"Didn't I tell you I was a gentleman? You've made a big mistake, Ringfield. Even in my deterioration" (he had difficulty with this word) "I remember who I am, and I don't go after married women. Matrimony's one of the Church's sacraments, Ringfield, isn't it? Perhaps not; I have forgotten. Anyway, Mme. Poussette is the wife of my best friend, my best friend I tell you, and whoever cares for her faded hair and finicking ways it isn't I. Sweeter pastures once were mine. Have I named the lady of my choice or have I not? The gay Pauline, the witty Pauline, the handsome Pauline! Ah! You admire her yourself. You wrote her a letter. I gave it to her and we read it together and laughed at it. 'Yours in Christ.' Ha-ha! We laughed at it, Ringfield."
Even in his foolish insults he paused, for an awful expression appeared for a moment on the other's face. In that moment Ringfield realized what Miss Clairville had become to him. No one can bear to hear his love traduced, and he believed that in his cups this villain, Crabbe, was lying. They faced each other and Ringfield was not the cooler nor the saner of the two.
"Pauline! Miss Clairville! What can she be to you? Hanger on of womanly footsteps," burst from him, scarcely knowing what words formed in his brain and emptied themselves upon the darkening air of the cabin. "Stealthy and gloating admirer of her beauty, even the despised companion and disloyal friend of her brother—all these you may be, but surely nothing more to her."
"What I am to her I know well enough and can tell you easily enough. She's done with me, hates and fears me, won't have anything to do with me, and yet she belongs to me and I'm not likely to forget it. And I belong to her. That's another reason why I wouldn't go after Mme. Poussette."
"You mean—that she is, that you are—oh! impossible! You mean—what do you mean? Not that you are married to her?"
Extreme agony and repulsion gave shrillness to Ringfield's voice. To have met and loved, to have coveted and dreamed of that warm, imperious yet womanly presence, and to hear this dreadful truth concerning her—if it were the truth.
"Well, you've guessed it. Yes, married to her, by heaven!" said
Crabbe, and he lurched forward and fell.
Ringfield saw and heard him fall, but he was already out of the shack and speeding through the forest paths; dim arcades of larch and pine met over his head while upon the river and the great Fall were stealing long bars of bright silvery light from the level sun. Soon the silver would mellow to gold as the daily marvel of the sunset was accomplished, but Ringfield was beyond such matters now. Nature could do no more for him in this crisis than it had done for Edmund Crabbe, and the virginity, the silence and fragrance of the noble wood, brought him no solace. Yet as he sped he could not choose but breathe and the air filled his breast and then fed his mind so that presently coming upon a glade or opening in which was a large slab of grey lichened rock he lay down at length to think. And that Nature which could do nothing for him spiritually in this hour of trial conspired to comfort and restore him physically. He could not pray. His accustomed resources had failed him; instead, as it grew quite dark around, he fell asleep.