JOHN
A LOVE STORY
BY
MRS OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF ‘CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,’ ETC.
VOL. I.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXX
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE
| CHAPTER I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX., X., XI., XII., XIII., XIV. |
JOHN.
CHAPTER I.
I do not know how to begin this story otherwise than by a confessionthat I cannot describe its very first scene. It was a scene such ashappens very often in romance, and which a great many writers coulddescribe to the life. I know who could do it so well that you wouldthink you saw the accident—the plunge of the frightened horse, thesudden change in the sensations of the rider from voluntary progresson her own part to a gradual confused wild mad rush past of treesand houses and hedgerows, and all the whirling level green of thecountry round—the flash before her eyes—the jar—the stillness ofinsensibility. Many writers whom I know could make a great point ofit; but I never was run away with by my horse, and I do not know how itfeels. Therefore I will begin where the excitement ends, and take upmy story from the moment when Kate Crediton opened her eyes, withoutany notion where sh{2}e was, with a thousand bells ringing in her ears,and awful shadows of something that had happened or was going to happenflitting about her brain—and by degrees found that she was not on herhorse, as she had been when last she had any acquaintance with herself,but lying on a sofa with a sense of wetness and coolness about herhead, and the strangest incapacity to move or speak or exercise anyenergy of her own. She began to hear the voices and to feel the thingsthat were being done to her before she was capable of opening hereyes, or indeed had come to herself. There was a soft plash of water,and sensation as if a sudden shower had come over her face, and thenconsciousness struggled back, and she began to divine what it was.
“Where am I?” she said, faintly, in her great wonder; and then herfather came forward, and with tears in his eyes implored her not tostir or speak. And there was another man who was dimly apparent to her,holding her hand or her pulse or something; and at her feet a pair ofanxious, astonished eyes gazing at her, and somebody behind who wassprinkling some{3}thing fragrant over her head, and shedding the heavyhair off her forehead. She had fainted, and yet somehow had escapedbeing dead, as she ought to have been. Or was she dead, and were