anger and contempt flashed across at him like a heliograph, and his
vexation flashed back at her. She stood there staring at him
deliberately, staring him out of countenance. God! how vexed and furious
he was! It makes me laugh now to remember it. I never knew what a fool a
man could look when he was caught red-handed. The gipsy only giggled
vulgarly, and tried to rearrange her tumbled dress. Ruth never even
glanced at her, and presently she removed her gaze from Westmacott—it
seemed quite a long time, though I suppose it was not really more than a
few seconds—and turned to me.
“‘Shall we go?’ she said.
“‘We went, Ruth haughty, and I at a loss for words. Decidedly the
expedition had not been a success. The sheep-dog ran on in front and
tactfully barked, and in throwing little stones at him relations were
re-established between us. I was prepared not to allude to the incident,
but Ruth was bolder; she grappled directly with the difficulty.
“‘You saw Rawdon?’ she said with suppressed violence.
“‘I.... Well, yes, I saw him.’
“‘What was he doing there? He was up to no good with those gipsy women.’
“I had nothing to say; I knew she was right.
“‘He’s always after women,’ she added violently.
“‘I knew that she would not have said this to me had she not been
completely startled out of her self-control.
“‘He cares for you though, in his heart,’ I said, rather inanely.
“‘Does he!’ she exclaimed. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘he rides the cart-horses bareback with his face to
their tails to please you.’
“‘Oh, you may joke,’ she said; ‘he wants to please me now, but where’d I
be if I belonged to him? He’d sing a very different song.’
“‘It rests with you, after all,’ I ventured.
“She was silent, swishing at the hedges with her stick as she passed.
“‘Doesn’t it?’ I urged.
“‘Oh—I suppose so.’
“‘How do you mean, you suppose so? Nobody wants you to marry him; your
parents don’t; your brothers don’t. You need never see him again. Send
him away!’
“‘I can’t do that,’ she said in a very low voice.
“‘Why not?’
“‘I can’t.... I sometimes feel I can’t escape Rawdon,’ she cried out.
‘He’s always been there since I can remember, I think he always will be
there. There’s something between us; it may be fancy; but there’s
something between us.’
“‘Hush!’ I said, startled as I was; ‘here he is.’
“He caught us up, walking rapidly, and I could see at a glance that he
was determined to have it out with Ruth in spite of my presence. He came
up with us, and he took her by the arm.
“‘Ruth!’ he said, in a vibrant voice. I want a word with you. You’ve
misjudged me.’
“We had all come to a standstill.
“‘I can’t misjudge what I see,’ she answered very coldly.
“‘You saw, you saw! well, and what of it? That was only a bit of fun.
Damn you, if you treated me a bit better yourself ...’
“‘Let me alone, Rawdon,’ she said, shaking him off. ‘You can do as you
like, that’s your affair, only let me alone. I don’t want to talk to
you. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.’
“‘Your way!’ he said, scowling at me. ‘Your way’s my way, as you’ll
learn.’
“‘Now don’t you come bullying me, Rawdon,’ she said, but I think she was
frightened.
“‘Well, you speak me fair and I won’t bully you. I was up to no harm,
only larking around.... Come, Ruthie, haven’t you a smile for me? You
treat me cruel bad most days, you know, and I don’t take offence.
Ruthie!’
“‘We’re not alone, Rawdon,’ she said sharply.
“I thought he muttered, ‘No, damn it!’ between his teeth, and just then
I felt a hand close over my wrist on the side farthest from Westmacott,
a little imploring hand that checked in the nick of time my impulse to
move away. She spoke bravely, as though the contact gave her courage.
“‘That’ll do, now, Rawdon, don’t come making a scene. There’s nothing to
make a scene about.’
“‘But you’ll not sulk me?’ he said.
“‘I’ll not sulk you, why should I?’
“‘Then give me a kiss, for peace.’
“‘Let me be, Rawdon.’
“She was troubled, now that her anger had passed. I would have walked
on, but for the dry, fevered fingers gripping my wrist.
“A new idea had taken possession of Rawdon’s mind; his eyes glowed in
the noble, architectural carving of his face, that so belied the
coarseness of his nature.
“‘I’m your cousin, Ruth!’ he cried satirically.
“He caught her by the shoulder and turned her towards him. I thought she
would have struggled, and indeed I saw the preparatory tautening of her
frame; then to my astonishment she yielded suddenly, flexible and
abandoned, and he kissed her regardless of my presence; kissed her
ferociously, and pushed her from him.
“‘I’ll see you to-morrow?’ he asked.
“‘To-morrow, likely,’ she answered indifferently, with a quick return to
her old contemptuous manner.
“He nodded, put his hand on the top bar of the adjoining gate, and
vaulted it, walking off rapidly across the fields in the direction of
his own farm.
“‘And let me tell you,’ said Ruth, as though she were continuing an
uninterrupted conversation, “he’ll be back around that gipsy place
to-night as sure as geese at Michaelmas. He’s as false as can be, is
Rawdon.”
“‘Then I think you were weak with him,’ I said. ‘Are you afraid of him?’
“‘It’s like this,’ said Ruth, with that great uneasy heave of the
uneducated when confronted with the explanation of a problem beyond the
scope of their vocabulary, ‘we never get straight. Rawdon and I. He
cringes to me, and then I bully him; or else he bullies me, and then I
cringe to him. But quarrel as we may, we always come together again.
It’s no good,’ she said with a note of despair in her expressive voice
like the melancholy of a violin, ‘we can’t get away from one another. We
always come together again.’
“I was sad; I foresaw that those two would drift into marriage from pure
physical need, though there might well be more hatred than love between
them.
“In the meantime I tried, not always very successfully, to keep Ruth
away from him; she liked being with me, I know, and I think she even
welcomed a barrier between herself and her all-too compelling cousin,
and so it came about that our Sunday afternoons were, as I have told
you, usually spent together. There were times when she broke away from
me, when the physical craving became, I suppose, too strong for her, and
she would go back to Rawdon. But for the most part she would come after
dinner on Sundays, silent and reserved, to see if I was disposed for a
walk. She would come in her daily untidiness, with the colour blowing in
her cheeks, as beautiful and as wild as a flower. I used to feel sorry
for Westmacott and his hot blood.
“On these afternoons I tried my experiments on Ruth, and I sometimes
wonder whether she ever caught me at the game, for she would give me a
scared, distrustful glance, and turn her head away. She was curiously
lazy for so hard a worker, and in sudden indolence she would refuse to
move, but would lie on the ground idle and half asleep, and would do
nothing but eat the sweets I gave her. I never saw a book in her hand.
Once,” said Malory, throwing a bit of wood at the goats, “I thought I
would convert her to Art. I brought out some treasured books, and showed
her the pictures; she was neither bewildered, nor bored, nor impressed,
nor puzzled; she simply thought the masterpieces unspeakably funny. She
laughed.... I was absurdly offended at first, then I began to come round
to her point of view, and now I am not at all sure that I don’t agree.
She opened out for me a new attitude.
“After the failure of my pictures, I tried her with a more tangible
object. I took her to Penshurst. In telling you of this I am making a
very real sacrifice of my pride and self-respect, for, as sometimes
happens, I have realised since, from my disinclination to dwell in my
own mind upon the incident, that the little rapier of humiliation went
deeper than I thought, down to that point in the heart where
indifference ceases and essentials begin.”
As Malory said this, he looked at me with his quizzical, interrogative
expression, as if to see how I was taking it. I noticed then that he had
a crooked smile which gave to his face a quaint attraction. He was a
clean-shaven man, with lean features and a dark skin; graying hair; I
supposed him to be in the neighbourhood of forty.
“When I asked Ruth if she would come to Penshurst with me,” he
continued, “she said she must change her dress. She was absent for about
half an hour, while I waited in the garden and threw stones for the
sheep-dog. When she joined me I saw that she had done her best to
smarten herself up; she had frizzed her hair and put on a hat, and her
blouse was decorated with some sort of lace—I can’t give you a closer
description than that. I scarcely recognised her, and though I felt that
I was expected to make some comment I knew at the same time that I was
physically unable to do so. ‘How nice you look!’ were the words that my
will hammered out in my brain, but the words that left my lips were,
‘Come along.’
“We started thus unpropitiously, and the strain between us was tautened
at every step by the mood of excitement which possessed her. I had never
known her like this before. Usually she was quiet, lazy about her
speech, and not particularly apposite when she did make a remark, yet I
had always found her a satisfactory companion. To-day she chattered
volubly, and the painful conviction grew upon me that she was trying to
be coy; she hinted that she had broken an appointment with Westmacott; I
became more and more silent and miserable. I had anticipated with so
much pleasure our going to Penshurst, and I knew now that the afternoon
was to be a failure. When we reached the house, bad became worse; Ruth
giggled in the rooms, and the housekeeper looked severely at her. She
made terrible jokes about the pictures; giggled again; crammed her
handkerchief against her mouth; pinched my arm. At last my endurance
gave out, and I said, ‘We had better go home,’ and I thanked the
housekeeper, and said we would find our own way out.
“Ruth was very crestfallen as we went silently across the park; she
walked with hanging head beside me, and as I looked down on the top of
her absurd hat I was almost sorry for her, but I was really annoyed, and
childishly disappointed, so I said nothing, and stared gloomily in front
of me. I thought that if I thus marked my disapproval of her sudden mood
she would never repeat the experiment, and that next day she would
return to her blue linen dress and her habitual reserve. I did not think
she would make a scene, but rather that she would be glad to pass over
the disaster in silence.
“I was surprised when she stopped abruptly.
“‘I suppose you’ll never take me out again?’ she said, as though the
idea had been boiling wildly in her brain till it found a safety valve
in her lips.
“‘My dear Ruth....’ I began.
“‘How cold you are!’ she cried violently, and she stamped her foot upon
the ground. ‘Why don’t you get angry with me? shake me? abuse me? at any
rate, say something. Only “my dear Ruth.” I suppose I’m not good enough
for you to speak to. If that’s it, say so. I’ll go home a different way.
What have I done? What’s wrong? What have I done?’
“I realised that she was in the grip of an emotion she could not
control. Such emotions came over one but seldom in ordinary life, but
when they come they are uncontrollable, for they spring from that point
in the heart, which I was speaking of, where indifference ceases and
essentials begin. Still, while realising this, I hardened myself against
her.
“‘Nothing,’ I said, adding, ‘except failed to be yourself.’
“‘What do you want me to be?’ she asked, staring at me.
“‘My dear Ruth,’ I said, ‘I like you in blue linen.’
“I swear I only meant it symbolically; it was perhaps foolish of me to
think she would understand. She went on staring at me for a moment, then
a change came over her face, a wounded look, horrible to see, and I felt
I had hurt a child, most grievously, but before I could rush into the
breach I had made and build it up again with fair words, she had dropped
her face into her hands and I saw that her shoulders were shaking. She
uttered no word of reproach or self-justification, no plea; thereby
increasing her pathos a hundredfold.
“I was distressed and embarrassed beyond measure; I hated myself, but I
no longer hated her. I had begun to like her again in the brief period
of her rage, and now in the period of her despair I liked her again
completely. I implored her to stop crying, and I tried confusedly to
explain my meaning.
“She would have none of my explanations, but turned on me cheeks flaming
with a shame which forbade any allusion to her clothes. I could see that
she was trembling from head to foot, and by the force of her authority
over me I gauged the force of her emotion over herself. Genius and
passion are alike compelling. Here was a Ruth I did not know, but it was
a Ruth I had desired to see, and I triumphed secretly for having divined
her under the Ruth of every day.
“Well,” said Malory, “I have made my confession now, for it partakes of
the nature of confession. I never saw that piteous finery again, and I
never saw the mood that matched it. She calmed down at length, and we
made a compact of friendship, but if ever the name of Penshurst arose in
conversation I saw the scarlet flags fluttering in her cheeks.
“Meanwhile the familiarity of the place grew on me, as I had foreseen,
and there were many inmates of the farm, now old-established, whom I had
known since their birth; plants and animals alike. We were haymaking, a
common enough pursuit, but to me full of delight; I loved the ready
fields, the unceasing whirr and rattle of the cutter, the browning grass
as it lay where it had fallen, and the rough wooden rake in my hand. I
loved the curve of the fields over the hill, and the ridges of hay
stretching away like furrows. Above all I loved the great stack, which
swallowed up the cart-loads one by one, and the green tarpaulins furled
above it, which made it look like a galleon with sails and rigging.
“I told you I had dipped into many things; I worked once on a Greek
trader which plied with figs and oranges from Smyrna to Corinth through
the islands of the Ægean. It was a bulky, mediæval-looking vessel, with
vast red sails, very little changed, I should imagine, from the one in
which Ulysses sailed on his immortal journey. I learnt a certain amount
about the orange trade, but I learnt another thing from that Greek ship
which I value more: I learnt about colour, hot, tawny colour, that ran
the gamut from the bronze limbs of the crew, through the Venetian sails,
to the fire of the fruit, and echoed again in the sunset behind
Hymettus, and dropped in the cool aquamarine of the waves near the
shore, and deepened into sapphire as I hung over the sides of the ship
above the moving water. From this rich canvas I had come to the grays
and greens and browns of England, the dove after the bird of Paradise,
and do you know, I felt the relationship of the two, the relationship of
labour between the Greek, the almost pirate, crew, and the English
farmer with his classic and primitive tools, the brotherhood between the
sweeping scythe and the dipping oar, between the unwieldy stack and the
clumsy vessel.
“The scent of the hay is in my nostrils, and the stirring is in my arms
to throw up my fork-load upon the cart. We worked sometimes till ten at
night, a race with the weather; we worked by sunlight and moonlight, and
I preferred the latter. You may think that I preferred it because it
pleased me to see the round yellow moon come up from behind the trees,
and light that wholesome scene with its unwholesome radiance, like a
portrait of Hercules, naked, by Aubrey Beardsley? Well, you are wrong. I
preferred it because I got less hot.
“Rawdon Westmacott used to come over to help us. A pair of extra hands
was welcome, but I think old Pennistan would rather the hands had been
tied on to any other body. It was quite clear that he neglected his own
farm only to be near Ruth, and I had long since gathered that the
Pennistans would never willingly consider him as a son-in-law. I
sympathised with them. He was an unruly man, as wild as he was handsome,
a byword among the young men of the countryside; prompt with his
fist—that was perhaps the best thing that could be said of him—foul with
his tongue, intolerable when in his cups. So quarrelsome was he that
even when sober he would seek out cause for insult. I myself, who in my
capacity of guest took every precaution to avoid any unpleasantness, had
an ominous encounter with him. I had spent a day in London, and returned
with various little gifts which I had thought would please the
Pennistans; to Ruth I brought a pair of big, round, brass ear-rings and
a coloured scarf, for I had a fancy to see her tricked out as a gipsy.
It entertained me to see her, who as I have told you was habitually slow
of mind, enthusiasm, and speech, respond with some latent instinct to
the gaudy things. She ran to the glass in the kitchen and began to screw
the rings on to her unpierced ears.
“‘You must learn to dance now, Ruth,’ I said.
“She looked round at me, and in the turn of her head and the flash of
the rings I seemed to see Concha of the gipsy booth.
“‘Father doesn’t hold with dancing,’ she replied.
“‘He isn’t here to see,’ I said. ‘Won’t you try a step?’
“She blushed. It was a pretty sight to see her blush.
“‘I don’t know how,’ she said awkwardly, looking away from me into the
glass as she wound the scarf round her neck.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘will you learn if I have you taught?’
“She burst into the shrill laugh of the common girl, and cried, ‘Get
along with you, Mr. Malory! making fun of a poor girl like me.’
“Concha was gone, but I struggled to revive her, without conviction, and
with a queer blankness in my heart. At least,” said Malory, correcting
himself, “it wasn’t my heart, but my mind, my sense of rightness, that
was disappointed.
“‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I’ll have you taught the dances of Spain.’
“‘Spain?’ she echoed, with a frown genuinely puzzled, so remote from her
was all thought of the land of her wandering forefathers.
“I risked a bold remark.
“‘Your great-grandmother, I’ve no doubt, could give you a hint of the
Spanish dances.’
“Then she remembered, but the recollection came to her, I could see,
from afar off, with the unreality of a date in history, poignant enough
at the time.
“At that moment a knock fell upon the door, and Rawdon Westmacott came
in without waiting to be bidden. He saw Ruth standing there, and
stopped. Then he caught sight of me by the wide fireplace. His eyes
travelled swiftly between us, and I saw the rage and the prompt
conclusion spring into them. In fact, I never saw a man so suddenly full
of barely contained anger. He would have given a great deal, I am sure,
to have insulted me openly.
“We stood for a moment in silence, the three of us, then Westmacott’s
voice came out of space to break the moment’s eternity.
“‘That’s fine toggery, Ruth, you’ve got on,’ he said.
“She looked at him without answering, her breath beginning to come a
little quicker. I watched them both; I was angry, but not too angry to
be interested. I felt the man’s power; his brutality; and I remember
thinking that something in her—was it primitive woman?—responded to
something—was it primitive man?—in him. At the same time I knew that
waves of hatred vibrated between them; that, if she was attracted, she
was no less repelled. Did I touch then, in an unexpected moment of
insight, the vital spot of that enigma? I believe that I was very near
the truth. I knew that the situation was not by any means an important
one, but it was nevertheless a battle, a clash of wills, and as such I
thought it significant.
“I saw her hand travel upward, and slowly begin to unwind the scarf.
“‘It’s ill becoming you, my girl,’ he went on, with the threatening note
rising in his voice. ‘I’d sooner see you simple, Ruth,’ and I thought of
the lashing sea when the wind begins to swirl like a dragon’s tail along
the beach.
“I tried to intervene.
“‘I brought....’ I began to say, but catching the glance which Ruth
turned upon me I was silent.
“‘You’d best take them off,’ Westmacott said.
“Slowly she took the scarf, and laid it on the table, slowly she
unfastened the rings and laid them beside the scarf. I could have wrung
his neck, but for the sake of the girl I remained quiet; I knew that she
would have to pay for my championship, and, besides, I was ignorant of
what understanding existed between them. Underneath my anger, I was
conscious of a vague irritation creeping over me, that she had taken his
bullying so meekly and had not flown out at him, with her brass
ear-rings clanking in her ears, as she had flown out at me on the day of
Penshurst.
“Westmacott was clever enough to ignore the obvious fact that I had been
the giver of the ornaments. He swept them off the table into his pocket,
and, I presume, threw them into the horse-pond, and would have liked to
throw me after; but that Ruth should not go without a present I ordered
for her a pair of mice in a cage, a brown mouse and a Japanese waltzing
mouse. She thought it extremely diverting to see the black and white
mouse turning unceasingly after its tail, white the brown mouse watched
it in perplexity mingled with disapproval from a corner of the cage.”
IV
“Either Westmacott did not notice these new inhabitants of the kitchen
window-sill, for there they lived, among the pots of red geranium, or he
considered he had humiliated me sufficiently; at any rate he made no
allusions to the cage. As for Ruth and I, we went for several
uncomfortable days without reference to the scene, but there it was
between us, an awkward bond, until she broke the silence.
“We were in the dairy; I had brought in the newly-filled milk pails, and
she stood churning butter upon a marble slab. I liked the dairy, with
its great earthenware pans of milk, its tiled floor, and its cleanliness
like the cleanliness of a ship. To-day it was full of the smell of the
buttermilk.
“‘Mr. Malory,’ said Ruth, suddenly turning to me, ‘I’ve never thanked
you for understanding me the other night. I didn’t think any the worse
of you, I’d like to say, for keeping back your words.’
“‘So long as you didn’t think I was afraid of your savage young
friend....’ I said.
“‘No, no, I didn’t think that,’ she answered with her quick blush. ‘He
says more than he means, Rawdon does, if he’s roused, and it’s best to
give in.’
“‘You give in a good deal to people,’ I said with that same irritation
at her meekness.
“‘It’s easier...’ she murmured.
“Ah? so that was it? not tameness of spirit, but mere indolence? I felt
strangely comforted. At the same time I thought I would take advantage
of our enforced confidences to make some remark about the young man of
whom her parents had disapproved.
“‘Westmacott....’ I said. ‘He must be a difficult man to deal with? Even
for you, whose word should be law to him?’
“But my attempt wasn’t a success, for she shut up like a box with a
spring in the lid. I saw that I should never get her to discuss Rawdon
Westmacott with me, and I came to the conclusion that she must be fond
of the fellow, and I could understand it, regrettable as I thought it,
for he was an attractive man in his dare-devil way.
“I soon had cause to regret my conclusion more, for I surprised the
secret of a young handy-man who worked sometimes on the farm and for
whom I had always had a great liking. He came to fell timber when old
Pennistan wanted him, and he also did the thatching of the smaller,
out-lying stacks. I went to help him at this work one day when his mate
was laid up with a sprained ankle. He told me he had learnt his craft
from his father, who had been a thatcher for fifty years; it gave me
great satisfaction to think that a man could spend half a century on so
monotonous a craft, constantly crawling on the sloping tops of ricks,
with a bit of carpet tied round his knees, and his elementary tools—a
mallet, a long wooden comb, a bundle of sticks, and a pocketful of
pegs—always ready to his hand, while his mate on the ground pulled out
the straw from the golden truss, made the ends even, and lifted the
prepared bundle on a pitchfork up to the thatcher. My young friend told
me the art of thatching was dying out. I tried my hand at it, but the
straw blew about, and I found I could not lay two consecutive strands in
place.
“He was a fine young man, whose knowledge of the country seemed as
instinctive as it was extensive. I said I surprised his secret. I should
not have used the word surprise. It shouted itself out from his candid
eyes as he rested them on Ruth; she had brought out his dinner, and
leaned against his ladder for a moment’s talk; he looked down at her
from where he knelt on the rick, and if ever I saw adoration in a man’s
face I saw it on his just then. I felt angry with Ruth in her serene
unconsciousness. She had no right to disturb men with her more than
beauty. I wondered whether she was or was not pledged to Rawdon
Westmacott, and the more of a riddle she appeared to me the angrier I
felt against her.
“I was dissatisfied with the whole situation; I could not manipulate my
puppets as I would; I felt that I held a handful of scattered pearls,
and could find no string on which to hang them. In my discontent I went
into the kitchen to look at the mice, they were still and huddled in
separate corners. Amos and his wife were sitting at the table drinking
large cups of tea, Amos, full-bearded, and in his shirt sleeves and red
braces as I had first seen him. As I turned to go they stopped me.
“‘Mr. Malory,’ Amos said, ‘we’d like to ask your advice. We’re right
moidered about our girl. You’ve seen how it is between her and young
Westmacott. Now we’ll not have young Westmacott in our family if we can
help it, and we’re wondering whether it would be best to forbid him the
place, and forbid Ruth to hold any further truck with him, or to trust
her good sense to send him about his business in the end.’
“I reflected. Then I considered that Westmacott was probably more
attractive present than absent, and spoke.
“‘I hardly like to interfere in what isn’t really my affair at all, but
as you’ve asked me I’ll say that if Ruth were my daughter I should
forbid him the farm.’
“‘That clinches it,’ said Amos, bringing his hand down on the table.
‘We’ll have the girl in and tell it her straight away. You’ve voiced my
own feelings, sir, and I’m grateful to you.’
“Here Mrs. Pennistan began to cry.
“‘My poor Ruth! and what if she’s fond of the boy?’
“‘Better for her to shed a dozen tears for him now than a hundred
thousand in years to come. I’ll call her in.’
“She came, wiping her hands on her blue apron.
“‘Father, the butter’ll spoil.’
“‘Never mind the butter. Now listen here, my girl, we’ve been talking
about you, your mother and I, and we’ve decided that you and Rawdon have
seen more of each other than is good for you. So I’m going to tell him
that he’s to keep over at his own place in the future, and I expect you
to keep over here; that is, I won’t have you slipping out and meeting
that young good-for-nothing when the fancy takes you.’
“What a gentleman he is, I thought to myself, to have kept my name out
of it.
“I looked at Ruth, wondering what she would do, and hoping, yes, hoping
that she would rebel.
“‘Very well, dad,’ was all she said, and she looked perfectly composed,
and was not even twisting her apron as she stood there before the court
of justice.
“I think Amos was a little surprised, a little disappointed, at her
compliance.
“‘You understand?’ he said, trying to emphasise the point which he had
already
“‘I understand, dad,’ she said, still in that quiet and perfectly
respectful voice.
“‘There’s a good girl,’ said Mrs. Pennistan, and she got up and kissed
her daughter, who submitted passively.
“‘Now perhaps Mr. Malory’ll lend me a hand with the butter, or it’ll
spoil,’ said Ruth, looking at me, and I followed her out to the dairy,
expecting, I must confess, that she would turn upon me and rend me. But
she remained severely practical as she set me to my task.
“I could bear it no longer.
“‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘I must be honest with you, even though it makes you
angry. Your father asked my advice in this business, and I gave it him.’
“‘You shouldn’t stop,’ she said, ‘the butter’ll never set properly.’
“I returned to my churn.
“‘But, Ruth, do you understand what I say? I am partly responsible for
Westmacott’s dismissal.’
“Her hand and arm continued their rotary movement, but she turned her
large eyes upon me.
“‘Why?’ she inquired, with disconcerting simplicity.
“‘I don’t like him,’ I muttered. ‘How could I live here, knowing you
married to a man I dislike and mistrust?’
“To my surprise she said no more, but bent to her work, and I saw a
great blush like a wave creep slowly over her half hidden face and down
where her unfastened dress revealed her throat.
“‘Ruth,’ I said humbly, ‘are you angry with me?’
“I heard a ‘No,’ that glided out with her breath.
“‘I hope you don’t care for him too much? He isn’t worthy of you.’
“‘Can you lift that pail for me?’ she said, pointing, and I lifted the
heavy pail, and poured it as she directed into the separator, a smooth
Niagara of milk.
“About three days later my thatcher unbosomed himself to me. Westmacott
had disappeared from the farm, and of course every one for five miles
round knew that Pennistan had turned him out. I don’t know how they knew
it, but country people seem to know things like a swallow knows its way
to Egypt.
“I recommended my thatcher to speak privately to Amos first, which he
did, and received that good man’s sanction and approval.
“Then Ruth came to me, or, rather, I met her with the pig pail in her
hand, and she stopped me. A distant reaper was singing on its way
somewhere in the summer evening.
“‘I’ve seen Leslie Dymock,’ she said abruptly. ‘Is it true that you....’
“‘I didn’t discourage him,’ I said as she paused.
“Again she put to me that disconcerting question, ‘Why?’
“‘He’s a good fellow,’ I answered warmly. ‘He cares for you. He didn’t
tell me. I guessed.’
“‘How?’ she asked.
“‘Heavens!’ I cried, taking the pig pail angrily from her, ‘you
positively rout me with your direct questions. Why? How? As if one’s
actions could hold in a single why or how. Don’t you know that the stars
of the Milky Way are as nothing compared with the complexity of men’s
motives?’
“She gazed at me, and as I looked into her eyes I felt that I had been a
fool, and that with certain human beings a single motive could sail
serenely like a rising planet in the evening sky. Then I remembered I
was still holding the pail. I set it down.
“‘I am sorry,’ I said more gently, ‘I ought not to answer you like that.
I like, I respect, and I trust Leslie Dymock, and for that reason I
should at least be glad to see you consider his claim. As for my
guessing, I had only to look at his face when you came.’
“‘I see,’ she said slowly. She bent to recover her pail. ‘I must be
getting on to the pigs,’ and indeed those impatient animals were
shrieking discordantly from the stye.
“Next day,” said Malory as though in parenthesis, and with a reminiscent
smile on his face, “I remember that a butcher came to buy the pigs. He
fastened a big hook on to the beams of the ceiling in a little, dark,
disused cottage, and we drove the pigs, three of them, into the cottage
for the purpose of weighing them alive, and Ruth looked on from outside,
through the much cobwebbed window. It was a scene both farcical and
Flemish. All the farm dogs gathered round barking; the pigs, who were
terrified into panic, made an uproar such as you cannot imagine if you
have never heard a pig screaming. The butcher and his mate drove them
into sacks, head first, and as he got the snout neatly into one corner
of the sack, and the feet into as many corners as were left to
accommodate them, the sack took on the exact semblance of a pig dragging
itself with restraint and difficulty along the ground. One after the
other they were hoisted into the air and suspended yelling from the
hook. I went out to see whether Ruth was scared by the noise. She was
not. She was laughing as I had never seen her laugh before, her hands
pressed to her hips, tears in her eyes, her white teeth gleaming in the
shadows. I was interested, because I thought I understood the inevitable
introduction of farcical interludes into mediæval drama. Now I think I
understand better, that Ruth, who entirely lacked a sense of the
humorous in life, was rich in the truly Latin sense of farce. I
practised on her on several occasions after that, and never failed to
draw the laugh I expected. The physical imposition of the automatic was
unvarying in its results. And she had no feminine sentimentality about
the sufferings of the pigs—not she. She rather liked to see animals
baited.”
Yes, my friend, thought I as he paused, and I understand you even better
than you profess to have understood the girl. You have no spark of real
humour in you.
Just as Malory reached this point in his story, I was obliged to go away
to Turin for a couple of days, but my mind ran more on the Weald of Kent
than on my own affairs: I felt that the summer days were slipping by,
that the corn would be cut and set up in stooks, if not already carted,
by the time I got back, and that Leslie Dymock might have made such good
use of his time as to be actually betrothed. As soon as I reached
Sampiero and had changed from my travelling decency into my habitual
flannels, I rushed out to find Malory, who was sitting with his pipe in
his mouth beside the stream fishing.
He greeted me, “I’ve caught two trout.”
“No? We’ll have them for breakfast,” and I threw myself on the ground
beside him, and watched his lazy line rocking on the water.
“What it is to be a fisherman!” Malory said. “To wade out into a great,
broad river, and stand there isolated from men, with the water swirling
round your knees, and crying ‘Come! come away from the staid and stupid
land out to the sea, and exchange the shackles of life for the liberty
of death.’ When the voice of the water has become too insistent, I have
all but bent my knees and given myself up to the rhythm of the stream.
Fishing, like nothing else, begets serenity of spirit. Serenity of
spirit,” he repeated, “and turbulence of action—that should make up the
sum of man’s life.”
He cast his fly and began to murmur some lines over to himself,—
“Give me a spirit that on life’s rough sea
Loves t’ have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is....”
“The Elizabethans counted life well lost in an adventurous cause. I
believe in their sense of duty, but I believe still more in their sense
of adventure. And they share with the French the love of _panache_.
Prudence is a hateful virtue. I believe the hatefulness of prudence is
the chief cause of the unpopularity of Jews.”
He looked apologetically at me to see what I made of his dogmatic
excursion.
“I wonder whether you want me to go on with my story? You do! Well. Amos
Pennistan said to me after a month had passed, ‘I’ve enough of Ruth’s
nivvering-novvering.’
“I thought that,” said Malory, “an excellent expression—a moral
onomatopœia. Amos continued, ‘I’m going to say to her, “One thing or the
other; either you take Leslie Dymock, or you leave him.“’ ‘Grand!’ I
said, ‘I like your directness, straight to the point, like a pin to a
magnet. After all, over-much subtlety has weakened modern life and
modern art alike. And what if she replies that she will leave him?’
“I thought his answer a fine simple one, patriarchal in its pride:
‘There’s many young men besides Leslie Dymock that would be glad to
marry my daughter; ’tis not every girl has such a dower of looks as my
girl, and a dower of this world’s goods thrown along.’ Flocks and herds,
she-goats and he-goats, I suppose he would have said, had he lived in
Israel two thousand years ago.
“So this ultimatum was presented to Ruth, who asked for a month in which
to make up her mind. I saw her going about her work as usual, but I
supposed that thoughts more sacred, more speculative, than her ordinary
thoughts of daily labour, were coming and going in her brain, hopping,
and occasionally twittering, like little birds in a coppice. I did not
speak to her much at this time. I pictured her as a nun during her
novitiate, or as a young man in vigil beside his unused armour, or as
the condemned criminal in his cell, because all three figures share
alike a quantity of aloofness from the world. I only wished that Heaven
might grant me a second Daphnis and Chloe for my depopulated Arcady, and
I asked no greater happiness than to see Ruth and Leslie tangled
together in the meshes of love.
“September was merging into October, and again the orchards on the slope
of the hill were loaded with fruit, the bushel baskets stood on the
ground, and the tall ladders reared themselves into the branches. We
were all fruit-pickers for the time being. Of the apples, only the very
early kinds were ripe for market, and of this I was glad, for I enjoyed
the jewelled orchard, red, green, and russet, and yellow, too, where the
quince-trees stood with their roots under the little brook, but the
plums were ready, and the village boys swarmed into the trees to pick
such fruit as their hands could reach, and to shake the remainder to the
ground. We, below, stood clear while a shower of plums bounced and
tumbled into the grass, then we filled our baskets with gold and purple,
returning homewards in the evening laden like the spies from the
Promised Land. Amos stood, nobly apostolic, his great beard spread like
a breastplate over his chest, among the glowing plunder. I was reminded
of my Greek trader, and of the Tuscan vineyards; and the English country
and the southern plenty were again strangely mingled.
“Towards the end of the month, considering that if her mind had not yet
sailed into the sea of placidity I so desired it to attain, it would
never do so, I decided to sound Ruth upon her decision. You see, she
interested me, disappointed as I was in her, and I had nothing else to
think about at the time save these, to you no doubt tame, love affairs
of my country friends. I had a good deal of difficulty in coaxing her
into a sufficiently emotional frame of mind; as fast as I threw the
ballast out of our conversational balloon, she threw in the sand-bags
from the other side. My speech was all of the lover’s Heaven, hers of
the farm-labourer’s earth. She was curiously on the defensive; I could
not understand her. I was certain that her matter-of-factness was, that
evening, deliberate. She was full of restraint, and yet, a feverishness,
an expectancy clung about her, which I could not then explain, but which
I think was fully explained by later events.
“We got off at last, we went soaring up into the sky; it was my doing,
for I had uttered the wildest words to get her to follow me. I had
talked of marriage; Heaven knows what I said. I told her that love was
passion and friendship—passion in the secret night, but comradeship in
the open places under the sun, and that whereas passion was the
drunkenness of love, friendship was its food and clear water and warmth,
and bodily health and vigour. I told her that children were to their
begetters what flowers are to the gardener: little expanding things with
dancing butterflies, sensitive, responsive, satisfying; the crown of
life, the assurance of the future, the rhyme of the poem. I told her
that in love alone can the poignancy of joy equal the poignancy of
sorrow. I told her of that minority that finds its interest in continual
change, and of that majority which rests on a deep content, and a great
many other things which I do not believe, but which I should wish to
believe, and which I should wish all women to believe. I told her all
that I had never told a human being before, all that I had, perhaps,
checked my tongue from uttering once or twice in my life, because I knew
myself to be an inconstant man. I made love by quadruple proxy, not as
myself to Ruth Pennistan, or as myself in Leslie Dymock’s name to Ruth
Pennistan, or as myself to any named or unnamed woman, but as any man to
any woman, and I enjoyed it, because sincerity always carries with it a
certain degree of pain, but pure rhetoric carries the pure enjoyment of
the creative artist.”
I disliked Malory’s cynicism, and I should have disliked it still more
had I not suspected that he was not entirely speaking the truth. I was
also conscious of boiling rage against the man for being such a fool.
“When I had finished,” he went on, “she was trembling like a pool
stirred by the wind.
“‘You think like that,’ she said, ‘I never heard any one talk like that
before.’
“Then I told her a great deal more, about her Spanish heritage and that
disturbing blood in her veins, and about Spain, of which she knew next
to nothing: that southern Spain was soft and the air full of
orange-blossom, but that the north was fierce and arid, and peopled by
men who in their dignity and reserve had more in common with the English
than with the Latin races to whom they belonged; that as their country
had not the kindliness of the English country, so they themselves lacked
the kindly English humour, which mocks and smiles and, above all,
pities; and that their temper is not swift, but slow like the English
temper, but, when roused, ruthless and as little to be checked as a fall
of water. I think that for the first time she guessed at a world beyond
England, a world inhabited by real men. Before that, Spain and all
Europe had been as remote as the stars.”
Malory told her all this, and then, when they were fairly flying through
the air—I imagined them as the North Wind and the little girl in the
fairy-story: hair streaming, garments streaming, hand pulling hand—he
judged the moment opportune to return to Leslie Dymock. I fancy that the
crash to earth again must have knocked all consciousness from the girl
for a considerable interval. During this interval Malory dilated on the
admirableness of the young man, his estimable qualities, and his worldly
prospects. I could understand his scheme. He had planned to fill her
with electricity, then to switch her suddenly off, sparkling and
thrilling, on to Leslie Dymock. He had, I suppose, assumed that a
certain sympathy had already inclined her native tenderness towards
Leslie Dymock. The scheme was an excellent one in all but one
particular: that his initial premise was radically false.
After the interval of her unconsciousness, she returned with slowly
opening eyes to what he was saying. God knows what she had expected the
outcome of their wild journey to be. Malory only told me that with
parted lips and eyes in which all the mysteries of awakened adolescence
were stirring, she laid her hand, trembling, on his hand and said,—
“What do you mean? why do you speak to me like ... like this, and then
talk to me again about Leslie Dymock?”
He asked her whether she could not find her happiness with Leslie Dymock
and realise in her life with him all the pictures whose colours he,
Malory, had painted for her. And she answered so bitterly and so
scornfully that he charged her with having her heart still fixed on
Rawdon Westmacott.
“Still fixed!” she cried, emphasising the first word, “and how could
that be still fixed which never was fixed at all?”
He was baffled; he thought her an unnatural creature to be still
heart-whole when her youth, her advantages, and that depth which, in
spite of her tameness, her reserve, and his own protestations of her
lack of passion—protestations which I suspect he continued to make for
the strengthening of his own unsure belief—he instinctively divined,
should have created a tumult in her soul. It was to him unthinkable that
such hammer-strokes as Nature, Westmacott, and Dymock had conjointly
delivered on the walls of her heart, should have failed to open a
breach. Such breaches, once opened, are hard to close against a
determined invader. He urged her to confide in him, he told her that his
whole delight lay in the problems of humanity, that metaphysics and
psychology were to his mind as sea-air to his nostrils. She only looked
at him, and I think it was probably fortunate for his vanity that he
could not read what a fool she thought him. I suppose that every man
must appear to a woman half a genius and half a fool. Much as a grown
person must appear to the infinitely simpler and infinitely more complex
mind of a child.
He urged her confidence, therefore, seeing that she remained silent,
although her lips were still parted, her hand still lying on his hand,
and the expectation still living in her eyes, that had not as yet
remembered to follow the lead of her mind. They were the mirrors of her
instinct, and her instinct was at variance with her reason. He had come
down to the practical business of his mission, while she lived still in
the enchanted moments of their flight into a realm to her unknown. If
her ears received his emphatic words, her brain remained insensible to
them. He detached his hand from hers, to lay it on her shoulder and to
shake her slightly.
“Ruth, do you hear what I am saying to you?”
Her widened eyes contracted for an instant, as with pain, and turning
them on him she prepared an expression of intelligent comprehension to
greet his next sentence.
“I am asking you to trust me as a friend. It’s lonely to be left alone
with a decision. If you are angry with me for interfering, tell me to go
away, and I will go. But so long as I may talk to you, I want to keep my
finger on the pulse of your affairs, where it has been, let me remind
you, ever since I set foot in your father’s house. I want to see you
happy in your home, and to know that I accompanied you at any rate to
the threshold.”
She broke from him, he told me, with a cry; ran from him, and never
reappeared that evening. On the following day she accepted Leslie
Dymock.
V
“There was a great deal of rejoicing,” Malory continued, “in the
Pennistan household over the engagement. Nancy and her husband came for
a three days’ visit. I was glad to see my Daphnis and Chloe again, and
to discover that all the sweets of marriage which I had described to
Ruth were living realities in these two. They seemed insatiable for each
other’s presence. Their attitude towards Ruth and Leslie was parental;
nay, grandfatherly; nay, ancestral! Experience and patronage transpired
through the cracks of their benison. Ruth was annoyed, but I was greatly
amused.
“It had been arranged that the wedding should take place almost
immediately. Why delay? I am sure that Leslie Dymock was hungering to
get his wife away to his own home. And Ruth? She accepted every
happening with calm, avoided me—I supposed that she was shy, and left
her to herself—was gentle and affectionate to Leslie, took a suitable
interest in the preparations of her wedding. I was, on the whole,
satisfied. I did not believe that she was much in love with Leslie
Dymock, in fact I was inclined to think that she regretted her handsome
blackguard, but I believed that her evident fondness for Dymock would
develop with their intimacy, and that the bud would presently break out
into the full-blown rose.
“As for him, he would not have exchanged his present position with an
archangel.
“I asked Amos what had become of Westmacott.
“‘Over at his place, like a wild beast in a cave,’ he replied with a
grin.
“‘Is he coming to the wedding?’
“‘Oh, ay, if he chooses.’
“I now became concerned for my own future. Life at the Pennistans’
without Ruth would, I foresaw, be less agreeable although not actually
unbearable. She and I had worked together in a harmony I could scarcely
hope to reproduce with the hired girl who was to take her place, for you
must realise that although I have only reported to you our conversations
on the more human subjects of life, our everyday existence had been made
up of hours of happy work and mutual interest. I seriously thought of
leaving, and said as much to Dymock.
“Some days afterwards that good young man came to me.
“‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘of your leaving and of your not liking,
as you told me, to go away from the Weald till after next spring. Now
I’ve a proposal to make to you,’ and he told me of a cottage near his
own place, with five acres, enough to support hens, pigs, and a cow,
whose tenant had recently died. He suggested to me that I should rent
this small holding for a year. ‘And you can walk over o’ nights, and
have a bit of supper with us,’ he added hospitably.
“The matter was adjusted, and I told Ruth with joy that I should be
within half a mile of her in her new life. I was grieved to see that she
first looked taken aback, then dismayed, then irritated. I say that I
was grieved, but presently I found occasion to be glad, for I reflected
that if she thus resented the disturbance of her solitude with her
husband it could only be on account of her growing fondness for him, and
as I could not now revoke my tenancy I resolved that I would at least be
a discreet neighbour.
“How smugly satisfied we all were at that time! I feel ashamed for
myself and for the others when I think of it.
“The first indication I had that anything was wrong came about a week
before Ruth’s wedding, when, walking down a lane near Pennistans’
driving home the cattle, I passed Rawdon Westmacott. We were by then
near November, so the evening was dark, and I was not sure of the man’s
identity until we had actually crossed. Then I saw his sharp face, and
recognised the subtly Oriental lilt of his walk. He looked angry when he
saw that I was myself, and not one of the herdsmen he no doubt expected.
I wondered what the fellow was doing on Pennistan’s land.
“The weather was bitterly cold, all the leaves were gone from the trees,
and the fat, wealthy Weald was turned to a scarecrow presentment of
itself. Instead of the blue sky and great white clouds like the Lord
Mayor’s horses, a hard sulphur sky greeted me in the early mornings,
with streaks of iron gray cloud on the horizon, and a lowering red disc
of sun. Underfoot the ground was frosty, and the frozen mud stood up in
little sharp ridges. As it thawed during the day the clay resumed its
slimy dominion, and I had to exchange my shoes for boots, as the clay
pulled my shoes off my heels.
“It was now two days before the wedding, and I sought out Ruth to make
her my humble present. Never mind what it was. I had got her an extra
present, which, I told her, was my real offering, and I gave her the
case, and she opened it on a pair of big brass ear-rings. She got very
white.
“‘You can wear them now,’ I said, ‘Leslie at least isn’t jealous of me,
and here is the rest,’ and I gave her the coloured scarf.
“She took it from my hand, never thanking me or saying a word, but
looking at me steadily, and put the scarf round her throat.
“I added my good wishes; Heaven knows they were sincere.
“‘Tell me you’re happy, Ruth, and I shall be filled with gladness.’
“‘I’m happy,’ she said dully.
“‘And you’re fond of Leslie?’
“‘Yes,’ she said with such sudden emphasis that I was startled, ‘all
that you said about him is true; he is kind and valiant, a man with whom
any woman should be happy. I am glad that I have learnt how good he is.
I am fonder of him than of my brothers.’
“I thought that a strange comparison, but not wholly a bad one.
“I tried to be hearty.
“‘I am so pleased, Ruth, and my vanity is gratified, too, for I almost
think you might have passed him by but for me.’
“‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I would have passed him by.’
“‘By God, Ruth!’ I burst out, ‘he is a lucky fellow. Do you know that
you are a very beautiful woman?’
“She swayed as though she were dizzy for a moment.
“‘I must go,’ she said then, ‘and I haven’t said thank you, but I do
thank you.’
“She paused.
“‘You have taught me a great deal. I have learnt from you what men like
Leslie Dymock have a right to expect from life.’
“‘And you will give it him?’ I asked.
“She bowed her head.
“‘I will try.’
“Now I thought that a very satisfactory conversation, and I went about
my work, for beasts must be fed and housed, weddings or no weddings,
with a singing heart that day. If, somewhere, a tiny worm of jealousy
crawled about on the floor-mud of my being, I think I bottled it very
successfully into a corner. I was not jealous of Dymock on account of
Ruth; no, not exactly; but jealous only as one must be jealous of two
young happy things when one remembers that, much as one values one’s
independence, one is not the vital life-spark of any other human being
on this earth. There must be moments when the most liberty-loving among
us envy the yoke they fly from.
“I clapped a cow on her ungainly shallow flanks as I tossed up her
bedding, and said to her, ‘You and I, old friend, must stick together,
for if man can’t have his fellow-creatures to love he must return to the
beasts.’ She turned her glaucous eye on me as she munched her supper.
Then I heard voices in the shed.
“‘Rawdon! if dad sees you....’
“And Westmacott’s hoarse voice.
“‘I’ll chance that, but, by hell, Ruth, you shall listen to me. They
think you’re going to marry that lout, but as I’m a living man you
shan’t. I’ll murder him first. I swear before God that if you become
that man’s wife I’ll make you his widow.’
“I stood petrified, wondering what I should do. It was night, and pitch
dark inside the shed, but as I looked over the back of my cow down the
line of stalls in which the slow cattle were lazily ruminating, I saw
two indistinct figures and, beyond them, the open door, the night sky,
and an angry moon, the yellow Hunter’s moon, rising behind the trees.
“Ruth spoke again.
“‘Rawdon, don’t talk too loud. I’ll stay, yes, I’ll stay with you; only
dad’ll kill you if he finds you here.’
“‘I’ve been up every night to find you,’ Westmacott said in a lower
voice. ‘I’ve hung about hoping you’d come out. Ruth, you don’t know. I’m
mad for you.... You’re my woman. What business have you to go with
bloodless men? You come with me, and I’ll give you all you lack. I’ll be
good to you, too, I swear I will. I’ll not drink; no, on my word, it’s
the thought of you that drives me to it. Ruth!’
“He put out his arms and tried to seize her, but she recoiled and stood
holding on to the butt-end of a stall.
“‘Hands off me, Rawdon.’
“‘You’re very particular,’ he sneered; and then, changing his tone,
‘Come, child, you’re just ridiculous. I know you better than that. Have
you forgotten the day we drove to Tonbridge market? you wasn’t so nice
then.’
“‘I disremember,’ she said stolidly, but under her stolidity I think she
was shaken.
“‘You don’t disremember at all. There’s fire in you, Ruth, there’s
blood; that’s why I like you. You’re shamming ladylike. I’ve got that
gent with his accursed notions to thank, I suppose.’
“This reminded me with a start of my own identity. I could not stay
eavesdropping, so I made up my mind and stepped out into the passage
between the stalls.
“Westmacott and Ruth cried simultaneously,—
“‘Who’s that?’
“‘Mr. Malory!’
“‘This is a bad hour for you, sir,’ said Westmacott to me.
“I knew that I must not quarrel with him.
“‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I had no intention of spying on you and was only
doing my ordinary work in here. I will go if you, Ruth, wish me to go.’
“‘No,’ said Westmacott, ‘go, and tell them all I’m here? Not much.
You’ve heard enough now to know I want Ruth. You’ve always known it.
I’ve always wanted her, and I mean to have her. Who are you, you fine
gentleman, that you should stand in my way? I could crush your windpipe
with my finger and thumb.’”
I pictured that grotesque scene in that dark, smelly shed, among the
ruminating cattle, and those two antagonistic men with the girl between
them.
“I turned to Ruth,” said Malory, “and asked her frigidly what she wanted
me to do? Should I attack the fellow? or give the alarm? or was it by
her consent that he was there? Again she did not speak and he answered
for her.
“‘I’m here by her consent, she’s had a note from me, and she answered
it, and here she is. Isn’t it true?’ he demanded of her.
“‘It is quite true,’ she said, speaking to me.
“I was hurt and disappointed.
“‘Then I will go, as it appears to be an assignation.’
“‘No,’ said Ruth, ‘wait. You said you had had your finger on the pulse
of my affairs ever since you came here, and now you must follow them out
to the end. I am not a bit afraid of your turning me away from the path
I’ve chosen.’
“Weak! I had thought her. As I stood there like a bereft and helpless
puppet between those two dark figures, I felt myself a stranger and a
foreigner to them, baffled by the remoteness of their race. They were of
the same blood, and I and Leslie Dymock were of a different breed, tame,
contented, orderly, incapable of abrupt resolution. Weak! I had thought
her. Well, and so she had been, indolently weak, but now, like many weak
natures, strong under the influence of a nature stronger than her own.
So, at least, I read her new determination, for I did not believe in a
well of strength sprung suddenly in the native soil of her being. I
perceived, rather, a spring gushing up in the man, and pouring its
torrent irresistibly over her pleasant valleys. I thought her the
mouthpiece of his thunder. At the same time, something in her must have
risen to merge and marry with the force of his resolve. Who knows what
southern blood, what ancient blood, what tribal blood, had stirred in
her from slumber? what cry of the unknown, unseen wild had drawn her
towards a mate of her own calibre? An absurd joy rushed up in me at the
thought. I flung a dart of sympathy to Leslie Dymock, but he, like those
slow-chewing cattle, was of the patient, long-suffering sort whose fate
is always to be cast aside and sacrificed to the egoism of others. I
forgot my homily on marriage, and the pictures I had drawn of Ruth and
Dymock in their happy home with their quiverful of robust and flaxen
children. I forgot the sinful lusts of Rawdon Westmacott. Yes, I lost
myself wholly in the joy of the mating of two Bohemian creatures, and in
Ruth’s final justification of herself.
“‘I want you,’ continued Ruth, in the same even, relentless voice, ‘to
stand by Leslie whatever may come to him, and to show him that he’s a
happier man for losing me....’
“I heard Westmacott in the darkness give a snarl of triumph.
“‘You’re determined, then?’ I said to Ruth. ‘You’ve not had much time to
make up your mind, or wasted many words over it, since I surprised you
here.’
“‘Time?’ she said, ‘words? A kettle’s a long time on the fire before it
boils over. I know I’m not for Leslie Dymock, I know it this evening,
and I’ve known it a long while though I wouldn’t own it. I’m going, and
I want to be forgotten by all at home.’
“I was moved—by her homely little simile, and by the anguish in her
voice at her last sentence.
“‘I don’t dissuade you,’ I said. ‘Dymock must recover, and if you and
your cousin love one another....’
“Westmacott broke in bitterly,—
“‘Say! You seem to have missed the point....’
“‘Rawdon!’ Ruth spoke with a passion I, even I, had not foreseen.
‘Rawdon, I forbid you to say another word.’
“He grumbled to himself, and was silent.
“I looked at her during the pause in which she waited threateningly for
signs of rebellion on his part, and I found in her face, lit by the
light of the Hunter’s moon, the strangest conflict that ever I saw on a
woman’s face before. I read there distress, soul-shattering and
terrible, but I also read a determination which I knew no argument could
weaken. She was unaware of my scrutiny, for her eyes were bent on
Westmacott. Her glance was imperious; she knew herself to be the coveted
woman for whose possession he must fawn and cringe; she knew that
to-night she could command, if for ever after she would have to obey. I
read this knowledge, and I read her distress, but above all I read
recklessness, a wild defiance, which alarmed me.
“‘I’ve said what I want to say,’ she added. ‘You’ve thought me a meek
woman, Mr. Malory, you’ve told me so, and so I am, but I seem to have
come to a fence across my meekness, and I know neither you nor any soul
on earth could hold me back. It’s never come to me before like this.
Maybe it’ll never come again. Maybe you’ve helped me to it. There’s much
I don’t know, much I can’t say ...’ her ignorant spirit struggled vainly
for speech. I was silent, for I knew that elemental forces were loose
like monstrous bats in the shed which contained us.
“‘Am I to say good-bye?’ I asked.
“She swayed over towards me, as though the strength of her body were
infinitely inferior to the strength of her will. She put her hands on my
shoulders and turned me, so that the light of the yellow moon fell on my
face.
“She said then,—
“‘Kiss me once before I go.’
“Rawdon started forward.
“‘No, damn him!’
“She laughed.
“‘Don’t be a fool, Rawdon, you’ll have me all your life.’
“I kissed her like a brother.
“‘Bless you, my dear, may you be happy. I don’t know if you’re wise, but
I dare say this is inevitable, and things are not very real to-night.’
“There was indeed something absurdly theatrical about the shed full of
uneasily shifting cattle, and that great saffron moon—shining, too, on
the empty arena of Cadiz.
“I left them standing in the shed, and got into the house by the back
door; with methodical precision I replaced the key under the mat where,
country-like, it always lived.”
I felt in my own mind that much remained which had not been
satisfactorily explained, but when Malory resumed after a moment’s
pause, it was to say,—
“I don’t know that there is very much more to tell. I came down at my
usual hour the next morning, and found no signs of commotion about the
farm. As a matter of fact, I caught sight of nobody but a stray labourer
or so as I went my rounds. I moved in a dull coma, such as overtakes us
after a crisis of great excitement; a dull reaction, such as follows on
some deep stirring of our emotions. Then as I went in to breakfast, I
saw Mrs. Pennistan moving in the kitchen in her habitual placid fashion,
and Amos came in, rubbing his hands on a coarse towel, strong and hearty
in the crisp morning. The old grandmother was already in her place by
the fire, her quavering hands busy with her toast and her cup of coffee.
Everything wore the look I had seen on it a hundred times before, and I
wondered whether my experience had not all been a dream of my sleep, and
whether Ruth would not presently arrive with that flush I had learnt to
look for on her cheeks.
“‘Where’s Ruth?’ said Mrs. Pennistan as we sat down.
“‘She’ll be in presently, likely,’ said Amos, who was an easy-going man.
“Her mother grumbled.
“‘She shouldn’t be late for breakfast.’
“‘Come, come, mother,’ said Amos, ‘don’t be hard on the girl on her
wedding-eve,’ and as he winked at me I hid my face in my vast cup.
“Then Leslie Dymock burst in, with a letter in his hand, and at the
sight of his face, and of that suddenly ominous little piece of white
paper, the Pennistans started up and tragedy rushed like a hurricane
into the pleasant room.
“He said,—
“‘She’s gone, read her letter,’ and thrust it into her father’s hand.
“I wish I could reproduce for you the effect of that letter which Amos
read aloud; it was quite short, and said, ‘Leslie. I am going away
because I can’t do you the injustice of becoming your wife. Tell father
and mother that I am doing this because I think it is right. I am not
trying to write more because it is all so difficult, and there is a
great deal more than they will ever know, and I don’t think I understand
everything myself. Try to forgive me. I am, your miserable Ruth.’
“I cannot tell you,” said Malory, who, as I could see, was profoundly
shaken by the vividness of his recollection, “how moved I was by the
confusion and distress of those strangely disquieting words. I could not
reconcile them at all with the picture I had formed of two kindred
natures rushing at last together in a pre-ordained and elemental union.
I rose to get away from the family hubbub, for I wanted to be by myself,
but on the way I stopped and looked at the mice in their cage among the
red geraniums. They were waltzing frantically, as though impelled by a
sinister influence from which there was no escape.”