"You must do what you think right," I said. Then I added, with a queer
feeling as if I were thinking aloud, "What you think right to her and
to--to the baby."
His face darkened, and I was glad that I had not said "your baby." I
understood it was natural for him to look angry at the thought of the
child, the unwelcome and unwitting betrayer of what he would have kept
hidden; and yet somehow I resented his look.
"The baby is not to blame, Tom," I said. "It has every right to blame
you."
"To blame me?" he repeated.
"If it has to bear a shame all its life, whose fault is it, its own or
yours? If it has been born to a life like that of its mother, it
certainly has no occasion to thank you."
He turned his flushed and shamed face away from me, and looked out into
the darkening sky. I could see how he was holding himself in check, and
that it was hard for him. I hated to be there, to be seeing him, to be
talking over a matter that it was intolerable even to think about; but
since I was there, I wanted to help him,--only I did not know how. I
wanted to give him my hand, but I somehow shrank from touching his. I
felt as if it was wicked and cruel to hold back, but between us came
continually the consciousness of Julia and that little red baby sleeping
in the clothes-basket. I am humiliated now to think of it, but the truth
is that I was a brute to Tom.
Suddenly Tom turned for a moment toward the west, so that the little
lingering light of the dying day fell on his face, and I saw by his set
lips and the look in his eyes that he had come to some determination.
Then he faced me slowly.
"Ruth," he said, "I would go down into hell for you, and I'm going to do
something that is worse. What's past, it's no use to make excuses for,
and you're too good to understand if I told you how I got into this foul
mess. Now"--
He stopped, with a catch in his voice, and I wanted more than I can tell
to say something to help him, but no words came. I could not think; I
wanted to comfort him as I comfort Kathie when she is desperate. The
evident difficulty he had in keeping his self-control moved me more than
anything he could have said.
"I'll marry the girl," he burst out in a moment. "You are right about
the baby. It's no matter about Jule. She isn't of any account anyway,
and she never expected me to marry her. I'll never see her after
she's--after I've done it. It makes me sick to think of her, but I'll do
what I can for the baby." He stopped, and caught his breath. I could
feel in the dusk, rather than see, that he looked up, as if he were
trying to read my face in the darkness. "I will marry her," he went on,
"on one condition."
"What is that?" I asked, with my throat so dry that it ached.
"That you will take the child."
I think now that we must both have spoken like puppets talking by
machinery. I hardly seemed to myself to be alive and real, but this
proposition awoke me like a blow. I could at first only gasp, too much
overcome to bring out a word.
"But its mother?" I managed to stammer at last.
"If I'm to marry her for the sake of the child," he answered in a voice
I hardly recognized, "it would be perfect tomfoolery to leave it to grow
up with the Brownrigs. If that's to be the plan, I'll save myself. Jule
doesn't mind not being married. You don't know what a tribe the
Brownrigs are. It's an insult for me to be talking to you about them,
only it can't be helped. Is it a boy or a girl?"