Ida walked home through the rain very thoughtfully: but not sadly; for
though it was still pelting in the uncompromising lake fashion, she was
half conscious of a strange lightness of the heart, a strange
brightness in herself, and even in the rain-swept view, which vaguely
surprised and puzzled her. The feeling was not vivid enough to be
happiness, but it was the nearest thing to it.
And without realising it, she thought, all the way home, of Stafford
Orme. Her life had been so secluded, so solitary and friendless, that
he had come into it as a sudden and unexpected flash of sunlight in a
drear November day. It seemed to her extraordinary that she should have
met him so often, still more extraordinary the offer he had made that
morning. She asked herself, as she went with quick, light step along
the hills, why he had done it; why he, who was rich and had so many
friends--no doubt the Villa would be full of them--should find any
pleasure in learning to herd cattle and count sheep, to ride about the
dale with only a young girl for company.
If anyone had whispered, "It is because he prefers that young girl's
society to any other's; it is because he wants to be with you, not from
any desire to learn farming," she would have been more than surprised,
would have received this offer of a solution of the mystery with a
smile of incredulity; for there had been no candid friend to tell her
that she possessed the fatal gift of beauty; that she was one of those
upon whom the eyes of man cannot look without a stirring of the heart,
and a quickening of the pulse. Vanity is a strong plant, and it
flourishes in every soil; but it had found no root in Ida's nature. She
was too absorbed in the round of her daily tasks, in the care of her
father and her efforts to keep the great place from going to rack and
ruin, to think of herself; and if her glass had ever whispered that she
was one of the loveliest of the daughters of Eve, she had turned a deaf
ear to it.
No; she assured herself that it was just a whim of Mr. Orme's, a
passing fancy and caprice which would soon be satisfied, and that he
would tire of it after a few days, perhaps hours. Of course, she was
wrong to humour the whim; but it had been hard to refuse him, hard to
seem churlish and obstinate after he had been so kind on the night her
father had frightened her by his sleep-walking; and it had been still
harder because she had been conscious of a certain pleasure in the
thought that she should see him again.
For the first time, as she went into the great silent house, she
realised how lonely her life was, how drear and uneventful. Now and
again, while cantering along the roads on the big chestnut, she had met
other girls riding and driving: the Vaynes, the Avorys, and the
Bannerdales; had heard them talking and laughing merrily and happily,
but it had never occurred to her to envy them, to reflect that she was
different to other girls who had friends and companions and girlish
amusements. She had been quite content--until now. And even now she was
not discontented; but this acquaintanceship which had sprung up so
strangely between her and Mr. Orme was like the touch of a warm hand
stretched out from the great world, and its sudden warmth awoke her to
the coldness, the dreariness of her life.
As she entered the hall, Jessie came in by the back door with her apron
full of eggs.
"I saw you come in, Miss Ida, so I thought I'd just bring you these to
show you; they're laying finely now, ain't they?"
Ida looked round, from where she stood going through the form of drying
her thick but small boots against the huge log that glowed on the wide
dog-iron.
"Yes: that is a splendid lot, Jessie!" she said, with a smile. "You
will have some to send to market for the first time this season."
"Yes, miss," said Jessie, deftly rolling the eggs into a basket. "But
I'm thinking there won't be any need to send them to Bryndermere
market. Jason's just been telling me that the new folks up at Brae Wood
have been sending all round the place for eggs and butter and cream and
fowls, and Jason says that he can get so much better prices from them
than from Bryndermere. He was thinking that he'd put aside all the
cream he could spare and kill half a dozen of the pullets--if you don't
object, Miss Ida?"
Ida's face flushed, and she looked fixedly at the fire. Something
within her protested against the idea of selling the dairy produce to
the new people at Brae Wood; but she struggled against the feeling.
"Oh yes; why not, Jessie?" she said; though she knew well enough.
"Well, miss," replied Jessie, hesitatingly, and with a questioning
glance at her young mistress's averted face, "Jason didn't know at
first; he said that selling the things at the new house was different
to sending 'em to market, and that you mightn't like it; that you might
think it was not becoming."
Ida laughed.
"That's pride on Jason's part; wicked pride, Jessie," she said. "If you
sell your butter and eggs, it can't very much matter whether you sell
them at the market or direct. Oh, yes: tell Jason he can let them have
anything we can spare."
Jessie's face cleared and broke into a smile: she came of a race that
looks after the pennies and loves a good "deal."
"Thank you, miss!" she said, as if Ida had conferred a personal favour.
"And they'll take all we can let 'em have, for they've a mortal sight
of folk up there at Brae Wood. William says that there's nigh upon
fifty bedrooms, and that they'll all be full. His sister is one of the
kitchen-maids--there's a cook from London, quite the gentleman, miss,
with, rings on his fingers and a piano in his own room--and Susie says
that the place is all one mass of ivory and gold, and that some of the
rooms is like heaven--or the queen's own rooms in Windsor Castle."
Ida laughed.
"Susie appears to have an enviable acquaintance with the celestial
regions and the abode of royalty, Jessie."
"Yes, miss; of course, it's only what she've read about 'em. And she
says that Sir Stephen--that's the gentleman as owns it all--is a kind
of king, with his own body servant and a--a--I forget what they call
him; it's a word like a book-case."
"A secretary," suggested Ida.
"Yes, that's it, miss! But that he's quite simple and pleasant-like,
and that he's as easily pleased as if he were a mere nobody. And Susie
says that she runs out after dinner and peeps into the stables, and
that it's full of horses and that there's a dozen carriages, some of
'em grand enough for the Lord Mayor of London; and that there's a head
coachman and eight or nine men and boys under him. I'm thinking, Miss
Ida, that the Court"--the Court was the Vaynes' place--"or Bannerdale
Grange ain't half so grand."
"I daresay," said Ida. "Is the lunch nearly ready, Jessie?"
"Yes, miss; I was only waiting for you to come in. And Suzie's seen the
young Mr. Orme, Sir Stephen's son, and she says that he's the
handsomest gentleman she ever saw; and she heard Mr. Davis tell one of
the new hands that Mr. Stafford was a very great gentleman amongst the
fashionable people in London; and that very likely he'd marry one of
the great ladies that is coming down. Mr. Davis says that a duchess
wouldn't be too fine for him, he stands so high; and yet, Susie says,
he's just as pleasant and easy as Sir Stephen, and that he says 'thank
you' quite like a common person. But there, how foolish of me! I'm
standing here chattering while you're wet through. Do ye run up and
change while I put the lunch on, Miss Ida, dear!"
When Ida came down her father was already at the table with his book
open at his elbow, and he scarcely looked up as she went to her place.
Now, as a rule, she gave him an account of her rides and walks, and
told him about the cattle and the progress of the farm generally, of
how she had seen a kingfisher or noticed that the trout were rising, or
that she had startled a covey of partridges in the young wheat; to all
of which he seemed scarcely ever to listen, nodding his head now and
again and returning often to his book before she had finished speaking;
but to-day she could not tell him of her morning walk and her meeting
with Stafford Orme.
She would have liked to have assured him that he had done Sir Stephen
an injustice in thinking him guilty of buying the Brae Wood land in an
underhand way, but she knew it would be of no use to do so; for once an
idea had got into Mr. Heron's head it was difficult to destroy it. For
the first time in her life, too, she was concealing something from him.
Once or twice she tried to say:
"Father, the gentleman who was fishing on the river was Sir Stephen
Orme's son; I have met him two or three times since, and he has asked
me to meet him to-morrow;" but she could not.
She knew he would fly into one of the half-childish passions in which
he could not be persuaded to listen to reason, and that he would insist
upon the breaking off of her acquaintance with Mr. Orme; and there was
so much pain in the mere thought of it that her courage failed her. If
she were not to meet him, or if she met him, and told him that she
could not remain with him, must not speak to him again, it would be
tantamount to telling him that she did not believe his father was
innocent; and she did believe it. Though she knew so little of Mr.
Orme, she felt that she could trust him.
So she sat almost silent, thinking of what Jessie had told her, and
wondering why Stafford Orme should leave the gay party at the Villa to
ride with her. Once only in the course of the meal did her father
speak. He looked up suddenly, with a quick, almost cunning, glance, and
said:
"Can you let me have some money, Ida? I want to order some books.
There's a copy of the Percy 'Reliques' in the catalogue I should like
to buy."
"How much is it, father?" she asked.
"Oh, five pounds will do," he said, vaguely. "There are one or two
other books."
She made a hasty calculation: five pounds was a large sum to her; but
she smiled as she said:
"You are very extravagant, dear. There is already a copy of the
'Reliques' in the library."
He looked confused for a moment, then he said:
"But not with these notes--not with these notes! They're valuable, and
the book is cheap."
"Very well, dear," she responded; and she went to the antique bureau
and, unlocking it, took a five-pound note from a cedar box.
He watched her covertly, with a painful eagerness.
"I suppose you have a large nest egg there, eh, Ida?" he remarked, with
a quavering laugh.
"No: a very little one," she responded. "'Not nearly enough to pay the
quarterly bills. But never mind, dear; there it is. You must show me
the books when they come; I never saw the last you ordered, you know!"
He took the note with an assumption of indifference but with a gleam of
satisfaction in his sunken eyes.
"Didn't you?" he said. "I must have forgotten. You're always so busy;
but I'll show you these, if you'll remind me. You must be careful of
the money, Ida; you must keep down the expenses. We're poor, very poor,
you know; and the cost of living and servants is very great--very
great."
He wandered off to the library, muttering to himself, with his book
under his arm, and the five-pound note gripped tightly in the hand
which he had thrust into the pocket of his dressing-gown; and Ida, as
she put on her habit and went into the stable-yard to have the colt
saddled, sighed as she thought that it would be nice to have just, for
once, enough money to meet all the bills and buy all the books her
father coveted.
But her melancholy was not of long duration. The colt was in high
spirits, and the task of impressing him with the fact that he had now
reached a responsible age and must behave like a horse, with something
else before him in life than kicking up his heels in the paddock, soon
drove the thought of their poverty from her mind and sent the blood
leaping warmly and wildly in her veins.
She spent the afternoon in breaking in the colt, and succeeded in
keeping Stafford Orme out of her thoughts; but he slid into them again
as she sat by the drawing-room fire after dinner--the nights are often
cool in the dales all through early summer--and recalled the
earnestness in his handsome face when he pleaded to be allowed to "help
her."
She sat up for some little time after her father had gone to bed, and
as usual, she paused outside his door and listened. All was quiet then;
but as she was brushing her hair she thought she heard his door open.
She laid down the brush and stood battling with the sudden fear which
possessed her; then she stole out on to the corridor. The old man was
standing at the head of the stairs as if about to descend; and though
she could not see his face she knew that he was asleep.
She glided to him noiselessly and put her hand upon his arm softly. He
turned his sightless eyes upon her, evidently without seeing her, and,
fighting against the desire to cry out, she led him gently back to his
room.
He woke as they crossed the threshold, woke and looked at her in a
stupefied fashion.
"Are you ill, father? Is there anything you want?" she asked, as calmly
as she could.
"No," he replied. "I am quite well; I do not want anything. I was going
to bed--why have you called me?"
She remained with him for a few minutes, then left the room, turning
the key in the door. When she had gone he stood listening with his head
on one side; then he opened his hand and looked with a cunning smile at
the five-pound note which had been tightly grasped in it.
"She didn't see it; no, she didn't see it!" he muttered; and he went
stealthily to the bed and thrust it under the pillow.