Part 38 (1/2)
”Do you believe that?” I asked him. ”Or do you only wish to believe it?”
He looked at me half angrily, and the blood sprang into his cheeks. Then he took a step forward.
”She came between us!” he said, lowering his voice, but speaking with a new fierceness.
I felt as if he had struck me, and I shrank back. Then I straightened up, and looked him in the eye.
”You don't dare to say that aloud,” I retorted. ”You left me of your own accord. You insult me to come here and say such a thing, and I will not hear it. If you mean to talk in that strain, you may leave the house.”
He was naturally a good deal taken aback by this, and perhaps I should not--Yes, I should; I am glad I did say it. He stammered something about begging my pardon.
”Let that go,” interrupted I, feeling as if I had endured about all that I could hear. ”The question is whether you are not going to be just to your wife.”
”You fight mighty well for her,” responded George, ”but if you knew how she”--
”Never mind,” I broke in. ”Can't you see I am fighting for you? I am trying to make you see you owe it to yourself to be right in this; and moreover you owe it to me.”
”To you?” he asked, with a touch in his voice which should have warned me, but did not, I was so wrapped up in my own view of the situation.
”Yes, to me. I am your oldest friend, don't you see, and you owe it to me not to fail now.”
He sprang forward impulsively, holding out both his hands.
”Ruth,” he cried out, ”what's the use of all this talk? You know it's you I love, and you I mean to marry.”
I know now how a man feels when he strikes another full in the face for insulting him. I felt myself growing hot and then cold again; and I was literally speechless from indignation.
”I went crazy a while for a fool with a pretty face,” he went rus.h.i.+ng on; ”but all that”--
”She is your wife, George Weston!” I broke in. ”How dare you talk so to me!”
He was evidently astonished, but he persisted.
”We ought to be honest with each other now, Ruth,” he said. ”There's too much at stake for us to beat about the bush. I know I've behaved like a fool and a brute. I've hurt you and--and cheated you, and you've had every reason to throw me over like a sick dog; but when you made up the money I'd lost and didn't let Mr. Longworthy suspect, I knew you cared for me just the same!”
”Cared for you!” I blazed out. ”Do you think I could have ruined any man's life for that? I love you no more than I love any other man with a wife of his own!”
”That's just it,” he broke in eagerly. ”Of course I knew you couldn't own you cared while she”--
The egotism of it, the vulgarity of it made me frantic. I was ashamed of myself, I was ashamed of him, and I felt as if nothing would make him see the truth. Never in my whole life have I spoken to any human being as I did to him. I felt like a raging termagant, but he would not see.
”Stop!” I cried out. ”If you had never had a wife, I couldn't care for you. I thought I loved you, and perhaps I did; but all that is over, and over forever.”
”You've said you'd love me always,” he retorted.
Some outer layer of courtesy seemed to have cracked and fallen from him, and to have left an ugly and vulgar nature bare. The pathos of it came over me. The pity that a man should be capable of so exposing his baser self struck me in the midst of all my indignation. I could not help a feeling, moreover, that he had somehow a right to reproach me with having changed. Thinking of it now in cooler blood I cannot see that since he has left me to marry another woman he has any ground for reproaching me; but somehow at the moment I felt guilty.
”George,” I answered, ”I thought I was telling the truth; I didn't understand myself.”