CHAPTER XLI.

As Esmeralda sunk unconscious against Trafford’s breast, a sharp cry of horror rose from Varley, and was echoed by Norman, who came up a moment or two afterward. The revolver dropped from Varley’s hand, and he stood staring[325] before him with ashen face and quivering lips. She had come between him and Trafford at the very moment Varley pulled the trigger; there had not even been time for him to divert his aim.

For an instant or two not one of them was capable of realizing what had happened; then, with cry of anguish, Trafford pressed Esmeralda to him, and looked down into her face, which was as composed as if by the hand of death. He saw a line of red trickling over the bosom of her dress, and a groan burst from his lips.

“My God, you’ve killed her!” he exclaimed, hoarsely.

Varley came up with uncertain steps, but Trafford half turned away with his precious burden, as if to prevent Varley from touching her. Norman stood shaking and trembling, and it was Simon who, being the least interested, retained his presence of mind, said:

“P’r’aps she isn’t killed; let us see!”

Trafford knelt down, and with her head still upon his breast, unfastened her blouse.

The blood was oozing from a little wound in her shoulder; he could feel her heart beat, though faintly, under his hand.

“She ain’t dead,” said Simon, judging by the swift look of unspeakable relief upon Trafford’s face. “I thought as how Varley Howard aimed too high to hit her mortal, like. It’s lucky for you, mister, that she come a-tween you, or you’d been a dead ’un. She’s saved your life—if she’s lost her own.”

Varley knelt on the other side of Esmeralda in speechless agony. Simon turned to Norman.

“What’s to be done?” he asked. “They two have lost their wits, and you and me will have to act.”

“We must get her to some place of shelter,” said Norman, huskily.

“That’s so,” said Simon. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll go and fetch my man; we’ll make a kind of litter and carry her to the hut—p’r’aps we could fix up something out of the things lying about here,” and he looked round.

“Yes—yes, for God’s sake, let us do something!” said Norman.

With some of the débris and a couple of planks from the hut they constructed a litter, Varley assisting them in a kind of stupor. When they carried it to where Trafford still held Esmeralda in his arms, he looked up with bewildered eyes.

“She is alive—she is alive!” he said.

He did not seem to be aware of Norman’s presence, to be[326] conscious of anything but the limp figure lying in his arms. He made a pillow of his coat, and they placed Esmeralda upon the litter and started for the hut, Trafford, as he bore one corner of the stretcher, bending over her with a distraught gaze. They went slowly, picking every step, and almost in silence. Varley walked with bent head and shoulders, crushed by this last blow from the hand of Fate.

They reached the hut at last, and the woman, hearing their steps, came out to meet them; she uttered one cry at sight of the motionless figure of the brave girl, then helped them place her on the bed and silently drew a curtain before it. Trafford sunk on a chair and hid his face in his hands; Varley leaned against the wall as if utterly exhausted, as indeed he was; Simon looked from one to the other grimly.

“I’ll trouble you for that two hundred, Varley Howard,” he said, laconically.

Varley started, drew the bag containing the money from his pocket, and handed it to him without a word.

The woman came from behind the curtain.

“She’s alive,” she said in a low voice, and with her eyes fixed upon the ground. “You’d better fetch a doctor.”

“I will go,” said Norman, abruptly.

Both Trafford and Varley started as if to go also; but Norman waved them back.

“No, no; you stay here. She may want you, if she comes to.”

As he hurried out of the hut, Simon followed him, and Varley and Trafford were left alone.

Presently Trafford felt a tingling sensation in his arm, and saw that the blood was oozing from under his shirt-sleeve, but he paid no attention to it.

Varley went outside, and paced up and down. He saw now that Esmeralda still loved her husband, and that if he had shot him, he would have broken her heart, and so, perhaps, have killed her one way as surely as he had, in all probability, killed her with a bullet. Every now and then he went into the hut and gazed at the curtain with a terrible anxiety, and on one occasion he noticed the blood dropping from Trafford’s arm, and he pointed to it.

“You were hit?” he said.

Trafford looked stupidly at his arm.

“Yes; it is of no consequence,” he said, dully.

Varley got some water in a bowl, and offered to examine and bind up the wound. Trafford made to repulse him for a moment, then submitted with palpable indifference.

[327]

“It is a pity you didn’t kill me outright, Mr. Howard,” he said, bitterly. “It would have been more merciful.”

Varley made no response, but bound up the wound as if he were ministering to a close friend, and then went outside again.

The woman came from the bedside occasionally, but always with the same report: Esmeralda was still unconscious.

The night passed; the dawn broke with exquisite beauty, and the sun shone upon the white and haggard faces of the two men watching and waiting with feverish and almost intolerable anxiety. Presently they saw a party riding up the hill at a furious gallop; they were Norman, the doctor, and Mother Melinda.

The doctor turned the men out, and went with Mother Melinda to the bedside. Trafford withdrew to a little distance from the hut, and sat with his face hidden in his hands, and Norman and Varley leaned against a tree and waited silently for a time. Then Norman said, with difficulty, as if there were a lump in his throat:

“It’s all my fault. If I had told you everything the night I arrived, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Varley said nothing. He felt that if Esmeralda were to die, it mattered little whose fault it was; the burden of her death would lie upon his—Varley’s—soul forever.

After what seemed an interminable time, filled up with a suspense beyond the power of words to describe, the door of the hut opened and the doctor came out. The three men started forward simultaneously. The doctor addressed Varley.

“She is still unconscious,” he said. “Keep up your heart, Varley; the wound isn’t a mortal one. It isn’t the wound I’m afraid of; it’s the shock to the system, and what has gone before. She was dead beat when you—when this happened to her. She’d gone through enough to knock up a strong man, let alone a woman, and she’s just exhausted and played out.” He looked at Trafford as he said this, and Trafford turned aside and stifled a groan. “You’re her husband, sir, Lord Druce tells me. You’d better stay here. You, Varley, and Lord Druce, had better get back to Three Star; I don’t want a crowd round her, and you can do no good. I’ll give you a list of things I want from the camp; you can send them by Taffy, in the spring-cart. I shall move her down to the camp as soon as she’s fit.”

“She will recover?” exclaimed Norman, eagerly.

“I didn’t say that, young man,” said the doctor, pursing his lips. “We shall see. If you think it’s an easy case you[328] make a very great mistake; as I said, I haven’t got to fight the wound alone; there’s something behind that.”

Varley and Norman went toward their horses, which Simon, before he left, had carefully tethered. Half-way, Varley paused and looked round at Trafford, who was following the doctor to the hut. Trafford stopped and waited, and the two men looked steadily at each other.

“Our account is not yet settled, your grace,” said Varley, sternly.

Trafford inclined his head as if assenting.

“No—no!” said Norman in a kind of despair. “You neither of you understand!” and he laid his hand upon Varley’s arm; but Varley shook it off as he turned, and walked to his horse.

Trafford entered the hut. The two women had undressed Esmeralda, and she lay like a flower, the red-gold hair framing her face and streaming over the pillow; her eyes were closed, and she seemed scarcely to breathe. She looked so “dead” that Trafford, as he sunk on his knees beside the bed, shuddered, and had hard work to repress the cry that rose to his lips. He would have taken the hand that hung down so lifeless and laid it on his bosom, but the doctor forbid it with a gesture.

“Don’t touch her,” he said. “There may be a glimmer of consciousness in her somewhere, and I can’t have her startled.”

A silence fell upon the place, broken only by the whispering of the two women as they moved about in ministration. The doctor went in and out, always with that quiet gravity on his face which the medical man wears in the presence of a “difficult” case. He had brought his medicine-case with him, and once or twice he had administered a few drops of something, and Trafford watched him as if the precious life were depending upon him.

The hours passed by, hours fraught with such anguish as few men have suffered. As he knelt there beside the girl who was his wife only in name, Trafford had no thought for anything but his love for her. He did not ask himself if she were guilty; at that moment he did not care. If she had opened her lips and confessed her guilt, he would not have cared. He loved her; and she had offered her life for him. Yes. Whether she had ever loved him or not she had been willing to die for him. There was no woman in the world like her, guilty or not; and he loved her—loved her! It was all summed up in that word. Honor, the desire for vengeance,[329] were as nothing to him now. If she should recover—if God should give her back to him, he would hold her against Norman, against the whole world, no matter what she had done, how deeply she had sinned.

Time passed unnoticed by him; he was in a kind of trance, and he started when the doctor touched him upon the shoulder and beckoned him from the bedside.

“You must have something to eat, my lord,” he said, eying Trafford keenly.

Trafford shook his head and moved his hand impatiently.

“But I say you must,” said the doctor, with quiet determination. “You’re looking almost as bad as she is; worse, in some ways. Let me look at that arm of yours. H’m! Varley’s almost as good a surgeon as he is a shot.”

Trafford took his arm away impatiently.

The doctor forced him into a chair, and motioned to the food which the women had prepared.

“Eat, and try and look a little more cheerful,” he said. “If she should wake and see that face of yours as it looks now, she’d think it was a ghost, and get scared.”

Trafford forced himself to eat and drink, then went back to the bedside.

Later on the cart arrived, then all was silent again. The day passed, the shades of evening began to fall upon the valley below as he sat and watched the white, lovely face.

The doctor was outside with the two women arranging the stores which Taffy had brought. Trafford was alone with his girl-wife.

Suddenly he saw a faint color rise and spread over the white face, her lips moved and quivered, and one hand, the one nearest him, stirred like a wounded bird.

Trafford’s heart leaped, and he was about to rise from his knees and fetch the doctor, but before he could do so, he heard her speak, and her voice, so low as to be almost inaudible, chained him to the spot.

“Trafford!” she breathed.

Trafford trembled at the sound of his name spoken with an infinite tenderness.

“Trafford, don’t you think you could love me a little? I know that I am ignorant and common, almost a savage compared with her, and that you have loved her for a long time—but I am your wife, after all, and I love you as well as she does.”

Trafford bit his lip to stifle the moan that would have expressed the anguish of his heart; and not the anguish only,[330] but a sudden swift joy which ran through every vein like fire. She was speaking in unconsciousness, speaking from her heart, the soul’s truth.

“You don’t believe me,” she went on, her brows contracting. “You don’t believe me; you think that I am telling you a lie, that I love some one else—who was it? I forget! I forget!” She moved her head restlessly to and fro. “It is not true. I have never loved any one in the world excepting you, Trafford, my husband. But you are not my husband, are you? You only wanted my money, not me, and you sent me away because you love Lady Ada.”

Trafford could bear no more. He rose and staggered out of the hut and leaned against the wall, with his face upon his arm.

The doctor glanced at him and hurried inside, followed by the two women. He came out again presently to fetch something from the stores, and Trafford grasped his arm.

“How is she?” he demanded, hoarsely.

The doctor shook him off almost roughly.

“In a high fever, if you must know,” he said. “The battle’s just beginning; keep outside here, and leave us to fight it.”

“You will save her? You must—you must! I tell you she must not die! She loves me—she loves me! I know it now! You must save her!”

The doctor looked at the distorted face and wild eyes, and setting down the bottle he had in his hand, took up another and poured out a draught.

“Drink that,” he said. “Drink that, man! For God’s sake, calm yourself, or I shall have a mad man, as well as a sick woman, on my hands.”

Trafford raised the cup with trembling hands to his burning lips, and pushed the hair, damp with sweat, from his brow.

The doctor led him to a mound under a tree.

“Lie down there, and try and sleep,” he said. “Keep quiet, at any rate; if not for your own sake, for hers. If she should come to and ask for you, and you presented yourself in your condition, I wouldn’t answer for the consequences.”

Trafford sunk upon the mound and covered his face with his hands as a sob shook him from head to foot.

“Yes, yes!” he said. “Tell her— Oh, God! let me go to her the moment she wakes!”