It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

The hindrances were few and slight. Two or three colloquies of as many minutes each, ending with apologies for their brevity, made up the total of delay. Twenty-five minutes may have passed since Challis left Jim to keep his appointment, when the Rector reached the Rifle Butts and took the path that goes across from them to the Abbey Well; it branches off from the path Lizarann and Joan followed to go to the cottage.

What ensued does not explain itself, unless it is made quite clear that the curve in the road round the Abbey Well was no mere kink, but a full curve, like the letter U. One side of this U looked towards the Hall, the other to the village; and beyond it the turning for Thanes Castle, along which the motor-car came last night. The point to keep in mind is that the entrance to the Abbey Well gave towards the Hall, not the village. Nevertheless, the Well was visible from the Rifle Butts through a gap in the trees, which grew thicker on each side of the curve of the road, concealing a portion of it very completely. It was into this the motor-car vanished from the eyes of the deaf turf-cutter.

Athelstan Taylor, half broken-hearted as he thought of the task before him, had a struggle with himself not to flinch from it, and slacken the speed that was bringing it so near. He could see, shortly after passing the Rifle Butts, the figure of Lizarann's Daddy, and could picture to himself his unsuspicious ignorance. How sick he felt! How glad he would be when it was over!

He saw Jim rise from his seat and make for the entrance, and conjectured that his own footstep was the cause. He saw him stop and wait when he reached the road, and then lost sight of the entry for a moment. But he thought he heard Jim shout, as he had heard him often shout before now, in answer to little Lizarann's call of "Pilot." When he next saw the entry there was no Jim.

He had to go only the length of the curve to get to the place where he saw Jim last. He was within five minutes of it now. Courage!

That was the motor-car from the Hall making that hideous noise. Louis Rossier, the chauffeur, going by himself, of course! He always broke out of bounds when alone, and that speed was something awful. The Felixthorpes must have stayed at Thanes. Bess had said they were there; and now M. Louis was going to fetch them. Would he never slacken down at that bend in the road? Apparently not. A terrible corner that, to whirl a motor round at sixty miles an hour! He could hear Jim's little dog bark in answer to his own, but he was still some minutes' walk from the road....

What was that cry? What were those cries, rather—cries of panic or of warning, with a woman's shriek above them? And what was that terrible cry in a voice he knew?—Jim's voice!

Then he was conscious, in spite of distance, of rapid, panic-stricken interchange of speech. Two voices, a man's and a woman's, mixed with the pulsations of the shut-off machinery of the car, checked in its course. Then of alternations of the sounds of the working-gear, which he knew meant the turning of the car in the narrow space. Then, as he reached the spot, the sound of its resumed movement, and its trumpet-signal again. When he arrived it was vanishing, but he took little heed of it or its contents. All his thought was for the man who lay, crushed and groaning, on the bare road in the sun. Would his message need to be given now?

"Twice over's soon told, Master, and there an end!" Those seemed to be Jim's words to the man who kneeled over him, not daring to touch him yet till he should know more. Should he examine him where he lay, or try at once to move him off the road?

"Oh, Jim—Jim Coupland—who has done this?" He raised the head that lay in the dust with cautious strength, fearing that any touch might only be so much more needless pain. But there was no appearance of flinching; and he raised him further yet, to rest against his knee; then carefully wiped the forehead, red with blood from a cut on the temple, but still there was no sign of flinching from his touch. "Can you bear to be lifted, Jim?... Say if I hurt you."