CHAPTER 7 #3
There are moments when fear does not enlarge thought but abolishes it. She knew only that the horses were moving and Pom-Pom was somewhere under or near them and that if the next second went wrong she should never forgive herself while breath remained.
A man moved before she did.
He had been standing near the carriage-head, perhaps in conversation with the driver or crossing the street at the right fortunate moment; she never afterward knew clearly.
She saw only the effect: a tall gentleman in dark clothes stepping in without noise, catching the frightened horse at the head with a steadiness that seemed less force than command, speaking low, quick, and sure.
The animal, which a louder man might have turned into confusion, checked beneath his hand.
In the same motion, while keeping the team steady, he bent and drew Pom-Pom out from a position far too close to wheel and hoof.
For one impossible instant Elizabeth could not breathe.
Then Pom-Pom gave a furious, insulted bark from the gentleman’s grasp, and the world resumed.
She was beside them almost before she knew she had moved.
“My dog — oh! — sir—”
He turned at the sound of her voice and held the creature out to her.
Pom-Pom, though very much alive, had no gratitude in him.
His narrow body shook with indignation, his eyes were bright with the after-violence of instinct, and one paw had contrived to smear some dreadful contribution from the street upon the gentleman’s glove and cuff in the struggle.
There was mud along one knee of his breeches, a dark mark at his coat-skirt, and dust on the sleeve which had saved Pom-Pom from being crushed. None of it seemed to concern him.
“Is he yours?” he asked.
His voice was low, smooth, and polished by habits no mud could disguise.
Elizabeth took Pom-Pom from him with both hands, examined him frantically, found him whole, and only then looked up properly.
She saw, all at once, that he was tall, handsome, and not quite young in the careless way of gentlemen who fill ballrooms with their own satisfaction.
He could not be much above five or six and twenty, perhaps only a few years older than herself, but fatigue had put years where age had not.
It was in the set of his mouth, the shadows beneath his eyes, the severity of the brow, as if his face had learned to brace itself before the world could ask anything of him.
He was grave, dark, composed, a little dirtied now by horse and dog, and so entirely unlike Mr. Collins in every visible particular that for one absurd second she thought Providence had sent a corrective specimen.
Then he looked down at Pom-Pom with a kind of restrained bewilderment, and something in his air touched her more sharply than his looks.
Not weakness. Certainly not appeal. But a guarded, battered dignity she had seen before in small creatures too proud to confess injury and too accustomed to being mishandled to expect gentleness.
Elizabeth, who had never been able to leave such creatures where she found them, felt the first ridiculous movement of interest.
More ridiculous still, it was not only interest. A lock of dark hair, loosened by the struggle, had fallen slightly from its order near his temple; and for one ungoverned instant she wanted to smooth the hard line from his brow, brush back that fallen hair, and discover whether such a face might alter under kindness.
“You have saved his life,” she said.
He appeared almost uncomfortable under the force with which she said it.
“There was no great harm done.”
“There might have been every harm done.” She looked down at Pom-Pom, who was now licking his own indignation into order. “You wicked, odious, heroic little creature—” Then back at the gentleman. “Sir, I live only a few doors away. You must come with me at once.”
He blinked.
“There is no necessity—”
“There is every necessity. You are covered in mud, my dog has put something dreadful upon your glove, and I am not going to let the man who has just saved the dearest and most disagreeable part of my household escape into the street unrewarded. Mrs. Doddridge, we are going home. Sir, you must allow me.”
“Madam, I assure you—”
“You cannot assure me while wearing my dog upon your cuff.”
He looked down, as if only then discovering the evidence.
“It is nothing.”
“Then it may be nothing by my fire.”
Mrs. Doddridge, who had reached them by now with the basket, the orange peel, and no visible increase of pulse, said only, “The house is very near, sir.”
The gentleman looked from her to Elizabeth, then to the dog, then once more to Elizabeth, who was staring at him with such direct admiration and gratitude that refusal had perhaps already become difficult.
He inclined his head slightly.
“As you wish.”
Elizabeth tightened her hold on Pom-Pom, who settled into her arms with the exhausted malice of a creature saved against his better judgment, and turned toward home with the strange man beside her.
Only when they had taken several steps did it occur to her that she still did not know his name.