"Do you believe that?" I asked him. "Or do you only wish to believe it?"
He looked at me half angrily, and the blood sprang into his cheeks. Then he took a step forward.
"She came between us!" he said, lowering his voice, but speaking with a new fierceness.
I felt as if he had struck me, and I shrank back. Then I straightened up, and looked him in the eye.
"You don"t dare to say that aloud," I retorted. "You left me of your own accord. You insult me to come here and say such a thing, and I will not hear it. If you mean to talk in that strain, you may leave the house."
He was naturally a good deal taken aback by this, and perhaps I should not--Yes, I should; I am glad I did say it. He stammered something about begging my pardon.
"Let that go," interrupted I, feeling as if I had endured about all that I could hear. "The question is whether you are not going to be just to your wife."
"You fight mighty well for her," responded George, "but if you knew how she"--
"Never mind," I broke in. "Can"t you see I am fighting for you? I am trying to make you see you owe it to yourself to be right in this; and moreover you owe it to me."
"To you?" he asked, with a touch in his voice which should have warned me, but did not, I was so wrapped up in my own view of the situation.
"Yes, to me. I am your oldest friend, don"t you see, and you owe it to me not to fail now."
He sprang forward impulsively, holding out both his hands.
"Ruth," he cried out, "what"s the use of all this talk? You know it"s you I love, and you I mean to marry."
I know now how a man feels when he strikes another full in the face for insulting him. I felt myself growing hot and then cold again; and I was literally speechless from indignation.
"I went crazy a while for a fool with a pretty face," he went rushing on; "but all that"--
"She is your wife, George Weston!" I broke in. "How dare you talk so to me!"
He was evidently astonished, but he persisted.
"We ought to be honest with each other now, Ruth," he said. "There"s too much at stake for us to beat about the bush. I know I"ve behaved like a fool and a brute. I"ve hurt you and--and cheated you, and you"ve had every reason to throw me over like a sick dog; but when you made up the money I"d lost and didn"t let Mr. Longworthy suspect, I knew you cared for me just the same!"
"Cared for you!" I blazed out. "Do you think I could have ruined any man"s life for that? I love you no more than I love any other man with a wife of his own!"
"That"s just it," he broke in eagerly. "Of course I knew you couldn"t own you cared while she"--
The egotism of it, the vulgarity of it made me frantic. I was ashamed of myself, I was ashamed of him, and I felt as if nothing would make him see the truth. Never in my whole life have I spoken to any human being as I did to him. I felt like a raging termagant, but he would not see.
"Stop!" I cried out. "If you had never had a wife, I couldn"t care for you. I thought I loved you, and perhaps I did; but all that is over, and over forever."
"You"ve said you"d love me always," he retorted.
Some outer layer of courtesy seemed to have cracked and fallen from him, and to have left an ugly and vulgar nature bare. The pathos of it came over me. The pity that a man should be capable of so exposing his baser self struck me in the midst of all my indignation. I could not help a feeling, moreover, that he had somehow a right to reproach me with having changed. Thinking of it now in cooler blood I cannot see that since he has left me to marry another woman he has any ground for reproaching me; but somehow at the moment I felt guilty.
"George," I answered, "I thought I was telling the truth; I didn"t understand myself."
The change in his face showed me that this way of putting it had done more to convince him than any direct denial. His whole manner altered.
"You don"t mean," he pleaded piteously, "you"ve stopped caring for me?"
I could only tell him that certainly I had stopped caring for him in the old way, and I begged him to go back to his wife. He said little more, and I was at last released from this horrible scene. All night I thought of it miserably or I dreamed of it more miserably still. That poor woman! What can I do for her? I hope I have not lost the power of influencing George, for I might use it to help her.
XI
NOVEMBER
November 3. How odd are the turns that fate plays us. Sometimes it seems as if an unseen power were amusing himself tangling the threads of human lives just as Peter has been snarling up my worsted for pure fun. Only a power mighty enough to be able to do this must be too great to be so heartless. I suppose, too, that the pity of things is often more in the way in which we look at them than it is in the turn which fate or fortune has given to affairs. The point of view changes values so.
All this is commonplace, of course; but it is certainly curious that George"s wife should be in my house, almost turned out of her husband"s.
When I found her on the steps the other night, wet with the rain, afraid to ring, afraid of me, and terrified at what had come upon her, I had no time to think of the strange perversity of events which had brought this about. She had left George"s house, she said, because she was afraid of him and because he had said she was to go as soon as she was able. He had called her a horrible name, she added, and he had told her he was done with her; that she must in the future take care of herself and not expect to live with him. I know, after seeing the cruel self George showed the other day, that he could be terrible, and he would have less restraint with his wife than with me. In the evening, as soon as it was really dark, in the midst of the storm, she came to me. She said she knew how I must hate her, that she had said horrid things about me, but she had nowhere else to go, and she implored I would take her in. She is asleep now in the south chamber. She is ill, and I cannot tell what the effects of her exposure will be. Dr. Wentworth looks grave, but he does not say what he thinks.
What I ought to do is the question. She has been here two days, and her husband must have found out by this time what I suppose everybody in town knows,--where she is. I cannot fold my hands and let things go. I must send for George, much as I shrink from seeing him. How can I run the risk of having another scene like the one on Friday? and yet I must do something. She can do nothing for herself. It should be a man to talk with George; but I cannot ask Tom. He and George do not like each other, and he could not persuade George to do right to Gertrude. Perhaps Deacon Richards might effect something.
November 5. After all my difficulty in persuading Deacon Richards to interfere, his efforts have come to nothing. George was rude to him, and told him to mind his own affairs. I suppose dear old Deacon Daniel had not much tact.
"I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself," the Deacon said indignantly, "and that he was a disgrace to the town; but it didn"t seem to move him any."
"I hope he treated you well," I answered dolefully. "I am sorry I persuaded you to go."
"He was plain enough," Deacon Daniel responded grimly. "He didn"t mince words any to speak of."
I must see him myself. I wish I dared consult Tom, but it could not do any good. I must work it out alone; but what can I say?
November 6. Fortunately, I did not have to send for George. He appeared this afternoon on a singular errand. He wanted to pay me board for his wife until she was well enough to go away. I a.s.sured him he need not be troubled about board, because I was glad to do what I could for his wife; and I could not help adding that I did not keep a lodging-house.
"I"m willing to be as kind to her while she"s here as I can," he a.s.sured me awkwardly, "and of course I shall not let her go away empty-handed."
"She is not likely to," I retorted, feeling my cheeks get hot. "Dr.
Wentworth says she cannot be moved until after the baby comes."
He flushed in his turn, and looked out of the window.
"I don"t think, Ruth," was his reply, "we can discuss that. It isn"t a pleasant subject."
There are women, I know, who can meet obstinacy with guile. I begin to understand how it may be a woman will stoop to flatter and seem to yield, simply through despair of carrying her end by any other means.
The hardness of this man almost bred in me a purpose to try and soften him, to try to bewitch him, somehow to fool and ensnare him for his own good; to hide how I raged inwardly at his injustice and cruelty, and to pretend to be acquiescent until I had accomplished my end. I cannot lie, however, even in acts, and all that sort of thing is beyond my power as well as my will. I realized how hopeless it was for me to try to do anything with him, and I rose.
"Very likely you are right," I said. "It is evidently useless for us to discuss anything. Now I can only say good-by; but I forbid you to come into my house again until you bring Mr. Saychase with you to remarry you to Gertrude."