The Luck of the Irish/Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXVI
HIS hair was rumpled; he had thrown off his coat and collar, and the shirt was open at the throat. His shoulders filled the doorway; through the thin texture of the silk shirt the great, quiescent muscles were conspicuous; and yet his air was one of abject helplessness. He ran his fingers through his hair as if to reassure himself. She was by now very familiar with his gesture.
"I've been a coward," he began, his glance roving and pausing, avoiding as much as he could her wide, startled gray eyes. "But I couldn't put it off any longer. I've got to tell you what's on my mind, and I don't want any strangers around. God knows it's hard enough as it is!"
She might have been marble, for all the visible effect of those halting words.
"In the first place, I want you to forgive me the wrong I've done you."
"Wrong?" The trend, so absolutely at variance with what she had been expecting, befogged her.
"Ye-ah. I didn't honestly mean anything wrong, but I've done a whole lot of thinking lately. When I asked you to marry me you weren't yourself. You'd just been through seven kinds of hell. And I didn't know that I was thinking a lot about William Grogan when I asked you; but I guess I was. When I said I loved you, God knows that was square and true enough. I guess I began loving you from the first day you walked past my cellar window; but I didn't wake up to the fact until you came aboard the Ajax. Yes, that was honest enough. But deep down somewhere I thought maybe I might have a chance if you were married to me. Well, what I had on my mind was this: to give you a name until we got back to the States, to have the right to take care of you, to see that you had everything. I didn't know that you were coming down. Perhaps I wasn't very steady myself; I'd just been through a whale of a fight. If you've been through hell, so 've I—When you didn't turn up on the Ajax, when you lay there in that bed and we did not know which way it was going. Well, when we got back to the States I was going to give you your freedom and tide you over the bumps until the … the right one came along."
His fingers went into his hair again.
"That's what I had in my poor old coco, what I had to tell you to-night or choke to death. I couldn't sleep, thinking you'd put me in the same boat with other men. Colburton won't bother you any more. He's gone back with his face out of plumb. I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't glad, damned glad. He got what was coming to him. And now that I've got it all off my chest, you just buck up, sister, and forget it. When we get back to little old United, we'll fix up things. I know you've been worrying a lot. Gee! what woman wouldn't have worried? And you've been mighty kind to me. If I remember anything about history or pictures or churches it's because you told me; if I remember any place it's because you were there with me. I can't lose you altogether. I want to fix it up so's sometimes I can come around and hear you play the piano. All I want you to do is to get well and make believe the whole business was a bad nightmare. That's all, sister. Good night."
He smiled, reached in and caught hold of the knob, closing the door rather hastily. He did not want to hear her voice, he did not care for any expression of gratitude. He had burned his bridges, and his heart could not stand any more.
Ruth often wondered in after days how long she had remained standing there in the middle of her room, entranced, incapable of stirring hand or foot or withdrawing her dry-eyed gaze from that door which had strangely lost its sinister significance.
The spell was broken by the touch of the nurse's hand. "Did you call, Mrs. Grogan? I thought I heard voices. Please go right back to bed. Mercy! your shoulders are dripping with sweat! That's bad. Come, please."
Docilely Ruth permitted the nurse to put her to bed and tuck her in. But sleep never came to her that night. She lay there thinking, thinking; dawn came and daylight, and still the tumult in her mind abated not a jot. A cheat! Was she always going to be one? Wasn't it in her to play fair even with William Grogan, who had fought for her like one of the ancient heroes, who had denied himself, toiled in the hot sun for her, and guarded her at night? Her superiority, her bloodstock, her education, her talent, what were these compared with the pure nobility of the heart? A cheat! She doubled her knees, laid her head upon them, and rocked.
She did not comprehend immediately what this whole-hearted self-condemnation signified, that she had reached the turning-point in her outlook upon life. Curtain after curtain was torn aside, and at last there was light in all the corners of her soul. She knew Ruth Warren for what she was.
One morning, some days later, she sprang out of bed, stronger than she had been at any time during her convalescence. Life! Real life, the day-by-day affairs; never again to look at life obliquely, but squarely; to accept the inevitable, clear-eyed, head high; to shoulder cheerfully the burden of each day and cheerfully to lay it down at night; to drive away the false gods of complacency and self-interest. … Not her kind? No, William Grogan was not her kind. Never would she be able to pull herself up to his level. He would have to do that.
Self-analysis is the best of moral tonics. The fact that we can dig into our innermost thoughts and distinguish the good from the bad, that we are able to weigh justly the one against the other, is in itself a spur to noble deeds. By this process we become capable of forgiving wrongs, of bursts of real generosity and sacrifice. In face of such magnanimity as William had exhibited Ruth could be no less magnanimous herself.
The determination which stirred her heart was not based upon pride. Sometimes we are credited with lofty actions when in truth we are urged forward only by a sense of shame. But Ruth had found herself. No more self-lies, no more evasions; she stood free at last, on rock, the morass behind her. An obligation was no longer a thing to run around; she would meet each one as it came, honestly and squarely. And there was something in her heart this morning she did not quite understand.
She drew her kimono over her shoulders and walked boldly into William's room. He was not there. The bed had not been touched. It was a man's room, but it was the room of a man who took care of his belongings, who was orderly without being finical. Upon the chairs lay clothes neatly folded; just under the bed were several pairs of shoes, the heels in soldierly alignment. There was no litter at all except in one obscure corner where he had made a bundle of his working-clothes. She recalled what the nurse had told her about his going out in search of work, for fear they might not have money to pay the bills. Her imagination constructed a picture. She saw him laboring under the blistering decks, from early morn until sundown, and then watching half the night at her bedside. All for her! The walls and the furnishings of the room became grotesquely twisted, and she knew that her eyes had filled with tears.
She looked down at her ringless hand. She knew now why he had taken off the rings. The singular thoughtfulness of the act! He was a man, strong in the body and strong in the soul. He had the strength, the moral strength, to let her go!
Timidly—for her initial boldness was gone now—she approached the table. Propped against some books books—he was reading to please her—she saw the photograph she had given him in Venice. And there was his pipe. She took it up. She turned it about in her hands. She saw where his strong teeth had worn away the stem. She studied it, not because she was particularly interested in the pipe itself, but because it suggested intimacy; it was almost as if she were touching the man himself. And he was a man.
Suddenly she smiled; and when a woman smiles like that there is either an epic or an idyl in the air. The epic in this instance had already been written.
As she laid down the pipe he came in, and halted by the door in his astonishment.
"Where have you been?" she questioned, with a nod toward the untouched bed.
"Why, I couldn't sleep in here last night; too muggy. So I spent the night over on the grass-plot down by the sea. Slept like a top. And how do you feel this morning?"
"I'm a good deal better."
He nodded comprehendingly. Her terror gone, she would naturally pick up from now on.
"And I'm crazy to go home. When can we start?"
"Think you'll be strong enough two weeks from to-day?"
"Oh, yes. I'm going to get stronger every minute." She spoke boldly, but she no longer felt boldy. She had entered this room with a great resolve; and now she was afraid. Afraid of what? She did not know, unless it was that William did not look homely this morning.
"That's the way to talk," said he, briskly. "I'll see about passage to-day. Gee! but I'm a homesick pup myself."
It was the prospect of her freedom that had put this new spirit into her. Well, that was logical. But he was going to be very, very glad to walk into Burns, Dolan & Co's, and get into his working-togs again. God bless tobacco and God bless work; a man could manage to forget a good deal by the aid of these two comforts.
He sighed.
"What made you sigh like that?" she asked.
"Who, me? I didn't sigh, did I?"
"Like a house afire. What made you?" Never in all her life had she been so happy. "What made you?" she repeated.
"I can't tell you, sister."
She held out her hand, palm upward. He eyed it, his expression one of mystification. He was poles away from the true meaning of the gesture. The fact is, the idyl was about to be written. He advanced toward her irresolutely.
"What's the matter, sister?"
"Don't you ever call me that again, William Grogan! I … I want my rings."
Mystification resolved into blank stupidity.
"Do you hear me? My rings! … Or don't you want me? Are you going to let me go?"
He started to run his fingers through his hair, but she caught his hand and drew it down, clinging to it.
"And you thought I was going to let you go! Oh, man, man! If you could only see yourself a little as I see you. And if God had made it possible for me to love you as you are worthy to be loved! There is no flame or fire in what I offer you; but I'd give you my heart's blood if you wanted it or needed it. There are some dreams that never come true; and yours and mine are like that. But you are the bravest and kindliest man I have ever known, and I think you'll understand me. And don't think for a moment that it's sacrifice on my part. No. I want you; I couldn't get along without you; and I want to belong. What good there is in me you stirred and brought into life. And once I thought I was superior!"
The blood was rushing into his throat and drumming in his ears. She went on. He hadn't the power to interrupt her.
"I will be a true wife to you, William Grogan. I will work for you and with you, I will try to make you happy, help you in your ambition, be with you and of you until the end of time. And you thought I was going to let you go! You put me on a pedestal, and you've seen what poor stuff it was made of. But I didn't put you on a pedestal. When my eyes opened you were already on one, all gold. Will you help me climb up there with you? That is, if you want me?"
"Want you?" He dared not touch her yet.
"Ye-ah!" She laughed and tugged at his hand again. "Do you remember the day of the typhoon? You called me a little fool. I wasn't. I was a great and glorious fool. Will you ever forget the feel of the wind and water in your hair? … You held me pretty tight that day. Suppose you do it again and kiss me, being as I am your true wife? And do it before the nurse comes and sends me back to bed!"