I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales Part 10

"My poor lad. Step in an' break your fast with me--poor lad, poor lad!

Nay, but you shall. There's a b.i.t.c.h pup i' the stables that I want your judgment on. Bitter, eh? I dessay. I dessay. I'm thinking of walking her--lemon spot on the left ear--Rattler strain, of course. Dear me, this makes six generations I can count back that spot--an' game every one. Step in, poor lad, step in: she's a picture."

CHAPTER VI.

SIEGE IS LAID TO RUBY.

The sun was higher by some hours--high enough to be streaming brightly over the wall into the courtlage at Sheba--when Ruby awoke from a dreamless sleep. As she lifted her head from the pillow and felt the fatigue of last night yet in her limbs, she was aware also of a rich tenor voice uplifted beneath her window. Air and words were strange to her, and the voice had little in common with the world as she knew it.

Its exile on that coast was almost pathetic, and it dwelt on the notes with a feeling of a warmer land.

"O south be north-- O sun be shady-- Until my lady Shall issue forth: Till her own mouth Bid sun uncertain To draw his curtain, Bid south be south."

She stole out of bed and went on tiptoe to the window, where she drew the blind an inch aside. The stranger's footstep had ceased to crunch the gravel, and he stood now just beneath her, before the monthly-rose bush. Throughout the winter a blossom or two lingered in that sheltered corner; and he had drawn the nearest down to smell at it.

"O heart, her rose, I cannot ease thee Till she release thee And bid unclose.

So, till day come And she be risen, Rest, rose, in prison And heart be dumb!"

He snapped the stem and pa.s.sed on, whistling the air of his ditty, and twirling the rose between finger and thumb.

"Men are all ninnies," Ruby decided as she dropped the blind; "and I thank the fates that framed me female and priced me high. Heigho! but it's a difficult world for women. Either a man thinks you an angel, and then you know him for a fool, or he sees through you and won't marry you for worlds. If _we_ behaved like that, men would fare badly, I reckon.

Zeb loved me till the very moment I began to respect him: then he left off. If this one . . . I like his cool way of plucking my roses, though. Zeb would have waited and wanted, till the flower dropped."

She spent longer than usual over her dressing: so that when she appeared in the parlour the two men were already seated at breakfast. The room still bore traces of last night's frolic. The uncarpeted boards gleamed as the guests' feet had polished them; and upon the very spot where the stranger had danced now stood the breakfast-table, piled with broken meats. This alone of all the heavier pieces of furniture had been restored to its place. As Ruby entered, the stranger broke off an earnest conversation he was holding with the farmer, and stood up to greet her. The rose lay on her plate.

"Who has robbed my rose-bush?" she asked.

"I am guilty," he answered: "I stole it to give it back; and, not being mine, 'twas the harder to part with."

"To my mind," broke in Farmer Tresidder, with his mouth full of ham, "the best part o' the feast be the over-plush. Squab pie, muggetty pie, conger pie, sweet giblet pie--such a whack of pies do try a man, to be sure. Likewise junkets an' heavy cake be a responsibility, for if not eaten quick, they perish. But let it be mine to pa.s.s my days with a cheek o' pork like the present instance. Ruby, my dear, the young man here wants to lave us."

"Leave us?" echoed Ruby, p.r.i.c.king her finger deep in the act of pinning the stranger's rose in her bosom.

"You hear, young man. That's the tone o' speech signifyin' 'd.a.m.n it all!' among women. And so say I, wi' all these vittles cryin' out to be ate."

"These brisk days," began the stranger quietly, "are not to be let slip.

I have no wife, no kin, no friends, no fortune--or only the pound or two sewn in my belt. The rest has been lost to me these three days and lies with the _Sentinel_, five fathoms deep in your cove below. It is time for me to begin the world anew."

"But how about that notion o' mine?"

"We beat about the bush, I think," answered the other, pushing back his chair a bit and turning towards Ruby. "My dear young lady, your father has been begging me to stay--chiefly, no doubt, out of goodwill, but partly also that I may set him in the way to work this newly found wealth of his. I am sorry, but I must refuse."

"Why?" murmured the girl, taking courage to look at him.

"You oblige me to be brutal." His look was bent on her. He sat facing the window, and the light, as he leant sidewise, struck into the iris of his eyes and turned them blood-red in their depths. She had seen the same in dogs' eyes, but never before in a man's: and it sent a small shiver through her.

"Briefly," he went on, "I can stay on one condition only--that I marry you."

She rose from her seat and stood, grasping the back rail of the chair.

"Don't be alarmed. I merely state the condition, but of course it's awkward: you're already bound. Your father (who, I must say, honours me with considerable trust, seeing that he knows nothing about me) was good enough to suggest that your affection for this young fish-jowter was a transient fancy--"

"Father--" began the girl, rather for the sake of hearing her own voice than because she knew what to say.

Farmer Tresidder groaned. "Young man, where's your gumption? You'm makin' a mess o't--an' I thought 'ee so very clever."

"Really," pursued the stranger imperturbably, without lifting his eyes from Ruby, "I don't know which to admire most, your father's head or his heart; his head, I think, on the whole. So much hospitality, paternal solicitude, and commercial prudence was surely never packed into one scheme."

He broke off for a minute and, still looking at her, began to drum with his finger-tips on the cloth. His mouth was pursed up as if silently whistling an air. Ruby could neither move nor speak. The spell upon her was much like that which had lain on Young Zeb, the night before, during the hornpipe. She felt weak as a child in the presence of this man, or rather as one recovering from a long illness. He seemed to fill the room, speaking words as if they were living things, as if he were taking the world to bits and re-arranging it before her eyes.

She divined the pa.s.sion behind these words, and she longed to get a sight of it, to catch an echo of the voice that had sung beneath her window, an hour before. But when he resumed, it was in the same bloodless and contemptuous tone.

"Your father was very anxious that I should supplant this young jowter--"

"O Lord! I never said it."

"Allow me," said the stranger, without deigning to look round, "to carry on this courtship in my own way. Your father, young woman, desired--it was none of my suggestion--that I should insinuate myself into your good graces. I will not conceal from you my plain opinion of your father's judgment in these matters. I think him a fool."

"Name o' thunder!"

"Farmer, if you interrupt again I must ask you to get out. Young woman, kindly listen while I make you a formal proposition of marriage.

My name, I have told you, is Zebedee Minards. I was born by London Docks, but have neither home nor people. I have travelled by land and sea; slept on silk and straw; drunk wine and the salt water; fought, gambled, made love, begged my bread; in all, lost much and found much, in many countries. I am tossed on this coast, where I find you, and find also a man in my name having hold over you. I think I want to marry you. Will you give up this other man?"

He pursed up his lips again. With that sense of trifles which is sharpest when the world suddenly becomes too big for a human being, Ruby had a curiosity to know what he was whistling. And this worried her even while, after a minute's silence, she stammered out--

"I--I gave him up--last night."

"Very good. Now listen again. In an hour's time I walk to Porthlooe.

There I shall take the van to catch the Plymouth coach. In any case, I must spend till Sat.u.r.day in Plymouth. It depends on you whether I come back at the end of that time. You are going to cry: keep the tears back till you have answered me. Will you marry me?"

She put out a hand to steady herself, and opened her lips. She felt the room spinning, and wanted to cry out for mercy. But her mouth made no sound.

"Will you marry me?"

"Ye--e--yes!"

As the word came, she sank down in a chair, bent her head on the table, and burst into a storm of tears.

"The devil's in it!" shouted her father, and bounced out of the room.

No sooner had the door slammed behind him than the stranger's face became transfigured.

He stood up and laid a hand softly on the girl's head.

"Ruby!"

She did not look up. Her shoulders were shaken by one great sob after another.

"Ruby!"