"It is too late already."
"No," said Charles, in a low voice of intense determination. "It is not--yet. It will be soon. It is still possible to go back. You are not married to him, and it is no longer right that you should marry him. You must give him up. There is no other way."
"Yes," said Ruth, with vehemence. "There is another way. You have made me forget it; but before you came I saw it clearly. I can"t think it out as I did then; but I know it is there. There is another way"--and her voice faltered--"to do what is right, and let everything else go."
Charles saw for the first time, with a sudden frightful contraction of the heart, that her will was as strong as his own. He had staked everything on one desperate appeal to her feelings; he had carried the outworks, and now another adversary--her conscience--rose up between him and her.
"A marriage without love is a sin," he said, quietly. "If you had lived in the world as long as I have, and had seen what marriage without love means, and what it generally comes to in the end, you would know that I am speaking the truth. You have no right to marry Dare if you care for me. Hesitate, and it will be too late! Break off your engagement now. Do you suppose," with sudden fire, "that we shall cease to love each other; that I shall be able to cease to love you for the rest of my life because you are Dare"s wife? What is done can"t be undone. Our love for each other can"t. It is no good shutting your eyes to that. Look the facts in the face, and don"t deceive yourself into thinking that the most difficult course is necessarily the right one."
He turned from her, and sat down on the bench again, his chin in his hands, his haggard eyes fastened on her face. He had said his last word, and she felt that when she spoke it would be her last word too. Neither could bear much more.
"All you say sounds right, _at first_," she said, after a long silence, and as she spoke Charles"s hands dropped from his face and clinched themselves together; "but I cannot go by what any one thinks unless I think so myself as well. I can"t take other people"s judgments. When G.o.d gave us our own, he did not mean us to shirk using it. What you say is right, but there is something which after a little bit seems more right--at least, which seems so to me. I cannot look at the future. I can only see one thing distinctly, now in the present, and that is that I cannot break my word. I never have been able to see that a woman"s word is less binding than a man"s. When I said I would marry him, it was of my own free-will. I knew what I was doing, and it was not only for his sake I did it. It is not as if he believed I cared for him very much. Then, perhaps--but he knows I don"t, and--he is different from other men--he does not seem to mind. I knew at the time that I accepted him for the sake of other things, which are just the same now as they were then: because he was poor and I had money; because I felt sure he would never do much by himself, and I thought I could help him, and my money would help too; because the people at Vandon are so wretched, and their cottages are tumbling down, and there is no one who lives among them and cares about them. I can"t make it clear, and I did hesitate; but at the time it seemed wrong to hesitate. If it seemed so right then, it cannot be all wrong now, even if it has become hard. I cannot give it all up. He is building cottages that I am to pay for, that I asked to pay for. He cannot. And he has promised so many people their houses shall be put in order, and they all believe him. And he can"t do it. If I don"t, it will not be done; and some of them are very old--and--and the winter is coming." Ruth"s voice had become almost inaudible. "Oh, Charles! Charles!" she said, brokenly, "I cannot bear to hurt you. G.o.d knows I love you. I think I shall always love you, though I shall try not. But I cannot go back now from what I have undertaken. I cannot break my word. I cannot do what is wrong, even for you. Oh, G.o.d! not even for you!"
She knelt down beside him, and took his clinched hands between her own; but he did not stir.
"Not even for you," she whispered, while two hot tears fell upon his hands. In another moment she had risen swiftly to her feet, and had left him.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Charles sat quite still where Ruth had left him, looking straight in front of him. He had not thought for a moment of following her, of speaking to her again. Her decision was final, and he knew it. And now he also knew how much he had built upon the wild new hope of the last two days.
Presently a slight discreet cough broke upon his ear, apparently close at hand.
He started up, and, wheeling round in the direction of the sound, called out, in sudden anger, "Who is there?"
If there is a time when we feel that a fellow-creature is entirely out of harmony with ourselves, it is when we discover that he has overheard or overseen us at a moment when we imagined we were alone, or--almost alone.
Charles was furious.
"Come out!" he said, in a tone that would have made any ordinary creature stay as far _in_ as it could. And hearing a slight crackling in the nearest horse-box, of which the door stood open, he shook the door violently.
"Come out," he repeated, "this instant!"
"Stop that noise, then," said a voice sharply from the inside, "and keep quiet. By ----, a violent temper, what a thing it is; always raising a dust, and kicking up a row, just when it"s least wanted."
The voice made Charles start.
"Great G.o.d!" he said, "it"s not--"
"Yes, it is," was the reply; "and when you have taken a seat on the farther end of that bench, and recovered your temper, I"ll show, and not before."
Charles walked to the bench and sat down.
"You can come out," he said, in a carefully lowered voice, in which there was contempt as well as anger.
Accordingly there was a little more crackling among the f.a.gots, and a slight, shabbily dressed man came to the door and peered warily out, shading his blinking eyes with his hand.
"If there is a thing I hate," he said, with a curious mixture of recklessness and anxiety, "it is a noise. Sit so that you face the left, will you, and I"ll look after the right, and if you see any one coming you may as well mention it. I am only at home to old friends."
He took his hand from his eyes as they became more accustomed to the light, and showed a shrewd, dissipated face, that yet had a kind of ruined good looks about it, and, what was more hateful to Charles than anything else, a decided resemblance to Ruth. Though he was shabby in the extreme, his clothes sat upon him as they always and only do sit upon a gentleman; and, though his face and voice showed that he had severed himself effectually from the cla.s.s in which he had been born, a certain unsuitability remained between his appearance and his evidently disreputable circ.u.mstances. When Charles looked at him he was somehow reminded of a broken-down thorough-bred in a hansom cab.
"It is a quiet spot," remarked Raymond Deyncourt, for he it was, standing in the door-way, his watchful eyes scanning the deserted court-yard and strip of green. "A retired and peaceful spot. I"m sorry if my cough annoyed you, coming when it did, but I thought you seemed before to be engaged in conversation which I felt a certain diffidence in interrupting."
"So you listened, I suppose?"
"Yes, I listened. I did not hear as much as I could have wished, but it was your best manner, Danvers. You certainly have a gift, though you dropped your voice unnecessarily once or twice, I thought. If I had had your talents, I should not be here now. Eh? Dear me! you can swear still, can you? How refreshing. I fancied you had quite reformed."
"Why are you here now?" asked Charles, sternly.
Raymond shrugged his shoulders.
"Why are you here?" continued Charles, bitterly, "when you swore to me in July that if I would pay your pa.s.sage out again to America you would let her alone in future? Why are you here, when I wrote to tell you that she had promised me she would never give you money again without advice?
But I might have known you could break a promise as easily as make one.
I might have known you would only keep it as long as it suited yourself."
"Well, now, I"m glad to hear you say that," said Raymond, airily, "because it takes off any feeling of surprise I was afraid you might feel at seeing me back here. There"s nothing like a good understanding between friends. I"m precious hard up, I can tell you, or I should not have come; and when a fellow has got into as tight a place as I have he has got to think of other things besides keeping promises. Have you seen to-day"s papers?" with sudden eagerness.
"Yes."
"Any news about the "Frisco forgery case?" and Raymond leaned forward through the door, and spoke in a whisper.
"Nothing much," said Charles, trying to recollect. "Nothing new to-day, I think. You know they got one of them two days ago, followed him down to Birmingham, and took him in the train."
Raymond drew in his breath.
"I don"t hold with trains," he said, after a pause; "at least, not with pa.s.sengers. I told him as much at the time. And the--the other one--Stephens? Any news of him?"
"Nothing more about him, as far as I can remember. They were both traced together from Boston to London, but there they parted company. Stephens is at large still."
"Is he?" said Raymond. "By George, I"m glad to hear it! I hope he"ll keep so, that"s all. I am glad I left that fool. He"d not my notions at all. We split two days ago, and I made tracks for the old diggings; got down as far as Tarbury under a tarpaulin in a goods train--there"s some sense in a goods train--and then lay close by a weir of the ca.n.a.l, and got aboard a barge after dark. Nothing breaks a scent like a barge. And it went the right way for my business too, and travelled all night. I kept close all next day, and then struck across country for this place at night. If I hadn"t known the lie of the land from a boy, when I used to spend the holidays with old Alwynn, I couldn"t have done it, or if I"d been as dog lame as I was in July; but I was pushed for time, and I footed it up here, and got in just before dawn. And not too soon either, for I"m cleaned out, and food is precious hard to come by if you don"t care to go shopping for it. I am only waiting till it"s dark to go and get something from the old woman at the lodge. She looked after me before, but it wasn"t so serious then as it is now."
"It will be penal servitude for life this time for--Stephens," said Charles.
"Yes," said Raymond, thoughtfully. "It"s playing deuced high. I knew that at the time, but I thought it was worth it. It was a beautiful thing, and there was a mint of money in it if it had gone straight--a mint of money;" and he shook his head regretfully. "But the luck is bound to change in the end," he went on, after a moment of mournful retrospection. "You"ll see, I shall make my pile yet, Danvers. One can"t go on turning up tails all the time."
"You will turn them up once too often," said Charles, "and get your affairs wound up for you some day in a way you won"t like. But I suppose it"s no earthly use my saying anything."
"Not much," replied the other. "I guess I"ve heard it all before. Don"t you remember how you held forth that night in the wood? You came out too strong. I felt as if I were in church; but you forked out handsomely at the collection afterwards. I will say that for you."
"And what are you going to do now you"ve got here?" interrupted Charles, sharply.
"Lie by."
"How long?"