She did not resist, but resigned herself to his embrace, as if he still
had the right to take her in his arms, as if she still belonged to him.
She had been under a great, an indescribable strain for several hours,
and his sudden presence, the look in his eyes, the touch of his hands,
deprived her of the power of thought, of resistance. To her and to him,
at that moment, it was as if they had not been parted, as if the events
of the last few months were only visionary.
With surrender in every fibre of her being she lay in his arms, her
head upon his breast, her eyes closed, her heart throbbing wildly under
the kisses which he pressed passionately upon her lips, her hair; the
while he called upon her name, as if his lips hungered to pronounce it.
"Stafford!" she said, at last. "It is really you! When--" Her voice
died away, as if she were speaking in a dream, and her eyes closed with
a little shudder of perfect joy and rest.
"Yes, it's I!" he responded, in a voice almost as low as hers, a voice
that trembled with the intensity of his passion, his joy in having her
in his arms again. "Last night I came down by the first train--I waited
at the station for it--I came straight from the docks." She drew a
happy sigh.
"So soon? And you came straight here? When I saw you just now, I
thought it was a vision: if the dogs had not been here--I remembered
that dogs do not see ghosts. Oh, Stafford, it is so long, so very long
since I have seen you, so sad and dreary a time! Tell me--ah, tell me
everything! Where you have been. But I know! Stafford, did you know
that I saw you the day you sailed?" she shuddered faintly. "I thought
that was a vision, too, that it was my fancy: it would not have been
the first time I had fancied I had seen you." He drew her to the bank,
and sinking on it held her in his arms, almost like a child.
"You saw me! You--there in London! And yet I can understand. Dearest, I
did not hear of your trouble until a few weeks ago. But I must tell
you--"
"Yes, tell me. I long to hear! Think, Stafford! I have not heard of
you--I saw you at the concert in London one night--"
He started and held her more tightly.
--"I looked round and saw you; and when you turned and looked up
towards me, it seemed as if you must have seen me. But tell me! Oh, I
want to hear everything!"
The spell wrought by the joy of his presence still held her reason, her
memory, in thrall; one thought, one fact, dominated all others: the
fact that he was here, that she was in his arms, with her head on his
breast as of old.
And the spell was on him as strongly; how could he remember the past
and the barrier he had erected between them?
"I went to Australia, Ida," he said in a low voice, every note of which
was pitched to love's harmony: it soothed while it rejoiced her. "I met
a man in London, a farmer, who offered to take me out with him. You saw
me start, you say? How strange, how wonderful! And I, yes, I saw you,
but I could not believe my senses! How could it be my beautiful, dainty
Ida, the mistress of Herondale, standing on the dirty, squalid quay! I
went with him and worked with him on his cattle-run. Do you remember
how you taught me to count the sheep, Ida? God, how often when I was
riding through solitary wastes I have recalled those hours, every look
of your dear eyes, every curve of those sweet lips--hold them up to me,
dearest!--every tone of your voice, the low, musical voice the memory
of which had power to set every nerve tingling with longing and
despair. The work was hard, it seemed unceasing, but I was glad of it;
for sometimes I was too weary to think; too weary even to dream of you.
And it was sad business dreaming of you, Ida; for, you see, there was
the waking!"
"Do I not know!" she murmured, with something like a sob, and her hand
closed on his shoulder.
"My employer was a pleasant, genial man, my fellow-labourers were good
fellows; I could have been happy, or, at least, contented with the
life, hard as it was, if I could but have forgotten; if I could even
for a day have lost the awful hunger and thirst for you; if I could
have got you out of my mind, the memory of you out of my heart--but I
could not!"
He paused, looking straight before him; and gazing up at him, she saw
his face drawn and haggard, as if he still thought himself separated
from her. Then, as if he remembered, he looked down at her and caught
her to him with a sudden violence that almost hurt her.
"But I could not; you haunted me, dearest, all day and all night!
Sometimes, when the men were singing round the camp fire, singing and
laughing, the sense of my loss would come crushing down upon me, and
I'd spring to my feet and wander out into the starlit silence of the
vast plains and spend the night thinking of all that had passed between
us. At other times, a kind of madness would catch hold of me, and I'd
join the wildest of the gangs, and laugh and sing and drink with the
maddest of the lot."
She drew a long breath of comprehension and pity, and hid her eyes on
his breast. He bent and kissed her, murmuring penitently:
"I'm not fit to kiss you, Ida. I did not mean to tell you, but--but, I
can't keep anything from you, even though it will go against me. One
night the drinking led to fighting and I stood up to a son of Anak, a
giant of a fellow; and we fought until both of us were knocked out; but
I remember him going down first, just before I fell, I went from bad to
worse. The owner of the run--it was called Salisbury Plain--spoke a
word of warning, and I tried to pull up, tried to take to the work
again, and forget myself in it; but--ah, well, dearest, thank God you
would not understand that you cannot know what a man is like when he is
at odds with fate, and is bed-fellow with despair!"
"Do I not!" she murmured again, with the fullest understanding and
compassion. "Do you think he is worse than a woman. On, Stafford, there
have been times, black times, when I learned to know why some women fly
to drink to drown their misery: and our misery is as keen, yes, keener
than yours. For we are so helpless, so shackled; we have nothing else
to do but think, think, think! Go on, dearest! I seem to see you
there!"
"Thank God! you could not!" he said, huskily. "The black fit passed for
a time, and I settled down to work again. One day there was an attack
upon the farm by the blacks, as they are called. I was fortunately at
home, and we managed to beat them off and save the stock. It was a
valuable one and my employer, thinking too highly of my services, made
me a present of half the value. It was a generous gift, a lavish one,
and altogether uncalled for--"
"Oh, Stafford, do you think I don't know that you risked your life, as
plainly as if I had been told, as if I had been there!" she said, her
eyes glowing, her breath coming faster.
Stafford coloured and turned away from the subject.
"It was a large sum, and Mr. Joffler--that is the name of the owner of
Salisbury Plain--advised me to invest it in a run of my own: there was
enough to buy a large and important one. I went down to Melbourne to
see the agents, and--is there no such thing as fate, or chance, Ida!
Indeed there is!--as I was walking down one of the streets, I heard my
name spoken. I turned and saw the stableman from the Woodman Inn, Mr.
Groves's man--"
"Henry," murmured Ida, enviously: for had he not met her lover!
"Yes. He was surprised, but I think glad, to see me; and we went to a
hotel and talked. For some time I couldn't bring myself to speak your
name: you see, dearest, it had lived in my heart so long, and I had
only whispered it to the stars, and in the solitary places, that I--I
shrank from uttering it aloud," he explained with masculine simplicity.
Ida's eyes filled with tears and she nestled closer to him.
"At last I asked after the people, and nervously mentioned the Hall
and--and 'Miss Ida.' Then the man told me."
His voice grew lower and he laid his hand on her head and stroked her
hair soothingly, pityingly.
"He told me that your father was dead, had died suddenly, and worse--for
it was worse to me dearest--that you had been left poor, and well-nigh
penniless."
She sighed, but as one who sighs, looking back at a sorrow which has
passed long ago and is swallowed up in present joy.
"I asked him where you were, and when he told me that you had left the
Hall, and that it was said you--you were working for a livelihood, that
you were in poverty, I--dearest, I felt as if I should go mad. Think of
it! There was I, all those thousands of miles away, with all that money
in my possession, and you, the queen of my heart, the girl I loved
better than life itself, in poverty and perhaps wanting a friend!" He
was silent a moment, and Ida felt him shudder as if he were again
tasting the bitterness of that moment.
"When I had taken my passage," he went on, succinctly, "I sent Henry up
to the run to fill my place, and with him a letter to explain my sudden
departure; and the next day, Heaven being kind to me--I should have
gone out of my mind if I had had to wait--we sailed. I stood at the
bow, with my face turned towards England, and counted the days before I
could get there and begin my search for you."
"And you came here, Stafford, first?" she said, to lead him on: for
what an unspeakable bliss it was to listen to him!
"Yes; I knew that I should hear some tidings of you here. There would
be a lawyer, a steward, who would know. I little thought, hoped, to see
you yourself, Ida. I came from the station to-night to look at the old
place, to walk where we had walked, to stand where we had stood. I
stopped under the trees here and looked at the house, at the terrace
where I had seen you, watched for you. I could see that men had been at
work, and I thought that you had sold the place, that the new people
were altering it, and I cursed them in my heart; for every stone of it
is sacred to me. And then, as I stood looking, and asking myself where
you were, the dogs came. Even then it did not occur to me that you were
still here--at the Hall--and when I saw you--"
He stopped, and laughed shortly, as a man does when his emotion is
almost too much for him.
"I'd made up my mind what to write to you; but, you see, I'd had no
thought, no hope, of seeing you; and now--ah, well, it's hard to think
of anything, with you in my arms! But see here, Ida, there isn't any
need to say anything, is there? You'll come back with me to that new
world--"
What was it, what word in the tender, loving speech that, like a breath
of wind sweeping away a mountain mist, cleared the mist from her mind,
woke her from her strange, dream-like condition, recalled the past,
and, alas! and alas! the present!
With a low cry, a cry of anguish--one has heard it from the lips of a
sufferer waking from the anodyne of sleep to fresh pain--she tore
herself from his arms, and with both hands to her head, stood regarding
him, her face white, something like terror in her eyes.
"Ida!" he cried, rising and stretching out his hands to her.
She shrank back, putting out her hand as if to keep him off.
"Don't--don't come near me! Oh, how could I have forgotten!--how could
I! I must have been mad!"
She wrung her hands and bit her lips as if she were tortured by the
shame of it. His arms fell to his sides, and he stood and looked at her
with his teeth set.
"Ida, listen to me! I--I, too--had forgotten. It--it was the delight of
seeing you. But, dearest, what does the past matter? It _is_ past, I
have come back to you."
She turned to him with suppressed passion.
"Why did you leave me?" came painfully from her white lips.
His face grew red and his eyes fell before hers for a moment. At times
his sacrifice of her to his father's need had seemed not only
inexcusable, but shameful; the shame of it now weighed upon him.
"Ida, for God's sake listen to me!" for, as he had hesitated, she had
turned from him with a gesture of repudiation. "Listen to me! There was
nothing else for me to do; fate left me no alternative. My father--Ida,
how can I tell you!--my father's good name, his reputation, were in my
hands. He had done so much for me--everything! There has never been a
father like him: my happiness stood between him and ruin--ah, not mine
alone, but yours--and I sacrificed them! If you knew all you would
forgive me the wrong I did, great as it was. I think now, if the time
were to come over again, that--yes, I should have to do it!" he broke
out. "I could not have stood by and seen-him ruined and disgraced
without stretching out my hand to save him."
"It was for your father's sake?" she said, almost inaudibly.
"Yes," he responded, grimly. "And it saved him--saved his good name, at
any rate. The rest went--you have heard?"
She made a gesture of assent. He drew a long breath, and held out his
hand to her.
"Can you not forgive me, Ida? If you knew what the sacrifice cost me,
how much I have suffered. See here, dearest"--he drew still closer to
her--"let the past go. It shall, I swear! There is a limit to a man's
endurance, and I have passed it. I love you, Ida, I want you! Come back
with me and let us live for each other, live for love. Dearest, I will
teach you to forget the wrong I did you. It's very little I have to
offer you, a share in the hard life of a farmer out there in the wilds;
but if you were still the mistress of Herondale, instead of poor--"
Half unconsciously she broke in upon his prayer.
"I am still--what I was. I am not poor. My father was a rich man when
he died."
Stafford regarded her with surprise, then he moved his hand, as if he
were waving away the suggestion of an obstacle.
"I am glad--for your sake, dearest; though for my own I would almost
rather that you were as poor as I thought you; that I might work for
you. Why do you stand and look at me so hopelessly. What else is there
to divide us, dearest?"
Her lips opened, and almost inaudibly she breathed:
"Your honour."
He winced and set his teeth hard.
"My honour!"
"Yes. You have pledged your word, you have made your bargain--the price
was paid, I suppose; you say so. Then in honour you belong to--_her_."
The colour flamed in his face and his eyes grew hot.
"You cast me off--you drive me back to her!" he said, scarcely knowing
what he said.
"Yes!" she responded, faintly. "You belong to her--to her only. Not to
me, ah, not to me! No, no, do not come near me, do not touch me! I had
forgotten--I was mad!--but I have remembered, I am sane now."
Driven almost beyond himself by the sudden revulsion from joy and hope
to doubt and despair, racked by the swift stemming of his passion,
Stafford's unreasoning anger rose against her: it is always so with the
man.
"My God! You send me away--to her! You--you do it coolly, easily
enough! Perhaps you have some other reason--someone has stepped into my
place--"
It was a cruel thing to say, even in his madness. For a moment she
cowered under it, then she raised her white face and looked straight
into his eyes.
"And if there has, can you blame me? You cast me aside--you sacrificed
me to your father's honour. You had done with me," her voice vibrated
with the bitterness which had been her portion for so many dreary
months. "Was the world, my life, to cease from that time forth? For you
there was--someone else, wealth, rank--for me was there to be nothing,
no consolation, no part or lot in life! Yes, there _is_ one--one who is
both good and noble, and--"
She broke down and covering her face with her hands turned away.
Stafford stood as if turned to stone; as if he had lost the sense of
sight and hearing. Silence reigned between them; the dogs who had been
sitting watching them, rose and shivering, whined complainingly, as if
they were asking what was amiss.
It was the woman--as always--who first relented and was moved to pity.
She moved to the motionless figure and touched him on the arm.
"Forgive me! I--I did not mean to wound you; but--but you drove me too
hard! But--but it is true. We cannot undo the past. It is _there_, as
solid, as unmovable, as that mountain: _and it is between us_, a wall,
a barrier of stone. Nothing can remove it. You--you will remember your
honour, Stafford?" Her voice quavered for a moment but she steadied it.
"You--you will not lose that, though all else be lost? You will go to
her?"
He looked at her, his breath coming thick and painfully.
"My God! you--you are hard--" he broke out at last.
"I--am just! Oh, my dearest, my dearest!" She took his hand and laid it
against her cheek, her lips. "Don't you see how much it costs me to
send you away? But I must! I must! Go--oh, go now! I--I cannot bear
much more!"
His hand--it shook--fell softly, tenderly on her head.
"God forgive me for the wrong I have wrought you, the tears I have
caused you!" he said, hoarsely. "Yes, I daresay you're right, and--and
I'll go! Let me see you go back to the house--One kiss, the last, the
last! Oh, Ida, Ida, life of my life, soul of my soul!"
He caught her to him, and she lay in his arms for a moment, her lips
clung to his in one long kiss, then she tore herself away from him and
fled to the house.
Stafford went on to The Woodman, where Mr. Groves was surprised, and,
it need scarcely be said, overjoyed to see him. To him, the young man
was still "Mr. Stafford," and he eyed him with an amazed and respectful
admiration; for though Stafford had never been a weakling, he had grown
so hard and muscular and altogether "fit" that Mr. Groves could not
refrain from expressing his approval.
"Ah, there is nothing like roughing it, Mr. Stafford, sir," he said. "I
can tell in a minute when a man's 'hard' right through, and been doing
square and honest work. It seems strange to us commoner people that you
gentle folks should be so fond of going through all sorts of hardships
and perils just for the fun of it; but, after all, it's not to be
wondered at, for that's the kind of spirit that has helped Englishmen
to make England what it is. But you're looking a little pale and worn
to-night, sir. I've no doubt it's the want of dinner. If I'd known
you'd been coming--but you know I'll do my best, sir."
He did his best, and Stafford tried to do justice to it; but it was
almost impossible to eat. And he checked the almost overmastering
desire to drink.
Ida had been right. He knew it, though the thought did not help to
allay his bitterness. She had spoken the truth: he was still pledged to
Maude. Mr. Falconer had paid the price demanded, and it was not his
fault if it had failed to save Sir Stephen from ruin; the sacrifice
Stafford had made had, at any rate, saved his father's good name from
shame and reproach. Maude's father had performed his part of the
bargain; Stafford had still to perform his. Ida was right; she had
pointed out to him his duty, and if there was a spark of manliness left
in him, he must do it.
He sat over the fire, close over it, as he had done in the backwoods
many a night, smoking the old brier pipe that had cheered him in his
hours of solitary watching, and thinking with a grim bitterness that it
would have been better for him if he had been knocked on the head the
night of the raid at Salisbury Plain. To be married to one woman, while
he loved another with all his heart and soul: it was a cruel fate. But,
cruel as it was, he had to bend to it. He would go straight to London
and find Maude, redeem his promise, and save his honour.
Mr. Groves came into the room with a bottle of the port, and Stafford
forced himself to show an interest in it and drink a glass or two.
"I suppose you'll be going up to the Villa to-morrow, sir?--I beg your
pardon, I mean my lord; and I must apologise for not calling you so."
"Not 'my lord,'" said Stafford. "I have never used the title, Groves.
Go up to the Villa? Why should I?" he asked, wearily. "It is closed,
isn't it?"
Mr. Groves looked at him with surprise.
"No, sir. Didn't you know? Mr. Falconer bought it; and he and Miss
Falconer have been staying there. She is there now."
Stafford turned away. Chance was making his hard road straight. After a
sleepless night, worse even than some of the worst he had spent in
Australia, and after a pretence at breakfast, he went slowly up to the
Villa. Last night, as he had held Ida in his arms, something of the old
brightness had come back to his face, the old light to his eyes; but he
looked haggard and wan now, like a man who had barely recovered from a
long and trying illness. He turned on the slope of the terrace and
looked down at the lake, lying dark and sullen under a cloudy sky; and
it seemed to him typical of his own life, of his own future, in which
there seemed not a streak of light. A servant came to meet him. "Yes,"
he said, "Miss Falconer is in." She was in the morning-room, he
thought. Stafford followed him; the man opened the door, and Stafford
entered.
Maude was seated at a table writing. She did not turn her head, and he
stood looking at her and seeing the record the weary months had left
upon her face; and, even in his own misery, he felt some pity for her.
"Maude!" he said in a low voice.
She did not move for a moment, but looked straight before her
wistfully, as if she could not trust her ears; then she turned and came
towards him, with something like fear on her face. The fear broke up,
as it were, and, stretching out her arms, she spoke his name--the
accents of love fighting with those of doubt and a joy that dreaded its
own greatness.
"Stafford! It is you!"
She pressed her hands to her heart for a moment, then she fell into his
arm, half fainting.