His black hair, dank and all uncurled, fell over her bare arm. With the movement his wound opened afresh, and as she pressed him against her she felt his blood soak through her bodice to the skin. Then her soul yearned over him with an indescribable, inarticulate passion of desire; to help him, to heal him! If she could have given her blood to him she would have given it with the joy with which a mother gives life to the babe at her breast.
Pomona was mistress of herself and of her farm, and lived alone with her servants. Though she was a firm ruler, these latter considered her soft on certain points. They had known her, before this, carry home a calf that had staked itself, a mongrel cur half-drowned. But a murdered gentleman, that was beyond everything!
“Heavens ha’ mercy, mistress,” cried Sue, rising to the occasion, while the others gaped, and clapped their hands, and whispered together. “Shall I fetch old Mall to help you lay him out?”
“Fool,” panted Pomona, “bring me the Nantes brandy!”
* * * * *
Earl Blantyre woke from a succession of dreams, in which he had had most varied and curious experiences; known strange horrors and strange sweetnesses, flown to more aërial heights than any bird, and sunk to deeper depths than the sea could hold; fought unending combats and lain in peace in tender arms.
He woke. His eyelids were heavy. His hand had grown so weighty that it was as much as he could do to lift it. And yet, as he held it up, he hardly knew it for his own; ’twas a skeleton thing. There was a sound in his ears which, dimly he recognized, had woven into most of his dreams these days, a whirring, soothing sound, like the ceaseless beating of moth’s wings. As he breathed deeply and with delicious ease, there was fragrance of herbs in his nostrils. A tag of poetry floated into his mind—
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows.
He turned his head and went to sleep again and dreamed not at all.
Pomona lighted the lamp, and, shading it with her hand, came, with soft tread, into the guest chamber. He was still asleep. She set down the light, mended the fire with another log, peeped into the pan of broth simmering on the hob, and then sat to her spinning wheel once more. Suddenly the wool snapped; she started, to find that he was holding back the curtain with a finger and thumb, and had turned his head on the pillow to watch her; his eyes gleamed in the firelight. She rose and came to him quickly.