The Swindler and Other Stories Part 79

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Nonsense!" said Tots kindly. "n.o.body's blamin' you, my child. It's this infernal heat. You stay quietly here for a bit. I must go back and see that Danvers signs his name all right. But I'll come and fetch you afterwards."

He departed, and Ruth suddenly realised an urgent need for solitude. She turned to her cousin.

"Do please go! I shall be all right. It is cool and shady here. And they will be looking for you in the vestry. Please go! I will wait till--Tots comes back."

Her cousin demurred a little, but it was obvious that her inclination fell in with Ruth's request, and it was also quite obvious that Ruth did not want her. So, after some persuasion, she yielded and went.

During the interval that followed, Ruth sat in the quiet corner just out of sight of the vestry door, bracing herself to meet Tots and implore him to set her free. It was a bad quarter of an hour for her, and when, at the end of it, Tots came, she looked on the verge of fainting again.

"Sorry I couldn't come before," said Tots. "But my responsibilities are over now, thank the G.o.ds. I suppose, now, you didn't have time for anything to eat before you came?"

This was the actual truth. Ruth owned it with a feeling of guilt. And suddenly she found that she could not speak then. There was something that made it impossible. Perhaps it was the loud clash of the bells overhead.

"I am very sorry," she said again.

Tots smiled.

"You must manage better at our own weddin'," he said. "There's nothin'

like fortifyin' yourself with a good substantial meal for an ordeal of this sort. You're feelin' better, eh? Take my arm."

She obeyed him, still quivering with her fruitless effort to tell him of the miserable deception she had unintentionally practised upon him. She had a feeling that, if she made him angry, the world itself would stop.

Surely no one had ever found Tots formidable before.

At the touch of his hand upon hers, she started.

"What's wrong with it?" queried Tots softly. "Doesn't it fit?"

She glanced up in confusion. She was trembling so that she could scarcely stand. He slipped his arm about her rea.s.suringly, comfortably.

"Never mind. We must look at it together. I'll take it back if it isn't right. We'll go through the church, shall we? It's the shortest way."

He led her, unresisting, back into the building, and the clamour of the bells merged into the swelling chords of the organ. As they walked side by side down the empty aisle the strains of Mendelssohn's Wedding March transformed their progress into a triumphant procession, and Tots looked down into the girl's face with a smile....

There was no help for it. She could not tell him to his face. Gradually the conviction dawned upon her through another night of racking thought.

And there was only one thing left to do. She must go.

Soon after sunrise she was up, and writing a note to her aunt. She experienced small difficulty in this. It was quite simple to express her thanks for all the kindness shown her, and to explain that she had decided to pay a visit to her old home. She scarcely touched upon the suddenness of her departure. The Careys were all of them sudden in their ways. This move of hers would hardly strike them as extraordinary. She was, moreover, so much a stranger among them that it did not seem to matter in the face of her great need what they thought.

But a note to Tots was a different matter altogether, and she sat for nearly two hours motionless above a sheet of paper, considering. In the end she was again overcome by the almost physical impossibility of putting the intolerable situation into bald words. Simply, she felt utterly incapable of dealing with it. He had told her he was not joking.

She had believed the contrary in spite of this a.s.surance. And she had dared to trifle with him, to treat his offer as a jest.

How could she explain, how apologise, for such a mistake as this? The thing was beyond words, and at length she gave up the attempt in despair. She would send him back his ring in silence, and perhaps he would understand. At least, he would know that she was unworthy of that which he had offered her. She took the ring from its hiding-place, and once more the sunlight flashed upon its stones. For a s.p.a.ce she stood gazing fixedly, as one fascinated. And then, suddenly, inexplicably, her eyes filled with tears, and she packed up the little box hurriedly with fingers that trembled.

She directed the parcel to Tots, and put it aside with the intention of posting it herself. A tiny strip of paper on the floor attracted her attention as she turned. She picked it up. It was only Tots's simple message in four short words. She caught her breath sharply as she slipped it into her dress....

Home! Ruth Carey stood in the little inn-parlour that smelt of honeysuckle and stale tobacco, and looked across the village street. It looked even narrower than in the old days, and the pond on the green had shrunk to a mere dark puddle. The old grey church on the hill looked like a child's toy, and the quiet that brooded everywhere was the quiet of stagnation. An ancient dog was limping down the road--the only living thing in sight.

The girl turned from the window with a heavy sigh. She was conscious of a great emptiness, of a craving too intense to be silenced, a feverish longing that had in it the elements of a bitter despair. She had fled from captivity to the desert. But she had not found relief. She had escaped indeed. But she was like to perish of starvation in the wilderness.

She slept that night from sheer weariness, but, waking in the early morning, she lay for hours, listening to the cheery pipings of the birds, and wondering what she should do with her life. For there was no one belonging to her in a truly intimate sense. She had no near ties.

There was no one who really wanted her, except--The burning colour rushed up to her temples. No; even he did not want her now. And again the loneliness and the emptiness seemed more than she could bear.

Dressing, she told herself suddenly and pa.s.sionately that her home-coming had been a miserable farce, a sham, and a delusion. And she called bitterly to mind words that she had once either read or heard: "Where the heart is, there is home."

The scent of honeysuckle and stale tobacco was mingled with that of fried bacon as she opened the door of the inn-parlour. It rushed out to greet her in a nauseating wave, and she nearly shut the door again in disgust. But the sight of an immense bunch of roses waiting for her on the table checked the impulse. She went forward into the room and picked it up, burying her face in its fragrance.

There was a tiny strip of paper twisted about one of the stalks which she did not at first perceive. When she did, she unfolded it, wondering.

Four words met her eyes, written in minute characters, and it was as if a meteor had flamed suddenly across her sky. They were words that, curiously, had never ceased to ring in her brain since the moment she had first read them: "With love from Tots."

Fully five minutes pa.s.sed before Ruth crossed the room to the honeysuckle-draped window, the roses pressed against her thumping heart.

Outside, an ancient wooden bench that sagged dubiously in the middle stood against a crumbling stone wall. It was a bench greatly favoured by aged labourers in the summer evenings, but this morning it had but one occupant--a loose-knit, lounging figure with a straw hat drawn well down over the eyes, and a pipe thrust between the teeth.

As Ruth gazed upon this negligent apparition, it suddenly moved, and the next instant it stood up in the suns.h.i.+ne and faced her, hat in one hand, pipe in the other.

"Mornin'" said Tots. "Got somethin' nice for breakfast?" His brown face smiled imperturbably upon her. He looked pleased to see her, but not extravagantly so.

Ruth fell back a step from the window, her roses clutched fast against her. She was for the moment speechless.

Tots continued to smile sociably.

"Nice, quiet little place--this," he said. "There's a touch of the antediluvian about it that I like. Good idea of yours, comin' here. No one to get in the way. It won't be disturbin' you if I sit on the window-sill while you have your breakfast?"

Ruth experienced a sudden, hysterical desire to laugh. He was beyond her, this man--utterly, hopelessly beyond her.

She sat down at the table, not with the idea of eating anything, but from a sense of sheer helplessness. Tots knocked the ashes from his pipe and took his seat on the window-sill. He did not seem to be aware of any strain in the situation.

After a pause, during which Ruth sat motionless, he turned a little to survey her.

"Not begun yet?" he queried.

She looked back at him with a species of desperate courage.

This sort of thing could not go on. She must be brave for once.

Unconsciously she was still gripping the roses with both hands.

"Mr. Waring--" she began.

"Tots," he subst.i.tuted gently.

"Well--Tots," she repeated unwillingly, "I--I want to ask you something."

"Fire away!" said Tots.

"I want to know--I want to know--" She stumbled again, and broke off in distress.