"Felice--my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile on my hands and knees--God, I thought I should never have got here!...I have come to you--be-cause you are the only friend--I have in the world now....I can never go back to Hintock--never--to the roof of the Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter feud!...If I were only well again--"
"Let me bind your head, now that you have rested."
"Yes--but wait a moment--it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or I should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to make a tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well? Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more.
My practice is nearly gone, you know--and after this I would not care to recover it if I could."
By this time Felice's tears began to blind her. Where were now her discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought. The first step was to hide him, and she asked herself where. A place occurred to her mind.
She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him much. Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on the other, they went thus in slow march out of the room and up the stairs. At the top she took him along a gallery, pausing whenever he required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase to the least used part of the house, where she unlocked a door. Within was a lumber-room, containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye gaze in at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this dungeon.
Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the aforesaid nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried blood from his face and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining, fetched food from the larder. While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously on his face, following its every movement with such loving-kindness as only a fond woman can show.
He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her.
"What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence. But I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so that I hardly was aware of what I said. Well-- the veil of that temple is rent in twain!...As I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my first efforts must be directed to allay any alarm that may be felt at my absence, before I am able to get clear away. Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or there will be a country talk about me. Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all search for me. I think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now. I could rest better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with running up and down!"
She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife.
"The animosity shown towards me by your father," he wrote, in this coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I cannot return again to a roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division.
I am starting on a journey which will take me a long way from Hintock, and you must not expect to see me there again for some time."
He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint of his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again.
He offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but she would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations distressed her beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers, and sobbed bitterly.
"If you can get this posted at a place some miles away," he whispered, exhausted by the effort of writing--"at Shottsford or Port-Bredy, or still better, Budmouth--it will divert all suspicion from this house as the place of my refuge."
"I will drive to one or other of the places myself--anything to keep it unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now that the excitement of helping him had passed away.
Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to he done.
"In creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he said, "I made the rail bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint--I could see it in the dark. At all hazards it should be washed off.
Could you do that also, Felice?"
What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground- floor, then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid under her cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into the night. The white railing stared out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood--just where he had told her it would be found. she shuddered. It was almost too much to bear in one day--but with a shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and returned to the house.
The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than two hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized bed, and placed everything within his reach that she could think of, she took her leave of him, and locked him in.