“Still——”
“D—n him, it’s his affair!”
“Still we cannot leave him if he has fallen, my lord,” Stubbs replied with decision. And without waiting for his employer’s assent he tried the gate. It was locked, but in a trice he found the key on his bunch, turned it, and pushed back the gate. Audley noticed that it moved silently on its hinges.
Stubbs, the gate open, began to feel ashamed of his impulse. Probably there was nothing amiss after all. But he had hardly looked along the path before he uttered a cry, and hurrying forward, stooped over a bundle of clothes that lay in the middle of the walk. It was John Audley. Apparently he had tripped over a root and lain where he had fallen.
Stubbs’s cry summoned the other, who followed him through the gate, to find him on his knees supporting the old man’s head. The sight recalled Audley to his better self. The mottled face, the staring eyes, the helpless limbs shocked him. “Good G—d!” he cried, “you were right, Stubbs! He might have died if we had left him.”
“He would have died,” Stubbs answered. “As it is—I am not sure.” He opened the waistcoat, felt for the beating of the heart, bent his ear to it. “No, I don’t think he’s gone,” he said, “but the heart is feeble, very feeble. We must have brandy! My lord, you are the more active. Will you go to the Gatehouse—there is no nearer place—and get some? And something to carry him home! A hurdle if there is nothing better, and a couple of men?”
“Right!” Audley cried.
“And don’t lose a minute, my lord! He’s nearly gone.”
Audley stripped off his overcoat. “Wrap this about him!” he said. And before the other could answer he had started for the Gatehouse, at a pace which he believed that he could keep up.
Pad, pad, my lord ran under the yew trees, swish, swish across the soaking grass, about the great Butterfly. Pad, pad, again through the gloom under the yews! Not too fast, he told himself—he was a big man and he must save himself. Now he saw before him the opening into the park, and the light falling on the pale turf. And then, at a point not more than twenty yards short of the open ground, he tripped over a root, tried to recover himself, struck another root, and fell.