Joyce of the North Woods Part 41

"Don't! don't!" Ruth Dale put out her hands as if warding off a blow.

"Haven't you guessed? Can you not think?"

Drew shook his head slowly. He did not seem to be able to think at all.

"Mrs. Dale died soon after. She had a weak heart--it killed her. Philip was everything to her--he was heavenly good in his attention and devotion. Somehow, I wonder what you will think of me, but suddenly I became possessed with a pa.s.sion for making happier them whom John had blighted. I grappled with my own love--I knew it would kill me if I let it gain power over me. I knew I never could be anything to John--I was not the sort of woman, Ralph, who could love the sinner--forgetting the sin. I could forgive--I thought I could--but I remembered all the more sharply.

"Philip had always loved me. I saw my way. I would ignore the stigma on the family, I would marry Philip and carry what joy I could to him and his mother. My father tried to restrain me. He called me martyr, sacrifice, and all the rest, but I married--and I know I took comfort into poor Mrs. Dale's life, and--I never doubted what I did for Philip.

But--" Ruth whispered the horrible secret--"John Dale _took_ the money for--Philip! He never wanted it for himself. He never used one dollar of it. It was Philip who ran the family honour, and his own, into danger--he made it seem to John that to tide him over the critical hour would be to save them all and bring no harm. But he was wrong. The crash came. John never cringed under the blow. To his simple nature the mere act was enough. He did not try to shield himself by one word of explanation--he went away!"

Drew's throat and eyes burned. He seemed to know all this like an oft-told tale that still had power to awe and control him.

"Then the years of agonized consecration began for Philip. I never knew until a week before his death, but the memory scorches into my soul day by day now.

"You see I thought it was love for his brother, and the shame, that had changed Philip--and _that_ endeared him to me. All the lightness and carelessness of manner departed. A great, strong, tenderness took their place. But you know, it was so that he came into your life. He had a wide sympathy and charity, for all--oh! how it drew people to him. But think of his suffering--alone and through all those years!

"The money that was John's ruin was the force that brought success to Philip. You see--he could not explain--at least he thought he could not, he was too cowardly--and the knowledge spurred him on. Wealth flowed in and in. He paid, and with interest, all that had been taken. How the world praised him--and how he suffered as they applauded him! He gave great sums to charity--mostly to those charities that mitigate the misery of--the outcasts. Men and women who come under the law. Can you understand?"

"Yes! yes!" Drew's head was buried in his thin hands. His voice was full of anguish.

"They used to come to him, those sad creatures,--and he never turned them away. I have seen and heard them bless him as they knelt beside him. He helped them so wisely because--oh! because he was--one of them, and they never knew! Then the disease came--the cancer. I think he welcomed it--it was so sure to open the door for him--and I think he even loved the suffering as a kind of expiation.

"Never once did a murmur escape him of impatience or regret. It was he who cheered us. It was he who stood by my father's death-bed and comforted him, and strengthened me. Always cheerful, always helpful until--just before he went. When he knew the days were few--when the coward in him--his last enemy--died, he told me everything.

"He said--" a sob choked the words--"that I must find--John. I must lay waste the beautiful memory of him. Show the _coward_ who had not been able to stand before men! I must redeem the past as best I could. I must begin with you--the friend he most loved--for you must help me find--John."

Ralph Drew rose weakly to his feet. Something had gone out of him.

Something that he groped after, but could not grasp. He felt as if he and the stricken woman before him were lost upon a black and dangerous road. Their only salvation was to cling together spiritually and bodily.

He caught the back of her chair for support, and bent over her.

"Is there no one, who kept in touch with--the brother? Was he utterly forsaken? G.o.d help him!"

"They said it was his desire. But there was one--I never knew who it was; that was part of the mystery--but some one claimed and claimed money for him, for John. I knew sums of money were paid regularly, I used to think it was another of Philip's charities--but I know now that there was a constant lash laid upon him. Oh! if they had only known all.

"Ralph, Philip left nearly all his fortune to his brother. There is only my portion reserved for me. So you see I must find him. I was left sole executor."

"I will help you, Ruth."

"I was sure you would. Philip spoke your name last; he said you could see the man he tried to be, even in the man he was."

"Yes! yes, a thousand times more than he ever hoped. What was the poor crumbling sh.e.l.l compared to the splendid soul that he builded through those horrible years? Years when he could not quite free himself from the craven thing that was his curse--the fear! fear! fear!"

The two were silent for a moment while the red glow showed them haggard and worn. Then it was the woman who spoke.

"Ralph--do you think a woman can love--really love--two men?"

He stared at her.

"Perhaps," he faltered; "perhaps, but in different ways."

"I loved them both. When--when I find John--if he wants me--if he asks me--I shall marry him." She shuddered.

"Ruth!"

"Yes; I think Philip would give him even--me. His renunciation was wide and deep. He, the great, strong soul of him, went on--alone. It had no real part with his weakness and all that was bound up in his weakness--he wanted John to have everything of which he had deprived him. You can understand, can you not? At the last, when fear had no further power, he was almost mad in his abandon of recompense.

"He did not tell me this, that awful night when he told me--the rest; but I felt it. I saw that I, with all else that had meant anything to him, was included in his shame; and the new nature that had evolved from the agony and remorse--had nothing to do with us any more!"

A deep sob shook the slim form. For a moment Ruth Dale rocked to and fro in her misery, then she let the wild confession again have its way.

"For myself--" the haunted eyes fixed themselves upon Drew's rigid face--"for myself--in a strange fashion--and oh! you shall _not_ misunderstand me, I want to give to him that which I withheld from him when he needed it most. I want to bring back the gladness of life to him--if I can," she gasped; "it has all been such a hideous nightmare.

If he wants me--if he wants me, he shall have me!" The words were flung out defiantly, fiercely.

Drew started to his feet, and went quickly to her. In all his life he had never seen on a woman's face such desperation and remorse.

As his friend's wife he had loved her as a sister. Her beauty had always fascinated and charmed him. To see her now, cast adrift on this troubled sea of love and fear, was a bitter, almost a terrifying sight.

He bent over her, and raised her face firmly and gently with one trembling hand. He felt that he must calm and steady her by physical control.

"Ruth," he said gently, but distinctly, "why do you look as you do? Tell me, what is in your heart?"

The woman tried to shrink from the hold he had upon her. He saw that the vital point of her confession she would keep from him unless he commanded, and, if the future were to be saved from the grip of the miserable past, he and she must thoroughly understand each other.

"Ruth, you must tell me everything."

She panted, but no longer struggled mentally or bodily.

"Because," she said, "even now, I could accept the man who was the true sinner easier than the man who was sinned against! Not because of a greater love; but because of the slime of the punishment that the one was doomed to suffer.

"That's what life has done for him--and me!" Again she shuddered. "Don't you see, even when my heart is breaking with love for him--and the old love is growing stronger as--as Philip seems to be going further from me--I shall always think of the hideous--detail that--he suffered. It was what Philip could not face--it is what I--must!"

The words came pantingly, grudgingly and full of soul-terror.

Drew sought for comfort to give to this poor, distracted woman whose white, still face rested in the hollow of his hand, like a dead thing.

"Ruth, you shall not lash yourself unnecessarily. G.o.d knows you have borne the scourge of others bravely enough. It is not the detail alone that rises before you, and keeps you from what you have set up as your duty--it is the weakness of the man. That is the pitiful difference. The sin is the sin--but the man who _planned_ was more the master, than he who became the slave. Do not blame yourself entirely--can you not see, it is the instinctive homage humanity pays to even an evil interpretation of the Creator!"

A blur, for an instant, shimmered over the beautiful, solemn eyes.

"No." The woman would not shield herself in this hour. "No; for you forget Philip's cowardice--and weakness. But he was not--smirched with society's remedy for wrong-doing. No; even if I found John had come out of the--the detail, strong and purified, I know, as G.o.d hears me, I should always, when most he needed me, see the _prisoner_ instead of--him. Oh! Oh! Oh!"

She closed her eyes, and the great tears were pressed from under the quivering lids.

Drew for very pity released the suffering face, but his hand rested on the bent shoulder. Then out of the strain of the black hour, he asked a question that seemed to have no part in the present trouble; no meaning.

"Ruth have you ever loved just for yourself--just because _you_ wanted what you loved?"

"Just for myself? Who ever does in this world, I wonder?"

She sighed deeply, and sank back in the chair.