At Love's Cost Part 73

"I will not be five minutes," she said, brightly. "You'd like to go over the house? They shall bring you something to drink in the smoking-room, or here, if you like: you are lord and master."

She went up to her room, and, when she had rung for her maid, paced up and down feverishly. He had gone to that girl before he had come to her! She was racked with hate and jealousy, which was all the harder to bear because she knew she must hide them within her bosom, that no word or look of hers must let him see that she knew of her rival. Some time, after they were marred, she would tell him: but not till she was safe.

She got into her habit quickly and went down to him. He was standing where she had left him, and as she entered the room she saw before he had time to turn to her with a smile, how haggard and hara.s.sed he looked.

"You have been quick," he said.

"Yes; I am learning one of my wifely duties: not to keep my husband waiting." They went out, and Pottinger, standing by the horses, touched his hat and grew red with joy at sight of his master.

"Well, Pottinger! Glad to see you!" said Stafford; and he was genuinely glad. "You're looking well, and the horse is too. Halloo! you're put the side-saddle on Adonis," he added, as he went up and patted the horse.

Pottinger touched his hat again.

"Yes, sir; Miss Falconer's been riding him, and I did not know that I ought to change the saddle. I can do so in a minute--"

"No, no," said Stafford; "never mind. I will ride the hunter, as you have the saddle on him. You like Adonis, Maude?"

"Oh, yes," she replied. "Though I'm not quite sure he likes me," she added, with a laugh.

Stafford put her up, and noticed, with some surprise, that Adonis seemed restless and ill at ease, and that he s.h.i.+vered and shrank as he felt Maude on his back.

"What is the matter with him?" he said. "He seems fidgety. Does the saddle fit?"

"Yes, sir," said Pottinger, with a half-nervous glance at Maude, followed by the impa.s.sive expression of the trained servant who cannot speak out.

"He is troublesome sometimes," said Maude; "but I can manage him quite easily."

"Oh, yes," a.s.sented Stafford; "he is as quiet as a lamb; but he is highly bred and as highly strung."

As they were starting, Pottinger murmured:

"Don't curb him too tightly, miss."

Maude ignored the warning; and she and Stafford rode out. The rain had ceased, the clouds had pa.s.sed away, and in the joy of his nearness, her spirits rose, a feeling of triumph swelled in her bosom.

"How little I thought yesterday, even this morning, that we should be riding side by side, Stafford," she said. "How little I thought I should have you back again, my own, my very own! Don't all these months you've been away seem like a dream to you? They do to me." She drew a long breath. "Let us ride across the dale."

"You will find it wet there, had you not better keep to the road?"

"No, no," she said; "Adonis is dying for a gallop; see how he is fretting."

Stafford looked at the horse curiously. He was champing his bit and throwing up his head in a nervous, agitated manner which Stafford had never seen him display before.

"I can't make the horse out," he said, more to himself than Maude.

"Perhaps he'll be all right after a gallop."

They crossed the road at a trot, which was an uneven one on Adonis's part, and got on the moor. Maude, still in high spirit, still buoyed up by her feeling of triumph, talked continuously; telling him some of the London news, planning out their future. They would have a house in London, Stafford should take his proper place in the world; they would step back to the high position which was his by right, as a peer of the realm. Stafford was scarcely listening. A question was haunting him, a question which he could not thrust from him: he was going to marry Maude Falconer, going to take the hard and stony road of duty which Ida, in her n.o.ble way, had pointed out to him. Ought he not to tell Maude about Ida and his broken engagement to her; would it not be better for both of them, for all of them, if he were to do so? He would have to tell her that he could not live at the Villa; she would want to know the reason; would it not be better to tell her?

He raised his head to begin; when suddenly he saw, going up the hill in front of them, a horse and horsewoman. She was walking up slowly, and, long before her figure stood out against the clear sky, he saw that it was Ida. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that his heart stood still. That she should have appeared before him in his sight, at such a moment, while he was riding beside his future wife--his future wife!--filled him with bitterness. His face must have paled, or Maude must have seen him start, for she looked at him and then turned her head and looked in the direction in which his eyes were fixed. She recognised Ida instantly; the colour rushed to her face; her hand tightened on her rein spasmodically; for a moment she felt inclined to turn aside, to ride away, escape from the girl she hated and loathed.

And then she was moved by another impulse; the demon of jealousy whispered: "This is the moment of your triumph; why not enjoy it to the full; why not let her feel the bitterness of defeat? There is your rival! Let her see with her own eyes your triumph and your happiness."

The temptation was too great for her, and she yielded to it.

"Who is that riding up the hill?" she said, controlling her voice admirably. "It is Miss Heron, is it not?"

"Yes, it is," he said, as impa.s.sively as he could.

Her lips curled scornfully at his a.s.sumption of indifference. "I have seen her and met her," she said, "but I have not been introduced to her. Let us overtake her, and you can introduce me. I should like to know her."

He looked straight before him, his face grave and set.

"Is it worth while?" he said in a low voice. "Some other time--"

"Why not now?" she asked. "We can catch her quite easily."

The moment had come for him to tell her.

"Not now," he said, huskily. "I have something to tell you, Maude; something you ought to know before--before you make Miss Heron's acquaintance."

She turned to him with a low laugh.

"Do you think I don't know?" she said, between her teeth. "I have know all along! I read the letter you wrote to her--I got it--stole it, if you like--from Pottinger. I have known all along--do you not think I have been very patient, very discreet? Even now I bear no malice. I can forget the past, forget and forgive. Why should I not, seeing that I am a.s.sured of your love and good faith? You will see how completely I forget, how little importance I attach to your fancy for the girl; a fancy which I am sure you have quite outgrown. Oh, I can trust you! We will join Miss Heron by all means."

His face was dark and heavy.

"Do not, Maude, until you've heard all," he began, but with a scornful laugh that yet had something doubting and desperate in it, she sent Adonis on. He sprang forward nervously and s.h.i.+vering under a stroke from her whip, and swiftly lessened the distance between him and Rupert, who heard his approach before Ida did, and who neighed a welcome. Ida turned and saw who was following her, saw Stafford just behind, and gathering her reins together she rode Rupert quickly to the top of the hill.

"Miss Heron!" cried Maude, in a voice of covert insolence, but almost open triumph. "Miss Heron, stop, please!"

Ida did stop for a moment, then, feeling that it was impossible for her to meet them, that day, at any rate, she let Rupert go again. By this time, Stafford had almost gained Maude's side. His face was dark with anger, his teeth clenched tightly. He knew that Maude intended to flaunt her possession of him before Ida. In a low but perfectly distinct voice, he said:

"Stop, Maude! Do not follow her." She looked over her shoulder at him, her face flushed, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"Why not?" she demanded, scornfully. "Is she afraid, or is it you who are afraid? Both, perhaps? We shall see!"

Before he could catch her rein she had struck Adonis twice with the sharp, cutting whip, and with a shake of his head and a snort of rage and resentment, he stood on his haunches for a moment, then leapt forward and began to race down the hill. Stafford saw that the horse had bolted, either from fear or anger; he knew that it would only increase Maude's peril if he galloped in pursuit behind her; he, therefore, checked his horse and made, in a slanting line, for a point towards which he judged Adonis would go. Maude was swaying in her saddle, in which she could only keep herself by clutching at the pommel; it seemed every moment as if she must fall, as if the horse itself must fall and throw her like a stone down the steep hill.

Ida, the moment she had got over the top of the hill, had ridden quickly, and, of course, quite fearlessly and safely, and had got Rupert so well in hand, as usual, that when she heard the clatter behind her, and, turning, saw the peril in which Maude had put herself, she was able to pull Rupert up. It was almost a repet.i.tion of what had occurred the other day; but this time Maude Falconer's peril was infinitely greater; for her horse was half mad and tearing down the steep hill-side, rendered doubly dangerous by the loose stones, and was all too evidently indifferent whether he stood or fell. And yet another risk lay just below; for William had been digging in that spot for stones to mend the bank, and even if the maddened horse saw the hole, it was more than probable that he would not be able to pull up in time.

Such moments as these form the criterion of true courage. There was only one way in which Ida could save, or attempt to save, the white-faced woman who was drawing towards her at breakneck speed. What she would have to attempt to do would be to ride straight for the oncoming horse, swerve almost as she reached it, and keep side by side with it until she could succeed either in turning it away from that horrible hole, or stop it by throwing it. She did not hesitate for a moment.

It may be said in all truth that at that moment she forgot that the woman whose life she was going to save was Maude Falconer; she did not realise the fact--or, if she did, she was indifferent to it--that she was risking her own life to save the woman who had robbed her of Stafford. There was the life to be saved, and that was enough for Ida.

She slipped her foot almost out of the stirrup, felt Rupert's mouth firmly but gently, leant forward and whispered a word to him, which it is very likely he understood--perhaps he saw all the game even before she did--and, with an encouraging touch of her hand, she let him go.

He sprang forward like an arrow from the bow. As they drew near the flying horse, Ida s.h.i.+fted her whip to her left hand, so that her right should be free, and, leaning as far in the saddle as she could with safety, she made a s.n.a.t.c.h at Adonis's rein at the moment she came alongside him. She would have caught the rein, she might have stopped the horse or turned it aside--G.o.d alone knows!--but as her fingers almost grasped it, Maude, steadied in her seat by the nearness of her would-be rescuer, raised her whip and struck Ida across the bosom and across the outstretched hand. The blow, in its finish, fell on Adonis's reeking neck. With a snort he tore away from the other horse and swept onwards, with Maude once again swaying in her saddle. Ida gazed at her in speechless terror for an instant, then, as if she could look no longer, she flung up her arm across her eyes.

A moment afterwards a cry, a shrill scream, that rang in her ears for many a day afterwards, rose above the clatter of Adonis's hoofs, and before the cry had died away horse and rider had fallen with awful force into and across the hole. Then came a dead silence, broken only by the sound of the horse's iron shoes as he kicked wildly and pawed in a vain attempt to rise. Ida rode up, and flinging herself to the ground, tried to approach the struggling animal. But, indeed, it was horror and not fear that struck her motionless for a moment; for horse and rider were mixed in awful confusion, and already Maude Falconer's graceful form was stained with blood, and battered by the madly kicking animal, now in its death-throes.

An instant after, before she could recover from her paralysis of terror--the whole affair was one of a moment and had pa.s.sed as quickly as a flitting cloud--Stafford was by her side, and at work extricating woman from horse. It was not an easy task, for though Adonis was now dead, a part of Maude's body lay under his shoulder; but with utmost herculean strength Stafford succeeded in getting her clear, and lifted her out of the hole on to the gra.s.s. Kneeling beside him, Ida, calm now, but trembling, raised Maude's head on her knee and wiped the blood from the beautiful face. Its loveliness was not marred, there was no bruise or cut upon it, the blood having flown from a wound just behind the temple.