Chapter XV.

THE CHOOSING.

The minutes passed, and still she leaned there. At long intervals, when

a sob would not be repressed, her shoulders heaved and fell. But it was

characteristic of Ruth Josselin throughout her life that she hated to

indulge in distress, even when alone. As a child she had been stoical;

but since the day of her ordeal in Port Nassau she had not once wept in

self-pity. She had taught herself to regard all self-pity as shameful.

She made no sound. The morning heat had increased, and across it the

small morning noises of the farm were borne drowsily--the repeated

strokes of a hatchet in the backyard, where young Lemuel split logs; the

voice of Mrs. Cordery, also in the backyard, calling the poultry for

their meal of Indian corn; the opening and shutting of windows as rooms

were redded and dusted; lastly, Miss Quiney's tentative touch on the

spinet. Sir Oliver in his lordly way had sent a spinet by cart from

Boston; and Tatty, long since outstripped by her pupil, had a trick of

picking out passages from the more difficult pieces of music and

"sampling" them as she innocently termed it--a few chords now and again,

but melodies for the most part, note by note hesitatingly attempted with

one finger.

For a while these noises fell on Ruth's ear unheeded. Then something

like a miracle happened.

Of a sudden either the noises ceased or she no longer heard them.

It was as if a hush had descended on the farmstead; a hush of

expectancy. Still leaning on the gate, she felt it operate within

her--an instantaneous calm at first, soothing away the spirit's anguish

as though it were ointment delicately laid on a bodily wound. Not an

ache, even, left for reminder! but healing peace at a stroke, and in the

hush of it small thrills awaking, stirring, soft ripples scarcely

perceptible, stealing, hesitating, until overtaken by reinforcements of

bliss and urged in a flood, bathing her soul.

_He_ was near! He must be here, close at hand!

She lifted her head and gazed around. For minutes her closed eyeballs

had been pressed down upon her arms, and the sunlight played tricks with

her vision. Strange hues of scarlet and violet danced on the sky and

around the fringes of the elms.

But he was there! Yes, beyond all doubting it was he. . . .

He had ridden in through the gateway on his favourite Bayard, and with a

led horse at his side. He was calling, in that easy masterful voice of

his, for one of the Cordery lads to take the pair to stable.

Lemuel came running.

In the act of dismounting he caught sight of her and paused to lift his

hat. But before dismissing the horses to stable he looked them over, as

a good master should.

He was coming towards her. . . . Three paces away he halted, and his

smile changed to a frown.

"You are in trouble?"

"It has passed. I am happy now; and you are welcome, my lord."

She gave him her hand. He detained it.

"Who has annoyed you? Those women?"

She shook her head. "You might make a better guess, for you must have

met him on the way. Mr. Silk was here a while ago."

"Silk?"

"And he--he asked me to marry him."

"The hound! But I don't understand. Silk here? I see the game; he

must have played escort to those infernal women. . . . Somehow I hadn't

suspected it, and Lady Caroline kept that cat in the bag when I

surprised her at Natchett an hour ago. I wonder why?"

Ruth had a shrewd guess; but, fearing violence, forbore to tell it.

He went on: "But what puzzles me more is, how I missed meeting him."

In truth the explanation was simple enough. Mr. Silk, turning the

corner of the lane, where it bent sharply around Farmer Cordery's

wood-stacks, had chanced to spy Sir Oliver on a rise of the road to the

eastward, and had edged aside and taken cover behind the stacks. He was

now making for Natchett at his best speed.

"A while ago, you say? How long ago? The thief cannot have gone far--"

Sir Oliver looked behind him. Clearly he had a mind to call for his

horse again and to pursue.

But Ruth put out a hand. "He is not worth my lord's anger."

For a moment he stood undecided, then broke into a laugh.

"Was he riding?"

"He was on horseback, to be more exact."

"Then he'll find it a stony long way back to Boston." He laughed again.

"You see, I've been worrying myself, off and on, about that trick of

Madcap's--I'll be sworn she came within an ace of crossing her legs that

day. I'd a mind to ride over and bring you Forester--he's a soberer

horse, and can be trusted at timber. I'd resolved on it, in short, even

before my brother Harry happened to blurt out the secret of Lady

Caroline's little expedition. Soon as I heard that, I put George the

groom on Forester, and came in chase. . . . I find her ladyship at

Natchett, and after some straight talking I put George in charge of the

conspirators, with instructions to drive them home. They chose to say

nothing of Silk, and I didn't guess; so now the rogue must either leg it

back or gall himself on a waggon-horse."

"You worried yourself about me?"

"Certainly. You don't suppose I want my pupil to break her neck?"

"You do Madcap injustice. Why, yesterday she jumped--she almost flew--

this very gate on which I am leaning."

"The more reason--" he began, and broke off. His tone had been light,

but when he spoke again it had grown graver, sincerer. "It is a fact

that I worried about you, but that is not all the reason why I am here.

The whole truth is more selfish. . . . Ruth, I cannot do without you."

She put up a hand, leaning back against the gate as though giddy.

"But why?" he urged, as she made no other response. "Is it that you

still doubt me--or yourself, perhaps?"

"Both," she murmured. "It is not so easy as you pretend." Bliss had

weakened her for a while, but the weakness was passing.

"Those women have been talking to you. I can engage, whatever they

said, I gave it back to 'em with interest. They sail by the next ship.

. . . But what did they say?"

"_They say. What say they? Let them say_," Ruth quoted, her lips

smiling albeit her eyes were moist. "Does it matter what they said?"

"No; for I can guess. However the old harridan put it, you were asked

to give me up; and, after all, everything turns on our answer to that.

I have given you mine. What of yours?" He stepped close. "Ruth, will

you give me up?"

She put out her hands as one groping, sightless, and in pain.

"Ah, you are cruel! . . . You know I cannot."

BOOK III.

THE BRIDALS.

Chapter I.

BETROTHED.

Sir Oliver rode back to Boston that same evening. Ruth had stipulated

that his promise to her folk in the beach cottage still held good; that

when the three years were out, and not a day before, she would return to

them and make her announcement. Meanwhile, although the coast would

soon be clear of her enemies and he desired to have her near, she begged

off returning to Sabines. Here at Sweetwater Farm she could ride, with

the large air about her and freedom to think. It was not that she

shirked books and tutors. She would turn to them again, by-and-by.

But at Sweetwater she could think things out, and she had great need of

thinking.

He yielded. He was passionately in love and could deny her nothing.

He would ride over and pay his respects once a week.

So he took his leave, and Ruth abode with the Corderys and Miss Quiney.

Disloyal though she felt it, she caught herself wishing, more than once,

that her lord could have taken dear Tatty back with him to Boston.

I desire to depict Ruth Josselin here as the woman she was, not as an

angel.

Now Tatty, when Sir Oliver had led Ruth indoors and presented her as his

affianced wife, had been taken aback; not scandalised, but decidedly--

and, for so slight a creature, heavily--taken aback. It is undoubted

that she loved Ruth dearly; nay, so dearly that in a general way no

fortune was too high to befall her darling. What dreams she had

entertained for her I cannot tell. Very likely they had been at once

splendid and vague. Miss Quiney was not worldly-wise, yet her wisdom

did not transcend what little she knew of the world. She had great

notions of Family, for example. She had imagined, may be--still in a

vague way--that Sir Oliver would some day provide his _protegee_ with a

mate of good, or at least sufficient, Colonial birth. She had been

outraged by Lady Caroline's suggestions. Now this, while it

triumphantly refuted them, did seem to show that Lady Caroline had not

altogether lacked ground for suspicion.

In fine, the dear creature received a shock, and in her flurry could not

dissemble it.

Sir Oliver did not perceive this. In the first flush of conquest all

men are a trifle fatuous, unobservant. No woman is. Miss Quiney's arms

did not suddenly go out to Ruth. Ruth noted it. She was just: she

understood. But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember

indelibly whatever small thing happens at this crisis of their lives.

In the end Miss Quiney stretched forth her arms; but at first she seemed

to shrivel and grow very small in her chair. Nor can her first comment

be called adequate,--

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

Later, when she and Ruth were left alone, she explained, still a little

tremulously, "You took me all of a heap, my dear! I can hardly realise

it, even now. . . . Such a splendid position! You will go to London,

I doubt not; and be presented at Court; and be called Lady Vyell. . . .

Have you thought of the responsibilities?"

She had, and she had not. Her own promised splendours, the command of

wealth and of a great household--this aspect of the future was blank to

her as yet. But another presented itself and frightened her: it engaged

her conscience in doubts even when she shook it free of fears.

The Family--that mysterious shadow of which Lady Caroline no doubt

showed as the ugliest projection! Ruth was conscientious. She divined

that behind Lady Caroline's aggressiveness the shadow held something

truly sacred and worth guarding; something impalpable and yet immensely

solid; something not to be defied or laughed away because inexplicable,

but venerable precisely because it could not be explained; something not

fashioned hastily upon reason, but built by slow accretion, with the

years for its builders--mortared by sentiments, memories, traditions,

decencies, trivialities good and bad, even (may be) by the blood of

foolish quarrels--but founded and welded more firmly, massed more

formidably, than any structure of mere reason; and withal a temple

wherein she, however chastely, might never serve without profaning it.

I do most eagerly desire you, at this point in her story, to be just to

Ruth Josselin. I wish you to remember what she had suffered, in the

streets, at the hands of self-righteous folk; to understand that it had

killed all religion in her, with all belief in its rites, but not the

essential goodness of her soul.

She at any rate, and according to the light given her, was incurably

just. Weighing on the one hand her love and Oliver Vyell's, on the

other the half-guessed injury their marriage might do to him and to

others of his race; weighing them not hastily but through long hours of

thought: carrying her doubts off to the hills and there considering them

in solitude, under the open sky; casting out from the problem all of

self save only her exceeding love; this strange girl--made strange by

man's cruelty--decided to give herself in due time, but to exact no

marriage.

Why should she? The blessing of a clergyman meant nothing to her, as

she was sure it meant nothing to her lover. Why should she tie him a

day beyond the endurance of his love? Beyond the death of the thing

itself what sanctity could live in its husk? And, moreover, in any

event was she not his slave?

So she reasoned: and let the reader call her reasoning by any name he

will. By some standards it was wicked; by others wrong. It forgot one

of the strongest arguments against itself, as she was in time to prove.

But let none call her unchaste.

After certain weeks she brought her arguments to him; standing before

him, halting in her speech a little, but entreating him with eyes as

straight as they were modest. Her very childishness appealed against

her arguments.

He listened, marvelled, and broke into joyous laughter. He would have

none of it. Why, she was fit to be a queen!--a thousand times too good

for him. His family? Their prejudices should fall down before her and

worship. As little as she did he set store by rites of the Church or

believe in them: but, as the world went, to neglect them would be to

stint her of the chief honour. Was this fair to him, who desired to

heap honours upon her and would stretch for them even beyond his power?

His passion, rather than his arguments, overbore her. That passion

rejuvenated him. Once or twice it choked his voice, and her heart

leapt; for she was a sensible girl and, remembering the dead Margaret

Dance, had schooled herself to know that what was first love with her,

drenching her heart with ecstasy, could never be first love with him.

Yet now and again the miracle declared itself and instead of a lord,

commanding her, he stood before her a boy: and with a boy's halting

speech--ah, so much dearer than eloquence!

Beyond a doubt he was over head and ears in love. He was honest, too,

in his desire to set her high and make a queen of her. In Boston, Mr.

Ned Manley, architect of genius, was sitting up into the small hours of

morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a

slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile

that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired

ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked.

Already on a hillside between Boston and Sweetwater Farm--the hill

itself could be seen from the farmstead, but not their operations, which

lay on the far side--three hundred labourers were toiling in gangs,

levelling, terracing, hewing down forest trees, laying foundations.

Already ships were heading for Boston Harbour with statuary and wrought

marble in their holds, all to beautify a palace meet for Oliver Vyell's

bride. Thus love wrought in him, in a not extraordinary way if we allow

for his extraordinary means. He and Ruth, between them, were beginning

to sing the eternal duet of courtship:--

_He_.--Since that I love, this world has grown;

Yea, widens all to be possest.

_She_--Since that I love, it narrows down

Into one little nest.

_He_.--Since that I love, I rage and burn

O'erwhelming Nineveh with Rome!

_She_.--In vain! in vain! Fond man return--

Such doings be at home!

He had reached an age to know himself in his own despite. He was no

boy, to dream of building or overthrowing empires. But he could build

his love a palace. His friend Batty Langton bore with all this energy

and smiled wisely.

Ruth guessed nothing of these preparations. But his vehemence broke

down her scruples, overbore and swept away what she had built in hours

of patient thinking. She yielded: she would be married, since he willed

it.

But the debate had been; and it left Tatty, with her maxims and

taken-for-granted practicalities, hard to endure at times.

"The outfit?" Tatty would suggest. "At this distance from civilisation

we cannot even begin to take it in hand. Yet it should be worthy of the

occasion, and men--speaking with all respect of Sir Oliver--are apt to

overlook these things. Dear Ruth, I do not know if you have thought of

returning to Sabines. . . . So much handier. . . ."

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

But if Tatty fussed, the Cordery lads made more than recompense for her

fussing. From the hour when, at supper-time, Sir Oliver led Miss

Josselin into the kitchen, his bride affianced, all discord ceased

between these young men. He was their master and patron, and they

thenceforth were her servants only--her equal champions should

occasion ever be given.

Thenceforth too, and until the hour when at nightfall she drove away

from Sweetwater Farm, she was their goddess: and as, while Phoebus

served shepherd to Admetus, his fellow swains noted that never had

harvest been so heavy or life so full of sweet and healthy rivalries, so

these young men, who but once or twice saw Ruth Josselin after the hour

of her departure, talked in scattered homesteads all their days of that

good time at Sweetwater, and of the season's wonderful bearings.

Undoubtedly the winter was a genial one--so genial that scarcely a day

denied Ruth a bracing ride: the spring that followed seemed to rain and

shine almost in obedience to Farmer Cordery's evening prayer (and it

never left the Almighty in doubt of his exact wishes). Summer came, and

the young men, emulous but no longer bickering, scythed down prodigious

swathes; harvest-fall, and they put in their sickles among tall stalk

and full ear.

Sir Oliver and Ruth watched the harvest. When all was gathered, the

young men begged that she would ride home on the last load.

They escorted her back to the farmstead, walking two-by-two before the

cart, under the young moon.

Next evening at the same hour she bade them farewell and climbed into a

light waggon that stood ready, its lamps throwing long shafts of light.

Horses had been sent on ahead, with two servants for escort, and would

await her at dawn, far on the road; but to-night she would sleep in the

waggon, upon a scented bed of hay. The reason for this belated start

Sir Oliver kept a secret from her. There was a certain hill upon the

way, and he would not have her pass it by daylight. He had returned

that morning to Boston; Miss Quiney with him.

Ruth's eyes were moist to leave these good folk. Farmer Cordery cleared

his throat and blessed her in parting. She blessed them in return.

The waggon, after following the Boston road for a while, turned

northward, bearing her by strange ways and through the night towards

Port Nassau.

Chapter II.

THE RETURN.

The breakers boomed up the beach, and in the blown spray Old Josselin

pottered, bareheaded and barefoot. His eyesight had grown dimmer, but

otherwise his bodily health had improved, for nowadays he ate food

enough: and, as for purblindness, why there was no real need to keep

watch on the sea. He did it from habit.

Ruth came on him much as Sir Oliver had come on him three years before;

the roar of the breakers swallowing all sound of Madcap's hoofs until

she was close at his shoulder. Now as then he turned about with a

puzzled face, peered, and lifted his hand a little way as if to touch

his forehead.

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

"Grandfather!"

She slipped down from saddle and kissed him, in sight of the grooms, who

had reined up fifty yards away.

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

soul!"

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

"Eh! . . . Your mother keeps well enough; though doited, o' course--

doited. Properly grown you be, too, I must say. . . . I didn't

reckernise ye comin' on me like that. Inches ye've grown."

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

"Do I?" The old man gave her in the old way certain details of his

health. "But I'm betterin'. Food's a blessin', however ye come

by it."

On a sudden, as she read his thought, the very tokens of health in his

face accused her . . . and, a moment since, she had been merely glad to

note them.

"Clothes too, ye'll say? I don't set store by clothes, meself; but a

fine han'some quean they make of ye. That's a mare, too! Cost a

hundred guineas, I shouldn't wonder. . . . Well, an' how's the gentleman

keepin'? Turned into a lord, you told us, in one o' your letters: that,

or something o' the sort."

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

"Why, to be sure. My old eyes can't tackle 'em; but your mother reads

'em out, over an' over, an' I tell her what this an' that means, an' get

the sense into her head somehow."

"Take me to her." Ruth signalled to the grooms, who came forward.

They were well-trained servants, recent imports from England, and Sir

Oliver had billeted them where they could hear no gossip of her history.

They had kept their distance with faces absolutely impassive while their

mistress kissed and chatted with this old man, and they merely touched

their hats, with a "Very good, miss," when she gave over the mare,

saying she would walk up to the cottage and rest for an hour.

"Oo-oof! the dear old smell!" Ruth, before she turned, drew in a deep

breath of it. There was no one near to observe and liken her, standing

there with blown tresses and wind-wrapt skirt on the edge of Ocean, to

the fairest among goddesses, the Sea-born.

She walked up the beach, the old man beside her.

"Ay: you reckernise the taste of it, I dessay. But you'd not come back

to it, not you. . . . It must be nigh upon dinner: my belly still keeps

time like a clock. M'ria shall cook us a few clams. Snuffin' won't

bring it back like clams." He chuckled, supposing he had made a joke.

Her mother had caught sight of them from the window where she sat as

usual watching the sea. As they climbed the slope, picking their way

along loosely-piled wreckwood, she opened the door and stood at first

fastening a clean apron and then rubbing her palms up and down upon it,

as though they were sweaty and she would dry them before she shook

hands.

"That's so, M'ria!" the old man shouted cheerfully, as his eyes made out

the patch of white apron in the doorway. "It's our Ruth, all right--

come to pay us a visit!" He bawled it, at close quarters. This was his

way of conveying intelligence to the crazed brain.

Mrs. Josselin, awed by her daughter's appearance--a little perhaps, by

her loveliness; more, belike, by her air of distinction and her fine

dress (though this was simple enough--a riding suit of grey velvet, with

a broad-brimmed hat and one black feather)--withdrew behind her back the

hand she had been wiping, and stood irresolute, smiling in a timid way.

It was horrible. Ruth stretched out her arms lest in another moment her

mother should bob a curtsy.

"Mother--mother!"

She took the poor creature in her arms and held her, shivering a little

as she sought her lips; for Mrs. Josselin, albeit scrupulously clean,

had a trace of that strange wild smell that haunts the insane. Ruth had

lived with it aforetime and ceased to notice it. Now she recognised it,

and shivered.

"Surely, surely," said the mother as soon as the embrace released her.

"I always said you would come back, some day. In wealth or in trouble,

I always told grandfather you would come back. . . . That hat, now--the

very latest I'll be bound. . . . And how is your good gentleman?"

"Mother! Please do not call him that!"

"Why, you ha'n't quarrelled, ha' you?"

"Indeed, no."

"That's right." Mrs. Josselin nodded, looking extremely wise.

"Show a good face always, no matter what happens; and, with your looks

there's no saying what you can't persuade him to. All the Pococks were

good-looking, though I say it who shouldn't: and as for the Josselins--"

"Sit down, mother," Ruth commanded. She must get this over, and soon,

for it was straining at her heart. "Sit down and listen to what I have

to tell. Afterwards you shall get me something to eat; and while you

are dishing it--dear mother, you were always briskest about the

fireplace--we will talk in the old style."

"Surely, surely." Mrs. Josselin seated herself on the block-stool.

"You remember the promise? In three years--and yesterday the three

years were up--I was to come back and report myself."

"Is it three years, now? Time _do_ slip away!"

"The gel's right," corroborated old Josselin, pausing as he filled a

pipe. "I remember it."

"This is what I have to report--Sir Oliver has asked me to marry him."

There was a pause. "I dunno," said the old man sourly--and Ruth knew

that tone so well! He always used it on hearing good news, lest he

should be mistaken for genial--"I dunno why you couldn' ha' told us that

straight off, without beatin' round the bush. It's important enough."

"He has asked me to marry him, and I have said 'yes.'"

"What else _could_ ye say?"

"Of _course_ she said 'yes,' the darling!" Mrs. Josselin clapped her

hands together, without noise. "What did I ever say but that 'twas a

chance, if you used it? But when is it to be?" she added, suspiciously.

"Very soon. As soon as I please, in fact."

"You take my advice and pin him to it. The sooner the better--eh,

darling?"

Ruth rose wearily. "I see the pot boiling," she said with a glance at

the fireplace, "and I have been on horseback since seven o'clock.

Mother, won't you give me food, at least? I am hungry as a hunter."

--But this was very nearly a fib. She had been hungry enough, half an

hour ago. Now her throat worked in disgust--not at the hovel and its

poverty; for these were dear--but at the thought that thus for three

years her dearest had been thinking of her. It had been the home of

infinite mutual tolerance, of some affection--an affection not patent

perhaps--and for years it had been all she owned. Now it lived on, but

was poisoned; the atmosphere of the humble place was poisoned, and

through her.

"Food?"--her mother rose. "Food be sure, and a bed, deary: for you'll

be sleeping here, of course?"

"No. I go on to Port Nassau; and thence in a few days to a lodging up

in the back country."

"Such a mare as she's ridin' too!" put in the old man.

"I wouldn' put up at Port Nassau, if I was you," said her mother pausing

as she made ready to lift the pot-handle. "They won't know what you've

told us, and they'll cast up the old shame on you."

"M'ria ha'n't talked so sensible for days," said the old man.

"Joy must ha' steadied her. . . . Clams, is it? Clams, I hope."

The meal over, Ruth took leave of them, reproaching herself for her

haste, though troubled to have delayed the grooms so long.

She mounted and rode forward thoughtfully.

The grooms did not wear the Vyell white and scarlet, but a sober livery

of dark blue. Between more serious thoughts Ruth wondered if any one in

Port Nassau would recognise her.

The hostess of the Bowling Green did not, but came to the door and

dropped curtsies to her, as to a grand lady. She startled Ruth,

however, by respectfully asking her name.

Ruth, who had forgotten to provide against this, had a happy

inspiration.

"I am Miss Ruth," she said.

The landlady desired to be informed how to spell it. "For," said she,

"I keep a list of all the quality that honour the Bowling Green."

Ruth signed it boldly in the book presented, and ordered supper to be

brought to her room; also a fire to be lit. She was given the same room

in which she had knelt to pull off Oliver Vyell's boots.

Whilst supper was preparing, in a panic lest she should be recognised

she tied her hair high and wound it with a rope of pearls--her lover's

first gift to her. In her dress she could make little change.

The waggon following in her wake would be due to-morrow with her boxes;

but for to-night she must rely on the few necessaries of toilet the

grooms had brought, packed in small hold-alls at their saddle bows.

Her fears proved to be idle. The meal was served by a small maid, upon

whom she once or twice looked curiously. She wondered if the landlady

scolded her often.

After supper she sat a long while in thought over the fire, shielding

its heat from her with her hands. They were exquisite hands, but once

or twice she turned them palms-uppermost, as though to make sure they

bore no scars.

Chapter III.

NESTING.

She spent a week in Port Nassau, recognised by none. She walked its

streets, her features half hidden by a veil; and among the Port

Nassauers she passed for an English lady of quality who, by one of those

freaks from which the wealthy suffer, designed to rent or build herself

a house in the neighbourhood. Her accent by this time was English; by

unconscious preference she had learnt it from her lover, translating and

adapting it to her own musical tones. It deceived the Port Nassauers

completely.

She visited many stores, always with a manservant in attendance; and,

always paying down ready-money, bought of the best the little town could

afford (but chiefly small articles of furniture, with some salted

provisions and luxuries such as well-to-do skippers took to sea for

their private tables). The waggon had arrived; it, too, contained a

quantity of wine and provisions, camp furniture, clothes, etc.

At the end of the week she left Port Nassau with her purchases, the two

men escorting her, the laden waggon following. They climbed the hill

above the town, and struck inland from the base of the peninsula,

travelling north and by west. The road--a passably good one--led them

across a dip of cultivated land, shaped like a saddle-back, with a line

of forest trees topping its farther ridge. This was the fringe of a

considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the

shade of boughs, slanting their way along a gentle declivity, with here

and there glimpses of a broad plain below, and of a broad-banded river

winding through it with many loops.

But these glimpses were rare, and a stranger could not guess the extent

of the plain until, stepping from the forest into broad day, he found

himself on the very skirts of it.

An ample plain it was; a grass ground of many thousand acres, where

fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers

laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring

launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and

wading-boots. For in winter one sheet of water--or of ice, as it might

happen--covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many

brooks that threaded their way to her. But at this season they ran low

between their banks and the eye easily traced their meanderings, while

the main stream itself rolled its waters in full view--in places three

hundred yards wide, and seldom narrower than one hundred. Dwarf willows

fringed it: at some distance back from the shore, alders and reddening

maples dotted the meadows, with oaks here and there, and everywhere wild

cranberry bushes in great moss-like hummocks.

It ran sluggishly, and always--however long the curve--up to its near or

right bank the plain lay flat, or broken only by these hummocks.

But from the farther shore the ground rose at a moderate slope, and here

were farmhouses and haystacks planted above reach of the waters.

A high ridge of forest backed this inhabited terrace, and dense forest

filled the eastward gap through which the river passed down to these

levels from the cleft hills.

At one point on the farther shore the houses had drawn together in a

cluster, and towards this the road ran in a straight line on the raised

causeway that had suffered much erosion from bygone floods. It cost the

travellers an hour to reach the river-bank, where a ferry plied to and

from the village. It was a horse-boat, but not capable of conveying the

waggon, the contents of which must be unladen and shipped across in

parcels, to be repacked in a cart that stood ready on the village quay.

Leaving her men to handle this, Ruth crossed alone with her mare and

rode on, as the ferryman directed her, past the village towards her

lodging, some two miles up the stream. The house stood beside a more

ancient ferry, now disused, to which it had formerly served as a tavern.

It rested on stout oaken piles driven deep into the river-mud; a notable

building, with a roof like the inverted hull of a galleon, pierced with

dormer windows and topped by a rusty vane. Its tenants were a childless

couple--a Mr. and Mrs. Strongtharm: he a taciturn man of fifty, a born

naturalist and great shooter of wildfowl; she a douce woman, with eyes

like beads of jet, and an incurable propensity for mothering and

spoiling her neighbours' children.

The couple received her kindly, asking few questions. Their dwelling

was by many sizes too large for them, and she might have taken her

choice among a dozen of the old guest-chambers. But Sir Oliver

had come and gone a month before and selected the best for her.

Its roof-timbers, shaped like the ribs of a ship, curved outwards and

downwards from a veritable keelson; and it was reached by way of a

zig-zagging corridor, lit by port-holes, and adorned in every niche and

corner with cases of stuffed wildfowl. Ruth supped well on game Mr.

Strongtharm's gun had provided, and slept soundly, lulled between her

dreams by the ripple of water swirling between the piles that supported,

far below her, the house's cellarage.

She awoke at daybreak to the humming of wind; and looked forth on a

leaden sky, on the river ruffled and clapping in small waves against a

shrill north-easter, and on countless birds in flocks rising from the

meadows and balancing their wings against it. Before breakfast-time the

weather had turned to heavy rain. But this mattered nothing; she had a

day's work indoors before her.

She spent the morning in unpacking the stores, which had arrived late

overnight from the ferry, and in putting a hundred small touches to her

bedroom and sitting-room, to make them more habitable. By noon she had

finished the unpacking, and dismissed the two grooms to make their way

back to Boston and report that all was well with her. It rained until

three in the afternoon; and then, the weather clearing, she saddled

Madcap with her own hands and rode to the edge of the forest.

Little light remained when she reached its outskirts, and she peered

curiously between the dim boles for a few minutes before turning for her

homeward ride. She had brought a beautiful scheme in her head, and the

forest was concerned in it; but for the moment, in this twilight, the

forest daunted her. She had--for she differed from most maidens--left

her lover to arrange all the business of the marriage ceremony,

stipulating only that it must be private. But she had at the same time

bound him by a lover's oath that all details of the honeymoon must be

left to her; that he should neither know where and how it was to be

spent, nor seek to enquire. She would meet him at the church porch in

the village below--in what garb, even, she would not promise; and after

the ceremony he must be ready to ride away with her--she would not

promise whither.

Her project had been to build a camp far in the woods; and to this end

she had made her many purchases in Port Nassau. They included, besides

an array of provisions and cooking-pots, a hunter's tent such as the

backwoodsmen used in their expeditions after beaver and moose.

It weighed many pounds, and a part of her problem was how to convey it

to any depth of the forest unaided.

The easterly gale blew itself out. The next morning broke with rifts of

blue, and steadied itself, after two hours, to clear sunshine.

She awoke in blithe spirits, and after breakfast went off without waste

of time to saddle Madcap. By the stable door she found Mr. Strongtharm

seated and polishing his gun, and paused to catechise him on the forest

tracks, particularly on those leading up through Soldier's Gap--by which

name he called the gorge at the head of the plain.

"The best track beyond, you'll find, lies pretty close 'longside the

river," he said. "But 'tis no road for the mare. I doubt if a mule

could manage it after the third mile. The river, you see, comes through

in a monstrous hurry--by the look of it here you'd never guess.

No, indeed, 'tisn't a river at all, properly speakin', but a whole heap

o' streams tumblin' down this-a-way, that-a-way, out o' the side

valleys; and what you may call the main river don't run in one body, but

breaks itself up considerable over waterfalls. Rock for the most part,

an' pretty steep, with splashy ground below the falls. I han't been

right up the Gap these dozen years; an' a man's job it is at the best--a

two days' journey. The las' time I slept the night, goin' an' comin',

in Peter Vanders' lodge."

"A lodge?"

"That's what they call it. He was a trapper, and a famous one, but

before my time; an' that was his headquarters--a sort o' cabin, pretty

stout, just by the head in the sixth fall, or maybe 'tis the seventh--

I forget. He lived up there without wife or family--" Mr. Strongtharm

would have launched into further particulars about the dead trapper,

whose skill and strange habits had passed into a legend in the valley.

But Ruth wished to hear more of the cabin.

"It's standin', no doubt, to this day. Vanders was a Dutchman, an'

Dutchmen build strong by nature. The man who built _this_ yer house was

a Dutchman, an' look at the piles of it--_an_ the ribs you may ha'

noticed. Ay, the lodge will be there yet; but you'll never find it, not

unless I takes ye. That fourth fall is a teaser."

Ruth saddled her mare, and rode off in the direction of the gap,

thoughtfully. Mr. Strongtharm had given her a new notion. . . .

It was close upon nightfall when she returned. She was muddy, but

cheerful; and she hummed a song to herself in her chamber as she slid

off her mired garments and attired herself for supper.

That song was her nesting song. Away Boston-wards, her lover, too, was

building in his magnificent fashion; but Ruth had found a secret place,

such as birds love, and shyly, stealthily as a mating bird, she set

about planning and furnishing. It is woman's instinct. . . . Every day,

as soon as breakfast was done, she saddled and rode towards the Gap, and

always with a parcel or two dangling from the saddle-bow or strapped

upon Madcap's back.

For the first time in her life she had money to handle; money furnished

by Sir Oliver to be spent at her own disposal on the honeymoon.

It seemed to her a prodigious sum, but she was none the less economical

with it. I fear that sometimes she opened the bags and gloated over the

coins as over a hoard. She was neither miser nor spendthrift; but

unlike many girls brought up in poverty, she brought good husbandry to

good fortune.

Yet "shopping"--to enter a store and choose among the goods for sale,

having money to pay, but weighing quality and price--was undeniably

pleasant. Twice or thrice, bethinking her of some trifle overlooked at

Port Nassau, she enjoyed visiting the village store--it boasted but

one--and dallying with a purchase.

She was riding back from one of these visits--it had been (if the Muse

will smile and condescend) to buy a packet of hairpins--when, half-way

up the village street, she spied a horseman approaching. An instant

later she recognised Mr. Trask.

There was really nothing strange in her meeting him here. Mr. Trask

owned a herd of bullocks, and had ridden over from Port Nassau to

bargain for their winter fodder. He had not aged a day. His horse was

a tall grey, large-jointed, and ugly.

Ruth wore a veil, but it was wreathed just now above the brim of her

hat. Her first impulse was to draw it over her face, and her hand went

up; but she desisted in pride, and rode by her old enemy with a calm

face.

They passed one another, and she believed that he had not recognised

her; but after a few paces she heard him check his horse.

"Hi, madam!"

She halted, and he came slowly back.

"You are Ruth Josselin," he said.

"I am, sir."

"And what are you doing here?"

She smiled at him a little scornfully. "Do you ask as a magistrate,

sir, or in curiosity?"

He frowned, narrowing his eyes. "You are marvellously changed.

You appear prosperous. Has Vyell married you yet?"

"No, sir."

"Nor as yet cast you off, it would seem."

"No, sir."

"Ah, well, go your ways. You are a beautiful thing, but evil; and I

would have saved ye from it. I whipped ye, remember."

Her face burned, but she held her eyes steady on him. "Mr. Trask," she

said, "do you believe in hell?"

"Eh?" He was taken aback, but he could not frown away the question; for

she asked it with a certain authority, albeit very courteously. "Eh?

To be sure I do."

"I am going to prove to you (and some day you may take comfort from it)

that, except on earth, there is no such place."

"Ye'd like to believe that, I daresay!"

"For you see," she went on, letting the sneer pass, "it is agreed that,

if there be a hell, none but the wicked go there."

"Well?"

"Why, then, hell must defeat itself. For, where all are wicked

together, no punishment can degrade, because no shame is felt."

"There's the pain, madam." He eyed her, and barked it in a short,

savage laugh. "The torment--the worm that dies not, the fire that's not

quenched. Won't these content ye, bating the shame?"

Her eyes answered his in scorn. "No, sir. Because I once suffered your

cruelty, you have less understanding than I; but you have more ingenuity

than the Almighty, being able, in your district, to make a hell of

earth."

"You blaspheme thus to me, that honestly tried to save your soul?"

"Did you? . . . Well, perhaps you did in your fashion, and you may take

this comfort for reward. Believe me, who have tried, hell is

bottomless, but in its own way. Should ever you attain to it--and there

may in another world be such a place for the cruel--go down boldly; and

it may be you will drop through into bliss."

"You, to talk of another world!" he snapped.

"And why not, Mr. Trask? Once upon a time you killed me."

He turned his grey horse impatiently. "I whipped ye," was his parting

shot. "If 'twarn't too late, I'd take pleasure to whip ye again!"

Chapter IV.

THE BRIDEGROOM.

Mr. Trask had not concluded the bargain for his winter fodder.

Just a week later he rode over from Port Nassau, to clinch it, and had

almost reached the foot of the descent to the river meadows when a

better mounted rider overtook him.

"Ah!" said the stranger, checking his horse's stride as he passed.

"Good-morning, Mr. Trask! But possibly you do not remember me?"

"I remember you perfectly," answered Mr. Trask. "You are Sir Oliver

Vyell."

"Whom, once on a time, you sentenced to the stocks. You recall our last

conversation? Well, I bear you no malice; and, to prove it, will ask

leave to ride to the ferry with you. You will oblige me? I like

companionship, and my one fellow-traveller--a poor horseman--I have left

some way behind on the road."

"I have no wish to ride with you, Sir Oliver," said Mr. Trask stiffly.

"Forbye that I consider ye a son of Belial, I have a particular quarrel

with you. At the time you condescend to mention, I took it upon me to

give you some honest advice--not wholly for your own sake. You flouted

it, and 'that's nothing to me' you'll say; but every step we take

worsens that very sin against which I warned ye, and therefore I want

none of your company."

"Honest Mr. Trask," Sir Oliver answered with a laugh. "I put it to you

that, having fallen in together thus agreeably, we shall make ourselves

but a pair of fools if one rides ahead of the other in dudgeon. Add to

this that the ferry-man, spying us, will wait to tide us over together;

and add also, if you will, that I have the better mount and it lies in

my will that you shall neither lag behind nor outstrip me. Moreover,

you are mistaken."

"I am not mistaken. This day week I met Ruth Josselin and had speech

with her."

"Satisfactory, I hope?"

"It was not satisfactory; and if I must ride with you, Sir Oliver,

you'll understand it to be under protest. You are a lewd man. You have

taken this child--"

Here Mr. Trask choked upon speech. Recovering, he said the most

unexpected thing in the world.

"I am not as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in

me to pity her the more for her comeliness. But as a matter of fact I

do."

Sir Oliver stared at him. "_You_ to pity her! _You_ to plead her

beauty to _me_, who took it out of the mud where you had flung her,

mauled by you and left to lie like a bloody clout!"

But the armour of Mr. Trask's self-righteousness was not pierced.

"I sentenced her," he replied calmly, "for her soul's welfare.

Who said--what right have you to assume--that she would have been left

to lie there? Rather, did I not promise you in the market-square that,

her chastening over, my cart should fetch her? Did I not keep my word?

And could you not read in the action some earnest that the girl would be

looked after? Your atheism, sir, makes you dull in spiritual

understanding."

"I am glad that it does, sir."

"If your passion for Ruth Josselin held an ounce of honesty, you would

not be glad; for even in this world you have ruined her."

"Mr. Trask, I have not."

Mr. Trask glanced at him quickly.

"--Upon my honour as a gentleman I have not, neither do I desire

it . . . Sir, twice in this half-mile you have prompted me to ask,

What, here on this meadow, prevents my killing you? Wait; I know your

answer. You are a courageous man and would say that as a magistrate you

have schooled yourself to accept risks and to despise threats. Yes,"

Sir Oliver admitted with a laugh, "you are an infernally hard nut to

crack, and somehow I cannot help liking you for it. Are you spending

the night yonder, by-the-bye?" He nodded towards the village.

"No, sir. I propose returning this evening to Port Nassau."

"Then it is idle to invite you to my wedding. I am to be married at

nine o'clock to-morrow."

Mr. Trask eyed him for a moment or two. Then his gaze wandered ahead to

the river, where already the ferrymen had caught sight of them and were

pushing the horse-boat across with long sweeps; and beyond the river to

a small wooden-spired church, roofed with mossy shingles that even at

this distance showed green in the slant sunlight.

"Yonder?" he asked.

"Ay: you would have been welcome."

"I will attend," said Mr. Trask. "A friend of mine--a farmer--will

lodge me for the night. A hospitable man, who has made the offer a

score of times. After so many refusals I am glad of an excuse for

accepting."

"I stipulate that you keep the excuse a secret from him. It is to be

quite private. That," said Sir Oliver, turning in saddle for a look

behind him, "is one of my reasons for outriding my fellow-traveller."

"The clergyman?"

"Ay . . . To-morrow, maybe, you'll admit to having misjudged us."

"Maybe," Mr. Trask conceded. "I shall at any rate thank God,

provisionally. He is merciful. But I have difficulty in believing that

any good can come of it."

Chapter V.

RUTH'S WEDDING DAY.

She had left it all to him, receiving his instructions by letter.

It was to be quite private, as he had told Mr. Trask. She would ride

down to the village in her customary grey habit, as though on an early

errand of shopping. He would lodge overnight at the Ferry Inn, and be

awaiting her by the chancel step. Afterwards--ah, that was her secret!

In this, their first stage in married life, he had promised--reversing

the marriage vow--to obey.

Happiness bubbled within her like a spring; overshadowed by a little

awe, but not to be held down. Almost at the last moment she must take

Mrs. Strongtharm into her confidence. She could not help it.

"Granny," she whispered. (They were great friends.) "I am to be married

to-morrow."

"Sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Strongtharm, peering at her, misdoubting that

she jested.

But Ruth's face told its own tale. "May I?" asked the elder woman, and

her arm went about the girl's waist. "God bless ye, dear, and send ye a

long family! Who's the gentleman? Not him as came an' took the rooms

for ye? He said you was a near relation o' his. . . . Well, never mind!

The trick's as old as Abram."

"Be down at the church at nine to-morrow, and you shall see him, whoever

he is. But it is a secret, and you are not to tell Mr. Strongtharm."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Strongtharm. "_Him!_"

"But you ought to make _some_ difference," whispered the good woman next

morning, after breakfast, as she was preparing to slip away to the

village. "Be it but a flower in your bodice. But we've no garden, and

the season's late."

Ruth took her kiss of benediction. She was scarcely listening; but the

words by a strange trick repeated themselves on her brain a few minutes

later, upstairs, as she went about her last preparations.

She leaned out at the lattice over the river. A lusty creeper, rooted

in _terra firma_ at the back of the house, had pushed its embrace over

west side and front. The leaves, green the summer through, were now

turned to a vivid flame-colour. She plucked three or four and pinned

them over her bosom, glanced at the effect in the mirror, and went

quickly down the stairs.

Fairer day could hardly have been chosen. "Happy is the bride the sun

shines on." ... In the sunshine by the stable door Mr. Strongtharm sat

polishing his gun. She asked him what sport he would be after to-day.

He answered, "None. I don't reckon 'pon luck, fishing, after a body's

mentioned rabbits; and I don't go gunning if I've seen a parson.

A new parson, I mean. Th' old Minister's all in the day's work."

"You have seen a strange clergyman to-day?"

"Yes; as I pulled home past the Ferry. I'd been down-stream early,

tryin' for eels. On my way back I saw him--over my left shoulder too.

He was comin' out o' the Inn by the waterside door, wipin' his mouth: a

loose-featured man, with one shoulder higher than t'other, and a hard

drinker by his looks."

Ruth saddled-up and mounted in silence. Fatally she recognised the old

fellow's description; but--was it possible her lover had brought this

man to marry them?--this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their

hands? If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy,

this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous

farce. If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to have

everything about her pure and holy--and on this day, of all days!

Surely Oliver--she had taught herself to call him Oliver--would never

misunderstand her so! Why, it was a misunderstanding that went down,

down, almost to the roots. _Those whom God hath joined together let no

man put asunder_ . . . but here was cleavage, and from within.

Say rather of such sundering. What man could remedy it? _Those whom

God hath joined together_--ah, by such hands!

It was not possible! In all things her lover had shown himself

considerate, tender; guessing, preventing her smallest wish.

As she rode she sought back once more to the wellspring of love.

Had he not stooped to her as a god, lifted her from the mire?

It was not possible.

Yet, as she rode, the unconquerable common sense within her kept

whispering that this thing _was_ possible. . . . It darkened the

sunlight. She rode as one who, having sung carelessly for miles,

surmises a dreadful leap close ahead. Still she rode on, less and less

sure of herself, and came to the church porch, and alighted.

The church was a plain oblong building, homely within to the last

degree. The pews were of pitch-pine, the walls and rafters coated with

white-wash, some of which had peeled off and lay strewing the floor.

A smell of oil filled the air; it was sweet and sickly, and came from

the oozings of half a dozen untended lamps. Ornament the place had

none, save a decent damask cloth on the Communion table.

Oliver Vyell stood by the chancel rail. The rest of the congregation

comprised Mr. Trask, seated stiff and solitary in the largest pew, Mrs.

Strongtharm, and half a score of children whom Mrs. Strongtharm had

collected on the way and against her will. They followed her by habit,

after goodies; but just now, though they sat quiet, her reputation was

suffering from a transient distrust. (Allurements to piety rarely fell

in the path of a New England child; but even he was child enough to

suspect them when they occurred.) At the sound of the mare's footsteps

they turned their heads, one and all. Mr. Silk, clad in white surplice

and nervously turning the pages of the Office by the holy table, faced

about also.

Ruth was seen alighting, out there in the sunlight. She hitched the

mare's bridle over a staple and came lightly stepping through the shadow

of the porchway. Her lover walked down the aisle to meet her. He, too,

stepped briskly, courteously.

Three paces within the doorway she came to a halt. The sunlight fell on

her again, through the first of the southern windows. It flamed on the

leaves pinned to her bosom.

He offered his arm. But she, that had come stepping like a wild fawn,

like a fawn stood at gaze, terrified, staring past him at the figure by

the table. Mr. Silk commanded an oily smile and, book in hand, advanced

to the chancel step.

"Ah, no!" she murmured. "It is wicked--"

She cast her eyes around, as though for help. They did not turn--it was

pitifullest of all--to him who was about to swear to help her throughout

life. They turned and encountered Mr. Trask's.

With a sob, as Sir Oliver would have taken her arm, she threw it up,

broke from him, and fled back through the porchway. As she drew back

that one pace before fleeing, the sun fell full again on that

breast-knot of scarlet leaves.

He stared after her dumbfoundered, still doubting her intent.

He saw her catch at the mare's bridle, and, with a bitter curse, ran

forward. But he was too late. She had mounted, and was away.

He heard the mare's hoofs clattering up the street. His own horse was

stabled at the Ferry Inn. It would cost him ten minutes at least to

mount and pursue. . . .

"I said 'provisionally.'" It was Mr. Trask's voice, speaking at his

elbow. "Nay, man, don't strike me; since you meant business, 'tis

yourself you should strike for a fool. You were a fool to invite me;

but she was scared before ever she caught sight of _me_--by that

buck-parson of yours, I guess."

He had fetched Bayard, had mounted, and was after her. He pulled rein

at her lodgings. Yes, Mr. Strongtharm had seen her go by.

The old fellow did not guess what was amiss; as how should he?

"It's cruel for the mare's hoofs," he commented, "forcing her that pace

on the hard road. She rides well, s' far as ridin' goes; but the best

womankind on horseback has neither bowels nor understandin'."

He pointed towards Soldiers' Gap. "She rides there most days," he said;

"but it can't be far. There's no Christian road for a horse, once

you're past the second fall."

Oliver Vyell struck spur and followed. Already he had the decency to

curse himself, but not yet could he understand his transgressing.

"Your atheism"--Mr. Trask had said it--"makes you dull in spiritual

understanding."

Sceptics are of two orders, and religious disputants gain a potential

advantage, but miss truth, by confusing them. Oliver Vyell was dull,

and his dullness had betrayed him, precisely because his reason was so

lucid and logical that it shut out those half-tones in which abide all

men's, all women's, tenderest feelings. He knew that Ruth had no more

faith than he in Christian dogma; no faith at all in what a minister's

intervention could do to sanctify marriage. He had inferred that she

must consider the tying of the knot by Mr. Silk, if not as a fair jest,

at least as a gentle mockery, the humour of which he and she would

afterwards taste together. Why had she not pleaded against rite of any

kind? . . . Besides, the dog had once insulted her with a proposal.

Sir Oliver never allowed Mr. Silk to guess that he had surprised his

secret; and Mr. Silk, tortuous himself in all ways, could not begin to

be on terms with a candid soul such as Ruth's, craving in all things to

be open where it loves. Sir Oliver had supposed it a pretty lesson to

put on a calm, negligent face, and command the parson, who dared not

disobey, to perform the ceremony. Mr. Silk had cringed.

Likewise, when inviting Mr. Trask to the nuptials, he had looked on him

but as a witness to his triumph. The very man who had sentenced her to

degradation--was there not dramatic triumph in summoning him to behold

her exalted?

For behind all this reasoning, of course, and below all his real passion

for her, lay the poisonous, proud, Whig sense of superiority, the

conviction that, desirable though she was, his choice exalted her.

Would not ten thousand women--would not a hundred thousand--have counted

it heaven to stand in her place?

Yet she had earnestly begged off the rite which to every one of these

women would have meant everything. This puzzled him.

On second thoughts the puzzle had dissolved. She accepted his

negations, and, woman-like, improved on them. The marriage service was

humbug; therefore she had willed to have none of it. The attitude was

touching. It might have been convenient, had he been less in love.

But he was deeply in love, so deeply that in good earnest he longed to

lift and set her above all women. For this, nonsensical though they

were, due rites must be observed.

At the last pinch she had broken away. Was it possible, then, that

after all she did not love him? She had crossed her arms once and

called herself his slave. . . .

Not for one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forced

out of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count the

rite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holy

that to contaminate the rite is to poison all.

Not as yet did he understand one whit of this. But he vehemently

desired her, and his desire was straight. Because it was straight,

while he rode some inkling of the truth pierced him.

For, as he rode, he recalled how she had cast up an arm and turned to

flee. His eyes had rested confusedly on the breast-knot of scarlet

leaves, and it seemed to him, as he rode, that he had seen her heart

beating there through her ribs.

Chapter VI.

"YET HE WILL COME--".

The cabin stood close above the fall. It was built of oak logs split in

two, with the barked and rounded sides turned outward. Pete Vanders

would have found pine logs more tractable and handier to come by, and

they would have outlasted his time; but, being a Dutchman, he had built

solidly by instinct.

Also, he had chosen his ledge cunningly or else with amazing luck.

A stairway shaped in the solid rock--eight treads and no more--led down

to the very brink of the first cascade; yet through all these years,

with their freshets and floods, the cabin had clung to its perch.

Within doors the ears never lost the drone of the waters. There were

top-notes that lifted or sank as the wind blew, but below them the deep

bass thundered on.

Ruth had doffed her riding-dress for a bodice and short skirt of russet,

and moved about the cabin tidying where she had tidied a score of times

already. Through the window-opening drifted wisps of smoke, aromatic

and pungent, from the fire she had built in an angle of the crags a few

yards from the house. (It had been the Dutchman's hearth. She had

found it and cleared the creepers away, and below them the rock-face was

yet black with the smoke of old fires.) Some way up the gorge, where, at

the foot of a smaller waterfall, the river divided and swirled about an

island covered with sweet grass--a miniature meadow--her mare grazed at

will. About a fortnight ago, having set aside three days for the

search, on the second Ruth had found a circuitous way through the woods.

A part of it she had cleared with a billhook, and since then Madcap had

trodden a rough pathway with her frequent goings and comings.

It had immensely lightened the labour of furnishing, but she feared that

the pasturage would last but a day or two. Her lover, when he came,

must devise means of sending the mare back.

She never doubted his coming. He would probably miss the bridle-path,

the opening of which she had carefully hidden, and be forced to make the

ascent on foot. But he would come. See, she was laying out his clothes

for him! He had sent to Sweetwater, at her request, two valises full,

packed by Manasseh; and she had conveyed them hither with the rest of

the furniture. Carefully now she made her selection from the store:

coat, breeches of homespun and leather, stout boots, moccasined leggings

such as the Indians wore, woollen shirts--but other shirts also of

finest cambric--with underclothes of silk, and delicate nightshirts, and

silken stockings that could be drawn like soft ribbons between the

fingers. She thrilled as she handled them garment by garment.

Along the wall hung his two guns, with shot-bag and powder-flask.

Here was his home. Here were his clothes. . . . She had forgiven him,

hours ago, without necessity for his pleading. So would he forgive her.

After all, what store did he set by church ceremony. He had vowed to

her a dozen times that he set none. He loved her; that was enough, and

assurance of his following. He would confess that she had been right.

. . . As she moved about, touching, smoothing this garment and that,

there crossed her memory the Virgilian refrain--

"_Nihil ille deos, nil carmina curat.

Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin._"

She murmured it, smiling to herself as she recalled also the dour figure

of Mr. Hichens in the library at Sabines, seated stiffly, listening

while she construed. If only tutors guessed what they taught!

She hummed the lines: "_Nihil ille deos_"--he cared nothing for church

rites; "_nil carmina_"--she needed no incantations.

She never doubted that he would arrive; but, as the day wore on, she

told herself that very likely he had missed his road. He would arrive

hungered, in any event. . . . She stepped out to the cooking-pot, and,

on her way, paused for a long look down the glen. The sun, streaming

its rays over the high pines behind her, made rainbows in the spray of

the fall and cast her shadow far over the hollow at her feet.

The water, plunging past her, shot down the valley in three separate

cascades, lined with slippery rock, in the crevices of which many ferns

had lodged and grew, waving in the incessantly shaken air. From the

pool into which the last cascade tumbled--a stone dislodged by her foot

dropped to it almost plumb--the stream hurtled down the glen, following

the curve of its sides until they overlapped; naked cliffs above,

touched with sunlight, their feet set in peat, up which the forest trees

clambered as if in a race for the top--pines leading, with heather and

scrubby junipers, oaks and hemlocks some way behind; alders, mostly by

the waterside, with maples in swampy patches, and here and there a birch

waving silver against the shadow. The pines kept their funereal plumes,

like undertakers who had made a truce with death by making a business of

it. But these deciduous trees, that had rioted in green through spring

and summer, wrapped themselves in robes to die, the thinner the more

royal; the maples in scarlet, the swamp-oak in purple--bloody purple

where the sun smote on its upper boughs. Already the robes had worn

thin, and their ribs showed. Leaves strewed the flat rock where Ruth

stood, looking down.

She was not thinking of the leaves, nor of the fall of the year.

She was thinking that her lord would be hungered. She went back to her

cooking-pot under the cliff overhung with heath and juniper.

Herself fearless--or less fearful than other women--she did not for some

time let her mind run on possible accidents to him. He was a man, and

would arrive, though tired and hungered. Not until the sun sank behind

the upper pines did any sense of her own loneliness assail her.

Then she bethought her that with night, if he delayed, the forest would

wrap her around, formless, haunted by wild beasts. The singing of

birds, never in daylight utterly drowned by the roar of the fall, had

ceased about her; the call of the hidden chickadees, the cheep-cheep of

a friendly robin, hopping in near range of the cooking-pot, the sawing

of busy chipmunks.

These sounds had ceased; but she did not feel the silence until, far up

the valley behind her, a loon sent forth its sole unhappy cry.

It rang a moment between the cliffs. As it died away she felt how

friendly had been these casual voices, and wondered what beasts the

forest might hold.

She went back to the cabin, lit a lamp, and lifted one of the guns off

its rack. She charged it--well she had learnt how to charge a gun.

Twilight was falling. The fire burned beneath the cooking-pot; but,

seated on the flat stone with the gun laid across her knees and the fall

sounding beneath her, she had another thought--that the fire, set in an

angle of the rock, and moreover hidden around the house's corner, was

but a poor signal. It shed no ray down the glen.

She would light another fire on the flat stone. In the dusk she

collected dry twigs, piled stouter sticks above them, covered the whole

with leaves, and lit it, fetching a live brand from under the

cooking-pot. The flame leapt up, danced over the leaves, died down and

again revived. When assured that it was caught, she sat beside it,

staring across the flame over the valley now swallowed in darkness,

still with the gun laid across her knees.

"Ruth! O Ruth!"

His voice came up over the roar of the fall--which, while he stumbled

among the boulders below, had drowned his footsteps.

"Dear! Ah--have a care!"

"Yes; hold a light. . . . It must be dangerous here."

She snatched a brand from the fire. She had collected a fresh heap of

twigs and leaves in the lap of her gown, groping in the dusk for them;

and his first sight of her had been as she stood high emptying them in a

red stream to feed the flames. A witch she seemed, pouring sacrifice on

that wild altar, while the light of it danced upon her face and figure.

Having gained the ledge of the second cascade, he anchored himself on

good foothold and stared up, catching breath before he hailed.

Her first glimpse of him, as she held the blazing stick over the edge of

the fall, was of a face damp with sweat or with spray, and of his hands

reaching up the slimed rock, feeling for a grip.

"Ah, be careful! Shall I come down to you?" For the first time she

realised his peril.

"_Over rocks that are steepest_," he quoted gaily, between grunts of

hard breathing. He had handhold now. "Hero on her tower--and faith,

Leander came near to swimming for it--once or twice" (grunt) "_Over the

mountains, And over the waves_--hullo! that rock of yours overhangs.

What's to the left?" (grunt) "Grass? I mistrust grass on these ledges.

. . . Reach down your hand, dear Ruth, to steady me only. . . ."

She flung herself prone on the flat rock beside the fire, and gave a

hand to him. He caught it, heaved himself over the ledge with a final

grunt of triumph, and dropped beside her, panting and laughing.

"You might have killed yourself!" she shivered.

"And whom, then, would you have reproached?"

"You might have killed yourself--and then--and then I think I should

have died too."

"Ruth!"

"My lord will be hungry. He shall rest here and eat."

He flung a glance towards the cabin; or rather--for the dusk hid its

outlines--towards the light that shone cosily through the window-hatch.

"Not yet!" she murmured. "My lord shall rest here for a while."

She was kneeling now to draw off his shoes. He drew away his foot,

protesting.

"Child, I am not so tired, but out of breath, and--yes--hungry as a

hunter."

"My lord will remember. It was the first service I ever did for him."

It may have been an innocent wile to anchor him fast there and helpless.

. . . At any rate she knelt, and drew off his shoes and carried them to

a little distance. "Next, my lord shall eat," she said; and having

rinsed her hands in the stream and spread them a moment to the flame to

dry, sped off to the cabin.

In a minute she was back with glasses and clean napkins, knives, forks,

spoons, and a bottle of wine; from a second visit she returned with

plates, condiments, and a dish of fruit. Then, running to the

cooking-pot, she fetched soup in two bowls. "And after that," she

promised, "there will be partridges. Mr. Strongtharm shot them for me,

for I was too busy. They are turning by the fire on a jack my mother

taught me to make out of threads that untwist and twist again. . . .

Shall I sit here, at my lord's feet?"

"Sit where you will, but close; and kiss me first. You have not kissed

me yet--and it is our wedding day. Our wedding feast! O Ruth--Ruth, my

love!"

"Our wedding feast! . . . Could it be better! O my dear, dear lord!

. . . But I'll not kiss you yet."

"Why, Ruth?"

"Why, sir, because I will not--and that's a woman's reason.

Afterwards--but not now! You boasted of your hunger. What has become

of it?"

They ate for a while in silence. The stream roared at their feet.

Above them, in the gap of the hills, Jupiter already blazed, and as the

last of the light faded, star after star came out to keep him company.

He praised her roasting of the partridges. "To-morrow," she answered,

"you shall take your gun and get me game. We must be good providers.

To-morrow--"

"To-morrow--and for ever and ever--" He poured wine and drank it

slowly.

"Ah, look up at the heavens! And we two alone. Is this not best,

after all? Was I not right?"

"Perhaps," he answered after a pause. "It is good, at all events."

"To-morrow we will explore; and when this place tires us--but my lord

has not praised it yet--"

"Must I make speeches?"

"No. When this place tires us, we will strike camp and travel up

through the pass. It may be we shall find boatmen on the upper waters,

and a canoe. But for some days, O my love, let these only woods be

enough for us!"

Their dessert of fruit eaten, she arose and turned to the business of

washing-up. He would have helped; but she mocked him, having hidden his

shoes. "You are to rest quiet, and obey!"

Before setting to work she brought him coffee and a roll of

tobacco-leaf, and held a burning stick for him while he lit and inhaled.

For twenty minutes, perhaps, he watched her, stretched on the rock,

resting on his elbow, his hunger appeased, his whole frame fatigued, but

in a delicious weariness, as in a dream.

Far down the valley the full moon thrust a rim above the massed oaks and

hemlocks. It swam clear, and he called to her to come and watch it.

She did not answer. She had slipped away to the house--as he supposed

to restore the plates to their shelves. Apparently it took her a long

while. . . . He called again to her.

The curtain of the doorway was lifted and she stood on the threshold,

all in white, fronting the moon.

"Will my lord come into his house?"

Her voice thrilled down to him. . . . Then she remembered that he stood

there shoeless; and, giving a little cry, would have run barefoot down

the moonlit rocky steps, preventing him.

But he had sprung to his unshod feet, and with a cry rushed up to her,

disregarding the thorns.

She sank, crossing her arms as a slave--in homage, or, it may be, to

protect her maiden breasts.

"No, no--" she murmured, sliding low within his arms. "Look first

around, if our house be worthy!"

But he caught her up, and lifting her, crushing her body to his, carried

her into the hut.

Chapter VII.

HOUSEKEEPING.

She awoke at daybreak to the twittering of birds. Raising herself

little by little, she bent over him, studying the face of her beloved.

He slept on; and after a while she slipped from the couch, collected her

garments in a bundle, tiptoed to the door, and lifting its curtain,

stole out to the dawn.

Mist filled the valley below the fall. A purple bank of vapour blocked

the end of it. But the rolling outline was edged already with gold, and

already ray upon ray of gold shivered across the upper sky and touched

the pinewoods at the head of the pass.

Clad in cloak and night-rail, shod in loose slippers of Indian

leather-work, she moved across to the fire she had banked overnight.

Beside it a bold robin had perched on the rim of the cooking-pot.

He fluttered up to a bough, and thence watched her warily. She remade

the fire, building a cone of twigs; fetched water, scoured the cauldron,

and hung it again on its bar. As she lifted it the sunlight glinted on

the ring her lover had brought for the wedding and had slipped on her

finger in the cabin, binding her by this only rite.

The fire revived and crackled cheerfully. She caught up the bundle

again and climbed beside the stream, following its right bank until she

came to the pool of her choice. There, casting all garments aside, she

went down to it, and the alders hid her.

Half an hour later she returned and paused on the threshold of the hut,

the sunlight behind her. In her arms she carried a cluster--a bundle

almost--of ferns and autumnal branches--cedar and black-alder, the one

berried with blue the other with coral, maple and aromatic spruce, with

trails of the grape vine. He was awake and lay facing the door,

half-raised on his left elbow.

"This for good-morning!" She held out the armful to show him, but so

that it hid her blushes. Then, dropping the cluster on the floor, she

ran and knelt, bowing her face upon the couch beside him. But laying a

palm against either temple he forced her to lift it and gaze at him,

mastering the lovely shame.

He looked long into her eyes. "You are very beautiful," he said slowly.

She sprang to her feet. "See the dew on my shoes! I have bathed,

and--" with a gesture of the hand towards the scattered boughs--

"afterwards I pulled these for you. But I was in haste and late

because--because--" She explained that while bathing she had let the

ring, which was loose and heavy, slip from her finger into the pool.

It had lodged endwise between two pebbles, and she had taken some

minutes to find it. "As for these," she said, "the flowers are all

done, but I like the leaves better. In summer our housekeeping might

have been make-believe; now, with the frosts upon us, we shall have hard

work, and a fire to give thanks for."

He slid from the couch and, standing erect, threw a bath-gown over his

shoulders. "I must build a chimney," he said, looking around; "a

chimney and a stone hearth."

"Then our house will be perfect."

"I will start this very day. . . . Show me the way to your pool."

They ate their breakfast on the stone above the fall, in the warm

sunshine, planning and talking together like children. He would build

the chimney; but first he must climb down to the lower valley and find

Bayard, deserted at the foot of the falls, and left to wander all night

at will.

He must take the mare, too, she said; and promised to start him on the

bridle-path, so that he could not miss it.

"What! Must I ride on a side-saddle?"

"It should be easy for you," she laughed. "You pretended to know all

about it when you taught me." In the end it was settled that she should

ride and he walk beside till Bayard was found. "Then you can lead her

back and leave her with Mr. Strongtharm."

"But I shall need Bayard to bring home a sack of lime for my mortar.

And you are over thoughtful for Madcap. I walked up to inspect the

pasture, and there is enough to last the pair for a week. It is odds,

too, we find some burnt lands at the back of these woods, with patches

of good grass. Let us keep the horses up here, at any rate until the

nights turn colder. A taste of hard faring will be good for their

pampered flesh, as for mine. Besides--though you may not know it--I am

a first-class groom."

"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.