Volume Iii Part 4 (2/2)
Certainly the plates produced a healthy rivalry, but the bags, I take it, are less of a tax, and the congregation a.s.suredly prefers them. It's a mystery to me where they get all the threepenny-pieces, and I am sorry to say that farthings, and even b.u.t.tons, are not uncommon. Still, your father and Justice Sleek--everybody calls him Justice Sleek now--let us have all we want in the shape of money, so I suppose there's nothing to complain of.”
”Whatever my husband may say, dear Mrs. Haggard, there has been a great awakening, and though he may not see it, for none are so proverbially blind as those who won't see, I look upon it as princ.i.p.ally due, at all events in my own parish, to the exertions of my own s.e.x. My curates are both highly popular.”
”My dear, curates always are highly popular when they are married to wealthy good-looking young women, and their pockets consequently bursting, literally bursting, with half-crowns; I may add that, in my experience, these are the only circ.u.mstances under which married curates _are_ popular.”
”You have much to be grateful for, John.”
”I know it, my dear--I know it,” said the vicar as he finished his coffee. And then the party broke up to commence the real business of the day.
No one would have recognized in the well-appointed and terribly respectable head keeper who touched his hat to the party of gentlemen as they emerged upon the lawn, the former village reprobate--Blogg, the whilom King's Warren poacher. But so it was. By some strange fatality or other your poacher either becomes a confirmed reprobate or blossoms into the very best kind of gamekeeper. Perhaps it's on the principle of set a thief to catch a thief that those estates are best preserved where the head keeper has been poacher in his youth. Just as the man who has risen from the ranks makes the sternest martinet and the strictest disciplinarian, so the reformed poacher is invariably the prince of gamekeepers, when honest.
The vicar of King's Warren was a High Churchman. I believe he would have ridden to hounds with pleasure but for the fact that he found it impossible to find anything up to his weight. But he sternly drew the line at carrying a gun. Though the vicar denied himself this pleasure, he joined the shooting party, for his intense appreciation of the culinary art made violent exercise a necessity of his existence.
As Mrs. Haggard and the vicar's wife sat and chatted over the little details of life at the village of King's Warren, the happy home of the former's girlhood, Mrs. Haggard remarked to her companion that it was strange that they had not heard a shot for at least half an hour. As she uttered the words Lord Spunyarn entered the room, pale and out of breath, and evidently hardly able to control his emotion.
”What! back so soon, Lord Spunyarn? Is anything the matter?” said Mrs.
Dodd.
”Something dreadful has happened.”
”Has there been an accident? Has anything happened to George?” cried the mother, and the colour left her lips as she rose excitedly.
At that moment the old lord entered the room.
”George is safe, dear madam,” said her husband's old friend, ”but I have hurried here as the bearer of bad news, and I must bid you prepare for the worst.”
”Gad, sir, don't keep us in suspense,” cried old Lord Pit Town, with the irritability of age. ”Is Lucius the victim?”
”No, the boys are safe, dear Mrs. Haggard,” he continued. ”My old friend is badly hurt. In pa.s.sing through a hedge----”
But Mrs. Haggard had fainted in the arms of the vicar's wife.
And then Lord Spunyarn told his tale to the old man, while Mrs. Dodd and the women-servants who, unsummoned, had appeared upon the scene, busied themselves around the fainting woman.
It appeared that in getting through a hedge to pick up a bird that, wounded, had managed to struggle through it, Reginald Haggard's gun had suddenly exploded and lodged a charge of shot in his chest. It was not from carelessness; but Haggard's foot had caught in a rabbit burrow, and as he fell the accident happened. Before their eyes the thing had taken place. There was nothing mysterious about it. It was terribly sudden, that was all.
Hardly had Spunyarn told his tale when Mrs. Haggard came to herself.
Tearless and wan she rose to her feet, and taking the old earl's arm, she said simply but in a broken voice, ”Let us go to him--let us go to him at once, Lord Pit Town; there may be hope--there may be hope yet.”
The old man looked towards Spunyarn interrogatively, but a shake of the head was the only response.
Mrs. Haggard hadn't to go far to meet her wounded husband, for as they pa.s.sed into the great entrance hall of the Castle a melancholy little procession came in by the main doorway. Four keepers bore a hurdle, upon which lay Lord Pit Town's wounded heir. His face was pale, the lips bloodless, while cold drops stood upon his brow. The four men halted, uncertain where to deposit their burden. Georgie Haggard, quitting the old lord's arm, sprang at once to her husband's side, seized his hand, and attempted to wipe the death drops from his brow.
”Don't touch me, Georgie,” he muttered, and the voice sounded unequal and cavernous. ”I've suffered untold tortures in being brought here,”
and his pale fingers, whose nails had become livid, vainly fumbled at his collar. The faithful wife tenderly loosened the band, which appeared to almost strangle him. ”Georgie,” he continued to his wife, ”where is Spunyarn? I must speak with him at once.”
He who had been his faithful friend from youth to middle age stepped forward and bent his head over the mouth of the dying man, for he was dying. For several seconds Haggard whispered a hurried communication to his friend, while the bystanders, including the old lord and Haggard's wife, stood aside, so as not to interrupt the privacy of the communication. Ever and anon Haggard paused for breath.
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