Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 34

Sir Oliver did not perceive this. In the first flush of conquest all men are a trifle fatuous, un.o.bservant. No woman is. Miss Quiney's arms did not suddenly go out to Ruth. Ruth noted it. She was just: she understood. But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember indelibly whatever small thing happens at this crisis of their lives.

In the end Miss Quiney stretched forth her arms; but at first she seemed to shrivel and grow very small in her chair. Nor can her first comment be called adequate,--

"Dear sir--oh, but excuse me!--this is so sudden!"

Later, when she and Ruth were left alone, she explained, still a little tremulously, "You took me all of a heap, my dear! I can hardly realise it, even now. . . . Such a splendid position! You will go to London, I doubt not; and be presented at Court; and be called Lady Vyell. . . .

Have you thought of the responsibilities?"

She had, and she had not. Her own promised splendours, the command of wealth and of a great household--this aspect of the future was blank to her as yet. But another presented itself and frightened her: it engaged her conscience in doubts even when she shook it free of fears.

The Family--that mysterious shadow of which Lady Caroline no doubt showed as the ugliest projection! Ruth was conscientious. She divined that behind Lady Caroline's aggressiveness the shadow held something truly sacred and worth guarding; something impalpable and yet immensely solid; something not to be defied or laughed away because inexplicable, but venerable precisely because it could not be explained; something not fashioned hastily upon reason, but built by slow accretion, with the years for its builders--mortared by sentiments, memories, traditions, decencies, trivialities good and bad, even (may be) by the blood of foolish quarrels--but founded and welded more firmly, ma.s.sed more formidably, than any structure of mere reason; and withal a temple wherein she, however chastely, might never serve without profaning it.

I do most eagerly desire you, at this point in her story, to be just to Ruth Josselin. I wish you to remember what she had suffered, in the streets, at the hands of self-righteous folk; to understand that it had killed all religion in her, with all belief in its rites, but not the essential goodness of her soul.

She at any rate, and according to the light given her, was incurably just. Weighing on the one hand her love and Oliver Vyell's, on the other the half-guessed injury their marriage might do to him and to others of his race; weighing them not hastily but through long hours of thought: carrying her doubts off to the hills and there considering them in solitude, under the open sky; casting out from the problem all of self save only her exceeding love; this strange girl--made strange by man's cruelty--decided to give herself in due time, but to exact no marriage.

Why should she? The blessing of a clergyman meant nothing to her, as she was sure it meant nothing to her lover. Why should she tie him a day beyond the endurance of his love? Beyond the death of the thing itself what sanct.i.ty could live in its husk? And, moreover, in any event was she not his slave?

So she reasoned: and let the reader call her reasoning by any name he will. By some standards it was wicked; by others wrong. It forgot one of the strongest arguments against itself, as she was in time to prove.

But let none call her unchaste.

After certain weeks she brought her arguments to him; standing before him, halting in her speech a little, but entreating him with eyes as straight as they were modest. Her very childishness appealed against her arguments.

He listened, marvelled, and broke into joyous laughter. He would have none of it. Why, she was fit to be a queen!--a thousand times too good for him. His family? Their prejudices should fall down before her and worship. As little as she did he set store by rites of the Church or believe in them: but, as the world went, to neglect them would be to stint her of the chief honour. Was this fair to him, who desired to heap honours upon her and would stretch for them even beyond his power?

His pa.s.sion, rather than his arguments, overbore her. That pa.s.sion rejuvenated him. Once or twice it choked his voice, and her heart leapt; for she was a sensible girl and, remembering the dead Margaret Dance, had schooled herself to know that what was first love with her, drenching her heart with ecstasy, could never be first love with him.

Yet now and again the miracle declared itself and instead of a lord, commanding her, he stood before her a boy: and with a boy's halting speech--ah, so much dearer than eloquence!

Beyond a doubt he was over head and ears in love. He was honest, too, in his desire to set her high and make a queen of her. In Boston, Mr.

Ned Manley, architect of genius, was sitting up into the small hours of morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked.

Already on a hillside between Boston and Sweet.w.a.ter Farm--the hill itself could be seen from the farmstead, but not their operations, which lay on the far side--three hundred labourers were toiling in gangs, levelling, terracing, hewing down forest trees, laying foundations.

Already ships were heading for Boston Harbour with statuary and wrought marble in their holds, all to beautify a palace meet for Oliver Vyell's bride. Thus love wrought in him, in a not extraordinary way if we allow for his extraordinary means. He and Ruth, between them, were beginning to sing the eternal duet of courtship:--

_He_.--Since that I love, this world has grown; Yea, widens all to be possest.

_She_--Since that I love, it narrows down Into one little nest.

_He_.--Since that I love, I rage and burn O'erwhelming Nineveh with Rome!

_She_.--In vain! in vain! Fond man return-- Such doings be at home!

He had reached an age to know himself in his own despite. He was no boy, to dream of building or overthrowing empires. But he could build his love a palace. His friend Batty Langton bore with all this energy and smiled wisely.

Ruth guessed nothing of these preparations. But his vehemence broke down her scruples, overbore and swept away what she had built in hours of patient thinking. She yielded: she would be married, since he willed it.

But the debate had been; and it left Tatty, with her maxims and taken-for-granted practicalities, hard to endure at times.

"The outfit?" Tatty would suggest. "At this distance from civilisation we cannot even begin to take it in hand. Yet it should be worthy of the occasion, and men--speaking with all respect of Sir Oliver--are apt to overlook these things. Dear Ruth, I do not know if you have thought of returning to Sabines. . . . So much handier. . . ."

Ruth, half-wilfully, refused to think of returning to Sabines.

But if Tatty fussed, the Cordery lads made more than recompense for her fussing. From the hour when, at supper-time, Sir Oliver led Miss Josselin into the kitchen, his bride affianced, all discord ceased between these young men. He was their master and patron, and they thenceforth were her servants only--her equal champions should occasion ever be given.

Thenceforth too, and until the hour when at nightfall she drove away from Sweet.w.a.ter Farm, she was their G.o.ddess: and as, while Phoebus served shepherd to Admetus, his fellow swains noted that never had harvest been so heavy or life so full of sweet and healthy rivalries, so these young men, who but once or twice saw Ruth Josselin after the hour of her departure, talked in scattered homesteads all their days of that good time at Sweet.w.a.ter, and of the season's wonderful bearings.

Undoubtedly the winter was a genial one--so genial that scarcely a day denied Ruth a bracing ride: the spring that followed seemed to rain and shine almost in obedience to Farmer Cordery's evening prayer (and it never left the Almighty in doubt of his exact wishes). Summer came, and the young men, emulous but no longer bickering, scythed down prodigious swathes; harvest-fall, and they put in their sickles among tall stalk and full ear.

Sir Oliver and Ruth watched the harvest. When all was gathered, the young men begged that she would ride home on the last load.

They escorted her back to the farmstead, walking two-by-two before the cart, under the young moon.

Next evening at the same hour she bade them farewell and climbed into a light waggon that stood ready, its lamps throwing long shafts of light.

Horses had been sent on ahead, with two servants for escort, and would await her at dawn, far on the road; but to-night she would sleep in the waggon, upon a scented bed of hay. The reason for this belated start Sir Oliver kept a secret from her. There was a certain hill upon the way, and he would not have her pa.s.s it by daylight. He had returned that morning to Boston; Miss Quiney with him.

Ruth's eyes were moist to leave these good folk. Farmer Cordery cleared his throat and blessed her in parting. She blessed them in return.

The waggon, after following the Boston road for a while, turned northward, bearing her by strange ways and through the night towards Port Na.s.sau.

Chapter II.

THE RETURN.

The breakers boomed up the beach, and in the blown spray Old Josselin pottered, bareheaded and barefoot. His eyesight had grown dimmer, but otherwise his bodily health had improved, for nowadays he ate food enough: and, as for purblindness, why there was no real need to keep watch on the sea. He did it from habit.

Ruth came on him much as Sir Oliver had come on him three years before; the roar of the breakers swallowing all sound of Madcap's hoofs until she was close at his shoulder. Now as then he turned about with a puzzled face, peered, and lifted his hand a little way as if to touch his forehead.

"Your ladyship--" he mumbled, noting only her fine clothes.

"Grandfather!"

She slipped down from saddle and kissed him, in sight of the grooms, who had reined up fifty yards away.

"What? Ruth, is it? . . . Here's news, now, for your mother, poor soul!"

"How is she? Take me to her at once, please."

"Eh! . . . Your mother keeps well enough; though doited, o' course-- doited. Properly grown you be, too, I must say. . . . I didn't reckernise ye comin' on me like that. Inches ye've grown."

"And you--well, you look just the same as ever; only fuller and haler."

"Do I?" The old man gave her in the old way certain details of his health. "But I'm betterin'. Food's a blessin', however ye come by it."

On a sudden, as she read his thought, the very tokens of health in his face accused her . . . and, a moment since, she had been merely glad to note them.

"Clothes too, ye'll say? I don't set store by clothes, meself; but a fine han'some quean they make of ye. That's a mare, too! Cost a hundred guineas, I shouldn't wonder. . . . Well, an' how's the gentleman keepin'? Turned into a lord, you told us, in one o' your letters: that, or something o' the sort."

"Then at any rate you have read my letters?"