"I almost wish for death now. What your mother and I have to live for, G.o.d only knows."
"Hush, John, hush! Don"t talk so. Richard will forget his idle ways, and be a blessing to us yet. Remember how we have spoiled him."
"There, there, mother, let him have it out. There"s no use reasoning with him when his back is up," said the young man, stretching himself more comfortably and turning a belligerent look on the father.
Mrs. Storms bent over her son, greatly troubled.
"Don"t anger your father, d.i.c.k. He was planning kindly for you."
"Planning what?--to keep me tied down here all my life?"
"If I have tried to do that," said the old man, "it came from more love than I felt like talking about. Your mother and I haven"t many pleasures now, and when you are away so much we feel lonesome."
d.i.c.k turned in his chair and looked keenly at the old man, amazed by his unusual gentleness. The lines that seemed hard as steel in his young face relaxed a little.
"Why couldn"t you have talked like that oftener, and made it a little more pleasant at home? One must have something of life. You know that as well as I do, father."
"Yes; your mother and I have been making allowances for that. Maybe things might have been managed for the better all along; but we must make the best of it now. As your mother says, a well-to-do man"s only son should make something better of himself than a farm drudge; so we won"t quarrel about it. Only be careful that the la.s.s your mother and I have set our hearts on gets no evil news of you, or we shall have trouble there."
Richard laughed at this and answered with an air of bravado, "No fear, no fear. The girl is too fond of me."
"But her father is a skittish man to deal with, once his back is up, and you will find it hard managing the la.s.s: let him see you with them terriers at your heels, and he"ll soon be off the bargain."
"If you are troubled about that, kick the dogs into the street and sell the game-chickens, if they crowd mother"s bantams out. How can a dutiful son do more than that?"
"Ah, now you talk like a sensible lad! Make good time, and when you bring the la.s.s home, mother and I will have a bit of a cottage on the land, and mayhap you will be master here."
"Is he in earnest, mother?"
"I think he is."
"And you, father?"
"For once I mean that your mother shall take her own way: mine has led to this."
The old man looked at the clock, and then on the wet marks of the dogs" feet on the kitchen floor, with grave significance.
Young Storms laughed a low, unpleasant laugh, which had nothing of genuine hilarity in it.
"You are right, father. We should only have gone from bad to worse. I don"t take to hard work, but the other thing suits me exactly. You"ll see that I shall come up to time in that."
Just then the old clock struck one with a hoa.r.s.e, angry clang, as if wrathful that the morning should be encroached upon in that house.
Mrs. Storms took up one of the candles and gave it to her son.
"Good-night, my son," she said, looking from the clock to her husband with pathetic tenderness in her voice. "d.i.c.k, you can kiss me good-night as you used to when I went to tuck up your bed in the winter. It"ll seem like old times, won"t it, husband? Shake hands with your father, too. It isn"t many men as would give up as he has."
The young man kissed his mother, with some show of feeling, and shook hands with his father in a hesitating way; but altogether his manner was so conciliatory that it touched those honest hearts with unusual tenderness.
"You see what kindness can do with him," said Mrs. Storms, as she stood on the hearth with the other candlestick in her hand, while her husband raked up the fire. "He has gone up to bed with a smile on his face."
"People are apt to smile when they get their own way," muttered the old man, who was half ashamed of his concession. "But I have no idea of taking anything back. You needn"t be afraid of that. The young man shall have his chance."
A sob was the only answer he got. Looking over his shoulder, as he put the shovel in its corner, he saw that tears were streaming down the old woman"s face.
"Why, what are you crying about, mother?"
"I am so thankful."
The good woman might have intended to say more, but she broke off suddenly, and the words died on her lips. The candle she held was darkened, and she saw that the wick was broadening at the top like a tiny mushroom, forming that weird thing called a "corpse-light" in the midst of the blaze.
"What is the matter? What are you afraid of?" said the farmer, wondering at the paleness in his wife"s face.
"Look," she said, pointing to the heavy wick. "It seems to have come all of a sudden."
"Only that?" said the old man, scornfully, snuffing out the corpse-light with his thumb and finger.
A shudder pa.s.sed over the woman as those h.o.r.n.y fingers closed on the corpse-light and flung it smoking into the ashes.
The old man had no sympathy with superst.i.tions, and spoke to his wife more sharply than was kind, after the double fright that had shaken her nerves. Perhaps this thought came over him, for he patted her arm with his rough hand, awkwardly enough, not being given to much display of affection, and told her that she had for once got her own way, and mustn"t be frightened out of what sleep was left for them between that and daylight by a smudge of soot in the candle.
"You can"t expect candles to burn after midnight without crumpling up their wicks," he said, philosophically: "so come to bed. The lad is sound asleep by this time, I dare say."
These kind arguments did not have the desired effect, for the mother"s eyes were full of tears, and her hand quivered under the weight of the candlestick, spite of all her efforts to conceal it from the observation of her husband.
In less than ten minutes the farmer was asleep, but his wife, being of a finer and more sensitive nature, could not rest. Like most countrywomen of her cla.s.s, she mingled some degree of superst.i.tion even with her most religious thoughts. Notwithstanding her terror occasioned by the snarling dog, she might have slept well, for the scene that had threatened to end in rageful a.s.sault had subsided in unexpected concession; but the funereal blackness in that candle coming so close upon her fright completely unnerved her. Certain it is no sleep came to those weary eyes. Close them as she would, that unseemly light glared upon them, and to her weird imagination seemed to point out some danger for her son.
At last the poor woman was seized with a desperate yearning of motherhood, which had often led her to her son"s room when the helplessness of infancy or the perils of sickness appealed to her--a yearning that drew her softly from her bed. Folding a shawl over her night dress, she mounted the stairs and entered the chamber where the young man lay in slumber so profound that he was quite unconscious of her presence; for neither conscience nor tenderness ever took growth enough in his nature to disturb an animal want of any kind. But the light of a waning moon lay upon his face, so the woman fell upon her knees, and gazing on those features, which might not have seemed in any degree perfect to another, soothed herself into prayer, and, out of the tranquillity that brings, into the sleep her nature craved so much.
The morning light found her kneeling thus, with her cheek resting on his hand, which, in her tender unconsciousness, she had stolen and hidden away there.
CHAPTER V.
CONFESSING HIS LOVE.
"Norston"s Rest" was now in a state of comparative quiet. The throng of visitors that had made the place so brilliant had departed, and, for the first time in months, Sir Noel could enjoy the company of his son with a feeling of restfulness; for now the discipline of school and college lay behind the young man, and he was ready to begin life in earnest. After travelling a while on the continent he had entered upon the dignity of heir-ship with all the pomp and splendor of a great ovation, into which he had brought so much of kindly memory and generous purpose that his popularity almost rivalled the love and homage with which his father was regarded.
Sir Noel was a proud man--so proud that the keenest critic must have failed to discover one trace of the arrogant self-a.s.sumption that so many persons are ready to display as a proof of superiority. With Sir Noel this feeling was a delicate permeation of his whole being, natural to it as the blue blood that flowed in his veins, and as little thought of. Profound self-respect rendered encroachment on the reserve of another simply impossible. During the stay of his son at "The Rest" one fond hope had possessed the baronet, and that grew out of his intense love of two human beings that were dearest to him on earth--the young heir and Lady Rose Hubert.
It could not be a.s.serted that ambition led to this wish; though the lady"s rank was of the highest, and she was the inheritor of estates that made her a match even for the heir of "Norston"s Rest." The baronet in the isolation of his long widowerhood had found in this fair girl all that he could have desired in a daughter of his own. Her delicacy of bloom and beauty appealed to his aesthetic taste. Her gayety and the spirituelle sadness into which it sometimes merged gave his home life a delightful variety. He could not think of her leaving "The Rest" without a pang such as n.o.ble-hearted fathers feel when they give away their daughters at the altar. To Sir Noel, Lady Rose was the brightest and most perfect being on earth, and the great desire of his heart was that she should become his daughter in fact, as she already was in his affections.
Filled with this hope he had watched with some anxiety for the influence this young lady"s loveliness might produce upon his son, without in any way intruding his wishes into the investigation; for, with regard to the perfect freedom which every heart should have to choose a companionship of love for itself, this old patrician was peculiarly sensitive. Having in his own early years suffered, as few men ever had, by the uprooting of one great hope, he was peculiarly anxious that no such abiding calamity should fall on the only son and heir of his house, but he was not the less interested in the choice that son might make when the hour of decision came. With all his liberality of sentiment it had never entered the thoughts of the baronet that a man of his race could choose ign.o.bly, or look beneath the rank in which he was born. To him perfect liberty of choice was limited, by education and family traditions, to a selection among the highest and the best in his own proud sphere of life. Thus it became possible that his sentiments, uttered under this unexplained limitation, might be honestly misunderstood.
Some months had pa.s.sed since the young heir had taken up his home at "The Rest"--pleasant months to the baronet, who had looked forward to this period with the longing affection which centred everything of love and pride on this one human being that man can feel for man. At first it had been enough of happiness that his son was there, honored, content--with an unclouded and brilliant future before him--but human wishes are limitless, and the strong desire that the young man should anchor his heart where his own wishes lay grew into a pleasant belief.
How could it be otherwise, when two beings so richly endowed were brought into the close companionship of a common home?