Ovington's Bank

by Stanley John Weyman

He carried a gun, but he carried it as he might have carried a stick, for he had long passed the bounds within which he had a right to shoot; and at all times, his shooting was as much an excuse for a walk among the objects he loved as anything else. He had left his horse at the Griffin Arms in the village, and he might have made his way thither more quickly by the road. But at the cost of an extra mile he had preferred to walk back by the brook, observing as he went things new and old; the dipper curtseying on its stone, the water-vole perched to perform its toilet on the leaf of a brook-plant, the first green shoots of the wheat piercing through the soil, an old laborer who was not sorry to unbend his back, and whose memory held the facts and figures of fifty-year-old harvests. The day was mild, the sun shone, Clement was happy. Why, oh, why were there such things as banks in the world?

At a stile which crossed the path he came to a stand. Something had caught his eye. It was a trifle, to which nine men out of ten would not have given a thought, for it was no more than a clump of snowdrops in the wood on his right. But a shaft of wintry sunshine, striking athwart the tiny globes, lifted them, star-like, above the brown leaves about them, and he paused, admiring them—thinking no evil, and far from foreseeing what was to happen. He wondered if they were wild, or—and he looked about for any trace of human hands—a keeper’s cottage might have stood here. He saw no trace, but still he stood, entranced by the white blossoms that, virgin-like, bowed meek heads to the sunlight that visited them.

He might have paused longer, if a sound had not brought him abruptly to earth. He turned. To his dismay he saw a girl, three or four paces from him, waiting to cross the stile. How long she had waited, how long watched him, he did not know, and in confusion—for he had not dreamed that there was a human being within a mile of him—and with a hurried snatch at his hat, he moved out of the way.

The girl stepped forward, coloring a little, for she foresaw that she must climb the stile under the young man’s eye. Instinctively, he held out a hand to assist her, and in the act—he never knew how, nor did she—the gun slipped from his grasp, or the trigger caught in a bramble. A sheet of flame tore between them, the blast of the powder rent the air.

“O my God!” Clement cried, and he reeled back, shielding his eyes with his hands.

The smoke hid the girl, and for a long moment, a moment of such agony as he had never known, Clement’s heart stood still. What had he done? oh, what had he done at last, with his cursed carelessness! Had he killed her?

Slowly, the smoke cleared away, and he saw the girl. She was on her feet—thank God, she was on her feet! She was clinging with both hands to the stile. But was she—“Are you—are you——” he tried to frame words, his voice a mere whistle.

She clung in silence to the rail, her face whiter than the quilted bonnet she wore. But he saw—thank God, he saw no wound, no blood, no hurt, and his own blood moved again, his lungs filled again with a mighty inspiration. “For pity’s sake, say you are not hurt!” he prayed. “For God’s sake, speak!”

But the shock had robbed her of speech, and he feared that she was going to swoon. He looked helplessly at the brook. If she did, what ought he to do? “Oh, a curse on my carelessness!” he cried. “I shall never, never forgive myself.”

It had in truth been a narrow, a most narrow escape, and at last she found words to say so. “I heard the shot—pass,” she whispered, and shuddering closed her eyes again, overcome by the remembrance.