Ruth (37 page)

"Who is the other?" asked Elizabeth.

"Mr Bradshaw said that Mr Farquhar and Mr Hickson would come with
him. But that is not Mr Farquhar, I am sure," said Ruth.

The girls looked at each other, as they always did, when Ruth
mentioned Mr Farquhar's name; but she was perfectly unconscious both
of the look and of the conjectures which gave rise to it.

As soon as the two parties drew near, Mr Bradshaw called out in his
strong voice,

"Well, my dears! we found there was an hour before dinner, so we came
down upon the sands, and here you are."

The tone of his voice assured them that he was in a bland and
indulgent mood, and the two little girls ran towards him. He kissed
them, and shook hands with Ruth; told his companions that these
were the little girls who were tempting him to this extravagance of
purchasing Eagle's Crag; and then, rather doubtfully, and because
he saw that Mr Donne expected it, he introduced "My daughters'
governess, Mrs Denbigh."

It was growing darker every moment, and it was time they should
hasten back to the rocks, which were even now indistinct in the grey
haze. Mr Bradshaw held a hand of each of his daughters, and Ruth
walked alongside, the two strange gentlemen being on the outskirts of
the party.

Mr Bradshaw began to give his little girls some home news. He told
them that Mr Farquhar was ill, and could not accompany them; but
Jemima and their mamma were quite well.

The gentleman nearest to Ruth spoke to her.

"Are you fond of the sea?" asked he. There was no answer, so he
repeated his question in a different form.

"Do you enjoy staying by the seaside? I should rather ask."

The reply was "Yes," rather breathed out in a deep inspiration than
spoken in a sound. The sands heaved and trembled beneath Ruth. The
figures near her vanished into strange nothingness; the sounds of
their voices were as distant sounds in a dream, while the echo of one
voice thrilled through and through. She could have caught at his arm
for support, in the awful dizziness which wrapped her up, body and
soul. That voice! No! if name, and face, and figure were all changed,
that voice was the same which had touched her girlish heart, which
had spoken most tender words of love, which had won, and wrecked her,
and which she had last heard in the low mutterings of fever. She
dared not look round to see the figure of him who spoke, dark as it
was. She knew he was there—she heard him speak in the manner in
which he used to address strangers years ago; perhaps she answered
him, perhaps she did not—God knew. It seemed as if weights were tied
to her feet—as if the steadfast rocks receded—as if time stood
still;—it was so long, so terrible, that path across the reeling
sand.

At the foot of the rocks they separated. Mr Bradshaw, afraid lest
dinner should cool, preferred the shorter way for himself and his
friends. On Elizabeth's account, the girls were to take the longer
and easier path, which wound upwards through a rocky field, where
larks' nests abounded, and where wild thyme and heather were now
throwing out their sweets to the soft night air.

The little girls spoke in eager discussion of the strangers. They
appealed to Ruth, but Ruth did not answer, and they were too
impatient to convince each other to repeat the question. The first
little ascent from the sands to the field surmounted, Ruth sat
down suddenly and covered her face with her hands. This was so
unusual—their wishes, their good, was so invariably the rule of
motion or of rest in their walks—that the girls, suddenly checked,
stood silent and affrighted in surprise. They were still more
startled when Ruth wailed aloud some inarticulate words.

"Are you not well, dear Mrs Denbigh?" asked Elizabeth, gently,
kneeling down on the grass by Ruth.

She sat facing the west. The low watery twilight was on her face as
she took her hands away. So pale, so haggard, so wild and wandering a
look the girls had never seen on human countenance before.

"Well! what are you doing here with me? You should not be with me,"
said she, shaking her head slowly.

They looked at each other.

"You are sadly tired," said Elizabeth, soothingly. "Come home, and
let me help you to bed. I will tell papa you are ill, and ask him to
send for a doctor."

Ruth looked at her as if she did not understand the meaning of her
words. No more she did at first. But by-and-by the dulled brain began
to think most vividly and rapidly, and she spoke in a sharp way which
deceived the girls into a belief that nothing had been the matter.

"Yes! I was tired. I am tired. Those sands—oh! those sands, those
weary, dreadful sands! But that is all over now. Only my heart aches
still. Feel how it flutters and beats," said she, taking Elizabeth's
hand, and holding it to her side. "I am quite well, though," she
continued, reading pity in the child's looks, as she felt the
trembling, quivering beat. "We will go straight to the dressing-room,
and read a chapter; that will still my heart; and then I'll go to
bed, and Mr Bradshaw will excuse me, I know, this one night. I only
ask for one night. Put on your right frocks, dears, and do all you
ought to do. But I know you will," said she, bending down to kiss
Elizabeth, and then, before she had done so, raising her head
abruptly. "You are good and dear girls—God keep you so!"

By a strong effort at self-command, she went onwards at an even pace,
neither rushing nor pausing to sob and think. The very regularity of
motion calmed her. The front and back doors of the house were on two
sides, at right angles with each other. They all shrunk a little
from the idea of going in at the front door, now that the strange
gentlemen were about, and, accordingly, they went through the quiet
farm-yard right into the bright, ruddy kitchen, where the servants
were dashing about with the dinner things. It was a contrast in
more than colour to the lonely, dusky field, which even the little
girls perceived; and the noise, the warmth, the very bustle of the
servants, were a positive relief to Ruth, and for the time lifted
off the heavy press of pent-up passion. A silent house, with moonlit
rooms, or with a faint gloom brooding over the apartments, would have
been more to be dreaded. Then, she must have given way, and cried
out. As it was, she went up the old awkward back stairs, and into the
room they were to sit in. There was no candle. Mary volunteered to go
down for one; and when she returned she was full of the wonders of
preparation in the drawing-room, and ready and eager to dress, so as
to take her place there before the gentlemen had finished dinner. But
she was struck by the strange paleness of Ruth's face, now that the
light fell upon it.

"Stay up here, dear Mrs Denbigh! We'll tell papa you are tired, and
are gone to bed."

Another time Ruth would have dreaded Mr Bradshaw's displeasure; for
it was an understood thing that no one was to be ill or tired in his
household without leave asked, and cause given and assigned. But
she never thought of that now. Her great desire was to hold quiet
till she was alone. Quietness it was not—it was rigidity; but she
succeeded in being rigid in look and movement, and went through her
duties to Elizabeth (who preferred remaining with her upstairs) with
wooden precision. But her heart felt at times like ice, at times
like burning fire; always a heavy, heavy weight within her. At last
Elizabeth went to bed. Still Ruth dared not think. Mary would come
upstairs soon; and with a strange, sick, shrinking yearning, Ruth
awaited her—and the crumbs of intelligence she might drop out about
him
. Ruth's sense of hearing was quickened to miserable intensity
as she stood before the chimney-piece, grasping it tight with both
hands—gazing into the dying fire, but seeing—not the dead grey
embers, or the little sparks of vivid light that ran hither and
thither among the wood-ashes—but an old farm-house, and climbing,
winding road, and a little golden breezy common, with a rural inn on
the hill-top, far, far away. And through the thoughts of the past
came the sharp sounds of the present—of three voices, one of which
was almost silence, it was so hushed. Indifferent people would only
have guessed that Mr Donne was speaking by the quietness in which
the others listened; but Ruth heard the voice and many of the words,
though they conveyed no idea to her mind. She was too much stunned
even to feel curious to know to what they related.
He
spoke. That
was her one fact.

Presently up came Mary, bounding, exultant. Papa had let her stay
up one quarter of an hour longer, because Mr Hickson had asked. Mr
Hickson was so clever! She did not know what to make of Mr Donne,
he seemed such a dawdle. But he was very handsome. Had Ruth seen
him? Oh, no! She could not, it was so dark on those stupid sands.
Well, never mind, she would see him to-morrow. She
must
be well
to-morrow. Papa seemed a good deal put out that neither she nor
Elizabeth were in the drawing-room to-night; and his last words were,
"Tell Mrs Denbigh I hope" (and papa's "hopes" always meant "expect")
"she will be able to make breakfast at nine o'clock;" and then she
would see Mr Donne.

That was all Ruth heard about him. She went with Mary into her
bedroom, helped her to undress, and put the candle out. At length she
was alone in her own room! At length!

But the tension did not give way immediately. She fastened her door,
and threw open the window, cold and threatening as was the night. She
tore off her gown; she put her hair back from her heated face. It
seemed now as if she could not think—as if thought and emotion had
been repressed so sternly that they would not come to relieve her
stupified brain. Till all at once, like a flash of lightning, her
life, past and present, was revealed to her in its minutest detail.
And when she saw her very present "Now," the strange confusion of
agony was too great to be borne, and she cried aloud. Then she was
quite dead, and listened as to the sound of galloping armies.

"If I might see him! If I might see him! If I might just ask him why
he left me; if I had vexed him in any way; it was so strange—so
cruel! It was not him; it was his mother," said she, almost fiercely,
as if answering herself. "Oh, God! but he might have found me out
before this," she continued, sadly. "He did not care for me, as I
did for him. He did not care for me at all," she went on wildly and
sharply. "He did me cruel harm. I can never again lift up my face in
innocence. They think I have forgotten all, because I do not speak.
Oh, darling love! am I talking against you?" asked she, tenderly. "I
am so torn and perplexed! You, who are the father of my child!"

But that very circumstance, full of such tender meaning in many
cases, threw a new light into her mind. It changed her from the woman
into the mother—the stern guardian of her child. She was still for a
time, thinking. Then she began again, but in a low, deep voice,

"He left me. He might have been hurried off, but he might have
inquired—he might have learnt, and explained. He left me to bear
the burden and the shame; and never cared to learn, as he might have
done, of Leonard's birth. He has no love for his child, and I will
have no love for him."

She raised her voice while uttering this determination, and then,
feeling her own weakness, she moaned out, "Alas! alas!"

And then she started up, for all this time she had been rocking
herself backwards and forwards as she sat on the ground, and began to
pace the room with hurried steps.

"What am I thinking of? Where am I? I who have been praying these
years and years to be worthy to be Leonard's mother. My God! what a
depth of sin is in my heart! Why, the old time would be as white as
snow to what it would be now, if I sought him out, and prayed for the
explanation, which should re-establish him in my heart. I who have
striven (or made a mock of trying) to learn God's holy will, in order
to bring up Leonard into the full strength of a Christian—I who have
taught his sweet innocent lips to pray, 'Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil;' and yet, somehow, I've been longing to
give him to his father, who is—who is—" she almost choked, till
at last she cried sharp out, "Oh, my God! I do believe Leonard's
father is a bad man, and yet, oh! pitiful God, I love him; I cannot
forget—I cannot!"

She threw her body half out of the window into the cold night air.
The wind was rising, and came in great gusts. The rain beat down on
her. It did her good. A still, calm night would not have soothed her
as this did. The wild tattered clouds, hurrying past the moon, gave
her a foolish kind of pleasure that almost made her smile a vacant
smile. The blast-driven rain came on her again, and drenched her hair
through and through. The words "stormy wind fulfilling His word" came
into her mind.

She sat down on the floor. This time her hands were clasped round her
knees. The uneasy rocking motion was stilled.

"I wonder if my darling is frightened with this blustering, noisy
wind. I wonder if he is awake."

And then her thoughts went back to the various times of old, when,
affrighted by the weather—sounds so mysterious in the night—he had
crept into her bed and clung to her, and she had soothed him, and
sweetly awed him into stillness and childlike faith, by telling him
of the goodness and power of God.

Of a sudden she crept to a chair, and there knelt as in the very
presence of God, hiding her face, at first not speaking a word (for
did He not know her heart), but by-and-by moaning out, amid her sobs
and tears (and now for the first time she wept),

"Oh, my God, help me, for I am very weak. My God! I pray Thee be my
rock and my strong fortress, for I of myself am nothing. If I ask in
His name, Thou wilt give it me. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray
for strength to do Thy will!"