At Love's Cost Part 23

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 brus.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on.

"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.

CHAPTER XIII.

The morning broke with that exquisite clearness which distinguishes the lakes when a fine day follows a wet one; and, despite her anxiety on her father's account, Ida, as she went down-stairs, was conscious of that sense of happiness which comes from antic.i.p.ation. She made her morning tour of inspection of the stables and the dairy, and ordered the big chestnut to be saddled directly after breakfast.

When her father came down she was relieved to find that he seemed to be in his usual health; and in answer to her question whether he had slept well, he replied in the affirmative, and was mildly surprised that she should enquire. Directly he had gone off to the library she ran upstairs to put on her habit.

For the first time she was struck by its shabbiness; she had never given a thought to it before. Her evening-dresses, though plain and inexpensive, were always dainty and fresh, but she wore her habit as long as it would hold together, and cared nothing for the fact that her hat was stained by the rain: they were her "working clothes," and strictly considered as such. But this morning she surveyed the skirt ruefully, and thought of the trim and apparently always new habits which the Bannerdale girls wore; and she brushed it with a care which it had never yet received. As a rule she wore a black scarf, or none at all; but as she looked at herself in the gla.s.s she was not satisfied, and she found a scarlet tie which she had bought in a fit of extravagance, and put it on. The touch of colour heightened the beauty of her clear ivory face and brightened up the old habit; but she looked at herself in the gla.s.s with something like shamefacedness: why was she so anxious about her appearance this morning of all the mornings? For an instant she was tempted to s.n.a.t.c.h off the tie; but in the end she let it remain; and she brushed the soft tendrils of her hair at her forehead with unusual care before she fastened on her hat.

Her father was walking up and down the terrace slowly as she came out, and he raised his head and looked at her absently.

"I shall probably ride into Bryndermere, father," she said. "Shall I post your letters? I know you will be anxious for that one to the book-sellers to go," she added, with a smile.

His eyes dropped and he seemed disconcerted for a minute, then he said:

"No, no; I'll send it by Jason; I've not written it yet;" and he turned away from her and resumed his pacing to and fro.

Ida went to the stable-yard and got on to Rupert by the aid of the stone "mounting block" from which Charles the Second had climbed, laughingly, to the white horse which figures in so many pictures of the Merry Monarch, and rode out of the court-yard, watched with pride by Jason. Before she had gone far he ran after her.

"If you're riding by West Hill, Miss Ida, perhaps you'd look at the cattle-shed there. Williams says that the roof's falling in."

"Very well," she called back in her clear voice.

"Oh, and, Miss Ida, there's a big stone washed out of the weir; I'm thinking it ought to be put back or we'll have the meadows above flooded this winter."

She laughed and nodded and put Rupert to a trot, for she knew that while she was within hearing Jason would bombard her with similar tales of woe. Not a slate slid from the old roof of the Hall, or a sheep fell lame, but the matter was referred to her.

She rode down the road in the sunlight, the big chestnut moving under her as if he were on springs and she were a feather, and, half unconsciously, she began to hum an air--not one of those modern ones one hears in many drawing-rooms, but an old-fas.h.i.+oned melody which she had found in an ancient music-book in the antique cabinet beside the grand piano. She left the road where it touched the wild moorland of the valley, and Rupert broke into a canter, Donald and Bess, settling into the stride with which they managed to keep up with the big horse.

She had resolved that she would not ride straight to the stream, and she kept up the hill-side, but her eyes wandered to the road expectantly now and again; but there was no sign of a horseman, and after half an hour had pa.s.sed a sense of disappointment rose within her. It was quite possible that he had forgotten the engagement; perhaps on reflection he had seen that she was quite right in her objections to his strange proposal, and he would not come. A faint flush rose to her face, and she turned Rupert and rode up and over the hill where she could not see the road. But she had no sooner got on top than she remembered that no time had been mentioned, or, if it had, that she had forgotten it. She turned and rode up the hill again, and looking down, saw Stafford riding along the valley in desperate haste, and yet looking about him uncertainly. Her heart beat with a quickened pulse, sending the delicate colour into her face, and she pulled up, and, leaning forward with her chin in her hand, watched him dreamily.

He rode a heavier horse than Adonis; and he had made a change in his dress; in place of the riding-suit, which had smacked of London and Hyde Park, he wore a rough but light coat, thick cord breeches, and brown leather gaiters. She smiled as she knew that he had tried to make himself look as much like a farmer as possible; but no farmer in the dales had that peculiar air of birth and breeding which distinguished Stafford Orme; the air which his father had been so quick to detect and to be proud of.

She noticed how well he sat the great horse, with what ease and "hands"

he rode over the rough and treacherous ground. Suddenly he turned his head and saw her, and with a wave of his hand came galloping up to her, with a smile of relief and gladness on his handsome face, as he spoke to the dogs, who clamoured round him.

"I was so afraid I had missed you," he said. "I am late, am I not? Some people kept me after breakfast."

"You are not late; I don't think any time was mentioned," she responded, quickly, though her heart was beating with a strange and novel sensation of pleasure in his presence. "I scarcely expected you."

He looked at her reproachfully.

"Not expect me! But why?"

"I thought you might change your mind," she said.

He checked a quick response, and said instead:

"And now, where do we go first? You see I have got a bit heavier horse.

He's a present, also, from my father. What do you think of him?"

She eyed him gravely and critically.

"He's nice-looking," she said, "but I don't like him so well as the one you rode yesterday. Didn't I see him slip just now, coming up the hill?"

"Did he?" said Stafford. "I didn't notice. To tell you the truth, I was so delighted at seeing you that I don't think I should have noticed if he had tumbled on his nose."

"Oh, it wasn't much of a slip," she said, quickly, to cover her slight confusion at his candid confession. "Shall we go down to the sheep first?"

"Anywhere you like," he a.s.sented, brightly. "Remember, I'm your pupil."

She glanced at him and smiled.

"A very big pupil."

"But a very humble one," he said. "I'm afraid you'll add, 'a very stupid one,' before long."

As they rode down hill, Stafford stole a look at her un.o.bserved. Ever since he had left her yesterday her face had haunted him, even while Maude Falconer, in all her war paint and sparkling with jewels, had been singing, even in the silent watches of the night, when--strange thing for him!--he had awakened from a dream of her; he had recalled the exquisitely lovely face with its grave yet girlish eyes, and he felt now, with a thrill, that she was even more lovely than she had been in his thoughts and his dreams; that the nameless charm which had haunted him was stronger, more subtle, than even his fancy had painted it. He noticed the touch of colour just below her white slender column of a neck, and wondered why no other woman had ever thought of wearing a crimson tie with her habit.

"What a grand morning," he said. "I don't think I ever saw a morning like this, so clear and bright; those hills there look as though they were quite near."

"It's the rain," she explained. "It seems to wash the atmosphere. My father says there is only one other place which has this particular clearness and brightness after rain: and that's Ireland. There are the sheep. Now," she smiled, "do you know how to count them?"

He stared at her.

"You begin at number one, I suppose," he said.