第23章

On the eve of the wedding he paid Ruth his last visit in the quality of a lover, and was received by her in the garden. He found her looking paler than her wont, and there was a cloud of sadness on her brow, a haunting sadness in her eyes. It touched him to the soul, and for a moment he wavered in his purpose. He stood beside her - she seated on the old lichened seat - and a silence fell between them, during which Mr. Wilding's conscience wrestled with his stronger passion. It was his habit to be glib, talking incessantly what time he was in her company, and seeing to it that his talk was shallow and touched at nothing belonging to the deeps of human life. Thus was it, perhaps, that this sudden and enduring silence affected her most oddly; it was as if she had absorbed some notion of what was passing in his mind. She looked up suddenly into his face, so white and so composed. Their eyes met, and he stooped to her suddenly, his long brown ringlets tumbling forward. She feared his kiss, yet never moved, staring up with fixed, dilated eyes as if fascinated by his dark, brooding gaze. He paused, hovering above her upturned face as hovers the hawk above the dove.

"Child," he said at last, and his voice was soft and winning from very sadness, "child, why do you fear me?"The truth of it went home to her. She feared him; she feared the strength that lay behind that calm; she feared the masterfulness of his wild but inscrutably hidden nature; she was afraid to surrender to such a man as this, afraid that in the hot crucible of his love her own nature would be dissolved, transmuted, and rendered part of his. Yet, though the truth was now made plain to her, she thrust it from her.

"I do not fear you," said she, and her voice at least rang fearlessly.

"Do you hate me, then?" he asked. Her glance grew troubled and fell away from his; it sought the calm of the river, gleaming golden in the sunset. There was a pause. Wilding sighed heavily, and straightened himself from his bending posture.

"You should not have sought thus to compel me, she said presently.

"I own it," he answered a thought bitterly. "I own it. Yet what hope had I but in compulsion?" She returned him no answer. "You see," he said, with increasing bitterness, "you see, that had I not seized the chance that was mine to win you by compulsion I had not won you at all.""It might," said she, "have been better so for both of us.""Better for neither," he replied. "Ah, think it not! In time, Iswear, you shall not think it. For you shall come to love me, Ruth,"he added with a note of such assurance that she turned to meet again his gaze. He answered the wordless question of her eyes. "There is,"said he, "no love of man for woman, so that the man be not wholly unworthy, so that his passion be sincere and strong, that can fail in time to arouse response." She smiled a little pitiful smile of unbelief. "Were I a boy," he rejoined, his earnestness vibrating now in a voice that was usually so calm and level, "offering you protestations of a callow worship, you might have cause to doubt me.

But I am a man, Ruth - a tried, and haply a sinful man, alas! - a man who needs you, and who will have you at all costs.""At all costs?" she echoed, and her lip took on a curl. "And you call this egotism by the name of love! No doubt you are right," she continued with an irony that stung him, "for love it is - love of yourself.""And is not all love of another founded upon the love of self?" he asked her, startling her with a question that revealed to her clear-sighted mind a truth undreamed of. "When some day - please Heaven - I come to find favour in your eyes, and you come to love me, what will it mean but that you have come to find me necessary to yourself and to your happiness? Would you deny me now your love if you felt that you had need of mine? I love you because I love myself, you say. I grant it you. But you'll confess that if you do not love me yet, it is for the same reason, and that when you do come to love me the reason will be still the same.""You are very sure that I shall come to love you, said she, shifting woman-like the ground of argument now that she found insecure the place on which at first she had taken her stand.

"Were I not, think you I should compel you to the church to-morrow?"She trembled at his calm assurance. It was as if she almost feared that what he said might come to pass.

"Since you bear such faith in your heart," said she, "were it not nobler, more generous, that you should set yourself to win me first and wed me afterwards?""It is the course I should, myself, prefer," he answered quietly. "But it is a course denied me. I was viewed here with disfavour, almost denied your house. What chance had I whilst I might not come near you, whilst your mind was poisoned against me by the idle, vicious prattle that goes round and round the countryside, increasing ever in bulk from constant repetition?""Do you say that these tales are groundless?" she asked, with a sudden lifting of the eyes, a sudden keen eagerness that did not escape him.

"I would to God I could," he cried, "since from your manner I see that would improve me in your sight. But there is just sufficient truth in them to forbid me, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, from giving them a full denial. Yet in what am I worse than my fellows? Are you of those who think a husband should come to them as one whose youth has been the youth of cloistered nun? Heaven knows, I am not one to draw parallels `twixt myself and any other, yet you compel me. Whilst you deny me, you receive this fellow Blake - a London night-scourer, a broken gamester who has given his creditors leg-bail, and who woos you that with your fortune he may close the doors of the debtor's gaol that's open to receive him.""This is unworthy in you," she exclaimed, her tone indignant - so indignant that he experienced his first pang of jealousy.

"It would be were I his rival," he answered quietly. "But I am not.

I have saved you from becoming the prey of such as he by forcing you to marry me.""That I may become the prey of such as you, instead," was her retort.