John Moseley returned from L---- within a week, and appeared as if his
whole delight consisted in knocking over the inoffensive birds. His
restlessness induced him to make Jarvis his companion; for although he
abhorred the captain's style of pursuing the sport, being in his opinion
both out of rule and without taste, yet he was a constitutional fidget,
and suited his own moving propensities at the moment. Egerton and Denbigh
were both frequently at the hall, but generally gave their time to the
ladies, neither being much inclined to the favorite amusement of John.
There was a little arbor within the walls of the park, which for years had
been a retreat from the summer heats to the ladies of the Moseley family;
even so long as the youth of Mrs. Wilson it had been in vogue, and she
loved it with a kind of melancholy pleasure, as the spot where she had
first listened to the language of love from the lips of her late husband.
Into this arbor the ladies had one day retired, during the warmth of a
noon-day sun, with the exception of Lady Moseley, who had her own
engagement in the house. Between Egerton and Denbigh there was maintained
a kind of courtly intercourse, which prevented any disagreeable collision
from their evident dislike. Mrs. Wilson thought, on the part of Denbigh,
it was the forbearance of a principled indulgence to another's weakness;
while the colonel's otherwise uniform good breeding was hardly able to
conceal a something amounting to very near repugnance. Egerton had taken
his seat on the ground, near the feet of Jane; and Denbigh was stationed
on a bench placed without the arbor but so near as to have the full
benefit of the shade of the noble oak, branches of which had been trained
so as to compose its principal covering. It might have been accident, that
gave each his particular situation; but it is certain they were so placed
as not to be in sight of each other, and so placed that the colonel was
ready to hand Jane her scissors, or any other little implement that she
occasionally dropped, and that Denbigh could read every lineament of the
animated countenance of Emily as she listened to his description of the
curiosities of Egypt, a country in which he had spent a few months while
attached to the army in Sicily. In this situation we will leave them for
an hour, happy in the society of each other, while we trace the route of
John Moseley and his companion, in their pursuit of woodcock, on the same
day.
"Do you know, Moseley," said Jarvis, who began to think he was a favorite
with John, now that he was admitted to his _menus plaisirs_, "that I have
taken it into my head this Mr. Denbigh was very happy to plead his morals
for not meeting me. He is a soldier, but I cannot find out what battles he
has been in."
"Captain Jarvis," said John, coolly, "the less you say about that business
the better. Call in Rover."
Now, another of Jarvis's recommendations was a set of lungs that might
have been heard half a mile with great ease on a still morning.
"Why," said Jarvis, rather humbly, "I am sensible, Mr Moseley, I was very
wrong as regards your sister; but don't you think it a little odd in a
soldier not to fight when properly called upon?"
"I suppose Mr. Denbigh did not think himself properly called upon, or
perhaps he had heard what a great shot you were."
Six months before his appearance in B----, Captain Jarvis had been a
clerk in the counting-room of Jarvis, Baxter & Co., and had never held
fire-arms of any kind in his hand, with the exception of an old
blunderbuss, which had been a kind of sentinel over the iron chest for
years. On mounting the cockade, he hail taken up shooting as a martial
exercise, inasmuch as the burning of gunpowder was an attendant of the
recreation. He had never killed but one bird in his life, and that, was an
owl, of which he took the advantage of daylight and his stocking feet to
knock off a tree in the deanery grounds, very early after his arrival. In
his trials with John, he sometimes pulled trigger at the same moment with
his companion; and as the bird generally fell, he thought he had an equal
claim to the honor. He was fond of warring with crows and birds of the
larger sort, and invariably went provided with small balls fitted to the
bore of his fowling-piece for such accidental rencontres. He had another
habit, which was not a little annoying to John, who had several times
tried in vain to break him of it--that of shooting at marks. If birds were
not plenty, he would throw up a chip, and sometimes his hat, by way of
shooting on the wing.
As the clay was excessively hot, and the game kept close, John felt
willing to return from such unprofitable labor. The captain now commenced
his chip firing, which in a few minutes was succeeded by his hat.
"See, Moseley, see; I have hit the band," cried the captain, delighted to
find he had at last wounded his old antagonist. "I don't think you can
beat that yourself."
"I am not sure I can," said John, slipping a handful of gravel in the
muzzle of his piece slily, "but I can do, as you did--try."
"Do," cried the captain, pleased to get his companion down to his own
level of amusements. "Are you ready?"
"Yes; throw."
Jarvis threw, and John fired: the hat fairly bounced.
"Have I hit it?" asked John, while reloading the barrel he had discharged.
"Hit it!" said the captain, looking ruefully at his hat. "It looks like a
cullender; but, Moseley, your gun don't scatter well: a dozen shot have
gone through in the same place."
"It does look rather like a cullender," said John, as he overlooked his
companion's beaver, "and, by the _size_ of some of the holes, one that has
been a good deal used."
The reports of the fowling-pieces announced to the party in the arbor the
return of the sportsmen, it being an invariable practice with John Moseley
to discharge his gun before he came in; and Jarvis had imitated him, from
a wish to be what he called in rule.
"Mr. Denbigh," said John, as he put down his gun, "Captain Jarvis has got
the better of his hat at last."
Denbigh smiled without speaking; and the captain, unwilling to have
anything to say to a gentleman to whom be had been obliged to apologize,
went into the arbor to show the mangled condition of his head-piece to the
colonel, on whose sympathies he felt a kind of claim, being of the same
corps. John complained of thirst, and went to a little run of water but a
short distance from them, in order to satisfy it. The interruption of
Jarvis was particularly unseasonable. Jane was relating, in a manner
peculiar to herself, in which was mingled that undefinable exchange of
looks lovers are so fond of, some incident of her early life to the
colonel that greatly interested him. Knowing the captain's foibles, he
pointed, therefore, with his finger, as he said--
"There is one of your old enemies, a hawk."
Jarvis threw down his hat, and ran with boyish eagerness to drive away the
intruder. In his haste, he caught up the gun of John Moseley, and loading
it rapidly/threw in a ball from his usual stock; but whether the hawk saw
and knew him, or whether it saw something else it liked better, it made a
dart for the baronet's poultry-yard at no great distance, and was out of
sight in a minute. Seeing that his foe had vanished, the captain laid the
piece where he had found it, and, recovering his old train of ideas,
picked up his hat again.
"John," said Emily, as she approached him affectionately, "you were too
warm to drink."
"Stand off, sis," cried John, playfully, taking up the gun from against
the body of the tree, and dropping it towards her.
Jarvis had endeavored to make an appeal to the commiseration of Emily in
favor of the neglected beaver, and was within a few feet of them. At this
moment, recoiling from the muzzle of the gun, he exclaimed, "It is
loaded!" "Hold," cried Denbigh, in a voice of horror, as he sprang between
John and his sister. Both were too late; the piece was discharged.
Denbigh, turning to Emily, and smiling mournfully, gazed for a moment at
her with an expression of tenderness, of pleasure, of sorrow, so blended
that she retained the recollection of it for life, and fell at her feet.
The gun dropped from the nerveless grasp of young Moseley. Emily sank in
insensibility by the side of her preserver. Mrs. Wilson and Jane stood
speechless and aghast. The colonel alone retained the presence of mind
necessary to devise the steps to be immediately taken. He sprang to the
examination of Denbigh; the eyes of the wounded man were open, and his
recollection perfect: the first were fixed in intense observation on the
inanimate body which lay at his side.
"Leave me, Colonel Egerton," he said, speaking with difficulty, and
pointing in the direction of the little run of water, "assist Miss
Moseley--your hat--your hat will answer."
Accustomed to scenes of blood, and not ignorant that time and care were
the remedies to be applied to the wounded man, Egerton flew to the stream,
and returning immediately, by the help of her sister and Mrs. Wilson, soon
restored Emily to life. The ladies and John had now begun to act. The
tenderest assiduities of Jane were devoted to her sister; while Mrs.
Wilson observing her niece to be uninjured by anything but the shock,
assisted John in supporting the wounded man.
Denbigh spoke, requesting to be carried to the house; and Jarvis was
despatched for help. Within half an hour, Denbigh was placed on a couch in
the house of Sir Edward, and was quietly waiting for that professional aid
which could only decide on his probable fate. The group assembled in the
room were in fearful expectation of the arrival of the surgeons, in
pursuit of whom messengers had been sent both to the barracks in F---- and
to the town itself. Sir Edward sat by the side of the sufferer, holding
one of his hands in his own, now turning his tearful eyes on that daughter
who had so lately been rescued as it were from the certainty of death, in
mute gratitude and thanksgiving; and now dwelling on the countenance of
him, who, by bravely interposing his bosom to the blow, had incurred in
his own person the imminent danger of a similar fate, with a painful sense
of his perilous situation, and devout and earnest prayers for his safety.
Emily was with her father, as with the rest of his family, a decided
favorite; and no reward would have been sufficient, no gratitude lively
enough, in the estimation of the baronet, to compensate the protector of
such a child. She sat between her mother and Jane, with a hand held by
each, pale and oppressed with a load of gratitude, of thanksgiving, of
woe, that almost bowed her to the earth. Lady Moseley and Jane were both
sensibly touched with the deliverance of Emily, and manifested the
interest they took in her by the tenderest caresses, while Mrs. Wilson sat
calmly collected within herself, occasionally giving those few directions
which were necessary under the circumstances, and offering up her silent
petitions in behalf of the sufferer. John had taken horse immediately for
F----, and Jarvis had volunteered to go to the rectory and Bolton. Denbigh
inquired frequently and with much anxiety for Dr. Ives; but the rector was
absent from home on a visit to a sick parishioner, and it was late in the
evening before he arrived. Within three hours of the accident, however,
Dr. Black, the surgeon of the ----th, reached the hall, and immediately
proceeded to examine the wound. The ball had penetrated the right breast,
and gone directly through the body; it was extracted with very little
difficulty, and his attendant acquainted the anxious friends of Denbigh
that the heart certainly, and he hoped the lungs, had escaped uninjured.
The ball was a very small one, and the principal danger to be apprehended
was from fever: he had taken the usual precautions against that, and
should it not set in with a violence greater than he apprehended at
present, the patient might be abroad within the month.
"But," continued the surgeon, with the hardened indifference of his
profession, "the gentleman has had a narrow chance in the passage of the
ball itself; half an inch would have settled his accounts with this
world."
This information greatly relieved the family, and orders were given to
preserve a silence in the house that would favor the patient's disposition
to quiet, or, if possible, sleep.
Dr. Ives now reached the hall. Mrs. Wilson had never Been the rector in
the agitation, or with the want of self-command he was in, as she met him
at the entrance of the house.
"Is he alive?--is there hope?--where is George?"--cried the doctor, as he
caught the extended hand of Mrs. Wilson. She briefly acquainted him with
the surgeon's report, and the reasonable ground there was to expect
Denbigh would survive the injury.
"May God be praised," said the rector, in a suppressed voice, and he
hastily withdrew into another room. Mrs. Wilson followed him slowly and in
silence; but was checked on opening the door with the sight of the rector
on his knees, the tears stealing down his venerable cheeks in quick
succession. "Surely," thought the widow, as she drew back unnoticed, "a
youth capable of exciting such affection in a man like Dr. Ives, cannot be
unworthy."
Denbigh, hearing of the arrival of his friend, desired to see him alone.
Their conference was short, and the rector returned from it with increased
hopes of the termination of this dreadful accident. He immediately left
the hall for his own house, with a promise of returning early on the
following morning.
During the night, however, the symptoms became unfavorable; and before the
return of Dr. Ives, Denbigh was in a state of delirium from the height of
his fever, and the apprehensions of his friends were renewed with
additional force.
"What, what, my good sir, do you think of him?" said the baronet to the
family physician, with an emotion that the danger of his dearest child
would not have exceeded, and within hearing of most of his children, who
were collected in the ante-chamber of the room in which Denbigh was
placed.
"It is impossible to say, Sir Edward," replied the physician: "he refuses
all medicines, and unless this fever abates, there is but little hope of
recovery."
Emily stood during this question and answer, motionless, pale as death,
and with her hands clasped together, betraying by the workings of her
fingers in a kind of convulsive motion, the intensity of her interest. She
had seen the draught prepared which it was so desirable that Denbigh
should take, and it now stood rejected on a table, where it could be seen
through the open door of his room. Almost breathless, she glided in, and
taking the draught in her hand, she approached the bed, by which sat John
alone, listening with a feeling of despair to the wanderings of the sick
man. Emily hesitated once or twice, as she drew near Denbigh; her face had
lost the paleness of anxiety, and glowed with another emotion.
"Mr. Denbigh--dear Denbigh." said Emily, with energy, unconsciously
dropping her voice into the softest notes of persuasion, "will you refuse
_me?--me_, Emily Moseley, whose life you have saved?"
"Emily Moseley!" repeated Denbigh, and in those tones so remarkable to his
natural voice. "Is she safe? I thought she was killed--dead." Then, as if
recollecting himself, he gazed intently on her countenance--his eye became
less fiery--his muscles relaxed--he smiled, and took, with the docility of
a well-trained child, the prescribed medicines from her hand. His ideas
still wandered, but his physician, profiting by the command Emily
possessed over his patient, increased his care, and by night the fever had
abated, and before morning the wounded man was in a profound sleep. During
the whole day, it was thought necessary to keep Emily by the side of his
bed; but at times it was no trifling tax on her feelings to remain there.
He spoke of her by name in the tenderest manner, although incoherently,
and in terms that restored to the blanched cheeks of the distressed girl
more than the richness of their native color. His thoughts were not
confined to Emily, however: he talked of his father, of his mother, and
frequently spoke of his poor deserted Marian. The latter name he dwelt on
in the language of the warmest affection, condemned his own desertion of
her, and, taking Emily for her, would beg her forgiveness, tell her her
sufferings had been enough, and that he would return, and never leave her
again. At such moments his nurse would sometimes show, by the paleness of
her cheeks, her anxiety for his health; and then, as he addressed her by
her proper appellation, all her emotions appeared absorbed in the sense of
shame at the praises with which he overwhelmed her. Mrs. Wilson succeeded
her in the charge of the patient, and she retired to seek that repose she
so greatly needed.
On the second morning after receiving the wound, Denbigh dropped into a
deep sleep, from which he awoke refreshed and perfectly collected in mind.
The fever had left him, and his attendants pronounced, with the usual
cautions to prevent a relapse, his recovery certain. It were impossible to
have communicated any intelligence more grateful to all the members of the
Moseley family; for Jane had even lost sight of her own lover, in sympathy
for the fate of a man who had sacrificed himself to save her beloved
sister.