Mrs. Falchion Part 28

His face had now settled into a peculiar calmness. He said with a touch of mock irony: "The sailor shall play his part--the obedient retainer of the house of Devlin."

"Oh," she said, "you are malicious now! You turn your long accomplished satire on a woman." And she nodded to the hills opposite, as if to tell them that it was as they had said to her: those grand old hills with which she had lived since childhood, to whom she had told all that had ever happened to her.

"No, indeed no," he replied, "though I am properly rebuked. I fear I am malicious--just a little, but it is all inner-self-malice: 'Rome turned upon itself.'"

"But one cannot always tell when irony is intended for the speaker of it. Yours did not seem applied to yourself," was her slow answer, and she seemed more interested in Mount Trinity than in him.

"No?" Then he said with a playful sadness: "A moment ago you were not completely innocent of irony, were you?"

"But a man is big and broad, and should not--he should be magnanimous, leaving it to woman, whose life is spent among little things, to be guilty of littlenesses. But see how daring I am--speaking like this to you who know so much more than I do.... Surely, you are still only humorous, when you speak of irony turned upon yourself--the irony so icy to your friends?"

She had developed greatly. Her mind had been sharpened by pain. The edge of her wit had become poignant, her speech rendered logical and allusive. Roscoe was wise enough to understand that the change in her had been achieved by the change in himself; that since Mrs. Falchion came, Ruth had awakened sharply to a distress not exactly definable. She felt that though he had never spoken of love to her, she had a right to share his troubles. The infrequency of his visits to her of late, and something in his manner, made her uneasy and a little bitter. For there was an understanding between them, though it had been unspoken and unwritten. They had vowed without priest or witness. The heart speaks eloquently in symbols first, and afterwards in stumbling words.

It seemed to Roscoe at this moment, as it had seemed for some time, that the words would never be spoken. And was this all that had troubled her--the belief that Mrs. Falchion had some claim upon his life? Or had she knowledge, got in some strange way, of that wretched shadow in his past?

This possibility filled him with bitterness. The old Adam in him awoke, and he said within himself "G.o.d in heaven, must one folly, one sin, kill me and her too? Why me more than another!... And I love her, I love her!"

His eyes flamed until their blue looked all black, and his brows grew straight over them sharply, making his face almost stern.... There came swift visions of renouncing his present life; of going with her--anywhere: to tell her all, beg her forgiveness, and begin life over again, admitting that this attempt at expiation was a mistake; to have his conscience clear of secret, and trust her kindness. For now he was sure that Mrs. Falchion meant to make his position as a clergyman impossible; to revenge herself on him for no wrong that, as far as he knew, he ever did directly to her. But to tell this girl, or even her father or mother, that he had been married, after a shameful, unsanctified fashion, to a savage, with what came after, and the awful thing that happened--he who ministered at the altar! Now that he looked the thing in the face it shocked him. No, he could not do it.

She said to him, while he looked at her as though he would read her through and through, though his mind was occupied with a dreadful possibility beyond her:

"Why do you look so? You are stern. You are critical. Have I--disimproved so?"

The words were full of a sudden and natural womanly fear, that something in herself had fallen in value. They had a pathos so much the more moving because she sought to hide it.

There swam before his eyes the picture of happiness from which she herself had roused him when she came. He involuntarily, pa.s.sionately, caught her hand and pressed it to his lips twice; but spoke nothing.

"Oh! oh!--please!" she said. Her voice was low and broken, and she spoke appealingly. Could he not see that he was breaking her heart, while filling it also with unbearable joy? Why did he not speak and make this possible, and not leave it a thing to flush her cheeks, and cause her to feel he had acted on a knowledge he had no right to possess till he had declared himself in speech? Could he not have spared her that?--This Christian gentleman, whose worth had compa.s.sed these mountains and won the dwellers among them--it was bitter. Her pride and injured heart rose up and choked her.

He let go her hand. Now his face was partly turned from her, and she saw how thin and pale it was. She saw, too, what I had seen during the past week, that his hair had become almost white about the temples; and the moveless sadness of his position struck her with unnatural force, so that, in spite of herself, tears came suddenly to her eyes, and a slight moan broke from her. She would have run away; but it was too late.

He saw the tears, the look of pity, indignation, pride, and love in her face.

"My love!" he cried pa.s.sionately. He opened his arms to her.

But she stood still. He came very close to her, spoke quickly, and almost despairingly: "Ruth, I love you, and I have wronged you; but here is your place, if you will come."

At first she seemed stunned, and her face was turned to her mountains, as though the echo of his words were coming back to her from them, but the thing crept into her heart and flooded it. She seemed to wake, and then all her affection carried her into his arms, and she dried her eyes upon his breast.

After a time he whispered, "My dear, I have wronged you. I should not have made you care for me."

She did not seem to notice that he spoke of wrong. She said: "I was yours, Galt, even from the beginning, I think, though I did not quite know it. I remember what you read in church the first Sunday you came, and it has always helped me; for I wanted to be good."

She paused and raised her eyes to his, and then with sweet solemnity she said: "The words were:

"'The Lord G.o.d is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds'

feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.'"

"Ruth," he answered, "you have always walked on the high places. You have never failed. And you are as safe as the nest of the eagle, a n.o.ble work of G.o.d."

"No, I am not n.o.ble; but I should like to be so. Most women like goodness. It is instinct with us, I suppose. We had rather be good than evil, and when we love we can do good things; but we quiver like the compa.s.s-needle between two poles. Oh, believe me! we are weak; but we are loving."

"Your worst, Ruth, is as much higher than my best as the heaven is--"

"Galt, you hurt my fingers!" she interrupted.

He had not noticed the almost fierce strength of his clasp. But his life was desperately hungry for her. "Forgive me, dearest.--As I said, better than my best; for, Ruth, my life was--wicked, long ago. You cannot understand how wicked!"

"You are a clergyman and a good man," she said, with pathetic negation.

"You give me a heart unsoiled, unspotted of the world. I have been in some ways worse than the worst men in the valley there below."

"Galt, Galt, you shock me!" she said.

"Why did I speak? Why did I kiss your hand as I did? Because at the moment it was the only honest thing to do; because it was due you that I should say: 'Ruth, I love you, love you so much'"--here she nestled close to him--"'so well, that everything else in life is as nothing beside it--nothing! so well that I could not let you share my wretchedness.'"

She ran her hand along his breast and looked up at him with swimming eyes.

"And you think that this is fair to me? that a woman gives the heart for pleasant weather only? I do not know what your sorrow may be, but it is my right to share it. I am only a woman; but a woman can be strong for those she loves. Remember that I have always had to care for others--always; and I can bear much. I will not ask what your trouble is, I only ask you"--here she spoke slowly and earnestly, and rested her hand on his shoulder--"to say to me that you love no other woman; and that--that no other woman has a claim upon you. Then I shall be content to pity you, to help you, to love you. G.o.d gives women many pains, but none so great as the love that will not trust utterly; for trust is our bread of life. Yes, indeed, indeed!"

"I dare not say," he said, "that it is your misfortune to love me, for in this you show how n.o.ble a woman can be. But I will say that the cup is bitter-sweet for you.... I cannot tell you now what my trouble is; but I can say that no other living woman has a claim upon me.... My reckoning is with the dead."

"That is with G.o.d," she whispered, "and He is just and merciful too....

Can it not be repaired here?" She smoothed back his hair, then let her fingers stray lightly on his cheek.

It hurt him like death to reply. "No, but there can be punishment here."

She shuddered slightly. "Punishment, punishment," she repeated fearfully--"what punishment?"

"I do not quite know." Lines of pain grew deeper in his face.... "Ruth, how much can a woman forgive?"

"A mother, everything." But she would say no more. He looked at her long and earnestly, and said at last: "Will you believe in me no matter what happens?"

"Always, always." Her smile was most winning.

"If things should appear dark against me?"

"Yes, if you give me your word."

"If I said to you that I did a wrong; that I broke the law of G.o.d, though not the laws of man?"

There was a pause in which she drew back, trembling slightly, and looked at him timidly and then steadily, but immediately put her hands bravely in his, and said: "Yes."

"I did not break the laws of man."

"It was when you were in the navy?" she inquired, in an awe-stricken tone.

"Yes, years ago."