Then a sound, far down in the park, startled her and she left the house absorbed and saddened. It was well for her chances of escape that the girl left Jessup"s cottage at once; for she was hardly out of sight when a group of neighbors from the funeral cortege came back, haunting those rooms with sorrowful countenances, and striving with great kindness to win the lone girl, thus suddenly made an orphan, from the terrible grief into which she had fallen.
CHAPTER LVI.
A MOTHER"S HOPEFULNESS.
Among the persons who had come to the gardener"s funeral old Mrs.
Storms was most conspicuous, not only from her high position among the tenants, but because of the relations her son was supposed to hold with the daughter, who was beloved by them all. After the funeral several neighbors offered to stay with Ruth, but in her wild wretchedness she refused them all--kindly, sweetly, as it was in her nature to do, but with a positiveness that admitted of no further urgency.
Even Mrs. Mason, who now considered herself as something more than friend or G.o.dmother, felt constrained to go away and leave the poor girl to the isolation she pleaded for; though with some little resentment at the bottom of her kind heart.
Mrs. Storms was not to be dissuaded from all kindliness so easily.
When the neighbors were gone she came into the room where Ruth was sitting, and in a gentle, motherly fashion, sat down by the mourner and strove to comfort her.
"Come," she said, taking the girl"s cold hands in the clasp of her hard-working fingers, "come, la.s.s, and stay with me. This house is so full of gloom that you will pine to death in it. Our home is large, and bright with sunshine. You shall have the lady"s chamber, which will be all your own some blessed day, G.o.d willing."
The good woman caught her breath here, for something like an electric shock flashed through the hands she clasped, and Ruth made a struggle to free herself from the thraldom of kindness that was torturing her.
"I know--I know this isn"t the time to speak of weddings; but you have no mother, and I never had a girl in the house; so if you would only come now, and be company for me--only company for the old woman--it would be better and happier for us all."
Ruth did not answer this loving appeal. She only closed her eyes and shuddered faintly. Great emotions had exhausted themselves with her.
"Be sure, Ruth, it is not my son alone who loves you. From the first I have always looked upon you as my own la.s.s, and a prettier no mother need want, or a better, either."
"No, no, you must not say that," Ruth cried out; for the anguish of these praises was more than she could bear. "He thought me pretty--he thought me good, and how have I repaid him? Oh, my father, my poor dead father, it was love for me that killed him!"
Mrs. Storms was silent a while. She understood this piteous outcry as a burst of natural grief, and gave it no deeper significance; but she felt the task of comforting the poor girl more difficult than she had imagined. What could she say that would not call forth some new cause of agitation? The subject which she had fondly trusted in seemed to give nothing but pain. Yet no hint had ever reached the woman that the attachment of her son was not more than returned by this orphaned girl. Perhaps Ruth was wounded that Richard was not there in place of his mother. With this possibility in her mind the matron renewed her kindly entreaties.
"You must not think it strange, dear, that Richard left the funeral without coming back to the cottage. It was that his heart was full of the great trouble, and he would not darken the cottage with more than you could bear. The father, too--for you must think of him as that, dear child--has well nigh broke his heart over the loss of his old friend. He"s eager as can be to have a daughter in the house, and will be good as gold to her."
Ruth did not listen to the subject of these words, but the kindly voice soothed her. This old housewife had been a good friend to her ever since she could remember, and was trying to comfort her now, as if anything approaching comfort could ever reach her life, fearfully burdened as it was. Still, there was soothing in the voice. So the matron, meeting no opposition, went on:
"We must not talk of what is closest to our hearts just yet; but the time will soon come when the old man and I will flit to some smaller home, and you shall have the house all for your two selves. It will be another place then; for Richard can afford to live more daintily than we ever cared for. The garden can be stocked with flowers and made pretty as this at the cottage. The barley-field can be seeded back to a lawn, and that parlor with the oriel window, where the good man stores his fruit, can be made rarely grand with its pictured walls and carved mantelpiece."
Still Ruth did not listen; only a fantastic and vague picture of some dream-like place was pa.s.sing through her mind, which the kind old neighbor was endeavoring to make her understand. Now and then she felt this hazy picture broken up by a jar of pain when Richard Storms was mentioned; but even that hated name was so softened by the loving, motherly voice that half its bitterness was lost.
"Tell me," said the matron, "when will you come? I made everything ready this morning before we left, hoping you would go back with us."
Ruth opened her great sad eyes, and looked into the motherly face bending over her.
"You are kind," she said, "so kind, and you were his dear friend. I know that well enough; but I cannot fix my mind on anything--only this: your voice is sweet; you are good, and wish me to do something that I cannot think of yet. Let me rest; my eyes ache with heaviness.
I have no strength for anything. This is a sad place, and I am sad like the rest; if you would leave me now, in all kindness I ask it; perhaps the good G.o.d might permit me to sleep. Since the night he died I have been fearfully awake, sitting by him, you know. Now--now I would like to be alone, quite alone. There is something I wish to ask of G.o.d."
Mrs. Storms yielded to this sad pleading, laid the girl"s hands into her lap, kissed her forehead and went away, thinking, in her motherly innocence:
"The child is worn out, dazed with her great sorrow. I can do nothing with her; but Richard will be going to the cottage, and she loves him.
Ah, who could help it, now that he is so manly and has given up the ways that we dreaded might turn to evil! She will listen to him, then John and I will have a daughter."
CHAPTER LVII.
WAITING AT THE LAKE HOUSE.
During the time that his mother was so kindly persuading Ruth to accept a home with her, Richard Storms was pacing the Lake House to and fro, like a caged animal waiting for its feeder.
The triumph of his revenge and his love seemed near at hand now.
Before Jessup"s death his power was insufficient, his influence feeble, for no one was in haste to take up a wrong which the sufferer was the first to ignore. But now the wound had done its work. A man had been shot to death, and any subject of Her Majesty had the right to call for a full investigation before a magistrate. This investigation the young man had resolved to demand.
All that the man wanted now, to complete his power of ruin, was the letter which Judith Hart had found drifting through the shrubbery on the day she had visited "Norston"s Rest," at his own suggestion, in order to get a foothold in the establishment and become his willing or unconscious spy, as he might be compelled to use her.
That letter was so important to him now that he was ready to do anything, promise anything, in order to get possession of it, and prowling around and around the old Lake House, he racked his brain for some power of inducement by which he could win it from her, and perhaps other proofs that she might find in the cottage.
Thus urged to the verge of desperation, by a thirst for revenge on young Hurst, and the craving love which Ruth Jessup had rejected with so much scorn, the young man awaited with burning impatience the coming of his dupe; for up to this time he had failed in making her entirely an accomplice.
Judith came down to the lake in great excitement. Storms saw that, as she turned from the path and waded through the long, thick rushes on the sh.o.r.e, without seeming to heed them.
"You have found something! I see that in your face," he said, as the girl darkened the Lake House door. "Give it to me, for I never was so eager to be at work. Why don"t you speak? Why don"t you tell me what it is?"
Judith pushed her way into the house and seated herself on the bench, where she sat looking at him with an expression in her eyes that seemed to forbode revolt.
"Tell me," he said, sitting down by her, "tell me what you have discovered. I hope it is something that will clear the way to our wedding, for I am getting impatient for it. Nothing but the want of that paper has kept me back so long."
The strange expression on Judith"s face softened a little. Some good was in the girl. The firm hold she had kept on Jessup"s dangerous letter had been maintained as much from reluctance to bring ruin on an innocent man as for her own security. On her way from the gardener"s cottage, she had taken a rapid survey of the situation, and for the first time felt the courage of possessed power.
"You are in terrible haste," she said, "as if the paper I have was not enough to win anything you want from Sir Noel."
"But you will not trust me with it. You do not love me well enough for that."
"I loved you well enough to give up my home, my poor old father, my good name with the neighbors, and become the meanest of servants, only to be near you," answered the girl, with deep feeling; "and I love you now, oh G.o.d, forgive me! better, better than my own wicked soul, or you never would have seen me again."
"Still you refuse to give me the one sc.r.a.p of paper that can bring us together," said Storms, reproachfully.
"If I did give it up what would you do with it?"
"Do with it! I will take it to Sir Noel, break down his pride, threaten him with the exposure of his son"s crime, and wring the lease I want from him, with enough money beside to keep my wife a lady."
"But what if I take the paper to Sir Noel, and get all these things for myself?"
For an instant Storms was startled, but a single thought restored his self-poise.
"There is one thing Sir Noel could not give you."