RIDING THE REEFS
The next afternoon Roscoe was sitting on the coping deep in thought, when
Ruth rode up with her father, dismounted, and came upon him so quietly
that he did not hear her. I was standing in the trees a little distance
away.
She spoke to him once, but he did not seem to hear. She touched his arm.
He got to his feet.
"You were so engaged that you did not hear me," she said.
"The noise of the rapids!" he answered, after a strange pause, "and your
footstep is very light."
She leaned her chin on her hand, rested against the rail of the coping,
looked meditatively into the torrent below, and replied: "Is it so
light?" Then after a pause: "You have not asked me how I came,
who came with me, or why I am here."
"It was first necessary for me to conceive the delightful fact that you
are here," he said in a dazed, and, therefore, not convincing tone.
She looked him full in the eyes. "Please do not pay me the ill
compliment of a compliment," she said. "Was it the sailor who spoke then
or the--or yourself? It is not like you."
"I did not mean it as a compliment," he replied. "I was thinking about
critical and important things."
"'Critical and important' sounds large," she returned.
"And the awakening was sudden," he continued. "You must make allowance,
please, for--"
"For the brusque appearance of a very unimaginative, substantial, and
undreamlike person? I do. And now, since you will not put me quite at
my ease by assuming, in words, that I have been properly 'chaperoned'
here, I must inform you that my father waits hard by--is, as my riotous
young brother says, 'without on the mat.'"
"I am very glad," he replied with more politeness than exactness.
"That I was duly escorted, or that my father is 'without on the mat'?
. . . However, you do not appear glad one way or the other. And now
I must explain our business. It is to ask your company at dinner (do
consider yourself honoured--actually a formal dinner party in the
Rockies!) to meet the lieutenant-governor, who is coming to see our
famous Viking and Sunburst. . . . But you are expected to go out
where my father feeds his--there, see--his horse on your 'trim parterre.'
And now that I have done my duty as page and messenger without a word of
assistance, Mr. Roscoe, will you go and encourage my father to hope that
you will be vis-a-vis to his excellency?" She lightly beat the air with
her whip, while I took a good look at the charming scene.
Roscoe looked seriously at the girl for an instant. He understood too
well the source of such gay social banter. He knew it covered a hurt.
He said to her: "Is this Ruth Devlin or another?"
And she replied very gravely: "It is Ruth Devlin and another too," and
she looked down to the chasm beneath with a peculiar smile; and her eyes
were troubled.
He left her and went and spoke to her father whom I had joined, but,
after a moment, returned to Ruth. Ruth turned slightly to meet him as he
came. "And is the prestige of the house of Devlin to be supported?" she
said; "and the governor to be entertained with tales of flood and field?"
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 "God 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, passionately,
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 compassed 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 passionately. 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 God 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 noble
work of God."
"No, I am not noble; 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
compass-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. God 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 noble 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 God," 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 God, 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."
"I know. I feel it. You must not tell me. It was a woman, and this
other woman, this Mrs. Falchion knows, and she would try to ruin you,
or"--here she seemed to be moved suddenly by a new thought--"or have you
love her. But she shall not, she shall not--neither! For I will love
you, and God will listen to me, and answer me."
"Would to Heaven I were worthy of you! I dare not think of where you
might be called to follow me, Ruth."
"'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God,'" she rejoined in a
low voice.
"'Thy God my God!'" he repeated after her slowly. He suddenly wondered
if his God was her God; whether now, in his trouble, he had that comfort
which his creed and profession should give him. For the first time he
felt acutely that his choice of this new life might have been more a
reaction from the past, a desire for expiation, than radical belief that
this was the right and only thing for him to do. And when, some time
after, he bade Ruth good-bye, as she went with her father, it came to him
with appalling conviction that his life had been a mistake. The twist of
a great wrong in a man's character distorts his vision; and if he has a
tender conscience he magnifies his misdeeds.
In silence Roscoe and I watched the two ride down the slope. I guessed
what had happened: afterwards I was told all. I was glad of it, though
the end was not yet promising. When we turned to go towards the house
again, a man lounged out of the trees towards us. He looked at me, then
at Roscoe, and said:
"I'm Phil Boldrick's pal from Danger Mountain." Roscoe held out his
hand, and the man took it, saying: "You're The Padre, I suppose, and Phil
was soft on you. Didn't turn religious, did he? He always had a streak
of God A'mighty in him; a kind of give-away-the-top-of-your-head chap;
friend o' the widow and the orphan, and divvy to his last crust with a
pal. I got your letter, and come over here straight to see that he's
been tombed accordin' to his virtues; to lay out the dollars he left me
on the people he had on his visitin' list; no loafers, no gophers, not
one; but to them that stayed by him I stay, while prog and liquor last."
I saw Roscoe looking at him in an abstracted way, and, as he did not
reply, I said: "Phil had many friends and no enemies." Then I told him
the tale of his death and funeral, and how the valley mourned for him.
While I spoke he stood leaning against a tree, shaking his head and
listening, his eyes occasionally resting on Roscoe with a look as
abstracted and puzzled as that on Roscoe's face. When I had finished he
drew his hand slowly down his beard and a thick sound came from behind
his fingers. But he did not speak.
Then I suggested quietly that Phil's dollars could be put to a better use
than for prog and liquor.
He did not reply to this at all; but after a moment's pause, in which he
seemed to be studying the gambols of a squirrel in a pine tree, he rubbed
his chin nervously, and more in soliloquy than conversation said: "I
never had but two pals that was pals through and through. And one was
Phil and the other was Jo--Jo Brackenbury."
Here Roscoe's hand, which had been picking at the bark of a poplar,
twitched suddenly.
The man continued: "Poor Jo went down in the 'Fly Away' when she swung
with her bare ribs flat before the wind, and swamped and tore upon the
bloody reefs at Apia. . . . God, how they gnawed her! And never a
rag holdin' nor a stick standin', and her pretty figger broke like a tin
whistle in a Corliss engine. And Jo Brackenbury, the dandiest rip, the
noisiest pal that ever said 'Here's how!' went out to heaven on a tearing
sea."
"Jo Brackenbury--" Roscoe repeated musingly. His head was turned away
from us.
"Yes, Jo Brackenbury; and Captain Falchion said to me" (I wonder that I
did not start then) "when I told him how the 'Fly Away' went down to Davy,
and her lovers went aloft, reefed close afore the wind--'Then,' says he,
'they've got a damned sound seaman on the Jordan, and so help me! him
that's good enough to row my girl from open sea, gales poundin' and
breakers showin' teeth across the bar to Maita Point, is good enough for
use where seas is still and reefs ain't fashionable.'"
Roscoe's face looked haggard as it now turned towards us. "If you will
meet me," he said to the stranger, "to-morrow morning, in Mr. Devlin's
office at Viking, I will hand you over Phil Boldrick's legacy."
The man made as if he would shake hands with Roscoe, who appeared not to
notice the motion, and then said: "I'll be there. You can bank on that;
and, as we used to say down in the Spicy Isles, where neither of you have
been, I s'pose, Talofa!"
He swung away down the hillside.
Roscoe turned to me. "You see, Marmion, all things circle to a centre.
The trail seems long, but the fox gets killed an arm's length from his
hole."
"Not always. You take it too seriously," I said. "You are no fox."
"That man will be in at the death," he persisted.
"Nonsense, Roscoe. He does not know you. What has he to do with you?
This is overwrought nerves. You are killing yourself with worry."
He was motionless and silent for a minute. Then he said very quietly:
"No, I do not think that I really worry now. I have known"--here he laid
his hand upon my shoulder and his eyes had a shining look--"what it is to
be happy, unspeakably happy, for a moment; and that stays with me. I am
a coward no longer."
He drew his finger tips slowly across his forehead. Then he continued:
"To-morrow I shall be angry with myself, no doubt, for having that
moment's joy, but I cannot feel so now. I shall probably condemn myself
for cruel selfishness; but I have touched life's highest point this
afternoon, Marmion."
I drew his hand down from my shoulder and pressed it. It was cold.
He withdrew his eyes from the mountain, and said: "I have had dreams,
Marmion, and they are over. I lived in one: to expiate--to wipe out--
a past, by spending my life for others. The expiation is not enough.
I lived in another: to win a woman's love; and I have, and was caught up
by it for a moment, and it was wonderful. But it is over now, quite
over. . . . And now for her sake renunciation must be made, before
I have another dream--a long one, Marmion."
I had forebodings, but I pulled myself together and said firmly: "Roscoe,
these are fancies. Stop it, man. You are moody. Come, let us walk, and
talk of other things."
"No, we will not walk," he said, "but let us sit there on the coping and
be quiet--quiet in that roar between the hills." Suddenly he swung
round, caught me by the shoulders and held me gently so.
"I have a pain at my heart, Marmion, as if I'd heard my death sentence;
such as a soldier feels who knows that Death looks out at him from iron
eyes. You smile: I suppose you think I am mad."
I saw that it was best to let him speak his mind. So I answered: "Not
mad, my friend. Say on what you like. Tell me all you feel. Only, for
God's sake be brave, and don't give up until there's occasion. I am sure
you exaggerate your danger, whatever it is."
"Listen for a minute," said he: "I had a brother Edward, as good a lad
as ever was; a boisterous, healthy fellow. We had an old nurse in our
family who came from Irish hills, faithful and kind to us both. There
came a change over Edward. He appeared not to take the same interest in
his sports. One day he came to me, looking a bit pale, and said: 'Galt,
I think I should like to study for the Church.' I laughed at it, yet it
troubled me in a way, for I saw he was not well. I told Martha, the
nurse. She shook her head sadly, and said: 'Edward is not for the
Church, but you, my lad. He is for heaven.'
"'For heaven, Martha?' laughed I.
"'In truth for heaven,' she replied, 'and that soon. The look of his eye
is doom. I've seen it since I swaddled him, and he will go suddenly.'
"I was angry, and I said to her,--though she thought she spoke the
truth,--'This is only Irish croaking. We'll have the banshee next.'
"She got up from her chair and answered me solemnly: 'Galt Roscoe, I HAVE
heard the banshee wail, and sorrow falls upon your home. And don't you
be so hard with me that have loved you, and who suffers for the lad that
often and often lay upon my breast. Don't be so hard; for your day of
trouble comes too. You, not he, will be priest at the altar. Death will
come to him like a swift and easy sleep; but you will feel its hand upon
your heart and know its hate for many a day, and bear the slow pangs of
it until your life is all crushed, and you go from the world alone, Love
crying after you and not able to save you, not even the love of woman--
weaker than death. . . . And, in my grave, when that day comes beside
a great mountain in a strange land, I will weep and pray for you; for I
was mother to you too, when yours left you alone bewhiles, never, in this
world, to come back.'
"And, Marmion, that night towards morning, as I lay in the same room with
Edward, I heard his breath stop sharply. I jumped up and drew aside the
curtains to let in the light, and then I knew that the old woman spoke
true. . . . And now! . . . Well, I am like Hamlet--and I can say
with him: 'But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart
--but it is no matter!"' . . . .
I tried to laugh and talk away his brooding, but there was little use,
his convictions were so strong. Besides, what can you do with a
morbidness which has its origin in fateful circumstances?
I devoutly wished that a telegram would come from Winnipeg to let me know
if Boyd Madras, under his new name, could be found. I was a hunter on a
faint trail.