At Love's Cost Part 71

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage," 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 pa.s.sion.

"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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sent. 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. She 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion, Stafford's unreasoning anger rose against her: it is always so with the man.

"My G.o.d! 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 n.o.ble, 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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 G.o.d! you--you are hard--" he broke out at last.