Chapter IX: Ruth Hailey

How he lived through the rest of the week he never definitely remembered. He would have willingly given the days away, but, as they had to be filled up somehow, they left confused recollections of theatres and ballets, of rencontres with random acquaintances, of riding on tiny tram-cars to see the Zoological Garden in the Bois de Boulogne, of wandering in a rag-fair, of reading modern French poetry, of visiting the ateliers of French painters whom he knew, and sympathizing with their grumbles against the Institute and the distribution of decorations, while wondering inwardly why these overgrown school-boys languished and died for lack of a bit of ribbon. What could a man want in life but to paint and to love? State recognition? Bah! The artist was always an Anarchist. He stood alone, self-centred.

He hobnobbed with students, too, in his new sympathy with youth and art, and--a distinguished visitor--was taken through the great ateliers with their rainbow-colored dados of palette-scrapings and the announcements in every European language that new-comers must pay for drinks. He gladly accepted a ticket for a students’ ball on the Saturday night; it had been postponed for a few weeks through the death of a beloved professor. He had heard much of these balls, but had never seen one, and he counted upon it to while away that last intolerable night between him and his happiness.

Several times during the week he had thought of going to see Ruth Hailey in accordance with the duty that on the other side of the Channel had seemed so pressing, but he shrank instinctively from the raking up of memories of the old unhappy days at this joyous crisis; he was not in the mood for extraneous emotion. Nevertheless on the Saturday afternoon, partly for want of anything better to do, partly to keep up to himself the pretence that she was at least one of the motives that brought him to Paris, and partly to ascertain if she had spoken to people in England about his wife, he set out to pay the long-projected visit. He would feel how the ground lay, discover if she had innocently betrayed him to anybody who might touch Mrs. Wyndwood’s circle--which might be awkward if in a possible compromise Eleanor should ever decide to live with him in ostensible marriage.

He had a dim, unformed idea of appealing to Ruth for silence, but he did not really meditate invoking her sympathies; she was on the eve of departing for the Antipodes--was perhaps already gone.

He found her hotel--it was in the Rue de Rivoli. A waiter took up his name and forthwith brought back word that Mademoiselle would see Monsieur Strang.

His heart was throbbing curiously as he mounted the stairs and stood outside her door. The quick, irregular clack, clack of a type-writer responded like an echo. He was ushered into a large plainly-furnished sitting-room. His first vision was of a tall comely lady in a grayish gown, writing at a table opposite the door; but this was effaced by the slimmer figure of a younger woman approaching from the right, with a smile of welcome and an extended hand. A moment later her smile had faded, and her hand was on her heart, soothing its flutter. He was shaken to his depths; behind all the bodily changes he saw the little girl-friend of his childhood; and, indeed, the purity of her limpid, truthful gaze was undimmed.

“Ruth!” he cried in alarm, moving forward as if to sustain her.

She drew herself up, rigid and frozen; then her face relaxed, suffused by a wan smile and a returning flood of carmine. She held out her hand with a nervous laugh.

“How are you, Mr. Strang? I thought it was Billy, and to see you instead startled me.”

As he took the little hand and looked into her face, maturer than its years, though it had not lost its olden charm, especially in the complexion, which was marvellously pure and soft, registering every slightest change of thought and feeling in dainty flickers of rose across its delicate fairness, his soul was invaded by a rush of tender memories, incongruously jostling in his brain: the thrills and raptures of boyhood, the joys of coasting down the slopes, and snaring rabbits and shooting partridges; the glow of skating; the delicious taste of the home-made cakes; the songs and hymns of childhood, the firelight casting shadows on the dusky walls, while his mother read the Bible; the drone of the fusty-coated preacher in the little wooden meeting-house; the thwacking of the dancers’ feet in the barn, the odors of hay and the lowing of cattle; the gleam of the yellow-tipped mullein by the wayside and the smell of the wild flowers in the woods; the note of the whippoorwill in the forest at twilight; the long cranes floating over the summer marshes; the buzz of fresh young voices in McTavit’s school-room. All these came back--dear and desirable, steeped in tears, softened by distance to a pensive beauty, like bawling choruses heard from afar across still water, inextricably interwoven with all the pieties of childhood, the simple sense of God and truth and honor and righteousness.

He stood holding her hand, oblivious of the present, in a whirling chaos of ancient images that melted his soul to childish tenderness, and brought back to it the child’s clear, unquestioning perception of spiritual ideas which had grown shadowy in the atmosphere of salons and studios and fashionable churches, that stereoscopic vision of the saint and the child which sees the spiritual solid. But Ruth disengaged her fingers at last, blushing under the kindly smile of the comely lady.

“This is Mr. Matthew Strang, Linda,” she said. “Mr. Strang, let me introduce you to Mrs. Verder.”

He bowed: “Oh, I have heard of Linda Verder,” he said, smiling.

“And I have heard more of Matthew Strang,” she replied, beamingly.

“That is scarcely possible,” he murmured.

She laughed with a bird-like trill. “Oh, I wasn’t alluding merely to your public career, though our sweet Ruth has gotten a whole album full of newspaper-cuttings about that. But it is of you yourself and your childhood that I have heard so much. So you see I _have_ the advantage of you. But you will excuse me, I know; I have to go out. You needn’t bother about those letters, dear. We’re nearly through with them.” And with an affectionate nod to Ruth and a beneficent smile to Matthew, she left the room. He was reddening: he was beginning to feel uncomfortable under Mrs. Verder’s smiles, which in their insinuation of old sweetheartship made it certain that Ruth had never mentioned his marriage to her friend even; to hear that the forgotten Ruth had been following his career all those years gave him an odd pathetic shiver. She and Billy--and Heaven knew what others--were sunning themselves in the mere reflected rays of that fame which had left him cold.

She stood away from him, shy and equally embarrassed, the blood ebbing and flowing in the pure, soft cheek.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said at last.

“Oh, thank you!” he replied, and took a distant chair.

She sat down behind her type-writer, facing him. There was a silence. She was the first to break it.

“I was so sorry to read you were ill.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” he murmured.

“I am so pleased we hadn’t left--we are sailing next Tuesday. It is so good of you to come and see me, with the many claims that you must have on your time.”

“It is a pleasure to be reminded of old times. I was sorry I missed you the time you called at my house,” he said, awkwardly.

“I was very sorry, too.”

“But you know I work at my studio,” he explained, trying not to flush. “There is no room at home.”

“Yes, I know. But I didn’t care to call there and interrupt your work. Billy showed me the little room where you used to work in the olden days. I thought it real nice of you to turn it into a study for him, and to take care of him as you are doing. He sent me a story of his. No; it wasn’t very good, poor fellow!” she added, seeing the question in his face. “Rather too full of passionate love-making.”

“Not published?”

“No--in manuscript. I returned it to him type-written. He was enraptured. He said it was like seeing himself in print.”

“Ah! we are not so used to the type-writer as you Americans.”

“It is coming in fast, though; even into your slow, old country, if you consider it yours,” she added, slyly. “I am delighted to see how many offices the new-fangled machine has crept into; in two years it will be in every business office.”

“Why delighted? Have you or Mrs. Verder shares in the patent?”

“No, no,” she said, gently. “Don’t you see it is a new occupation for women?”

He smiled.

“Ah, I remember. That’s your hobby.”

“Oh, not hobby, Mr. Strang, not hobby. It is my life-work. But I can’t expect you to sympathize with these sordid, practical things,” she said, smiling. “Your life is devoted to the gospel of the Beautiful.”

“Oh, but I do sympathize,” he cried, remorsefully. “I think it is very fine of you.”

She shook her head, her smile fading.

“You don’t--you can’t. You are outside the circle of the material worries of the poor; or, what is worse, the genteel. And nobody but a woman can know the tragic pettiness of the life-struggle for single girls--the stifled aspirations, the abortive longings, the tears in the night. Christ would have understood. But He was not a man.”

He saw the blur of emotion veil her eyes ere she turned her head hastily away. He felt his own sight growing dim; an understratum of his consciousness admired the flow of her language, and divined platform experiences. He had never before thought of her as clever.

She recovered herself in a moment, and resumed, playfully:

“No, if you were a black-and-white artist you would have sketched Mrs. Verder with corkscrew ringlets and crying for trousers. We do want the Franchise and the right to dress as we please, but these are only incidental aspects of the movement for the independence of women, though they lend themselves most readily to caricature. The woman of the future is simply the working woman. All we really want is to make girls economically independent of marriage; able to choose their mates from love instead of selling themselves for a home.”

He could not meet her frank eyes; he was suddenly reminded of his own marriage. What would this stainless soul think of him if she knew he had sold himself, or--worse--if she knew why he had come to her this afternoon? He murmured, surveying the carpet, that he knew life was hard for girls, but that he hoped she at least had not been unhappy.

“I? Oh! I’ve been as happy as the next girl, though I’ve had my trials,” she said, cheerily, between smiles and tears. “But I am grateful to God for them, else I should never have learned to sympathize as I do, and I should not have served the Master. My life might have been wasted in mere happiness.”

Mere happiness! The phrase went through him like a sword.

“But _you_ had no need to work for a living,” he said, dubiously.

“Indeed I had! I had nothing.”

“You had a father.”

“Of a kind. But I quarrelled with him. You heard that, of course.”

He had heard of it, of course, but her affairs had made trivial dints upon his consciousness.

“Why did you quarrel with him?” he asked.

Her face became a crimson mask. She lowered her head.

“Oh--I beg your pardon,” he stammered in distress. “Of course I had no right to ask.”

She was silent, her fingers nervously picking out letters on the type-writer. Then her eyes met his unflinchingly again.

“No, in a way you have a right to ask,” she said, uneasily. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you--it’s so long ago. You know I became the Deacon’s book-keeper?”

He nodded, wondering.

“He made me keep all his accounts. I learned all about his affairs. Well, one day, looking over the books, I made a discovery.”

“Yes?”

She hesitated. Her face was still fiery. The image of the mumbling, quid-chewing Deacon, with the roundabout methods of arriving at his point, rose vivid to his memory. He remembered his childish strain to understand “Ole Hey’s” good advice. Pop! Pop! Pop! It was like the clack, clack, clack of the type-writer under Ruth’s nervous, unconscious fingers. But what was this she was saying to the accompaniment of the erratic automatic music?

“I discovered that he was cheating you, or rather your sister and Abner Preep, that he had always bamboozled your father, that the mortgage was more than paid off long before, aside from the work he had gotten out of your brothers and sisters.” She paused, then hastened on with a lighter tone. “So, of course, being a foolish, hot-headed girl, I wouldn’t stay any longer in his house unless he repaid you, and equally of course he refused, knowing I wouldn’t make a scandal, and so I went off to the only relative I had in the world--my mother’s sister in Portland, Maine. She was too poor to give me more than food and shelter. But my knowledge of book-keeping soon got me a place in a store. And ever since I have earned my own bread, Heaven be thanked.”

She was not looking at him now; her fingers were still lightly tapping the letters into combinations that spelled only embarrassment. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have told you--but you won’t take action now, will you?”

“No, seeing that the money has been paid!” he cried, hoarsely, with a sudden intuition. He sprang up agitatedly. “You sent us all that money anonymously--from Maine!”

Her head drooped lower. “Oh, I felt I oughtn’t to say anything,” she cried in vexation.

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“It was such a trifle, anyhow,” she said, deprecatingly.

“It was a fortune then--five hundred dollars!”

“I could do no less. There was no other call for the money I earned in those first few years, while my aunt still lived. And I thought that perhaps--” He came towards her. “That perhaps--that perhaps it might help you in your career--my aunt corresponded with my poor mother’s friends in Cobequid Village--I knew how you were slaving and sending money to your folks.”

“God bless you, Ruth.”

“I hope it was a little help to you, Matt.” He thrilled under the name, spoken for the first time. “I have often liked to think it was--that I had a wee finger in the making of a great artist.”

Her words cut him to the heart. How could he tell her that her money had come too late? He was about to murmur something, but she stopped him.

“No, don’t answer me for fear you should dispel my illusion. It has been such a joy to me when I read about your rapid rise to say to myself: ‘Ah, perhaps _we_ know something.’ But half the joy was in the secrecy; now you have found me out, don’t take away the relics of my pleasure.”

“But why should you bother to read things about me?” he murmured, only half sincerely, for another and more agitating suspicion was fast germinating in his breast.

She flashed a quick glance up at him as he stood over her, then looked down again indifferently, her sweet mouth quivering. “Oh, why should I not be proud of knowing, if only in boyhood, the only great man our township ever produced?”

But he had now been trained in woman’s looks. Rosina and Eleanor had taught him much, and the thought that was borne in upon him now--the conviction that Ruth, too, loved him, that she had always cherished her childish affection, though his own had been swamped by his craving for Art--was not the complacent conviction of a coxcomb. It was a chilling agony. It pierced his breast like a jagged icicle. He had an appalling sense as of responsibility for a ruined life. The image of “Aunt Clara” flashed suddenly before him--careworn, faded, broken-down, unlovely. Was that to be the end of Ruth--the sweet playmate, the great soul?

“And you, too, have done something in life,” he said, as if to reassure himself, trying to curve his trembling lips to a smile.

She looked up frankly at him. “In so far as I have been able to help Linda to help other girls.”

“And do you meditate--helping Linda all your life?”

“With God’s help.”

“Even,” he essayed to smile again, “even if you marry?”

“Oh, but I won’t marry,” she said, quickly, and kept her face bravely raised to his, though the tell-tale rose was coming and going on her transparent skin.

“Not even”--his smile was a ghastly caricature--”to spite the caricaturists?”

She smiled a faint response. “Not even for that. Has not Linda sacrificed herself on that altar? It’s true she’s a widow, but still--”

He could not help asking the question: “But why won’t you marry?”

“Because I don’t want to. Is that a woman’s reason?” And she smiled again.

“Ruth!” he cried, frenziedly, in a strange mixture of emotions. “I am not worthy to kneel to you!”

She opened her eyes, wondering: “Because I prefer celibacy? Because my life is happy enough as it is; because, thanks to Mrs. Verder, it is sufficiently filled with activity and movement?”

“Oh, if it is, if it is!” he cried, almost hysterically.

“Certainly it is. You men are all so mistaken about women. Marriage may be a necessity for some women, but not for all--oh, thank God! not for all. It may be harder for Linda, who has known a husband’s love--but for me? Oh, I am perfectly happy.” She rose and moved away from him, and began to walk restlessly up and down, talking rapidly. “It is perfectly absurd, this making marriage and happiness synonyms. Novels end with marriage, and that is called a happy ending. Good heavens! It is quite as often an unhappy beginning! If you had seen the things I have seen, heard the tales women have told me! Even the women you would imagine the most enviable are full of worries. Why, look at your own wife, Mr. Strang, who has everything to make her happy.” And her lips parted in a faint smile.

He turned his face away. “Did she also tell you tales of woe?” he said, with a forced laugh.

“Well, not precisely woe, but plenty of anxiety about the children, and about the dishonesty of her helps, and she seemed rather poorly, too. I hope you left her strong and well.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, flushing.

“How proud she is of you,” Ruth went on. “I was so glad to find that she really appreciated you. I had often wondered. And it isn’t only on account of your importance, Matthew Strang! She told me you were goodness itself, which, of course, I knew, and that you had long wished her to move to a better neighborhood, only she was afraid to put you to expense. What a good woman she must be! And so pretty too!”

“Do you think so?” he muttered. His face was still averted.

“Yes, and I seem to remember her in your earliest pictures. She’s the woman in ‘Motherhood,’ isn’t she?”

“I think she sat for the figure,” he said, hesitatingly. “I couldn’t afford models then. I wish you weren’t going so soon. I should so like to do a sketch of you--something to remember you by.”

She shook her head. “We have so much to do this week. I shouldn’t have time.”

“I am sorry. Perhaps we shall never meet again,” he said in low tones. “I never even had a photograph of you--I could do a sketch from that.”

“I don’t think I have any. You did a sketch of me once,” she reminded him, “but I’m not going to give you that. That’s precious--an example of your first manner.” The gay note in her voice sounded rather strained. “Don’t you remember? You sent it me when you first went to Halifax, please don’t remember how many years ago.”

But he did remember. And he remembered, too, how he had sent it her as a slight return for the _Arabian Nights_. He had lost her gift (through the carelessness of Jack Floss) very soon after, but she cherished his still.

He moved to her side, watching her rummage among heaps of papers. He saw the backs of two photographs, and picked them up. One was a portrait of Linda Verder, the other of himself.

“Both public celebrities,” she said, with a little confused laugh. “I’ve never attained to the shop-windows, so naturally I am scarcer.” She continued her search, and at last turned up something. “Ah, there’s an old one--or rather a young one. Me at sixteen! Goodness, to think I’ve still got that!”

His flaccid nerves sent fresh moisture to his eyes as he gazed at the simple picture of the sweet, delicate, girlish face, with large eyes luminous with dreams, looking out shyly upon life in a sort of wistful wonder and expectation, unconscious, unprophetic of the blank years when eyes grow dim with sudden unsought tears.

His voice was broken as he said: “Thank you. This is the picture I would most have wished to have. Henceforward I shall think of you, earnest, truthful, aspiring ... as you have thought of me all these years. And now I suppose I must not keep you any longer from your duties.”

“Oh, they are nothing. It is your time that is precious, I know. I am rejoiced to have had this glimpse of you in your fame and happiness. I shall always remember this afternoon. Good-bye, Mr. Strang.” She held out her hand.

He put his, with the portrait, behind his back. “No, I won’t,” he said, petulantly. “Not if you call me that.”

She dropped her hand with a sad smile.

“You see I belong to the rejected, Matt.”

He quivered as at a thrust.

“No, you are of the elect, of the saints of this earth.”

Her smile took on the wistfulness of her early portrait. They stood looking at each other in a tender embarrassment.

“Oh, by-the-way, Matt, you will not mind my speaking of her ... she belongs to me a little as well as to you, you know ... I went to see your poor mother before I left for Europe.”

He shuddered.

“Did she recognize you?” he said, in a half-whisper.

She shook her head. Her face was drawn with the pain of the memory. “But she is quite gentle, except when she quotes texts. They give her simple housework to do--it provides a vent for her activity ... marriages are not always happy, you see.” A wan smile flitted across her features. “I shall go to see her again. Poor creature! I forgot her when I called you happy. The thought of her must always sadden you.”

He would not trust his voice to reply. He transferred the photograph to his left hand, and held out the right in silence. She put her hand into his.

“Good-bye, Matt; perhaps forever.”

He struggled to speak.

“Good-bye, Ruth.” He bent nearer. “May I not kiss you ... for auld lang syne?”

She withdrew her hand. Her voice was tremulous and low. “We are not playmates now, Matt.”

He held up the photograph.

“Then I will kiss the girl I used to know.”

He pressed his lips reverentially to it.

She smiled sadly.

“Good-bye again, dear Matt. God bless you.”

He hurried from the room, overwhelmed with emotion. The door closed upon him, and he leaned against the balustrade for a moment to recover himself.

Clack! clack! clack! clack! clack!

It was the steady, business-like clatter of determined work. She had taken up the burden of Duty again.