Then the hounds were again on the scent and were running very fast towards the park. “That’s a nasty ditch before us,” said the Lord. “Come down a little to the left. The hounds are heading that way, and there’s a gate.” Young Hampton in the meantime was going straight for the fence.
“I’m not afraid,” said Arabella.
“Very well. Give him his head and he’ll do it.”
Just at that moment there was a noise behind them and the Major on Jemima rushed up. She was covered with foam and he with dirt, and her sides were sliced with the spur. His hat was crushed, and he was riding almost altogether with his right hand. He came close to Arabella and she could see the rage in his face as the animal rushed on with her head almost between her knees. “He’ll have another fall there,” said Lord Rufford.
Hampton who had passed them was the first over the fence, and the other three all took it abreast. The Major was to the right, the lord to the left and the girl between them. The mare’s head was perhaps the first. She rushed at the fence, made no leap at all, and of course went headlong into the ditch. The Major still stuck to her though two or three voices implored him to get off. He afterwards declared that he had not strength to lift himself out of the saddle. The mare lay for a moment;—then blundered out, rolled over him, jumped on to her feet, and lunging out kicked her rider on the head as he was rising. Then she went away and afterwards jumped the palings into Rufford Park. That evening she was shot.
The man when kicked had fallen back close under the feet of Miss Trefoil’s horse. She screamed and half-fainting, fell also;—but fell without hurting herself. Lord Rufford of course stopped, as did also Mr. Hampton and one of the whips—with several others in the course of a minute or two. The Major was senseless—but they who understood what they were looking at were afraid that the case was very bad. He was picked up and put on a door and within half an hour was on his bed in Rufford Hall. But he did not speak for some hours and before six o’clock that evening the doctor from Rufford had declared that he had mounted his last horse and ridden his last hunt!
“Oh Lord Rufford,” said Arabella, “I shall never recover that. I heard the horse’s feet against his head.” Lord Rufford shuddered and put his hand round her waist to support her. At that time they were standing on the ground. “Don’t mind me if you can do any good to him.” But there was nothing that Lord Rufford could do as four men were carrying the Major on a shutter. So he and Arabella returned together, and when she got off her horse she was only able to throw herself into his arms.
XXIII
Poor Caneback
A closer intimacy will occasionally be created by some accident, some fortuitous circumstance, than weeks of ordinary intercourse will produce. Walk down Bond Street in a hailstorm of peculiar severity and you may make a friend of the first person you meet, whereas you would be held to have committed an affront were you to speak to the same person in the same place on a fine day. You shall travel smoothly to York with a lady and she will look as though she would call the guard at once were you so much as to suggest that it were a fine day; but if you are lucky enough to break a wheel before you get to Darlington, she will have told you all her history and shared your sherry by the time you have reached that town. Arabella was very much shocked by the dreadful accident she had seen. Her nerves had suffered, though it may be doubted whether her heart had been affected much. But she was quite conscious when she reached her room that the poor Major’s misfortune, happening as it had done just beneath her horse’s feet, had been a godsend to her. For a moment the young lord’s arm had been round her waist and her head had been upon his shoulder. And again when she had slipped from her saddle she had felt his embrace. His fervour to her had been simply the uncontrolled expression of his feeling at the moment—as one man squeezes another tightly by the hand in any crisis of sudden impulse. She knew this;—but she knew also that he would probably revert to the intimacy which the sudden emotion had created. The mutual galvanic shock might be continued at the next meeting—and so on. They had seen the tragedy together and it would not fail to be a bond of union. As she told the tragedy to her mother, she delicately laid aside her hat and whip and riding dress, and then asked whether it was not possible that they might prolong their stay at Rufford. “But the Gores, my dear! I put them off, you know, for two days only.” Then Arabella declared that she did not care a straw for the Gores. In such a matter as this what would it signify though they should quarrel with a whole generation of Gores? For some time she thought that she would not come down again that afternoon or even that evening. It might well be that the sight of the accident should have made her too ill to appear. She felt conscious that in that moment and in the subsequent half hour she had carried herself well, and that there would be an interest about her were she to own herself compelled to keep her room. Were she now to take to her bed they could not turn her out on the following day. But at last her
