Dare returned to Vandon in the highest spirits, with an enormous emerald
engagement-ring in an inner waistcoat-pocket. He put it on Ruth's third
finger a few days later, under the ancient cedar on the terrace at
Vandon, a spot which, he informed her (for he was not without poetic
flights at times), his inner consciousness associated with all the love
scenes of his ancestors that were no more.
He was stricken to the heart when, after duly admiring it, Ruth gently
explained to him that she could not wear his ring at present, until her
engagement was given out.
"Let it then be given out," he said, impetuously. "Ah! why already is it
not given out?"
She explained again, but it was difficult to make him understand, and
she felt conscious that if he would have allowed her the temporary use
of one hand to release a fly, which was losing all self-control inside
her veil, she might have been more lucid. As it was, she at last made
him realize the fact that, until Lord Polesworth's return from America
in November, no further step was to be taken.
"But all is right," he urged with pride. "I have seen my lawyer; I make
a settlement. I raise money on the property to make a settlement. There
is nothing I will not do. I care for nothing only to marry you."
Ruth led him to talk of other things. She was very gentle with him,
always attentive, always ready to be interested; but any one less
self-centred than Dare would have had a misgiving about her feeling for
him. He had none. Half his life he had spent in Paris, and, imbued with
French ideas of betrothal and marriage, he thought her manner at once
exceedingly becoming and natural. She was reserved, but reserve was
charming. She did not care for him very much perhaps, as yet, but as
much as she could care for any one. Most men think that if a woman does
not attach herself to them she is by nature cold. Dare was no exception
to the rule; and though he would have preferred that there should be
less constraint in their present intercourse, that she would be a little
more shy, and a little less calm, still he was supremely happy and
proud, and only longed to proclaim the fortunate state of his affairs to
the world.
One thing about Ruth puzzled him very much, and with a vague misgiving
she saw it did so. Her interest in the Vandon cottages, and the schools,
and the new pump, had been most natural up to this time. It had served
to bring them together; but now the use of these things was past, and
yet he observed, with incredulity at first and astonishment afterwards,
that she clung to them more than ever.
What mattered it for the moment whether the pump was put up or not, or
whether the cottages by the river were protected from the floods? Of
course in time, for he had promised, a vague something would be done;
but why in the golden season of love and plighted faith revert to
prosaic subjects such as these?
Some men are quite unable to believe in any act of a woman being
genuine. They always find out that it has something to do with them. If
an angel came down from heaven to warn a man of this kind of wrath to
come, he would think the real object of her journey was to make his
acquaintance.
Ruth saw the incredulity in Dare's face when she questioned him, and her
heart sank within her. It sank yet lower when she told him one day, with
a faint smile, that she knew he was not rich, and that she wanted him to
let her help in the rebuilding of certain cottages, the plans of which
he had brought over in the summer, but which had not yet been begun,
apparently for the want of funds.
"What you cannot do alone we can do together," she said.
He agreed with effusion. He was surprised, flattered, delighted, but
entirely puzzled.
The cottages were begun immediately. They were near the river, which
divided the Slumberleigh and Vandon properties. Ruth often went to look
at them. It did her good to see them rising, strong and firm, though
hideous to behold, on higher ground than the poor dilapidated hovels at
the water's edge, where fever was always breaking out, which yet made,
as they supported each other in their crookedness, and leaned over their
own wavering reflections, such a picturesque sketch that it seemed a
shame to supplant them by such brand new red brick, such blue tiling,
such dreadful little porches.
Ruth drew the old condemned cottages, with the long lines of pollarded
marshy meadow, and distant bridge and mill in the background, but it was
a sketch she never cared to look at afterwards. She was constantly
drawing now. There was a vague restlessness in her at this time that
made her take refuge in the world of nature, where the mind can withdraw
itself from itself for a time into a stronghold where misgiving and
anxiety cannot corrupt, nor self break through and steal. In these days
she shut out self steadfastly, and fixed her eyes firmly on the future,
as she herself had made it with her own hands.
She had grown very grave of late. Dare's high spirits had the effect of
depressing her more than she would allow, even to herself. She liked
him. She told herself so every day, and it was a pleasure to her to see
him so happy. But when she had accepted him he was so diffident, so
quiet, so anxious, that she had not realized that he would return to his
previous happy self-confidence, his volubility, his gray hats--in fact,
his former gay self--directly his mind was at ease and he had got what
he wanted. She saw at once that the change was natural, but she found it
difficult to keep pace with, and the effort to do so was a constant
strain.
She had yet to learn that it is hard to live for those who live for
self. Between a nature which struggles, however feebly, towards a higher
life, and one whose sole object is gracefully and good-naturedly, but
persistently to enjoy itself, there is a great gulf fixed, of which
often neither are aware, until they attempt a close relationship with
each other, when the chasm reveals itself with appalling clearness to
the higher nature of the two.
Ruth was glad when a long-standing engagement to sing at a private
concert in one place, and sell modern knick-knacks in old English
costume at another, took her from Slumberleigh for a week. She looked
forward to the dreary dissipation in store for her with positive
gladness; and when the week had passed, and she was returning once more,
she wished the stations would not fly so quickly past, that the train
would not hurry itself so unnecessarily to bring her back to
Slumberleigh.
As the little local line passed Stoke Moreton station she looked out for
a moment, but leaned back hurriedly as she caught a glimpse of the
Danvers omnibus in the background, with its great black horses, and a
footman with a bag standing on the platform. In another moment Mrs.
Alwynn, followed by the footman, made a dart at Ruth's carriage, jumped
in, seized the bag, repeated voluble thanks, pressed half her gayly
dressed person out again through the window to ascertain that her boxes
were put in the van, caught her veil in the ventilator as the train
started, and finally precipitated herself into a seat on her bag, as the
motion destroyed her equilibrium.
"Well, Aunt Fanny!" said Ruth.
"Why, goodness gracious, my dear, if it isn't you! And, now I think of
it, you were to come home to-day. Well, how oddly things fall out, to be
sure, me getting into your carriage like that. And you'll never guess,
Ruth, though for that matter there's nothing so very astonishing about
it, as I told Mrs. Thursby, you'll never guess where _I've_ been
visiting."
Ruth remembered seeing the Danvers omnibus at the station, and suddenly
remembered, too, a certain request which she had once made of Charles.
"Where can it have been?" she said, with a great show of curiosity.
"You will never guess," said Mrs. Alwynn, in high glee. "I shall have to
help you. You remember my sprained ankle? There! Now I have as good as
told you."
But Ruth would not spoil her aunt's pleasure; and after numerous
guesses, Mrs. Alwynn had the delight of taking her completely by
surprise, when at last she leaned forward and said, with a rustle of
pride, emphasizing each word with a pat on Ruth's knee:
"I've been to Stoke Moreton."
"How delightful!" ejaculated Ruth. "How astonished I am! Stoke Moreton!"
"You may well say that," said Mrs. Alwynn, nodding to her. "Mrs. Thursby
would not believe it at first, and afterwards she said she was afraid
there would not be any party; but there was, Ruth. There was a married
couple, very nice people, of the name of Reynolds. I dare say, being
London people, you may have known them. She had quite the London look
about her, though not dressed low of an evening; and he was a clergyman,
who had overworked himself, and had come down to Stoke Moreton to rest,
and had soup at luncheon. And there was another person besides, a
Colonel Middleton, a very clever man, who wrote a book that was printed,
and had been in India, and was altogether most superior. We were three
gentlemen and two ladies, but we had ices each night, Ruth, two kinds of
ices; and the second night I wore my ruby satin, and the clergyman at
Stoke Moreton, that nice young Mr. Brown, who comes to your uncle's
chapter meetings, dined, with his sister, a very pleasing person indeed,
Ruth, in black. In fact, it was a very pleasant little gathering, so
nice and informal, and the footman did not wait at luncheon, just put
the pudding and the hot plates down to the fire; and Sir Charles so
chatty and so full of his jokes, and I always liked to hear him, though
my scent of humor is not quite the same as his. Sir Charles has a
feeling heart, Ruth. You should have heard Mr. Reynolds talk about him.
But he looked very thin and pale, my dear, and he seemed to be always so
tired, but still as pleasant as could be. And I told him he wanted a
wife to look after him, and I advised him to have an egg beaten up in
ever such a little drop of brandy at eleven o'clock, and he said he
would think about it, he did indeed, Ruth; so I just went quietly to the
house-keeper and asked her to see to it, and a very sensible person she
was, Ruth, been in the family twenty years, and thinks all the world of
Sir Charles, and showed me the damask table-cloths that were used for
the prince's visit, and the white satin coverlet, embroidered with gold
thistles, quite an heirloom, which had been worked by the ladies of the
house when James I. slept there. Think of that, my dear!"
And so Mrs. Alwynn rambled on, recounting how Charles had shown her all
the pictures himself, and the piazza where the orange and myrtle trees
were, and how she and Mrs. Reynolds had gone for a drive together, "in
a beautiful landau," etc., till they reached home.
As a rule Ruth rather shrank from travelling with Mrs. Alwynn, who
always journeyed in her best clothes, "because you never know whom you
may not meet." To stand on a platform with her was to be made
conspicuous, and Ruth generally found herself unconsciously going into
half mourning for the day, when she went anywhere by rail with her aunt.
To-day Mrs. Alwynn was more gayly dressed than ever, but as Ruth looked
at her beaming face she felt nothing but a strange pleasure in the fact
that Charles had not forgotten the little request which later events had
completely effaced from her own memory. He, it seemed, had remembered,
and, in spite of what had passed, had done what she asked him. She
wished that she could have told him she was grateful. Alas! there were
other things that she wished she could have told him; that she was sorry
she had misjudged him; that she understood him better now. But what did
it matter? What did it matter? She was going to marry Dare, and _he_ was
the person whom she must try to understand for the remainder of her
natural life. She thought a little wearily that she could understand
_him_ without trying.