing himself down in that way and lying still? What are the people laughing at? Is he ill? Is he hurt? Why doesn't someone go to him? What do these foolish people mean by laughing? The man is hurt? Look, look! They cannot see. They are all in front of him. Look there! What is that oozing under his face? Go, see, help him, Jack. Look under his face on the ground! That is Blood!"
John Hanbury did not move. He too had seen something was wrong. He too saw the swelling pool of bright scarlet blood under the black face of the Negro now lying at full length. Still, he did not move. He had grown deadly pale and cold and limp. His head felt light, the colour faded out of objects, and everything became a white and watery blue. The light shivered and then grew faint and far away. Sounds waxed thin, attenuated, confused.
"I can't go, Dora. I am not well. I always faint at the sight of blood," and he staggered back, dragging her with him until he leaned against the blank wall of Forbes's bakery. She disengaged her arm from his, and sought to support him with both her hands. His legs suddenly bent under him, and he slipped from her grasp and fell with legs thrust out across the flagway, and back drooping sideway and forward partly supported by the wall.
At that moment Oscar Leigh stepped back from his post on the curb, and uncovering his head, bowed lowly to Dora, and said: "I beg your pardon. Will you allow me to assist you?"
In her haste, confusion, anxiety, Dora glanced but casually at the speaker, saying: "It is not I who want assistance, but he."
"I would assist even my rival for your sake," he said humbly, bowing low and remaining bent before her. "I did not hope to meet you again so soon. I did not think it would be my good luck to meet you once more to-day until I called at Grimsby Street."
The girl looked at Hanbury's recumbent form with anxiety and dread, and then in dire perplexity at the hunchback who had just raised his uncovered head: "If you will be so good as to help me I shall be very much obliged. Oh! I am terrified. But I do not know what you mean by saying you met me to-day. I have, I think, never seen you until now. What shall I do? Is there a doctor here?"
"He has only fainted. Never seen me before! Never at Eltham yesterday! Not to-day! Not this morning, Miss Grace, am I mad."
"You are mistaken. I never saw you before. My name is not Grace. My name is Ashton, and this is Mr. John Hanbury. Oh! will no one help me?"