As she corked it, Mrs. Toft appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. “Dear, dear, miss,” she said, “is the master bad? But it’s no wonder when he, that doesn’t quit the fire for a week together, goes out like this? And Toft away and all!” She stared at his lordship. Probably she knew him by sight.
“Will you get his bed warmed, Mrs. Toft,” Mary answered. She gave Lord Audley the flask. “Please don’t lose a moment,” she urged. “I am following—oh yes, I am. But you will go faster.”
She had not a thought, he saw, for the disorder of her dress, or for her hair dishevelled by the wind, and scarce a thought for him. He decided that he had never seen her to such advantage, but it was no time for compliments, nor was she in the mood for them. Without more he nodded and set off on his return journey—he had not been in the house three minutes. By and by he looked back, and saw that Mary was following on his heels. She had snatched up a sun-bonnet, discarded the umbrella, and, heedless of the rain, was coming after him as swiftly and lightly as Atalanta of the golden apple. “Gad, she’s not one of the fainting sort!” he reflected; and also that if he had given way to that d—d temptation he could not have looked her in the face. “As it is,” his mind ran, “what are the odds the old boy’s not dead when we get there? If he is—I am safe! If he is not, I might do worse than think of her. It would checkmate him finely. More”—he looked again over his shoulder—“she’s a fine mover, by Gad, and her figure’s perfect! Even that rag on her head don’t spoil her!” Whereupon he thought of a certain Lady Adela with whom he was very friendly, who had political connections and would some day have a plum. The comparison was not, in the matter of fineness and figure, to Lady Adela’s advantage. Her lines were rather on the Flemish side.
Meanwhile Mary was feeling anything but an Atalanta. Wind and rain and wet grass, loosened hair and swaying skirts do not make for romance. But in her anxiety she gave small thought to these. Her one instinct was to help. With all his oddity her uncle had been kind to her, and she longed to show him that she was grateful. And he was her one relative. She had no one else in the world. He had given her what of home he had, and ease, and a security which she had never known before. Were she to lose him now—the mere fancy spurred her to fresh exertions, and in spite of a pain in her side, in spite of clinging skirts, and shoes that threatened to leave her feet, she pushed on. She was not far behind Audley when he reached the Yew Walk.
She saw him plunge into it, she followed, and was on the scene not many seconds later. When she caught sight of the little group kneeling about the prostrate man, that sense of tragedy, and of the inevitable, which assails at such a time, shook her. The thing always possible, never expected, had happened at last.
Then the coolness which women find in these emergencies returned. She knelt between the men, took the insensible head on her arm, held out her other hand for the cup. “Has he swallowed any?” she asked, taking command of the situation.
“No,” Toft answered—and she became aware that the man with Lord Audley was the servant.
She waited for no more, she tilted the cup, and by some knack she succeeded where Toft had failed. A little of the spirit was swallowed. She improvised a pillow and laid the head down on it. “The lower the better,” she murmured. She felt the hands and began to rub one. “Rub the other,” she said to Toft. “The first thing to do is to get him home! Have you a carriage? How near can you bring it, Lord Audley?”
“We can bring it to the park at the end of the walk,” he answered. “My agent has gone to fetch it.”
“Will you hasten it?” she replied. “Toft will stay with me. And bring something, please, on which you can carry him to it.”