LOVE OR FAREWELL
With Ralph Penlogan, resolution usually meant action. Having made up his mind to do a thing, he did not loiter long on the way. In any case, he could only be rebuffed, and he preferred to know the truth at once to waiting in doubt and uncertainty. A less impetuous nature would have seen many more lions in the way than he did. For a son of the masses to woo a daughter of the classes was an unheard-of thing, and had he taken anyone into his confidence he would have been dissuaded from the enterprise.
In this matter, however, he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve. So carefully had he guarded his secret, that even Ruth was under the impression that if he had ever been in love with Dorothy Hamblyn, he had outgrown the infatuation. Her name had not been mentioned for months, and she had been so long absent from St. Goram that it scarcely seemed probable that a youthful fancy would survive the long separation.
Ralph did not tell her that the squire's "little maid" had once more appeared on the scene. She would hear soon enough from other sources. He intended to keep his own counsel. If he failed, no one would ever know; but in any case, failure should not be due to any lack on his part either of courage or perseverance.
He was very silent and self-absorbed that evening, and had not Ruth been so much taken up with her own love affair, she would not have failed to notice it. But Ruth was living for the moment in a little heaven of her own—a heaven so beautiful, so full of unspeakable delights, that she was half afraid sometimes that she would wake up and find it was all a dream.
William was growing stronger every day, and expected soon to be as well as ever. Moreover, he seemed determined to make up for all the years he had lost. Ruth to him was a daily miracle of grace and beauty, and her love for him was a perpetual wonder. He did not understand it. He did not suppose he ever would. He accepted the fact with reverent gratitude, and gave up attempting to fathom the mystery.
He was very shy at first, and almost dubious. He felt so unworthy of so great a gift, but comprehension grew with returning strength, and with comprehension, courage. He believed himself to be the luckiest man on earth, and the happiest. The most difficult thing of all to believe was that Ruth could possibly be as happy as he.
Conviction on that point came through sight. It was not what Ruth said; it was the light that glowed in her soft brown eyes. A single glance meant volumes. A shy glance darted across the room stirred his heart like music.
Ralph watched their growing intimacy and their deepening joy with a sense of keen satisfaction. William was the one man in the world he would have chosen for his sister if he had been called upon to decide, and he was thankful beyond measure that Ruth had recognised his sterling qualities, and, without persuasion from anyone, had made her choice.
As the days passed away, Ralph had great difficulty in hiding his restlessness from his sister. It seemed to him that Dorothy purposely avoided him. He sought her out in all directions; lay in wait for her in the most likely places; but, for some reason or other, she failed to come his way. He spent hours leaning against the stile near Treliskey Plantation, and on three separate occasions defied the notices that trespassers would be prosecuted, and boldly marched through the plantation till he came in sight of the gables of the Manor; but neither patience nor perseverance was rewarded. He had to return disconsolate the way he had come.
Had he been of a less sanguine temperament, he would have drawn anything but hopeful conclusions. Her avoidance of him could surely have but one meaning, particularly as she knew the state of his feelings towards her.
But presumptions and deductions did not satisfy Ralph. He would be content with nothing short of actual facts. He was not sure yet that she purposely avoided him, and he was sure that she had smiled when they met, and that one fact was his sheet anchor just now.
He went to St. Goram Church on the following Sunday morning, much to the surprise of the vicar, for both he and Ruth were unswervingly loyal to the little community at Veryan, to which their father and mother belonged. Deep down in his heart he felt a little ashamed of himself. He knew it was not to worship that he went to church, but in the hope of catching a glimpse of Dorothy Hamblyn's face.
The Hamblyn pew, however, remained empty during the whole of the service. If he had gone to church from a wrong motive, he had been deservedly punished.
He began to think after awhile that Dorothy had paid a flying visit just for a day, and had gone away again, and that consequently any hope he ever had of winning her was more remote than ever. This view received confirmation from the fact that he never heard her name mentioned. Ruth had evidently not heard that she had been in St. Goram. Apparently she had come and gone without anyone seeing her but himself—come and gone like a gleam of sunshine on a stormy day—come and gone leaving him more disconsolate than he had ever been before.
For two days he kept close to his work, and never went beyond the bounds of Great St. Goram Mine. For the moment he had been checkmated, but he was not in despair. London was only a few hours away, and he had frequently to go there on business. He should meet her again some time, and if God meant him to win her he should win.
It was in this hopeful spirit that he returned late from the mine. Ruth brewed a fresh pot of tea for him, and put several dainties on the table to tempt his appetite, for it had recently occurred to her that he was not looking his best.
"What do you think, Ralph?" she said at length.
He looked up at her with a questioning light in his eyes, but did not reply.
"Dorothy Hamblyn is at the Manor."
"Indeed," he said, in a tone of apparent indifference. "Who told you that?"
"She has been there a fortnight!"
"A fortnight?"
"Dr. Barrow told William. He has been attending her."
"She is ill, then?"
"She has been. Caught a chill or something of the kind, and was a good deal run down to start with, but she is nearly all right again now. I wonder if she will come to see me here as she used to do at the cottage?"
"Possibly."
"I hope she will. It would be so nice to see her again. Her father may be a tyrant, but she is an angel."
Ralph gave a short, dry laugh.
"You do not seem very much interested," Ruth continued.
"Why should I be?" he questioned, looking up with a smile.
"I thought you used to like her very much."
"Oh, well, I did for that matter. But—but that's scarcely to the point, is it?"
"Well, no, perhaps it isn't. Only—only——"
"Yes?"
"Well, I sometimes wonder if you will ever do what William has done."
"Oh, I fell in love with my sister long before he did."
"Your own sister doesn't count."
"She does with William—counts too much, I'm afraid. He's no eyes for anything else."
"Oh, go along!"
"Not till I've had my tea. Remember, I'm hungry."
Then a knock came to the door, and William entered. He was still thin and pale, but there was a light in his eyes and a glow on his cheeks such as no one ever saw in the old days.
On the following afternoon Ralph made his way up the slant again in the direction of Treliskey Plantation. It was a glorious afternoon. The hot sunshine was tempered by a cool, Atlantic breeze. The hills and dales were looking their best, the hedges were full of flowers, the woods and plantations were great banks of delicious green. At the stile he paused for several minutes and surveyed the landscape, but his thoughts all the time were somewhere else. Hope had sprung up afresh in his heart, and a determined purpose was throbbing through all his veins.
After awhile he left the stile and passed through the plantation gate. He was a trespasser, he knew, but that was a matter of little account. No one would molest him now. He was a man of too much importance in the neighbourhood. He hardly realised yet what a power he had become, and how anxious people were to be on good terms with him. In himself he was conscious of no change. So far, at any rate, money had not spoiled him. Every Sunday as he passed through the little graveyard at Veryan he was reminded of the fact that his mother had died in the workhouse. If he was ever tempted to put on airs—which he was not—that fact would have kept him humble.
The true secret of his influence, however, was not that he was prosperous, but that he was just. There was not a toiler in Great St. Goram Mine who did not know that. In the past strength had been the synonym for tyranny. Those who possessed a giant's strength had used it like a giant. But Ralph had changed the tradition. The strong man was a just man and a generous, and it was for that reason his influence had grown with every passing day.
Yet he was quite unconscious of the measure of his influence. In his own eyes he was only David Penlogan's son, though that fact meant a great deal to him. David Penlogan was an honest man—a man who, in a very real sense, walked with God—and it was Ralph's supreme desire to prove worthy of his father.
But it was of none of these things he thought as he walked slowly along between high banks of trees. The road was grass-grown from end to end, and was so constructed that the pedestrian appeared to be constantly turning corners.
"I think she will walk out to-day," he kept saying to himself. "This beautiful weather will surely tempt her out."
He had made up his mind what to do and say in case they did meet. For good or ill, he was determined to know his fate. It might be an act of presumption, or a simple act of folly—that was an aspect of the question that scarcely occurred to him.
The supreme factor in the case, as far as he was concerned, was, he loved her. On that point there was no room for doubt. The mere social aspect of the question he was constitutionally incapable of seeing. A man was a man, and if he were of good character, and able to maintain the woman he loved, what mattered anything else?
He came face to face with Dorothy at a bend in the road. She was walking slowly, with her eyes on the ground. She did not hear his footsteps on the grass-grown road, and when she looked up he was close upon her. There was no time to debate the situation even with herself, so she followed the impulse of her heart and held out her hand to him.
"I thought I should meet you to-day," he said. "I am sorry you have been ill."
"I was rather run down when I came," she answered, glancing at him with a questioning look, "and I think I caught cold on the journey."
"But you are better now?"
"Oh yes, I am quite well again."
"I feared you had returned to London. I have been on the look-out for you for weeks."
She looked shyly up into his face, but did not reply.
"I wanted to know my fate," he went on. "You know that I love you. You must have guessed it long before I told you."
"But—but——" she began, with averted eyes.
"Please hear me out first," he interrupted. "I would not have spoken again had not circumstances changed. When I saw you in London I was poor and without hope. I believed that I should have to leave the country in order to earn a living. To have offered marriage to anyone would have been an insult. And yet if I had never seen you again I should have loved you to the end."
"But have you considered——" she began again, with eyes still turned from his face.
"I have considered everything," he interrupted eagerly, almost passionately. "But there is only one thing that matters, and that is love. If you do not love me—cannot love me—my dream is at an end, and I will endure as best I am able. But if your heart responds to my appeal, then the thing is settled. You are mine."
"But you are forgetting my—my—position," she stammered.
"I am forgetting nothing of importance," he went on resolutely. "There are only two people in the world really concerned in this matter, you and I, and the decision rests with you. It is not my fault that I love you. I cannot help it. You did not mean to steal my heart, perhaps, but you did it. It seems a curious irony of fate, for I detested your father; but Providence threw me across your path. In strange and inexplicable ways your life has become linked with mine. You are all the world to me. Cannot you give me some hope?"
"But my father still——" she began.
"You are of age," he interrupted. "No, no! Questions of parentage or birth or position do not count. Why should they? Let us get back to the one thing that matters. If you cannot love me, say the word, and I will go my way and never molest you again. But if you do love me, be it ever so little, you must give me hope."
"My father would never consent," she said quickly.
"That is nothing," he answered, almost impatiently. "I will wait till he does give his consent. Oh, Dorothy, the only thing I want to know is do you love me? If you can give me that assurance, nothing else in the world matters. Just say the little word. God surely meant us for each other, or I could not love you as I do."
She dropped her eyes to the ground and remained motionless.
He came a step nearer and took her hand in his. She did not resist, nor did she raise her eyes, but he felt that she was trembling from head to foot.
"You are not angry with me?" he questioned, almost in a whisper.
"No, no; I am not angry," she said, almost with a sob. "How could I be? You are a good man, and such love as yours humbles me."
"Then you care for me just a little?" he said eagerly.
"I cannot tell how much I care," she answered, and the tears came into her eyes and filled them to the brim. "But what does it matter? It must all end here and now."
"Why end, Dorothy?"
"Because my father would die before he gave me to you. You do not know him. You do not know how proud he is. Name and lineage are nothing to you, but they are everything to him."
"But he would have married you to Lord Probus, a—a bloated brewer!" He spoke angrily and scornfully.
"But he had been made a peer."
"What does that matter if Nature made him a clown?"
"Which Nature had not done. No, no; give him his due. He was commonplace, and not very well educated——"
"And do these empty social distinctions count with you?" he questioned.
"I sometimes hate them," she answered. "But what can I do? There is no escape. The laws of society are as inflexible as the laws of the Medes and Persians."
"And you will fling love away as an offering to the prejudices of your father?"
"Why do you tempt me? You must surely see how hard it is!"
"Then you do love me!" he cried; and he caught her in his arms and kissed her.
For a moment she struggled as if to free herself. Then her head dropped upon his shoulder.
"Oh, Ralph," she whispered, "let me love you for one brief minute; then we must say farewell for ever!"