CHAPTER IV—RUTHITA

We lay back against the cushions. We acted like conspirators—it was difficult to tell why. The surprise of meeting her thus suddenly had deprived me of words. It must have been the same with her; we clasped hands in silence.

“I had to see you—had to speak to you.”

She was panting—almost crying.

“Of course. Why not? It was foolish to go on the way we were going.”

“Yes, foolish and heartbreaking. It wasn’t as though we were wanting to do anything wicked—only to meet one another, as we used to.”

Her voice trailed off into a little shivering sob; she flickered her eye-lids to prevent the tears from gathering.

“Ruthie, you mustn’t carry on so.” Then, “What has he done to you?” I asked fiercely. “You’re afraid.”

“He’s guessed.”

“Guessed what?”

“What you never knew.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I can’t tell you. If you’d guessed, it might have made all the difference.”

I did not dare to speak—her whisper was so ashamed. Her hand was hot in mine. She withdrew it. When I leant over her she shuddered, just as the trees had done when they knew the rain was coming, as though I were a thing to her both sweet and dreadful. She took my face between her hands, and yet shrank back from me. She delighted in and feared the thing she was doing.

The rain volleyed against the carriage, shutting us in as with a tightly drawn curtain; yet, did I look up, through the gray mist the tepid gold of the sun was shining.

“Ruthie, it seems almost too good to be true that we’re alone at last together—to have you all to myself.”

“Did you ever want me, Dannie?”

“Did I ever want you!”

“But as much as you wanted her?”

“Differently, yes.”

“You poor boy. And you didn’t get either of us.”

“Couldn’t be helped, Ruthie. That’s life—to be always wanting and never getting. But I have you now and, perhaps, one day——”

“But how can you? She’s married.”

“One can’t tell. Things come unexpectedly. I didn’t expect half-an-hour ago that I’d be with you.”

She fell to asking me little stabbing questions. When I only answered her vaguely, “Don’t let’s start with secrets,” she implored me.

“But it’s five years—there’s so much to explain.”

“Yes—on both sides.”

“You seemed—seemed to dislike him,” I said. “I never understood——”

She took me up quickly. “Nor did I. Don’t let’s talk about it—not yet, Dante.”

So I told her about my doings, the book I was writing and the little daily round at Woadley; and then I told her of why I had quarreled with my father.

“But he let me marry Halloway, and you’ve never——” I laughed. “Ah, but no matter what Halloway did as a bachelor, he was discreet when it came to marriage.”

She drew me forward to the light; doubt was in her eyes. “But you—you’re unhappy too.”

“I’ve gained everything I played for; I played to lose.”

“Everything?”

“I didn’t deserve Vi. And I didn’t deserve you; if I had, I shouldn’t have lost you.”

Not until I had replied did she realize how much she had told me. She was not happy! I wanted to ask her questions, so many questions—questions which I had no right to ask, nor she to answer.

“And you—you have no children?”

She hesitated. “No.”

I rubbed the damp from the panes. We were in Stoke Newington. The storm was over; streets and roof-tops shone as with liquid fire. Children going home from school, were laughing and playing. They might have been myself and Ruthie of years ago.

“They won’t see me,” I warned her.

“Who?”

“Folks at Pope Lane.”

“They’re not there. Only Hetty’s left to take care of the house. They’ve gone away for a few days.”

“Then I can see it all again. We can walk in the garden together and pretend that things are exactly as they were.”

“Oh, Dannie!” she cried. “I can call you Dannie, can’t I?”

Time slipped away. She was my little sister now—no longer Lady Halloway. At the posts before the passage we alighted—that was the first news the coachman had of whom he had been driving. We went slowly up the lane, where the shadows of the limes groped like tentacles fingering the sunshine. When I felt beneath the creepers and the bell jangled faintly, Ruthita clutched my arm, attempting to appear bold.

Hetty stared at us. “Well, I’ll be blowed!”

We pushed by her smiling, assuring her that we had no objection. Not until we had rounded the house, did I hear the rattle of the door closing.

Nothing ever changed in that walled-in garden. Flowers grew in the same places—crocuses, daffodils, and hyacinths. Peaches on the wall would soon ripen. Presently sunflowers, like sentinels in gold helmets, would stand in stately line. Pigeons strutted on the slates of houses opposite or wheeled against the sky. There was the window of Ruthita’s bedroom, up to which I had so often called.

The hole, which had been bricked up between the Favarts’ garden, was still discernible. Everything retained its record; only we had changed.

Truants again, stealing an hour together, I listened expectant to hear Hetty call, “Dant-ee. Dant-ee. Bedtime.” The old excitement clutched my heart. Her starched skirt would rustle down the path, and we would run into the gooseberry bushes to hide. I glanced at the study-window. Surely I should see my father seated there, leaning across the desk with his head propped by his arm. Surely that hand of Ruthita’s in my own was growing smaller. I should turn to find a child in a short print-frock, with clusters of ringlets on her shoulders. A shutter in my mind had opened; the past had become present. Ah, but I was no longer anxious to escape. The walled-in garden was all I wanted. I was tired of liberty. I was ready to be commanded. I was willing that others should order my life.

That the illusion might not slip from me, I half shut my eyes. Drip, drip, drip, from eaves and branches! The earth was stirring in the gentle quiet. Through drenched bushes and on the vivid stretch of lawn blackbirds were hopping, delving with their yellow bills. Perhaps I was dwindling into a small boy, just as I had once hoped in the forest that I might suddenly shoot up into manhood. How absurd to believe that I was thirty, and had seen so much of disillusionment! That was all a dream out of which I was waking—I had been here all the time in the narrow confines of the walled-in garden. The old enchantment of familiar sensations stole upon me—I was Dannie Cardover of the Red House; playing tricks with his imagination.

How did it happen? Was it I or was it Ruthie? Her lips were pressing mine. A step came down the path behind us. We sprang apart, laughing softly with reckless joy at our impropriety. Which of us would have thought ten years ago that there would be anything improper in being caught kissing?

Hetty pretended not to have seen us, but her flustered face told its story.

“D’you remember, Hetty, how I once found you doing that to John?”

She writhed her hands under her apron, trying to appear shocked and not to smile. “I remember, Sir Dante; ‘t’aint likely I’d forget.” Then, disregarding me for Ruthita, “I was about to h’arsk your ladyship, whether I should get tea ready.”

Ruthita took her by the hand. “You didn’t talk to me that way once, Hetty. I’m just Ruthie to you always, and Sir Dante is plain Dannie.”

She looked up and met the laughing reproach in our eyes. Her apron went to her face and her bodice commenced to quiver. “Little did I think when I washed and dressed yer little bodies that I should ever see this day,” she sobbed. “It’s breakin’ me ‘eart, that’s what it is, all this quarrelin’. Why shouldn’t I speak to ’im if I wants ter? Why shouldn’t ’e kiss ’is own sister if he likes? Wot’s it matter if all the neighbors was lookin’? There’s too little lovin’ and too little kissin’; that’s wot I say. ‘Tain’t right ter be ashamed o’ bein’ nateral. If it ‘adn’t ’a’ been for bein’ afraid and ashamed, I might ’a’ married John. The nus-girl next door got ’im. There’s allaws been someone a-lookin’ when I was courtin’—there’s been, too little kissin’ in my life, and it’s yer Pa’s fault, if I do say it, wi’ ’is everlastin’ look of ‘Don’t yer do it.’”

“If it’s as bad as all that, Hetty, I’m sure you won’t mind if I——” She made an emotional armful, but between struggling and giggling she allowed me.

We had tea together in the formal dining-room, with its heavy furniture and snug red walls. We made Hetty sit beside us; she protested and was scandalized, but we wouldn’t let her wait. As we talked, the old freedom of happiness came back to Ruthita’s laughter. The mask of enforced prejudices lifted from Hetty’s face. All our conversation was of the past—our adventures, childish mutinies, and punishments. We told Hetty what a tyrant she had been to us. We asked her whether her nightgowns were still of gray flannel. I accused her of being the start of all my naughtiness in the explanation she had given me of how marriages were concocted. It was like putting a wilted flower into water to see the way she picked up and freshened. When she had nothing else to reply, she wagged her head at us, exclaiming, “Oh, my h’eye—what goin’s on! It’s a good thing walls ain’t got ears. What would your poor Pa say?”

We left her and wandered through the rooms together. We only opened the study-door; we did not enter. It had always, even when we had been invited, seemed to have been closed against us. Books lay on the desk, dust-covered. It was allowed to be tidied only in my father’s presence. We both felt that he must know of our trespassing, even though we could not see him. I had the uncanny feeling that he was still there at the table writing; any moment he might glance up, having completed his sentence, and I should hear his voice. Not until we had climbed the stairs did we rid ourselves of the shadow of his disapproval. In the old days when we were romping, we had been accustomed to hear his dreaded door open and his stern voice calling, “Children! Children! What d’you think you’re doing? Not so much noise.” It was something of this kind we were now expecting and with the same sensations of trembling.

The house was memory-haunted. Following our footsteps, yet so discreetly that we never caught them, were a witch-faced girl and a sturdy boy. Where pools of sunlight lay upon the floor we lost them; when we turned into dark passages, again they followed. On entering rooms, we half expected to find them occupied with their playing; when the budding creeper stirred against the walls, it was as though they whispered. They were always somewhere where we were not—either in the room we had just left, or the room to which we were going.

We entered what had been my bedroom. The sun was westering, playing hide-and-seek behind crooked chimneypots. Below us the garden lay in shadow, cool and cloistered.

Kneeling beside the window, with our elbows on the sill, not watching one another’s eyes, we whispered by fits and starts, leaving our sentences unended. Most of what we said commenced with “Do you remember?” and drifted off into silence as the picture formed. It was like flinging pebbles into a pond and watching the circles spreading. One after another memories came and departed—all that we had done together and been to one another in that conspiracy of childhood. There was the pink muffler she had made me, the guinea-pig about which I had lied to her, the tragic departures and wild homecomings of schooldays, and the week when the Bantam had declared his love for her. And there were memories which preceded her knowledge—my quest for the magic carpet. How I wished I might yet find it; I would fly by night to her window and carry her off, re-visiting old happinesses while Lord Halloway lay snoring.

I don’t know how we came to it—I suppose we must have been speaking about Vi. Presently Ruthita said, “You could only love golden hair, could you, Dannie?”

I didn’t know what she was driving at; her voice shook and her face was flushing.

“Dark-haired girls never had any chance with you, did they? You told me that long ago, after Fiesole. I remembered because—because——”

“I was a boy then, and was clumsy.”

“But you spoke the truth, though you did say that for sisters black hair was the prettiest in the world. It hurt because at that time I fancied—you can guess what.”

“You never showed it.”

“You never looked for it—never asked for it.”

I knew to what she referred. It was on the night of my sudden return from the Red House because the Spuffler had lost our money. I was sitting at this window as I was now sitting. A tap at the door had startled me; then a timid voice had said, “It’s only Ruthita.” She had crept in noiselessly as a shadow. Her dear arms went about my neck, drawing down my face. “Oh, Dannie, I’m so sorry,” she had whispered; “I’ve never missed welcoming you home ever since you went to school.” She had nestled against me in the dark, her face looking frailer and purer than ever. She had slipped on a long blue dressing-gown, I remember, and her black hair hung about her shoulders like a cloud. Just below the edge of the gown her pale feet twinkled. I noticed that a physical change had come over her. Then I had realized for the first time that she was different as I was different—we were no longer children. I had fallen to wondering whether the same wistful imaginings, exquisite and alluring, had come to her. With an overwhelming reverence, I had become aware of the strange fascination of her appealing beauty. In the confessing that followed I had told her of my jilting by Fiesole, and had spoken those stupid words about loving only golden hair. How wounding I had been in my boyish egotism! And that was not the last time I had wounded her in my blindness.

Scene after scene came back to me—into each I read a new meaning in the light of what she had told me: the Snow Lady’s hints before I sailed for America; Ruthita’s appeal for my protection against Halloway, and her sudden acceptance of him directly she heard that I was with Vi at Sheba.

“Ruthie, all this was very long ago; so many things have happened since then, there can be no harm in talking about it. You wanted me right up to the last—and I was too selfish to know it.”

“Right up to the last,” she whispered, and I knew she meant right up to now.

“And this—and this is what your husband has guessed?”

She took my hands in both her own, speaking with quiet dignity. “I had to tell you. Perhaps I too have been selfish, but I couldn’t let you misunderstand me any longer. I’ve seen you watching for me, and I’ve had to go by you without looking. We never had any secrets, you and I; you must have wondered why I let my husband make me cut you—I’ve been wicked—I couldn’t trust myself. When I heard that you’d gone to Sheba, I didn’t care what happened. I’d always hoped and hoped that you might come to love me. But it seemed I wasn’t wanted, so I just took—— He’s been good to me, but it isn’t like living with the person you love best, is it? You mustn’t hate him any more; to love a woman who can’t love you back again makes even success empty—and he’s been used to take love without asking.”

We sat very still. We saw Hetty come out into the garden and walk down the path as though she were looking for us. We waited to hear her call, but she re-entered the house, leaving the silence unruffled.

“I’ve made a pretty fair mess of things, haven’t I? There was Vi first, and now there’s you. I’m a pretty fair blighter.”

She pressed herself against me to stop me. “Oh, you mustn’t say that. It hurts. You mustn’t say it.”

“But I am. Even your husband knows it.”

“Some day you’ll marry and everything’ll come right.”

“For Vi, if we have the luck to come together. But what about you? What about even Halloway?”

She avoided answering my self-accusations by attracting attention to herself. “From the first he didn’t want me to know you; he gave excuses, and I understood. Because I couldn’t give him love, I gave him everything else that he wanted. But now—now that I’m going to be a mother, I had to tell you. I want it to be a boy, Dannie. Waiting for him, I’ve thought so much of old days. I felt that if you didn’t know, somehow, things wouldn’t go right—because when he comes I want him to be like you.”

She had risen, letting go my hand.

“I had always thought of you as my sister,” I faltered. “I know—and you were a dear brother. It was just my foolishness to want you to be something else.”

For a moment she clung to me, hiding her face against my shoulder. Then we passed down the stairs, afraid to be alone any longer.

“Goin’?” Hetty inquired. “You won’t tell the master, will yer?” She glanced toward the study-door as though he were behind it and might have overheard.

At the end of the lane the carriage was standing. In the presence of the coachman Ruthita’s tones were conventional. “You’re going westwards? Where can I drop you?”

In the carriage I asked her whether her husband would know of what we had done.

“I shall tell him.”

“Don’t you think he might be willing to let us be friends?”

“I’ll ask him,” she said, “but——”

At Hyde Park Corner the carriage pulled up and I alighted. I watched her eager face looking back at me, growing smaller and smaller.

Wandering aimlessly through the parks, I sat for a time by the Serpentine. The nerves of all that had happened in the past five years were cut. If I had married Ruthita, would she have been happy? The thought of marrying her was just as impossible to me now as it had been when Grandmother Cardover had mentioned it at Ransby. And yet, at a time when I had been most sensitive of injustice, I had been unjust to her—— And now she was going to be a mother—little Ruthita, who seemed to me herself so much a child!

When I came into Whitehall, the pale twilight of spring still hovered above house-tops; from streets the flare of London steamed up. The opal of the sky reflected the marigold-yellow of illumined windows; arc-lights, like ox-eye daisies, stared above the grass of the dusk.

I made my way to my club and sank into a chair, aimlessly skimming the papers, reading scarcely a line. Few people were about; the room was empty save for one other loiterer. Spring in the streets was calling.

The man strolled up to me, holding an illustrated weekly in his hand. I knew him slightly and nodded.

“Writing a book on the Renaissance, ar’n’t you? Here’s something a bit in your line. Funny how Paris’ll go mad over a thing like that!” He smacked the page. “Girl comes from nowhere. Her lover writes a play—that’s the story. There’s a mystery. The play’s difficult to understand, so it must be brainy. Now I like a thing that don’t need no explanation: Marie Lloyd, the Empire, musical comedy—that’s my cut.”

He tossed me the weekly and turned on his heel to walk out. Annoyed at being disturbed, I glanced down irritably.

From a full-page illustration the face of Fiesole smiled up.