The Rose in the Ring Part 62

"I wonder if I could have--Oh, say, there's no use talking," he ended bitterly.

"What were you about to say, Tom?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, you were. Tell me."

"Oh," he cried, with all the bitterness of a lost, hungry soul, "if I had only known! She _could_ have comforted me. What a fool I was not to see her. I've been cursing myself all day. Now I know why I cursed. It was because I wanted to see her--" He struck himself a violent blow on the mouth, as if that were all that was needed to crush the great longing that was in his breast.

"Yes. Go on, Tom," she said quietly.

"I can't, Mary. I can't talk about it. I guess I'd better say good-by now. I'll lose my nerve if I get to thinking and talking. I don't want to think that I might still get some happiness out of life if--if I went after it right."

She put her cold hand on his big, clenched fist. He looked at her. The faint light from a near-by lamppost struck his face. It was heavy, leaden with despair and misery.

"Almost the last thing she said to me before she went away was this, Tom: 'Some day I shall go to him. He needs some one to love him. I am sure he is not so wicked as--' She got no farther than that. I stopped her."

"She said all--Mary, why did you stop her? Why didn't you want her to say it? Why did you begrudge me a little thing like that?" He was trembling violently. There was misery, not anger or resentment in his voice.

"Tom, are you ready to go to the river?"

He shrank away from her, shuddering, appalled.

"It's hard to die, after all. I--I ought not to have let you tell me all this. It's made it harder. I never thought of it before. Somehow, Mary, I--I think I might have turned out a better man if--if I'd known just how Christine felt." He got to his feet suddenly. "I said I'd do it. You want me to do it. Well, I will!"

She clung to his hand. He turned upon her with an oath on his lips. The light now struck her face. What he saw there caused him to catch his breath and to choke back the imprecation.

"I am convinced that you would do it, Tom, for her sake and mine. You would do it, not because you are weak, but because you are strong. I am satisfied now."

"Satisfied?" he murmured, wonder-struck.

She arose. "Tom, I am not going to say that I love you. You cannot expect that. There is a feeling within me, however, that may develop into something like the old love I once had for you, if you give it the right kind of encouragement--and care."

"What are you saying to me, Mary?" he cried hoa.r.s.ely.

"You would have given up your life so that Christine might be happy. I am willing to do as much, Tom, toward the same end. I will give up the life I am leading. You want another chance, Tom. Well, you shall have it. I will go where you go, live where you live."

"Mary!" he gasped.

"Christine said you needed help. Well, I will try to give it to you.

You have her love. You didn't quite kill that, as you did mine." She took his limp hand in hers and looked up into his eyes. "Perhaps, if both of us try hard, you and I together, Tom, we may be able to make her forget the ugliest part of her life."

"Together? I don't understand."

"I am still your wife," she said, a shrill note creeping into her voice despite the effort she made to be calm.

"You--you mean I won't have to go--to go to the river?" he cried, unable to think beyond that awful alternative.

"I never meant you to do that."

He suddenly took a long, deep breath and lifted his face, to stare about as if trying to convince himself that he was really there, alive and awake.

"I guess I don't quite get your meaning, Mary," he muttered, but his fingers were beginning to tighten on hers. "Of course, I understand you are still my wife, and--You don't mean you--you are going to take me back!"

"No. I am asking you to take _me_ back."

He could not speak for a full minute or more.

"You'll give me another chance? That's what you mean--that's what you're really saying, isn't it?" He was fairly gasping out the words.

"Yes, Tom."

"Oh!" He turned and flung himself on the bench, bursting into tears. "I don't deserve it--I don't deserve it! It's too much to hope for." These and other sentences fell in broken disorder from his lips.

She did not speak, but sat down beside him, laying her hand on his shoulder. After a time, he grew quieter,--then almost deathly still.

She shook him gently.

"Will you come home with me now, Tom?" she asked. She too had been crying softly.

He looked up. They were so close together that she could detect the humble, wistful look in his face. His lips moved, but the words did not come at once.

"Home with you?"

"Yes. We have our plans to discuss, Tom."

"To your father's house?" he persisted.

"Yes. He understands. I talked it all over with him this afternoon. It was hard to do, Tom,--it was very hard to hurt that poor old man all over again. But I had it to do, and he understands. He asked me to bring you back with me. I told him I would. He wants to talk with you in the morning."

"Mary," he began, fingering his hat in the extremity of an emotion that almost benumbed him, "I don't know whether you want to hear me say it, but I've never stopped caring for you. It isn't all Christine with me.

I just want to tell you that."

"I understand, Tom," she said, still more gently.

"I can't take any help from your father," he managed to say after another long period of silence.

"He will offer nothing but his hand and his well-wishes."

"This is all so unexpected. I'm trying to get too many things through my head at once. Let me think for a minute or two."

She was silent, looking off into the gloomy little street below. A man was whistling gayly near by. From afar came the sound of rumbling street cars. She had not noticed these or any other sounds before. A policeman came up to the corner, stopped and looked at the huddled twain for a minute or two, and then moved off. The sight of that uniform created a sudden chill in her heart. Tom Braddock began speaking again, in low, steady tones in which there was not only a sort of bitter determination but something like defiance.

"What's more, Mary, I won't accept anything from you. Whatever you've got, put it aside for Christine or against the time when you may need it yourself. I'm not going to live off you. I'm not what I was back in those rotten days. I believe I'm going to be I happy again--I think life's going to be sweet to me after all. Half an hour ago I had but a few minutes to live, as I believed. I don't know just how to take this new grip on life. Maybe I'll be able some time to tell you all that I can't say now. I'm all befuddled. The main point is: I'm going to have a chance to be a man again, a real man; to be your husband and to make Christine forget she was ashamed of me. That's it. That's what I'm trying to say. So, you see, I can't afford to be ashamed of myself. Do you get what I mean?"

"You would be ashamed of yourself if you accepted money or help from me? Is that it?"

"Yes. I can work, Mary. I can support you, if you'll come with me. I know where to go. But you'd better think it over carefully. I can go alone, Mary dear,--I can go alone, if you feel you can't stand being with me."