Heriot's Choice: A Tale

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'John, save me!' she screamed, as she felt herself slipping into the black abyss beneath.

'John!'

John Heriot heard her.

'Yes, I am coming, Mildred; hold on—hold on, another minute.' The drops of mortal agony stood on his brow as he saw her awful peril, but he dared not, for both their sakes, venture on reckless haste; already he had slipped more than once, but had recovered himself. It seemed minutes to both of them before Polly saw him kneeling on one knee beside the hole, his feet hanging over the water.

'Hush! do not struggle so, Mildred,' he pleaded, as he got his arm with difficulty round her, and she clung to him almost frantically; the poor soul had become delirious from the shock, and thought she was being dashed to pieces; her face elongated and sharpened with terror, as she sank half fainting against his shoulder. The weight on his arm was terrible.

'Good Heavens! what can I do?' he ejaculated, as he felt his strength insufficient to lift her. His position was painful in the extreme; his knee was slipping under him; and the dripping serge dress, heavy with water, increased the strain on the left arm; a false movement, the slightest change of posture, and they must both have gone. He remembered how he had heard it said that Coop Kernan Hole was of unknown depth under the bridge; the dark sluggish pool lay black and terrible between the rocks; if she slipped from his hold into that cruel water, he knew he could not save her, for he had ever been accounted a poor swimmer, and yet her dead-weight was already numbing his arm.

'Mildred, if you faint we must both die!' he cried in despair.

His voice seemed to rouse her; some instinct of preservation prompted her to renewed effort; and as he held her more firmly, she managed to get one hand round his neck—the other still clutched at the rock; and as Polly's cries for help reached a navvy working at some distance, she saw Dr. Heriot slowly and painfully lift Mildred over the edge of the rock.

'Thank God!' he panted, and then he could say no more; but as he felt the agonised shuddering run through Mildred's frame, as, unconscious of her safety, she still clung to him, he half-pityingly and half-caressingly put back the unbound hair from the pale face, as he would have done to a child.

But he looked almost as ghastly as Mildred did, when, aided by the navvy's strong arms, they lifted her over the huge masses of rocks and up the steep steps.