Faith And Unfaith Part 64

"Hateful? Why? I only wish you had laid his cheek open," says Sir James, venomously. "But of course this poor little hand could not manage so much." Stooping involuntarily, he presses his lips to the hand that rests upon her knee.

"That wasn't the hand at all," says Miss Peyton, feeling inexpressibly consoled by his tone and manner.

"Wasn't it? Then I shall kiss the right one now," says Sir James, and caresses the other hand right warmly.

"I can't go on to Sartoris to-day," says Clarissa, in a troubled tone, checking her horse in the middle of the broad avenue.

"No; come home instead," says Scrope; and, turning, they go slowly, and almost silently, back to Gowran.

Horace, rousing himself after his encounter with Clarissa, puts his hand impulsively to his face, the sting of the blow still remaining.

His illness has left him somewhat prostrate and weak; so that he feels more intensely than he otherwise would the pain that has arisen from the sudden stroke. A bitter execration rises to his lips; and then, feeling that all hope of reconciliation with Clarissa is at an end, he returns to Langham Station, and, with a mind full of evil thoughts and bitter revenge, goes back to town.

Wild and disturbed in appearance, he breaks in upon Ruth as she sits reading alone in the very room where she had last seen Clarissa. As he enters, she utters a glad little cry of welcome, and, springing to her feet, goes over to him.

"So soon returned?" she says, joyfully; and then something she sees in his face freezes within her all further expressions of pleasure: his eyes are dark, his whole face is livid with rage.

"So you betrayed me?" he says, pushing her away from him. "Now, no lies! I saw Clarissa Peyton to-day, and I know everything."

"You have been to Pullingham?" exclaims she, with a little gasp.

"Horace, do not blame me. What was I to do? When she came in here, and saw me----"

"Clarissa, here?"

"Yes, here. I was afraid to tell you of it before, you seemed so weak, so fretful. Last Tuesday week--the day you had the sleeping-draught from Dr. Gregson--she came; she entered the room, she came near you, she touched you, she would"--faintly--"have kissed you. But how could I bear that? I stepped forward just in time to prevent her lips from meeting yours."

"And so," he says, with slow vindictiveness, taking no notice of her agony, "for the sake of a mere bit of silly sentimentality you spoiled every prospect I have in life."

"Horace, do not look at me like that," she entreats, painfully.

"Remember all that has pa.s.sed. If for one moment I went mad and forgot all, am I so much to be blamed? You had been mine--altogether mine--for so long that I had not strength in one short moment to relinquish you. When she would have kissed you, it seemed to me more than I could endure."

"Was it? It is but a little part of what you will have to endure for the future," he says, brutally. "You have wilfully ruined me, and must take the consequences. My marriage with Clarissa Peyton would have set me straight with the world once more, and need not have altered our relations with each other one iota."

"You would have been false to your wife?" murmurs she, shrinking back from him. "Oh, no! that would have been impossible!"

He laughs ironically.

"I tell you candidly," he says, with reckless emphasis, "I should have been false to one or other of you, and it certainly would not have been to you."

"You malign yourself," she says, looking at him with steadfast love.

"Do I? What a fool you are!" he says, roughly. "Well, by your own mad folly you have separated us irretrievably. Blame yourself for this, not me. My affairs are so hopelessly entangled that I must quit the country without delay. Your own mad act has rolled an ocean between us."

He turns, and goes towards the door. Wild with grief and despair, she follows him, and lays a detaining hand upon his arm.

"Not like this, Horace!" she whispers, desperately. "Do not leave me like this. Have pity. You shall not go like this! Be merciful: you are my all!"

"Stand out of my way," he says, between his teeth: and then, as she still clings to him in her agony, he raises his hand and deliberately strikes her. Not violently, not severely, but still with sufficient force to make her stagger backwards and catch hold of a chair to keep her from falling.

He is gone: and she, stunned, quivering, half blind with nervous horror, still stands by the chair and tries to realize all that has pa.s.sed. As she draws a deep breath, she places her hand, with a spasmodic movement, to her left side, as though to quell some darting pain that lies there. The action brings back consciousness, and that saddest of all things, memory.

"He did not mean it," she whispers to herself, with white set lips.

"It was not a blow; it was only that he wished to put me to one side, and I was in his way, no doubt: I angered him by my persistency.

Darling! How could I think that he would hurt me?"

Languid, heart-broken, she creeps to her bed, and, flinging herself upon it, dressed as she is, sleeps heavily until the morn, "diffusing round a trembling flood of light," wakes her to grief once more.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

"Have mind that eild aye follows youth; Death follows life with gaping mouth; Sen erdly joy abidis never, Work for the joy that lastis ever; For other joy is all but vain, And erdly joy returns in pain."--W. DUNBAR.

Something within her knows he will return. Yet all the next day long she sits in terrible suspense, not being certain of the end. Towards noon he comes, sullen, disdainful, and dark with depression.

He sinks into a chair, looking tired and careworn.

"You have over-fatigued yourself?" she says, gently, going over to him and touching his hand lightly.

"No. I have been to Pullingham again and back; that is all."

"There again?" she says. "And you saw----?"

"Only Dorian. Don't trouble yourself about Clarissa," he says, with an unpleasant laugh: "that game is played out. No, Dorian, alone, I went to see." He shades his face with his hand, and then goes on: "There are few like him in the world. In spite of all that has come and gone, he received me kindly, and has given me what will enable me to commence life afresh in a foreign land." There is remorse and deep admiration in his tone.

But Ruth makes no reply: she cannot. Those last words, "a foreign land," have struck like a dying knell upon her heart. She watches him in despairing silence, as he walks restlessly up and down the room in the uncertain twilight.

Presently he stops close to her.

"I suppose there is some orthodox way of breaking bad news," he says, "but I never learned it. Ruth, your father is dead."

The girl shrinks back, and puts her hand to her forehead in a dazed, pitiful fashion.

"Not dead!" she says, imploringly, as though her contrition could bring him back to life. "Not altogether gone beyond recall. Sick, perhaps,--nay, dying,--but not dead!"

"Yes, he is dead," says Horace, though more gently. "He died a week ago."

A terrible silence falls upon the room. Presently, alarmed at her unnatural calm, he lays his hand upon her shoulder to rouse her.

"There is no use in fretting over what cannot be recalled," he says, quickly, though still in his gentler tone. "And there are other things I must speak to you about to-night. My remaining time in this country is short, and I want you to understand the arrangements I have made for your comfort before leaving you."

"You will leave me?" cries she, sharply. A dagger seems to have reached and pierced her heart. Falling upon her knees before him, she clasps him, and whispers, in a voice that has grown feeble through the intensity of her emotion, "Horace, do not forsake me. Think of all the past, and do not let the end be separation. What can I do? Where can I go?--with no home, no aim in life! Have pity! My father is dead; my friends, too, are dead to me. In all this wide miserable world I have only you!"

"Only me!" he echoes, with a short bitter laugh. "A prize, surely. You don't know what folly you are talking. I give you a chance of escape from me,--an honorable chance, where a new home and new friends await you."