Norston's Rest Part 66

CHAPTER LX.

LOVE AND HATE.

Ruth did sleep long and profoundly. A stone had been rolled from her heart, and the solemn rest of subsiding grief fell upon her. Early in the morning she arose and went down-stairs, feeling, for the first time for days, a keen want of food. There was no fire in the house: gray ashes on the hearth, a few blackened embers, and nothing more.

The house was very lonely to her that bright morning, for the shutters had kept it in gloomy twilight since the funeral, and she had not heeded the semi-darkness, having so much of it in her own soul.

"He has forgiven me. He knows," she thought, with a deep, deep sigh, "there is no reason why his child should cower in darkness now, and he loved the light."

Ruth pushed open the shutters, and almost smiled as a burst of sunshine came streaming in through the ivy, embroidering the floor all around her with flecks of silver.

"Yes," she thought, "he loved the light, and it is so beautiful now, I will have some breakfast. It seems strange to be hungry."

Ruth opened a cupboard, and took from it some fruit, a biscuit, and a cup of milk. While she had been lost in the darkness, some kind hand had placed these things where she would be sure to find them when a craving for food made itself felt through her grief. She became conscious of this kindness, and her eyes filled with softer tears than she had shed for many a day. After spreading the little table with a white cloth, Ruth sat down near the window, and began to drop the berries, which some pitying child had brought her, into the milk. Just as the old china bowl was full, and she had taken up her spoon, a black shadow came against the window, shutting out all the silvery rain of light, and looking up, with a start, the girl saw Richard Storms leaning into the room.

Ruth dropped her spoon, both hands fell into her lap, and there she sat stupefied, gazing at him as a fascinated bird looks into the glittering eyes of a snake. There had been no color in her face from the first, but a deeper pallor spread over it, and her lips grew ashen.

"I would have come before, as was the duty of a man when his sweetheart was in trouble," said Storms; "but the house seemed empty.

This morning I saw a shutter open, and came."

"What did you come for? Why will you torment me so?" said Ruth, hoa.r.s.e with dread.

"Torment! As if the sight of one's own true love ever did that, especially when he comes to comfort one. Mother, who is so anxious to have you for a daughter, sent me."

"You cannot comfort any one against her will," said Ruth, striving to appear calm. "As for me, I only want to be left alone!"

"As if any man, with a heart in his bosom, could do that; especially one so fond of you as I am," answered Storms; "besides, I have a fear that you may not always want to be alone. Last night, for instance!"

Ruth had for a moment rested her hands on the table, resolved to be brave; but they fell downward, and were wrung together in a spasm of distress.

The fiend at the cas.e.m.e.nt saw this and smiled.

"Nay, do not let me keep you from breakfast. I love to see you eat.

Many a day you and I have plucked berries together. It won't be the first time I have seen your pretty mouth red with them."

Ruth pushed the bowl of fruited milk away from her.

"I cannot eat," she said, desperately. "Your presence kills hunger and everything else. Cannot you understand how hateful it is to me? Leave that window! You block out all the pure light of heaven!"

"I will," answered Storms, with a bitter laugh. "You shall have all the light you want," and, resting his hand on the window-sill, he leaped into the room.

"Audacious!" cried Ruth, starting up, while a flash of anger shot across her face as scarlet sunset stains a snow bank.

"While girls are so tantalizingly coy, men will be audacious," said Storms, attempting to draw her toward him. "And they like us all the better for it. Shilly-shallying won't do when a man is in earnest."

"Leave me! Leave the house!" commanded Ruth, drawing back from his approach.

Any one who had seen the girl then would have thought her a fit chatelaine for the stately "Old Rest," or any other proud mansion of England.

"Not yet. Not till I have told you where you stand, and what danger lies in a storm of rage like this. It makes you beautiful enough for a queen, but you must not dare to practise your grand airs on me. I won't have them! Do you understand that, my la.s.s? I won't have them!

Come here and kiss me. That is what I mean to have."

"Wretch!"

"Go on, but don't forget that every word has got to be paid for on your knees. I can afford to offer kisses now, because you are pretty enough to make any man stoop a bit. But wait a while, and you shall come a begging for them, and then it'll be as I choose."

Ruth did not speak, but a look of such disgustful scorn came over her face that it abashed even his insolence. He made an effort to laugh off the confusion into which that look had thrown him.

CHAPTER LXI.

HUNTED DOWN.

"You don't believe me! You think to escape, or put me down with these fine-lady airs. Perhaps you mean to complain to the young man up yonder, and set him to worrying me again. Try that--only try it! I ask nothing better. Let him interfere with me if he dares. Have you nothing to say?"

"Nothing!" answered Ruth, with quiet dignity, for contempt had conquered all the terror in her.

"Nothing! Then I will make you speak, understand this. You cannot put me down. No one can do that. Father and son, I am the master of them all!"

"Go!" said Ruth, wearied with his bombastic threats, for such she considered them. "Go!"

"Go! Do I frighten you?"

"You weary me--that is all."

"Then you do not believe what I say?"

"No!"

"You think the young man up yonder everything that is good."

"Yes!"

"Well, I think--But no matter. You will soon learn more than you want to hear. This is enough. I can tear the Hurst pride up by the roots. I can make them hide their faces in the dust, and I will, if you drive me to it."

"I?"

"Yes, you! It all depends on you. That young fellow's blood will be on your own head if I am brought to strike him down!"

"His blood on my head! His! Are you mad, or only fiendish, Richard Storms?"

"This is what I am, Ruth Jessup--the man who can prove who killed your father. The man who can hang your sweetheart on the highest gallows ever built in England. That is what I am, and what I will do, if you ever speak to him again."

"You! You!"