The Way We Live Now (59 page)

‘Bother what she says!' Felix was not at all anxious to hear what aunt Pipkin might have to say upon such an occasion.

‘She's right too. Of course she knows there's somebody. She ain't such a fool as to think that I'm out at these hours to sing psalms with a lot of young women. She says that whoever it is ought to speak out his mind. There – that's what she says. And she's right A girl has to mind herself, though she's ever so fond of a young man.'

Sir Felix sucked his cigar and then took a long drink of brandy and water. Having emptied the beaker before him, he rapped for the waiter
and called for another. He intended to avoid the necessity of making any direct reply to Ruby's importunities. He was going to New York very shortly, and looked on his journey thither as an horizon in his future beyond which it was unnecessary to speculate as to any farther distance. He had not troubled himself to think how it might be with Ruby when he was gone. He had not even considered whether he would or would not tell her that he was going, before he started. It was not his fault that she had come up to London. She was an ‘awfully jolly girl', and he liked the feeling of the intrigue better perhaps than the girl herself. But he assured himself that he wasn't going to give himself any ‘d—d trouble.' The idea of John Crumb coming up to London in his wrath had never occurred to him – or he would probably have hurried on his journey to New York instead of delaying it, as he was doing now. ‘Let's go in and have a dance,' he said.

Ruby was very fond of dancing – perhaps liked it better than anything in the world. It was heaven to her to be spinning round the big room with her lover's arm tight round her waist, with one hand in his and her other hanging over his back. She loved the music, and loved the motion. Her ear was good, and her strength was great, and she never lacked breath. She could spin along and dance a whole room down, and feel at the time that the world could have nothing to give better worth having than that – and such moments were too precious to be lost. She went and danced, resolving as she did so that she would have some answer to her question before she left her lover on that night.

‘And now I must go,' she said at last ‘You'll see me as far as the Angel, won't you?' Of course he was ready to see her as far as the Angel. ‘What am I to say to the squire?'

‘Say nothing.'

‘And what am I to say to aunt?'

‘Say to her? Just say what you have said all along.'

‘I've said nothing all along – just to oblige you, Felix. I must say something. A girl has got herself to mind. What have you got to say to me, Felix?'

He was silent for about a minute, meditating his answer. ‘If you bother me I shall cut it, you know.'

‘Cut it!'

‘Yes – cut it. Can't you wait till I am ready to say something?'

‘Waiting will be the ruin o' me, if I wait much longer. Where am I to go, if Mrs Pipkin won't have me no more?'

‘I'll find a place for you.'

‘You find a place! No; that won't do. I've told you all that before. I'd sooner go into service, or –'

‘Go back to John Crumb.'

‘John Crumb has more respect for me nor you. He'd make me his wife to-morrow, and only be too happy.'

‘I didn't tell you to come away from him,' said Sir Felix.

‘Yes, you did. You told me as I was to come up to London when I saw you at Sheepstone Beeches – didn't you? And you told me you loved me – didn't you? And that if I wanted anything you'd get it done for me – didn't you?'

‘So I will. What do you want? I can give you a couple of sovereigns, if that's what it is.'

‘No it isn't – and I won't have your money. I'd sooner work my fingers off. I want you to say whether you mean to marry me. There!'

As to the additional lie which Sir Felix might now have told, that would have been nothing to him. He was going to New York, and would be out of the way of any trouble; and he thought that lies of that kind to young women never went for anything. Young women, he thought, didn't believe them, but liked to be able to believe afterwards that they had been deceived. It wasn't the lie that stuck in his throat, but the fact that he was a baronet It was in his estimation ‘confounded impudence' on the part of Ruby Ruggles to ask to be his wife. He did not care for the lie, but he did not like to seem to lower himself by telling such a lie as that at her dictation. ‘Marry, Ruby! No, I don't ever mean to marry. It's the greatest bore out. I know a trick worth two of that.'

She stopped in the street and looked at him. This was a state of things of which she had never dreamed. She could imagine that a man should wish to put it off, but that he should have the face to declare to his young woman that he never meant to many at all, was a thing that she could not understand. What business had such a man to go after any young woman? ‘And what do you mean that I'm to do, Sir Felix?' she said.

Just go easy, and not make yourself a bother.'

‘Not make myself a bother! Oh, but I will; I will. I'm to be carrying on with you, and nothing to come of it; but for you to tell me that you don't mean to marry, never at all! Never?'

‘Don't you see lots of old bachelors about, Ruby?'

‘Of course I does. There's the squire. But he don't come asking girls to keep him company.'

‘That's more than you know, Ruby.'

‘If he did he'd marry her out of hand – because he's a gentleman. That's what he is, every inch of him. He never said a word to a girl – not to do her any harm, I'm sure,' and Ruby began to cry. ‘You mustn't come no further now, and I'll never see you again – never! I think you're the falsest young man, and the basest, and the lowest-minded that I ever heard tell of. I know there are them as don't keep their words. Things turn up, and they can't. Or they gets to like others better; or there ain't nothing to live on. But for a young man to come after a young woman, and then say, right out, as he never means to marry at all, is the lowest-spirited fellow that ever was. I never read of such a one in none of the books. No, I won't. You go your way, and I'll go mine.' In her passion she was as good as her word, and escaped from him, running all the way to her aunt's door. There was in her mind a feeling of anger against the man, which she did not herself understand, in that he would incur no risk on her behalf. He would not even make a lover's easy promise, in order that the present hour might be made pleasant. Ruby let herself into her aunt's house, and cried herself to sleep with a child on each side of her.

On the next day Roger called. She had begged Mrs Pipkin to attend the door, and had asked her to declare, should any gentleman ask for Ruby Ruggles, that Ruby Ruggles was out. Mrs Pipkin had not refused to do so; but, having heard sufficient of Roger Carbury to imagine the cause which might possibly bring him to the house, and having made up her mind that Ruby's present condition of independence was equally unfavourable to the lodging-house and to Ruby herself, she determined that the squire, if he did come, should see the young lady. When therefore Ruby was called into the little back parlour and found Roger Carbury there, she thought that she had been caught in a trap. She had been very cross all the morning. Though in her rage she had been able on the previous evening to dismiss her titled lover, and to imply that she never meant to see him again, now, when the remembrance of the loss came upon her amidst her daily work – when she could no longer console herself in her drudgery by thinking of the beautiful things that were in store for her, and by flattering herself that though at this moment she was little better than a maid of all work in a lodging-house, the time was soon coming in which she would bloom forth as a baronet's bride – now in her solitude she almost regretted the precipitancy of her own conduct. Could it be that she would never see him again – that she would dance no more in that gilded bright saloon? And might it not be possible that she had pressed him too hard? A baronet of course would
not like to be brought to book, as she could bring to book such a one as John Crumb. But yet – that he should have said never – that he would never marry! Looking at it in any light, she was very unhappy, and this coming of the squire did not serve to cure her misery.

Roger was very kind to her, taking her by the hand, and bidding her sit down, and telling her how glad he was to find that she was comfortably settled with her aunt. ‘We were all alarmed, of course, when you went away without telling anybody where you were going.'

‘Grandfather ‘d been that cruel to me that I couldn't tell him.'

‘He wanted you to keep your word to an old friend of yours.'

‘To pull me all about by the hairs of my head wasn't the way to make a girl keep her word – was it, Mr Carbury? That's what he did, then; – and Sally Hockett, who is there, heard it. I've been good to grandfather, whatever I may have been to John Crumb; and he shouldn't have treated me like that. No girl ‘d like to be pulled about the room by the hairs of her head, and she with her things all off, just getting into bed.'

The squire had no answer to make to this. That old Ruggles should be a violent brute under the influence of gin and water did not surprise him. And the girl, when driven away from her home by such usage, had not done amiss in coming to her aunt But Roger had already heard a few words from Mrs Pipkin as to Ruby's late hours, had heard also that there was a lover, and knew very well who that lover was. He also was quite familiar with John Crumb's state of mind. John Crumb was a gallant, loving fellow who might be induced to forgive everything, if Ruby would only go back to him; but would certainly persevere, after some slow fashion of his own, and ‘see the matter out', as he would say himself, if she did not go back. ‘As you found yourself obliged to run away,' said Roger, ‘I'm glad that you should be here; but you don't mean to stay here always?'

‘I don't know,' said Ruby.

‘You must think of your future life. You don't want to be always your aunt's maid.'

‘Oh dear, no.'

‘It would be very odd if you did, when you may be the wife of such a man as Mr Crumb.'

‘Oh, Mr Crumb! Everybody is going on about Mr Crumb. I don't like Mr Crumb, and I never will like him.'

‘Now look here, Ruby; I have come to speak to you very seriously, and I expect you to hear me. Nobody can make you marry Mr Crumb, unless you please.'

‘Nobody can't, of course, sir.'

‘But I fear you have given him up for somebody else, who certainly won't marry you, and who can only mean to ruin you.'

‘Nobody won't ruin me,' said Ruby. ‘A girl has to look to herself, and I mean to look to myself.'

‘I'm glad to hear you say so, but being out at night with such a one as Sir Felix Carbury is not looking to yourself. That means going to the Devil head foremost.'

‘I ain't a going to the Devil,' said Ruby, sobbing and blushing.

‘But you will, if you put yourself into the hands of that young man. He's as bad as bad can be. He's my own cousin, and yet I'm obliged to tell you so. He has no more idea of marrying you than I have; but were he to marry you, he could not support you. He is ruined himself, and would ruin any young woman who trusted him. I'm almost old enough to be your father, and in all my experience I never came across so vile a young man as he is. He would ruin you and cast you from him without a pang of remorse. He has no heart in his bosom – none.' Ruby had now given way altogether, and was sobbing with her apron to her eyes in one corner of the room. ‘That's what Sir Felix Carbury is,' said the squire, standing up so that he might speak with the more energy, and talk her down more thoroughly. ‘And if I understand it rightly,' he continued, ‘it is for a vile thing such as he, that you have left a man who is as much above him in character, as the sun is above the earth. You think little of John Crumb because he does not wear a fine coat.'

‘I don't care about any man's coat,' said Ruby; ‘but John hasn't ever a word to say, was it ever so.'

‘Words to say! what do words matter? He loves you. He loves you after that fashion that he wants to make you happy and respectable, not to make you a by-word and a disgrace.' Ruby struggled hard to make some opposition to the suggestion, but found herself to be incapable of speech at the moment. ‘He thinks more of you than of himself, and would give you all that he has. What would that other man give you? If you were once married to John Crumb, would anyone then pull you by the hairs of your head? Would there be any want then, or any disgrace?'

‘There ain't no disgrace, Mr Carbury.'

‘No disgrace in going about at midnight with such a one as Felix Carbury? You are not a fool, and you know that it is disgraceful. If you are not unfit to be an honest man's wife, go back and beg that man's pardon.'

‘John Crumb's pardon! No!'

‘Oh, Ruby, if you knew how highly I respect that man, and how lowly I think of the other; how I look on the one as a noble fellow, and regard the other as dust beneath my feet, you would perhaps change your mind a little.'

Her mind was being changed. His words did have their effect, though the poor girl struggled against the conviction that was borne in upon her. She had never expected to hear any one call John Crumb noble. But she had never respected any one more highly than Squire Carbury, and he said that John Crumb was noble. Amidst all her misery and trouble she still told herself that it was but a dusty, mealy – and also a dumb nobility.

‘I'll tell you what will take place,' continued Roger. ‘Mr Crumb won't put up with this you know.'

‘He can't do nothing to me, sir.'

‘That's true enough. Unless it be to take you in his arms and press you to his heart, he wants to do nothing to you. Do you think he'd injure you if he could? You don't know what a man's love really means, Ruby. But he could do something to somebody else. How do you think it would be with Felix Carbury, if they two were in a room together and nobody else by.'