The 18th of October had arrived. Slumberleigh Hall was filling. The
pheasants, reprieved till then, supposed it was only for partridge
shooting, and thinking no evil, ate Indian-corn, and took no thought for
the annual St. Bartholomew of their race.
Mabel Thursby had met Ruth out walking that day, and had informed her
that Charles was to be one of the guns, also Dare, though, as she
remembered to add, suspecting Dare admired Ruth, the latter was a bad
shot, and was only asked out of neighborly feeling.
After parting with Mabel, Ruth met, almost at her own gate, Ralph
Danvers, who passed her on horseback, and then turned on recognizing
her. Ralph's conversational powers were not great, and though he walked
his horse beside her, he chiefly contented himself with assenting to
Ruth's remarks until she asked after Molly.
He at once whistled and flicked a fly off his horse's neck.
"Sad business with Molly," he said; "and mother out for the day. Great
grief in the nursery. Vic's dead!"
"Oh, poor Molly!"
"Died this morning. Fits. I say," with a sudden inspiration, "you
wouldn't go over and cheer her up, would you? Mother's out. I'm out.
Magistrates' meeting at D----."
Ruth said she had nothing to do, and would go over at once, and Ralph
nodded kindly at her, and rode on. He liked her, and it never occurred
to him that it could be anything but a privilege to minister to any need
of Molly's. He jogged on more happily after his meeting with Ruth, and
only remembered half an hour later that he had completely forgotten to
order the dog-cart to meet Charles, who was coming to Atherstone for a
night before he went on to kill the Slumberleigh pheasants the following
morning.
Ruth set out at once over the pale stubble fields, glad of an object for
a walk.
Deep distress reigned meanwhile in the nursery at Atherstone. Vic, the
much-beloved, the stoat pursuer, the would-be church-goer, Vic was dead,
and Molly's soul refused comfort. In vain nurse conveyed a palpitating
guinea-pig into the nursery in a bird-cage, on the narrow door of which
remains of fur showed an unwilling entrance; Molly could derive no
comfort from guinea-pigs.
In vain was the new horse, with leather hoofs, with real hair, and a
horse-hair tail--in vain was that token of esteem from Uncle Charles
brought out of its stable, and unevenly yoked with a dappled pony
planted on a green, oval lawn, into Molly's own hay-cart. Molly's woe
was beyond the reach of hay-carts or horse-hair tails, however
realistic. Like Hezekiah, she turned her face to the nursery wall, on
which trains and railroads were depicted; and even when cook herself
rose up out of her kitchen to comfort her with material consolations,
she refused the mockery of a gingerbread nut, which could not restore
the friend with whom previous gingerbread nuts had always been equally
divided.
Presently a step came along the passage, and Charles, who had found no
one in the drawing-room, came in tired and dusty, and inclined to be
annoyed at having had to walk up from the station.
Molly flew to him, and flung her arms tightly round his neck.
"Oh, Uncle Charles! Uncle Charles! Vic is dead!"
"I am so sorry, Molly," taking her on his knee.
Nurse and the nursery-maid and cook withdrew, leaving the two mourners
alone together.
"He is _dead_, Uncle Charles. He was quite well, and eating Albert
biscuits with the dolls this morning, and now--" The rest was too
dreadful, and Molly burst into a flood of tears, and burrowed with her
head against the faithful waistcoat of Uncle Charles--Uncle Charles, the
friend, the consoler of all the ills that Molly had so far been heir to.
"Vic had a very happy life, Molly," said Charles, pressing the little
brown head against his cheek, and vaguely wondering what it would be
like to have any one to turn to in time of trouble.
"I always kept trouble from him except that time I shut him in the
door," gasped Molly. "I never took him out in a string, and he only wore
his collar--that collar you gave him, that made him scratch so--on
Sundays."
"And he was not ill a long time. He did not suffer any pain?"
"No, Uncle Charles, not much; but, though he did not say anything, his
face looked worse than screaming, and he passed away very stiff in his
hind-legs. Oh!" (with a fresh outburst), "when cook told me that her
sister that was in a decline had gone, I never thought," (sob, sob!)
"poor Vic would be the next."
A step came along the passage, a firm light step that Charles knew, that
made his heart beat violently.
The door opened and a familiar voice said:
"Molly! My poor Molly! I met father, and--"
Ruth stood in the door-way, and stopped short. A wave of color passed
over her face, and left it paler than usual.
Charles looked at her over the mop of Molly's brown head against his
breast. Their grave eyes met, and each thought how ill the other looked.
"I did not know--I thought you were going to Slumberleigh to-day," said
Ruth.
"I go to-morrow morning," replied Charles. "I came here first."
There was an awkward silence, but Molly came to their relief by a sudden
rush at Ruth, and a repetition of the details of the death-bed scene of
poor Vic for her benefit, for which both were grateful.
"You ought to be thinking where he is to be buried, Molly," suggested
Charles, when she had finished. "Let us go into the garden and find a
place."
Molly revived somewhat at the prospect of a funeral, and though Ruth was
anxious to leave her with her uncle, insisted on her remaining for the
ceremony. They went out together, Molly holding a hand of each, to
choose a suitable spot in the garden. By the time the grave had been
dug by Charles, Molly was sufficiently recovered to take a lively
interest in the proceedings, and to insist on the attendance of the
stable-cat, in deep mourning, when the remains of poor Vic, arrayed in
his best collar, were lowered into their long home.
By the time the last duties to the dead had been performed, and Charles,
under Molly's direction, had planted a rose-tree on the grave, while
Ruth surrounded the little mound with white pebbles, Molly's tea-time
had arrived, and that young lady allowed herself to be led away by the
nursery-maid, with the stable-cat in a close embrace, resigned, and even
cheerful at the remembrance of those creature comforts of cook's, which
earlier in the day she had refused so peremptorily.
When Molly left them, Ruth and Charles walked together in silence to the
garden-gate which led to the foot-path over the fields by which she had
come. Neither had a word to say, who formerly had so much.
"Good-bye," she said, without looking at him.
He seemed intent on the hasp of the gate.
There was a moment's pause.
"I should like," said Ruth, hating herself for the formality of her
tone, "to thank you before I go for giving Mrs. Alwynn so much pleasure.
She still talks of her visit to you. It was kind of you to remember it.
So much seems to have happened since then, that I had not thought of it
again."
At her last words Charles raised his eyes and looked at her with strange
wistful intentness, but when Ruth had finished speaking he had no remark
to make in answer; and as he stood, bareheaded by the gate, twirling the
hasp and looking, as a hasty glance told her, so worn and jaded in the
sunshine, she said "Good-bye" again, and turned hastily away.
And all along the empty harvested fields, and all along the lanes, where
the hips and haws grew red and stiff among the ruddy hedge-rows, Ruth
still saw Charles's grave, worn face.
That night she saw it still, as she sat in her own room, and listened to
the whisper of the rain upon the roof, and the touch of its myriad
fingers on the window-panes.
"I cannot bear to see him look like that. I cannot bear it," she said,
suddenly, and the storm which had been gathering so long, the clouds of
which had darkened the sky for so many days, broke at last, with a
strong and mighty wind of swift emotion which carried all before it.
It was a relief to give way, to let the tempest do its worst, and remain
passive. But when its force was spent at last, and it died away in gusts
and flying showers, it left flood and wreckage and desolation behind.
When Ruth raised her head and looked about her, all her landmarks were
gone. There was a streaming glory in the heavens, but it shone on the
ruin of all her little world below. She loved Charles, and she knew it.
It seemed to her now as if, though she had not realized it, she must
have loved him from the first; and with the knowledge came an
overwhelming sense of utter misery that struck terror to her heart. She
understood at last the meaning of the weariness and the restless
misgivings of these last weeks. If heretofore they had spoken in
riddles, they spoke plainly now. Every other feeling in the world seemed
to have been swept away by a passion, the overwhelming strength of which
she regarded panic-stricken. She seemed to have been asleep all her
life, to have stirred restlessly once or twice of late, and now to have
waked to consciousness and agony. Love, with women like Ruth, is a great
happiness or a great calamity. It is with them indeed for better, for
worse.
Those whose feelings lie below the surface escape the hundred rubs and
scratches which superficial natures are heir to; but it is the nerve
which is not easily reached which when touched gives forth the sharpest
pang. Nature, when she gives intensity of feeling, mercifully covers it
well with a certain superficial coldness. Ruth had sometimes wondered
why the incidents, the books, which called forth emotion in others,
passed her by. The vehement passion which once or twice in her life she
had involuntarily awakened in others had met with no response from
herself. The sight of the fire she had unwittingly kindled only made her
shiver with cold. She believed herself to be cold--always a dangerous
assumption on the part of a woman, and apt to prove a broken reed in
emergency.
Charles knew her better than she knew herself. Her pride and unconscious
humble-mindedness, her frankness with its underlying reserve, spoke of a
strong nature, slow, perhaps, but earnest, constant, and, once roused,
capable of deep attachment.
And now the common lot had befallen her, the common lot of man and
womankind since Adam first met Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ruth was not
exempt.
She loved Charles.
* * * * *
When the dawn came up pale and tearful to wake the birds, it found her
still sitting by her window, sitting where she had sat all night,
looking with blank eyes at nothing. Creep into bed, Ruth, for already
the sparrows are all waking, and their cheerful greetings to the new day
add weariness to your weariness. Creep into bed, for soon the servants
will be stirring, and before long Martha, who has slept all night, and
thinks your lines have fallen to you in pleasant places and late hours,
will bring the hot water.