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The Flight of the Shadow, a novel by George MacDonald |
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Chapter 24. Hand To Hand |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. HAND TO HAND We looked for lady Cairnedge all the next day. John was up by noon, and ready to receive her in the drawing-room; he would not see her in his bedroom. But the hours passed, and she did not come. In the evening, however, when the twilight was thickening, and already all was dark in the alleys of the garden, her carriage drove quietly up--with a startling scramble of arrest at the door. The same servants were outside, and a very handsome dame within. As she descended, I saw that she was tall, and, if rather stout, not stouter than suited her age and style. Her face was pale, but she seemed in perfect health. When I saw her closer, I found her features the most regular I had ever seen. Had the soul within it filled the mould of that face, it would have been beautiful. As it was, it was only handsome--to me repulsive. The moment I saw it, I knew myself in the presence of a masked battery. My uncle had insisted that she should be received where we usually sat, and had given Penny orders to show her into the hall-kitchen. I was alone there, preparing something for John. We were not expecting her, for it seemed now too late to look for her. My uncle was in the study, and Martha somewhere about the house. My heart sank as I turned from the window, and sank yet lower when she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. But as I advanced, I caught sight of my uncle, and went boldly to meet the enemy. He had come down his stair, and had just stepped into a clear blaze of light, which that moment burst from the wood I had some time ago laid damp upon the fire. The next instant I saw the lady's countenance ghastly with terror, looking beyond me. I turned, but saw nothing, save that my uncle had disappeared. When I faced her again, only a shadow of her fright remained. I offered her my hand--for she was John's mother, but she did not take it. She stood scanning me from head to foot. "I am lady Cairnedge," she said. "Where is my son?" I turned yet again. My uncle had not come back. I was not prepared to take his part. I was bewildered. A dead silence fell. For the first time in my life, my uncle seemed to have deserted me, and at the moment when most I needed him! I turned once more to the lady, and said, hardly knowing what, "You wish to see Mr. Day?" She answered me with a cold stare. "I will go and tell him you are here," I faltered; and passing her, I sped along the passage to the drawing-room. "John!" I cried, bursting in, "she's come! Do you still mean to see her? Are you able? Uncle--" There I stopped, for his eyes were stern, and not looking at me, but at something behind me. One moment I thought his fever had returned, but following his gaze I looked round:--there stood lady Cairnedge! John was face to face with his mother, and my uncle was not there to defend him! "Are you ready?" she said, nor pretended greeting. She seemed slightly discomposed, and in haste. I was by this time well aware of my lover's determination of character, but I was not prepared for the tone in which he addressed the icy woman calling herself his mother. "I am ready to listen," he answered. "John!" she returned, with mingled severity and sharpness, "let us have no masquerading! You are perfectly fit to come home, and you must come at once. The carriage is at the door." "You are quite right, mother," answered John calmly; "I _am_ fit to go home with you. But Rising does not quite agree with me. I dread such another attack, and do not mean to go." The drawing-room had a rectangular bay-window, one of whose three sides commanded the door. The opposite side looked into a little grove of larches. Lady Cairnedge had already realized the position of the room. She darted to the window, and saw her carriage but a few yards away. She would have thrown up the sash, but found she could not. She twisted her handkerchief round her gloved hand, and dashed it through a pane. "Men!" she cried, in a loud, commanding voice, "come at once." The moment she went to the window, I sprang to the door, locked it, put the key in my pocket, and set my back to the door. I heard the men thundering at the hall-door. Lady Cairnedge turned as if she would herself go and open to them, but seeing me, she understood what I had done, and went back to the window. "Come here! Come to me here--to the window!" she cried. John had been watching with a calm, determined look. He came and stood between us. "John," I said, "leave your mother to me." "She will kill you!" he answered. "You might kill her!" I replied. I darted to the chimney, where a clear fire was burning, caught up the poker, and thrust it between the bars. "That's for you!" I whispered. "They will not touch you with that in your hand! Never mind me. If your mother move hand or foot to help them, it will be my turn!" He gave me a smile and a nod, and his eyes lightened. I saw that he trusted me, and I felt fearless as a bull-dog. In the meantime, she had spoken to her servants, and was now trying to open the window, which had a peculiar catch. I saw that John could defend himself much better at the window than in the room. I went softly behind his mother, put my hands round her neck, and clasping them in front, pulled her backward with all my strength. We fell on the floor together, I under of course, but clutching as if all my soul were in my fingers. Neither should she meddle with John, nor should he lay hand on her! I did not mind much what I did to her myself. "To the window, John," I cried, "and break their heads!" He snatched the poker from the fire, and the next moment I heard a crashing of glass, but of course I could not see what was going on. Mine was no grand way of fighting, but what was dignity where John was in danger! For the moment I had the advantage, but, while determined to hold on to the last, I feared she would get the better of me, for she was much bigger and stronger, and crushed and kicked, and dug her elbows into me, struggling like a mad woman. All at once the tug of her hands on mine ceased. She gave a great shriek, and I felt a shudder go through her. Then she lay still. I relaxed my hold cautiously, for I feared a trick. She did not move. Horror seized me; I thought I had killed her. I writhed from under her to see. As I did so, I caught sight of the pale face of my uncle, looking in at that part of the window next the larch-grove. Immediately I remembered lady Cairnedge's terror in the kitchen, and knew that the cause of it, and of her present cry, must be the same, to wit, the sight of my uncle. I had not hurt her! I was not yet on my feet when my uncle left the window, flew to the other side of it, and fell upon the men with a stick so furiously that he drove them to the carriage. The horses took fright, and went prancing about, rearing and jibbing. At the call of the coachman, two of the men flew to their heads. I saw no more of their assailant. John, who had not got a fair blow at one of his besiegers, left the window, and came to me where I was trying to restore his mother. The third man, the butler, came back to the window, put his hand through, undid the catch, and flung the sash wide. John caught up the poker from the floor, and darted to it. "Set foot within the window, Parker," he cried, "and I will break your head." The man did not believe he would hurt him, and put foot and head through the window. Now John had honestly threatened, but to perform he found harder than he had thought: it is one thing to raise a poker, and another to strike a head with it. The window was narrow, and the whole man was not yet in the room, when John raised his weapon; but he could not bring the horrid poker down upon the dumb blind back of the stooping man's head. He threw it from him, and casting his eyes about, spied a huge family-bible on a side-table. He sprang to it, and caught it up--just in time. The man had got one foot firm on the floor, and was slowly drawing in the other, when down came the bible on his head, with all the force John could add to its weight. The butler tumbled senseless on the floor. "Here, Orbie!" cried John; "help me to bundle him out before he comes to himself--Take what you would have!" he said, as between us we shoved him out on the gravel. I fetched smelling-salts and brandy, and everything I could think of--fetched Martha too, and between us we got her on the sofa, but lady Cairnedge lay motionless. She breathed indeed, but did not open her eyes. John stood ready to do anything for her, but his countenance revealed little compassion. Whatever the cause of his mother's swoon--he had never seen her in one before--he was certain it had to do with some bad passage in her life. He said so to me that same evening. "But what could the sight of my uncle have to do with it?" I asked. "Probably he knows something, or she thinks he does," he answered. "Wouldn't it be better to put her to bed, and send for the doctor, John?" I suggested at last. Perhaps the sound of my voice calling her son by his Christian name, stung her proud ear, for the same moment she sat up, passed her hands over her eyes, and cast a scared gaze about the room. "Where am I? Is it gone?" she murmured, looking ghastly. No one answered her. "Call Parker," she said, feebly, yet imperiously. Still no one spoke. She kept glancing sideways at the window, where nothing was to be seen but the gathering night. In a few moments she rose and walked straight from the room, erect, but white as a corpse. I followed, passed her, and opened the hall-door. There stood the carriage, waiting, as if nothing unusual had happened, Parker seated in the rumble, with one of the footmen beside him. The other man stood by the carriage-door. He opened it immediately; her ladyship stepped in, and dropped on the seat; the carriage rolled away. I went back to John. "I must leave you, darling!" he said. "I cannot subject you to the risk of such another outrage! I fear sometimes my mother may be what she would have you think me. I ought to have said, I hope she is. It would be the only possible excuse for her behaviour. The natural end of loving one's own way, is to go mad. If you don't get it, you go mad; if you do get it, you go madder--that's all the difference!--I must go!" I tried to expostulate with him, but it was of no use. "Where will you go?" I said. "You cannot go home!" "I would at once," he answered, "if I could take the reins in my own hands. But I will go to London, and see the family-lawyer. He will tell me what I had better do." "You have no money!" I said. "How do you know that?" he returned with a smile. "Have you been searching my pockets?" "John!" I cried. He broke into a merry laugh. "Your uncle will lend me a five-pound-note," he said. "He will lend you as much as you want; but I don't think he's in the house," I answered. "I have two myself, though! I'll run and fetch them." I bounded away to get the notes. It was like having a common purse already, to lend John ten pounds! But I had no intention of letting him leave the house the same day he was first out of his room after such an illness--that was, if I could help it. My uncle had given me the use of a drawer in that same cabinet in which were the precious stones; and there, partly, I think, from the pride of sharing the cabinet with my uncle, I had long kept everything I counted precious: I should have kept Zoe there if she had not been alive and too big! _ |
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