As if she understood the words, that mild cow walked slowly away, cropping a tuft of violets that grew by the stone fence as she went.
Storms reached out his hand for the pail.
"Shall I help you?"
"No, thank you," she answered, turning her black eyes, full of mischief, upon him. "I can do very well without."
If this was intended for a rebuff, the young man would not understand it as such. He followed her into the house, without waiting for an invitation, and remained there for more than an hour, chatting familiarly with the girl, whose rude good-humor had particular charms for him.
In a crafty but careless way he questioned her of her history and domestic life. She answered him freely enough; but there was not much to learn. Her father had come into that part of the country when she was quite a child. A mother?--Of course she had a mother once, but that was before she could remember--long before the old man came to that house, which she had kept for him from that day out.
Storms looked around the room in which they sat, and a faint, derisive smile came across his lips, for there was dust on everything, and venerable cobwebs hung in the corners.
"Wonderful housekeeping it must have been!" he thought, while the girl went on.
Did her father own the house? Of course he did; she had seen the lease--a long one--which gave it to him for almost nothing, with her own eyes. Still, that did not make him very rich, and he had to go out to day"s work for a living when farmers wanted help, and not having much strength to give, got poor wages, and sometimes no work at all.
"Was her father an old man?"
Yes, old enough to be her grandfather. Good as gold, too, for he never scolded her, and was sure to make believe he wasn"t hungry when she had no supper ready after a hard day"s work, which was often enough, for if there was anything she hated it was washing dishes and setting out tables.
"Isn"t that rather hard on your father?" questioned the young man.
Judith answered, with a heavy shrug of the shoulders, that she did not think it was, for he never did more than heave a little sigh, then take up the Bible or some other book, if he could find one, and read till bedtime.
"A book! Does he read much?" asked Storms, really surprised.
Read! Judith rather thought he did! Nothing seemed to pacify him when he was tired and hungry like a book. Where did he get the books? Why, folks were always lending them to him; especially the clergyman. She herself might never have learned to read or write if it had not been for her father; and then, what would she have done all alone in the old house from morning till night? What did she read? Why, everything that she could lay her hands on. The girls about had plenty of paper-covered books, and she always managed to get hold of them somehow. It was when she had promised to read them through in no time that her father had to go without his supper oftenest.
Storms asked to look at some of these volumes, if she had any on hand.
After a little hesitation, Judith went into the kitchen and brought a soiled novel, with half the paper cover torn off, which had been hidden under the bread-tray.
The smile deepened on the young man"s lips as he turned over the dingy pages and read a pa.s.sage here and there. After a while he lifted his eyes, full of sinister light, to hers, and asked if her father knew that she read these books so much.
The girl laughed, and said that she wasn"t likely to tell him, when he thought she was busy with the tracts and history books that he left for her. Then she gave a little start, and looked anxiously out of the window, saying, with awkward hesitation, that her father was working for the clergyman that day, and might come home early.
Storms arose at once. He had no wish to extend the pleasant acquaintance he was making to the old man, if he was "good as gold."
As he pa.s.sed into the lane, the cow, that was daintily cropping the gra.s.s on one side, lifted her head and followed him with her great, earnest eyes, that seemed to question his presence there as if she had been human.
He took a step out of the way and patted her on the neck, at which she tossed her head and wheeled up a bank, evidently not liking the caresses of a stranger.
CHAPTER III.
WAITING AND WATCHING.
That night, long after the party at "Norston"s Rest" had returned from the hunt, John Storms, a farmer on the estate, who stood at the door of his house chafing and annoyed by the disappearance of his son with the new horse that had just been purchased, heard an unequal tramping of hoofs and a strange sound of pain from the neighboring stable-yard.
Taking a lantern, for it was after dark, he went out and was startled by the limping approach of the poor hunter, that had found its way home and was wandering about the enclosure with the bridle dragging under his feet, and empty stirrups swinging from the torn saddle.
The old man had been made sullen and angry enough by the unauthorized disappearance of his son with the new purchase; but when he saw the empty saddle and disabled condition of the lamed animal, a sudden panic seized upon him. He hurried into the house with strange pallor on his sunburned face and a tremor of the knees, which made him glad to drop into a chair when he reached the kitchen, where his wife was moving about her work with the same feverish restlessness that had ended so painfully with him.
The woman, startled by his appearance, came up to him in subdued agitation.
"It is only that the new beast has come home lamed, and with the saddle empty," he said, in reply to her look. "I must go to the village, or find some of the grooms. Keep up a good heart, dame, till I come back."
"Is he hurt? Oh, John! is there any sign that our lad has come to harm?" questioned the poor woman, shaking from head to foot, as she supported herself by the back of the chair from which her husband started in haste to be off.
"I will soon know--I will soon know"--was his answer. "G.o.d help us!"
"G.o.d help us!" repeated the woman, dropping helplessly down into the chair, as her husband put on his hat and went hurriedly through the door; and there she sat trembling until another sound of pain, that seemed mournfully human, reached her from the stable-yard.
This appeal to her compa.s.sion divided somewhat the agony of her fears, and strengthened her for kindly exertion. "Poor beast," she thought, "no one is taking care of him."
She looked around; no aid was near. The tired farm-hands had gone to bed, or wandered off to the village. She was rather glad of that. It was something that she could appease her own anxiety by giving help to anything in distress. Taking up the lantern, which was still alight, she went toward the stable, and there limping out of the darkness met the wounded horse. An active housewife like Mrs. Storms required no help in relieving the animal of its trappings. She unbuckled the girth, took off the saddle, and pa.s.sed her hand gently down the fore leg, that shrunk and quivered even under that slight touch.
"It is a sprain, and a bad one," she thought, leading the poor beast into his stall, where he lay down wearily; "but no bones are broken.
Oh, if he could only speak now and tell me if my lad is alive--or--or--Oh, my G.o.d, have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me!"
Here the poor woman leaned her shoulder against the side of the stall, and a burning moisture broke into her eyes, filling them with pain; for this woman was given to endurance, and, with such, weeping is seldom a relief; but looking downward at the pathetic and almost human appeal in the great wild eyes of the wounded horse, tears partaking of compa.s.sion as well as grief swelled into drops and ran down her face in comforting abundance. So, patting the poor beast on his soiled neck, she went to the house again and heating some decoction of leaves that she gathered from under the garden wall, came back with her lantern and bathed the swollen limb until the horse laid his head upon the straw, and bore the slackened pain with patience.
It was a pity that some other work of mercy did not present itself to a.s.suage the suspense that was becoming almost unendurable to a woman waiting to know of the life or death of her only son. She could not sit down in her accustomed place and wait, but turned from the threshold heart-sick, and, still holding the lantern, wandered up and down a lane that ran half a mile before it reached the highway--up and down until it seemed to her as if unnumbered hours had pa.s.sed since she had seen her husband go forth to learn whether she was a childless mother or not. "Would he never come?"
She grew weary at last, and went into the house, looking older by ten years than she had done before that shock came, and there she sat, perfectly still, gazing into the fire. Once or twice she turned her eyes drearily on a wicker basketful of work, where a sock, she had been darning before her husband came in, lay uppermost, with a threaded darning needle thrust through the heel, but it seemed ages since she had laid the work down, and she had no will to take it up; for the thought that her son might never need the sock again pierced her like a knife.
Turning from the agony of this thought she would fasten her sad eyes on the smouldering coals as they crumbled into ashes, starting and shivering when some chance noise outside awoke new anguish of expectation.
The sound she dared not listen for came at last. A man"s footstep, slow and heavy, turned from the lane and paused at the kitchen door.
She did not move, she could not breathe, but sat there mute and still, waiting.
The door opened, and John Storms entered the kitchen where his wife sat. She was afraid to look on his face, and kept her eyes on the fire, shivering inwardly. He came across the room and laid his hand on her shoulder. Then she gave a start, and looked in her husband"s face: it was sullenly dark.
"He is not dead?" she cried out; seeing more anger than grief in the wrathful eyes. "My son is not dead?"
"No, not dead; keep your mind easy about that; but he and I will have a reckoning afore the day breaks, and one he shall remember to his dying day. So I warn you keep out of it for this time: I mean to be master now."
Here Storms seated himself in an empty chair near the fire, and stretching both feet out on the hearth, thrust a hand into each pocket of his corduroy dress. With the inconsistency of a rough nature, he had allowed the anguish and fright that had seized upon him with the first idea of his son"s danger to harden into bitterness and wrath against the young man, the moment he learned that all his apprehensions had been groundless. Even the pale, pitiful face of his wife had no softening effect upon him.
"He is alive--but you say nothing more. Tell me is our son maimed--is he hurt?"
"Hurt! He deserves to have his neck broken. I tell you the lad is getting beyond our management--wandering about after the gentry up yonder as if he belonged with them; going after the hunt and almost getting his neck broke on the new horse that fell short of his leap at a wall with a ditch on t"other side, that the best hunter in Sir Noel"s stables couldn"t"a" cleared."
"Oh, father! you heard that; but was he much hurt? Why didn"t they bring him home at once?" cried the mother, with a fever of dread in her eyes.