The fire-light threw grotesque shadows on the walls. Ruth and Louis in the library made no movement to ring for lights; it was quite cosey as it was. They had both drawn near the crackling wood-blaze, Ruth in a low rocker, Arnold in Mr. Levice’s broad easy-chair.
“I surely thought you intended going to the concert this evening, Louis,” she said, looking across at him. “I fancy Mamma expected you to accompany her.”
“What! Voluntarily put myself into the cold when there is a fire blazing right here? Ah, no. At any rate, your mother is all right with the Lewises, and I am all right with you.”
“I give you a guarantee I shall not bite; you look altogether too hard for my cannibalistic propensities.”
“It is something not to be accounted soft. I think a redundancy of flesh overflows in trickling sentimentality. My worst enemy could not accuse me of either fault.”
“But your best friend would not mind a little thaw now and then. One of the girls confided to me today that walking on and over-waxed floor was nothing to attempting an equal footing in conversation with you.”
“I am sorry I am such a slippery customer. Does not the fire burn your face? Shall I hand you a screen?”
“No; I like to toast.”
“But your complexion might char; move your chair a little forward.”
“In two minutes I intend to have lights and to bring my work down. Will it make you tired to watch me?”
“Exceedingly. I prefer your undivided attention; it is not often we are alone, Ruth.”
She looked up slightly startled; he seldom made personal remarks. Her pulses began to flutter with the premonition that reference to a tacitly buried secret was going to be made.
“We have been going out and receiving a good deal lately, though somehow I don’t feel festive, with Father away in freezing New York. Mamma would gladly have stayed at home to-night if Jennie had not insisted.”
“You think so? I fancy she was a very willing captive; she intimated as much to me.”
“How?”
“Not in words, but her eyes were interesting reading: first, capitulation to Jennie, then, in rapid succession, inspiration, command, entreaty, a challenge and retreat, all directed at me. Possibly this eloquence was lost upon you.”
“Entirely. What was your interpretation?”
“Ah, that was confidential. Perhaps I even endowed her with these thoughts, knowing her desires were in touch with my own.”
“It is wanton cruelty to arouse a woman’s curiosity and leave it unsatisfied.”
“It is not cruelty; it is cowardice.”
She gazed at him in wonder. His apple-blossom cheeks wore a rosier glow than usual. He seized a log from the box, threw it on the blaze that illumined their faces, grasped the poker, and leaning forward in his chair let it grow hot as he held it to the flames. His glasses fell off, dangling from the cord; and as he adjusted them, he caught the curious, half-amused smile on Ruth’s attentive face. He gave the fire a sharp raking and addressed her, gazing into the leaping flames.
“I was wondering why, after all, you could not be happy as my wife.”
A numbness as of death overspread her.
“I think I could make you happy, Ruth.”
In the pregnant silence that followed he looked up, and meeting her sad, reproachful eyes, laid down the poker softly but resolutely; there was method in the action.
“In fact, I know I could make you happy.”
“Louis, have you forgotten?” she cried in sharp pain.
“I have forgotten nothing,” he replied incisively. “Listen to me, Ruth. It is because I remember that I ask you. Give me the right to care for you, and you will be happier than you can ever be in these circumstances.”
“You do not know what you ask, Louis. Even if I could, you would never be satisfied.”
“Try me, Ruth,” he entreated.
She raised herself from her easy, reclining position, and regarded him earnestly.
“What you desire,” she said in a restrained manner, “would be little short of a crime for me. What manner of wife should I be to you when my every thought is given to another?”
His face put on the set look of one who has shut his teeth hard together.
“I anticipated this repulse,” he said after a pause; “so what you have just assured me of does not affect my wish or my resolution to continue my plea.”
“Would you marry a woman who feels herself as closely bound to another, or the memory of another, as if the marriage rite had been actually performed? Oh, Louis, how could you force me to these disclosures?”
“I am seeking no disclosure, but it is impossible for me to continue silent now.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I love you.”
They sat so close together he might have touched her by putting out his hand, but he remained perfectly still, only the pale excitement of long repression speaking from his face; but she shrank back at his words and raised her hand as if about to receive a blow.
“Do not be alarmed,” he continued, noticing the action; “my love cannot hurt you, or it would have killed you long ago.”
“Oh, Louis,” she murmured, “forgive me; I never thought you cared so much.”
“How should you? I am not a man to wear my heart upon my sleeve. I think I have always loved you; but living as familiarly as we have lived, seeing you whenever I wished, the thought that some day this might end never occurred to me. It was only when the possibility of some other man’s claiming your love and taking you from me presented itself, that my heart rose up in arms against it,—and then I asked you to be my wife.”
“Yes,” she replied, raising her pale face; “and I refused. The same cause that moved me then, and to which you submitted without protest, rules me now, and you know it.”
“No; I do not know it. What then might have had a possible issue is now done with—or do I err?”
Her mouth trembled piteously, but no tears came as she lowered her head.
“Then listen to me. You may think me a poor sort of a fellow even to wish you to marry me when you assure me that you love another. That means that you do not love me as a husband should be loved, but it does not prove that you never could love me so.”
“It proves just that.”
“No, you may think so now, but let me reason you into seeing the falsity of your thought,—for I do not wish to force or impel you to do a thing repugnant to your reason as well as to your feelings. To begin with, you do not dislike me?”
His face was painful in its eagerness.
“I have always loved you as a dear brother.”
“Some people would consider that worse than hostility; I do not. Another question: Is there anything about my life or personality to which you object, or of which your are ashamed?”
“You know how proud we all are of you in your bearing in every relation of life.”
“I was egotist enough to think as much at any rate; otherwise I could not approach you so confidently. Well, love—indifferent if you will—and respect are not a bad foundation for something stronger. Will you, for the sake of argument, suppose that for some reason you have forgotten your opposition and have been led into marrying me?”
The sad indulgence of her smile was not inspiriting, but he continued,—
“Now, then, say you are my wife; that means I am your husband, and I love you. You do not return my love, you say; you think you would be wretched with me because you love another. Still, you are married to me; that gives me rights that no other man can possess, no matter how much you love him. You are bound to me, I to you and your happiness; so I pledge myself to make you happier than you are now, because I shall make you forget this man.”
“You could not, and I should only grow to hate you.”
“Impossible,” the pallor of his face intensifying; “because I should so act that my love would wait upon your pleasure: it would never push itself into another’s place, but it would in time overshadow the other. For, remember, I shall be your husband. I shall give you another life; I shall take you away with me. You will leave all your old friends and associations for a while, and I shall be with you always,—not intrusively, but necessarily. I shall give you every pleasure and novelty that the Old World can afford. I shall shower my love on you, not myself. In return I shall expect your tolerance. In time I will make you love me.”
His voice shook with the strength of his passion, while she listened in heart-sick fear. Carried away by his manner, she almost felt as if he had accomplished his object. He quieted down after this.
“Don’t you see, Ruth, that all this change must make you forget? And if you tried to put the past from you for no other reason than that your wifehood would be less untrue, you would be but following the instincts of a truly honorable woman. After that, all would be easy. In every instance you would be forced to look upon me as your husband, for you would belong to me. I should be the author of all your surroundings; and always keeping in mind how I want you to regard me, I should woo you so tenderly that without knowing it you would finally yield. Then, and only then, when I had filled your thought to the exclusion of every other man, I should bring you home; and I think we should be happy.”
“And you would be satisfied to give so much and receive so little?”
“The end would repay me.”
“It is a pretty story,” she said, letting her hands fall listlessly into her lap, “but the denouement is a castle in Spain that we should never inhabit. You think your love is strong enough to kill mine first of all; well, I tell you, nothing is strong enough for that. With this fact established the rest is needless to speak of. It is only your dream, Louis; forgive me that I unwittingly intruded into it; reality would mean disillusion,—we are happy only when we dream.”
“You are bitter.”
“Our relations are turned, then; I have put into practice your old theories of the uselessness of life. No; I am wrong. It is better to die than not to have loved.”
“You think you have lived your life, then. I can’t convince you otherwise now; but I am going to beg you to think this over, to try to imagine yourself my wife. I will not hasten your decision, but in a week’s time you should be able to answer me yes or no. If anything can help my cause, I cannot overlook it; so I may tell you now that for some occult reason your mother’s one wish is to see you my wife.”
“And my father?” her voice was harsh now.
“Your father has expressed to your mother that such a course would make him happy.”
She rose suddenly as if oppressed. Her face looked hard to a degree. She stood before him, tall and rigid. He stood up and faced her, reading her face so intently that he straightened himself as if to receive an attack.
“I will consider what you have said,” she said mechanically.
The reaction was so unexpected that he turned giddy and caught on to the back of a chair to steady himself.
“It will not take me a week,” she went on with no change in her monotone; “I can give you an answer in a day or two. To-morrow night, perhaps.”
He made a step forward, a movement to seize her hand; but she stepped back and waved him off.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried in a suppressed voice; “at least you are not my husband—yet.”
She turned hastily toward the door without another word.
“Wait!”
His vibrant voice compelled her to turn.
“I want no martyr for a wife, nor yet a tragedy queen. If you can come to me and honestly say, ‘I trust my happiness to you,’ well and good. But as I told you once before, I am not a saint, and I cannot always control myself as I have been forced to do tonight. If this admission is damaging, it is too true to be put lightly aside. I shall not detain you longer.”
He looked haughty and cold regarding her from this dim distance. Her gentleness struggled to get the better of her, and she came back and held out her hand.
“I am sorry if I offended you, Louis; good-night. Will you not pardon my selfishness?”
His eyes gleamed behind their glasses; he did not take her hand, but merely bent over the little peace-offering as over a sacrament. Seeing that he had no intention of doing more, her hand fell passively to her side, and she left the room.
As the door closed softly, Arnold sank with a hopeless gesture into a chair and buried his face in his hands. He was not a stoic, but a man,—a Frenchman, who loved much; but Arnold, half-blinded by his own love, scarcely appreciated the depths of self-forgetfulness to which Ruth would have to succumb in order to accept the guaranty of happiness which he offered her.
The question now presented itself in the light of a duty: if by this action she could undo the remorse that her former offence had inflicted, had she the right to ignore the opportunity? A vision of her own sad face obtruded itself, but she put it sternly from her. If she were to do this thing, the motive alone must be considered; and she rigidly kept in view the fact that her marriage would be the only means by which her father might be relieved of the haunting knowledge of her lost peace of mind. Had she given one thought to Louis, the possibility of the act would have been abhorrent to her. One picture she kept constantly before her,—her father’s happy eyes.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg