Part 37 (2/2)
”You wouldn't take up cudgels for her that way if you didn't know something,” she observed.
After that there was nothing for me to say. I simply dropped the subject, and refused to talk about the affairs of the Westons at all. I am so sorry, however, that gossip has got hold of a suspicion. It was to be expected, I suppose, and indeed it has been in the air ever since the man came. I am sorry for the Westons.
October 30. After the earthquake a fire,--I wonder whether after the fire will come the still, small voice! It is curious that out of all this excitement the feeling of which I am most conscious after my dismay and my pity is one of irritation. I am ashamed to find in my thought so much anger against George. He had perhaps a right to think as he did about my affection for him, though it is inconceivable any gentleman should say the things he said to me last night. Even if he were crazy enough to suppose I could still love him, how could he forget his wife; how could he be glad of an excuse to be freed from her; how could he forget the little child that is coming? Oh, I am like Jonah when he was so sure he did well to be angry! I am convinced I can have no just perception of character at all, for this George Weston is showing himself so weak, so ungenerous, so cruel, that he has either been changed vitally or I did not really know him. I was utterly deceived in him. No; I will not believe that. We have all of us possibilities in different directions. I wish I could remember the pa.s.sage where Browning says a man has two sides, one for the world and one to show a woman when he loves her. Perhaps one side is as true as the other; and what I knew was a possible George, I am sure.
He came in yesterday afternoon with a look of hard determination. He greeted me almost curtly, and added in the same breath:--
”The man is dead. She's confessed it all. He was her husband, and she was never my wife legally at all. She says she thought he was dead.”
”Then there's only one thing to do,” I answered. ”You can get Mr.
Saychase to marry you to-day. Of course it can be arranged if you tell him how the mistake arose, and he won't speak of it.”
He laughed sneeringly.
”I haven't any intention of marrying her,” he said.
”No intention of marrying her?” I repeated, not understanding him. ”If the first ceremony wasn't legal, another is necessary, of course.”
”She cheated me,” he declared, his manner becoming more excited. ”Do you suppose after that I'd have her for my wife? Besides, you don't see. She was another man's wife when she came to live with me, and”--
I stared at him without speaking, and he began to look confused.
”No man wants to marry a woman that's been living with him,” he blurted out defiantly. ”I suppose that isn't a nice thing to say to you, but any man would understand.”
I was silent at first, in mere amazement and indignation. The thing seemed so monstrous, so indelicate, so cruel to the woman. She had deceived him and hidden the fact that she had been married, but there was no justice in this horrible way of looking at it, as if her ignorance had been a crime. I could hardly believe he realized what he was saying. Before I could think what to say, he went on.
”Very likely you think I'm hard, Ruth; and perhaps I shouldn't feel so if it hadn't come about through her own fault. If she'd told me the truth”--
”George!” I burst out. ”You don't know what you are saying! You didn't take her as your wife for a week or a month, but for all her life.”
”She never was my wife,” he persisted stubbornly.
I looked at him with a feeling of despair,--not unmixed, I must confess, with anger. Most of all, however, I wanted to reach him; to make him see things as they were; and I wanted to save the poor woman. I leaned forward, and laid my fingers on his arm. My eyes were smarting, but I would not cry.
”But if there were no question of her at all,” I pleaded, ”you must do what is right for your own sake. You have made her pledges, and you can't in common honesty give them up.”
”She set me free from all that when she lied to me. I made pledges to a girl, not to another man's wife.”
”But she didn't know. She thought she was free to marry you. She believed she was honestly your wife.”
”She never was, she never was.”
He repeated it stubbornly as if the fact settled everything.
”She was!” I broke out hotly. ”She was your wife; and she is your wife!
When a man and a woman honestly love each other and marry without knowing of any reason why they may not, I say they are man and wife, no matter what the law is.”
”Suppose the husband had lived?” he demanded, with a hateful smile. ”The law really settles it.”
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