The Squire's Daughter Part 34

"It may be," he answered, "and yet many people suffer injustice who have never meted it out to others."

For a while silence fell between them, then looking up into his face she said--

"Have you any plans for the future, Ralph?"

"A good many, Ruth, but the chances are they will come to nothing. One thing my prison experience has allowed me, and that is time to think. If I can work out half my dreams there will be topsy-turvydom in St.

Goram." And he smiled again.

"Then you have not given up hope?"

"Not quite, Ruth. But first of all I must see mother and get her out of the workhouse."

"You will have to earn some money and take a house first. You see, everything has gone, Ralph."

"Which means an absolutely fresh start, and from the bottom," he answered. "But never mind, when you build from the bottom you are pretty sure of your foundation."

"Oh, it does me good to hear you talk like that," she said, the tears coming into her eyes again.

"I hope I'm not altogether a coward, sis," he said, with a smile. "It'll be a hard struggle, I know; but, at any rate, I have something to live for."

"That's bravely said." And she leant over and kissed him.

"Now we must stop talking, and act," he went on. "I must get William Menire to lend me his trap, and I must drive over to see mother."

"That will be lovely, for then I can ride with you, for I must be in by seven o'clock."

"What?"

"This is an extra day off, you know."

"Are you cook, or housemaid, or what?"

"I am sewing maid," she answered. "The Varcoes have a big family of children, you know, and I have really as much as I can do with the making and mending."

"What, Varcoes the Quakers?"

"Yes. And they have really been exceedingly kind to me. They took me without references, and have done their best to make me comfortable.

There are some good people in the world, Ralph."

"It would be a sorry world if there weren't," he answered. And then William Menire and his mother entered.

A few minutes later a substantial dinner was served, and for the next hour William fluttered about his guests unmindful of how his customers fared.

Had not Ralph been so busy with his own thoughts, and Ruth so taken up with her brother, they would have both seen in what direction William's inclinations lay. He would gladly have kept them both if he could, and hailed their presence as a dispensation of Providence. Ruth looked lovelier in William's eyes than she had ever done, and to be her friend was the supreme ambition of his life.

He insisted on driving them to St. Hilary, but demanded as a first condition that Ralph should return with him to St. Goram.

"You can stay here," he said, "until you can get work or suit yourself with better lodgings. You can't sleep in the open air, and you may as well stay with me as with anybody else."

This, on the face of it, seemed a reasonable enough proposition, and with this understanding Ralph climbed into the back of the trap, Ruth riding on the front seat with William.

Never did a driver feel more proud than William felt that afternoon. It was not that he was doing a kindly and neighbourly deed; there was much more in his jubilation than that. He had by his side, so he believed, the fairest girl in the three parishes. William watched with no ordinary interest and curiosity the face of everyone they met, and when he saw some admiring pairs of eyes resting upon his companion, his own eyes sparkled with a brighter light.

William thought very little of Ralph, who was sitting at his back, and who kept up a conversation with Ruth over his left shoulder. It was Ruth who filled his thoughts and awakened in his heart a new and strange sensation. He did not talk himself. He was content to listen, content to catch the sweet undertone of a voice that was sweeter and softer than St. Goram bells on a stormy night; content to feel, when the trap lurched, the pressure of Ruth's arm against his own.

He did not drive rapidly. Why should he? This was a red-letter day in the grey monotony of his life, a day to be remembered when business was bad and profits small, and his mother's temper had more rough edges in it than usual.

So he let his horse amble along at its own sweet will. They would return at a much smarter pace.

William pulled up slowly at the workhouse gates. He would have helped Ruth down if there had been any excuse or opportunity. He was sorry the journey had come to an end. It might be long before he looked into those soft brown eyes again. He suppressed a sigh with difficulty when Ralph sprang out behind and helped his sister down. How much less clumsily he could have done it himself, and how he would have enjoyed the privilege!

"I'll put the horse up at the Star and Garter," he said, adjusting the seat to the lighter load, "and will be waiting round there till you're ready."

Then Ruth came up and stood by the shafts.

"I shall not see you again," she said, raising grateful eyes to his.

"But I should like to thank you very much for your kindness."

"Please don't say a word about it," he answered, blushing painfully.

"The pleasure's been on my side." And he reached down and grasped Ruth's extended hand with a vigour that left no doubt as to his sincerity.

He did not drive away at once. He waited till Ralph and Ruth had disappeared within the gloomy building, then, heaving a long-drawn sigh, he touched his horse with his whip, and drove slowly down the hill toward the Star and Garter.

"It's very foolish of me to think about women at all," he mused, "especially about one woman in particular. I'm not a woman's man, and never was, and never shall be. Besides, she's good enough for the best in the land."

And he plucked at the reins and started the horse into a trot.

"If I were ten years younger and handsome," he went on, "and didn't keep a shop, and hadn't my mother to keep, and--and----But there, what's the use of saying 'if' this and 'if' that? I'm just William Menire, and n.o.body else, and there ain't her equal in the three parishes. No, I'd better be content to jog along quietly as I've been doing for years past. It's foolish to dream at my time of life--foolish--foolish!" And with another sigh he let the reins slacken.

But, foolish or not, William continued to dream, until his dreams seemed to him the larger part of his life.

CHAPTER XXI

A GOOD NAME

In a long, barrack-like room, with uncarpeted floor and whitewashed walls, Ralph and Ruth found their mother. She was propped up with pillows in a narrow, comfortless bed. Her hands lay listless upon the coa.r.s.e coverlet, her eyes were fixed upon the blank wall opposite, her lips were parted in a patient and pathetic smile.

She did not see the wall, nor feel the texture of the bedclothes, nor hear the sound of footsteps on the uncarpeted floor. She was back again in the old days when husband and children were about her, and hope gladdened their daily toil, and love glorified and made beautiful the drudgery of life. She tried not to think about the present at all, and in the main she succeeded. Her life was in the past and in the future.

When she was not wandering through the pleasant fields of memory, and plucking the flowers that grew in those sheltered vales, she was soaring aloft into those fair Elysian fields which imagination pictured and faith made real--fields on which the blight of winter never fell, and across which storms and tempests never swept.

She had lost all count of days, lost consciousness almost of her present surroundings. Every day was the same--grey and sunless. There were no duties to be done, no meals to prepare, no b.u.t.ter to make, no chickens to feed, no husband to greet when the day was done, no hungry children to come romping in from the fields.

There were old people who had been in the workhouse so long that they had accommodated their life to its slow routine, and who found something to interest them in the narrowest and greyest of all worlds. But Mary Penlogan had come too suddenly into its sombre shadow and had left too many pleasant things behind her.