"I'm sorry for all this, Ringfield, I really am. It's some misunderstanding, I suppose. I can't blame you for admiring Pauline. I don't blame you for it. You're a man, despite your calling, same as I am. And I have liked you better since you have shown me your rough side.—By Heaven, I have, Ringfield! Things have turned out in an unexpected way with me, and you have suffered on account, and if not in silence, as we might look for from you, why, it only proves you a man like the rest of us! You'll get over it, you know. She's to leave here for good with me the day after to-morrow; everything's settled and it's much the best thing that could happen for both of us. I wish you would be reasonable and understand this and make her going away easier."
This rambling speech was received at first in silence, then Ringfield spoke, his slow utterances affording a contrast to the half-jocular, half-querulous words of the ex-guide.
"That word reasonable! Be reasonable! You—you ask me to be reasonable! As if I were at fault, as if I were doing her the injury! God knows I have my own battle to fight, my own self to overcome, but that is beside the question. Do you see nothing unreasonable in your own relation to—to Miss Clairville? When I came here—and God knows I'm sorry at times I ever came or stayed—I met Miss Clairville. I talked to her and she to me. I learned her mind, or thought I did. I fathomed her heart, or she allowed me to think so, and thus I became acquainted with her story, the story that is concerned with her young life and with you. I was deeply affected, deeply moved, deeply interested—how could it be otherwise! And then to my eternal sorrow, as I fear, I grew to love her. She—she—returned it."
Crabbe made some indistinct remark, but Ringfield went on without caring to ask what it was.
"I tell you—she returned my affection and gave me proof of it. All that, whatever it was between us, is very sacred and I am not going to talk about it. Then you know what happened; you would not leave her alone, you followed and I believe annoyed and pestered her, using the power you have over her for her destruction and despair."
"The whole thing is monstrous," cried the other hotly. "You have cast your damned ugly, black shadow over this place too long as it is! Miss Clairville is no child; she knows, has always known, her own mind, and I do not grudge her a slight flirtation or two with any one she fancies; it is her way, a safe outlet for her strong yet variable temperament. You take things too seriously, that's all."
And the guide, slapping and shaking the snow from his clothing and adjusting his cap, walked down from the bridge to one side and sat upon a rock in sheer fatigue. It was the identical rock from which Poussette had been pulled back by Ringfield on that April day when the affairs of the parish had been discussed, and was no safer now than at that time, in fact, footing was precarious everywhere around the fall, for the same glassy covering, slowly melting and slippery, had spread to all objects in sight.
Ringfield, too, turned and stood a few yards behind the guide and again he kept that peculiar silence.
"Now consider," said Crabbe quietly, looking in his pocket for matches and holding his pipe comfortably in his hand. "I'm perfectly ready to sympathize with you. I know when you first saw me you cannot have been very pleasantly impressed, and all that, but that's all or nearly all over, and I'm going to try and turn over a new leaf, Ringfield. No more Nature for me, nor for her; we are to flee these dismal wilds and try a brighter clime,—a brighter clime! You must be generous and confess that I can do more for her than you can. It will be a new lease of life for us both, but candidly, Ringfield—lazy dog and worse that I have been—I think more of what it will mean for her than for myself."
"If you consider her happiness and her—her good name so much," said Ringfield, trembling and white, "why did you lie to me about your relations with her?"