Two events of unusual importance happened at "Norston"s Rest," the next day. It was given out in the village that Sir Noel and his family had gone up to the London house that the young man might be nearer his physicians, and that Lady Rose had taken Ruth Jessup with her, thinking that change of scene might soften the melancholy into which she had fallen. This sudden movement hardly found general discussion, when something more terrible filled the public mind. The body of Richard Storms had been found floating in the Black Lake, three days after Sir Noel"s departure. It had evidently risen from the depths, and become entangled in the broken timbers still swaying from the balcony. When he failed to return from the fair, as he had promised, his mother, remembering the weird visitor who had called her up in the dead of the night, betook herself to the lake, and was at last joined by the old farmer, whose distress was even greater than her own, for he had a deeper knowledge of the young man"s character, and this gave ground for fears of which she, kind woman, was made ignorant by her deep motherly love.
Thus fear-haunted, these two old people wandered about the lake day after day, until, one morning, they found a group of men upon the bank, talking solemnly together, and looking down upon the broken timbers still weltering in the water, as if some painful interest had all at once been attached to them.
When these people saw the old man and woman coming toward them, they shrunk back and left a pa.s.sage by which they could pa.s.s into the old building, but no one spoke a word.
No noise, no outcry came from those two people when they saw their only son lying upon the bench where the neighbors had laid him down; but when one of them went in, troubled by the stillness, he found the old man standing against the wall, mournful and dumb, looking upon the dead face, as if the whole world had for him been cast down there. He did not even seek to comfort the poor mother, who was kneeling by the bench, with her arms clasped about all that was left of her son, unconscious that his dripping garments were chilling her bosom through to the heart, or that the face to which she laid hers with such pathetic mournfulness had been frozen to marble in the depths of the lake.
As the kind neighbor drew near and would gladly have offered consolation, the poor old woman looked up with a piteous smile on her lips and said:
"My brave, brave lad lost his life in saving a poor creature, who would have been drowned but for him."
Then she dropped her face again, and was still as the dead she embraced; but as she spoke of her son"s bravery, those scant, hot tears that agony forces on old age came to her eyes and burned there.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
COMING HOME.
"Uncle, I have brought you a daughter."
Sir Noel looked up from the volume he was reading, and saw Lady Rose standing before him, flushed, agitated, but with a glow of exaltation in her eyes that he had never seen there before. With one arm she encircled the waist of Walton"s bride, the other hand she extended in the grace of unconscious pleading; for the young creature she more than half supported was trembling like a leaf. Touched with exquisite pity, Sir Noel arose, drew Ruth gently toward him, and kissed her on the forehead.
"We shall have Walton better now," he said, leading her to a seat.
"With two such nurses he can have no excuse for keeping ill."
"Is he so ill?" questioned Ruth, blushing crimson at the sound of her own voice. "I thought, I hoped--"
"We all hoped that the short journey up from "Norston"s Rest" would do him good rather than harm; but he has been more than usually restless," said Sir Noel. "If Lady Rose will excuse me, I will have the pleasure of taking you to his room myself."
Ruth stood up, blushing because of her own eager wishes; ready to cry because of the quiet gentleness with which her intrusion into that family had been received. Never, in all her short life, had she so keenly felt the great social barriers that she had overleaped. If reproaches and coldness had met her on the threshold of that house, she could have borne them better than the kindness with which Lady Rose had introduced her, and the gracious reception awarded her by Sir Noel; for she could not help feeling how much had been suppressed and forgiven by that proud man, before he could thus offer to present her with his own hand to his son.
When Sir Noel offered his arm, she took it for the first time in her life, with such trembling that the old man patted the hand that scarcely dared to touch him, and smiled as he looked down upon her.
They went up a flight of steps and through several rooms. The house in Grosvenor Square was by no means so s.p.a.cious as "Norston"s Rest," but the splendor of its more modern adornment would have won her admiration at another time. Now she only thought of the husband she had fled from, to whom his own father was conducting her.
Sir Noel opened a door, paused on the threshold a moment, and then went into the room where Walton Hurst was sitting.
"My son," he said, in his usual quiet voice, "you must thank Lady Rose for the surprise I bring you. It is she who has persuaded your wife to come home to us with a less ceremonious welcome than I was prepared to give."
Walton Hurst stood up like a healthy man, for astonishment had given him fict.i.tious strength; he came forward at once, reaching out both hands. Sir Noel quietly withdrew his arm from the hand that had hardly dared to rest on it, and left the room.
The marriage of Walton Hurst, only son of Sir Noel Hurst, of "Norston"s Rest," to Miss Ruth Jessup, daughter of the late William Jessup, was announced in the _Court Journal_ that week. Some few persons noticed that the usual details were omitted; but the fact itself was enough to surprise and interest society, for young Hurst was considered the best match of the season, and no one could learn more of the bride than that Sir Noel was well pleased with the match, and the young lady herself was the most intimate friend of his lovely ward, the Lady Rose.
The joy bells were ringing merrily at "Norston"s Rest." Sir Noel and Lady Rose had been down at the old mansion more than a month, and guests chosen from the brightest and highest of the land were invited to receive the young heir and his bride on their return from a brief wedding tour on the continent. Having once accepted this fair girl as his daughter, Sir Noel was a man to stand right n.o.bly by the position he had taken. Born a gardener"s daughter, she was now a Hurst, and must receive in all things the homage due a lady of "Norston"s Rest."
For this reason those joy bells were filling the valley with their sweetest music; for this the streets of the village were arched with evergreens, and school-children were busy scattering flowers along the street to be trodden down by the wheels of the carriage or the hoofs of four black horses, sent to meet the young couple at the station.
It was a holiday in the village. The tenants on the estate turned out in a body, and were to be entertained now as they had been when the young heir became of age.
The landlady of the "Two Ravens" stood at the inn door, with her arms full of yellow lilies, hollyhocks and sweetwilliams, which she lavished in gorgeous ma.s.ses on the carriage as it pa.s.sed. Hurst took up one of the flowers and gave it to the bride, who held it to her lips, and smiled pleasantly upon the good friends of her father as she pa.s.sed through them.
When the carriage drew up at "Norston"s Rest," Sir Noel came down the steps, took Ruth upon his arm, and led her across the great terrace into the hall, where Lady Rose stood ready to welcome her. In the background all the servants of the household were a.s.sembled, headed by the steward and Mrs. Mason, both quiet and reverential in their reception of the bride, as if they had never seen her before.
Still, in the good housekeeper"s face there was a proud lighting up of the countenance, that might have been traced to an inward consciousness that it was her protegee and G.o.ddaughter who was receiving all this welcoming homage; but from that day no person ever heard Mrs. Mason allude to the fact, except once, when Ruth addressed her by the old endearing t.i.tle, she said, with simple gravity:
"Do not tempt a fond old woman to forgot that she is only housekeeper to the mistress of "Norston"s Rest.""
After all the festivities were over, and Ruth was established in her new position, Lady Rose, who had been the leading spirit in every social arrangement, came to Sir Noel in his library one day. There she announced her resolve to leave "The Rest," and retire to one of her own estates in another part of England--that which she had once been willing to bestow on Richard Storms in ransom of Walton Hurst"s honor.
The old baronet received this proposal with even less composure than he had exhibited when the announcement of his son"s marriage was made to him. With grave and pathetic sadness he drew the girl toward him and kissed her on the forehead.
"I will not ask you to stay, my child," he said, holding her hands in his until both began to tremble. "I had hoped I--oh, Rose! your own father could not have parted with you more unwillingly. It will not seem like the old place without you to any of us."
"Yes, oh, yes. They are both so happy--very happy! Don"t you think so?
One is not missed much. There, there, Sir Noel, this parting with you almost makes me cry!"
It did bring tears into Sir Noel"s eyes--the first that Lady Rose had ever seen there in her life.
THE END.