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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.senting 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed 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 repet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sive. 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 pa.s.sion, 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, pa.s.sed her by. The vehement pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumption 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.