VI
“And then she unfolded to me the extraordinary story which, as I warned you at the very beginning of my letter, you will probably not believe. Nevertheless I offer it to you as a fact, so tangible a fact that it has driven a man—no chicken-hearted man—to abandon his home and source of wealth, his wife, and his children, and to fly, without stopping to pack up his closest possessions, to America. I will not attempt to give you the story in Ruth’s own words, because they came confusedly, transposing the order of events, dealing only with effects, ignoring the examination of causes. I will tell it you as I see it myself, after piecing together all my scraps of narrative and evidence. I only hope that, in dragging you away with me to Ephesus, and in giving you the events of my own life, you have not forgotten those who, in the Weald of Kent, are, after all, far more essential characters than I myself. Please try now to forget the MacPhersons, and project yourself, like a kind, accommodating audience, to the homestead, outwardly so peaceable, inwardly the stormy centre of so many complicated passions.
“And, again like a kind, accommodating audience, put ready at your elbow a little heap of your credulity, that you may draw on it from time to time, like a man taking a pinch of snuff.
“I do not know how far I should go back, perhaps even to the day when Ruth, in a wild state of reckless misery, ran away with Rawdon Westmacott. At once, you see, I am up against the question of their relationship, and you will understand that, situated as I now am with regard to Ruth, it isn’t a question I like to dwell upon. There is a certain fellowship, however, between us, Ruth, Rawdon, and I, and when I consider that fellowship, my resentment—I will go further than that, and call it my loathing, my disgust—bends down like a springing stick and lies flat to the ground. By fellowship I mean, in myself, the restless spirit which drove me onward until, blinded by the habit of constant movement, I couldn’t see the riches that lay close to my hand. In Ruth and Rawdon, I mean the passionate spirit that was the heritage of their common blood, and that drew them together even when she, by an accident of dislike, would have stood apart. We talk very glibly of love and indifference, but, believe me, it is largely, if it doesn’t come by sudden revelation, a question of accident, of suggestion. It simply didn’t occur to me that I might be in love with Ruth; I didn’t examine the question. So I never knew.... And she, on her part, was there, young, southern, trembling on the brink of mysteries, pursued by Rawdon, whose character and mentality she disliked, from whom she, afraid, wanted to fly, and in whose arms she nevertheless felt convinced that she must end. From this I might have saved her. I see her now, a hunted creature, turning her despairing eyes on me, for a brief space seeking a refuge with Leslie Dymock, but finally trapped, captured, yielding—yielding herself to a storm of passion that something uncontrollable in her own nature rose up to meet.
“Seeing her in this light, I am overcome, not only with my stupidity and blindness, but with my guilt. Yet she was not altogether unhappy. It is true that Rawdon ill-treated and was unfaithful to her almost from the first, but it is also true that in their moments of reconciliation, which were as frequent as their estrangements, that is to say, very frequent indeed—in these moments of reconciliation she found consolation in the renewal of their curiously satisfying communion. I don’t pretend to understand this. Ruth loved me—she has told me so, and I know, without argument, that she is speaking the truth—yet she found pleasure in the love of another man, and even a certain grim pleasure in his ill-treatment of her. Or should I reverse my order, finding more marvel in her humility under his caresses than under his blows?
“What am I to believe? that she is cursed with a dual nature, the one coarse and unbridled, the other delicate, conventional, practical, motherly, refined? Have I hit the nail on the head? And is it, can it be, the result of the separate, antagonistic strains in her blood, the southern and the northern legacy? Did she love Westmacott with the one, and me with the other? I am afraid to pry deeper into this mystery, for who can tell what taint of his blood may not appear suddenly to stain the clear waters of his life?
“This, then, is Ruth, but in Westmacott the southern strain seems to be dominant; the clear English waters are tainted through and through. He is a creature of pure instinct, and when his instinct is aroused no logic, no reason will hold him, any more than a silk ribbon will hold a bucking horse. Ruth has told me of her life with him after he had gained possession of her, all his humility gone, changed into a domineering brutality; sometimes he would sit sulkily for hours, smoking and playing cards, and then would catch her to him and half strangle her with his kisses. She seems to have lived with him, the spirit crushed from her, meek and submissive to his will. I remembered the days when he used to lounge about Pennistans’, leaning against the doorpost staring at her, and when she in disdain and contempt would clatter her milk-pans while singing at the top of her voice. Westmacott, I thought grimly, had had his own revenge.
“Once, as you know, she rebelled, but I do not think you know what drove her to it. Westmacott had brought another woman home to the farm, and had ordered his wife to draw cider for them both. When she refused, he struck her so that she staggered and fell in a corner of the room. She then collected her children and walked straight over to her father’s house. How she tried to shoot Westmacott you know, for you were there.—I can’t think about that story.
“But to come down to the day I went to the farm and asked her to come away with me. Westmacott suspected nothing at the time. About a week later he came home slightly drunk, and began to bully one of the children. Ruth cried out,—
“‘Hands off my children, Rawdon!’
“‘You can’t stop me,’ he jeered.
“She said,—
“‘I can. I nearly stopped you for ever once, and what’s to prevent my doing it again?’
“He looked at her blankly, and his jaw dropped.
“For a week after that he was civil to her; their rôles were reversed, and she held the upper hand. Then he started shouting at her, but, brave in her previous success, she defied him,—
“‘Stop swearing at me, Rawdon, or I’ll go away and leave you.’
“He roared with laughter.
“‘Go away? Where to?’
“She says that she was wild, and did not care for the rashness of her words,—
“‘I shall go to Mr. Malory.’
“‘He wouldn’t have you!’ said Rawdon.
“‘He would!’ she cried. ‘He came here—you never knew—and tried to get me to go with him. And I’d have gone, but for the children. So there!’
“After this there was a pause; Rawdon was taken aback, Ruth was appalled by her indiscretion. Then Rawdon burst out into oaths, ‘which fouled the kitchen,’ said Ruth, ‘as though the lamp had been flaring.’ At this time, I suppose, I was at Sampiero.
“Of course, these and similar scenes could not go on perpetually. Their married life, although long in years, had been interrupted by over four years of war and absence, but now they found that they must settle down to life on a workable basis. They were married, therefore they must live together and make the best of it. Ruth tells me that they talked it out seriously together. A strange conversation! She undertook not to resent his infidelities if he, on his side, would undertake not to ill-treat her at home. So they sealed this compact, and in the course of time sank down, as the houses of the neighbourhood sank down into the clay, into a situation of no greater discontent than many of their prototypes.
“There was apparently no reason why this should not go on for ever. It did, indeed, let me tell you at once, go on for nearly ten years. They were quite tolerably happy; their children grew; their farm prospered; they were able to keep a servant. And then she saw a change coming over her husband.
“This is the thing which I do not expect you to believe.
“It began with his suggestion that Ruth should occupy the larger bedroom with the younger children, while he himself moved up to an attic at the top of the house, next to the boys’ attic. She was astonished at this suggestion, and naturally asked him for his reasons. He could give none, except that it would be ‘more convenient.’ He shuffled uneasily as he said it. For the sake of peace, she agreed.
“But, suspicious now, she watched him closely, and he, realising that she was watching him, tried to writhe away from her vigilance. He would invent excuses to absent himself all day from the farm—a distant market, a local show—and would return late at night, creeping unheard up to his attic, there to slip off his clothes in the dark, or with the moonlight streaming in through his little latticed, dormer window. So for days he would contrive to meet his wife only at breakfast. His excuses were always convincing, and in them she could find no flaw. She might not have noticed his strange behaviour, but for the incident of the re-arranged bedrooms, and perhaps some feminine instinct which had stirred in her. She dared not question him, fearing a scene, but gradually she came to the not unnatural conclusion that he was keeping a second establishment where he spent most of his time.
“This left her indifferent; she had long since made her life independent of his, and the possible gossip of neighbours did not touch her as it would have touched a woman of commoner fibre. She had quite made up her mind that Rawdon spent all his nights away from home, returning shortly before she awoke in the morning. She did not resent this, especially as he had shown himself much gentler towards her of late. She was even vaguely sorry for him, that he should take so much trouble to conceal his movements. It must be very wet, walking through the long dewy grass of the fields so early in the morning.
“She was surprised to notice that his boots were never soaked through, as she logically expected to find them.
“One night she lay awake, thinking over all these things, when an impulse came to her, to go and look in his room. She got up quietly, slipping on her shoes and dressing gown, and stole out on to the landing. The house was dark and silent. She crept upstairs, and turned the handle of his door, confident that she would find the room empty. By the light of the moon, which poured down unimpeded by any curtain through the little oblong window in the sloping roof, she saw her husband’s dark, beautiful head on the white pillow. He was sleeping profoundly. His clothes lay scattered about the floor, as he had thrown them off.
“So surprised was she—a surprise amounting, not to relief, but almost to dismay—that she stood gazing at him, holding the door open with her hand. Sensitive people and children will often wake under the influence of a prolonged gaze. Westmacott, who was a sensitive man beneath his brutality, and who further was living just then, I imagine, in a state of considerable nerve tension, woke abruptly with an involuntary cry as from a nightmare. He sat up in bed, flinging back the clothes—sat up, Ruth says, with staring eyes and the signs of terror stamped on all his features.
“‘You! you!’ he said wildly, ‘what do you want with me? in God’s name what do you want?’
“She thought him still half-asleep, and replied in a soothing voice,—
“‘It’s all right, Rawdon; I don’t want anything; I couldn’t sleep, that’s all; I’m going away now.’
“But he continued to stare at her as though she had been an apparition, muttering incomprehensibly, and passing his hand with a wild gesture over his hair.
“‘What’s the matter, Rawdon?’ she said, genuinely puzzled.
“At that he cried out,—
“‘Oh, go away, leave me alone, for God’s sake leave me alone!’ and he began to sob hysterically, hiding his face in his sheets.
“Afraid that he would wake the children, she backed hastily out, shutting the door, and flying downstairs to her own room.
“He did not come to breakfast, but at midday he appeared, white and hollow-eyed, and climbed to his room, where he spent an hour screwing a bolt on to the inside of his door. When he came down again, he tried to slip furtively out of the house, but she stopped him in the passage.
“‘Look here, Rawdon,’ she said, taking him by the shoulders, ‘what’s the matter with you?’
“He shrank miserably under her touch.
“‘There’s nothing the matter,’ he mumbled.
“Then he spoke in a tone she had never heard since the days before their marriage, a cringing, whining tone.
“‘Let me be, Ruth, my pretty little Ruth; I’m up to no wrong, I promise you. Be kind to your poor Rawdon, darling,’ and he tried to kiss her.
“But instantly with his servility she regained her disdain of him. She pushed him roughly from her.
“‘Get out then; don’t bother me.’
“He went, swiftly, thankfully.
“The furtiveness which she had already noticed clung to him; he slunk about like a Jew, watching her covertly, answering her, when she spoke, in his low, propitiatory voice. She had lost all fear of him now. She ordered him about in a peremptory way, and he obeyed her, sulkily, surlily, when she was not looking, but with obsequious alacrity when her eyes were on him. His chief desire seemed to be to get out of her sight, out of her company. He moved noiselessly about the house, seeking to conceal his presence; ‘pussy-footed,’ was the word she used. Their relations were entirely reversed. With the acquiescent philosophy of the poor, she had almost ceased to wonder at the new state of affairs thus mysteriously come about. She dated it from the day he had first taken to the attic, realising also that a great leap forward had been made from the hour of her midnight visit to his bedroom. He was an altered being. From time to time he tried to defy her, to reassert himself, but she held firm, and he slid back again to his cowed manner. She became aware that he was afraid of her, though the knowledge neither surprised nor startled her over-much. She merely accepted it into her scheme of life. She was also perfectly prepared that one day he should break out, beat her, and reassume his authority as master of the house and of her person.
“This, then, was the position at Westmacotts’ while I toiled at Ephesus and received with such wide-spaced regularity little packets of seed from Ruth. The situation developed rapidly at a date corresponding to the time when MacPherson fell ill with cholera. It was then three months since Westmacott, by going to the attic, had made the first concession to his creeping cowardice. He was looking ill, Ruth told me; his eyes were bright, and she thought he slept badly at night. Her questioning him on this subject precipitated the crisis.
“‘Rawdon, you’re looking feverish.’
“‘Oh, no,’ he said nervously. They were at breakfast.
“‘Ay, dad,’ said the eldest boy, ‘I heard you tossing about last night.’
“Ruth turned on him with that bullying instinct that she could not control, and asked roughly,—
“‘What do you mean by keeping the children awake?’
“He cowered away, and she went on, her voice rising,—
“‘I won’t have it, do you hear? If you can’t sleep quietly here, you can go and sleep elsewhere—in the stable, for all I care.’
“He didn’t answer, he only watched her, huddled in his chair—yes, huddled, that tall, lithe figure—watched her with a sidelong glance of his almond eyes.
“She went on storming at him; she says she felt like a person speaking the words dictated to her by somebody else, and indeed you know Ruth well enough to know that this description doesn’t tally with your impression of her.
“He was fingering a tea-spoon all the while, now looking down at it, now stealing that oblique glance at his wife, but never saying a word. She cried to him,—
“‘Let that spoon alone, can’t you?’ and as she spoke she stretched out her hand to take it from him. He bent swiftly forward and snapped at her hand like a hungry wolf.
“The children screamed, and Ruth sprang to her feet. Rawdon was already on his feet, over in the corner, holding a chair, reversed, in front of him.
“‘Don’t you come near me,’ he gibbered, ‘don’t you dare to come near me. You said you nearly stopped me once’—oh little seed sown ten years ago!—‘but by Hell you shan’t do it again. I’ll kill you first, ay, and all your children with you, cursed brats! how am I to know they’re mine?’ and a stream of foul language followed.
“Ruth had recovered herself, she stood on the other side of the room, with all her frightened children clinging round her.
“‘I think you must be mad, Rawdon,’ she said, as coldly as she could.
“‘And if I am,’ he cried, ‘who’s driven me to it? Isn’t it you? making my life a hell, spying on me, chasing me even to my bed at night, ready to pounce on me the moment you get a chance? Oh, you hate me, I know; it’s that other man you want, you’ve had your fill of me. Oh, you false, lying vixen, you’re just waiting till you can get me—catch me asleep, likely; what was you doing in my room that night? The woman who can shoot at a man once can shoot at him twice. Mad, you say I am? No, I’m not mad, but ’tis not your fault that I wasn’t mad long ago.’
“The eldest boy darted across the room at his father, but Rawdon warded him off with the chair.
“‘Keep the brat off me!’ he cried to Ruth. ‘I won’t be answerable, I’ll do him a mischief.’
“He cried suddenly,—
“‘This is what I’ll do if you try to lay hands on me, you and all your brood.’
“He was near the window, he took the pots of geranium one by one off the sill, crying, ‘This! and this! and this!’ and flung them with all possible violence on the tiled floor, where the brittle terra-cotta smashed into fragments, and the plants rolled with a scattering of earth under the furniture.
“‘I’ll do that with your heads,’ he said savagely.
“His eye fell on the cage of mice, left standing exposed on the window-sill. At the sight of these his rage redoubled.
“‘He gave you these,’ he shouted, and hurled the cage from him into the farthest corner of the room.
“He was left quivering in the midst of his devastation, quivering, panting, like some slim, wild animal at bay.
“The storm that had swept across him was too much for his nerves; the expression on his face changed; he sank down in the corner, letting the chair fall, and hiding his face in his hands.
“‘There, it’s over,’ he wailed, ‘don’t be afraid, Ruth, I won’t touch you. Only let me go away now; it’s this life has done for me. I can’t live with you. You can keep the children, you can keep the farm; I’m going away, right away, where you’ll never hear of me again. Only let me go.’
“It seemed to be his dominating idea.
“She moved across to him, but he leaped up and to one side before she could touch him.
“‘Keep away!’ he cried warningly.
“He reached the door; paused there one brief, intense moment.
“‘You’ll hear from me from London,’ he uttered.
“He seemed to her exactly like a swift animal, scared and untamed, checked for one instant in its flight.
“‘I’ll never trouble you more.’
“Then he was gone; had he bounded away? had he flown? she could not have said, she could only remain pressed against the wall, the children crying, and her hands clasped over her heart.
“There, what do you think of that for the story of a Kentish farm-house? What a train of dynamite, isn’t it, laid in the arena of Cadiz? What a heritage to transmit even to the third generation! You don’t believe it? I thought you wouldn’t. But it is true.
“Ruth told me the whole of this amazing story in a low voice, playing all the while with her two faded roses. She showed me a lawyer’s letter which she had received next day, formalising the agreement about the farm, stipulating that she should pay rent; all couched in cold, business-like terms. ‘Our client, Rawdon Westmacott, Esq.,’ that savage, half-crazed, screaming creature that had smashed the flower-pots only a week before....
“‘I see you’ve replaced the geraniums,’ I said rather irrelevantly.
“‘Yes.’
“‘What about the mice?’
“‘They all died.’
“So that chapter was closed?
“‘At any rate, Ruth, you need not worry now about your children.’
“She looked puzzled.
“‘Never mind, I was only joking.’
“Then we were quite silent, faced with the future. I said slowly.
“‘And you brought me down here to tell me all this?’
“‘Yes. I am sorry if you are annoyed.’
“‘I am not annoyed, but it is late and I must go back to London to-night.’
“She came a little closer to me, and my pulses began to race.
“‘Why?’
“‘Well, my dear, I can’t stop here, can I?’
“She whispered,—
“‘Why not?’
“‘Because you’re here alone, even the children are away.’
“‘Does that matter?’ she said.
“A ray from the setting sun slanted in at the window, firing the red geraniums, and the canary incontinently began to sing.
“‘You came here once,’ said Ruth, ‘and you asked me to go away and live with you. Do you remember?’
“‘My dear,’ I said, ‘I have lived on that remembrance for the last ten years.’
“I waited for her to speak again, but she remained silent, yet her meaning was clearer to me than the spoken word. We stood silent in the presence of her invitation and of my acquiescence. We stood in the warm, quiet kitchen, where all things glowed as in the splendour of a mellow sunset: the crimson flowers, the sinking fire, the rounded copper of utensils, the tiled floor rosy as a pippin. In the distance I heard the lowing of cattle, rich and melodious as the tones within the room. I saw and heard these English things, but, as a man who, looking into a mirror, beholds his own expected image in an unexpected setting, I had a sudden vision of ourselves, standing side by side on the deck of a ship that, to the music of many oars, glided majestically towards the land. We were in a broad gulf, fairer and more fruitful than the Gulf of Smyrna. The water lay serenely around us, heaving slightly, but unbroken by the passage of our vessel, and the voices of the rowers on the lower deck rose up in a cadenced volume of song as we came slowly into port.
“Ever yours,
“Christopher Malory.”