FIRST OFFER.
A little before noon next day word came to her room that Sir Oliver had
called and desired to speak with her.
She was not unprepared. She had indeed dressed with special care in
the hope of it; but she went to her glass and stood for a minute or two,
touching here and there her seemly tresses.
Should she keep him waiting--keep him even a long while? . . .
He deserved it. . . . But ah, no! She was under a vow never to be other
than forthright with him; and the truth was, his coming filled her with
joy.
"I am glad you have come!" These, in fact, were her first words as he
turned to face her in the drawing-room. He had been standing by the
broad window-seat, staring out on the roses.
"You guess, of course, what has brought me?" He had dressed himself
with extreme care. His voice was steady, his eye clear, and only a
touch of pallor told of the overnight debauch. "I am here to be
forgiven."
"Who am I, to forgive?"
"If you say that, you make it three times worse for me. Whatever you
are does not touch my right to ask your pardon, or my need to be
forgiven--which is absolute."
"No," she mused, "you are right. . . . Have you asked pardon of Tatty?"
"I have, ten minutes ago. She sent the message to you."
"Tatty was heroic"--Ruth paused on the reminiscence with a smile--"
and, if you will believe me, quite waspish when I told her so."
"You should have refused to come. You might have known that I was
drunk, or I could never have sent."
"How does it go?" She stood before him, puckering her brows a little as
she searched to remember the words--"'_On the seventh day, when the
heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded the seven
chamberlains_--'"
"Spare me."
"'--_to bring Vasbti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to
show the people and the princes her beauty, for she was fair to look
on_.' Do I quote immodestly, my lord?"
"Not immodestly," he answered. "For I think--I'll be sworn--no woman
ever had half your beauty without knowing it. But you quote
_mal a propos_. Queen Vashti refused to come."
"'_Therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him_.'"
"I think, again, that you were not the woman to obey any such fear."
"No. Queen Vashti refused to come, being a queen. Whereas I, my lord--
"'Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?'"
"My slave?" he asked. "Setting aside last night--when I was
disgustingly drunk--have you a single excuse for using that word?"
"Of your giving, none. You have been more than considerate. Of my own
choosing, yes."
He stared.
"At any rate Tatty is not your slave," she went on, and he smiled with
her. "I am glad you asked Tatty's pardon. Did she forgive you
easily?"
"Too easily. She was aware, she said, that gentlemen would be
gentlemen."
"She must have meant precisely the reverse."
"Was I pretty bad?"
She put a hand across her eyes as if to brush the image from them.
"What matters the degree? It was another man seated and wearing my
lord's body. _That_ hurt."
"By God, Ruth, it shall never happen again!"
She winced as he spoke her name, and her colour rose. "Please make no
promise in haste," she said.
"Excuse me; when a man takes an oath for life, the quicker he's through
with it the better--at least that's the way with us Vyells.
It's trifles--like getting drunk, for instance--we do deliberately.
Believe me, child, I have a will of my own."
"Yes," she meditated, "I believe you have a strong will."
"'Tis a swinish business, over-drinking, when all's said and done."
He announced it as if he made a discovery; and indeed something of a
discovery it was, for that age. "Weakens a man's self-control, besides
dulling his palate. . . . They tell me, by the way, that after you left
I beat Silk."
Ruth looked grave. "You did wrong, then."
"Silk is a beast."
"An excellent reason for not making him your guest; none for striking
him at your own table."
"Perhaps not." Sir Oliver shrugged his shoulders. "Well, he can have
his revenge, if he wants it."
"How so? As a clergyman he cannot offer to fight you, and as a coward
he would not if he could."
"Is one, then, to be considerate with cowards?"
"Certainly, if you honour cowards with your friendship."
"Friendship! . . . The dog likes his platter and I suffer him for his
talk. When his talk trespasses beyond sufferance, I chastise him.
That's how I look at it."
"I am sorry, my lord, that Mr. Silk should make the third on your list
this morning."
"Oh, come; you don't ask me to _apologise_ to Silk!"
"To him rather than to me."
"But--oh nonsense! He was disgusting--unspeakable, I tell you. If you
suppose I struck him for nothing--"
"I do not."
"You cannot think what he said."
"Something about me, was it not?" Then, as Sir Oliver stood silent,
"Something a great many folk--your guests included--are quite capable of
thinking about me, though they have not Mr. Silk's gift of language."
"--That gift for which (you will go on to remind me) I suffer him."
"No; that gift which (you said) trespasses beyond sufferance."
She did not remind him that he, after all, had exposed her and provoked
Mr. Silk's uncleanly words.
Both were beating time now. He had come, as was meet, to offer an
apology, and with no intent beyond. He found not only that Ruth
Josselin was grown a woman surpassing fair, but that her mere presence
(it seemed, by no will of hers, but in spite of her will) laid hold of
him, commanding him to face a further intent. It was wonderful, and yet
just at this moment it mattered little, that the daylight soberly
confirmed what had dazzled his drunkenness over night; that her speech
added good sense to beauty. . . . What mattered at the moment was a
sense of urgency, oppressing and oppressed by an equal sense of
helplessness.
He had set the forces working and, with that, had chosen to stand
aside--in indolence partly, partly in a careful cultivated indifference,
but in part also obeying motives more creditable. He had stood aside,
promising the result, but himself dallying with time. And lo! of a
sudden the result had overtaken him. Had he created a monster, in place
of a beautiful woman, he had not been more at its mercy.
But why this sense of urgency? And why should he allow it to oppress
him?
Here was a creature exquisite, desirable, educated for no purpose but to
be his. Then why not declare himself, leap the last easy fence and in a
short while make her his?
To be sure her education--which, as we have seen, owned one source and
spring, the passion to make herself perfect for his sake--had fashioned
a woman very different to the woman of _his_ planning. She had built
not upon his careless defective design but upon her own incessant
instinct for the best. So much his last night's blunder had taught him.
He had sent for her as for a handmaid; and as a handmaid she had
obeyed--but in spirit as a queen.
To put it brutally, she could raise her terms, and he as a gentleman
could not beat her down. With ninety-nine women out of a hundred those
higher terms could be summed up in one word--marriage. Well and again,
why not? He was rich and his own master. In all but her poor origin
and the scandal of an undeserved punishment she was worthy--more than
worthy; and for the Colonials, among whom alone that scandal would count
against her, he had a habit of contempt. He could, and would in his
humour, force Boston to court her salons and hold its tongue from all
but secret tattle. The thought, too, of Lady Caroline at this moment
crossing the high seas to be met with the news agreeably moved him to
mirth.
But somehow, face to face here, he divined that Ruth was not as
ninety-nine women in the hundred; that her terms were different.
They might he less, but also they were more. They might be less.
Had she not crossed her arms and told him she was his slave? But in
that very humility he read that they were more. There was no last easy
fence. There was no fence at all. But a veil there was; a veil he
lacked the insight to penetrate, the brutality to tear aside.
Partly to assure himself, partly to tempt her from this mysterious ring
of defence, he went on, "I ought to apologise, too, for having sent Silk
yesterday with my message. You received it?"
She bent her head.
"My aunt and cousin invite themselves to Boston, and give me no chance
to say anything but 'Welcome.' Two pistols held to my head."
He laughed. "There's a certain downrightness in Lady Caroline.
And what do you suppose she wants?"
"Mr. Silk says she wants you to marry your cousin."
"Told you that, did he?" His eyes were on her face, but it had not
changed colour; her clear gaze yet baffled him. "Well, and what do you
say?"
"Must I say anything?"
"Well"--he gave a short, impatient laugh--"we can hardly pretend--can
we?--that it doesn't concern you."
"I do not pretend it," she answered. "I am yours, to deal with as you
will; to dismiss when you choose. I can never owe you anything but
gratitude."
"Ruth, will you marry me?"
He said it with the accent of passion, stepping half a pace forward,
holding out his hands. She winced and drew back a little; she, too,
holding out her hands, but with the palms turned downward. Upon that
movement his passion hung fire. (Was it actual passion, or rather a
surrender to the inevitable--to a feeling that it had all happened
fatally, beyond escape, that now--beautiful, wonderful as she had
grown--he could never do without her? At any rate their hands,
outstretched thus, did not meet.)
"You talked lightly just now," she said, and with the smallest catch in
her voice, "of vows made in haste. You forget your vow that after three
years I should go back--go back whence you took me--and choose."
"No," he corrected. "My promise was that you should go back and
announce your choice. If some few months are to run, nothing hinders
your choosing here and now. I do not ask you to marry me before the
term is out, but only to make up your mind. You hear what I offer?"
She swept him a low, obedient bow. "I do, and it is much to me, my dear
lord. Oh, believe me, it is very much! . . . But I do not think I want
to be your wife--thus."
"You could not love me? Is that what you mean?"
"Not love you?" Her voice, sweet and low, choked on the words.
"Not love you?" she managed to repeat. "You, who came to me as a god--
to me, a poor tavern drudge--who lifted me from the cart, the scourge;
lifted me out of ignorance, out of shame? Lord--love--doubt what you
will of me--but not that!"
"You do love me? Then why--" He paused, wondering. The impalpable
barrier hung like a mist about his wits.
"Did Andromeda not love Perseus, think you?" she asked lightly,
recovering her smile, albeit her eyes were dewy.
"I am dull, then," he confessed. "I certainly do not understand."
"You came to me as a god when you saved me. Shall you come to me as
less by an inch when you stoop to love me?"
"Ah!" he said, as if at length he comprehended; "I was drunk last night,
and you must have time to get that image out of your mind."
She shook her head slowly. "You did not ask me last night to marry you.
I shall always, I think, be able to separate an unworthy image of you,
and forget it."
"Then you must mean that I am yet unworthy."
"My dear lord," she said after a moment or two, in which she seemed to
consider how best to make it plain to him, "you asked me just now to
marry you, but not because you knew me to be worthy; and though you may
command what you choose, and I can deny you nothing, I would not
willingly be your wife for a smaller reason. Nor did you ask me in the
strength of your will, your passion even, but in their weakness.
Am I not right?"
He was dumb.
"And is it thus," she went on, "that the great ones love and beget noble
children?"
"I see," he said at length, and very slowly. "It means that I must very
humbly become your wooer."
"It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it
were with the best of me. . . . Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and
be in no hurry to choose. Your cousin--what is her name? Oh, I shall
not be jealous!"
With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had
prepared for her--at a farmstead under Wachusett. He was sending
thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.
"Books, too, you shall have in plenty," he promised. "But there will be
a dearth of tutors, I fear. I could not, for example, very well ask Mr.
Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in
the wilderness."
She laughed. Her eyes sparkled already at the thought of learning to
be a horsewoman.
"I will do without tutors." She spread her arms wide, as with a
swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it. The palms,
turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he
interpreted.
"I have mewed you here too long. You sigh for liberty."
She nodded, drawing a long breath. "I come from the sea-beach,
remember."
"Say but the word, and instead of the mountain, the beach shall be
yours."
"No. I have never seen a mountain. It will have the sound of waters,
too--of its own cataracts. And on the plain I shall learn to gallop,
and feel the wind rushing past me. These things, and a few books, and
Tatty--" Here she broke off, on a sudden thought. "My lord, there is a
question I have put to myself many times, and have promised myself to
put to you. Why does Tatty never talk to me about God and religion and
such things?"
He did not answer at once.
She went on: "It cannot only be because you do not believe in them.
For Tatty is very religious, and brave as a lion; she would never be
silent against her conscience."
"How do you know that I don't believe in them?"
She laughed. "Does my lord truly suppose me so dull of wit? or will he
fence with my question instead of answering it?"
"The truth is, then," he confessed, "that before she saw you I thought
fit to tell Miss Quiney what you had suffered--"
"She has known it from the first? I wondered sometimes. But oh, the
dear deceit of her!"
"--And seeing that this same religion had caused your sufferings, I
asked her to deal gently with you. She would not promise more than to
wait and choose her own time. But Tatty, as you call her, is an
honourable woman."
Ruth stretched out her hands.
"Ah, you were good--you were good! . . . If only my heart were a glass,
and you might see how goodness becomes you!"
He took her hands this time, and laying one over another, kissed the
back of the uppermost, but yet so respectfully that Miss Quiney,
entering the room just then, supposed him to be merely taking a
ceremonious leave.
For a few minutes he lingered out his call, hat and walking-cane in
hand, talking pleasantly of his last night's guests, and with a smile
that assumed his pardon to be granted. Incidentally Ruth learned how it
had happened that a chair stood empty for her by Mr. Langton's side.
It appeared that Governor Shirley himself had called, earlier in the
evening, to offer his felicitations; and finding the seat on Sir
Oliver's right occupied by a toper who either would not or could not
make room, he had with some tact taken a chair at the far end of the
table and _vis-a-vis_ with his host, protesting that he chose it as the
better vantage-ground for delivering a small speech. His speech, too,
had been neat, happy in phrase, and not devoid of good feeling. Having
delivered it, he had slipped away early, on an excuse of official
business.
Sir Oliver related this appreciatively; and it had, in fact, been one of
those small courtesies which, among men of English stock, give a grace
to public life and help to keep the fighting clean. But in fact also
(Ruth gathered) the two men did not love one another. Shirley--able and
_ruse_ statesman--had some sense of colonial independence, colonial
ambition, colonial self-respect. Sir Oliver had none; he was a Whig
patrician, and the colonies existed for the use and patronage of
England. More than a year before, when Massachusetts raised a militia
and went forth to capture Louisbourg--which it did, to the astonishment
of the world--the Governor, whose heart was set on the expedition, had
approached Captain Vyell and privately begged him to command it. He was
answered that, having once borne the King's commission, Captain Vyell
did not find a colonial uniform to his taste.