It was a warm, close night, and a leaf of the cas.e.m.e.nt was partly open. She thrust it back, with a swiftness that gave no sound, and stepped into the room. Hurst was lying on the bed asleep. Illness had left its traces upon his features, and his hands lay clasped, loosely, on the counterpane. Something more sombre than the shadows thrown by the dim lamp lay upon his fine face. Anxiety had done its work, as well as sickness.
Ruth stood by the bed, motionless, almost calm. The supreme misery of her life had come. She had no sobs to keep back, no tears to hide--despair had locked up all the tenderness of grief with an iron hand. She was about to part with that sleeping man forever and ever.
He was her bridegroom: she must give him up, that his honor, nay, his very life might be saved.
The prayer-book that she carried in her hand contained, she believed, all the proofs of a marriage that had been more unfortunate than death. No one must ever see them. They were a fatal secret, which she gave up to her husband"s keeping alone. She laid the book upon the counterpane, close to his folded hands, not daring to touch them, lest the misery within her might break out in cries of anguish. Then she stood mute and still, gazing down upon him, minute after minute, while the light shone dimly on the dumb agony of her face. At last, she bent down, touched his forehead with her lips, and fled.
CHAPTER LXIX.
THE SOUL"S DANGER.
How, and by what way, that poor young creature came out on the verge of the Black Lake she could not have told. When she came down those balcony steps she had left the world behind her. Filled with an insane idea of self-martyrdom, she went onward and onward as rudderless boats reel through a storm.
Now she stood among the rushes--clouds over her head, a great sea of inky waters weltering away from her feet--gloom and blackness everywhere. The old lake house flung down uncouth shadows on one hand, a gnarled oak pushed its gaunt limbs far over the waters on the other.
The rushes around her swayed and moaned in the wind like living things in pain.
Was it this weird picture that brought Ruth to a sense of her own condition? Did it seem to her as if she had already accomplished her purpose, and was entering upon its punishment? Who can answer for the impulses of a soul in its pa.s.sions of distress? No two events are alike in all the tumultuous actions of life. When the destinies of a human being can be turned by a chance thought, a careless word, even a sunbeam, more or less, what intellect can fathom the exact thing that sways it for good or evil? One might have thought that the gloom of this picture would intensify the dark resolve that had urged that young creature on to death. Instead of that, it came upon her with a great shock, and she stood there among the rushes appalled.
Was it by that dark way she could hope to find her father?
As she asked this question an awful fear came upon her. She walked slowly backward, with her eyes fixed upon the water, breathing heavier and heavier, as the rushes swayed to their place between her and them.
Thus she drew away from the awful danger to the threshold of the lake house. There she sat down.
What was this thing she had promised to do? A great crime which would shut her out from her father"s presence forever and ever, which would make it impossible to meet her young husband through all eternity. She was willing to die for him--the agony was nothing. Had she not suffered more than that over and over again? But to give him up here and beyond those black waters was more than she could force upon her soul.
Beyond all this, the delicate organism of her being shrunk from that which might come to her body after death. She saw, as if it were a real presence, herself sinking, sinking down into the blackness of those waters, her limbs, so full of life now, limp and dead, tangled in the coa.r.s.e gra.s.ses, or seized upon by some undercurrent, and dragged down into the depths of the earth. Worse still, coa.r.s.e men might, with mistaken kindness, search the waters, and lift her from them in the very presence of her husband; who would see the face he had kissed swollen, the sodden lengths of her hair trailing the--the--
She could not bear these thoughts; they made existence itself unreal.
She pushed the hair back from her face, as if expecting to find it dripping; she lifted both hands to her lips and laughed aloud when she found them dry. She folded both arms over her bosom and clasped herself in, sobbing out her relief that he had been saved from the anguish of seeing her dead. But not the less was she doomed. It was not the sacrifice that she shrunk from, but the crime. This moral force kept the girl back from her fate, but in no way lessened the spirit of self-abnegation that had brought her to the lake. Only how would she carry that into effect without crime? How could she take herself out of the way and be dead to every one that she loved? The fearful necessities of her case gave vigor to each thought, as it pa.s.sed through her mind, and these thoughts were taking vague form, when the sounds of footsteps and of voices, speaking low and at intervals, startled her. Looking through the darkness she saw two forms coming down the brief descent along which a path led to the lake house. She had risen, and was looking for some place of refuge when a voice reached her, and darting around the old building she stole up the bank and away through the wildness.
It was the voice of Richard Storms.
Ruth went back to the cottage and searched the darkened rooms for the desk in which her father had kept his money. She placed what was found there in her pocket, with the key which had let her through the park-gate on that other eventful day of her life, and went out into the night again. She reached the gate, turned the lock, and taking the highway, walked rapidly toward the nearest railroad station.
A train was in sight. She had scarcely time to secure a ticket when it swept up to the platform. The guard half pushed her into a second-cla.s.s car, and she was borne away toward London.
There in the solitude which seems most forlorn, she fell into a trance, in which all the faculties of her mind were self-centred--all the information she had ever received from her father or any other source presented itself for her use.
She would not save even her own husband by a crime. That idea she put utterly aside, knowing that to live was a choice of deeper suffering and more cruel martyrdom. But she must be dead to him--dead to the whole world. Her name, humble as it was, should not betray her. She would go, no matter where, but so far as the money in her pocket would allow. Her father had sometimes talked of places beyond the great ocean, where people of small means, or made desperate from misfortune, sought a new life. All that she had read of such places came vividly to her remembrance--how people went on shipboard, and were months and months out to sea, where they were happy enough to die sometimes.
Perhaps G.o.d would be so merciful to her.
With these thoughts taking form in her mind Ruth found herself in London.
CHAPTER LXX.
ON THE TRAIN.
At the station, which Richard Storms had designated, Judith Hart had been waiting while three or four trains went by. She did not travel much by railroads, and this was almost like a new experience to her.
She had brought no luggage, for the pretty dress of black and scarlet, that Storms had given her, was the only portion of her wardrobe worth taking away, and she had put that on with a womanly desire to please his parents with her appearance, which certainly was that of a beautiful, if not highly-bred, girl.
It was getting dark when a train came up, and Storms, recognizing her on the platform, made the signal agreed upon, though his face clouded over, and he stifled an oath between his teeth when he saw how conspicuous the dress made her.
"I might have known it," he thought; "from the highest to the lowest, all female creatures are alike. Most of them would go in full dress to the gallows, if the hangman were fool enough to permit it."
Judith had not seen the first signal, but stood on the verge of the platform, looking with evident disappointment up and down the train, when her eyes fell on the department he was in. The next instant she sprang up the steps and took a seat by his side, but the smile left her face when he looked up vaguely and turned to the opposite window, as if her presence was an intrusion.
The train gave a lurch and moved on. Then she ventured to speak.
"You look sullen. You do not seem glad. What is the matter, Richard?"
Storms turned in his seat and scrutinized her dress from head to foot.
"You don"t like it?" she said, in some confusion; "but I had nothing else fit to wear at your mother"s house, and I thought you would like me to look like a lady, as you are to make me one so soon. Forgive me, if I have taken too much on myself."
"Forgive you for making yourself so handsome? I should be a brute of a fellow not to do that."
The girl"s heart leaped. She had expected harsh language, reproach, perhaps bitterness, if the dress did not please him; but there was nothing of this; on the contrary, there was hilarity in his voice, a sort of careless abandonment, as if some pleasant surprise had been given him, which he was prepared to accept with acquiescence at least.
This ready, almost hilarious, approval of her dress overwhelmed Judith with delight.
"Oh, how tired I was of waiting! How happy I am!" she sighed, leaning toward him.
Storms drew her close to him with a fierce grip of the arm, in a pa.s.sion of love or hate which took away her breath; then his arm released its hold, and he made a gesture as if to push her from him.
"What is the matter?" she questioned, turning her eyes wildly upon him.
"Nothing," he said; "your curls brushed my face; that is all."
"It seemed almost as if you hated me," said the girl, rubbing her arm with one hand.
"Hated you! What should make me do that?"
"Perhaps because I come between you and that Jessup girl, with all her money."
"What is her money to me? It was the old people that wanted it, not I.
Now, all she has got would be nothing compared to what I can give a wife."
"To think that all this has been brought about by a bit of paper! That chance lifted me out of myself. Loving you as I did, it was like opening the gates of heaven to me."
"Yes, the gate of heaven," repeated the young man, in a voice full of weird irony. "It would be a pity to draw you back."