CHAPTER XV

A DIFFICULT SITUATION

Does every man who names love in our lives Become a power, for that? Is love's true thing So much best to us, that what personates love Is next best? ... My soul is not a pauper; I can live At least my soul's life, without alms from men. --E. BARRETT BROWNING.

The distress which had overmastered Rona was so extreme that for a few moments it seemed to her a natural thing that Denzil should be consoling her. Her need of just that--just the comfort that mere petting brings in overwhelming trouble--was so intense, that there was fitness in the thought that he, the generous man who had done so much for her, should be the one to offer comfort in her perplexity.

But to the Squire, after the impetuous outrush of sympathy which had carried him, as it were, off his feet for a moment, there came an acute attack of self-consciousness which could not fail to communicate itself to the girl whom he still held in his arms.

How the fact that there was something not in the least paternal in the pressure of those arms was conveyed to Rona is not to be explained. But the fact remains that, in a very short time, she did realize it; and, sitting upright, drew herself away, and covered her quivering mouth with her drenched handkerchief.

"Oh, what an object I must be!" she gasped, shakily, with a sudden foolish laugh, forced and unreal.

He could not at once reply. He was moved and shaken to a surprising degree by his plunge into so new an experience. But he made a manful effort to answer her rationally. He thought he knew the cause of her tears, and was not merely astonished, but frightened at their vehemence. "Oh, do forgive me!" he stammered. "I--it was most unintentional. You are crying because I spoke to you so harshly at the landing-stage, are you not?"

This remarkable idea had the immediate effect of turning her thoughts and drying her tears. "Oh!" cried she, "how could you think me so silly? No, indeed, it is not that. It is a trouble, a real one, that has come upon me all in a minute. I ought to have expected it--I have always known that it must come. But, somehow, one forgets--one hopes. And now it has happened, and I must go away--away from everything that I--love."

The last word was almost inaudible, by reason of the tears which threatened to flow again. Denzil's spirits rose with a leap. That was it--Jealousy! Clever Aunt Bee, who had given him a hint! She was jealous of Myrtle Bentley, and this most natural feminine feeling had shown her the true state of her own heart. He snatched her hands.

"Darling, I know, I know! But you are quite mistaken! How could you have got such a preposterous notion into your head? And yet it was natural, too; for before I fell in love with you I had some thoughts of Miss--ah--Bentley. But it was nothing. And you must not go, my Rona, but stay here always, in your true home, with me. You will, won't you? Say that you will, Rona?" His pulses bounded as he saw how completely he had surprised her. "Have you not guessed?" he tenderly asked, stooping to look into her troubled, drooping face.

"Have you not known always that I was most awfully fond of you? I think I fell in love at first sight. But, of course, I would not speak until you were a woman grown, and able to decide for yourself."

The words affected Rona. She contrasted his behavior with that of his brother, as was inevitable. The rich man, who had so much to offer, had held back, in order that her choice might be free and deliberate. Her other suitor, the almost beggar, caught her, worked upon her gratitude, bound her by a promise at an age when she was not able to give a valid one. The thought of the deception which she had practiced upon this good, generous friend for two years weighed down her spirit. How little he had known her--the chivalrous, unworldly man, who had taken her on trust, knowing nothing of her antecedents! The real King Cophetua can never have seen, in the eyes of his beggar maid, a look of more fervent gratitude and admiration than Rona lifted to her suitor's face.

Of love, as between man and woman, she knew nothing at all. His gentle and affectionate interest was just the thing to appeal to her. And marriage with him would mean life at Normansgrave--life in safety and honor, and clean, open-eyed peace: life undisturbed by secrets, and dark Brotherhoods, and sinister memories. It seemed to her that Denzil stood in sunlight, beckoning her; while, from some dark tunnel, David stretched out hands to drag her down.

There was bewilderment and vain regret in her voice as she told her lover:

"Oh, you are good, you are good to me! There never was such a good man as you!"

No words could have been more sweet in his ears. He thought her quite right. He felt sure that he was a good, just man. And she had the insight to perceive it. No doubt marriages are made in heaven. Rona had been sent, bruised and maltreated, lying in a canal barge, to his door, to be the consolation of Providence for his undeserved misfortune in having a suicide brother. Ah, what a relief it would be to tell her all about his early manhood, and the tragedy of Felix's disgrace!

"Then--then--you do? You will?" he stammered. "Thank Heaven, my darling! I feared perhaps you might think me too old and grave. But with you I shall grow young again----"

She checked him as, taking her hands, he made a movement as if to draw her nearer.

"Oh, stop! Wait!" she gasped, falteringly, her head spinning with the excitement of the situation, which seemed to be carrying her away. "There is something I must tell you first--something you must hear. I don't know how to tell you.... Oh, Mr. Vanston, if only I had been perfectly frank with you from the first! You will be so--so disappointed in me. I feel as if--as if I dare not tell you!" She stopped, for the effort to speak seemed likely to choke her.

Denzil's face grew pale with apprehension. His heart knocked loudly. What was he about to hear?

"Wait," he said, kindly, but with a slight difference from his former tenderness of manner; "don't speak until you can do so without distressing yourself----"

Something in his tone--an indefinable drawing-back--caused her to cry out with urgency. "Listen! Had I guessed--had I had the least idea that you were going to say--what you said to me just now, I would have stopped you. Let us pretend that you did not say it! We are as we were this morning--you my kindest friend, I your most devoted child. Now listen. I am engaged already. I have been secretly engaged ever since I--almost ever since I first came into your house."

He was so surprised that for a few moments he sat quite still, while a dull brick-red surged up under his fair skin. Rona lowered before him the proud head she had always carried so high. At last he brought out: "Engaged! To whom?"

"To the young man who called himself my brother--to David Smith."

There was silence. Denzil took in and digested this new view of the girl at his side. He had thought her every idea and tendency known to him. He had believed that he himself had formed her tastes and decided her bent. And now he was faced by the awful thought that in her tender girlhood another man had kissed her--held her in his arms.... He remembered the conditions under which she had been found--on board a canal barge--with this wild youth who was not her brother! A horrible despondency assailed him, darkening the face of the fair landscape. All that he said was: "I could not have believed it of you, Rona."

She winced, but maintained her composure. For long had she dreaded this moment. It was almost with relief that she found herself living through it. In all her forecastings of the scene, she had pictured herself as making her avowal to Miss Rawson also.

Denzil alone was unquestionably easier to deal with.

She continued her confession.

"I have had a letter from him--to-day!"

"Indeed!" Denzil's voice sounded as though dashed with ice.

Its coldness was ominous, and stung her.

"Listen!" she urged. "If you turn from me, what is to become of me? You are the only person in all the world who cares--except him! You are the only person who could advise me, who could help--who could--could--save me from him."

There was a moment's tense silence; then he said, in a softer tone, "So you do not--love this--er--this young man to whom you are plighted?"

She shook her head. "I was a child, you know," she faltered. "And I--I hardly knew him. But, you see, he had saved my life. He had saved me from--worse than death, I think. I was very grateful to him." She mused for a moment, and then timidly asked, "Will you read his letter?"

Denzil was not a great-minded man, nor a clever man, but he had his code of honor. "Are you pledged to secrecy?" he asked. "I gather that this young man has claims upon your gratitude, if not your affection. Ought you to show me his letter?"

His integrity made her admire him afresh.

"Yes," she said, "I can hardly do otherwise, now. For he asks me to make a decision. He wants to come over and marry me, and take me out there to--to Siberia to live."

"To Siberia!" echoed Denzil in horror.

In truth, the idea of this brother of Rona's had occupied but a very small niche in his mind. He was abroad, he was poor, he hardly counted, except in so far as he would be overcome with joy at the marvelous condescension of Mr. Vanston in raising his sister to the rank and dignity of his wife.

And now he faced the idea that this man was a living power, to be reckoned with; that he could, if he chose, take Rona away, to the ends of the earth, and leave him bereft of all that made life pleasant to him. And, on that, another thought shot swiftly into his mind. If David Smith were no relative, then David Smith had no legal claim. To such claim as gratitude may give, Denzil had a far better right than he.

"You see," said Rona, "if he comes home to marry me, everything must be known. There cannot be any more secret-keeping. David can tell you nothing of me; when you found me, I had only known him a day or two; he knows no more than I do of my family or position. I have never been told who my mother was, nor my father. I was brought up in a convent school. I had been there ever since I was a baby. My uncle, Rankin Leigh, who took me away, was a perfectly detestable person--a person you would not speak to, nor have any dealings with. Oh," she wound up, with a sort of grim desperation, "it is of no use! You could never marry a girl like me. He had better come and fetch me away. I did promise him, and he--he--poor boy, he has nobody but me."

After a minute's helpless silence, "Will you show me his letter?" asked Denzil, wearily.

She drew the letter from her pocket and held it to him, keeping her face hidden. She heard him draw the paper from the envelope, and sat on in miserable humiliated silence while he read. The sunshine was no longer bright to her--the gray ruins were a warning of the decay of all earthly things, however strong. Before her lay a pilgrimage into the wilderness, a dark frowning future, and separation from all home ties.

He took a long time to read the letter--so long that at last she raised her head to look at him. He was seated, staring straight before him, his brows knit, and on his face a most curious expression of perplexity.

"Rona," he said, with a gravity such as she had never heard from him--"I judge from this letter that this young man who wishes to marry you is entangled with some gang of Nihilists."

She assented.

Denzil swallowed hard, once or twice, and then said, "Could you tell me how you came to make acquaintance with him?" In his mind was a cold chill, a sudden, awful thought. Cravatz, the Pole, had been tried and acquitted at the time of Felix's condemnation.

"Yes," said Rona, simply, "I will tell you. You know something about it--how my uncle shut me up in a room, because--because--well, chiefly because I would not let the dreadful man, Levy, kiss me. I knew, somehow, that that man meant to do me harm--I could see in his eyes that he was wicked. But, of course, I was helpless--as helpless as a rabbit; and they were starving me, so that I was weak, and I was so afraid that I should not be able to refuse food if they brought it to me--at any price. So I decided that the only thing I could do was to commit suicide. There were railway lines outside the window, where I was locked up. So I said my prayers, and then I opened the window, stood upon the sill, shut my eyes, and jumped."

Denzil uttered a cry. "Rona!" He dropped his head into his hands, and hid his face.

"Yes," she said, quietly, "what else was there for me to do? But just below my room there was an iron balcony, and I fell upon that, all doubled up over the railing. Inside that room," solemnly continued the girl, "was David Smith. What do you think he was doing? He was in the act of drinking laudanum, with the very same idea. He, too, was in the hands of his enemies. He, too, like me, was starving. He had nobody in the world but his half-brother, who did not love him, and was ashamed of him. He saw only one way out, and he was going to die. But when I fell, he rushed out and dragged me in. I fought and struggled to get away, for, of course, I did not know who he was. But when I was quieter, and looked at him, I could see that he was a gentleman, though he was so terribly thin and starved. So we ran away together. I managed, with his help, to get down to the canal wharf, where he knew a man, who helped us to hide aboard a barge. But I had been so badly hurt that the effort was too much for me, and I don't remember much else, until I woke up in the Cottage Hospital."

Silence, broken only by the humming of summer insects among the grass. Then Denzil asked, without raising his hidden face:

"And have you never seen him since?"

"Yes, once," replied Rona.

"When?" asked the hollow voice.

"One Sunday evening, just before he went away with Mr. Vronsky. He asked me to meet him, and I went to the old arbor while you were at evening service. He was unhappy and lonely, craving for love. He had been good to me, and I was sorry for him. And when he asked me to promise to be his wife when I grew up, I promised, because it seemed a little thing to do for him. I was happy with you, and he was all alone----" Her voice broke.

At last Denzil spoke. "Then it was really he whom the old gardener saw, as he told us. Rona, the man who saved you is not called David Smith at all. He is my younger brother, Felix Vanston."

The shock of these words brought the girl to her feet with a spring. "Your brother? Your brother?" she cried, incoherently. "Oh, no, for his brother was hard and merciless, and you--you are always so good and generous! That can't be true--it simply can't!"

The Squire, too, rose. "Let me tell you something of our early life," he said, with urgency. "You have told me the truth--the truth which I ought to have heard when first you came to us. If I had known--but I do my brother justice. He did not wish me to know that it was he until he had had a chance to show that he meant to try and do better. He has done better. He has apparently put in two years of good, steady work, and conquered a position for himself. But his discreditable past still drags at his heels. What did he tell you of his past, if I may ask the question?"

She answered, softly and low, "He told me that he had been in prison. But he said he was very sorry. He was misled, enticed, by bad men, who were too clever for him. He was young, and his head was full of great ideas."

"Let us walk along, away from the others," said Denzil, "and I will try and tell you something about Felix's mother."