He had risen also, and we stood face to face.
"Do you suppose," he asked doggedly, "now I am free I"d consent to marry any woman but you? I"ll make you marry me yet, Ruth Privet, for I know perfectly well you love me. Think how long we were engaged."
I remembered the question he asked me when he came back from Franklin after he had seen her: "How long have we been engaged?"
"I shall keep your wife," was all I said, "until she is well and chooses to go. George, I beg of you not to let her baby be born fatherless."
A hateful look came into his eyes.
"I thought you were fond of fatherless babies," he sneered.
"Go," I said, hardly controlling myself, "and don"t come here again without Mr. Saychase."
"If I bring him it will be to marry you, Ruth."
Something in me rose up and spoke without my volition. I did not know what I was saying until the words were half said. I crossed the room and rang the bell for Rosa, and as I did it I said:--
"I see I must have a husband to protect me from your insults, and I will marry Tom Webbe."
Before he could answer, Rosa appeared.
"Rosa," I said, and all my calmness had come back, "will you show Mr.
Weston to the door. I am not at home to him again until he comes with Mr. Saychase."
She restrained her surprise and amus.e.m.e.nt better than I expected, but before she had had time to do more than toss her head George had rushed away without ceremony. By this time, I suppose, every man, woman, and child in town knows that I have turned him out of my house.
November 7. "And after the fire a still, small voice!" I have been saying this over and over to myself; and remembering, not irreverently, that G.o.d was in the voice.
I have had a talk with Tom which has moved me more than all the trouble with George. The very fact that George so outraged all my feelings and made me so angry kept me from being touched as I might have been otherwise; but this explanation with Tom has left me shaken and tired out. It is emotion and not physical work that wears humanity to shreds.
Tom came to discuss the reading-room. He is delighted that it has started so well and is going on so swimmingly; and he is full of plans for increasing the interest. I was, I confess, so preoccupied with what I had made up my mind to say to him I could hardly follow what he was saying. I felt as if something were grasping me by the throat. He looked at me strangely, but he went on talking as if he did not notice my uneasiness.
"Tom," I broke out at last, when I could endure it no longer, "did you know that Mrs. Weston is here, very ill?"
"Yes," was all he answered.
"And, Tom," I hurried on, "George won"t remarry her."
"Won"t remarry her?" he echoed. "The cur!"
"He was here yesterday," I went on desperately, "and he said he is determined to marry me."
Tom started forward with hot face and clenched fist.
"The blackguard! I wish I"d been here to kick him out of the house! What did you say to him?"
"I told him he had insulted me, and forbade him to come here again without Mr. Saychase to remarry them," I said. Then before Tom"s searching look I became so confused he could not help seeing there was more.
"Well?" he demanded.
He was almost peremptory, although he was courteous. Men have such a way in a crisis of instinctively taking the lead that a woman yields to it almost of necessity.
"Tom," I answered, more and more confused, "I must tell you, but I hope you"ll understand. I had a frightful time with him. I was ashamed of him and ashamed of myself, and very angry; and when he said he"d make me marry him sometime, I told him"--
"Well?" demanded Tom, his voice much lower than before, but even more compelling.
"I told him," said I, the blood fairly throbbing in my cheeks, "that I should marry you. You"ve asked me, you know!"
He grew fairly white, but for a moment he did not move. His eyes had a look in them I had never seen, and which made me tremble. It seemed to me that he was fighting down what he wanted to say, and to get control of himself.
"Ruth," he asked me at last, with an odd hoa.r.s.eness in his voice, "do you want George Weston to marry that woman?"
"Of course I do," I cried, so surprised and relieved that the question was not more personal the tears started to my eyes. "I want it more than anything else in the world."
Again he was still for a moment, his eyes looking into mine as if he meant to drag out my most secret thought. These silences were too much for me to bear, and I broke this one. I asked him if he were vexed at what I had said to George, and told him the words had seemed to say themselves without any will of mine.
"I could only be sorry at anything you said, Ruth," he returned, "never vexed. I only think it a pity for you to link your name with mine."
I tried to speak, but he went on.
"I"ve loved you ever since I was old enough to love anything. I"ve told you that often enough, and I don"t think you doubt it. I had you as my ambition all the time I was growing up. I came home from college, and you were engaged, and all the good was taken out of life for me. I"ve never cared much since what happened. But if I"ve asked you to love me, Ruth, I never gave you the right to think I"d be base enough to be willing you should marry me without loving me."
Again I tried to speak, though I cannot tell what I wished to say. I only choked and could not get out a word.
"Don"t talk about it. I can"t stand it," he broke in, his voice husky.
"You needn"t marry me to make George Weston come up to the mark. I"ll take care of that."
I suppose I looked up with a dread of what might happen if he saw George, and of course Tom could not understand that my concern was for him and not for George. He smiled a bitter sort of smile.
"You needn"t be afraid," he said. "I"ll treat him tenderly for your sake."
I was too confused to speak, and I could only sit there dazed and silent while he went away. It was not what he was saying that filled me with a tumult till my thoughts seemed beating in my head like wild birds in a net. Suddenly while he was speaking, while his dear, honest eyes full of pain were looking into mine, the still, small voice had spoken, and I knew that I cared for Tom as he cared for me.
November 8. I realize now that from the morning when Tom and I first stood with baby in my arms between us I have felt differently toward him. It was at the moment almost as if I were his wife, and though I never owned it to myself, even in my most secret thought, I have somehow belonged to him ever since. I see now that something very deep within has known and has from time to time tried to tell me; but I put my hands to the ears of my mind. Miss Fleming used to try to teach us things at school about the difference between the consciousness and the will, and other dark mysteries which to me were, and are, and always will be utterly incomprehensible, and I suppose some kind of a consciousness knew what the will wouldn"t recognize. That sounds like nonsense now it is on paper, but it seemed extremely wise when I began to write it. No matter; the facts I know well enough. It is wonderful how a woman will hide a thing from herself, a thing she knows really, but keeps from being conscious she knows by refusing to let her thoughts put it into words.
To myself I seem shamefully fickle,--and yet it seems also as if I had never changed at all, but that it was always Tom I have been fond of, even when I fully believed it was George. Of course this is only a weak excuse; but at least I have been fond of Tom as a friend from my childhood. He has always commanded me, too, in a way. He has done what I wished and what I thought best; but I have always known he could be influenced only so far, and that if I wanted what he did not believe in he could be as stubborn as a rock. The hardness of his mother shows itself in him as the stanch foundation for the gentleness he gets from his father.
Miss Charlotte came in for a moment to-day, and by instinct she knew that something had made me happy. She was full of sympathy for a moment, and then, I think, some suspicion came into her dear old head which she would not have there.
"Ruth, my dear," she said in her rough way, "you look too cheerful for the head of a foundling asylum and a house of refuge. I hope you"ve made George Weston promise to marry his own wife,--though if I made the laws it wouldn"t be necessary for a man to marry a woman more than once. I"ve no idea of weddings that have to come round once in so often like house-cleaning."
She was watching me so keenly as she spoke that I smiled in spite of myself.
"No," I told her, "I haven"t been able to make him; but Tom Webbe has undertaken to bring him round, so I believe it will be all right."
Whether she understood or not I cannot tell, but from the loving way in which she leaned over and kissed me I suspect she had some inkling of it.