East Anglia (England) -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
“’Tain’t for myself, Silly!” he replied. “You ask
the doctor to step out, for I don’t trust this here horse to you or
anybody: he’s run away once, and I don’t want no more of that there
game.”
The girl complied, laughing; and presently Dr. Childs, a middle-aged man with a
quiet manner, appeared, and asked what was the matter.
“Please, sir, there’s a gentleman fallen off Ramborough Tower and
broken his leg; and Joan Haste she’s with him, and she’s all bloody
too—though I don’t know what she’s broken. I was to ask you
to go and fetch him with a shutter, and to take things along to tie him up
with.”
“When did he fall, and what is his name, my boy?” asked the doctor.
“I don’t know when he fell, sir; but I saw Joan Haste about six
o’clock time. Since then I’ve been getting here with this here
horse; and I wish that I’d stuck to my legs, for all the help he’s
been to me—the great idle brute! I’d rather wheel a barrow of
bricks nor pull him along behind me. Oh! the name? She said it was Captain
Graves of Rosham: that was what I was to tell her aunt.”
“Captain Graves of Rosham!” said Dr. Childs to himself. “Why,
I heard Mr. Levinger say that he was coming to stay with him to-day!”
Then he went into the house, and ten minutes later he was on his way to
Ramborough in a dog-cart, followed by some men with a stretcher. On reaching
the ruined abbey, the doctor stood up and looked round; but, although the moon
was bright, he could see no one. He called aloud, and presently heard a faint
voice answering him. Leaving the cart in charge of his groom, he followed the
direction of the sound till he came to the foot of the tower. Here, beneath the
shadow of the spiked tomb, clasping the senseless body of a man in her arms, he
found a woman—Joan Haste— whose white dress was smirched with
blood, and who, to all appearance, had but just awakened from a faint. Very
feebly—for she was quite exhausted—she explained what had happened;
and, without more words, the doctor set to work.
“It’s a baddish fracture,” he said presently. “Lucky
that the poor fellow is insensible.”
In a quarter of an hour he had done all that could be done there and in that
light, and by this time the men who were following with the stretcher, were
seen arriving in another cart. Very gently they lifted Henry, who was still
unconscious, on to the stretcher, and set out upon the long trudge back to
Bradmouth, Dr. Childs walking by their side. Meanwhile Joan was placed in the
dog-cart and driven forward by the coachman, to see that every possible
preparation was made at the Crown and Mitre, whither it was rapidly decided
that the injured man must be taken, for it was the only inn at Bradmouth, and
the doctor had no place for him in his own house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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