Ruth of the U. S. A. (McClurg)/Chapter 13
RUTH turned, without asking more, and went into the room which had been hers, and shut herself in alone. She dared not inquire anything further, or permit anything more to be asked of her; she dared not let Milicent see her until she had time to think.
Milicent and she long ago had given to one another those intimate confidences about their personal affairs which girls, who share the same rooms, usually exchange; but Ruth's confidences, of course, had detailed the family situation of Cynthia Gail. Accordingly, Ruth knew that Milicent had believed that the boy, whose picture was the third in the portfolio of Cynthia's family, which Ruth always had kept upon the dresser, was Ruth's brother. Milicent would believe, therefore, that it was this sudden discovery of her brother dying in a Paris hospital which had shocked Ruth into need for being alone just now.
Indeed, feeling for that boy, whose picture she had carried for so long, and about whom she had written so many times to his parents, and who was mentioned in some loving manner in almost everyone of those letters which Ruth had received from Decatur, had its part in the tumult of sensations oversweeping her. But dominant in that tumult was the knowledge that his discovery—and, even more certainly, the arrival of George Byrne—meant extinction of Ruth as Cynthia Gail; meant annihilation of her projects and her plans; meant, perhaps, destruction of her even as Ruth Alden.
Ruth had not ceased to realize, during the tremendous events of these last weeks, that at any moment someone might appear to betray her; and she had kept some calculation of the probable consequence. When she had first embraced this wild enterprise, which fate had seemed to proffer, she had entered upon considerable risks; if caught, she would have the difficult burden of proof, when she was taking the enemy's money and using a passport supplied by the enemy and following—outwardly, at least—the enemy's instructions, that she was not actually acting for the enemy. But if she had been betrayed during the first days, it would have been possible to show how the true Cynthia Gail met her death and to show that she—Ruth Alden—could have had no hand in that. But now more than two months had passed since that day in Chicago when Ruth Alden took on her present identity—more than two months since the body of Cynthia Gail, still unrecognized, must have been cremated or laid away in some nameless grave. Therefore, the former possibility no longer existed.
Horror at her position, if she suddenly faced one of Cynthia Gail's family, sometimes startled Ruth up wide-awake in bed at night. She had not been able to think what to do in such case as that; her mind had simply balked before it; and every added week with its letters subscribed by those forged "Thias" to Cynthia's father, and those intimate endearments to Cynthia's mother, and those letters about love to George Byrne—well, every day had made it more and more impossible to prepare for the sometime inevitable confession.
For confession to Cynthia's family must come if Ruth lived; but only—she prayed—after the war and after she had done such service that Cynthia's people could at least partially understand why she had tricked them. The best end of all, perhaps—and perhaps the most probable—was that Ruth should be killed; she would die, then, as Cynthia, and no one would challenge the dead. That was how Ruth dismissed the matter when the terror within clamored for answer. But she could not so dismiss it now.
Impulse seized her to flee and to hide. But, in the France of the war, she could not easily do that; nor could she slip off from Cynthia's identity and name without complete disaster. Anywhere she went—even if she desired to take lodgings in a different zone in Paris, or indeed if she was to dwell elsewhere in the same zone—she must present Cynthia's passport and continue as Cynthia. And other, and more conclusive reasons, controlled her.
Her sole justification for having become Cynthia Gail was her belief that she could go into Germany by aid of the German agents who would know her as Cynthia Gail. They could find her only if she went about Cynthia Gail's work and lived at the lodgings here.
Ruth was getting herself together during these moments of realization. She opened the bedroom door and called in Milicent.
Charles Gail had been gassed. Milicent had not seen him, but Lieutenant Byrne had visited him and repeated to Milicent that he was not sure whether Charles knew him. Ruth scarcely could bear thought of visiting Charles Gail and pretending that she was Cynthia; but it was evident that he was so weak that he would suspect nothing.
The chance of George Byrne betraying her was greater. He had been in Paris, Milicent said, upon some special duty of indefinite duration. Every time he had called he had left messages with Milicent and had assumed that he might not be able to return to the Rue des Saints Pères.
"He was here the day we got the news that Mirevaux was taken," Milicent said. "We tried in every way to get word of you. He was almost crazy, dear. He loves you; don't you ever doubt that!"
Ruth made no reply, though Milicent waited, watching her.
"I didn't say anything to him about Gerry Hull, dear."
"I've written him about meeting Gerry," Ruth said, simply. "I'll start for the hospital now, Mil."
"You'll let me go with you, Cynthia?"
"Thanks; but it's not—I think I'd rather not."
Milicent gazed at her, a little surprised and hurt, but she made no further offer.
Ruth went out on the Rue des Saints Pères alone; a start of panic seized her as she gazed up and down the little street—panic that from a neighboring doorway, or about one of the corners, George Byrne might suddenly appear and speak to her.
The late spring afternoon was clear and warm; and that part of Paris was quiet, when from Ruth's right and ahead of her came the resound and the concussion of a heavy explosion. Ruth gazed up, instinctively, to find the German airplane from which a torpedo might have dropped; but she saw only the faint, dragon-fly forms of the French sentinel machines which constantly stood guard over Paris. They circled and spun in and out monotonously, as usual, and undisturbed at their watch; and, with a start, Ruth suddenly remembered. From beyond the German lines in the forest of Saint Gobain, Paris was being bombarded by some monster of Krupp's; the explosion where a haze of débris dust was hanging over the roofs a half mile or more away had been the burst of a shell from that gun. Since the start of the German assault the Germans had been sending these random shells to strike and kill at every half hour for several hours upon almost every day. So Paris had learned to recognize them; Paris had become accustomed to them; Parisians shrugged when they struck. But Ruth did not.
The studied brutality of that German gun, more than sixty miles away, dispatching its unaimed shells to do methodical, indiscriminate murder in the city, was the sort of thing Ruth needed at that moment to steady her to what lay before her. She was setting herself to this, as to the rest, to help stop forever deeds like the firing of that gun. She hastened on more resolutely; the gun fired again, its monstrous, random shell falling in quite another quarter. Presenting herself at the doors of the hospital, she ascertained that Sergeant Charles Gail, who had originally been enrolled in a Canadian battalion under another name, was still living. Consultation with a nurse evoked the further information that he was conscious at the present minute, but desperately weak; he had been asking many times for his friends or word of his people; it was therefore permissible—indeed, it was desirable—that his sister see him.
Ruth followed the nurse between the long rows of beds where boys and men lay until the nurse halted beside a boy whose wide-open eyes gazed up, unmoving, at the ceiling; he was very thin and yellow, but his brows yet held some of the boldness, in the set of his chin was still some of the high spirit of defiance of the picture in the portfolio—the boy who had quarreled with his father four years ago and who had run away to the war.
"Here is your sister," the nurse told him gently in French.
"My sister?" he repeated the French words while his eyes sought and found Ruth. A tinge of color came to his cheek; with an effort a hand lifted from the coverlet.
"Hello, Cynth," he said. "They said—you were—here."
Ruth bent and kissed his forehead. "All right, Cynth," he murmured when she withdrew a little. "You can do that again."
Ruth did it again and sat down beside him. His hand was in hers; and whenever she relaxed her tight grasp of it he stirred impatiently. He did not know she was not his sister. His eyes rested upon hers, but vacantly; he was too exhausted to observe critically; his sister had come, they said; and if she was not exactly as he remembered her, why he had not seen her for four years; a great deal had happened to her, and even more had happened to him. Her lips were soft and warm as his sister's always had been; her hands were very gentle, and it was awfully good to have her there.
Ruth was full of joy that she had dared to come; for she was, to this boy, his sister.
"Tell me—about—home," he begged her.
"I've brought all my letters," she said; and opening them with one hand—for he would not have her lose grasp of him—she read the home news until the nurse returned and, nodding, let Ruth know she must go.
He could not follow in his mind the simple events related in the letters; but he liked to hear the sentences about home objects, and the names of the people he had loved, and who loved him.
"You'll—come back—tomorrow, Cynth?" he pleaded.
Ruth promised and kissed him again and departed.
It was quite dark now on the streets with only the sound of the evening bustle. The long-range German gun had ceased firing; but the dim lights beside doorways proved that on this clear, still night the people of Paris realized the danger of air raids. Ruth was hurrying along, thinking of the boy she had left and of his comrades in the long rows of beds; from them her thoughts flew back to the battle, to "1583" and his English on the hill, to Grand'mère Bergues' farm, and to Gerry Hull; she thought of the German soldiers she had seen with him and of her errand to their land. Almost before she realized it, she was turning into the little street of the Holy Fathers when a man, approaching out of the shadows, suddenly halted before her and cried out:
"Cynthia!"
The glow of light was behind him, so she could not make out his face; but she knew that only one stranger, recognizing her as Cynthia, could have cried out to her like that; so she spoke his name instantly, instinctively, before she thought.
Her voice either was like Cynthia's or, in his rush of feeling, George Byrne did not notice a difference. He had come before her and was seizing her hands; his fingers, after their first grasp, moved up her arms. "Cynthia; my own Cynthia," he murmured her name. At first he had held her in the glow of the light the better to see her; but now he carried her back with him into the shadow; and his arms were around her; he was crushing her against him, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her lips again, her hands from which he stripped the gloves.
She strained to compress her repulse of him. He was not rough nor sensuous; he simply was possessing himself of her in full passion of love. If she were Cynthia, who loved this man, she would have clung in his embrace in the abandonment of joy. Ruth tried to think of that and control herself not to repel him; but she could not. Reflexes, beyond her obedience, opposed him.
Ever since Milicent had informed her that he was in Paris, Ruth had been forming plans for every contingency of their meeting; but this encounter had introduced elements different from any expectations. If this visit to the street of the Holy Fathers was to be his last one before leaving Paris, then perhaps she had better keep him out upon the street in the dark and play at being Cynthia until she could dismiss him. She must feel—or at least she must betray—no recoil of outrage at his taking her into his arms. He had had that right with Cynthia Gail. Though he and Cynthia had quarreled—and Ruth had never mended that quarrel—yet Cynthia and he had loved. Too much had passed between them to put them finally apart. And now, as Ruth felt his arms enfolding her, his lips on hers, and his breath whispering to her his passionate love, she knew that Cynthia could not have forbidden this.
He took Ruth's struggle as meant to tempt his strength and he laughed joyously as, very gently, he overpowered her. She tried to cease to struggle; she tried to laugh as Cynthia would have laughed; but she could not. "Don't!" she found herself resisting. "Don't!"
"Oh! I hurt you, dearest?"
"Yes," she said; though he had not. And remorsefully and with anxious endearments, he let her go.
"You've heard about Charles?" he asked.
"I've just come from him."
"He's—the same?"
"Yes."
She stood gasping against the wall of a building, entirely in the shadow herself, with the little light which reached them showing her his face. Ruth liked that face; and she liked the girl whom she played at being—that Cynthia whose identity she was carrying on, but about whom she yet knew so little—for having loved this man. George Byrne had been clean-living; he was strong and eager, but gentle, too. He had high thoughts and resolute ideals. These he had told her in those letters which had come; but Ruth had not embodied them in him till now. She was recovering from the offense of having anyone's arms but Gerry's about her. She was not conscious of thinking of Gerry that way; only, his arms had been about her, he had held her; and, because of that, what she had just undergone had been more difficult to bear.
"I love you; you love me, Cynthia?" Byrne was begging of her now.
"Of course I do," she said.
"There's not someone else, then? Tell me, Cynthia!"
"No—no one else," she breathed. What could she say? She was not speaking for herself; but for Cynthia; and now she was absolutely sure that, for Cynthia, there could have been no one else. But she could not deceive him.
"My God!" he gasped the realization to himself, drawing back a little farther from her. "Then that's—that's been the matter all the time."
"All what time?" she asked.
"Since you met Gerry Hull in Chicago."
He meant, of course, since the girl who had loved him had died; but he did not know that. He had felt a change in the letters which had come to him which he could not explain as merely the result of their quarrel. Another man seemed to him the only possible explanation.
Someone opened a door behind them; and Ruth withdrew from the shaft of light. "We can't stay here, George," she said.
She thought that now he was noticing a difference in her voice; but if he did, evidently he put it down as only part of her alteration toward him.
"Where can we go?" he asked her.
"Not back to the pension," Ruth said.
"No; no! Can't you stay out with me here? We can walk."
"Yes."
He faced down the street of the Holy Fathers away from the pension; she came beside him. He took her hand and for a moment held it as, undoubtedly, he and Cynthia had done when walking in darkened streets together; but after a few steps he released her.
"Your hand's thinner, Cynthia."
"I suppose so."
"You're a little thinner all over. I can't see you well; but you felt that way," he said a little sadly, referring to his embrace which she had broken. "You've been overdoing, of course."
She made no reply; and for several seconds he offered nothing more but went on, gazing down at her. "You've been fine, Cynthia, in getting those people out." He spoke of what he had heard of her work in the retreat. "I knew ten days ago you were in it; but I couldn't go to you! I tried to; I tried to get into the fight. We all tried—our men; but they didn't want us. Except Gerry Hull, of course, and a few like him."
He said this so completely without bitterness—with envy, only—that Ruth felt more warmly for him. "It's Gerry Hull, isn't it, Cynthia?" he demanded directly.
"Yes," she admitted now. Denial had become wholly impossible; moreover, by telling the truth—or that much of the truth which had to do with Gerry Hull—she might send George Byrne away. It was a cruel wrong to him, and to the girl who was dead; but the wrong already was done. Ruth merely was beginning herself to reap some of the fruits of her deception.
"You love him?" Byrne inquired of her inevasively.
"Yes."
"He loves you?"
"I don't know."
"What's he said to you?"
"Nothing—about loving me."
"But he loves you, all right; he must, if he knows you!" Byrne returned in pitiful loyalty to his Cynthia. "How much has gone on between you?" he demanded.
Ruth related to him much about her meetings with Gerry, while they walked side by side about the Paris streets. A dozen times she was on the point of breaking down and telling him all the truth; when his hand reached toward hers, instinctively, and suddenly pulled away; when they passed a light and, venturing to gaze up, she saw his face as he looked down at her; when he asked her questions or offered short, hoarse interjections, she almost cried out to him that she was a fraud; the girl he had loved, and who she was saying had turned from him, was dead and had been dead all that time during which he had felt the difference; she had never met Gerry, Hull at all.
"What are you stopping for?" he asked her at one of these times. "Thinking about the Sangamon River?"
That was the Illinois river which flowed close by Cynthia Gail's home. And Ruth knew from his voice that by the river Cynthia and he first had known love.
"Yes," Ruth said; but now her courage completely failed her.
"What did you say to me, then; oh, what did we both say, Cynthia?"
This was no test or challenge of Ruth; it was simply a cry from his heart.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,
I love thee to the depth and height . . . .
He was starting to quote something which they used to repeat together.
"Go on, Cynthia!" he charged.
"I can't," Ruth cried.
"You can't—after you found it and taught it to me? 'I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life,'" he quoted bitterly to her. "Let me look at you better, Cynthia!"
They were passing a light and he drew her closer to it.
"What has happened to you?" he whispered to her aghast when he had searched her through and through with his eyes. Then, "Who are you?"
He had made, he realized, some frightful mistake; how he could have come to make it, he did not know. "You're not Cynthia Gail!" he cried. For an instant, that discovery was enough for him. The agony which he had been suffering this last half hour was not real; the girl whom he had found on the street never had been his; they had both been going about only in some grotesque error.
"No; I'm not Cynthia Gail," Ruth told him.
"Then where is she?" he demanded. "Where is my Cynthia?" His hands were upon Ruth and he shook her a little in the passion of his demand. He could not even begin to suspect the truth; but—from sight of her now—fear flicked him. If this girl was not Cynthia
"How are you so like her?" he put his challenge aloud. "Why did you pretend to be her? Why? You tell me why!"
"I'll tell you," Ruth said. "But not here."
"Where?"
"We must find some place where we can talk undisturbed; where we can have a long talk."
"Take me to her, first. That's all I care about. I don't care about you—or why you did that. I don't care, I say. Take me to Cynthia; or I'll go there."
He started away toward the Rue des Saints Pères and the pension; so Ruth swiftly caught his sleeve.
"You can't go to her!" Ruth gasped to him. "She's not there. Believe me, you can't find her!"
"Why not?"
"She's—we must find some place, Mr. Byrne!"
"She's—what? Killed? Killed, you were going to say?"
"Yes; she's been killed."
"In Picardy, you mean? Where? How? Why, she was at her rooms two hours ago. Miss Wetherell told me; or was she lying to me?"
"I was at the rooms two hours ago," Ruth said. "Miss Wetherell knows me as Cynthia Gail. I've been Cynthia Gail since January."
"What do you mean? How?"
"Cynthia Gail died in January, Mr. Byrne."
"What? How? Where?"
"She was killed—in Chicago."
"That's a lie! Why, I've been hearing from her myself."
"You've been hearing from me. I'm Cynthia Gail, I tell you. I've been Cynthia Gail since January."
He caught another glimpse of her face; and his impetuousness to start to the Rue des Saints Pères collapsed, pitifully. "Where shall we go?" he asked.
Ruth gazed about, uncertainly; she had not attended to their direction; and now she found herself in a strange, narrow street of tiny shops and apartments, interrupted a half square ahead by a chasm of ruins and strewn débris, where one of those random shells from the German long-range gun, or a bomb dropped from a night-raiding Gotha recently had struck. The destruction had been done sufficiently long ago, however, for the curiosity of the neighborhood to have been already satisfied and for all treasures to have been removed. The ruin was fenced off, therefore, and was unguarded. Ruth gazed into the shell of the building and Byrne, glancing in also, saw that in the rear were apartments half wrecked and deserted, but which offered sanctuary from the street.