At Love's Cost Part 25

He lay quite still; and she knew quite well what had happened: that he had fallen on his head and stunned himself.

She remembered, at that moment, that she herself had once so fallen; but the remembrance did nothing to soften her present anxiety. She knelt beside him and lifted his head on her knee, and his white face smote her accusingly. He was still, motionless so long that she began to fear--was he dead? She asked herself the question with a heavy pulsation of the heart, with a sense of irrevocable loss. If he was dead, then--then--what had she lost!

Trembling in every limb, she laid her hand upon his heart. It beat, but slowly, reluctantly. She looked round her with a sense of helplessness.

She had never been placed in such a position before. Not far from her was a mountain rill, and she ran to it with unsteady steps and soaked her handkerchief in it, and bathed the white, smooth forehead.

Even at that moment she noticed, half unconsciously, the clear-cut, patrician features, the delicate lines of the handsome face.

He had come to this mishap in his attempt to help her. He was dying, perhaps, in her service. A thrill ran through her, a thrill that moved her as by an uncontrollable impulse to bend still lower over him so that her lips almost touched his unconscious ones. Their nearness, the intent gaze of her eyes, now dark as violets, seemed to make themselves felt by him, seemed by some mysterious power to call him back from the shadow-land of unconsciousness. He moved and opened his eyes.

She started, and the colour flooded her face as if her lips had quite touched his, and her eyes grew heavy as, breathing painfully, she waited for him to entirely recover his intelligence and to speak.

"The steer!" he said at last, feebly.

She moistened her lips, and looked away from him as if she were afraid lest he should see what was in her eyes. "The steer is all right; but--but you!"

He forced a laugh. "Oh, I'm all right, too," he said. He looked around hazily. "I must have come a smasher over that bank!"

Then he saw that he was lying with his head upon her knee, and with a hot flush, the man's shame for his weakness in the presence of a woman, he struggled into a sitting posture and looked at her, looked at her with the forced cheerfulness of a man who has come an unforeseen, unexpected cropper of the first magnitude.

"It was my fault. You--you were right about the horse: he ought not to have slipped--Where's my hat? Oh here it is. The horse isn't lame, I hope?"

"No," she said, setting her teeth in her great effort to appear calm and unmoved. "He is standing beside Rupert--" She had got thus far when her voice broke, and she turned her face away quickly; but not so quickly that he did not see her exceeding pallor, the heavy droop of the lids, the sweep of the dark lashes on her white cheek.

"Why--what's the matter, Miss Heron?" he asked, anxiously, and with all a man's obtuseness. "_You_ didn't happen to come to grief in any way? I didn't fall on you?--or anything? I--"

She tried to laugh, tried to laugh scornfully; for indeed she was filled with scorn for this sudden inexplicable weakness, a weakness which had never a.s.sailed her before in all her life, a weakness which filled her breast with rage; but from under the closed lids two tears crept and rolled down her cheek; and against her will she made confession of this same foolish weakness.

"It is nothing: I am very foolish--but I--I thought you were badly hurt--for the moment that you might even be--killed!"

He staggered to his feet and caught her hand and held it, looking at her with that look in a man's eyes which is stronger and fiercer than fire, and yet softer than water; the look which goes straight to a woman's heart.

"And you cared--cared so much?" he said, in a voice so low that she could scarcely hear it, hushed by the awe and wonder of pa.s.sion.

She tried to withdraw her hand, biting her lips, setting them tightly, in her battle for calmness and her old _hauteur_ and indifference; but he held the small hand firmly, felt it quiver and tremble, saw the violet eyes raised to his with a troubled wonder in them; and her name sprang to his lips:

"Ida!" he breathed.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Ida!" The name had sprung from his lips, from his heart, almost unconsciously; it did not seem strange to him, for he knew, as he spoke it, that he had called her so in his thoughts, that it had hovered on his lips ever since he had heard it. But to her--Who shall describe the subtle emotion which thrills through a girl's heart when she hears, for the first time from a strange man's lips, the name whose use hitherto has been reserved for her kith and kin?

She stood erect, but with her head bent, her eyes fixed on the ground, the name, his voice, ringing in her ears; her heart was beating almost painfully, as if with weight of a novel kind of fear, that yet was not altogether fear. Stafford looked at her with the man's, the lover's eagerness, but her face told him nothing. She was so ignorant of the very A B C of love that there was no start of surprise, no word or movement which might guide him; but his instant thought was that she was offended, angry.

"Forgive me!" he said. "You are angry because I called you--Ida! It was wrong and presumptuous; but I have learned to think of you by your name--and it slipped out. Are you very angry? Ah, you knew why I called you so? Don't you know that--I love you!"

She raised her eyes for a moment but did not look at him; they were fixed dreamily on the great hills in the distance, then drooped again, and her brows came together, her lips straightened with a still more marked expression of trouble, doubt, and wonder.

"I love you," he said, with the deep note of a man's pa.s.sion in his voice. "I didn't mean to tell you, to speak--I didn't know until just now how it was with me: you see I am telling you everything, the whole truth! You will listen to me?"

For she had made a movement of turning away, a slow, heavy gesture as if she were enc.u.mbered by chains, as if she were under some spell from which she could not wake.

"I will tell you everything, at the risk of making you angry, at the risk of your--sending me away."

He paused for a moment, as if he were choosing his words with a care that sprang from his fear lest he should indeed rouse her anger and--lose her.

"The first day I saw you--you remember?"

As if she could forget! She knew as he asked the question that no trifling detail of that first meeting was forgotten, that every word was engraven on her memory.

"When I saw you riding down the hill, I thought I had never seen any girl so beautiful, so lovely--"

The colour rose slowly to her face, but died away again: the least vain of women is moved when a man tells her she is beautiful--in his eyes, at any rate.

"And when you spoke to me I thought I had never heard so sweet a voice; and if I had, that there had never been one that I so longed to hear again. You were not with me long, only a few minutes, but when I left you and trumped over the hill to the inn I could not get you out of my mind. I wondered who you were, and whether I should see you again." The horses moved, and instinctively she looked over her shoulder towards them.

"They will not go: they are quite quiet," he said. "Wait--ah, wait for a few minutes! I have a feeling that if I let you go I shall not see you again; and that would--that would be more than I could bear. That night at the inn the landlord told me about you. Of course he had nothing but praise and admiration for you--who would have any other?

But he told me of the lonely life you led, of the care you took of your father, of your devotion and goodness; and the picture of you living at the great, silent house, without friends or companions--well, it haunted me! I could see it all so plainly--I, who am not usually quick at seeing things. As a rule, I'm not impressed by women--Howard says I am cold and bored--perhaps he's right; but I could not get you out of my mind. I felt that I wanted to see you again."

He paused again, as if the state of mind he was describing was a puzzle to himself--paused and frowned.

"I left the inn and started up the road--I suppose I wanted to get a glimpse of the house in which you lived. Yes; that must have been it.

And then, all at once, I saw you. I remember the frock you wore that night--you looked like an angel, a spirit standing there in the moonlight, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Are you angry with me for saying so? Don't be; for I've got to tell you everything, and--and--it's difficult!"

He was silent a moment. Her head was still down-bent, her small white hand hung at her side; she was quite motionless but for the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her bosom.

"When you came to me, when you spoke to me, my heart leapt as if--well, as if something good had happened to me--something that had never happened before. When I went away the picture of you standing at the door, waving your hand, went with me, and--stayed with me. I could not get you out of my mind--could think of nothing else. Even in the meeting with my father, whom I hadn't seen for so long, the thought of you kept with me. I tried to get rid of it--to forget you, but it was of no use: sleeping and waking, you--_you were with me!_"

His voice grew almost harsh in its intensity, and the hand that had hung so stilly beside her closed on the skirt of her dress in her effort to keep the hot blush from her face.

"When I rode out the next day it was only with the hope of seeing you.

It seemed to me there was only one thing I wanted: to see you again; to look into your eyes, to hear you speak. All that I had heard about you--well, I dwelt upon it, and I felt that I must help you. It seemed as if Fate--Chance--oh, I don't know what to call it!--had _sent_ me to help you. And when I saw you--ah, well, I can't expect you to understand what I felt!"

He stopped again, as if he himself were trying to understand it.

"The feeling that fate had something to do with it--you see, it was quite by chance I started fis.h.i.+ng that afternoon, that I saw you at the house--gave me courage to ask you to let me help you. It sounded ridiculous to you--of course it did!--but if you only knew how much it meant to me! It meant that I should see you again; perhaps every day for--for a long time: ah, well, it meant just life and death to me. And now--!"

His breath came fast, his eyes dwelt upon her with pa.s.sionate eagerness; but he forced himself to speak calmly than he might not frighten her from his side, might not lose her.

--"Now the truth has come upon me, quite suddenly. It was just now when I saw that you cared what had happened to me, cared if I were hurt!--Oh, I know, it was just because you were frightened, it was just a woman's pity for a fellow that had come to harm, the fear lest I had broken any bones; but--ah, it showed me my heart, it told me how much I loved you! Yes; I love you! You are all the world to me: nothing else matters, _nothing!_"

Her lips quivered, but she did not speak, and the look of trouble, of doubt, did not leave her face. He waited, his eyes seeking hers, seeking them for some sign which might still the pa.s.sion of fear and suspense with which he was battling, then he said in a low voice that thrilled with the tempest of emotion which raged under his forced calm:

"Will you not speak to me? Are you angry?"