"There are a great many things, Pat-ricia," she said slowly, "that a girl ought to do if she were logical, and consistent, and acted up to what she preached. But she isn't, and she don't. I'm not in a mite of a hurry to get back..."

The hall was packed to overflowing for the evening concert, additional chairs were placed down the aisles, and even after they were filled, a number of people had to be content with standing places at the back.

The performers peeping round the corner of the stage felt a mingling of nervousness and excitement, and vociferously instructed every one else to pull his or her self together, and do his or her best.

It soon became apparent, however, that the audience was indulgent to the point of boredom, applauding with consistency each item, good or bad, and demanding thereto an encore. Esmeralda's entrance brought down the house, Pixie's Irish ditties evoked shouts of applause, and the part songs but narrowly escaped being turned into choruses. It was, indeed, a village audience of the old-fashioned kind, a.s.sembled together in pleasant, friendly spirit, with the object of being amused, and determined that that object should be fulfilled.

The squire was a favourite, as he well deserved to be, and his beautiful wife was regarded with a fervent admiration, which her very aloofness had served to heighten. Other ladies might call round at cottage doors, and talk intimately concerning book clubs, and Dorcas societies, but no one expected such condescension from Mrs Geoffrey Hilliard. She whizzed along in her great green car, or cantered past on her tall brown horse, followed by a groom in livery, vouchsafing a gracious smile in return for bows and curtseys. On Sundays she sat ensconced in the great square pew, a vision of stately beauty. ... The good dames of the village felt it the great privilege of this evening to see the squire's lady without her hat, with diamonds flashing at her throat, smiling, laughing, singing--a G.o.ddess descended from her pedestal to make merry on their behalf.

And so at last in the midst of this simple happiness came the time for the last item on the programme--that double tableau which every person in the hall was fated to remember, to the last day of his life!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE ACCIDENT.

The curtain drew up on the first tableau. Joan sang appropriate words in the sweetest tones of her rich contralto voice, her eyes, like those of the audience, riveted on the face of the little invalid as he lay on his truckle bed. White-cheeked, bandaged, reclining, the transformation in the child's appearance was astounding. Considered as a piece of stage-craft, Joan had every reason to congratulate herself on the result, but the mother's heart felt a pang of dismay. The representation was too life-like! Just so would the darling look if the illness were real, not imaginary. In the afternoon he had not looked so ghastly. Was the double excitement too much for his strength? Joan's eyes turned from the stage to the first row of seats, where her husband had his place. Geoffrey looked worried; his brows contracted as he watched his son. Unconsciously Joan quickened the pace of the last verse of her song. She was anxious to get to the second tableau, to see Jack sitting up, smiling, his eyes alert.

The curtain fell. A low murmur from the audience swelled into somewhat forced applause. The villagers also, Joan realised, had felt the scene to be almost too realistic. Behind the scenes Honor as nurse and Pixie as mother propped the child's back with cushions, and showered kisses on his white cheeks.

"Smile, Jackey, smile!" they cried. "Now you are a getting-well boy, and all the people will see you, and be so pleased! Just once more, darling, and then away we go, driving off home to supper in the car.

Now a big smile!"

The curtain rose. Jack smiled his sweet, baby smile, and the audience burst into cheers of hearty relief. Every one was smiling--not only the invalid, but also the mother, the father, the neat, complacent nurse.

Esmeralda's voice swelled in glad content. That last scene had been horrible; never, never again would she attempt to simulate so dreadful a reality! What a comfort to see the darling once more bonnie and smiling. Half an hour more and he would be safe in bed.

The curtain fell, was lifted again in response to a storm of applause, the piano strummed out the first bars of "G.o.d Save the King," and the audience, stumbling to their feet, began to join in the strain.

Suddenly, startlingly, a shriek rent the air, rising shrill above the heavy chorus of voices--the piercing, treble shrieks of a young child, followed by loud cries for help and a stampede of feet behind the curtain.

The music ceased. Geoffrey Hilliard and his wife rushed with one accord up the steps leading to the platform, the village doctor edged his way hurriedly through the crowded hall, the real parish nurse, wearing for the first time her new uniform, followed in his wake. And still the treble shrieks continued--the terrible, childish shrieks. The women in the audience shivered and turned pale. _Master Jack_! And only a moment before he had been playing at sickness. It was ill-work trifling with serious things. The pretty lamb! What could have happened?

Behind the curtain all was horror and confusion, a ghastly nightmare exaggeration of the scene just depicted. There on the same bed lay Jack, writhing in torture, the bandages charred and blackened, a terrible smell of burning in the air. Bending over him in torment stood the real father and mother; coming forward with calm, capable help came the veritable nurse.

How had it happened? How? By what terrible lapse of care had the precious child been allowed to fall into danger?

The mother's glance was fierce in its wrath and despair, but the explanation when it came was but too simple. Jack had been bidden to sit still in bed until his clothes should be brought; from the adjoining dressing-room. But for a moment Pixie had left his side, but in that moment a child-like impatience and restlessness had a.s.serted itself with fatal consequences. Jack had leapt up, rushed to the table, clutched at a gla.s.s of milk placed ready for his own refreshment, and in so doing had brought his bandaged head across the flame of an open candle, one of the small "properties" of the cottage scene. In an instant he was in flames; he threw up his little arm and the sleeve of the nightshirt caught the blaze; he ran shrieking to and fro, dodging pursuit, fighting, struggling, refusing to be held. For a moment the beholders had been too aghast for action; then Pixie leapt for the blankets, while Stanor overtook the child, tripped him up, wrapped and pressed and wrapped again; unfolded with trembling hands--

It was no one's fault. No one could be blamed. Jack was old enough to understand and obey, was proverbially docile and obedient. Under the same circ.u.mstances at home he would have been left without a qualm. The unusual circ.u.mstances had created an unusual restlessness not to be antic.i.p.ated. Even at that bitter moment Joan realised that if it was a question of blame, she herself was at fault in having allowed the child to take part in the tableau against her husband's better judgment. A smaller nature might have found relief in scattering blame wholesale, but there was a generosity in Irish Esmeralda's nature which lifted her above the temptation. In the midst of her anguish she spared a moment to comfort Pixie by a breathless "Not your fault!" before she became unconscious of everything but the moaning figure on the bed.

The treatment of Jack's burns was completed with praiseworthy expedition. The local chemist flew on winged feet to his shop in the village street, whence he brought back all that was required. Nurse and doctor sent away the relatives, and worked with swift, tender fingers; and presently a swathed, motionless figure was carried out to an impromptu ambulance, fitted up inside the great car, while the late audience stood ma.s.sed together in the street, looking on silent and motionless--silent as to speech, but from every heart in that crowd went up a cry to G.o.d, and every mother in the village knelt that night beside her bed and prayed with tears for the life of little Jack Hilliard, and for the support and comfort of his father and mother.

Jack lay motionless in the darkened room, a tiny form outlined beneath the bedclothes; on the pillow was a swathe of bandages, with barely an inch between to show the small, scarred face. The night before, with tossing curls, flushed cheeks, and curving coral lips, he had lain a picture of childish beauty, at sight of which his parents' hearts had glowed with tenderness and pride as they paid their good-night visit.

"He looks flushed. All this rehearsing is exciting. I shall be glad when the tableaux are over," Geoffrey had said, and Joan had whispered back ardently--

"But so _lovely_! If he looks like that to-morrow!"

And this was to-morrow; and there on the bed lay Jack, shorn, blinded, tortured--a marble image that moaned, and moaned...

Through the night telephone and telegraph had been busy summoning the most skilful aid. Here at least was one blessing of wealth--that the question of expense need never be considered. This man for eyes, that man for skin, a third for shock to the nerves; the cleverest nurses, the newest appliances--the wonderful wires summoned them each in turn.

Throughout the night motor-cars whirled up the drive, tall men in top coats, nurses in cloaks and bonnets, dismantled and pa.s.sed into the house, mysterious cases were hurried up back stairways. Joan and her husband were banished from the sickroom, and sat in her boudoir awaiting the verdict. It was the first time they had been alone together since the accident, and when the door closed behind them Joan glanced at her husband with a quivering fear. His face was white and drawn. He looked old, and bowed, and broken, but there was no anger in his face.

"Geoffrey! Will you ever forgive me?"

For all answer he held out his arms. The old look of love was in his eyes, the old beautiful softness; there was no bitterness in his look, no anger, not the faintest shadow of blame.

"Dearest, don't! We both suffer. We must keep strong. We must help each other."

"Geoff, you warned me. You said it would be bad. It was against your wish ... It's my fault!"

"Darling, darling, don't make it worse!" He pressed her head against his shoulder with tender, soothing touches. "No one could have foreseen. I feared for excitement only; there was no thought of danger.

We have enough to bear, sweetheart. Don't torture yourself needlessly."

"It's my doing, it's my punishment; I brought it about. I've been cold, and selfish, and ungrateful. I had so much I ought to have been so thankful, but I was discontented--I made you wretched. G.o.d gave me a chance--" she pushed him away with frenzied hands and paced wildly, up and down the room--"a chance of salvation by happiness, and I was too mean, too poor to take it. Geoff, do you remember that poem of Stevenson's, 'The Celestial Surgeon'? They have been rinking in my head all night, those last lines, those dreadful lines. I _was_ 'obdurate.'

All the blessings which had been showered upon me left me dead; it needed this 'darting pain' to '_stab my dead heart wide awake_!'" She repeated the words with an emphasis, a wildness which brought an additional furrow into Geoffrey's brow.

He sighed heavily and sank down on a corner of the sofa. All night long body and mind had been on the rack; he was chill, faint, wearied to death. The prospect of another hysterical scene was almost more than he could endure, yet through all his heart yearned over his wife, for he realised that, great as was his own sorrow, hers was still harder to bear. He might reason with her till doomsday, he might prove over and again that for the night's catastrophe she was as free from blame as himself, yet Esmeralda, being Esmeralda, would turn her back on reason and persist in turning the knife in her own wound. Speech failed him; but the voiceless prayer of his heart found an answer, for no words that he could have spoken could have appealed to his wife's heart as did his silence and the helpless sorrow of his face.

She came running to him, fell at his feet, and laid her beautiful head upon his knee.

"Geoff, it's so hard, for I _was_ trying! In my own foolish way I was trying to please, you. I may have been hasty, I may have been rash, but I _did_ mean to do right.--I did try! I've loved you all the time, Geoff, but I was spoiled. You were too good to me. My nature was not fine enough to stand it. I _presumed_ on your love. I imagined, vain fool! that nothing could kill it, and then you opened my eyes. _You_ said yourself that I had worn you out.--It killed me, Geoff, to think you had grown tired!"

"Joan, darling, let's forget all that. I've been at fault too; there were faults on both sides, but we have _always_ loved each other; the love was there just as surely as the sun is behind the clouds. And now ... we _need_ our love... I--I'm worn out, dear. I can't go through this if you fail me. Bury the past, forget it. You are my wife, I am your husband--we _need_ each other. Our little child!"

They clung together, weeping. In each mind was a great o'ershadowing dread, but the dread was not the same. The father asked of himself-- Would the boy _die_? The mother--Would he live, blinded, maimed, crippled?

The door opened, a small face peered in and withdrew. Pixie had seen the entwined arms, the heads pressed together, and realised that she was not needed. She crept away, and sat alone watching the slow dawn.

The verdict of the specialists brought no lessening of the strain. It was too soon to judge; the shock was severe, and it was a question of strength holding out. Too soon to talk about the eyes. That must be left. There were injuries, no doubt, but in the present condition of inflammation and collapse it was only possible to wait. And to wait was, to the distracted mother, the most unbearable torture she could have had to endure.

The great house was quiet as the grave; the three guests had departed, little Geoff had been carried away by the vicar's wife to the refuge of her own full, healthful nursery. The boy was shocked and silenced by the thought of his brother's danger, but at five years of age a continuance of grief is as little to be expected as desired, and nothing could be left to chance. A cry beneath the window, a sudden, unexpected noise might be sufficient to turn the frail balance.

Pixie was alone, more helplessly, achingly alone than she had been in her life. The doors of the sickroom were closed against her. Joan had no need of her. Joan wanted Geoffrey--Geoffrey, only--Geoffrey alone to herself. Even Bridgie's telegraphed offer had been refused. "Not now!

No. Don't let her come--later on," Esmeralda said, and turned restlessly away, impatient even of the slight interruption.

If it had been an ordinary, middle-cla.s.s house, wherein sudden illness brings so much strain and upset, Pixie would have expended herself in service, and have found comfort in so doing, but in the great ordered house all moved like a well-oiled machine. Meals appeared on the table at the ordinary hours, were carried away untouched, to be replaced by others equally tempting, equally futile. Banks of flowers bloomed in the empty rooms, servants flitted about their duties; there was no stir, no stress, no overwork, no need at all for a poor little sister-in-law; nothing for her to do but wander disconsolately from room to room, from garden to garden, to weep alone, and pour out her tender heart in a pa.s.sion of love and prayer.

"Christ, there are so many little boys in your heaven--leave us Jack!

G.o.d, have pity on Esmeralda! She's his mother. ... _Her beloved son ... Must he go_?"

The silent house felt like a prison. Pixie opened a side door and crept out into the garden. The sun was shining cloudlessly, the scent of flowers hung on the air, the birds sang blithely overhead; to a sorrowful heart there seemed something almost brutal in this indifference of Nature. How could the sun shine when a little innocent human soul lay suffering cruel torture in that upper room?

Pixie made her way to her favourite seat at the end of a long, straight path, bordered on each side by square-cut hedges of yew. On the north side the great bush had grown to a height of eight or ten feet, with a width almost as great; on the southern side the hedge was kept trimmed to a level of four feet, to allow a view of the sloping park. For two hundred yards the path lay straight as a die between those grand old hedges; occasionally a peac.o.c.k strutted proudly along its length, trailing its tail over the gravel, and then the final touch of picturesqueness was given to the scene, but even the approach of an ordinary humdrum human had an effect of dignity, of importance, in such old-world surroundings. It gratified Pixie's keen sense of what it dramatically termed "a situation" to place herself in this point of vantage and act the part of audience; and to-day, though no one more interesting than a gardener was likely to appear, she yet made instinctively for the accustomed place. The sombre green of the yew was more in accord with her mood than the riot of blossom in the gardens beyond, and she was out of sight of those terrible upper windows. At any moment, as it seemed, a hand from within might stretch out to lower those blinds ... Could one live through the moment that saw them fall?