Only One Love, or Who Was the Heir Part 2

"Lost his way," murmured the woman, as she lifted a saucepan from the fire, "and a gentleman. It is a rare sight in Warden Forest. Why, Gideon, what has happened to thee?" and saucepan in hand, she stared at her husband's cloudy brow.

"Tut--nothing!" he answered, thrusting a projecting log into the fire with his foot. "The young man's face seemed--as I thought--'twas but a pa.s.sing fancy--but I thought it was familiar. It was the voice more than the face. And a bold face it was. I wish," he broke off, "that the la.s.s would come in. From to-night I will have no more wanderings after sunset! One stranger follows another, and it is not safe for her to be out so late----"

"Hus.h.!.+" interrupted the woman, holding up a forefinger. "Here she comes."

"Not a word!" said Gideon, warningly.

As he spoke the door opened, the dog bounded in with a short yelp of satisfaction, and close behind him, framed like a picture in the dark doorway, stood a young girl.

CHAPTER II.

She had evidently run some distance, for she stood panting and breathless, the color coming and going on her face, which shone out of the hood which half covered her head.

She was dressed in a plain cotton dress which a woodman's daughter might wear, and which was short enough in the skirt to reveal a shapely foot, and scant enough in the sleeves to show a white, shapely arm.

But no one would have wasted time upon either arm or foot after a glance at her face.

To write it down simply and curtly, it was a beautiful face; but such a description is far too meager and insufficient. It requires an artist, a Rembrandt or a Gainsborough, to describe it, no pen-and-ink work can do it. Beautiful faces can be seen by the score by anyone who chooses to walk through Hyde Park in the middle of the season, but such a face as this which was enframed by the doorway of the woodman's hut is not seen in twenty seasons.

It was a face which baffles the powers of description, just as a sunset sky laughs to scorn the brush of the ablest painter. It was neither dark nor fair, neither grave nor sad, though at the moment of its entrance a smile played over it as the moonbeams play over a placid lake.

To catalogue in dry matter-of-fact fas.h.i.+on, the face possessed dark brown eyes, bright brown hair, and red, ripe lips; but no catalogue can give the spirit of the face, no description convey an idea of the swift and eloquent play of expression which, like a flash of sunlight, lit up eyes and lips.

Beautiful! The word is hackneyed and worn out. Here was a face more than beautiful, it was soulful. Like the still pool in the heart of a wood, it mirrored the emotion of the heart as faithfully as a gla.s.s would reflect the face. Like a gla.s.s--joy, sorrow, pleasure, mirth, were reflected in the eloquent eyes and mobile lips.

Of concealment the face was entirely ignorant; no bird of the forest in which she lived could be more frank, innocent of guile, and ignorant of evil.

With her light summer cloak held round her graceful figure, she stood in the doorway, a picture of grace and youthful beauty.

For a moment she stood silent, looking from the woodman to his wife questioningly, then she came into the room and threw the hood back, revealing a shapely head, s.h.i.+ning, bronze-like, in the light of the lamp.

"Did you send d.i.c.k for me, father?" she said, and her voice, like her face, betokened a refinement uncommon in a woodman's daughter. "I was not far off, only at the pool to hear the frogs' concert. d.i.c.k knows where to find me now, he comes straight to the pond, though he hates frogs' music; don't you, d.i.c.k?"

The dog rubbed his nose against her hand and wagged his tail, and the girl took her seat at the table.

To match face and voice, her mien and movements were graceful, and she handled the dinner-napkin like--a lady. It was just that, expressed in a word. The girl was not only beautiful--but a lady, in appearance, in tone, in bearing--and that, notwithstanding she wore a plain cotton gown in a woodman's hut, and called the woodman "father."

"You did not come by your usual path, father," she said, turning from the deerhound, who sat on his haunches and rested his nose in her lap, quite content if her hand touched his head, say once during the meal.

"No, Una," he replied, and though he called her by her Christian name, and without any prefix there was a subtle undertone in his voice and in his manner of addressing her, which seemed to infer something like respect. "No, I went astray."

"And you were late," she said. "Was anything the matter?" she added, turning her eyes upon him, with, for the first time, an air of interrogation.

"Matter? No," he said, raising himself and coming to the table. "What should be? Yes, I came home by another path, and I don't think you must come to meet me after dark, Una," he added, with affected carelessness.

"No?" she asked, looking from one to the other with a smile of surprise.

"Why not? Do you think I should get lost, or have you seen any wolves in Warden Forest, father? I know every path from end to end, and wolves have left merry England forever."

"Not quite," said Gideon, absently.

"Yes, quite," and she laughed. "What Saxon king was it who offered fivepence for every wolf's head? We were reading about it the other night, don't you remember?"

"Reading! you are always reading," said the woman, as she put a smoking dish on the table, and speaking for the first time. "It's books, books, from morn to night, and your father encourages you. The books will make thee old before thy time, child, and put no pence in thy father's pocket."

"Poor father!" she murmured, and leaning forward, put her arms round his neck. "I wish I could find in the poor, abused books the way to make him rich."

Gideon had put up his rough hand to caress the white one nestling against his face, but he let his hand drop again and looked at her with a slight cloud on his brow.

"Rich! who wants to be rich? The word is on your lips full oft of late, Una. Do _you_ want to be rich?"

"Sometimes," she answered. "As much for your sake as mine. I should like to be rich enough for you to rest, and"--looking round the plainly furnished but comfortable room--"and a better house and clothes."

"I am not weary," he said, his eyes fixed on her with a thoughtful air of concealed scrutiny. "The cot is good enough for me, and the purple and fine linen I want none of. So much for me; now for yourself, Una?"

"For myself?" she said. "Well, sometimes I think, when I have been reading some of the books, that I should like to be rich and see the world."

"It must be such a wonderful place! Not so wonderful as I think it, perhaps, and that's just because I have never seen anything of it. Is it not strange that for all these years I have never been outside Warden?"

"Strange?" he echoed, reluctantly.

"Yes; are other girls so shut in and kept from seeing the world that one reads so pleasantly of?"

"Not all. It would be well for most of them if they were. It has been well for you. You have not been unhappy, Una?"

"Unhappy! No! How could one be unhappy in Warden? Why, it's a world in itself, and full of friends. Every living thing in it seems a friend, and an old friend, too. How long have we lived in Warden, father?"

"Eighteen years."

"And I am twenty-one. Mother told me yesterday. Where did we live before we came to Warden?"

"Don't worry your father, Una," said Mrs. Rolfe, who had been listening and looking from one to the other with ill-concealed anxiety; "he is too weary to talk."

"Forgive me, father. It was thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that you have had a hard day, while I have been idling in the wood, and over my books; it was stupid of me to trouble you. Won't you sit down again and--and I will promise not to talk."

"Say no more, Una. It grieves me to think that you might not be content, that you were not happy; if you knew as much of the world that raves and writhes outside as I do, you would be all too thankful that you are out of the monster's reach, and that all you know of it is from your books, which--Heaven forgive them--lie all too often! See now, here is something I found in Arkdale;" and as he spoke he drew from the capacious pocket of his velveteen jacket a small volume.

The girl sprang to her feet--not clumsily, but with infinite grace--and leaned over his shoulder eagerly.

"Why, father, it is the poems you promised me, and it was in your pocket all the while I was wearying you with my foolish questions."

"Tut, tut! Take your book, child, and devour it, as usual."

Once or twice Gideon looked up, roused from his reverie by the rustling of the trees as the gusts shook them, and suddenly the sky was rent by a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder, followed by the heavy rattle of the rainstorm.

"Hark at the night, father!" she said, raising her eyes from the book, but only for a moment.