Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 47

They sat later--the gentlemen by their wine--on the stone terrace overlooking the wide champaign.

"But," said Ruth, for she observed that the boy was restless, "I must leave Tatty to play hostess while I take a scamper with d.i.c.k.

There's a pool below here, d.i.c.ky, with oh, such trout!"

d.i.c.ky was on his feet in a trice. "Rods?"

"Rods, if you will. But there are the stables, too, to be seen; and the gunroom--"

"Stables? Gunroom?--Oh, come along!--the day is too short!" Here d.i.c.ky paused. "But would you like to come too, sir?" he asked, addressing Mr. Hanmer.

Mrs. Harry laughed. "Those two," she told Ruth, "are like master and dog, and one never can be quite sure which is which."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Hanmer, "you must surely see that Lady Vyell wants you all to herself. Yet I dare say the captain and I will be strolling around to the stables before long."

"Ay, when this decanter is done," agreed Captain Harry.

"That was rather pretty of you," said Ruth, as she and the boy went down the terrace stairs together.

"What?--asking old Hanmer to come with us? . . . Oh, but he's the best in the world, and, what's more, never speaks out of his turn.

He has a tremendous opinion of you, too."

"Indeed?"

"Worships the very ground you tread on."

Ruth laughed. "Were those his words?"

d.i.c.ky laughed too. "Likely they would be! Fancy old Han talking like a sick schoolgirl! I made the words up to please you: but it's the truth, all the same."

They reached the pool; and the boy, after ten minutes spent in discovering the biggest monster among the trout and attempting to tickle him with a twig, fell to prodding the turfed brink thoughtfully.

"We talked a deal about you, first-along," he blurted at length. "I fancy old Han guessed that I was--was--well, fond of you and all that sort of thing."

"Dear d.i.c.ky!"

"Boys are terrible softies at this age," my young master admitted.

"And, after all, it was rather a knockdown, you know, when papa's letter came with the news."

"But we're friends, eh?--you and I--just as before?"

"Oh, of course--only you might have told. . . . And I've brought you a parrot. Remember the parrots in that old fellow's shop in Port Na.s.sau?"

She led him to talk of his sea adventures, of the ship, of the West Indies among which they had been cruising; and as they wandered back from terrace to terrace he poured out a stream of boyish gossip about his shipmates, from Captain Vyell down to the cook's dog. Half of it was Hebrew to her; but in every sentence of it, and in the gay, eager voice, she read that the child had unerringly found his vocation; that the sea lent him back to the sh.o.r.e for a romp and a holiday, but that to the sea he belonged.

"There's one thing against shipboard though." He had come to a halt, head aslant, and said it softly, eyeing a tree some thirty yards distant.

"What?"

"No stones lying about." Picking up one, he launched it at a nuthatch that clung pecking at the moss on the bark. "Hit him, by George! Come--"

He ran and she raced after him for a few paces, but stopped half-way, with her hand to her side. The nuthatch was not hit after all, but had bobbed away into the green gloom.

"Tell you what--you can't run as you used," he said critically.

"No? . . ." She was wondering at the mysterious life a-flutter in her side--that it should be his brother.

"Not half. I'll have to get you into training. . . . Now show me the stables, please."

They were retracing their steps when along a green alley they saw Mr.

Hanmer coming down to meet them. He was alone, and his face, always grave, seemed to Ruth graver than ever.

"d.i.c.ky!" said he. "Service, if you please."

"Ay, sir!" d.i.c.ky's small person stiffened at once, and d.i.c.ky's hand went up to the salute.

"Wait here, please. I wish a word in private with Lady Vyell--if you will forgive me, ma'am?"

"Why to be sure, sir," she answered, wondering. As he turned, she walked on with him. After some fifty paces she confronted him under the pale-green dappled shadows of the alley.

"Something has happened? Is it serious?"

"Yes."

Looking straight before him, as they resumed their walk, he told her; in brief words that seemed, as he jerked them out, to be pumped from him; that made no single coherent sentence, and yet were concise as a despatch.

This in substance was Mr. Hanmer's report:--

They had remained on the terrace, seated, as she had left them-- Captain and Mrs. Harry, Miss Quiney and he. The Captain was talking.

. . . A servant brought word that two ladies--Mr. Hanmer could not recall their names--had called from Boston and desired to see Mrs.

Vyell. "Surely," protested Mrs. Harry, "they must mean Lady Vyell?"

The servant was positive: Mrs. Captain Vyell had been the name.

"They are anxious to pay their respects," suggested Miss Quiney.

"Anxious indeed! Why we landed but a few hours since. They must have galloped." Miss Quiney was sent to offer them refreshment and discover their business.

Miss Quiney goes off on her errand. Minutes elapse. After many minutes the servant reappears. "Miss Quiney requests Mrs. Harry's attendance." Mrs. Harry goes.

"Women are queer cattle," says Captain Harry sententiously, and talks on. By-and-by the servant appears yet again. Mr. Hanmer is sent for. "Why, 'tis like a story I've read somewhere, about a family sent one by one to stop a tap running," says Captain Harry.

"But I'll say this for the women--I'm always the last they bother."

Following the servant, Mr. Hanmer--so runs his report--enters the great drawing-room to find Miss Quiney stretched on the sofa, her face buried in cushions, and Mrs. Harry standing erect and confronting two ladies of forbidding aspect.

"In brief," concluded Mr. Hanmer, "she sent me for you."

"To confront them with her? I wonder what their business can be. . . ." With a glance at his side face she added, "I think you have not told me all."

"No," he confessed haltingly; "that's true enough. In--in fact Mrs. Harry first employed me to show them to the door."