The journey down to Herondale cannot be described: whenever Ida thought
of it in the after years, she felt herself trembling and quivering with
the memory of it. Until she had sat in the carriage, and the train had
started and she realised that she was indeed going home--home!--she did
not know what it had cost her to leave Herondale, how much she had
suffered at Laburnum Villa, how deep the iron of dependence had entered
her soul. She was all of a quiver with delight, with profound gratitude
to the Providence which was restoring her to the old house, the wide
moors, the brawling streams which she knew now were dearer to her than
life itself.
Mr. Wordley understood, and was full of sympathy with her mood. He
bought newspapers and magazines, and he let her alone and pretended to
read; but every now and then she met his smiling glance, and knew by
his nod of the head that he was rejoicing with her.
He had wired for a carriage and pair to meet them at Bryndermere, and
Ida leant back and tried to be patient, then to look unconcerned and
calm and composed; but she uttered a little cry and nearly broke down
when the carriage stopped at the familiar gate, and Jessie, who was
standing there, with her hair blown wild by the wind, forgot the
inequalities of their positions, and catching her beloved young
mistress to her bosom crooned and sobbed over her.
Jason stood just behind, balancing himself first on one foot, and then
on the other, in his efforts to get a glimpse of Ida, and she stretched
out her arm over Jessee's shoulder and shook the honest hand which had
grown hard and horny in her service. Jessie almost carried her mistress
into the hall, where a huge fire was burning and threw a red and
cheerful glow over the fading gilding and grey-toned hangings.
"Oh, miss, how thin you be!" she said at last, as, with clasped hands,
she surveyed Ida from top to toe anxiously and greedily. "Wherever have
you been to look like that? But never mind, Miss Ida; you're back, and
that's everything! And we'll very soon get some flesh on your bones and
drive the sad look out of thee eyes." In moments of emotion and
excitement Jessie forgot the schooling Ida had given her, and lapsed
into semi-Westmoreland. "You've missed the moorland air, dearie, and
the cream and the milk--I've 'eard it's all chalk and water in
London--and I suppose there wasn't room to ride in them crowded
streets; and the food, too, I'm told it ain't fit for ordinary humans,
leave alone a dainty maid like my sweet mistress."
"Yes, you shall fatten me to your heart's desire, Jessie," said Ida. "I
suppose I don't look of much account; I've been ill. But I shall soon
get well. I felt, as we drove along the moor, with the wind blowing on
my cheek, as if I had not breathed since the hour I left. And now tell
me everything--all--at once! Rupert? There's no need to ask about the
dogs." Donald and Bess had not yet ceased to tear at her in frantic
efforts to express their delight. "Are you glad I've come back,
Donald?" she asked in a low voice as she knelt and put her arms round
his neck and nestled her face against his, and let him lick her with
his great, soft tongue. "Ah, if you are only half as glad as I am,
doggie, your heart must be half breaking with the joy of it. And if I'm
lean, you are disgracefully fat, Bess. Don't tell me you've missed me,
for I don't believe it."
It was some time before Jessie could drag her upstairs; and the sight
of her old room, as cheerful as the hall, with the huge fire, almost
unnerved her, and when she was alone she sank upon her knees beside the
bed in a thanksgiving which was none the less deep and fervent for its
muteness.
When she came down the dinner was ready and Mr. Wordley was standing in
front of the fire awaiting her. She was glad that Jason had not had
time to procure a new livery, was glad of the old shabbiness of the
room, that its aspect was not yet changed, and that it greeted her with
all its old familiarity, Mr. Wordley would not let her talk until she
had made, at any rate, a pretense of eating; but when they had gone
into the drawing-room, he drew a chair to the fire for her, and said;
"Now, my dear, I am afraid I shall have to talk business. I shall be
too busy to come over to-morrow." He laughed. "You see I have left all
my other clients' affairs, to come after my stray lamb: I expect I
shall find them in a pretty muddle. Now, my dear, before I go I should
like you to tell me exactly what you would like to do. As I have
explained to you, you are now the mistress of a very large fortune with
which you can do absolutely what you like. Would you like to live here,
or would you like to take a house in London, or go abroad?"
Ida looked up a little piteously.
"Oh, not go to London or abroad!" she said. "Can I not live here? If
you knew how I feel--how the sight of the place, the thought that I am
under the old roof again--"
She looked round the faded, stately room lovingly, wistfully, and Mr.
Wordley nodded sympathetically.
"Of course you can, my dear," he said. "But equally o' course, you will
now want to restore the old place. There is a great deal to be done,
and I thought that perhaps you would like to go away while the work was
being carried on."
Ida shook her head.
"No, I would like to stay, even if I have to live in the kitchen or one
of the garrets. It will be a delight to me to watch the men at work; I
should never grow tired of it."
"I quite understand, my dear," he said. "I honour you for that feeling.
Well, then, I shall engage an architect of repute, the first in his
profession"--he rubbed his hands with an air of enjoyment--"and he
shall restore the old place, with a respect and reverence. I think I
know the man to employ; and we will start at once, so that no time may
be lost, I want to see you settled in your proper position here. The
thought of it gives me a new lease of life! Of course, you will want a
proper establishment; more servants both in the house and out of it;
you will want carriages and horses; both the lodges must be rebuilt,
and the old avenue opened out and put in order. Heron Hall was one of
the finest places in the county and it shall be so again."
"And Jessie shall be the housekeeper and Jason the butler," said Ida,
with a laugh of almost child-like enjoyment. "Oh, it all seems like a
dream; and I feel that at any moment I may wake and find myself at
Laburnum Villa. And, oh, Mr. Wordley, I shall want some more money at
once. I want to send the Herons a present, a really nice present that
will help them, I hope, to forget the trouble I caused them. Poor
people! it was not their fault; they did not understand." Mr. Wordley
snorted.
"There is one topic of conversation, my dear Miss Ida, I shall be
compelled to bar," he said. "I never want to hear Mr. John Heron's name
again. As to sending them a present, you can, of course, send them
anything you like, to the half of your kingdom; though, if you ask me
whether they deserve it--"
"I didn't ask you," said Ida, with a laugh, putting her hand on his
arm. "If we all got our deserts, how sad it would be for everyone of
us."
Mr. Wordley grunted.
"To-morrow I shall pay a sum of money into the bank for you, and you
will have to drive over and get a cheque-book; and you can amuse
yourself by drawing cheques until I come again."
He lingered as long as he could, and kept the carriage waiting some
time; but at last he went and Ida was left alone to face the strange
change in her fortune. She sat before the fire dreaming for a few
minutes, then she wandered over the old house from room to room; and
every room had its memories and associations for her. In the library
she could almost fancy that her father was sitting in the high-backed
chair which was still drawn up in its place to the table; and she went
and sat in it and touched with reverent, loving hand the books and
papers over which he had been wont to bend. She stood before his
portrait and gazed at it with tear-dimmed eyes, and only the
consciousness of the love she had borne him enabled her to bear his
absence. As she passed through the hall the newly risen moon was
pouring in through the tall window, and, followed by Donald and Bess,
who had not left her for a moment, she opened the great hall door and
went on to the terrace, and walking to the end, stood and looked
towards the ruined chapel in which her father had buried his treasure.
Up to this moment she had been buoyed up by excitement and the joy and
pleasure of her return to the old house; but suddenly there fell a
cloud-like depression upon her; she was conscious of an aching void, a
lack of something which robbed her heart of all its joy. She had no
need to ask herself what it was: she knew too well. Her old home had
come back to her, she was the mistress of a large fortune, she stood,
as it were, bathed in the sunshine of prosperity; but her heart fell
cold and dead, and the sunshine, bright as it was, well-nigh dazzling,
indeed, had no warmth in it. She was a great heiress now, would no
doubt soon be surrounded by friends. She had been poor and well-nigh
friendless that day Stafford had taken her in his arms and kissed her
for the first time; but, ah, how happy she had been!
Was it possible, could Fate be so cruel as to decree, that she should
never be happy again, never lose the aching pain which racked her heart
at every thought of him! She put the fear from her with a feeling of
shame and helplessness. She _would_ forget the man who left her for
another woman, would not let thought of him cast a shadow over her life
and dominate it. No doubt by this time he had quite forgotten her, or,
if he remembered her, recalled the past with a feeling of annoyance
with which a man regards a passing flirtation, pleasant enough while it
lasted, but of which he did well to be a little ashamed.
She would not look in the direction of the trees under which he had
stood on the night of the day she had first seen him; and she went in
with a forced cheerfulness to tell Jessie, listening with wide-open
eyes, of some of the strange things which had happened to her. All the
time she was talking, she was beset by a longing to ask Jessie about
Brae Wood and the Ormes; but she crushed down the idea; and Jessie was
too intent upon hearing the story of her mistress's sojourn in London
to have any breath or inclination to tell any of the dale news. Of
course Ida did not speak of the disagreement at Laburnum Villa, but she
gave Jessie an account of the accident and her experiences of a
hospital ward; at all which Jessie uttered "Ohs" and "Ahs" with bated
breath and gaping month. It was late before Ida got to bed, and later
still before she fell asleep; for, somehow, now that she was back at
Herondale the memory of that happy past grew more vivid; in fact, the
whole place was haunted by the spectre of her lost love: and of all
spectres this is the most sad and heart-possessing.
She was out on Rupert as early as possible the next morning, and it was
difficult to say which was the more pleased at the reunion, he or his
mistress. And oh, what a delight it was to ride across the moor and
along the valley and by the stream; to see the cattle grazing and to
hear the sheep calling to one another in the old plaintive way! It was
almost difficult to believe that she had ever left Herondale that
Laburnum Villa was anything but a nightmare and the Herons a dismal
unreality.
Now, for some time, she avoided that part of the road where the opening
of the plantation gave a view of the Villa; but she was drawn towards
it at last, and she leant forward on her horse and looked across the
lake at the great, white place shining in the autumn sunlight. It
seemed very still and quiet, and there was no sign of life about the
place; the lake itself was deserted save by one of the steamers on
which were only a few passengers well wrapped-up against the now keen
air. The appearance of the white, long-stretching place struck her with
a sense of desertion, and desolation, and with a sigh she turned and
rode away.
That afternoon, as she was coming in from the stable Jessie came
running towards her.
"Oh, Miss Ida, there's Lord and Lady Bannerdale and Lady Vayne and two
of the young ladies in the drawing-room."
"Very well," said Ida, quietly; and removing her right-hand gauntlet,
she went straight into the drawing-room.
In accordance with her father's wish and her own, perhaps mistaken,
pride she had avoided all these people hitherto; but there was no need
to avoid them any longer; she was their equal in birth, and her newly
discovered wealth effectually removed any cause for pride. Lady
Bannerdale, a motherly and good-natured woman, came forward to meet
her, and took her by both hands.
"My dear, we have come over at once to tell you how glad we are!" she
said. "We heard the good news from Mr. Wordley, and neither I nor my
husband could wait another day before we came to congratulate you."
Lady Vayne, too, held Ida's hand and looked at her with affectionate
sympathy.
"And we felt the same, my dear," she said; "so you must not think us
intrusive."
Ida shook hands with them all and rang for the tea. She was very quiet
and subdued, but the little cold look of surprise with which she had at
one time met their advances was now absent, and they could perceive
that she was glad to see them.
"Our joy in the good news is not altogether unselfish and
disinterested, my dear Miss Ida," said Lord Bannerdale. "That Heron
Hall should be shut up and deserted, while there is so charming a
mistress to represent the old family, was little short of a general
misfortune. You cannot tell how anxious and concerned we have been
about you--but we will say no more about that. I trust a brighter star
has risen above the old house, and that it is entering upon brighter
fortunes. At any rate, let that be as it may, we want you to believe
how delighted we are to have you back again, and under such happy
auspices." "And we want to say, too, dear," said Lady Bannerdale, while
Lady Vayne nodded assentingly, "that we hope you have really come back
to us, that you will be one of us and let us see a great deal of you.
Of course, under the circumstances," she glanced at Ida's black dress,
"we are debarred from expressing our pleasure in festivity; but we hope
you will come to us quite quietly, and very often, and that you will
let us treat you as one of our own dear girls."
Ida murmured a suitable response; but though she was by no means
demonstrative they were satisfied; and as they left they expressed that
satisfaction to each other.
"Oh, yes, she was glad to see us," Lady Bannerdale said; "and I like
her all the better for not meeting us half-way and for refraining from
any gushing. Poor girl! I am afraid she has been very ill, and has felt
her trouble very keenly. She is much thinner, and when she came into
the room there was an expression in her face which touched me and made
my eyes dim."
"We must look after her," remarked Lady Vayne. "There is something
weird in the idea of her living there all alone; though, of course, her
maid, Jessie, will take care of her."
Lady Bannerdale smiled.
"Ida Heron is one of those girls who are quite capable of taking care
of themselves," she said. "How wonderfully calm and self-possessed she
was. Most girls would have been rather upset, or, at any rate, a little
flurried, meeting us all so unexpectedly; but she came into the room
with the perfect unself-consciousness which marks--"
"The high-bred lady," finished Lord Bannerdale. "I wonder whether we
realise how old a family the Herons is; we are all mushrooms compared
with that slim, little girl, who is now the mistress of Herondale and
an enormous fortune."
"We shall have to find a husband for her," remarked Lady Vayne, who was
the match-maker of the locality.
Lord Bannerdale smiled.
"The trouble would be to get Miss Ida to accept him when you have found
him," he said, shrewdly. "I have an idea she would be difficult to
please; there is a little curl to those pretty lips of hers which is
tolerably significant."
"Poor girl! There is time enough yet to think of such a thing," said
Lady Bannerdale, reprovingly; but while she sat it, mother-like, she
thought that her son, Edwin, would be home from a long tour in the East
in a week or two; that he was particularly good-looking, and in the
opinion of more persons than his mother, a particularly amiable and
good fellow.
The next day there were more visitors; they all seemed as genuinely
glad at her return, and they all made as genuine overtures of
friendship. It was evident that Ida need not be alone in the world any
longer, unless she wished to be. On the morning of the third day, as
she was riding to Bryndermere, with some shopping as an excuse, she met
Mr. Wordley; a gentleman was sitting beside him who, Ida guessed, was
the architect. He proved to be no less a personage than the famous Mr.
Hartley. They had pulled up for the introduction close by the opening
on the lake; and while the architect was exchanging greetings with Ida,
his keen eyes wandered now and again to the Villa; and as Ida turned to
ride back with them, he said:
"That is rather a fine place over there, Miss Heron; rather bizarre and
conspicuous, but striking and rather artistic. New, too: whose is it?"
"Stephen Orme's place," replied Mr. Wordley, in rather a low voice.
"Oh," said Mr. Hartley, with a nod which struck Ida as being peculiarly
expressive and significant, though she did not know what it implied.
The three went all over the old Hall and after lunch the great
architect explained, with the aid of a sheet of paper and a pencil, his
idea of what should be done.
"There need not be, there should not be, the least addition," he said.
"What you want to do, Miss Heron, is, as Mr. Wordley says, restore:
restore with all reverence. It is a superb piece of architecture of its
kind and it must be touched with a gentle hand. If you are prepared to
leave it all to me, I trust I may be able to make the present building
worthy of its past. It will be a delightful task for me; but I must
tell you frankly that it will cost a very large sum of money; how much
I shall be able to inform you when I have got out my plans and gone
into the estimate; but, at any rate, I can say emphatically that the
place is worth the expenditure. Am I to have _carte blanche_?"
"Yes," said Ida; "I will leave it entirely in your hands."
This at least she could do with the money which her father had so
mysteriously made: restore it, the house he had loved so well well, to
its old dignity and grandeur.
The great architect, very much impressed not only by the Hall but its
beautiful young mistress, left before Mr. Wordley, who wanted to talk
over business with Ida. But he found her rather absent-minded and
preoccupied and presently, in a pause, she said, with forced calmness:
"Is Sir Stephen Orme still at the Villa at Brae Wood, Mr. Wordley?"
He had been making some memoranda in his pocket-book and he looked up
with a start and stared at her.
"Is Sir Stephen--My dear child, don't you know--haven't you heard?"
"Heard what?" she asked, her face beginning to grow paler, her lips set
tightly.
"God bless my soul, I'm surprised!" he exclaimed. "I thought everybody
had heard the news. Sir Stephen is not living at the Villa, for a very
grave and all-sufficient reason: he is dead, my dear."
Ida leant back in her chair and raised a screen which she held in her
hand so that it shielded her face from his gaze.
"I did not know," she said, in a very low voice. "I had not heard, I
have not seen any papers, or, if I have, only the advertisement part.
Dead!"
"Yes," said Mr. Wordley; "poor man, he died suddenly, quite suddenly,
in the middle of a grand ball; died of the shock."
"Shock?" she echoed.
He looked at her as if he found it hard to realise her ignorance.
"Yes; the shock of the bad news. Dear me! it seems so strange that you,
a neighbour, so to speak, should not have heard the story of which all
London--one might almost say all England--was talking. Sir Stephen was
a great financier, and had just brought out a great company to work an
important concession in Africa. He was supposed to have made an
enormous sum of money by it; indeed, must have done so; but at the very
moment of his success there came a stroke of bad luck; and the news of
it was brought to him on the night of the ball he was giving in his
splendid town house. The sudden reverse meant absolute ruin, and he
fell dead with the cablegram in his hand. Shocking, was it not?"
Ida's lips moved, but she could not speak. The whole scene seemed to
rise before her; but, naturally enough, her thoughts were concentrated
upon one figure in it, that of Stafford.
"Then--then Mr. Stafford Orme is now the baronet, Sir Stafford?" she
said in a scarcely audible voice. "No; he is now Lord Highcliffe. His
father was raised to the peerage on the day he died--one night almost
say the hour he died. That makes it the more unfortunate."
"Unfortunate? I do not understand. You say he is a peer?"
"Yes; but a penniless peer; and I can't imagine a more unpleasant and
miserable position than his. His father died absolutely ruined; indeed,
insolvent; though I suppose by his son's act of noble self-sacrifice a
great many of the debts were paid."
"Tell me--I do not know," said Ida, as steadily as she could.
"Sir Stephen settled a very large sum of money upon the young man; but
he refused to take advantage of it, and made over the whole sum, every
penny of it, to the creditors; and left himself, I am told, absolutely
penniless. Not that it mattered very much; because he is engaged to a
Miss Falconer, who father is, I believe, a millionaire."
The colour rose to Ida's face, the hand which held the screen shook.
"And they--they are going to be married soon?" asked she.
"I don't know, I suppose not," replied Mr. Wordley, as he bent over his
memoranda again; "Lord Highcliffe has disappeared, left England. No one
seems to quite know where he has gone. It was a terrible collapse, and
a tragic end, the great Sir Stephen's; but men of his trade always have
to run such risks. By the way, I suppose the Villa will have to be
sold."
"Sold?" echoed Ida. "I would like to buy it."
She spoke on the impulse of the moment; but Mr. Wordley did not seem at
all surprised, and only smiled as he responded:
"I know no reason why you should not, my dear Miss Ida. I am not sure
that it would be a good investment; but if you've a fancy for it, I
will enquire into the matter. Yes; certainly you can buy if you want to
do so."
Long after he had gone Ida sat, leaning forward in her chair and gazing
at the fire. Stafford was now Lord Highcliffe, a peer, but poor and a
wanderer. She started: was it really he whom she had seen on the cattle
steamer? Then they had been near each other, had looked into each
other's eyes! Perhaps she would never seem him again--but, ah, yes! it
was quite probable she would, for was he not engaged to the wealthy
Miss Falconer, and would he not come back to marry her? The following
evening she received a short note from Mr. Wordley: it informed her
that the Villa was not for sale. It had been purchased by Mr. Falconer
for his daughter.