"Have mind that eild aye follows youth;
Death follows life with gaping mouth;
Sen erdly joy abidis never,
Work for the joy that lastis ever;
For other joy is all but vain,
And erdly joy returns in pain."--W. DUNBAR.
Something within her knows he will return. Yet all the next day long
she sits in terrible suspense, not being certain of the end. Towards
noon he comes, sullen, disdainful, and dark with depression.
He sinks into a chair, looking tired and careworn.
"You have over-fatigued yourself?" she says, gently, going over to him
and touching his hand lightly.
"No. I have been to Pullingham again and back; that is all."
"There again?" she says. "And you saw----?"
"Only Dorian. Don't trouble yourself about Clarissa," he says, with an
unpleasant laugh: "that game is played out. No, Dorian, alone, I went
to see." He shades his face with his hand, and then goes on: "There
are few like him in the world. In spite of all that has come and gone,
he received me kindly, and has given me what will enable me to
commence life afresh in a foreign land." There is remorse and deep
admiration in his tone.
But Ruth makes no reply: she cannot. Those last words, "a foreign
land," have struck like a dying knell upon her heart. She watches him
in despairing silence, as he walks restlessly up and down the room in
the uncertain twilight.
Presently he stops close to her.
"I suppose there is some orthodox way of breaking bad news," he says,
"but I never learned it. Ruth, your father is dead."
The girl shrinks back, and puts her hand to her forehead in a dazed,
pitiful fashion.
"Not dead!" she says, imploringly, as though her contrition could
bring him back to life. "Not altogether gone beyond recall. Sick,
perhaps,--nay, dying,--but not dead!"
"Yes, he is dead," says Horace, though more gently. "He died a week
ago."
A terrible silence falls upon the room. Presently, alarmed at her
unnatural calm, he lays his hand upon her shoulder to rouse her.
"There is no use in fretting over what cannot be recalled," he says,
quickly, though still in his gentler tone. "And there are other things
I must speak to you about to-night. My remaining time in this country
is short, and I want you to understand the arrangements I have made
for your comfort before leaving you."
"You will leave me?" cries she, sharply. A dagger seems to have
reached and pierced her heart. Falling upon her knees before him, she
clasps him, and whispers, in a voice that has grown feeble through the
intensity of her emotion, "Horace, do not forsake me. Think of all the
past, and do not let the end be separation. What can I do? Where can I
go?--with no home, no aim in life! Have pity! My father is dead; my
friends, too, are dead to me. In all this wide miserable world I have
only you!"
"Only me!" he echoes, with a short bitter laugh. "A prize, surely. You
don't know what folly you are talking. I give you a chance of escape
from me,--an honorable chance, where a new home and new friends await
you."
"I want no friends, no home." (She is still clinging to his knees,
with her white earnest face uplifted to his.) "Let me be your
slave,--anything; but do not part from me. I cannot live without you
now. It is only death you offer me."
"Remember my temper," he says, warningly. "Only last night I struck
you. Think of that. I shall probably strike you again. Be advised in
time, and forsake me, like all the others."
"You torture me," she says, still in the same low panting whisper.
"You are my very heart,--my life. Take me with you. Only let me see
your face sometimes, and hear your voice. I will not trouble you, or
hinder you in any way; only let me be near you." She presses her pale
lips to his hand with desperate entreaty.
"Be it so," he says, after a moment's hesitation. "If ever, in the
days to come, you repent your bargain, blame yourself, not me. I have
offered you liberty, and you have rejected it. I shall leave this
country in a week's time; so be prepared. But before going, as you are
so determined to cast in your lot with mine, I shall marry you."
She starts to her feet.
"Marry me?" she says, faintly. "Make me your wife! Oh, no! you don't
know what you are saying."
She trembles violently, and her head falls somewhat heavily against
his arm.
"It isn't worth a fainting fit," he says, hastily enough; but his arm,
as he places it round her, is strong and compassionate. "Can anything
be more absurd than a woman? Sit down here, and try to be reasonable.
You must be quick with your preparations, as we start on Tuesday. I
will see about a special license, and we can get the marriage ceremony
over to-morrow. I know a fellow who will manage it all for me."
"You are quite sure you will never regret this step?" she says,
earnestly, even at this supremely happy moment placing his happiness
before her own.
"I don't suppose so. If it is any satisfaction to you to know it," he
says, with a shrug, "you are the only woman I have ever loved, and
probably the only one I ever shall love."
A smile--radiant, perfect--lights her face. Surely, just then, the one
moment of utter happiness, that they tell us is all that is ever
allowed to poor mortals, is hers. It is broken by the clock of a
neighboring church clanging out the hour.
"So late!" says Horace, hurriedly. "I must go. Until to-morrow, Ruth,
good-by."
"Good-by!" She places her hands upon his shoulders, and, throwing back
her head, gazes long and earnestly into his face, as though reading
once again each line in the features she loves with such devotion.
"Before you go," she says, solemnly, "call me what I shall be so soon.
Say, 'Good-by, my wife!'"
"Good-by, my wife!" returns he, with more love in his accents than she
has heard for months.
She presses her lips passionately to his, and again, for the last
time, breathes the word "Farewell!"
His rapid footsteps descend the stairs. She listens to them until they
have ceased and all is still. Then she goes to the window, and presses
her forehead against the cold pane, that she may once more see him as
he crosses the street. The lamps are all alight, and a lurid glare
from one falls full upon her as she stands leaning eagerly forward to
catch the last glimpse of him she loves.
Presently she sinks into a seat, always with her eyes fixed upon the
spot where she last has seen him, and sits motionless, with her
fingers twisted loosely in her lap; she is so quiet that only the red
gleam from the world without betrays the fact of her presence.
Once her lips part, and from them slowly, ecstatically, come the
words, "His wife." Evidently her whole mind is filled with this one
thought alone. She thinks of him, and him only,--of him who has so
cruelly wronged her, yet who, in his own way, has loved her, too.
The moments fly, and night comes on apace, clothed in her "golden
dress, on which so many stars like gems are strewed;" yet still she
sits before the window silently. She is languid, yet happy,--weak and
spent by the excitement of the past hour, yet strangely full of peace.
Now and again she presses her hand with a gesture that is almost
convulsive to her side; yet whatever pain she feels there is
insufficient to drown the great gladness that is overfilling her.
To-morrow,--nay, even now, it is to-day,--and it is bringing her
renewed hope, fresh life, restored honor! He will be hers forever! No
other woman will have the right to claim him. Whatever she may have to
undergo at his hands, at least he will be her own. And he has loved
her as he never loved another. Oh, what unspeakable bliss lies in this
certainty! In another land, too, all will be unknown. A new life may
be begun in which the old may be swallowed up and forgotten. There
must be hope in the good future.
"When we slip a little
Out of the way of virtue, are we lost?
Is there no medicine called sweet mercy?"
Only this morning she had deemed herself miserable beyond her fellows;
now, who can compete with her in utter content? In a few short hours
she will be his wife! Oh that her father could but----
Her father! Now, all at once, it rushes back upon her; she is a little
dazed, a good deal unsettled, but surely some one had said that
her--her father--was--dead!
The lamps in the street die out. The sickly winter dawn comes over the
great city. The hush and calm still linger; only now and then a dark
phantom form issues from a silent gateway, and hurries along the
pavement, as though fearful of the growing light.
Ruth has sunk upon her knees, and is doing fierce battle with the
remorse that has come to kill her new-born happiness. There is a
terrible pain at her heart, even apart from the mental anguish that is
tearing it. Her slight frame trembles beneath the double shock; a long
shivering sob breaks from her; she throws her arms a little wildly
across the couch before which she is kneeling, and gradually her form
sinks upon her arms. No other sob comes to disturb the stillness. An
awful silence follows. Slowly the cold gray morning fills the chamber,
and the sun,--
"Eternal painter, now begins to rise,
And limn the heavens in vermilion dyes."
But within deathly silence reigns. Has peace fallen upon that quiet
form? Has gentle sleep come to her at last?
* * * * *
Horace, ascending the stairs cautiously, before the household is
astir, opens the room where last he had seen Ruth, and comes gently
in. He would have passed on to the inner chamber, thinking to rouse
her to prepare in haste for their early wedding, when the
half-kneeling half-crouching figure before the lounge attracts his
notice.
"Ruth," he says, very gently, fearful lest he shall frighten her by
too sudden a summons back to wakefulness; but there is no reply. How
can she have fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable position? "Ruth,"
he calls again, rather louder, some vague fear sending the blood back
to his heart; but again only silence greets his voice. And again he
says, "Ruth!" this time with passionate terror in his tone; but, alas!
there is still no response. For the first time she is deaf to his
entreaty.
Catching her in his arms, he raises her from her kneeling posture,
and, carrying her to the window, stares wildly into her calm
face,--the poor, sad, pretty face of her who had endured so much, and
borne so long, and loved so faithfully.
She is dead!--quite dead! Already the limbs are stiffening, the hands
are icy cold, the lips, that in life would so gladly have returned
kiss for kiss, are now silent and motionless beneath the despairing
caresses he lavishes upon them in the vain hope of finding yet some
warmth remaining.
But there is none. She is gone, past recall, past hearing all
expressions of remorseful tenderness. In the terrible lonely dawn she
had passed away, with no one near to hold her dying hand, without a
sigh or moan, leaving no farewell word of love or forgiveness to the
man who is now straining her lifeless body to his heart, as though to
make one last final effort to bring her back to earth.
There is a happy smile upon her lips, her eyes are quite closed,
almost she seems as one that sleepeth. The awful majesty of death is
upon her, and no voice of earth, however anguished and imploring, can
reach her ice-bound heart. As the first faint touch of light that came
to usher in her wedding morn broke upon the earth, she had died, and
gone somewhere
"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth."