As long as he lived, Charley Bonair would never forget that tragic moment.
All at once, the fumes of wine passed from his brain, and left him sober and horrified, the heart sinking like lead in his breast.
It flashed over his mind that Berry’s wild leap for liberty, made just as he turned the vehicle around, could hardly fail to result in her instant death on the rough and rocky road.
A loud groan escaped his blanched lips, and he drew the frightened horse swiftly back upon its haunches that he might spring out to go to her assistance.
But the spirited animal, frightened out of all reason by Berry’s leap, and his master’s wild cry of alarm, now spurned control, and darted forward at headlong speed, dragging the lines from Bonair’s hands, so that the light trap rocked so wildly from side to side he could barely keep his seat by clinging to the edges.
He felt himself rushing to instant death, and in his horror over Berry’s fate, he did not greatly care, though the instinct of self-preservation made him shout aloud while he clung desperately to the swaying vehicle that, after a mile or so of this tremendous rush, became shattered into pieces, mercifully enough for him, because he suddenly fell through the wreck to the ground, miraculously unharmed. The maddened horse still rushed forward with furious leaps, trying to rid himself of the fettering shafts that clung and hindered his flight.
He lay prostrate in the dust several moments, bruised, battered, and shaken, but, luckily, with no bones broken, so that presently he stood upright again, the only living thing in sight upon the lonesome road.
The moon and stars shone down upon him coldly, and the night winds seemed to reproach him in subtle whispers.
“Where is she, the girl who trusted you, whose tender faith you shattered with your reckless words?” it seemed to say.
With a groan he looked backward, then retraced his steps with difficulty, he was so shaken up from the shock and the fall.
But he knew that he must find her, dead or alive, must restore her to her home, for which she had pleaded pitifully.
There was a great ache, deep down in his heart, a passionate repentance for his folly, a dawning love greater than any he had ever known in his wild career.
“If Heaven would listen to such a sinner, I’d pray to find her, living and unhurt,” he thought wildly. “Surely if my unworthy life could be spared, hers should be! Dear, little, innocent Berry!”
Toiling wearily and anxiously along the road, he regained the spot where Berry had sprung to her fate. With a wild heart-throb he saw her white figure lying prone on the ground.
“Not dead! oh, not dead!” he prayed wildly, as he bent over the prostrate form.
Still and white, and seemingly lifeless, she lay, poor little girl; but placing his hand above her heart, he felt a faint, irregular flutter that assured him of life.
He looked wildly about for assistance, his pale face transfigured with joy.
“Berry, dear little Berry, speak to me,” he cried fondly; but there was no reply.
The dark lashes did not lift from the pallid cheeks, the sweet lips did not open to answer his pleading cry, the little hand he clasped seemed already cold with approaching death.
“Oh, if some one would happen along! If I only had a vehicle!” he groaned, sweeping his glance up and down the lonely road for a sign of life anywhere. But there was neither man nor house in sight, only unbroken vistas of trees lining the dreary road, and in the distance the prolonged baying of a hound that sent an evil shudder along his veins.
They were at least five miles from town, and he remembered with sickening self-reproach how he had promised Berry that it should be so short a drive, not over two miles at the longest.
“My accursed selfishness and vanity caused it all! If she dies, her death lies at my door,” was the thought that beat upon his bewildered brain.
Every moment of unconsciousness brought her death nearer and nearer; he realized it with cruel force. “Ah, Heaven, what should I do?” he cried, kneeling over her there in the dusty road, marveling even in his remorse and grief at the fairness of her pallid face.
There was only one thing to do—he must carry her back to town in his arms, since there was no other way.
Like Richard the Third, he could have cried out: “My kingdom for a horse!”
Realizing all the bitterness of his plight, he bent down and took Berry’s limp figure in his arms and started out to trudge the distance back to town.
Ordinarily this would have been no great feat, for Charley Bonair was an athlete of renown among his fellows. But he had got such a severe shaking up himself, besides partially spraining his ankle, that he was not very fit for the burden he now started out to carry.
He trembled under the weight of Berry, and the perspiration ran down his face in streams, while he had to hide his lips to suppress groans of agony, as the weak ankle now and then twisted under him so that he could barely proceed.
But he set his teeth, grimly, vowing:
“I shall take her home if I die for it. It is the only atonement I can make for my sin. How dared I think I could flirt with this pure, sweet little darling!”
He thought with wonder of her exquisite innocence and ignorance, of how surely she had believed at first that he really wished to marry her when she was so far beneath him in the social scale.
“I shall never forget her pride and anger when I showed her my real nature,” he thought ruefully. “Ah, what a strong sense of honor! How it put me to the blush! She is too good for me, sweet little Berry! It is better to marry Rosalind, who knows all my faults, doubtless, and is not very saintly herself.”
Suddenly he paused in distress, and looked about him.
The moon had gone under a dark cloud, the air had turned chill, a flurry of rain beat down upon him, groping in thick darkness with that dead weight in his arms. It was one of the sudden changes in September weather, capricious as April.
“We must get under shelter, somehow, somewhere!” he thought, looking toward the trees, then a cry of joy shrilled over his lips.
Among the trees he saw a light flare up like a precious jewel in the gloom. It came from the windows of a house.
He staggered toward it, drenched with rain, agonized at every step with his sprained ankle, and his mind in a tumult. How he gained the porch he scarcely knew, but he saw that it was a sort of tavern.
He stumbled on the steps and fell prone with his lovely burden.