CHAPTER IV

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I PAY THE RECKONING.

I just remember the boys shouting at us to hold on and sit steady. We didn't require that instruction, for every country-bred girl knows that the only thing to do when a horse bolts, is to keep quiet and do nothing. I gripped my side of the car and watched Hugh, who was driving beside me, fling himself half-way across the car in his effort to keep a tight grip of the reins. The wretched car was swinging from side to side, and I caught a glimpse of Esther, rather pale, holding on quietly to her side as I was doing to mine.

I wondered at the calm of my own mind. "If we meet nothing," said I, "and the harness holds, we are safe enough, for it won't take long to tire her out." On the other hand, if the harness did not hold, or we met anything coming in the opposite direction, some of us would get hurt. I watched the flying hedges as the car flung us high and low, with an absolute calm that looked neither before nor after. I hope God always sends such courage when one really needs it. So the mad flight went on in absolute silence as far as we were concerned.

But of course the wretched harness could not stand the strain. Hugh suddenly fell back towards us with a broken rein in his hand. The mare gave a tremendous leap to one side. There was a heap of stones on the side of the road, obligingly left there for our misfortune by Mullaly, the road contractor. In a moment she had kicked herself free of her harness and was off again, but I saw nothing of this, for I was lying at the bottom of a deep ditch, with my foot turned under me, and I don't know how many newts and young frogs walking about my pink frock.

I am not the fainting sort, but the fall stunned me. When I came to myself I had my head on somebody's shoulder. I looked up into the face bending over me, and saw a pair of gray eyes full of honest concern for me. It was the young man who had been Miss Pettigrew's escort. He was bathing my face with a silk handkerchief dipped in water someone had brought. I looked at him for a minute and tried to sit upright, but I only succeeded in uttering a sharp cry.

"My poor little girl," he said with pitying tenderness, "I am afraid you are hurt. Where is it?"

[Illustration: "MY POOR LITTLE GIRL, I AM AFRAID YOU ARE HURT!"]

"My foot," I gasped; and I felt that I was half-fainting again with pain.

"Keep quiet. It is probably sprained," he said quickly. "Let me look at it."

I heard him call to someone for a coat, which he arranged under my head. Then I remembered.

"Are the others all right?" I cried.

"Here they are to answer for themselves," he said; and then I saw that the boys and Esther were standing by, with very frightened faces, all plastered with mud and dirt, but evidently none the worse for the accident.

"We are all right, darling," said Esther, who was crying, "only alarmed about you."

"I am going to hurt you, my poor little girl," said the strange young man, "but you must be brave, and I will make you easier for the journey home."

I felt him cutting away my shoe and stocking. It was agony every bit of it, but I endured it, only saying my prayers, as I had seen the peasants do when they suffered. Then I felt him binding my ankle about with something cold and wet, that seemed to relieve me a little; when he had finished, he bent over me again, and I smiled faintly at him.

"You are very good to me," I managed to say.

"Good to you!" he echoed. "I wish I could save you the horrible suffering I know it is. I hope it is no worse than a bad sprain, but a doctor must see it immediately you get home. But how to get you home, that is the question?"

"I'll run to the cross-roads," volunteered Donald, "and bring Larry Brady's ass and cart. The ass will travel as slow as you like, and she can lie full-length in the cart."

"Right, my boy! If they can send a feather-bed and pillow, so much the better."

Donald was off like a shot.

"I hope you have not far to take her," he said, turning to Esther.

I saw she was about to tell him, and I darted a warning glance at her which she understood.

"Not very far," she said, haltingly.

"To Brandon village," he asked, "or one of the farm-houses yonder? I don't think this road leads anywhere else, except to Brandon itself."

Now I was vexed at his taking us for peasants or farmers' daughters, though I didn't want him to know we were Brandons. So I took the words out of Esther's mouth.

"Yes, to Brandon village," I said, which was true enough, for we had to pass through the village, and some of us would have to explain to Barney the accident to his property. That was worrying me too, for we could ill afford to make up the damage.

I closed my eyes after that and said nothing, for the throbbing pain in my ankle made me feel exhausted. Through my closed eyelids I could feel the pity in the kind strange eyes that were watching me. He was so kind that I felt I could forgive him not only for not recognizing us at once as Brandons--which I should have hated him to do--but for having walked with that Pettigrew creature. Evidently she had not told him who we were. Whatever her jibe had been, it had not told him that we were Brandons,--the proudest and most impoverished race within the four seas of Ireland.

My thoughts went from one thing to another, and presently grew hazy and dull with continued pain. Then I became aware that the ass-cart had arrived, with Mrs. Brady as well, full of lamentations and wirrasthrues. I was very much afraid she would give us away to the stranger, but he was so engaged looking after my comfort that I don't think he heard a word she said. It was he who lifted me into the little cart, so gently that my ankle scarcely hurt. As he lifted me, I saw his fine bay horse fastened to a gate. He must have been riding from the races and witnessed our mishap from the Upper Road.

He laid me down gently on the soft feather-bed. As he bent low to do it, his face almost touched mine. "Good, brave little girl!" he whispered. Then he turned to the others.

"Who is going to lead the ass?" he asked.

"I," said Hugh. "I," said Donald.

"You had better lead, being the oldest and wisest," he said to Hugh, with a smile; "and take care you do not jog her. Fortunately the road seems pretty level."

He lifted his hat, and I thought I detected a wistful look in his eyes. I am sure he wanted to know who we were, and to ask if he might hear how I progressed, but nobody said anything. He stood watching us as we moved off slowly, and when we had gone quite a long way, before the road turned, Hugh looked back, and said:

"Your friend is watching us still, Hilda." And then added in his emphatic way, "I call that no end of a good fellow!"

I said nothing. I was thinking dreamily that the stranger had never once looked at Esther, always at me. I wondered who he might be. Anyhow we were never likely to see or hear of him again. We never went out anywhere we were likely to meet him, and if he was, as Mag Byrne had suggested, an officer from the barracks, he would presently leave with his regiment and go out into the wide world, where even friends find it so hard to meet.

But here we were at last at Brandon hall-door, and Aline was running down the steps. Esther had gone on before to explain things to her. I saw that Aline looked very much disturbed, but when her eyes met mine they held nothing but love and pity.

Well, they sent for old Dr. Devine, who came and examined my sprain. He was very grave about it, for it was no sprain at all, but a compound fracture. After that I was ill for a long time, enduring such pain and fever with my hurt--for there were complications--that it wore me to skin and bone. Then Aline sent for a Dublin specialist, for Dr. Devine was very old, and not altogether to be trusted. Indeed, the Dublin doctor found things so bad that a bone had to be broken again and re-set. However, after months of it I was carried downstairs, hollow-eyed, and the ghost of my old self. But I had plenty of cause for gratitude, for I had very narrowly escaped being a permanent invalid, though, when I could walk about, I was a little lame, as the Dublin doctor had feared I should be for a long time, and I have never been quite my old strong self again.

However, they have all been so good to me, that even in my misfortune there is sweetness. It was quite a novelty in our strong family to have someone to wait on, and I believe the boys and the twins were delighted beyond telling in carrying my footstool or fetching a shawl or pillow for me, or, when I went with them on their expeditions, carrying a little bundle of rugs and wraps with which I should be made comfortable when we sat down to picnic among the harebells, or in a sunny hay-field sloping to the river.

I think it was a comfort to Aline to have me to distract her mind when Pierce went away. Once, after a long time, I said to her that I was sorry for the escapade which had ended so disastrously.

"Poor little Hilda!" she said. "You have had to pay heavily for a bit of childish folly;" and she stroked my hair in her exquisite way.

Yet I think that if all had ended well that day Aline would have been very angry with us, for she is so proud; and lying quietly so long, I seemed to have grown up suddenly, so that I understood how she might wince under the incidents that had seemed glorious fun to us younger ones.

As she sat beside me another day, feeding me with little bits of a peach, I asked her a question which had been in my mind.

"Aline," I said, "where does all this come from--the peaches and grapes, and game and wine? And how did you pay for the Dublin doctor for me?"

She bent down and kissed me again.

"I sold the collet," she said quietly.

"Sir Rupert's collet!" I almost shrieked. "But it was your own--the one beautiful thing you had! Grandmother left it to you herself."

"I had so much more right to part with it," she said, looking at the fruit she was peeling, not at me.

"Why didn't you sell some of the other jewels?" I asked, almost indignantly.

"Family jewels, dear, which must remain Brandon property. They are for Pierce's wife some day. Besides, I didn't care for the collet. That man's gift couldn't be of good omen."

After that I said nothing more, though I cried with sheer love and gratitude, when Aline had left me, to think I had such a sister.

During my illness I had often thought of the gentleman who had been so kind to me that day. When I was at last out-of-doors and able to sit in the rose-garden near Aline, I asked Hugh, who was sitting by me mending his fishing-tackle:

"Do you know, Hugh, what regiment is quartered in Annagassan Barracks just now?"

"No. What do you want to know for?" looking up at me in amazement. "You don't know anyone there."

"Well, I think the gentleman who was so kind the day I got hurt was probably an officer there."

"Oh, is that it? Well, if he was, he's gone, for there is a new regiment just come in. The other's gone to India. Say, Hilda, weren't we duffers not to have asked him to call? I thought it was pretty queer of us, but it wasn't my place, you know."

"We were rather duffers," said I.

"I expect he'd have been glad. He looked a right good sort, and a gentleman. I could have put him up to a lot of things, and Donald and I want some male friends. Of course you girls are all right, but a man wants men," said Hugh, wisely.

"Well," said I with a little sigh, "it's no use talking now. I don't suppose he'll ever come back again."

"I should jolly well think not. I wish I had his chance. Why didn't old Desmond take a fancy to me instead of to Pierce?"

"Maybe he will," said I consolingly. "Some day when he has established Pierce he will send for you."

Somehow after that, when I began to write stories out of my head, the hero always was brown-faced and gray-eyed. He had always a ripple of close-cut brown hair, and a humorous mouth, and such a kind expression, when anyone was in trouble. He must have grown rather monotonous to Esther, my only audience, who will listen entranced for hours while I read my effusions.

She is a most inspiriting audience. She reads her own romance into everything, and to see her flushed cheeks and wet, eager eyes she might be listening to Romeo and Juliet rather than to my poor little tales. It is the worst of Esther, that she has so little discrimination. Give her a love-story, and she doesn't mind whether the scene is Kerry or Mantua, the writer Hilda Brandon or William Shakespeare. "Oh, it is lovely!" she cries all the same, and thirsting for more. If Esther ever falls in love may I be there to see!

Still she found out my hero.

"Why, Hilda," she said one day, "Geoffrey Strafford is exactly like the young officer who helped you after Annagassan Races; and so was Hilton Beresford and Jack Vandaleur, and ever so many more."

"You think so?"--with exaggerated surprise. "You must only fancy it, for if there is anything I pride myself on it is the originality of my characters; and I am sure those three you mention are not a bit alike."

"Perhaps not," she said with a little puzzled line between her brows. "Yet I thought they all looked alike. He was quite nice enough for a hero anyway. You remember him, Hilda?"

"Yes," said I disingenuously; "but you don't remember very clearly things that happened when you were in such suffering, you know."

"Of course not, you poor darling! I don't suppose you really saw him a bit. Still your heroes are very like him."

After this I tried a course of fair heroes, but somehow I didn't succeed with them so well. That is the worst of having such limited experience as we have. I can't get my own brothers to stand for their portraits, and outside them I know only Dr. Devine and Mr. Benson, and the people in the village, and none of those are at all heroic.

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