At Love's Cost Part 70

"Ah, say it!" he implored her, eagerly.

She shook her head again, and lifting her eyes and looking at him straightly but sadly, she said in a still lower voice:

"Lord Edwin, I do not love you."

"I never said, thought, you did," he responded, promptly. "Why, you've only known me such a short time, and I'm not such a conceited bounder to think that you've fallen in love with me already. I only want you to let me try and win your love; and--I think I shall do so," he said in a modest but manly way, which would at once have won Ida's heart--if it had not been won already. "If you will only give me some hope, just tell me that I've a chance, that you'll let me, try--"

Ida smiled a sad little smile.

"If I said as much as that--But I cannot. Lord Edwin, you--you have told me that you love me, and it would not be fair--ah, please don't try to persuade me! Don't you see how terrible it would be if I were to let you think that I might come to care for you, and I did not do so."

"For G.o.d's sake, don't say 'no,'" broke from him, and his face paled under the tan.

She turned away from him, her eyes full of tears which she dared not let him see.

"I--I must have time," she said, almost desperately. "Will you give me a day, two days?" she asked, quite humbly. "I want to do what you want, but--I want to think: there is something I should have to tell you."

He flushed to the roots of his hair.

"If it's anything that's happened in the past, anyone else--of course, loving you as I do, I have seen that there has been something on your mind, some trouble besides your father's death--but if it is past, I don't mind. I know I can teach you to forget it, whatever it is. Ida, trust yourself to me."

She drew away from him.

"Give me two days," she said, with a catch in her breath.

He caught at the hope, small though it was.

"I will give you two days, twenty if you like," he said. "Only, while you are thinking it over, remember I love you with all my heart and soul, that my people will love you as a daughter, that--Oh, I won't say any more: I can't trust myself! I'll go now."

When he had gone Ida got on Rupert and rode to the top of the hill.

There she pulled up and thought with all her heart and mind. She could not doubt his love; she could not but feel that if she surrendered herself to him he would, indeed, in time teach her to forget. She knew that it was her duty to marry; his word about the estates had not been spoken in vain. Yes; if she became Lord Edwin's wife, she would in time forget. But, alas! she did not want to forget.

Her love for Stafford was still as strong as ever, and with its bitterness was mingled a sweetness which was sweeter than life itself.

And yet how great a sin it was, how shameful a one, that she should love a man who was pledged to another woman, who was going to marry her!

She came in late for dinner, and could scarcely eat. Her reason said "yes," her heart said "no:" and she knew that she ought to listen to her reason and turn a deaf ear to the still voice in her heart. She paced up and down the drawing-room, pale and wan with the fight that was going on within her. Then suddenly she resolved that she would accept him. She would not keep him in suspense: it would not be fair--it would be a cruel requital of his love and generosity. She went to the writing-table, and hurriedly, as if she were afraid of hesitating, she drew a sheet of paper towards her and wrote:

"Dear Lord Edwin--" She had got thus far when Donald and Bess, who had been lying beside the fire, sprang up and ran to the door barking loudly. She laid down the pen and opened the door mechanically; the moonlight was streaming through the window in the hall; the dogs bounded to the front door still barking vociferously. Still, mechanically, she let them out, and they rushed across the terrace and over the lawn to the group of trees beside the footpath. Thinking that they heard Jessie, whom she had sent to Bryndermere, Ida, half-unconsciously glad of the interruption, followed them slowly across the lawn.

Their barking ceased suddenly, and convinced that it was Jessie, she went on to add something to her message. Then, suddenly, she saw a tall figure standing in the shadow of the trees. It was a man, and Donald and Bess were jumping up at him with little whines of pleasure. Smitten by a sudden fear she stopped; but the man raised his head and saw her, and, with an exclamation, strode towards her. For an instant she thought that she was dreaming, that her imagination was playing her false, for it was Stafford's form and face. They stood and gazed at each other; her brain felt dizzy, her pale face grew paler; she knew that she was trembling, that she could scarcely stand; she began to sway to and fro slightly, and he caught her in his arms.

CHAPTER XLI.

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 pa.s.sionately upon her lips, her hair; the while he called upon her name, as if his lips hungered to p.r.o.nounce 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 pa.s.sion, 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? G.o.d, 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 compa.s.sion. "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 G.o.d! you could not!" he said, huskily. "The black fit pa.s.sed 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--"