Lord Bertie needed a strong hand; as his son-in-law, Mr. Huntingdon thought that he could keep him in order. The boy was certainly in love with Nea. He must come to an understanding with him. True, he was only a second son; but his brother, Lord Leveson, was still a bachelor, and rather shaky in his health. The family were not as a rule long-lived; they were const.i.tutionally and morally weak; and the old earl had already had a touch of paralysis. Yes, Mr. Huntingdon thought it would do; and there was Groombridge Hall for sale, he thought he would buy that; it should be his wedding-gift--part of the rich dowry that she would bring to her husband.
Mr. Huntingdon planned it all as he rode down to the city that morning, and it never entered his mind what Nea would say to his choice. His child belonged to him. She was part of himself. Hitherto his will had been hers. True, he had denied her nothing; he had never demanded even a trifling sacrifice from her; there was no fear that she would cross his will if he told her seriously that he had set his heart on this marriage; and he felt no pity for the motherless young creature, who in her beauty and innocence appealed so strongly to his protection. In his strange nature love was only another form of pride; his egotism made him incapable of unselfish tenderness.
Nea little knew of the thoughts that filled her father"s mind as she watched him fondly until both horse and rider had disappeared.
It was one of those days in the early year when the spring seems to rush upon the world as though suddenly new born, when there is all at once a delicious whisper and rustle of leaves, and the sunshine permeates everything; when the earth wakes up fresh, green, and laden with dews; and soft breezes, fragrant with the promise of summer, come stealing into the open windows. Nea looked like the embodiment of spring as she stood there in her white gown. Below her was the cool green garden of the square where she had played as a child, with the long morning shadows lying on the gra.s.s; around her were the twitterings of the house-martins and the cheeping of sparrows under the eaves; from the distance came the perfumy breath of violets.
Such days make the blood course tumultuously through the veins of youth, when with the birds and all the live young things that sport in the sunshine, they feel that mere existence is a joy and a source of endless grat.i.tude.
"Who so happy as I?" thought Nea, as she tripped through the great empty rooms of Belgrave House, with her hands full of golden primroses; "how delicious it is only to be alive on such a morning."
Alas for that happy spring-tide, for the joyousness and glory of her youth. Little did Nea guess as she flitted, like a white b.u.t.terfly, from one flower vase to another, that her spring-tide was already over, and that the cloud that was to obscure her life was dawning slowly in the east.
CHAPTER VIII.
MAURICE TRAFFORD.
I have no reason than a woman"s reason; I think him so, because I think him so.
SHAKESPEARE.
Before noon there was terror and confusion in Belgrave House. Nea, flitting like a humming-bird from flower to flower, was suddenly startled by the sound of heavy jolting footsteps on the stairs, and, coming out on the corridor, she saw strange men carrying the insensible figure of her father to his room. She uttered a shrill cry and sprung toward them, but a gentleman who was following them put her gently aside, and telling her that he was a doctor, and that he would come to her presently, quietly closed the door.
Nea, sitting on the stairs and weeping pa.s.sionately, heard from a sympathizing bystander the little there was to tell.
Mr. Huntingdon had met with an accident in one of the crowded city lanes. His horse had shied at some pa.s.sing object and had thrown him--here Nea uttered a low cry--but that was not all.
His horse had flung him at the feet of a very Juggernaut, a mighty wagon piled with wool bales nearly as high as a house. One of the leaders had backed on his haunches at the unexpected obstacle; but the other, a foolish young horse, reared, and in another moment would certainly have trodden out the brains of the insensible man, had not a youth--a mere boy--suddenly rushed from the crowded footpath and thrown himself full against the terrified animal, so for one brief instant r.e.t.a.r.ding the movement of the huge wagon while Mr. Huntingdon was dragged aside.
It had all happened in a moment; the next moment the horses were plunging and rearing, with the driver swearing at them, and the young man had sunk on a truck white as death, and faint from the pain of his sprained arm and shoulder.
"Who is he?" cried Nea, impetuously, "what have they done with him?"
He was in the library, the butler informed her. The doctor had promised to dress his shoulder after he had attended to Mr.
Huntingdon. No, his mistress need not go down, Wilson went on; it was only Mr. Trafford, one of the junior clerks. Only a junior clerk! Nea flashed an indignant look as Wilson spoke. What if he were the city messenger; her father should make his fortune, and she would go and thank him. But there was no time for this, for the same grave-looking doctor who had closed her father"s door against her was now standing on the threshold; and Nea forgot everything in her grat.i.tude and joy as he told her that, though severely injured, Mr. Huntingdon was in no danger, and with quiet and rest, and good nursing, he would soon be himself again. It would all depend on her, he added, looking at the agitated girl in a fatherly manner; and he bade her dry her eyes and look as cheerful as she could that she might not disturb Mr.
Huntingdon. Nea obeyed him; she choked down her sobs resolutely, and with a strange paleness on her young face, stole into the darkened room and stood beside him.
"Well, Nea," observed her father, huskily, as she took his hand and kissed it; "I have had a narrow escape; another instant and it would have been all over with me. Is Wilson there?"
"Yes, papa," answered Nea, still holding his hand to her cheek, as she knelt beside him; and the gray-haired butler stepped up to the bed.
"Wilson, let Stephenson know that he is to get rid of Gypsy at once.
She has been a bad bargain to me, and this trick of hers might have cost me my life."
"You are not going to sell Gypsy, papa," exclaimed the girl, forgetting the doctor"s injunctions in her dismay; "not your own beautiful Gypsy?"
"I never allow people or animals to offend me twice, Nea. It is not the first time Gypsy has played this trick on me. Let Stephenson see to it at once. I will not keep her. Tell him to let Uxbridge see her, he admired her last week; he likes spirit and will not mind a high figure, and he knows her pedigree."
"Yes, sir," replied Wilson.
"By the bye," continued Mr. Huntingdon, feebly, "some one told me just now about a youth who had done me a good turn in the matter. Did you hear his name, Wilson?"
"Yes, papa," interrupted Nea, eagerly; "it was Mr. Trafford, one of the junior clerks, and he is down-stairs in the library, waiting for the doctor to dress his shoulder."
Nea would have said more, for her heart was full of grat.i.tude to the heroic young stranger; but her father held up his hand deprecatingly, and she noticed that his face was very pale.
"That will do, my dear. You speak too fast, and my poor head is still painful and confused;" and as Nea looked distressed at her thoughtlessness, he continued, kindly, "Never mind, Doctor Ainslie says I shall be all right soon--he is going to send me a nurse.
Trafford, you say; that must be Maurice Trafford, a mere junior. Let me see, what did Dobson say about him?" and Mr. Huntingdon lay and pondered with that hard set face of his, until he had mastered the facts that had escaped his memory.
"Ah, yes, the youngest clerk but one in the office; a curate"s son from Birmingham, an orphan--no mother--and drawing a salary of seventy pounds a year. Dobson told me about him; a nice, gentlemanly lad; works well--he seems to have taken a fancy to him. He is an old fool, is Dobson, and full of vagaries, but a thoroughly good man of business. He said Trafford was a fellow to be trusted, and would make a good clerk by and by. Humph, a rise will not hurt him. One can not give a diamond ring to a boy like that. I will tell Dobson to-morrow to raise Trafford"s salary to a hundred a year."
"Papa!" burst from Nea"s lips as she overheard this muttered soliloquy, but, as she remembered the doctor"s advice, she prudently remained quiet; but if any one could have read her thoughts at that moment, could have known the oppression of grat.i.tude in the heart of the agitated girl toward the stranger who had just saved her father from a horrible death, and whose presence of mind and self-forgetfulness were to be repaid by the paltry sum of thirty pounds a year! "Papa!" she exclaimed, and then in her forbearance kept quiet.
"Ah, Nea, are you there still?" observed her father in some surprise; "I do not want to keep you a prisoner, my child. Wilson can sit by me while I sleep, for I must not be disturbed after I have taken the composing draught Dr. Ainslie ordered. Go out for a drive and amuse yourself; and, wait a moment, Nea, perhaps you had better say a civil word or two to young Trafford, and see if Mrs. Thorpe has attended to him. He shall hear from me officially tomorrow; yes," muttered Mr.
Huntingdon, as his daughter left the room, "a hundred a year is an ample allowance for a junior, more than that would be ill-advised and lead to presumption."
Maurice Trafford was in the library trying to forget the pain of his injured arm, which was beginning to revenge itself for that moment"s terrible strain.
The afternoon"s shadows lay on the garden of the square, the children were playing under the acacia trees, the house-martins still circled and wavered in the sunlight.
Through the open window came the soft spring breezes and the distant hum of young voices; within was warmth, silence, and the perfume of violets.
Maurice closed his drowsy eyes with a delicious sense of luxurious forgetfulness, and then opened them with a start; for some one had gently called him by his name, and for a moment he thought it was still his dream, for standing at the foot of the couch was a girl as beautiful as any vision, who held out her hand to him, and said in the sweetest voice he had ever heard:
"Mr. Trafford, you have saved my father"s life. I shall be grateful to you all my life."
Maurice was almost dizzy as he stood up and looked at the girl"s earnest face and eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with tears, and the sunlight and the violets and the children"s voices seemed all confused; and as he took her offered hand a strange shyness kept him silent.
"I have heard all about it," she went on. "I know, while others stood by too terrified to move, you risked your own life to protect my father--that you stood between him and death while they dragged him out from the horses" feet. It was n.o.ble--heroic;" and here Nea clasped her hands, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
Poor impetuous child; these were hardly the cold words of civility that her pompous father had dictated, and were to supplement the thirty pounds per annum, "officially delivered." Surely, as she looked at the young man in his shabby coat, she must have remembered that it was only Maurice Trafford the junior clerk--the drudge of a mercantile house.
Nea owned afterward that she had forgotten everything; in after years she confessed that Maurice"s grave young face came upon her like a revelation.
She had admirers by the score--the handsome, weak-minded Lord Bertie among them--but never had she seen such a face as Maurice Trafford"s, the poor curate"s son.
Maurice"s pale face flushed up under the girl"s enthusiastic praise, but he answered, very quietly:
"I did very little, Miss Huntingdon; any one could have done as much.
How could I stand by and see your father"s danger, and not go to his help?" and then, as the intolerable pain in his arm brought back the faintness, he asked her permission to reseat himself. "He would go home," he said, wearily, "and then he need trouble no one."
Nea"s heart was full of pity for him. She could not bear the thought of his going back to his lonely lodgings, with no one to take care of him, but there was no help for it. So Mrs. Thorpe was summoned with her remedies, and the carriage was ordered. When it came round Maurice looked up in his young hostess"s face with his honest gray eyes and frank smile and said good-bye. And the smile and the gray eyes, and the touch of the thin, boyish hand, were never to pa.s.s out of Nea"s memory from that day.