Stafford and Ida remained, unconscious of the rain, looking after the
carriage for a moment or two.
The sneer on the man's heavy yet acutely sharp face, still incensed
Stafford. He had the usual desire of the strong man--to dash after the
rapidly disappearing vehicle, lug the fellow out and ask him what he
was sneering at.
Ida was the first to speak.
"What a strange-looking man," she said.
Stafford started slightly, awaking to the fact that it was still
pouring.
"I--I beg your pardon. I'm keeping you out in the rain."
He put Adonis, not at all unwillingly, to a trot, and they gained the
rough cattle-shed, and he would have lifted the girl down, but she was
too quick for him, and slipped gracefully and easily from the saddle.
Stafford, leading the horse, followed her into the shed. Bess sat on
the extreme end of her haunches shivering and blinking, and all too
plainly cursing the British climate; but Donald threw himself down
outside as if he regarded the deluge as a cheap shower-bath.
Stafford looked at Ida anxiously.
"You are fearfully wet," he said. "I think I could wipe off the worst
of it, if you'll let me."
He took out his pocket handkerchief as he spoke and wiped the rain from
her straight, beautifully moulded shoulders. She drew back a little and
opened her lips to protest at first, but with a slight shrug she
resigned herself, her eyes downcast, a faint colour in her face.
"I must be quite dry now," she said at last.
"I'm afraid not," said Stafford. "I wish I had something bigger--a
towel."
She laughed, the sweet girlish laugh which seemed to him the most
musical sound he had ever heard.
"A towel? Fancying carrying a towel to wipe oneself with when it
rained! It is evident you don't know our country. There are weeks
sometimes in which it never ceases to rain. And you must be wet through
yourself," she added, glancing at him.
He was on his knees at the moment carefully wiping the old habit skirt
with his saturated handkerchief as if the former were something
precious; and her woman's eye noted his short crisp hair, the shapely
head and the straight broad back.
"I'm afraid that's all I can do!" he said, regretfully, as he rose and
looked at her gravely. "Do you mean to say that you habitually ride out
in such weather as this?"
"Why, yes!" she replied, lightly. "Why not? I am too substantial to
melt, and I never catch cold. Besides, I have to go out in all weathers
to see to the cattle and the sheep."
He leant against one of the posts which supported the shed, and gazed
at her with more intense interest than any other woman had ever aroused
in him.
"Isn't there a foreman, a bailiff, whatever you call him, in these
parts?"
She shook her head.
"No; we cannot afford one; so I do his work. And very pleasant work it
is, especially in fine weather."
"And you are happy?" he asked, almost unconsciously.
Her frank eyes met his with a smile of amusement.
"Yes, quite happy," she answered. "Why? Does it seem so unlikely, so
unreasonable?"
"Well, it does," he replied, as if her frankness were contagious. "Of
course, I could understand it if you did it occasionally, if you did it
because you liked riding; but to be obliged, to have to go out in all
weathers, it isn't right!"
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"Yes, I suppose it seems strange to you. I suppose most of the ladies
you know are rich, and only ride to amuse themselves, and never go out
when they do not want to do so. Sir Stephen Orme--you--are very rich,
are you not? We, my father and I, are poor, very poor. And if I did not
look after things, if I were not my own bailiff--Oh, well, I don't know
what would happen."
Stafford gnawed at his moustache as he gazed at her. The exquisitely
colourless face, in which the violet eyes glowed like two twin flowers,
the delicately cut lips, soft and red, the dark hair clustering at the
ivory temples in wet rings, set his heart beating with a heavy
pulsation that was an agony of admiration and longing--a longing that
was vague and indistinct.
"Yes, I suppose it must seem strange to you," she said, as if she were
following out the lines of her own thoughts. "You must be accustomed to
girls who are so different."
"Yes, they're different," he admitted. "Most of the women I know would
be frightened to death if they were caught in such a rain as this;
would be more than frightened to death if they had to ride down that
hill most of 'em think they've done wonder if they get in at the end of
a run over a fairly easy country; and none of 'em could doctor a sick
sheep to save their lives."
"Yes," she said, dreamily. "I've seen them, but only at a distance. But
I didn't know anything about farming until I came home."
"And do you never go away from here, go to London for a change and get
a dance, and--and all that?" he asked.
She shook her head indifferently.
"No, I never leave the dale. I cannot. My father could not spare me.
Has it left off raining yet?"
She went to the front of the shed and looked out.
"No, it is still pelting; please come back; it is pouring off the roof;
your hair is quite wet again."
She laughed, but she obeyed.
"I suppose that gentleman, the man in the carriage, was a friend of Sir
Stephen's, as he asked the way to your house?"
"I don't know," replied Stafford. "I don't know any of my father's
friends. I knew very little of him until last night."
She looked at him with frank, girlish interest.
"Did you find the new house very beautiful?" she asked.
Stafford nodded.
"Yes," he said, absently. "It is a kind of--of palace. It's beautiful
enough--perhaps a little too--too rich," he admitted.
She smiled.
"But then, you are rich. And is it true that a number of visitors are
coming down? I heard it from Jessie."
"Who is Jessie?" he asked, for he was more interested in the smallest
detail of this strange, bewilderingly lovely girl's life than his
father's affairs.
"Jessie is my maid. I call her mine, because she is very much attached
to me; but she is really our house-maid, parlour-maid. We have very few
servants: I suppose you have a great many up at the new house?"
He nodded.
"Oh, yes," he said, half apologetically. "Too many by far. I wish you
could, see it," he added.
She laughed softly.
"Thank you; but that is not likely. I think it is not raining so hard
now, and that I can go."
"It is simply pouring still," he said, earnestly and emphatically. "You
would get drenched if you ventured out."
"But I can't stay here all day," she remarked, with a laugh. "I have a
great deal to do: I have to see that the sheep have not strayed, and
that the cows are in the meadows; the fences are bad in places, and the
stupid creatures are always straying. It is wonderful how quickly a cow
finds a weak place in a fence."
Stafford's face grew red, a brick-dust red.
"It's not fit work for you," he said. "You--you are only a girl; you
can't be strong enough to face such weather, to do such work."
The beautiful eyes grew wide and gazed at him with girlish amusement,
and something of indignation.
"I'm older than you think. I'm not a girl!" she retorted. "And I am as
strong as a horse." She drew herself up and threw her head back. "I am
never tired--or scarcely ever. One day I rode to Keswick and back, and
when I got home Jason met me at the gate and told me that the steers
had 'broken' and had got on the Bryndermere road. I started after them,
but missed them for a time, and only came up with them at Landal
Water--ah, you don't know where that is; well, it is a great many
miles. Of course I had a rest coming back, as I could only drive them
slowly."
Something in his eyes--the pity, the indignation, the wonder that this
exquisitely refined specimen of maidenhood should be bent to such base
uses--shone in them and stopped her. The colour rose to her face and
her eyes grew faintly troubled, then a proud light flashed in them.
"Ah, I see; you are thinking that it is--is not ladylike, that none of
your lady-friends would do it if even if they were strong enough?"
Stafford would have scorned himself if he had been tempted to evade
those beautiful eyes, that sweet, and now rather haughty voice;
besides, he was not given to evasion with man or woman.
"I wasn't thinking quite that," he said. "But I'll tell you what I was
thinking, if you'll promise not to be offended."
She considered for a moment, then she said:
"I do not think you will offend me. What was it?"
"Well, I was thinking that--see here, now, Miss Heron, I've got your
promise!--it is not worthy of you--such work, I mean."
"Because I'm a girl?" she said, her lip curving with a smile.
"No," he said, gravely; "because you are a lady; because you are so--so
refined, so graceful, so"--he dared not say "beautiful," and
consequently he floundered and broke down. "If you were a farmer's
daughter, clumsy and rough and awkward, it would not seem to
inappropriate for you to be herding cattle and counting sheep; but--now
your promise!--when I come to think that ever since I met you,
whenever I think of you I think of--of--a beautiful flower--that now I
have seen you in evening-dress, I realise how wrong it is that you
should do such work. Oh, dash it! I know it's like my cheek to talk to
you like this," he wound up, abruptly and desperately.
While he had been speaking, the effect of his words had expressed
itself in her eyes and in the alternating colour and pallor of her
face. It was the first time in her life any man had told her that she
was refined and graceful and flower-like; that she was, so to speak,
wasting her sweetness on the desert air, and the speech was both
pleasant and painful to her. The long dark lashes swept her cheek; her
lips set tightly to repress the quiver which threatened them; but when
he had completely broken down, she raised her eyes to his with a look
so grave, so sweet, so girlish, that Stafford's heart leapt, not for
the first time that morning, and there flashed through him the
unexpected thought:
"What would not a man give to have those eyes turned upon him with love
shining in their depths!"
"I'm not offended," she said. "I know what you mean. None of your
lady-friends would do it because they are ladies. I'm sorry. But they
are not placed as I am. Do you think I could sit with my hands before
me, or do fancy-work, while things went to ruin? My father is old and
feeble--you saw him the other night--I have no brother--no one to help
me, and--so you see how it is!"
The eyes rested on his with a proud smile, as if she were challenging
him, then she went on:
"And it does not matter. I live quite alone; I see no one, no other
lady; there is no one to be ashamed of me."
Stafford reddened.
"That's rather a hard hit for me!" he said. "Ashamed! By Heaven! if you
knew how I admired--how amazed I am at your pluck and goodness--"
Her eyes dropped before his glowing ones.
"And there is no need to pity me: I am quite happy, quite; happier than
I should be if I were playing the piano or paying visits all day. It
has quite left off now."
Half unconsciously he put his hand on her arm pleadingly, and with the
firm, masterful touch of the man.
"Will you wait one more moment?" he said, in his deep, musical voice.
She paused and looked at him enquiringly. "You said just now that you
had no brother, no one to help you. Will you let me help you? will you
let me stand in the place of a friend, of a brother?"
She looked at him with frank surprise; and most men would have been
embarrassed and confused by the steady, astonished regard of the violet
eyes; but Stafford was too eager to get her consent to care for the
amusement that was mixed with the expression of surprise.
"Why--how could you help me?" she said at last; "even if--"
--"You'd let me," he finished for her. "Well, I'm not particularly
clever, but I've got sense enough to count sheep and drive cows; and I
can break in colts, train dogs, and, if I'm obliged, I daresay I could
drive a plough."
Her eyes wandered thoughtfully, abstractedly down the dale; but she was
listening and thinking.
"Of course I should have a lot to learn, but I'm rather quick at
picking up things, and--"
"Are you joking, Mr. Orme?" she broke in.
"Joking? I was never more serious in my life," he said, eagerly, and
yet with an attempt to conceal his earnestness. "I am asking it as a
favour, I am indeed! I shall be here for weeks, months, perhaps, and I
should be bored to death--"
"With your father's house full of visitors?" she put in, softly, and
with a smile breaking through her gravity.
"Oh, they'll amuse themselves," he said. "At any rate, I sha'n't be
with them all day; and I'd ever so much rather help you than dance
attendance on them."
She pushed the short silky curls from her temples, and shook her head.
"Of course it's ridiculous," she said, with a girlish laugh; "and it's
impossible, too."
"Oh, is it?" he retorted. "I've never yet found anything I wanted to do
impossible."
"You always have your own way?" she asked.
"By hook or by crook," he replied.
"But why do you want to--help me?" she asked. "Do you think you would
find it amusing? You wouldn't." The laughter shone in her eyes again.
"You would soon grow tired of it. It is not like hunting or fishing or
golfing; it's work that tries the temper--I never knew what a fiendish
temper I had got about me until the first time I had to drive a cow and
calf."
"My temper couldn't be worse," he remarked, calmly. "Howard says that
sometimes I could give points to the man possessed with seven devils."
"Who is Mr. Howard?" she asked.
"My own particular chum," he said. "He came down with me and is up at
the house now. But never mind Howard; are you going to let me help you
as if I were an old friend or a--brother? Or are you going to be unkind
enough to refuse?"
She began to feel driven, and her brows knit as she said:
"I think you are very--obstinate, Mr. Orme."
"That describes me exactly," he said, cheerfully. "I'm a perfect mule
when I like, and I'm liking it all I know at this moment."
"It's absurd--it's ridiculous, as I said," she murmured, half angrily,
half laughingly, "and I can't think why you offered, why you want
to--to help me!"
"Never mind!" said Stafford, his heart beating with anticipatory
triumph; for he knew that the woman who hesitates is gained. "Perhaps I
want to get some lessons in farming on the cheap, or--"
--"Perhaps you really want to help the poor girl who, though she is a
lady, has to do the work of a farmer's daughter," she said, in a low
voice. "Oh, it is very kind of you, but--"
"Then I'll come over to-morrow an hour earlier than this, and you shall
show me how to count the sheep, or whatever you do with them," he put
in, quickly.
"But I was going to refuse--very gratefully, of course--but to
refuse!"
"You couldn't; you couldn't be so unkind! I'll ride a hunter I've got;
he's rather stiffer than Adonis, and better up to rough work. I will
come to the stream where we first met and wait for you--shall I?"
He said all this as if the matter were settled; and with the sensation
of being driven still more strongly upon her, she raised her eyes to
his with a yielding expression in them, with that touch of imploration
which lurks in a woman's eyes and about the corners of her lips when
for the first time she surrenders her will to a man.
"I do not know what to say. It is absurd--it is--wrong. I don't
understand why--. Ah, well," she sighed with an air of relief, "you
will tire of it very quickly--after a few hours--"
"All right. We'll leave it at that," he said, with an exasperating air
of cheerful confidence. "It is a bargain, Miss Heron. Shall we shake
hands on it?"
He held out his hand with the smile which few men, and still fewer
women, could resist; and she tried to smile in response; but as his
strong hand closed over her small one, a faint look of doubt, almost of
trouble, was palpable in her violet eyes and on her lips. She drew her
hand away--and it had to be drawn, for he released it only slowly and
reluctantly--and without a word she left the shed.
Stafford watched her as she went lightly and quickly up the road
towards the Hall, Bess and Donald leaping round her; then, with a sharp
feeling of elation, a feeling that was as novel as it was confusing, he
sprang on his horse, and putting him to a gallop, rode for home, with
one thought standing clearly out: that before many hours--the next
morning--he should see her again.
Once he shifted his whip to his left hand, and stretching out his right
hand, looked at it curiously: it seemed to be still thrilling with the
contact of her small, warm palm.
As he came up to The Woodman Inn he remembered, what he had forgotten
in the morning, that he had left his cigar-case on the dining-room
mantel-shelf. He pulled up, and giving Adonis to the hostler, who
rushed forward promptly, he went into the inn. There was no one in the
hall, and knowing that he should be late for luncheon, he opened the
dining-room door and walked in, and straight up to the fireplace.
The cigar-case was where he had left it, and he turned to go out. Then
he saw that he was not the only occupant of the room, for a lady was
sitting in the broad bay-window. He snatched off his cap and murmured
an apology.
"I beg your pardon! I did not know anyone was in the room," he said.
The lady was young and handsome, with a beauty which owed a great deal
to colour. Her hair was a rich auburn, her complexion of the delicate
purity which sometimes goes with that coloured hair--"milk and roses,"
it used to be called. Her eyes were of china blue, and her lips rather
full, but of the richest carmine. She was exquisitely dressed, her
travelling costume evidently of Redfern's build, and one hand, from
which she had removed the glove, was loaded with costly rings; diamonds
and emeralds as large as nuts, and of the first water.
But it was not her undeniable beauty, or her dress and costly
jewellery, which impressed Stafford so much as the proud, scornfully
listless air with which she regarded him as she leant back
indolently--and a little insolently--tapping the edge of the table with
her glove.
"Pray don't apologise," she said, languidly. "This is a public room, I
suppose!"
"Yes, I think so," said Stafford, in his pleasant, frank way; "but one
doesn't rush into a public room with one's hat on if he has reason to
suppose that a lady is present. I thought there was no one here--the
curtain concealed you: I am sorry."
She shrugged her shoulders and gave him the faintest and most
condescending of bows; then, as he reached the door, she said:
"Do you think it will be moonlight to-night?"
Stafford naturally looked rather surprised at this point-blank
meteorological question.
"I shouldn't be surprised if it were," he said. "You see, this is a
very changeable climate, and as it is raining now it will probably
clear up before the evening."
"Thanks!" she said. "I am much obliged--"
"Oh, my opinion isn't worth much," he put in parenthetically, but she
went on as if he had not spoken.
--"I should be still further obliged if you would be so kind as to tell
my father--he is outside with the carriage somewhere--that I am tired
and that I would rather not go on until the cool of the evening."
"Certainly," said Stafford.
He waited a moment to see if she had any other requests, or rather
orders, and then went out and found the gentleman with the strongly
marked countenance, in the stable-yard beside the carriage to which the
hostler and the help were putting fresh horses.
Stafford raised his hat slightly.
"I am the bearer of a message from the young lady in the dining-room,
sir," he said. "She wishes me to tell you that she would prefer to
remain here until the evening."
The man swung round upon him with an alert and curious manner, half
startled, half resentful.
"What the devil--I beg your pardon! Prefers to remain here! Well!" He
muttered something that sounded extremely like an oath, then, with a
shrug of his shoulders, told the hostler to take the horses out. "Thank
you!" he said to Stafford, grudgingly. "I suppose my daughter is tired:
very kind of you."
"Not at all," responded Stafford, politely; and he got on
to Adonis, which Mr. Groves himself had led out, and rode away.
The gentleman looked after him with knitted brows.
"What is the name of that young fellow?" he asked of Groves.
"That is Mr. Stafford Orme, Sir Stephen's son, sir," replied Groves.
The gentleman was walking towards the house, but he pulled up short,
his eyes narrowed themselves to slits and his thick lips closed
tightly.
"A fine young fellow, sir!" said Groves, with respectful enthusiasm. "A
splendid specimen of an English gentleman!"
The gentleman grunted and went on to the dining-room.
"What whim is this, Maude?" he asked, irritably.
She yawned behind her beringed hand.
"I am tired. I can't face that stuffy carriage again just yet. Let us
dine here and go on afterwards in the cool."
"Oh, just as you like," he said. "It makes no difference to me!"
"I know," she assented. Then, in an indolently casual way, she asked:
"Who was that gentleman who rode by just now?"
Her father glanced at her suspiciously as he took off his overcoat.
"Now, how on earth should I know, my dear Maude!" he replied, with a
short, harsh laugh. "Some young farmer or cattle dealer, I imagine."
"I said _gentleman_," she retorted, with something approaching
insolence. "You will permit _me_ to know the difference."
Her father coloured angrily, as if she had stung him.
"You'd better go upstairs and take off your things while I order
dinner," he said.