"As well as a mason? You will have to turn hunter, too, before long, else your cook will be out of work. Dear, dear, how we begin to crowd the days!"

For a whole week he worked at intervals, building his chimney with stones from the river bed, and laying them well and truly. Ruth helped him at whiles, when household duties did not claim her. Now and then, when his back ached with the toil, he would break off for a spell and watch her as she stooped over the cooking-pot, or knelt by the stream-side, bare-legged, with petticoat kilted high, beating the linen on a flat stone.

When the chimney was finished they were in great anxiety lest, being built close under the cliff, it should catch a down-draught of the wind and fill the dwelling with smoke. But the wind came, and, as it turned out, made a leap from the cliff to the valley, singing high overhead and missing the chimney clear. When they lit their first fire indoors and ran forth to see the smoke rising in a thin blue pillar against the pines, they laughed elated, and at supper drank to their handiwork.

Ruth's first sacrifice on the new hearth was the solemn heating of a flat iron, to crimp and pleat her lover's body-linen.

Next day he shot a deer and flayed it; and, the next, set to work to build a bed. Their couch had been of white linen laid upon skins, the skins resting on a thick mat of leaves. Now he raised it from the ground on four posts, joining the posts with a stout framework and lacing the framework with cords criss-crossed like the netting of a hammock. Also he replaced the curtain at the entrance with a door of split pinewood, and fashioned a wooden bolt.

The halcyon weather held for two weeks, the delicate weather of Indian summer. Day by day the forest dropped its leaves under a blue windless sky; but the nights sharpened their frosts. Ruth, stealing early to her bathing-pool, found it edged with thin ice, and paused, breaking it with taps of her naked foot while she braced her body for the cold shock.

The flat rock over the fall was still their supper-table. After supping they would wrap themselves closer in their cloaks of bearskin, and sit for long, his arm about her body. The stars wheeled overhead. At a little distance shone the open window inviting them. From their ledge they overlooked the world.

She marvelled at the zest he threw into every moment and detail of this strange honeymooning. He had taken pride even in skinning and cutting up the slain deer.

She had, in fact, being fearful of her experiment; had planned it, in some sort, as a test for him. She was no sentimentalist. She had believed that he loved her—well she knew it now. But for him this could not be first love. Many times she had bethought her of the dead Margaret Dance, and as a sensible girl without resentment. But, herself in the ecstasy of first love, she marvelled how it could die and anything comparable spring up in its room; and she had only her own heart to interrogate. Her own heart told her that it was impossible. "Fool!" said her own heart. "Is it not enough that he condescends—that you have found favour in his sight—you, that asked but to be his slave?"

"Fool!" said her heart again. "Would you be jealous of this dead woman? Then jealousy is not cruel as the grave, but crueller."

And she retorted, "The woman is dead and cannot grudge it. Ah, conscience! are you the only part of me that has not slept in his arms. I want him all—all!"

"How can that be—since you are not his first love?" objected conscience, falling back upon its old position.

"Be still," she whispered back. "See how love is recreating him!"

Indeed, the secret may have lain in her passing loveliness—by night, beside their fire on the rock, he would sit motionless watching her face for minutes together, or the poise of her head, or the curve of her chin as she tilted it to ponder the stars; and, in part, the woodland life, chosen by her so cunningly, may have bewitched him for a space. Certain it is that during their sojourn here he became a youth again, eager and glad as a youth, passionate as a youth, laughing, throwing his heart into simple things and not shrinking from coarser trials—as when he plunged his hands into the blood of the deer.

This story is of Ruth, not of Oliver Vyell; or of him only in so far as his star ruled hers. For the moment their stars danced together and the common cares of this world stood back for a space and left a floor for them.

Their bliss was absolute. But the seed of its corruption lay in him. Her spirit was chaste, as her life had been. For him, before ever Margaret Dance met and crossed his path, he had lived loosely, squandering his manhood; and of this squandering let one who later underwent it record the inevitable sentence.

"But ah! it hardens all within, And petrifies the feeling."

Nor could this temporary miracle do more for Oliver Vyell than wake in him a false springtide of the heart and delay by so long the revenge of his past upon his present self.

Midway in the third week the weather broke. He had foreseen this, and early one morning set forth upon Bayard, the mare following obediently as a dog, along the downhill circuit to the village. There he would leave them in stall at the Ferry Inn, to be fetched by his grooms. Ruth walked some way beside him, telling off a list of purchases to be made at the village store to replenish their household stock.

She left him and turned back, under boughs too bare to hide the lowering sky. She had gained the hut and he the village before the storm broke. Indeed it gave him time to make his purchases and reach the Inn, where a heavy mail-bag awaited him. He was served with bread, cheese, and beer in the Inn parlour, and dealt with the letters then and there; answering some, tearing up others, albeit still with a sense of bringing back his habits of business to a world with which he had no concern. While he wrote, always in haste, on the cheap paper the Inn supplied, the storm broke and with such darkness that he pulled out his watch. It was yet early afternoon. He called for candles and wrote on.

The last letter, addressed to Batty Langton, Esquire, he superscribed "Most urgent," and having sealed it, arose and shouldered his sack for the homeward tramp. By this time the wind howled through the village street, blowing squall upon squall of rain before it. It blew, too, dead in his path; but he faced it cheerfully.

Before he gained what should have been the shelter of the woods, the gale had increased so that they gave less than the road had given. The trees rocked above him; leaves and dead twigs beat on his face, and at length the blast forced him almost to creep on all fours. It was dark, too, beneath the swaying boughs. But uppermost in his mind was fear for his love, lest the hut should have given way before the tempest, and she be lying crushed beneath it.

Still he fought his way. Darkness—the real darkness—was falling, and he was yet a mile from the hut when in his path a figure arose from the undergrowth where it had been crouching.

"Ruth!"

"Ah, you are safe! . . . I could not rest at home—"

They took hands and forced their way against the wind.

"The cabin?"

"It stands, please God!"

After much battling they spied the light shining through the louvers of its closed shutter. The gale streamed down the valley as through a funnel, but once past the angle of the cliff they found themselves almost in a calm. He pushed the door open.

On the hearth—the hearth of his building—a pile of logs burned cheerfully. Over these the kettle hissed; and the firelight fell on their bed, with its linen oversheet turned back and neatly folded.

She entered and he closed the door behind her. She laughed as he pushed its bolt. They were drenched to the skin, the pair.

"This is best," said she with another soft and happy laugh.

"This is best," he repeated after her. "Better even than in fair weather."



Chapter VIII.

HOME-COMING.

A week later they broke camp and set forth to climb to the head of the pass.

Behind it—so Sir Oliver had learnt from old Strongtharm—lay an almost flat table-land, of pine-forest for the most part, through which for maybe half a dozen miles their river ran roughly parallel with another that came down from the north-west. At one point (the old fellow declared) less than a mile divided their waters.

"Seems," he said, "as if Nature all along intended 'em to jine, and then, at the last moment, changed her mind." He explained the cause of their severance—an outcropping ridge of rock, not above a mile in length; but it served, deflecting the one stream to the southward, the other to north of east, so that they reached the ocean a good twenty leagues apart.

He showed a map and told Sir Oliver further that at the narrowest point between the two rivers there dwelt a couple of brothers, Dave and Andy M'Lauchlin, with their households and long families, of whom all the boys were expert log-drivers, like their fathers. They were likewise expert boatmen, and for money, no doubt, if Sir Oliver desired, would navigate the upper reaches of either stream for him. Of these reaches the old man could tell little save that their currents ran moderately— "nothing out of the way." The M'Lauchlins sent all their timber down to sea by the more northerly stream. "Our river 'd be the better by far, three-fourths of its way, but—" with a jerk of his thumb—"the Gap, yonder, makes it foolishness."

Sir Oliver asked many questions, studying the map; and ended by borrowing it.

He had it spread on his knee when Ruth came out of the cabin for the last time, having said farewell to her household gods.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

"A map." He folded it away hastily.

"And I am not to see it?"

"Some day. Some day, if the owner will sell, you shall have it framed, with our travels marked out upon it. But, just now, it holds a small secret."

She questioned him no further. "Come," she said, "reach your arm in at the window and draw the bolt, and afterwards we will pull the shutter and nail it. Are you going inside for a last look around?"

He laughed. "Why? The knapsacks are here, ready."

"Our home!"

"I take the soul of it with me, taking you."

It was prettily said. Yet perversely she remembered how he had once spoken of Margaret Dance, saying, "Let the dead bury their dead."

The sky, after six angry days—two sullen, four tempestuous—was clear again and promised another stretch of fair weather. This was important, for they counted on having to sleep a night in the open before reaching the M'Lauchlins' camp. Old Strongtharm had told Sir Oliver of a cave at the head of the pass and directed him how to find it. Should the sky's promise prove false, they would descend back to the hut. Snow was their one serious peril.

They carried but the barest necessaries; for although the worst of the falls lay below and behind them, the upper part of the Gap was arduous enough, and the more difficult for being unknown; also Sir Oliver had old Strongtharm's assurance that the M'Lauchlins would furnish them with all things requisite for voyaging by water.

Sir Oliver climbed in silence. He was flinging a bridge, albeit a short one, across the unknown, and the risk of it weighed on him. For himself this would have counted nothing, but he was learning the lesson common to all male animals whose mates for the first time travel beside them. As for Ruth, it was wonderful—the course of the path once turned, the small home left out of sight—how securely she breasted the upward path. Her lover and she were as gods walking, treading the roof of the world.

Through thickets they climbed, and by stairways beside the singing falls. In a pool below one of these falls they surprised a great loon that had resorted here to live solitary through his moulting-season. He rose and winged away with a cry like an inhuman laugh; and they recognised a sound which had often been borne down the gorge—once or twice at night, to awake and puzzle them.

They came to the uppermost fall a good hour before sunset, and after a little search Sir Oliver found the cave. They could have pushed on, but decided to sleep here: and they slept soundly, being in truth more weary than their spirits, exhilarated in the high air, allowed them to guess.

They might, as it turned out, by forcing the march, have found the M'Lauchlins' settlement before dusk. For scarcely had they travelled five miles next morning before they came on an outpost of it: a large hut, half dwelling-house, half boat-shed. It stood in a clearing on the left shore, and close by the water's edge was a young man, patching the bottom of an upturned canoe. Two children—a boy and a girl—had dropped their play to watch him. A flat-bottomed boat lay moored to the bank, close by.

The children, catching sight of our travellers, must have uttered some exclamation; for the young man turned quickly, and after a brief look called "Good-morning." There was a ford (he shouted) fifty yards upstream; but no need to wade. Let them wait a minute and he would fetch them.

He laid down his tools, unmoored the flat-bottomed boat, and poled across. On the way back he told them that he was Adam M'Lauchlin, son of David. The little ones were children of his father by a second wife; but he had seven brothers and sisters of his own. . . . Yes, their settlement stood by the other river; at no great distance. "If you'll hark, maybe you can hear the long saws at work. . . ."

He led them to it, the small children bringing up the rear of the procession. The Z'm—Z'm of the saws grew loud in Ruth's ears before crossing the ridge she spied the huts between the trees—a congregation of ten or a dozen standing a little way back from a smooth-flowing river. Between the huts and the river were many saw-pits, with men at work.

At young Adam's hail the men in view desisted, quite as though he had sounded the dinner horn. Heads of others emerged from the pits. Within a minute there was a small crowd gathered, of burly fellows diffusing the fragrance of pine sawdust, all stamped in their degrees with the M'Lauchlin family likeness, and all eager to know the strangers' business.

Sir Oliver explained that he wanted a boat and two strong guides, to explore the upper waters. He would pay any price, in moderation.

"Ay," said their spokesman. He wore a magnificent iron-grey beard powdered with saw-dust; and he carried a gigantic pair of shoulders, but rheumatism had contracted them to a permanent stoop. "Ay, I'm no fearin' about the pay. You'll be the rich man, the Collector from Boston."

Ruth was startled. She had supposed herself to be travelling deep into the wilderness. She had yet to learn that in the wilderness, where men traffic in little else, they exchange gossip with incredible energy— talk it, in fact, all the time. In those early colonial days the settlers overleapt and left behind them leagues of primeval forest, to all appearance inviolate. But the solitude was no longer virgin. Where foot of man had once parted the undergrowth the very breath of the wind followed and threaded its way after him, bearing messages to and fro.

"I'm no speirin'," said the oldster cautiously. "But though our lads have never been so far, there's talk of a braw house buildin'."

Here, somewhat hastily, Sir Oliver took him aside, and they spent twenty minutes or so in converse together. Ruth waited.

He came back and selected young Adam, with a cousin of his—a taciturn youth, by name Jesse, son of Andrew—to be their boatman. Five or six of the young men were evidently eager to be chosen; but none disputed his choice. Rome, which reaches everywhere, reigned in the forest here; its old law of family unquestioned and absolute. The two youths swung off to pack and provision the canoe. An hour later they reported that all was ready; and by three in the afternoon the voyagers were on their way up-stream.

The voyage lasted four days and was seldom laborious; for the river ran in long loops through the table-land, and with an easy current. But here and there shallow runs of rock made stairways for it from one level to another, and each of these miniature rapids compelled a portage; so that towards the end of the second day the young men had each a red shoulder spot chafed by the canoe's weight.

They camped by night close beside the murmuring water, ate their supper beside a fire of boughs, slept on piled leaves beneath a tent of canvas stretched over a long ridge-pole. The two young men had a separate and similar tent.

For two days the forest hemmed them in so closely that although frost had half-stripped the deciduous trees, the eye found few vistas save along the river ahead. On either hand was drawn a continuous curtain of mossed stems and boughs overlapping and interlacing their delicate twigs. Scarcely a bird sang within the curtain; scarcely a woodland sound broke in upon the monotonous plash of the paddles. Alder, birch, maple, pine, spruce, and hemlock—the woods were a lifeless tapestry. Ahead curved and stretched the waterway, rippled now and again by a musk-rat crossing, swimming with its nose and no more above water.

A little before noon on the third day they emerged from this forest upon a wide track of burnt land; and certain hills of which the blue summits had for some hours been visible above the tree-tops on their right, now took shape from the base up, behind thin clumps of birch, poplar, and spruce—all of them (but the spruce especially) ragged and stunted in growth. For the rest this burnt land resembled a neglected pasture, being carpeted for the most part with moss and blueberry. A mysterious blight lay over all, and appeared to extend to the foot of the hills.

All through the afternoon the chine of these hills closed the landscape; purpled at times by passing clouds, at times lit up by sun-rays that defined every bush and seam on the slopes. All through the afternoon the folded gullies between the slopes unwound themselves interminably, little by little, as the voyagers traced up the river, paddling almost due southward, along its loops and meanders.

But by nightfall they had turned the last spur of the range, and the next morning opened to them a vastly different landscape: an undulating country, wooded like a park, with hills indeed, but scattered ones to the south and west, and behind the hills the faint purple dome of a far-distant mountain, so faintly seen that at first Ruth mistook it for a cloud.

She could not tell afterwards—though she often asked herself the question—at what point the landscape struck her as being strangely familiar. Yet she was sure that the recognition came to her suddenly. Sir Oliver since the morning's start had been indisposed to talk. From time to time he drew out his map and consulted it. The M'Lauchlin lads, on the other hand, seemed to be restless. During the halt for the midday meal they drew aside together and Ruth heard them conversing in eager whispers.

Possibly this stirred some expectation in her, which passed into surmise, into certainty. Late in the afternoon she drew in the paddle she had been plying, laid it across the canoe, and called softly,—

"Oliver!"

He turned. She was pointing to a hill now full in view ahead of them.

"That cliff . . . you remember—the eagles?"

He laughed as though the question amused him.

"It is very like. Yes, certainly, it is very like. But wait until we open the clump of trees yonder. . . ."

They opened it, and her heart gave a leap. A moment before she had been sure this was the very hill. His laugh had confirmed it. . . . She remembered how, at the foot of it, just such a river as this looped itself through the plain. . . . But, lo! in the opening gap, inch by inch, a long building displayed itself: a mansion, gleaming white, with a pillared front and pillared terraces, rising—terrace on terrace—from the woodland, into which a cascade of water, spouting half-way down the slope, plunged and was lost.

She sat dumb. His eyes were upon her; and he laughed quietly.

"It is yours—as you commanded. See!"

He flung out a hand to the left. She beheld a clearing—an avenue, that ran like a broad ribbon to the summit of a flat-topped rise.

"You demanded sight of the ocean," he was saying, and his voice seemed to lose itself in the beat of the churning paddles. "We cannot see it from here; but from the house—your house—you shall look on it every day. Did you not bid me remove a mountain?"

For the rest of the way she sat as in a dream. One of the M'Lauchlin lads had produced a cow-horn and was blowing it lustily. . . . They came to shore by river-stairs of stone, where two servants in the Vyell livery stood like statues awaiting them.

It was falling dusk when Sir Oliver disembarked and gave her his hand. The men-servants, who had bent to hold the canoe steady as she stepped ashore, drew themselves erect and again touched foreheads to their lord and lady.

Still as in a dream, her arm resting within her lover's, she went up the broad stairways from terrace to terrace. Above her the long facade was lit with window after window blazing welcome.

At the head of the perron, under the colonnaded portico, other tall men-servants stood in waiting, mute, deferential. She passed between their lines into a vast entrance hall, and there, almost as her foot crossed its threshold, across the marbled floor little Miss Quiney came running a-flutter, inarticulate, with reaching hands.

Ruth drew back, almost with a cry. But before she could resist, Tatty's arms were about her and Tatty's lips lifted, pressed against either cheek. She suffered the embrace.

"My darling Ruth!—at last!" Then with a laugh, "And in what strange clothes! . . . But come—come and be arrayed!" She caught Ruth's cold hand and led her towards the staircase. "Nay, never look about you so: your eyes will not take in a tenth of all the wonders!"

Later, as an Indian gong sounded below, he came from his dressing-room into the great bride-chamber where she stood, arrayed in satin, before her mirror, hesitating as her fingers touched one after another of the jewels scattered on the dressing-table under the waxen lights. Her maid slipped away discreetly.

"Well?" he asked. He was resplendent in a suit of sapphire velvet, with cravat and ruffles of old Spanish lace. "Is my love content with her home-coming?"

She crossed her arms slowly.

"You are good to me," she said. "You do me too great honour, my lord."

He laughed, and catching up a necklace of diamonds from the dressing-table, looped it across her throat, clasped it, leaned over her shoulder and kissed her softly between the ear and the cheek's delicate round. Their eyes met in the mirror.

"I invited the Quiney," he said gaily, "to give you a feeling of home among these strange faces. She will not dine with us, though, unless you choose."

"Let us be alone, to-night!" she pleaded.

"So be it. . . . But you shiver: you are cold. No? Then weary, perhaps—yes, and hungry. I've a backwoods hunger, for my part. Let us go down and dine."



BOOK IV.



LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING.



Chapter I.

BATTY LANGTON, CHRONICLER.



From Batty Langton, Esquire, to the Hon. Horatio Walpole.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, January 21st, 1748.

. . . . . You ask me, my dear Sir, why I linger on year by year in this land of Cherokees and Choctaws, as you put it, at the same time hinting very delicately that now, with my poor old father in his grave and my own youthful debts discharged, you see no enduring reason for this exile. It is kind of you to be so solicitous: kinder still to profess that you yet miss me. But that I am missed at White's is more than you shall persuade me to believe. In an earlier letter, written when the Gaming Act passed, you told me they were for nailing up an escutcheon to mourn the death of play; they nailed up none for me. And I gather that play has recovered, and Dick Edgcumbe holds my cards. I doubt if I could endure to revisit St. James's—save by moonlight perhaps. Rappelez-moi to the waiters. They will remember me.

But in good deed, dear Sir, what should I be doing at home among the Malvern Hills upon a patrimony of 800 pounds?—for to that it has dwindled. Can I hoe turnips, or poke a knowledgeable finger into the flanks of beeves? I wonder if your literary explorations ever led you across the furrow of an ancient ploughman who—

—on a May morning, on Malvern hills

was weary of wandering and laid him down to sleep beside a brook—having been chased thither betimes, no doubt, by a nagging bedfellow. I have no wife, nor mean to take one, and find it more to my comfort to sleep here by the River Charles and dream of Malvern, secure that I shall wake to find myself detached from it by half a world.

Yet your last letter touched me closely; for it happens that Sir O. V., for love of whom rather than for any better reason I have kept this exile, has taken to himself a Lady. That, you'll say, should be my dismissal; and that I like her, as she appears willing to be friends with me, gives me, you'll say again, no excuse to linger. Yet I do, and shall.

As for her history, Vyell picked her up in a God-forsaken fishing town, some leagues up the coast; brought her home; placed her under gouvernante and tutors; finally espoused her. Stay: finally he has built a palace for her, "Eagles" by name, whither he forces all Boston to pay its homage. For convenience of access to the goddess he has cut a road twenty feet broad through the woodlands of her demesne.

The palace in a woody vale they found, High-raised, of stone—

or, to speak accurately, of stone and timber combined. Be pleased to imagine a river very much like that of Richmond, but covered with grey crags. "Fie," you will say, "the site is savage, then, like all else in this New World?" My dear sir, you were never more mistaken. Mr. Manley's young eye of genius fastened upon it at once, to adapt it to a house and gardens in the Italian style.

Have I mentioned this Mr. Manley in former letters? He is a young gentleman of good Midland blood (his county, I believe, Bedfordshire), with a moderate talent for drinking, a something more than talent for living on his friends, and a positive genius for architecture. He will have none of your new craze for Gothic. Palladio is his god, albeit he allows that Palladio had feet of clay, and corrects him boldly—though always, as he tells me, with help of his minor deities, Vignola and the rest, who built the great villas around Rome. He has studied in Italy, and tells me that at Florence he was much beholden to your friend Mann, who, I dare swear, lost money by the acquaintance.

Vyell, his present patron, takes him out and shows him the site. "Italy!" exclaims the Youth of Genius. "Italy?" echoes Maecenas, astonished. "We'll make it so," says the Youth. "These terraces, this spouting water, these pines to serve us for cypresses!" "But, my good sir, the House?" cries the impatient Vyell. "A fig for your house! Any fool can design a house when the Almighty and an artist together have once made the landscape for it. Grant me two years for the gardens," he pleads. "You shall have ten months to complete landscape, house, everything." "I shall need armies of workmen." "You shall have them." The Youth groaned. "I shall have to be sober for ten months on end!" "What of that?" says V. Lovers are unconscionable.

Well, the Youth sits down to his plans, and at once orders begin to fly across ocean to this port and that for the rarest marbles—rosso antico from Mount Taenarus, verde antico from Thessally; with green Carystian, likewise shipped from Corinth; Carrara, Veronese Orange, Spanish broccatello, Derbyshire alabaster, black granite from Vyell's Cornish estate, red and purple porphyries from high up the Nile. . . . The Youth conjures up his gardens as by magic. Here you have a terrace fenced with columns; below it a cascade pouring down a stairway of circular basins—the hint of it borrowed from Frascati (from the Villa Torlonia, if I remember); there an alley you'd swear was Boboli dipping to rise across the river, on a stairway you'd swear as positively was Val San Zibio. Yet all is congruous. The dog scouts the Villa d'Este for a "toy-shop."

The house at first disappoints one, being straight and simple to the last degree. ("D——n me," says he, "what can you look for, in ten months?") It is of two storeys, the windows of the upper storey loftier by one-third than those beneath; and has for sole ornament a balustraded parapet broken midway by an Ionic portico of twelve columns, with a loggia deeply recessed above its entrance door. To this portico a flight of sixteen steps conducts you from the uppermost terrace.

Such is Vyell's new pleasance of Eagles, Boston's latest wonder. I have described it at this length because you profess to take more interest in houses than in women; and also, to tell the truth, be cause I am shy of describing Lady V. To call her roundly the loveliest creature I have ever set eyes on, or am like to, is (you will say) no description, though it may argue me in love with her.

On my honour, no! or only as all others are in love—all the men, I mean, and even some pro portion of the womankind. The rest agree to call her "Lady Good-for-Nothing," upon a double rumour, of which one half is sad truth, and the other (my life on it) false as hell.

They have heard that when Vyell found her she was a serving-girl, undergoing punishment (a whipping, to be precise) for some trumpery offence against the Sabbath. Yes, my dear sir, this is true; as it is true also that Vyell, like a knight-errant of old, offered to share her punishment, and did indeed share it to the extent of sitting in the stocks beside her. You'd have thought an honest mind might find food for compassion in this, and even an excuse to believe the better of human nature; but it merely scandalises these Puritan tabbies. They fear Vyell for his wealth and title; and he, despising them, forces them to visit her.

Now for the falsehood. The clergyman who read the marriage ceremony for V. somewhere in the backwoods (this, too, was his whim, and they have to be content with it) is a low-bred trencher-chaplain, by name Silk. He should have been unfrocked the next week, not for performing a function apostolically derived, but for spreading a report—I wait to fasten it on him—that before marriage she was no better than she should be. I have earned better right than any other man to know Vyell, and I know it to be calumny. But the wind blows, and the name "Lady Good-for-Nothing" is a by-breath of it.

Vyell guesses nothing of this. He has a masculine judgment and no small degree of wit—though 'tis of a hard intellectual kind; but through misprising his fellow creatures he has come to lack flair. His lady, if she scent a taint on the wind wafted through her routs and assemblies, no doubt sets it down to breathings upon her humble origin, or (it may be) even to some leaking gossip of her foregone wrong. (Women, my dear sir, are brutes to rend a wounded one of the herd.) She can know nothing of the worse slander.

She moves through her duties as hostess with a pretty well-bred grace, and a childishness infinitely touching. Yet something more protects her; a certain common sense, which now and then very nearly achieves wit. For an instance—But yesterday a certain pompous lady lamented to her in my hearing (and with intention, as it seemed to me, who am grown suspicious), the rapid moral decay of Boston society. "Alas!" sighs my heroine; "but what a comfort, ma'am, to think that neither of us belongs to it!" Add to this that she has learning enough to equip ten precieuses—and hides it: has read Plato and can quote her Virgil by the page—but forbears. Yet all this while you have suspected me, no doubt, of raving over a 'Belle Sauvage, a Pocahontas.

Well, I shall watch her progress. . . . I have become so nearly a part of Vyell that I charge myself to stand for him and supply what he lacks. He loves her; she loves him to doting; but I cannot see into their future.

Vyell, by the way, charges me to request your good offices with Mr. Mann to procure him a couple of Tuscan vases. I know that your friend is infinitely obliging to all who approach him through you: and this request which my letter carries as a tag should have been its pretext, as in fact it was its occasion. Adieu! my dear sir.

Yours most sincerely,

BAT. LANGTON.



Chapter II.

SIR OLIVER SAILS.

Mr. Langton was right. Theologians, preaching mysteries, are helpless before the logical mind until they abandon defence and boldly attack their opponents' capital incapacity, saying, "Precisely because you insist upon daylight, you miss discovering the stars." The battle is a secular one, and that sentence contains the reason, too, why it will never be ended in this world. But the theologians may strengthen their conviction, if not their argument, by noting how often the more delicate shades of human feeling will oppose themselves to the logical mind as a mere wall of blindness.

Oliver Vyell loved his bride as passionately as his nature, hardened by his past, allowed him. To the women who envied her, to the gossips and backbiters, he opposed a nescience inexpugnable, unscalable as a wall of polished stone: but the mischief was, he equally ignored her sensitiveness.

Being sensitive, she understood the hostile shadows better than the hard protecting fence. To noble natures enemies are often nearer than friends, and more easily forgiven.

But Mr. Langton was also right in guessing her ignorant of the rumours set going by Silk, who, as yet, had whispered falsehoods only. The worst rumour of all—the truth—was beyond his courage.

Ruth loved her lord devoutly. To love him was so easy that it seemed no repayment of her infinite debt. She desired some harder task; and therefore, since he laid this upon her, she—who would have chosen a solitude to be happy in—rejoiced to meet these envious ladies with smiles, with a hundred small graces of hospitality; and still her bliss swallowed up their rancour, scarcely tasting its gall. He (they allowed) was the very pattern of a lover.

He was also a model man of business. Even from his most flagrant extravagances, as Batty Langton notes in another epistle, he usually contrived to get back something like his money's worth. He would lend money, or give it, where he chose: but to the man who overreached him in a money bargain he could be implacable. Moreover, though a hater of quarrels, he never neglected an enmity he had once taken up, but treated it with no less exactitude than a business account.

Their happiness had endured a little more than three months when, one morning, he entered Ruth's morning-room with a packet of letters in his hand. He was frowning, not so much in wrath, as in distaste of what he had to tell.

"Dear," he said brusquely, bending to kiss her, "I have ill news. I must go back to England, on business."

"To England ?" she echoed. Her wrists were laid along the arms of her chair, and, as she spoke, her fingers clutched sharply at the padding. She was not conscious of it. She was aware only that somehow, at the back of her happiness this shadow had always lurked; and that England lay across the seas, at an immense distance. . . .

He went on—his tone moody, but the words brief and distinct. "For a few months, only; five or six, perhaps; with any luck, even less. That infernal aunt of mine—"

"Lady Caroline ?" She asked it less out of curiosity than as a prompter gives a cue; for he had come to a full stop. She was wondering how Lady Caroline could injure him, being so far away. . . .

He laughed savagely, yet—having broken his news, or the worst of it—with something of relief. "She shall smart for it—if that console you?"

"Is it on my account?"

"Only, as I guess, in so far as she accuses you of having played the devil with her plan for marrying me up with my cousin Di'? If Di' had been the last woman in the world. . . . But the old harridan never spoke to me after the grooming I gave her that morning at Natchett. 'Faith, and I did treat her to some plain talk!" he wound up with another laugh.

"But what harm can she do you?"

He explained that his late uncle Sir Thomas had, in the closing years of his life, shown unmistakable signs of brain-softening, and that a symptom of his complaint had been his addiction to making a number of wills—"two-thirds of 'em incoherent. Every two or three days he'd compose a new one and send for Huskisson, his lawyer; and Huskisson, after reading the rigmarole through, as solemn as a judge, would get it solemnly witnessed and carry it off. He had three boxes full of these lunacies when the old man died, and I'll wager he has not destroyed 'em. Lawyers never destroy handwriting, however foolish. It's against their principles."

"But," said Ruth, musing. "I understood that he died of a jail fever, caught at the Assizes, where he was serving on—what do you call it?"

"The Grand Jury."

"Well, how could he be serving on a Grand Jury if his head was affected as you say?"

"You don't know England," he assured her. "Ten to one as a County magnate he stickled for it, and the High Sheriff put him on the panel to keep him amused."

"But a Grand Jury deals sometimes with matters of life and death, does it not?"

"Often, but only in the first instance. It finds a true bill usually, and sends the cause down to be tried by judge and jury, who dispose of it. Actually the incompetence of a grand juror or two doesn't count, if the scandal be not too glaring. . . . But I see your drift. It will be a point for the other side, no matter how lunatic the document, that after perpetrating it he was still thought capable by the High Sheriff of his county."

"I do not know that the point struck me. I was wondering—" Here she broke off. The thought, in fact, uppermost in her mind was that he had not suggested her voyaging to England with him.

"It is a point, anyway," he persisted. "But it won't stand against Huskisson's documentary proof of lunacy. . . . You see, the greater part of the property was entailed, and the poor old fool couldn't touch it. But there's an unentailed estate in Devonshire—Downton by name—worth about two thousand a year. By a will made in '41, when his mind was admittedly sound, he left it to me with a charge upon it of five hundred for Lady Caroline. By a second, made three years later and duly witnessed, he left her Downton for her life; and with that I chose not to quarrel, though I could have brought evidence that he was unfit to make any will. I agreed with the infernal woman to let things stand on that. But now, being at daggers drawn with me, she digs up (if you please) a will made in '46 and apparently sane in wording, by which, without any provision for the heir-at-law, the whole bagful, real and personal, goes to her, to be used by her and willed away, as she pleases; this, although she well knows I can prove Sir Thomas to have been a blethering idiot at the time."

"Is it worth while?"

"Worth while?" he echoed, as if doubtful that she had understood. "The woman is doing it out of spite, of course. Very likely she is fool enough to think that, fixed here with the Atlantic between us, I shall give her the double gratification of annoying me and letting her win by default."

"It is a large sum," she mused.

"Of course it is," he agreed sharply. "An estate yielding two thousand pounds interest. You would not suggest my letting it go, I should hope!"

"Certainly not, if you cannot afford it."

"If it were a twentieth part of the sum, I'd not be jockeyed out of it." He laughed harshly. "As men go, I am well-to-do: but, dear, has it never occurred to you to wonder what this place and its household cost me?"

She answered with a small wry smile. "Often it has occurred to me. Often I tell myself that I am wicked to accept, as you are foolish perhaps to give, all this luxury."

"You adorn it. . . . Dear, do not misunderstand me. All the offering I can bring is too little for my love."

"I know," she murmured, looking up at him with moist eyes. "I know; and yet—"

"I meant only that you are not used to handling money or calculating it—as why should you be?"

"If my lord will only try me!"

"Hey?"

"Of what use is a wife if she may not contrive for her husband's good—take thought for his household? Ah, my dear, these cares are half a woman's happiness! . . . I might make mistakes. Nay, 'tis certain. I would the house were smaller: in a sense I would that your wealth were smaller—it would frighten me less. But something tells me that, though frightened, I should not fail you."

He stared down at her, pulling his lip moodily. "I was thinking," said he, "to ask Langton to be my steward. Would you really choose to be cumbered with all this business?"

She held her breath for a moment; for his question meant that he had no design to take her with him. Her face paled a little, but she answered steadily.

"It will at least fill my empty hours. . . . Better, dear—it will keep you before me in all the day's duties; since, though I miss you, all day long I shall be learning to be a good wife."

As she said it her hand went up to her side beneath her left breast, as something fluttered there, soft as a bird's wing stirring. It fluttered for a moment under her palm, then ceased. The room had grown strangely still. . . . Yet he was speaking.

He was saying—"I'll teach these good people who's Head of the Family!"

Ah, yes—"the Family!" Should she tell him? . . . She bethought her of Mrs. Harry's sudden giddiness in the waggon. Mrs. Harry was now the mother of a lusty boy—Sir Oliver's heir, and the Family's prospective Head. . . . Should she tell him? . . .

He stooped and kissed her. "Love, you are pale. I have broken this news too roughly."

She faltered. "When must you start?"

"In three days. That's as soon as the Maryland can take in the rest of her cargo and clear the customs."

"They will be busy days for you."

"Desperately."

"Yet you must spare me a part of one, and teach me to keep accounts," said she, and smiled bravely albeit her face was wan.



Chapter III.

MISCALCULATING WRATH.

Mr. Langton sat in his private apartment by Boston Quay trying the balance of a malacca cane.

Sir Oliver had sailed a week ago. Mr. Langton had walked down to the ship with him and taken his farewell instructions.

"By the way," said Sir Oliver, "I want you to make occasion to visit Eagles now and again, and pay your respects. I shall write to you as well as to her; and the pair of you can exchange news from your letters. She likes you."

"I hope so," answered Langton, "because 'tis an open secret that I adore her."

Sir Oliver smiled, a trifle ruefully. "Then you'll understand how it hits a man to leave her. Maybe—for I had meant to make you paymaster in my absence—you'll also forgive me for having changed my mind?"

"I'd have called you a damned fool if you hadn't," said Langton equably. "She's your wife, hang it all: and I'll lay you five pounds you'll return to find her with hair dishevelled over your monstrous careless bookkeeping. My dear Noll, a woman—a good woman—is never completely happy till convinced that she, and only she, has saved the man she loves from ruin; and, what's more, she's a fool if she can't prove it."

"Nevertheless she's a beginner; and I'll be glad of your promise to run over from time to time. A question or two will soon discover if things are running on an even keel."

"I shall attempt no method so coarse," Langton assured him. "I don't want to be ordered out of the house—must I repeat that I adore her? It may be news to you that she repays my attachment with a certain respect. . . . Should she find herself in any difficulty—and she will not—I shall be sent for and consulted. In any event, fond man, you may count on my calling."

As they shook hands Sir Oliver asked, "Don't you envy me, Batty?"

"Constantly and in everything," answered Langton; "though—ass that I am—I have rather prided myself on concealing it."

"I mean, don't you wish that you, and not I, were sailing for England? For that matter, though, there's nothing prevents you."

"Oh yes—there is."

"What, then?"

"Use and wont, if you will; indolence, if you choose; affection for you, Noll, if you prefer it."

"That had been an excellent reason for coming with me."

"It may be a better one for staying. . . . Well, as you walk up St. James's, give it my regards."

"For so fine an intelligence Noll can be infernally crass at times," muttered Mr. Langton to himself as he walked back to his lodgings.

He kept his promise and rode over to Eagles ten days later, to pay Ruth a visit. He found her astonishingly cheerful. The sum left by Sir Oliver for her stewardship had scared her at first. It scared her worse to discover how the heap began to drain away as through a sieve. But slowly she saw her way to stop some of the holes in that sieve. He had calculated her expenses, taking for basis the accounts of the past few months; and in the matter of entertaining, for example, she would save vast sums. . . . She foresaw herself a miser almost, to earn his praise.

"—Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband shall safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of his life."

"She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchants's ships; she bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. . . . She considereth a field and buyeth it. . . . She looketh well into the ways of her household."

"Her children rise up, and call her blessed. . . ." Her children? But she had let him go, after all, without telling her secret.

Mr. Langton sat and balanced a malacca cane in his hand. When his man announced the Reverend Mr. Silk, he laid it down carefully on the floor beside him.

"Show Mr. Silk up, if you please."

Mr. Silk entered with an affable smile. "Ah, good-morning, Mr. Langton!" said he, depositing his hat on the table and pulling off a pair of thick woollen gloves. "I am prompt on your call, eh? But this cold weather invites a man to walk briskly. Not to mention," he added, with an effort at facetiousness, "that when Mr. Langton sends for a clergyman his need is presumably urgent."

"It is," said Mr. Langton, seemingly blind to the hand he proferred. "Would you, before taking a seat, oblige me by throwing a log on the fire? . . . Thank you—the weather is raw, as you say."

"Urgent? But not serious, I hope?"

"Both. Sit down, please. . . . I am, as you know, a particular friend of Sir Oliver Vyell's."

"Say, rather, his best." Mr. Silk bowed and smiled.

"Possibly. At all events so close a friend that, being absent, he gives me the right to resent any dishonouring suspicion that touches him—or touches his lady. It comes to the same thing."

Mr. Silk cocked his head sideways, like a bird considering a worm. "Does it?" he queried, after a slight pause.

"Certainly. A rumour is current through Boston, touching Lady Vyell's virtue; or, at least, her conduct before marriage."

"'Tis a censorious world, Mr. Langton."

"Maybe; but let us avoid generalities, Mr. Silk. What grounds have you for imputing this misconduct to Lady Vyell?"

"Me, sir?" cried Mr. Silk, startled out of his grammar.

"You, sir." Mr. Langton arose lazily, and stepping to the door, turned the key; then returning to the hearth, in leisurely manner turned back his cuff's. "I have traced the slander to you, and hold the proofs. Perhaps you had best stand up and recant it before you take your hiding. But, whether or no, I am going to hide you," he promised, with his engaging smile. Stooping swiftly he caught up the malacca. Mr. Silk sprang to his feet and snatched at the chair, dodging sideways.

"Strike as you please," he snarled; "Ruth Josselin is a—" But before the word could out Batty Langton's first blow beat down his guard. The second fell across his exposed shoulders, the third stunningly on the nape of his neck. The fourth—a back-hander— welted him full in the face, and the wretched man sank screaming for pity.

Batty Langton had no pity. "Stand up, you hound!" he commanded. The command was absurd, and he laughed savagely, tickled by its absurdity even in his fury, while he smote again and again. He showered blows until, between blow and blow, he caught his breath and panted. Mr. Silk's screams had sunk to blubbings and whimpers. Between the strokes he heard them.

His valet was knocking timorously on the door. "All right!" called Langton, lifting his cane and lowering it slowly—for his victim lay still. He stooped to drag aside the arm covering the huddled face. As he did so, Mr. Silk snarled again, raised his head and bit blindly, fastening his teeth in the flesh of the left hand. Langton wrenched free and, as the man scrambled to his feet, dealt him with the same hand a smashing blow on the mouth—a blow that sent him reeling, to overbalance and pitch backward to the floor again across an overturned chair.

Somehow the pleasure of getting in that blow restored—literally at a stroke—Langton's good temper. He laughed and tossed the cane into a corner.

"You may stand up now," said he sweetly. "You are not going to be beaten any more."

Mr. Silk stood up. His mouth trickled blood, and he nursed his right wrist, where the cane had smitten across the bone. Langton stepped to the door and, unlocking it, admitted his trembling valet.

"My good fool," he said, "didn't I call to you not to be alarmed? Mr. Silk, here, has been seized with a—a kind of epileptic fit. Help him downstairs and call a chair for him. Don't stare; he will not bite again for a very long time."

But in this Mr. Langton was mistaken.

He took the precaution of cauterising his bitten hand; and before retiring to rest that night contemplated it grimly, holding it out to the warmth of his bachelor fire. It was bandaged; but above the edge of the bandage his knuckles bore evidence how they had retaliated upon Mr. Silk's teeth.

He eyed these abrasions for a while and ended with a soft complacent laugh. "Queer, how little removed we are, after all, from the natural savage!" he murmured. "Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to your notice Batty Langton, Esquire, a child of nature— not perhaps of the best period—still using his naked fists and for a woman—primitive cause of quarrel. And didn't he enjoy it, by George!"

He laughed again softly. But, could he have foreseen, he had been willing rather to cut the hand off for its day's work.



Chapter IV.

THE TERRACE.

Ruth was happy. To-day, and for a whole week to come, she was determined to be purely happy, blithe as the spring sunshine upon the terrace. For a week she would, like Walton's milkmaid, cast away care and refuse to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be. Her spirit sang birdlike within her. And the reason?—that the Venus had arrived in harbour, with Dicky on board.

Peace had been signed, or was on the point to be signed, and in the North Atlantic waters His Majesty's captains of frigates could make a holiday of duty. Captain Harry used his holiday to sail up for Boston, standing in for Carolina on his way and fetching off his wife and his firstborn—a bouncing boy. It was time, they agreed, to pay their ceremonial visit to Sir Oliver and his bride; high time also for Dicky to return and embrace his father.

Sir Oliver had written of his approaching marriage. "Well, dear," was Mrs. Harry's comment, "'twas always certain he would marry. As for Ruth Josselin, she is an amazingly beautiful girl and I believe her to be good. So there's no more to be said but to wish 'em joy."

Captain Harry kissed his wife. "Glad you take it so, Sally. I was half afraid—for of course there was the chance, you know—"

"I'm not a goose, I hope, to cry for the moon!"

"Is that the way of geese?" he asked, and they both laughed.

A second letter had come to them from Eagles, telling them of his happiness, and franking a note in which Ruth prettily acknowledged Mrs. Harry's congratulations.

A third had been despatched; a hurried one, announcing his departure for England. Before this reached Carolina, however, the Venus had sailed, and Dicky rushed home to find his father gone.

But a message came down to Boston Quay, with the great coach for Mrs. Vyell, and the baggage and saddle-horses for the gentlemen. There were three saddle-horses, for Ruth added an invitation for Mr. Hanmer, "if the discipline of the ship would allow."

"She always was the thoughtfullest!" cried Dicky. "Why, sir, to be sure you must come too. . . . We'll go shooting. Is it too late for partridge? . . . One forgets the time of year, down in the islands."

Strangely enough Mr. Hanmer, so shy by habit, offered but a slight resistance.

It was Dicky who, as Ruth sped to him with a happy little cry, hung on his heel a moment and blushed violently. She took him in her arms, exclaiming at his growth.

"Why—look, Tatty—'tis a man! And is that what he means?—Ah, Dicky, don't say you're too tall to kiss your old playmate."

Then, holding him a little away and still observing his confusion, she remembered his absurd boyish love for her and how he had confessed it. Well, she must put him at his ease. . . . She turned laughingly to welcome the others, and now for a moment she too flushed rosy-red as she shook hands with Mr. Hanmer. She could not have told why; but perhaps it was that instead of returning her smile, his eyes rested on her face gravely, intently, as though unable to drag themselves away.

Captain Harry and his wife marvelled, as well they might, at the house and its wonders. Sir Oliver had chosen to take his meals French fashion and at French hours; and Ruth apologised for having kept up the custom. Captain Harry, after protesting against so ungodly a practice, admitted that his ride had hungered him, and at dejeuner proved it not only upon the courses but upon the cold meats on the side-table.

"You must have a jewel of a housekeeper, my dear!" Mrs. Harry had been taking in every detail of the ordered service. "'Housekeeper,' do I say? 'Major-domo'—you'll forgive me—"

Ruth swept her a bow. "I take the compliment."

"And she deserves it," added Miss Quiney.

"What? You don't tell me you manage it all yourself? . . . This palace of a house!"

"Already you are making it feel less empty to me. Yes, alone I do it; but if you wish to praise me, you should see my accounts. They are my real pride. But no, they are too holy to be shown!"

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 Dick. There's a pool below here, Dicky, with oh, such trout!"

Dicky 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 Dicky 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?"

Dicky 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 Dicky!"

"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 Nassau?"

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 shore 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.

"Dicky!" said he. "Service, if you please."

"Ay, sir!" Dicky's small person stiffened at once, and Dicky'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."

"And—on the way?"

"Honoured madam—"

"They said—what?—quoting whom?"

"A Mr. Silk. But again—ma'am, I am awkward at lying. I cannot manage it."

"I like you the better for it."

"I did not believe—"

"Yet you might have believed. . . . And suppose that it were true, sir?"

He shook visibly. "I pray God to protect you," he managed to stammer.

Her face was white, but she answered him steadily. "I believe you to be a good man. . . . I will go to them. Where is Dicky?" She glanced back along the alley.

"Dicky will stand where I have told him to stand: for hours unless I release him."

"Is that your naval code? And can a mere child stand by it so proudly? Oh," cried she, fixing on him a look he remembered all his days, "would to God I had been born a man!"

Yet fearlessly as any man she entered the great drawing-room. Miss Quiney still lay collapsed on her sofa. Mrs. Harry bent over her, but faced about.

"Mr. Hanmer managed, then, to discover you? Two women have called. . . . I thought it better, their errand being what it was, to show them out."

"I can guess it, perhaps," Ruth caught her up with a wan smile. "They managed to talk with him before he gave them their dismissal."

"Forgive me. I had not thought them capable—"

"There is nothing to forgive," Ruth assured her. "They probably told the truth, and the fault is mine."

Miss Quiney, incredulous, slowly raised her face from the cushions and stared.

"Yes," repeated Ruth, "the fault is entirely mine."

"But—but," stammered Mrs. Harry. Ruth had turned away towards the window, and the honest wife stared after her, against the light. "But he will make it all right when he returns." She started, of a sudden. Cunningly as Ruth had dressed herself, Mrs. Harry's eyes guessed the truth. "You have written to him?"

"No."

"He guesses, at least?"

"No."

"Then you are writing to him? There is enough time."

"No."

Their eyes met. Ruth's asked, "And if I do not, will you?" Mrs. Harry's met them for a few seconds and were abased.

No words passed between these two. "And as for my Tatty," said Ruth lightly, stepping to the sofa, "she is not to write. I command her."



Chapter V.

A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.

Sir Oliver wrote cheerfully. His lawsuit was prospering; his prompt invasion of the field had disconcerted Lady Caroline and her advisers. He had discovered fresh evidence of the late Sir Thomas's insanity. His own lawyers were sanguine. They assured him that, at the worst, the Courts would set aside the '46 will, and fall back for a compromise on that of '44, which gave the woman a life-interest only in the Downton estates. But the case would not be taken this side of the Long Vacation. . . . (It was certain, then, that he could not return in time.)

He had visited Bath and spent some weeks with his mother. He devoted a page or two to criticism of that fashionable city. It was clear he had picked up many threads of his younger days; had renewed old acquaintances and made a hundred new ones. Play, he wrote, was a craze in England; the stakes frightened a home-comer from New England. For his part, he gamed but moderately.

"As for the women, you have spoilt me for them. I see none—not one, dearest—who can hold a taper to you. Their artifices disgust me; and I watch them, telling myself that my Ruth has only to enter their balls and assemblies to triumph—nay, to eclipse them totally. . . . And this reminds me to say that I have spoken with my mother. She had heard, of course, from more than one. Lady Caroline's account had been merely coarse and spiteful; but by that lady's later conduct she was already prepared to discount it. The pair encountered in London, at my Lady Newcastle's; and my mother (who has spirit) refused her bow. Diana, to her credit, appears to have done you more justice; and Mrs. Harry writes reams in your praise. To be sure my mother, not knowing Mrs. Harry, distrusts her judgment for a Colonial's; but I vow she is the soundest of women. . . . In short, dear Ruth, we have only to regularise things and we are forgiven. The good soul dotes on me, and imagines she has but a few years left to live. This softens her. . . .

"There is a rumour—credit it, if you can!—that my Aunt Caroline intends to espouse a Mr. Adam Rouffignac, a foreigner and a wine merchant; I suppose (since he is reputed rich) to arm herself with money to pay her lawyers. What his object can be, poor man, I am unable to conjecture. It is a strange world. While her ugly mother mates at the age of fifty, Diana—who started with all the advantages of looks—withers upon the maiden thorn. . . ."

His letters, every one, concluded with protests of affection. She rejoiced in them. But it was now certain that he could not return in time.

At length, as her day drew near, she wrote to him, conceiving this to be her duty. She knew that he would take a blow from what she had to tell, and covered it up cleverly, lightly covering all her own dread. She hoped the child would be a boy. ("But why do I hope it?" she asked herself as she penned the words, and thought of Dicky.)

She said nothing of Mr. Silk's treachery; nothing of her ostracism. This indeed, during the later months, she recognised for the blessing it was.

Towards the end she felt a strange longing to have her mother near, close at hand, for her lying-in. The poor silly soul could not travel alone. . . . Ruth considered this and hit on the happy inspiration of inviting Mrs. Strongtharm to bring her. Tatty was useless, and among the few women who had been kind Mrs. Strongtharm had been the kindest.

Ruth sat down and penned a letter; and Mrs. Strongtharm, unable to write, responded valiantly. She arrived in a cart, with Mrs. Josselin at her side; and straightway alighting and neglecting Mrs. Josselin, sailed into a seventh heaven of womanly fuss. She examined the baby-clothes critically.

"Made with your own pretty hands—and with all this mort o' servants tumblin' over one another to help ye. But 'tis nat'ral. . . . It came to nothing with me, but I know. And expectin' a boy o' course. . . . La! ye blushin' one, don't I know the way of it!"

When Ruth's travail came on her the three were gathered by candle-light in Sir Oliver's dressing-room. Beyond the door, attended by her maid and a man-midwife, Ruth shut her teeth upon her throes. So the prologue opens.

PROLOGUE.

Mrs. Josselin sits in an armchair, regarding the pattern of the carpet with a silly air of self-importance; Mrs. Strongtharm in a chair opposite. By the window Miss Quiney, pulling at her knuckles, stares out through the dark panes. A clock strikes.

Miss Quiney (with a nervous start). Four o'clock . . . nine hours. . . .

Mrs. Strongtharm. More. The pains took her soon after six. . . . When her bell rang I looked at the clock. I remember.

Miss Quiney. My poor Ruth.

Mrs. Strongtharm. Eh? The first, o' course. . . . But a long labour's often the best.

Miss Quiney. There has not been a sound for hours.

Mrs. Strongtharm. She's brave. They say, too, that a man-child, if he's a real strong one, will wait for daybreak; but that's old women's notions, I shouldn't wonder.

Miss Quiney. A man-child? You think it will be?

Mrs. Strongtharm. (She exchanges a glance with Mrs. Josselin, who has looked up suddenly and nods.) Certain.

Mrs. Josselin. Certain, certain! I wonder, now, what they'll call him! After Sir Oliver, perhaps. Her own father's name was Michael. In my own family—that's the Pocock's—the men were mostly Williams and Georges. Called after the Kings of England.

Mrs. Strongtharm (yawns). Oliver Cromwell was as good as any king, and better. Leastways my mar says so. For my part, I don't bother my head wi' these old matters.

Miss Quiney (tentatively). Do you know, I was half hoping it would be a girl, just like my darling. (To herself) God forgive me, when I think—

Mrs. Strongtharm (interrupting the thought). She won't be hoping for a girl. You don't understand these things, beggin' your pardon, ma'am.

Miss Quiney (meekly). No.

Mrs. Josselin. You don't neither of you understand. How should you?

Mrs. Strongtharm (stung). I understand as well as a fool, I should hope! (She turns to Miss Quiney.) 'Twas a nat'ral wish in ye, ma'am, that such a piece o' loveliness should bear just such another. But wait a while; they're young and there's time. . . . My lady wants a boy first, like every true woman that loves her lord. There's pride an' wonder in it. All her life belike she's felt herself weak an' shivered to think of battles, and now, lo an' behold, she's the very gates o' strength with an army marchin' forth to conquer the world. Ha'n't ye never caught your breath an' felt the tears swellin' when ye saw a regiment swing up the street?

Miss Quiney. Ah! . . . Is it like that?

Mrs. Strongtharm. It's like all that, an' more. . . . An' though I've wet my pillow afore now with envy of it, I thank the Lord for givin' a barren woman the knowledge.

A pause.

Mrs. Josselin (with a silly laugh). What wonderful patterns they make in the carpets nowadays! Look at this one, now—runnin' in and out so that the eye can't hardly follow it; and all for my lord's dressing-room! Cost a hundred pound, I shouldn't wonder.

Mrs. Strongtharm. T'cht!

Mrs. Josselin. He must be amazing fond of her. Fancy, my Ruth! . . . It's a pity he's not home, to take the child.

Mrs. Strongtharm. Men at these times are best out o' the way.

Mrs. Josselin. When my first was born, Michael—that's my husband—stayed home from sea o' purpose to take it. My first was a girl. No, not Ruth; Ruth was born after my man died, and I had her christened Ruth because some one told me it stood for "sorrow." I had three before Ruth—a girl an' two boys, an' buried them all.

Miss Quiney (listening). Hush!

Mrs. Josselin (not hearing, immersed in her own mental flow). If you call a child by a sorrowful name it's apt to ward off the ill-luck. Look at Ruth now—christened in sorrow an' married, after all, to the richest in the land!

Miss Quiney (in desperation). Oh, hush! hush!

A low moan comes from the next room. The women sit silent, their faces white in the dawn that now comes stealing in at the window, conquering the candle-light by little and little.

Mrs. Strongtharm. I thought I heard a child's cry. . . . They cry at once.

Miss Quiney. Ah? I fancied it, too—a feeble one.

Mrs. Strongtharm (rising after a long pause). Something is wrong. . . .

As she goes to listen at the door, it opens, and the man-midwife enters. His face is grave.

Mrs. Strongtharm and Miss Quiney ask him together, under their breath—Well?

He answers: It is well. We have saved her life, I trust.

—And the child?

—A boy. It lived less than a minute. . . . Yet a shapely child. . . .

Miss Quiney clasps her hands. Shall she, within her breast, thank God? She cannot. She hears the voice saying,—

A very shapely child. . . . But the labour was difficult. There was some pressure on the brain, some lesion.

They would have denied Ruth sight of the poor little body, but she stretched out her arms for it and insisted. Then as she held it, flesh of her flesh, to her breast and felt it cold, she—she, whose courage had bred wonder in them, even awe—she who had smiled between her pangs, murmuring pretty thanks—wailed low, and, burying her face, lay still.



Chapter VI.

CHILDLESS MOTHER.

In the sad and cheated days that followed, she, with the milk of motherhood wasting in her, saw with new eyes—saw many things heretofore hidden from her.

She did not believe in any scriptural God. But she believed—she could not help believing—in an awful Justice overarching all human life with its law, as it overarched the very stars in heaven. And this law she believed to rest in goodness, accessible to the pure conscience, but stern against the transgressor.

Because she believed this, she had felt that the marriage rite, with such an one as Mr. Silk for intercessor between her vows and a clean Heaven, could be but a sullying of marriage. Yes, and she felt it still; of this, at any rate, she was sure.

But in her pride—as truly she saw it, in her pride of chastity—she had left the child out of account. He had inherited the world to face, not armed with her weapon of scorn. He had not won freedom through a scourge. He had grown to his fate in her womb, and in the womb she had betrayed him.

She had been blind, blind! She had lived for her lover and herself. To him and to her (it had seemed) this warm, transitory life belonged; a fleeting space of time, a lodge leased to bliss. . . . Now she fronted the truth, that between the selfish rapture of lovers Heaven slips a child, smiling at the rapture, provident for the race. Now she read the secret of woman's nesting instinct; the underlying wisdom stirring the root of it, awaking passion not to satisfy passion, but that the world may go on and on to its unguessed ends. Now she could read ironically the courtship of man and maid, dallying by river-paths, beside running water, overarched by boughs that had protected a thousand such courtships. Each pair in turn—poor fools! —had imagined the world theirs, compressed into their grasp; whereas the wise world was merely flattering, coaxing them, preparing for the child.

She should have been preparing, too. For what are women made but for motherhood? She? She had had but a hand to turn, a word to utter, and this child—healthily begotten, if ever child was, and to claim, if ever child could, the best—has broken triumphing through the gate of her travail. But she had betrayed him. The new-born spirit had arrived expectant, had cast one look across the threshold, and with one wail had fled. Through and beyond her answering wail, as she laid her head on the pillow, she heard the lost feet, the small betrayed feet, pattering away into darkness.

When she grew stronger, it consoled her a little to talk with Mrs. Strongtharm; not confiding her regrets and self-reproaches, but speculating much on this great book of Maternity into which she had been given a glimpse. The metaphor was Mrs. Strongtharm's.

"Ay," said that understanding female, "a book you may call it, and a wonderful one; written by all the women, white an' black, copper-skin an' red-skin, that ever groped their way in it with pangs an' joys; for every one writes in it as well as reads. What's more, 'tis all in one language, though they come, as my man would say, from all the airts o' Babel."

"I wonder," mused Ruth, "if somewhere in it there's a chapter would tell me why, when I lie awake and think of my lost one, 'tis his footsteps I listen for—feet that never walked!"

"Hush ye, now. . . . Isn't it always their feet, the darlings! Don't the sound of it, more'n their voices, call me to door a dozen times a day? . . . I never bore child; but I made garments in hope o' one. Tell me, when you knitted his little boots, wasn't it different from all the rest?"

"Ah, put them away!"

"To be sure, dearie, to be sure—all ready for the next."

"I shall never have another child."

Mrs. Strongtharm smiled tolerantly.

"Never," Ruth repeated; "never; I know it."

With the same assurance of prophesy she answered her lover on his return, a bare two months later.

"But you must have known. . . . Even your letters kept it secret. Yet, had you written, the next ship would have brought me. Surely you did not doubt that?"

"No."

"Then why did you not tell me?"

It was the inevitable question. She had forestalled it so often in her thoughts that, when uttered at last, it gave her a curious sensation of re-enacting some long-past scene.

"I thought you did not care for children."

He was pacing the room. He halted, and stared at her in sheer astonishment. Many a beautiful woman touches the height of her beauty after the birth of her first child; and this woman had never stood before him in loveliness that, passing comprehension, so nearly touched the divine. But her perversity passed comprehension yet farther.

"Do you call that an answer?" he demanded.

"No. . . . You asked, and I had to say something; but it is no answer. Forgive me. It was the best I could find."

He still eyed her, between wrath and admiration.

"I think," she said, after a pause, "the true answer is just that I did wrongly—wrongly for the child's sake."

"That's certain. And your own?"

"My own? That does not seem to me to count so much. . . . Neither of us believe that a priest can hallow marriage; but once I felt that the touch of a certain one could defile it."

"You have never before reproached me with that."

"Nor mean to now. I chose to run from him; but, dear, I do not ask to run from the consequences."

"The blackguard has had his pretty revenge. Langton told me of it. . . . All the prudes of Boston gather up their skirts, he says."

"What matter? Are we not happier missing them? . . . Honester, surely, and by that much at any rate the happier."

"Marry me, and I promise to force them all back to your feet."

She laughed quietly, almost to herself, a little wearily. "Can you not see, my dear lord, that I ask for no such triumph? It is good of you—oh, I see how good!—to desire it for me. But did we want these people in our forest days?"

"One cannot escape the world," he muttered.

"What? Not when the world is so quick to cast one out?"

"Ruth," he said, coming and standing close to her, "I do not believe you have given me the whole answer even yet. The true reason, please!"

"Must a woman give all her reasons? . . . She follows her fate, and at each new turning she may have a dozen, all to be forgotten at the next."

"I am sure you harbour some grudge—some reservation?" His eyes questioned her.

She kept him waiting for some seconds.

"My lord, women have no consistency but in this—they are jealous when they love. As your slave, I demand nothing; as your mistress, I demand only you. But if you wished also to set me high among women, you should have given me all or nothing. . . . You did not offer to take me with you. I was not worthy to be shown to that proud folk, your family."

"If you had breathed a wish, even the smallest hint of one—"

"I had no wish, save that you should offer it. I had only some pride. I was—I am—well content; only do not come back and offer me these women of Boston, or anything second best in your eyes, however much the gift may cost you."

"Have it as you will," said he, after a long pause. "I was wrong, and I beg your pardon. But I was less wrong than your jealousy suspects. My family will welcome you. Forgive me that I thought it well—that it might save you any chance of humiliation—to prepare them."

She swept him a curtsy. "They are very good," she said.

He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in control. "But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me. . . . Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child's sake. He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite! But for another, should another be born—"

"There would be time," she said quietly. "But we shall never have another."

She had hardened strangely. It was as if the milk of motherhood, wasting in her, had packed itself in a crust about her heart. He loved her; she never ceased to love him; but whereas under the public scourge something had broken, letting her free of opinion, to love the good and hate the evil for their own sakes, under this second and more mysterious visitation, she kept her courage indeed, but certainty was hers no longer; nor was she any longer free of opinion, but hardened her heart against it consciously, as against an enemy.

Not otherwise can I account for the image of Ruth Josselin—my Lady Vyell—Lady Good-for-Nothing—as under these various names it flits, for the next few years, through annals, memoirs, correspondence, scandalous chronicles; now vindicated, now glanced at with unseemly nods and becks, anon passionately denounced; now purely shining, now balefully, above and between the clouds of those times; but always a star and an object of wonder.

"In all Massachusetts," writes the Reverend Hiram Williams, B.D., in his tract entitled A Shoe Over Edom, "was no stronghold of Satan to compare with that built on a slope to the rearward of Boston, by Sir O—V—, Baronet. Here with a woman, born of this Colony, of passing wit and beauty (both alike the dower of the Evil One), he kept house to the scandal of all devout persons, entertaining none but professed Enemies of our Liberties, Atheists, Gamesters." Here one may pause and suspect the reverend castigator of confusing several dislikes in one argument. It is done sometimes, even in our own day, by religious folk who polemise in politics. "Cards they played on the Sabbath. Plays they rehearsed too, by Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreve and others, whose names may guarantee their lewdness. . . . The woman, I have said, was fair; but of that sort their feet go down ever to Hell. . . ."

"My Noll's Belle Sauvage," writes Langton to Walpole, "continues a riddle. I shall never solve it; yet 'till I have solved it, expect me not. 'Tis certain she loves him; and because she loves him, her loyalty allows not hint of sadness even to me, his best friend. Guess why she likes me? 'Tis because (I am sure of it) even in the old clouded days I never took money from Noll, nor borrowed a shilling that I didn't repay within the week. She is a puzzle, I say; but somehow the key lies in this—She is a woman that pays her debts. . . .

"They sail for Europe next spring; but not, as I understand for England, where his family may not receive her, and where by consequence he will not expose her to their slights. If I have made you impatient to set eyes on her, you must e'enpack and pay that long-promised visit to Florence. She is worth the pilgrimage."

They sailed in the early spring of 1752—Langton with them—and duly came to port in the Tagus. From Lisbon, after a short stay, they travelled to Paris, and from Paris across Switzerland to Italy, visiting in turn Turin, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and returning from that port to Lisbon, where (the situation so charmed him) Sir Oliver bought and furnished a villa overlooking the Tagus.

As she passes through Paris we get a glimpse of her in the Memoirs of that agreeable rattle, Arnauld de Jouy:—

"I must not forget to tell of an amusing little comedy of error played at the Opera-house this season (1752). All Paris was agog to see the famous English—or rather Irish—beauty, my Lady Coventry, newly arrived in the Capital. She was one of the Gunning sisters, over whom all London had already lost its head so wildly that I am assured a shoemaker made no small sum by exhibiting their pantoufles to the porters and chairmen at three sous a gaze. . . . On a certain night, then, it was rumoured that she would pay her first visit to the Opera, but none could say whose box she intended to honour. . . . It turned out to be the Duc de Luxembourg's, and upon my lady's entrance—a little late—the whole audience rose to its feet in homage, though Visconti happened just then to be midway in an aria. The singer faltered at the interruption, perplexed; her singing stopped, and lifting her eyes to the lines of boxes she dropped a sweeping curtsy—to the opposite side of the house! . . . All eyes turn, and behold! right opposite to Beauty Number One, into the box of Mme. the Marechale de Lowendahl there has just entered a Beauty Number Two, not one whit less fair—so regally fair indeed that the audience, yet standing, turn from one to the other, uncertain which to salute. Nor were they resolved when the act closed.

"Meantime my Lady Coventry (for in truth the first-comer was she) has sent her husband out to the foyer, to make enquiries. He comes back and reports her to be the lady of Sir Oliver Vyell, a great American Governor [But here we detect de Jouy in a slight error] newly arrived from his Province; that she is by birth an American, and has never visited Europe before. 'She must be Pocahontas herself, then,' says the Gunning, and very prettily sends across after the second Act, desiring the honour of her acquaintance. Nay, this being granted, she goes herself to the Marechale's box, and the pair sit together in full view of all—a superb challenge, and made with no show (as I believe, with no feeling) of jealousy. The audience is entranced. . . . Report said later that my Lady Coventry, who was given to these small indiscretions, asked almost in her first breath, yet breathlessly, her rival's age. Her rival smiled and told it. 'Then you are older than I—but how long have you been married?' This, too, her rival told her. 'Then,' sighed the Gunning, 'perhaps you do not love your lord as I love my Cov. It is wearing to the looks; but 'faith, I cannot help it!'"

From Lisbon Sir Oliver paid several flying visits to England, where his suit against Lady Caroline still dragged. Nor was it concluded until the summer of 1754, when the Gentleman's Magazine yields us the following:—

"June 4. A cause between Sir Oliver Vyell, baronet, plaintiff, and the lady of the late Sir Thomas, defendant, was tried in the Court of King's Bench by a special jury. The subject of the litigation was a will of Sir Thomas, suspected to be made when he was not of sound mind; and it appeared that he had made three—one in 1741, another in 1744, and a third in 1746. In the first only a slender provision was made for his lady, by the second a family estate in Devonshire, of 2,000 pounds per annum, was given her for her life, and by the third the whole estate real and personal was left to be disposed of at her discretion without any provision for the heir-at-law. The jury, after having withdrawn for about an hour and a half, set aside the last and confirmed the second. In a hearing before the Lord Chancellor some time afterwards in relation to the costs, it was deemed that the lady should pay them all, both at common law and in Chancery."

Thus we see our Ruth by glimpses in these years which were far from being the best or the happiest of her life—"an innocent life, yet far astray."

But one letter of hers abides, kept in contrition by the woman to whom she wrote it, and in this surely the noble soul of her mounts like a star and shines, clear above the wreck of her life.

"MY DEAR MRS. HARRY,—"

"Let there be few words between us. My child did not live, and I shall never bear my lord another; therefore, outside of your feelings and mine, what you did or left undone matters not at all in this world. You talk of the next, and there you go beyond me; but if there be a next world, and my forgiveness can help you there, why you had it long ago! . . . 'You reproach yourself constantly,' you say; 'You should have told him and you withheld the letter;' 'You did wickedly'—and the rest. Oh, my dear, will you not see that I have been a mother, too, and understand? In your place I might have done the same. Yes? No? At any rate I should have known the temptation.

"Yours affectionately,"

"RUTH."

The law business ended, she and Sir Oliver sailed for Boston and spent a few weeks at Eagles. He had resigned the Collectorship of Customs, but with no intent to return and make England his home. His attachment to Eagles had grown; he was perpetually making fresh plans to enlarge and adorn it; and he proposed henceforth, laying aside all official cares, to spend his summers in New England, his winters in the softer climate of Lisbon.



BOOK V.



LISBON AND AFTER.



Chapter I.

ACT OF FAITH.

"How is it possible for people beholding that glorious Body to worship any Being but Him who created it!"

Upon the stroke of nine the procession filed forth into the Square. It was headed by about a hundred Dominican friars, bearing the banner of their founder. The banner displayed a Cross betwixt an olive tree and a sword, with the motto Justitia et Misericordia.

After the Dominicans walked five penitents; each with a sergeant, or Familiar, attending. Two of the five wore black mitres, three were bareheaded. All walked barefoot, clad in black sleeveless coats, and each carried a long wax candle. These had escaped the extreme sentence; and after them came one, a woman, who had escaped it also, but narrowly and as by fire. In token of this her black robe was painted over with flames, having their points turned downward. Close behind followed three men on whose san-benitos the flames pointed upward. These were being led to execution, and two of them who carried boards on their breasts, painted with dogs and serpents, were to die by fire for having professed doctrines contrary to the Faith; the third, who carried no board, was a "Relapsed," and might look forward to the privilege of being strangled before being cast to the flame. To each of these three was assigned, in addition to the Familiar, a couple of Jesuit priests, to walk beside him and exhort him.

The man who was to be strangled came through the gateway of the Inquisition Office with his gaze bent to the ground, apparently insensible to the mob of sightseers gathered in the Square. The doomed man who followed—a mere youth, and, by his face, a Jew—stared about him fiercely and eagerly. The third was an old man, with ragged hair and beard, and a complexion bleached by long imprisonment in the dark. He halted, blinking, uncertain how to plant his steps. Then, feeling rather than seeing the sun, he stretched up both arms to it, dropping his taper, calling aloud as might a preacher, "How is it possible for people, beholding that glorious Body, to worship any Being but Him who created it!"

A Jesuit at his side flung an arm across the old man's mouth; and as quickly the Familiar whipped out a cloth, pulled his head back, and gagged him. The young Jew had turned and was staring, still with his fierce, eager look. He was wheeled about and plucked forward.

Next through the gateway issued a troupe of Familiars on horseback, some of them nobles of the first families in Portugal; after them the Inquisitors and other Officers of the Court upon mules; last of all, amid a train of nobles, the Inquisitor-General himself on a white horse led by two grooms: his delicate hands resting on the reins, his face a pale green by reason of the sunlight falling on it through a silken scarf of that colour pendant over the brim of his immense black hat.

All this passed before Ruth's eyes, and close, as she sat in the mule-chaise beside Sir Oliver. She would have drawn the leathern curtains, but he had put out a hand forbidding this.

She could not at any rate have escaped hearing the old man's exclamation; for their chaise was jammed in the crowd beside the gateway. Her ears still kept the echo of his vibrant voice; almost she was persuaded that his eyes had singled her out from the crowd.

—And why not? Had not she, also, cause to know what cruelties men will commit in the name of religion?

Her heart was wrathful as well as pitiful. Her lord had given her no warning of the auto-da-fe, and she now suspected that in suggesting this Sunday morning drive he had purposely decoyed her to it. Presently, as the crowd began to clear, he confirmed the suspicion.

"Since we are here, we may as well see the sp—" He was going to say "sport," but, warned by a sudden stiffening of her body, he corrected the word to "spectacle." "They erect a grand stand on these occasions; or, if you prefer, we can bribe them to give room for the chaise."

He bent forward and called to the coachman, "Turn the mules' heads, and follow!"

"Indeed I will not," she said firmly. "Do you go—if such crimes amuse you. . . . For me, I shall walk home."

He shrugged his shoulders. "It is the custom of the country. . . . But, as for your walking, I cannot allow it for a moment. Juan shall drive you home."

She glanced at him. His eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the square, and she surprised in them a look of recognition not intended for her. Following the look, she saw a chaise much like their own, moving slowly with the throng, and in it a woman seated.

Ruth knew her. She was Donna Maria, Countess of Montalagre; and of late Sir Oliver's name had been much coupled with hers.

This Ruth did not know; but she had guessed for some time that he was unfaithful. She had felt no curiosity at all to learn the woman's name. Now an accident had opened her eyes, and she saw.

Her first feeling was of slightly contemptuous amusement. Donna Maria, youthful wife of an aged and enfeebled lord, passed for one of the extremely devout. She had considerable beauty, but of an order Ruth could easily afford to scorn. It was the bizarrerie of the affair that tickled her, almost to laughter—Donna Maria's down-dropt gaze, the long lashes veiling eyes too holy-innocent for aught but the breviary; and he—he of all men!—playing the lover to this little dunce, with her empty brain, her narrow religiosity!

But on afterthought, she found it somewhat disgusting too.

"I thank you," she said. "Juan shall drive me home, then. It will not, I hope, inconvenience you very much, since I see the Countess of Montalagre's carriage across the way. No doubt she will offer you a seat."

He glanced at her, but her face was cheerfully impassive.

"That's an idea!" he said. "I will run and make interest with her."

He alighted, and gave Juan the order to drive home. He lifted his hat, and left her. She saw Donna Maria's start of simulated surprise. Also she detected, or thought she detected, the sly triumph of a woman who steals a man.

All this she had leisure to observe; for Juan, a Gallician, was by no means in a hurry to turn the mules' heads for home. He had slewed his body about, and was gazing wistfully after the throng.

"Your Excellency, it would be a thousand pities!"

"Hey?"

"There has not been a finer burning these two years, they tell me. And that old blasphemer's beard, when they set a light to it! . . . I am a poor Gallego, your Excellency, and at home get so few chances of enjoyment. Also I have dropped my whip, and it is trodden on, broken. In the crowd at the Terreiro de Paco I may perchance borrow another."

Ruth alighted in a blaze of wrath.

"Wretched man," she commanded, "climb down!"

"Your Excellency—"

"Climb down! You shall go, as your betters have gone, to feed your eyes with these abominations. . . . Nay, how shall I scold you, who do what your betters teach? But climb down. I will drive the mules myself."

"His Excellency will murder me when he hears of it. But, indeed, was ever such a thing heard of?" Nevertheless the man was plainly in two minds.

"It is not for you to argue, but to obey my orders."

He descended, still protesting. She mounted to his seat, and took the reins and whip.

"The brutes are spirited, your Excellency. For the love of God have a care of them!"

For answer she flicked them with the whip—he had lied about the broken whip—and left him staring.

The streets were deserted. All Lisbon had trooped to the auto-da-fe. If any saw and wondered at the sight of a lady driving like a mere bolhero, she heeded not. The mules trotted briskly, and she kept them to it.