"Even when he was young," she told her listener often, "he was shy and proud. And he would think I had treated him as though he had been the dirt beneath my feet. I did. I did. He will never forgive me. Never, never."

She always cried afresh tempestuously at this, but when the first pa.s.sion of her grief had worn itself out she came back to her story and lauded Ezra without stint. He was proud, oh yes, he was proud, but then it was not in a way to hurt anybody. He joined in the sports of the other young men when she was quite a girl, a mere chit of a thing, my dear, and he was master of them all. Then Ruth chimed in. And so was Reuben now. Reuben was not like the rest of them. He was their master in everything, and everybody who was old enough to remember said that he was more like his uncle than like his father even. The duet of praise, accompanied by the old maid's tears, murmured along for an hour.

"You will meet him now?" Ruth suggested, rather timidly. "You will be friends again?"

"We could never bear to meet each other," cried Rachel. "How could I come before him?" Then, "I must go away."

"No, no," Ruth pleaded, "you must not go away. You must stay here. You must be friends again. What shall we tell him, dear? He has found the letter at last, and he sends to you. Can you let him think that you are still against him?"

"No," said Rachel, almost wildly. "You will tell him I went away because I could not bear to see him. I ought to have known him too well to have thought so basely of him."

"It was his duty to speak to you. It was less your fault than his. It was n.o.body's fault. It was a disaster." Ruth thought poorly of Ezra's tactics as a lover, but she was not bent on expressing her own opinions.

Reuben would never have acted in such a way. He would have known at least whether his letter had been received or no. Would any _man_ take silent contempt as a final answer from the woman he loved? It was the man's real business to come conquering, whatever airs of gentleness he might wear. And animated by these reflections the girl became filled with impatience at the old maid's self-upbraidings. She was sorry, sorry with all her heart, for both, but if there were fault at all it lay on Ezra's side. "I shall see him in the morning," she said, finally, thinking of Reuben. "He will go to his uncle."

"Child," said Aunt Rachel, with the beginning of a return to her old manner, "do you think I can consent to have my affairs bandied from messenger to messenger in this way? I will write."

She said this boldly enough, but her heart shrank from it. Her mind went blank when she tried to figure what she should say. She could do nothing but prostrate herself anew before the re-established idol. She began to realize the fact that whatever disguise of hate and despite her love had taken, she had done nothing but love him all along.

Ruth contented herself with the promise, but, as it happened, Rachel never wrote, or had need to write, upon this question. For Reuben, strolling early in the morning, and finding his feet wandering in the direction of Rachel's cottage, encountered his uncle, and their talk rendered the letter unnecessary. Ezra flushed and coughed behind his hand in more than a commonly deprecatory way when he sighted his nephew.

"Well, lad," he began.

"Ruth took the letter," answered Reuben. "I waited outside for her, and I know Miss Blythe was deeply affected by it, because I heard her crying. Ruth stayed all night with her," he continued, "and I suppose"--with a flush and a little hesitation--"I suppose she's there now."

"That means as they two are reunited?" said Ezra; and, without saying much more, the old man took his nephew's arm and they strolled by the cottage together.

Its inmates were early astir despite the lateness of the hour at which they had retired; and hearing voices as they stood together in the bedroom renewing the moving duet of the evening, they peeped through the curtains and saw uncle and nephew go by arm-in-arm. At this they flew together and embraced, and from that moment the duet became broken and confused. The little maid who a.s.sisted Rachel in her household affairs had not jet arrived; so the old lady herself lit the fire and made tea, while Ruth established herself in ambush in the parlor, and kept a watch upon the road. When Rachel came in to lay the snowy table-cloth, the china and the spoons made an unusual clatter in her trembling hands, and the two were in such a state of agitation that breakfast was a pure pretence. While they were seated at table Reuben and Ezra again strolled by; and Ruth divined the fact that not only was Reuben waiting for her, which was to be expected, but Ezra was attending the moment when she should quit the house in order that he might make a call upon Aunt Rachel. So in such a state of tremulous-ness as she had never experienced before--even when she took Reuben's note from the pages of Manzini or hid her own there--she arose, and, protesting that her father would never breakfast in her absence, and that she should be roundly scolded for being so late, she put on her hat and gloves, kissed Aunt Rachel's cold cheek, and ran out into the lane with blushes so charming and becoming that she might have been taken for the very humanized spirit of the dawn, lingering an hour or two beyond her time to make acquaintance with daylight. If this simile should seem to border on the ridiculous, the responsibility of it may be safely thrown upon Reuben, who not merely met her with it in his mind, but conveyed it to her as they walked homeward together. Ezra was even more bashful than Ruth, though in him the sentiment wrought less attractive tokens of itself.

"I'll walk about a little while farther," he said, awkwardly, when he had bidden Ruth good-morning; and without need to watch him, they knew that he had walked no farther than Rachel's cottage. The girl, on leaving it, had neglected to close the door, and the old maid had not dared to rise. He stood in the open door-way, and it gave him a mute invitation to enter, though he had not courage to accept it. He knocked faintly once or twice, and by-and-by was aware of a movement in the parlor. He turned towards the door and saw it open slowly, and Rachel looked out at him, trembling from head to foot, with signs of tears in her face.

"Miss Blythe," he began, shakily, "I trust all ill-feelin' is at an end between us. May an old friend exchange a word with you?"

"Pray come in," said Miss Blythe, in a frightened whisper; and he entered. "Will you take a seat?" she asked him.

"Rachel," he said, "I was to blame, but never as you thought. But I kept single for your sake, Rachel."

By what wonderful alchemy of nature the withered heart grew young again at that moment, Heaven knows; but it was out of a heart suddenly impa.s.sioned and warm with youth that she answered him,

"And I will keep single for yours."

CHAPTER XIV.

Ferdinand, in obedience to the call of the political situation, had absented himself from Heydon Hay for a week or two. The Liberals had put into the field a stronger man than he had expected to encounter, and there was a sudden awakening in the const.i.tutional camp. He had to go the rounds and visit his bandsmen, and without being particularly alert himself to see that everybody else was on the _qui vive_. The const.i.tutional candidate was, perhaps, as little interested in the coming strife as any man in the limits of the const.i.tuency, but he had allowed himself to be entered for the race, and was bound to a pretence of warmth even if he could not feel it. Ruth was not much in his mind while he was away, but when he came back again he found time once more hanging heavy on his hands; and being greeted by her when he went to listen to the quartette party precisely as he had been from the first, he determined more than ever to start a p.r.o.nounced flirtation with the haughty little hussy, and bring her to a proper sense of her position.

So he went early to church afoot on Sunday morning, leaving his lordship to follow alone in his carriage, and he chatted affably with the members of the little crowd that lingered about the lich-gate and the porch, and there awaited Ruth's coming.

Fuller was rather impressed with the young man's civility as a general thing, being open to the territorial sentiment, and was proud to be singled out from the rest by the Earl of Barfield's visitor, and publicly talked to on terms of apparent equality. And Ruth, who accompanied her father, was on this particular morning not quite what she had been hitherto. "When Ferdinand raised his hat and proffered her his hand she blushed, and her eyes held a singular uncertainty he had never before remarked in them. He could even feel in the few brief seconds for which her hand lay in his own that it trembled slightly.

Aha! She began to awake, then. The young Ferdinand plumed himself and spread himself for her vision. The old man, not unwilling that his neighbors should remark him in familiar intercourse with the great of the land, lingered at the porch, and for once Ruth did not desert his side and run into the church alone.

"Upon my word," said Ferdinand, "there is something in the air of Heydon Hay, Mr. Fuller, which would seem to be unusually favorable to the growth of feminine charms. May I congratulate Miss Ruth upon her aspect this morning?"

He meant the little thing no harm. He could compliment her in her father's presence as easily as out of it, and perhaps with a better conscience. Whensoever loosed from the string the arrow of compliment would find its mark. Besides, the very carelessness of his appreciation would help its force. He might be a little kinder and more confidential later on.

"Well, sir," said Fuller, with a chuckle, "her's bound to look her best just now."

"Father," said Ruth, with an amazingly sudden vivacity, "I want to speak to you. Excuse us, Mr. De Blacquaire."

Her face was of the color of the rose from brow to chin, and her eyes were as shy as ever in spite of her vivacity. They met Ferdinand's smiling, conquering glance for a moment, and no more. He raised his hat and withdrew. He had shot his arrow, and had hit the white. He could afford to retire contented for the moment, and he did so. But by-and-by that young Gold, who played first fiddle in the quartette, came up with his auburn mane, with his fiddle tucked under his arm, and stopped to talk with Ruth and Fuller. Ferdinand, exchanging a friendly word or two with a doubtful voter, watched with interest. She was blushing still, and still surveying the ground, and marking patterns on it with the toe of her pretty little boot--conscious of his glance, the puss, no doubt, and was posing a little for his admiration.

Ferdinand sat in the Barfield pew, and Ruth sat opposite. Why, the philtre was working more and more! She was so conscious that she seemed scarcely able to raise her eyes; and when, as happened no less than three times, she met his glance, she looked down in the sweetest confusion. The victorious young gentleman was so absorbed in his own reflections that he took but little note of the service, and suffered his attention to it to be for the most part mechanical. But on a sudden a certain quite indefinable sense of general interest touched him.

Something was doing, or was going to be done, which was not altogether in the common.

"I publish banns of marriage," said Parson Hales, in those generous old port-wine tones of his, "between Reuben Gold, bachelor, and Ruth Fuller, spinster, both of this parish, and--"

Mr. Ferdinand de Blacquaire realized with a shocking suddenness and vividness that he was an a.s.s and a puppy. He learned later on that he was not absolutely either, but he gets a twinge out of "I publish banns of marriage," even unto this day.

Sennacherib, who sat near Reuben in the music-gallery, nudged him with his elbow.

"Knowest what's what?" he whispered, to the younger man's prodigious scandal and discomfort. "Hast got the best wench i' the parish."

Reuben would willingly have chosen another time and place for the receipt of congratulations.

Both Rachel and Ezra were in church, and each looked seriously and sadly down, thinking of what might have been.

When service was over the ringers met by previous arrangement, and startled Heydon Hay with a peal. Ezra was at Rachel's side when the flood of sound descended on them and drowned his salutation. But they shook hands, and walked away side by side until they reached the front of Ezra's house, when Rachel turned to say good-by.

"I'll walk a little way if you'll permit it, Miss Blythe," said Ezra; and the old maid a.s.senting, they walked on until the strenuous clang of the bells was softened into music. "They'll mek a handsome couple," said Ezra, breaking the silence.

"Upon acquaintance with the young man," said Rachel, "I discover many admirable qualities in him." The speech was prim still, and was likely to continue so, but it had lost something, and had gained something. It would be hard to say what it had lost or gained, and yet the change was there, and Ezra marked it, and thought the voice tenderer and more womanly. Perhaps the flood-tide of youth which had swept over her heart at their reconciliation had not entirely ebbed away, and its inward music lent an echo to her speech. If it were there still, it was that which lent some of its own liquid sweetness to her look. Not much, perhaps, and yet a little, and discernible.

There were half a dozen homeward-going worshippers ahead of them, a hundred yards away, and a handful more a hundred yards behind, as Ezra's backward glance discerned. They were all moving in the same direction, and at pretty much the same pace. The air was very quiet, and the clear music of the bells made no hinderance to their talk.

"I'm thinkin', Miss Blythe," said Ezra, slowly, walking with his hands clasped behind him and his downcast eyes just resting on her face and gliding away again, "I'm thinkin' as the spectacle of them two young lives being linked the one with the other gives a sort of a lonely seeming to the old age as you and me has got to look to."

"Perhaps so, Mr. Gold," said Rachel, stopping with dry brevity in her walk and holding out her hand. "I must hasten homeward. I wish you a good-morning."

Ezra took her proffered hand in his, shook it gravely, and accepted his dismissal.

Not many newspapers came to Heydon Hay, and the few that found their way thither reached the regular subscribers a day or two after their news was stale to London readers. Ezra got his _Argus_ regularly every Tuesday morning, and in fine weather would sit in the garden to read it.

It happened that on the Tuesday after the first time of asking of the banns, he sat beneath a full-leaved, distorted old cherry-tree, gravely reading "Our Paris Correspondence," when his eye fell upon an item of news or fancy which startled him and then set him a-thinking. "All Paris," said our correspondent, "was delightfully fluttered by the approaching marriage of the Marquis of B. and Madame De X. Madame De X. was a reigning beauty in the days of the Consul Plancus. It would be unfair to reveal her precise age even if one knew it. The Marquis of B.

was turned seventy. The two had been lovers in their youth, and had been separated by a misunderstanding. The lady had married, but the gentleman for her sake had kept single. Monsieur X. had lived with his bride for but a year, and had then succ.u.mbed to an attack of phthisis. Now, after a separation of forty years, the two lovers had met again, the ancient misunderstanding had been romantically explained, and they had decided to spend the winter of their days together. Paris was charmed, Paris was touched by this picture of a life-long devotion presented by the Marquis of B."

Ezra, rising from his seat, laid the paper upon it and walked soberly about the garden. Then he took up the journal, surrounded the paragraph which related to the devotion of the Marquis of B. with heavy ink-marks, waited patiently until the lines dried, folded up the paper, put it in his pocket, and walked into the road. There he turned to the left, and went straight on to Miss Blythe's cottage. There in the garden was Miss Blythe herself, in a cottage bonnet and long gloves, busily hoeing with little pecks at a raised flower-bed of the size of a tea-tray. She looked up when Ezra paused at the gate, nodded with brisk preciseness in answer to his salutation, and then went on industriously pecking at the flower-bed.

"My weekly paper has just arrived, Miss Blythe," said Ezra. "It appears to contain an unusual amount of interestin' matter, and I thought I'd ask you in pa.s.sing if you'd care to have a look at it."