Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (i read book .txt) 📕

“Do you enjoy staying by the seaside? I should rather ask.”

The reply was “Yes,” rather breathed out in a deep inspiration than spoken in a sound. The sands heaved and trembled beneath Ruth. The figures near her vanished into strange nothingness; the sounds of their voices were as distant sounds in a dream, while the echo of one voice thrilled through and through. She could have caught at his arm for support, in the awful dizziness which wrapped her up, body and soul. That voice! No! if name, and face, and figure were all changed, that voice was the same which had touched her girlish heart, which had spoken most tender words of love, which had won, and wrecked her, and which she had last heard in the low mutterings of fever. She dared not look round to see the figure of him who spoke, dark as it was. She knew he was there—she heard him speak in the manner in which he used to address strangers years ago; perhaps she answered him, perhaps she did not—God knew. It seemed as if weights were tied to her feet—as if the steadfast rocks receded—as if time stood still;—it was so long, so terrible, that path across the reeling sand.

At the foot of the rocks they separated. Mr. Bradshaw, afraid lest dinner should cool, preferred the shorter way for himself and his friends. On Elizabeth’s account, the girls were to take the longer and easier path, which wound upwards through a rocky field, where larks’ nests abounded, and where wild thyme and heather were now throwing out their sweets to the soft night air.

The little girls spoke in eager discussion of the strangers. They appealed to Ruth, but Ruth did not answer, and they were too impatient to convince each other to repeat the question. The first little ascent from the sands to the field surmounted, Ruth sat down suddenly and covered her face with her hands. This was so unusual—their wishes, their good, was so invariably the rule of motion or of rest in their walks—that the girls, suddenly checked, stood silent and affrighted in surprise. They were still more startled when Ruth wailed aloud some inarticulate words.

“Are you not well, dear Mrs. Denbigh?” asked Elizabeth gently, kneeling down on the grass by Ruth.

She sat facing the west. The low watery twilight was on her face as she took her hands away. So pale, so haggard, so wild and wandering a look the girls had never seen on human countenance before.

“Well! what are you doing here with me? You should not be with me,” said she, shaking her head slowly.

They looked at each other.

“You are sadly tired,” said Elizabeth soothingly. “Come home, and let me help you to bed. I will tell papa you are ill, and ask him to send for a doctor.” Ruth looked at her as if she did not understand the meaning of her words. No more she did at first. But by-and-by the dulled brain began to think most vividly and rapidly, and she spoke in a sharp way which deceived the girls into a belief that nothing had been the matter.

“Yes! I was tired. I am tired. Those sands—oh! those sands,—those weary, dreadful sands! But that is all over now. Only my heart aches still. Feel how it flutters and beats,” said she, taking Elizabeth’s hand, and holding it to her side. “I am quite well, though,” she continued, reading pity in the child’s looks, as she felt the trembling, quivering beat. “We will go straight to the dressing-room, and read a chapter; that will still my heart; and then I’ll go to bed, and Mr. Bradshaw will excuse me, I know, this one night. I only ask for one night. Put on your right frocks, dears, and do all you ought to do. But I know you will” said she, bending down to kiss Elizabeth, and then, before she had done so, raising her head abruptly, “You are good and dear girls—God keep you so!”

By a strong effort at self-command, she went onwards at an even pace, neither rushing nor pausing to sob and think. The very regularity of motion calmed her. The front and back doors of the house were on two sides, at right angles with each other. They all shrank a little from the idea of going in at the front door, now that the strange gentlemen were about, and, accordingly, they went through the quiet farmyard right into the bright, ruddy kitchen, where the servants were dashing about with the dinner-things. It was a contrast in more than colour to the lonely, dusky field, which even the little girls perceived; and the noise, the warmth, the very bustle of the servants, were a positive relief to Ruth, and for the time lifted off the heavy press of pent-up passion. A silent house, with moonlit rooms, or with a faint gloom brooding over the apartments, would have been more to be dreaded. Then, she must have given way, and cried out. As it was, she went up the old awkward back-stairs, and into the room they were to sit in. There was no candle. Mary volunteered to go down for one; and when she returned she was full of the wonders of preparation in the drawing-room, and ready and eager to dress, so as to take her place there before the gentlemen had finished dinner. But she was struck by the strange paleness of Ruth’s face, now that the light fell upon it.

“Stay up here, dear Mrs. Denbigh! We’ll tell papa you are tired, and are gone to bed.”

Another time Ruth would have dreaded Mr. Bradshaw’s displeasure; for it was an understood thing that no one was to be ill or tired in his household without leave asked, and cause given and assigned. But she never thought of that now. Her great desire was to hold quiet till she was alone. Quietness it was not—it was rigidity; but she succeeded in being rigid in look and movement, and went through her duties to Elizabeth (who preferred remaining with her upstairs) with wooden precision. But her heart felt at times like ice, at times like burning fire; always a heavy, heavy weight within her. At last Elizabeth went to bed. Still Ruth dared not think. Mary would come upstairs soon, and with a strange, sick, shrinking yearning, Ruth awaited her—and the crumbs of intelligence she might drop out about him. Ruth’s sense of hearing was quickened to miserable intensity as she stood before the chimney-piece, grasping it tight with both hands—gazing into the dying fire, but seeing—not the dead grey embers, or the little sparks of vivid light that ran hither and thither among the wood-ashes—but an old farmhouse, and climbing, winding road, and a little golden breezy common, with a rural inn on the hill-top, far, far away. And through the thoughts of the past came the sharp sounds of the present—of three voices, one of which was almost silence, it was so hushed. Indifferent people would only have guessed that Mr. Donne was speaking by the quietness in which the others listened; but Ruth heard the voice and many of the words, though they conveyed no idea to her mind. She was too much stunned even to feel curious to know to what they related. He spoke. That was her one fact.

Presently up came Mary, bounding, exultant. Papa had let her stay up one quarter of an hour longer, because Mr. Hickson had asked. Mr. Hickson was so clever! She did not know what to make of Mr. Donne, he seemed such a dawdle. But he was very handsome. Had Ruth seen him? Oh, no! She could not, it was so dark on those stupid sands. Well, never mind, she would see him to-morrow. She must be well to-morrow. Papa seemed a good deal put out that neither she nor Elizabeth were in the drawing-room to-night; and his last words were, “Tell Mrs. Denbigh I hope” (and papa’s “hopes” always meant “expect”) “she will be able to make breakfast at nine o’clock;” and then she would see Mr. Donne.

That was all Ruth heard about him. She went with Mary into her bedroom, helped her to undress, and put the candle out. At length she was alone in her own room! At length!

But the tension did not give way immediately. She fastened her door, and threw open the window, cold and threatening as was the night. She tore off her gown; she put her hair back from her heated face. It seemed now as if she could not think—as if thought and emotion had been repressed so sternly that they would not come to relieve her stupefied brain. Till all at once, like a flash of lightning, her life, past and present, was revealed to her to its minutest detail. And when she saw her very present “Now,” the strange confusion of agony was too great to be borne, and she cried aloud. Then she was quite dead, and listened as to the sound of galloping armies.

“If I might see him! If I might see him! If I might just ask him why he left me; if I had vexed him in any way; it was so strange—so cruel! It was not him; it was his mother,” said she, almost fiercely, as if answering herself. “O God! but he might have found me out before this,” she continued sadly. “He did not care for me, as I did for him. He did not care for me at all,” she went on wildly and sharply. “He did me cruel harm. I can never again lift up my face in innocence. They think I have forgotten all, because I do not speak. Oh, darling love! am I talking against you?” asked she tenderly. “I am so torn and perplexed! You, who are the father of my child!”

But that very circumstance, full of such tender meaning in many cases; threw a new light into her mind. It changed her from the woman into the mother—the stern guardian of her child. She was still for a time, thinking. Then she began again, but in a low, deep voice.

“He left me. He might have been hurried off, but he might have inquired—he might have learned and explained. He left me to bear the burden and the shame; and never cared to learn, as he might have done, of Leonard’s birth. He has no love for his child, and I will have no love for him.”

She raised her voice while uttering this determination, and then, feeling her own weakness, she moaned out, “Alas! alas!”

And then she started up, for all this time she had been rocking herself backwards and forwards as she sat on the ground, and began to pace the room with hurried steps.

“What am I thinking of? Where am I? I who have been praying these years and years to be worthy to be Leonard’s mother. My God! What a depth of sin is in my heart! Why, the old time would be as white as snow to what it would be now, if I sought him out, and prayed for the explanation, which would re-establish him in my heart. I who have striven (or made a mock of trying) to learn God’s holy will, in order to bring up Leonard into the full strength of a Christian—I who have taught his sweet innocent lips to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;’ and yet, somehow, I’ve been longing to give him to his father, who is—who is”—she almost choked, till at last she cried sharp out,

“Oh, my God! I do believe Leonard’s father is a bad man, and yet, oh! pitiful God, I love him; I cannot forget—I