Amy had married the gardener and Mr. Jeffers now had his eyes on one of the village girls. “He’s got the wandering eye, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Couch, “and wandering eyes never rest long in one place.” She glanced out of the window. “My patience me! What’s this?”
Her red face was a shade paler and her chins shook a little as her mouth dropped open.
I sprang up and looked through the window.
Two of the gardeners were carrying what looked like an improvised stretcher and on it was Mr. Sylvester Milner.
It was a silent house. It seemed as though fate was determined to deal one blow after another. Life was becoming like a nightmare. It seemed as though everywhere the life I had known was slipping away from me.
They had carried Mr. Sylvester in and the doctor had come immediately. He had said that an operation would have to be performed without delay and they had taken him away.
There was nothing we could do but sit around and talk. All we did know was that a bullet had lodged in his spine and would have to be removed.
Mrs. Couch made pot after pot of tea in the big brown kitchen earthenware teapot and we all assembled at the big table and talked of what had happened. Amy, protuberant enough under her apron to confirm Mrs. Couch’s conjectures, was the center of attraction for once because Jacob, her husband, had been one of those who had helped carry the stretcher into the house.
“There was all this shooting going on,” she said, “so nobody noticed. How long he’d been lying there is anybody’s guess. The shooting started after their lunch and it was four when he was found. Could have been half an hour or more. One of the guns, they say it was, don’t they, Jake?”
Jacob nodded. “One of the guns,” he repeated.
“You could have knocked Jake down with a feather couldn’t you, Jake?”
Jacob said: “Yes, you could have.”
“There he was coming back with some of the weed killer he was getting for the weeds.”
“The weeds is something shocking,” said Jacob, and looked embarrassed to have contributed to the conversation.
“When he suddenly stumbles and there’s Mr. Milner lying there… bleeding, wasn’t he, Jake?”
“Something shocking,” Jacob confirmed.
“So he gave the alarm and then they made this stretcher and brought him in.”
Mrs. Couch stirred resolutely. “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s like fate. Death don’t walk single. Death begets death, like they say in the Bible. When I was pulling the blinds down for poor dear Mrs. Lindsay I said to myself: ‘And who’ll be the next?’”
“Mr. Milner isn’t dead,” I reminded her.
“As near to it as makes no odds,” said Mrs. Couch. “There’s change coming in this house. I’ve felt it in my bones these last weeks, I wonder who the next owner will be, and who they’ll want to keep. Might be more like a house should be. There’s that about it. But Mr. Milner, he was a kind man in his way.”
I cried out: “Please don’t talk of him as though he’s dead. He’s not.”
“Yet,” added Mrs. Couch prophetically.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned and ran out of the room. As I did so I heard Mrs. Couch say: “Poor Jane. It’s her mother going off like that. Enough to upset any of us.”
Mr. Sylvester did not die. The operation was a success in that his life was saved, but he would not recover the full use of his limbs and was semi-paralyzed. The doctors called it a miracle as they had performed the tricky operation of removing a bullet from his spine. This was proved to have been fired from a gun which had come from Squire Merrit’s gun room though it was uncertain which member of the party had fired the actual shot. The obvious explanation was that Mr. Sylvester had ventured too near the shooting party and a shot intended for one of the birds had accidentally caught him.
Three weeks after the accident he was recovered enough to receive visitors and I went to see him.
He looked smaller and younger, I thought, without his smoking cap; his light brown hair was plentiful and only faintly touched with grey.
He was very pleased to see me.
“Well, Jane,” he said, “this will put an end to my wanderings for a while.”
“It may not be so.”
“They have explained to me rather fully what has happened. I have to be prepared for the existence of a semi-invalid.”
“Even if that were so you have many interests.”
“There you are right. I can still buy and sell, but sellers will have to come to me. It is a good thing I have trained you well.”
I said: “If I can be of the least service to you I shall be glad.”
“You will be. You are looking sorry for me. That shows you have a kind heart and that is a good thing to have. Sympathy for the troubles of others and courage in our own. That is one of the greatest gifts any human being can have. The fates are being good to you, Jane. They are giving you a chance to learn this lesson.”
“I’d rather fate had been a little less good.”
“Never rail against fate, Jane. What is to be will be. That is how the Chinese see it. Accept your fate meekly, submit to it, look upon it as experience. Never rail against it. Then you will come through.”
“I shall try.”
“You will come to see me again. Bring any letters, any papers. We will work on them together.”
“Would your doctors allow that?”
“My doctors know that fate has decided to immobilize me to a certain extent. I must learn to adjust myself and any time I spend in mourning for what I have lost can bring me no good. That is something we must remember. Like a good general I must re-form my forces and go on with the battle. You will help me, Jane.”
“I will do everything I can.”
“Come then tomorrow and we will talk business. You will see how quickly I will recover then.”
So I went each day to the hospital while he was there and I took with me any letters that came; there were also books and catalogues which we looked over together.
These sessions were salvation to us both.
And then the suspicions which had been with me for some time were confirmed.
I was pregnant.
In due course Mr. Sylvester came back to the house. He had already regained a little use in his legs and could manage to hobble very slowly on a crutch. This was great progress. Enquiries were still going on as to how he had come to be shot and from whose gun the fatal bullet had been fired, but there was no satisfaction in this. The inference seemed to be that it was a case of accidental shooting, not the first of its kind by any means.
The household settled back into a slightly new routine which soon became normal. Instead of Mr. Sylvester’s going away, guests came to see him. They often came for dinner and sometimes stayed for a night or two. I was housekeeper, hostess, and secretary, which kept me busy. I was grateful for that.
Joliffe wrote twice more. The first of these letters implored me to come to him. In the second which came two weeks later I sensed his desire for me to do so was less urgent. He was going to “move heaven and earth” he wrote to free himself; then all would be well.
He was constantly in my thoughts yet I felt that I was seeing him differently. In my unworldly eyes when I had been blindly in love with him I saw a perfect being, but now I saw a new Joliffe, a young adventurer, not always sure of himself, taking chances, not always strictly honorable… I saw Joliffe the sinner. It was as though I had been looking at a painting through a veil which made it mystic but wonderful and when the veil was removed the flaws began to show themselves. I did not, I think, love him less. I knew that I could still be charmed, but I saw him differently and I wanted to look more and more deeply into what was there.