"I saw you, child, but had no heart to make you more sorrowful."
"Did you think him so fearfully dangerous, then?" questioned the lady, with terror in her blue eyes. "I tried to persuade myself that it was only my fears. Every morning I came out and gathered such quant.i.ties of flowers for his room, but he never once noticed them, or me--"
"You! Have you seen him, then?"
A flood of crimson swept that fair face, and the white lids drooped over the eyes that sunk beneath his.
"No--no one else could arrange the flowers as he liked them. Once or twice--but only when his eyes were closed. I never once disturbed him."
"Dear child, how he ought to love you!"
Sir Noel kissed the crimson forehead, which drooped down to the girl"s uplifted hands, and he knew that the flush, which had first been one of maiden shame, was deepened by coming tears.
"There, there, my child, we must not grieve when the doctors give us hope for the first time. He is sleeping, they tell me, a calm, natural sleep. Go, and arrange these flowers after your own dainty fashion. He will notice them when he awakes. Already he has called the doctor by name."
"Oh, uncle! dear, dear guardian, is it so?"
The girl fell upon her knees by a great easy-chair that stood by, and the blossoms, no longer supported by her hand, fell in glowing ma.s.ses around her as she gave way to such happy sobs as had never shaken her frame before. At last she looked up, smiling through her tears.
"Is it really, really true?" she questioned, shaking the drops from her face.
"Go, and see for yourself, Rose."
"But he might awake, he might know."
"That an angel is in his room? Well, it will do him no harm, nor you either."
Lady Rose looked down at the flowers that lay scattered around her, and gathered them into the muslin of her dress again. She was smiling, now, yet trembling from head to foot. Would he know her? Would the perfume of her flowers awaken some memory in his mind of the days when they had made play-houses in the thickets, and pelted each other with roses, in childish warfare? How cold and distant he had been to her of late! Would he awake to his old self? Would she ever be able to approach him again without that miserable shrinking sensation?
"Sir Noel," she said, "I think my own father would never have been so kind to me as you are."
"I am glad you think so, child, for that was what I promised him on his death-bed. That and more, which G.o.d grant I may be able to carry out."
"I cannot remember him," said Lady Rose, shaking her head, as if weary with some mental effort.
"No; he left us when you were a little child. But we must not talk of this now."
"I know! I know! Just a moment since I was in such haste. Now I feel like putting it off. Isn"t it strange?"
Sir Noel understood better than that fair creature herself the significance of all these tremors and hesitations. Now that his first fears were at rest, they both touched and amused him, and a smile rose to his lips as she glided from the room, leaving a cloud of sweet odors behind her.
Into this delicate perfume old farmer Storms came a few minutes after, looking stolid, grim, and clumsily awkward. The nails of his heavy shoes sunk into the carpet at every step, and his fustian garments contrasted coa.r.s.ely with the rich cushions and sumptuous draperies of the room.
"Well, Sir Noel, I"ve come about the new lease, if you"ve no objection. I want your word upon it; being o"er anxious on the young man"s account."
"Why, Storms, has there been any disagreement between you and the bailiff? It has always been my orders that the old tenants should have preference when a lease dropped in."
"Well, as to that, Sir Noel, it isn"t so much the lease itself that troubles one; but d.i.c.k and I want it at a lighter rent, and we would like a new house on the grounds agin the time when the lad will get wed, and want a roof of his own. That is what we"ve been thinking of, Sir Noel."
"A new house?" said Sir Noel, astonished. "Why, Storms, yours is the best on the place. It was built for a dower house."
"Aye, aye! I know that; but as our d.i.c.k says, no house is big enough or good enough for two families. The lad is looking up in the world a bit of late. He means to take more land; that is why I come about the lease; and we shall give up our home to him and his wife."
"Indeed!" said Sir Noel. "What has he been doing to warrant this extraordinary start in the world?"
"Something that he means to keep to himself yet a while, he says, but it is sure, if things turn out rightly. So I want a promise of the lease, and all the other things, while the iron is hot. He told me to say nothing about it, only to ask, in a civil way, if the young master had come to his senses yet, or was likely to. He is awful fond of the young master, is my son, and sends me o"er, or comes himself to the lodge every day to hear about him. He would be put about sorely if he knew that I had let on about the house just yet; but I can see no good in waiting. You will kindly bear it in mind that we shall want a deal more than the lease. d.i.c.k says he"s sure to have it, one way or another; and a rare lad for getting his own will is our d.i.c.k."
There was something strange in the extravagance of this request, that made the baronet thoughtful. He felt the stolid a.s.sumption of the old man, but did not resent it. Some undercurrent of apprehension kept him prudent. He only replied quietly, "Well, Storms, the lease is not out yet. There is plenty of time," and, with a wave of the hand, dismissed the old man.
In the hall Storms was astonished to find his son waiting, apparently careless, though his eyes gleamed with suppressed wrath. He followed the old man out, and once under the shelter of the park, turned upon him.
"What were you doing in there?"
"Nothing, d.i.c.k! Only asking after the young master, and talking a bit with the baronet."
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
SHARPER THAN A SERPENT"S TOOTH.
Young Storms was very restless after his midnight interview with Judith Hart, and became feverishly so when he discovered that the elder Storms had begun to move in his affairs more promptly than he desired. He walked on by the old farmer with a frown on his face, and only spoke when his own footsteps bore him ahead of the stronger and more deliberate stride, which goaded his impatience into anger. There was, indeed, a striking contrast between the two men, which even a difference in age could not well account for. Old Storms was a stoutish man, round in the shoulders, slouching in his walk, and of a downcast countenance, in which a good deal of inert ability lay dormant. There was something of the son"s cunning in his eye, and animal craving about the mouth, but if the keen venom which repulsed you in the younger man ever existed in the father, it had become too sluggish for active wickedness, except, perhaps, as the subordinate of some more powerful nature.
That nature the old man had fostered in his own family, of which Richard was the absolute head, before he became of legal age. If the old man had been a tyrant over the boy, as many fathers of his cla.s.s are supposed to be in the mother land, Richard avenged his youth fully when it merged into manhood. As the two walked together across the park, toward their own farm, it was pitiful to see such gleams of anxiety in that old man"s eyes, whenever they were furtively lifted to the stern face of the son.
Once, when d.i.c.k got ahead of his father, walking swiftly in his wiry activity, he paused, and cut a sapling up by the roots with his heavy pruning-knife, and stood, with a grim smile on his face, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g off the small branches, and measuring it into a slender walking-stick.
"Art doing that for me, lad?" said the old man, in a voice that did not sound quite natural. "Nay, nay, I am not old enough for a stick yet a while. My old bones aren"t so limber as thine, maybe; but they"ll do for me many a year yet, never fear."
The young man made no answer, but smiled coldly, as he shook the sapling with a vigor that made the air whistle around him. Then he walked on, polishing up the knots daintily with his knife as he moved.
"More"n that," continued the old man, eying his son wistfully; "there isn"t toughness enough there for a walking-stick, which should be something to lean on."
"It"ll do," answered d.i.c.k, closing his knife, and thrusting it deep into his pocket. "It"ll do, for want of a better."
"Ha, ha," laughed the old man, so hoa.r.s.ely that his voice seemed to break into a timid bark. "That was what I used ter say when you were a lad, and I made you cut sticks to be lathered with. Many a time the twig that you brought wouldn"t hurt a dormouse. Ah, lad, lad, you were always a cunning one."
"Was I?" said d.i.c.k. "Well, beating begets cunning, I dare say."
By this time they were getting into the thick of the wilderness, a portion of the park little frequented, and in which the lonely lake we have spoken of lay like a pool of ink, the shadows fell so blackly upon it.
Here Richard verged out of the usual path, and struck through the most gloomy portion of the woods. After a moment"s hesitation, the old man followed him, muttering that the other path was nearest, but that did not matter.
When the two had left the lake behind them, Richard stopped, and wheeling suddenly around, faced his father.
"Now, once for all, tell me what took you to "The Rest" this morning; for, mark me, I"m bound to know."