When Mrs. Bolingbroke heard that Henry Pontycroft and Lucilla Dor were
on the sea, bound for America, she could not contain herself.
“Good gracious, Ruth, what are they comin' for?” she exclaimed,
wide-eyed, gazing at Ruth.
“Don't know,” said Ruth, putting her nose into a bowlful of fresh roses
from Rutherford's hot-houses. “Oddly enough, to see me, perhaps?” she
added, laughing, and she made an effort to look her friend squarely and
jocosely in the face.
“Richard,” said Mrs. Bolingbroke penetratedly to her husband, “Ruth
Adgate is either the most consummate actress or the most innocent dove
the good God has ever, in His ability, wrought from the dust of which we
are made. If the Pontycrofts are on the sea it's for some extraordinary
reason. Ruth either suspects that reason, or she doesn't. But she looked
at me with those clear guileless eyes of hers, when she mentioned their
coming, and I, for one, can imagine any man telling her he'd burn Troy
Town for such a glance. Yet there's that Mr. Rutherford--crazily in love
with her, I'm told,--a splendid match as Americans go. She could marry
him and his money to-morrow if she liked. And since she's so daft about
New England, she could send him into politics and have quite a life. It
will be interesting to see how the Pontycrofts will act when they find
the sources of her income are swept away.”
“That's not a proper remark for you to make, my dear,” replied the
Honourable Richard Bolingbroke, in a tone of unexpected severity. “Henry
Pontycroft's a sensitive, quixotic, high-minded, honourable English
gentleman. He's rich, moreover. Money plays no part in his coming. Lady
Dor I've known since I was a boy. She was a delightful girl, just as
now she's a charming woman. They'll be admirable additions to the house
party, and that's all that concerns you or me. Pontycroft will keep us
in roars of laughter and I'm curious to meet him in New England. You
may be sure he'll like this wonderful old place. He'll feel all the arid
romance of this aristocratic passionate bleak land. Who knows? He may be
the Prince come to wake it, humanise it, with a kiss. Oldbridge will not
have looked upon his like--it won't have heard anything to compare with
him, either, in its three hundred years of existence; never will again;
I hope it may make the best of its opportunity to give him a royal
welcome.”
“I feel crushed,” pouted Mrs. Bolingbroke. “How should I, who've never
met Henry Pontycroft--know he's the paragon of wit and chivalry?”
“That's precisely what Henry Pontycroft is,” her husband answered
gravely, “He _is_ the paragon of wit and chivalry!”
These young folk were pacing side by side in the moonlit garden after
the excellent New England repast, called supper; while Miss Adgate and
her uncle were busy with callers, upon the veranda. The night was the
first of a long series of warm May nights, the moon hung, majestic and
round, over the fringes of wood termed the Wigwam. A rustic bench stood
invitingly under the big syringa, now a perfumed canopy of white. As
they stood on the upper terrace it was easy to distinguish descending
terraces marked by rows of silvery budding irises swollen or in
bloom.... The magic smells of white and purple lilac were touched with
a whiff of apple blossoms from the hill and beyond--below--the Mantic
gleamed in the moonlight amid trees all a feathery, spring incrustation
of minute green foliage.
“This is a divine spot,” said Bolingbroke, suddenly kissing his wife,
“but we must rejoin the others.”
Lucilla Dor and Harry Pontycroft arrived the following day and were
installed in the Morris House at the other side of the hill, where
two neat Irish girls waited upon them under the enlightening, tempered
instruction of Pontycroft's man and of Lucilla's maid.
V
Spring was abroad in her witchery. She had come with a rush, with a good
will, with an--abundance, 'and all of a sudden-like'--as she has, after
many days of dallying, a way of doing in New England. She had been coy;
she had flirted; she had tantalised--a day here, a day there--with dewy
warmth of soft blue skies, her robes diaphanous April cloud. Then she
had veiled her face, vexed for one knew not what offences,--had turned
her coldest shoulder, shed her most frigid tears. She had looked forth,
wreathed again in smiles, while she put wonder-working fingers to shrubs
and branches... and again she had withdrawn herself in deepest greyest
dudgeon.
But now, she was come, come. The birds were building and calling and
fluttering, in all the emotion, the refreshing joy of an ever-renewed
bridalhood. A young male wren who had discovered a bird-house, fixed on
the off-chance of so happy an event as to entice him there--by Jobias,
to the top of a rustic pole in the rose garden--tore his throat open in
the rapture of telling the world what a place for a nest he had found,
and how sweet she was.
“Shameless uxorious creature,” Ponty said, as he came over the hill and
paused to listen to him.
Unaccountably enough, Ruth, as he came into the garden, Ruth issued from
the house dressed in white; dressed in white, without a hat, a watteau
sunshade in her hand.
“Good morning, my pretty maid,” said Pontycroft, “you're not going
a-milking in that costume, are you?” He eyed her sharply with the
quizzical glint she knew well.
“Good morning,” Ruth answered, in perfect composure. Yet at the
anticipation of seeing Pontycroft alone, she had many times felt
the earth quake under her,--“I'm going to call upon Lucilla,” she
vouchsafed.
“Oh, Lucilla's knocked up. I came with a message from her. She wants
me to say she's had her breakfast in bed and won't rise until luncheon.
Lucilla's tired from the journey. You two women must have talked
yourselves weary, if a mere man may judge of such matter. Oh, the hour
at which I caught sight of Paolina conducting you over the hill last
night!” said Ponty.
“It was a beautiful moonlit night,” said Ruth, inhaling the morning air
with delight, “and so,--why not?”
“Why not, indeed,” he agreed. “What a surprise it was, though, to find
the Bolingbrokes here. He's a decent chap.”
“Yes, I like them very much,” Ruth said, absently.
“And your uncle,” Ponty proceeded, “I like _him_ very much,” he
paraphrased. “We held an uproarious pow-wow in the library, the three of
us, last night, while you women discussed chiffons in the music-room.
By-the-bye, that was rather a nice thing that somebody played,” and
Ponty hummed the first bars of the Valse Lente. “You were the musician,
I suspect.”
“I suppose so,” Ruth said, negligently. They were standing beside the
flight of stone steps which leads from the rose-garden to the hill.
“Where are the Bolingbrokes?” enquired Pontycroft.
“Gone for the day, with the Wetherbys, on their yacht. It's a party of
twelve and they expect to come back by moonlight.”
“And why, pray, were not the rest of us included?” he asked.
Ruth began to laugh. “They did include the rest of us,” she answered.
“What _is_ the use of beating about the bush in this fashion? You've
something to tell me, I hear. Say it.” And leaving Pontycroft to
consider her suggestion Ruth ran up the steps and fled lightly over the
carpet woven of white saxifrage and violets thickly strewn among the
turf, to the bench under the big oak at the summit of the hill. Here
she sat herself, opened her blush-rose sunshade and defiantly watched
Pontycroft stroll towards her.
He followed. He stood, deliberating before her for a moment. Then,
bending a knee:
“Your Royal Highness, will your Royal Highness accept the Crown of
Altronde from the hands of the King's unworthy Ambassador?” he asked.
Ruth caught her breath.
“What do you mean?” she queried, in a most violent disappointment of
surprise.
“Your gracious Majesty,” answered Pontycroft, “I mean,--that I am
come all the way from Europe and from a certain small but
not-to-be-sneezed-at Principality called Altronde in order to ask you to
wear with King Bertram, the ermine and the purple.... If we must put it
bluntly, the King implores you to share his throne, his heart and his
crown.”
“Oh,” Ruth said, “how very absurd.”
“Not at all absurd,” said Pontycroft; he still knelt, one knee to earth.
“And he looks every inch Ambassador and not in the least ridiculous,”
Ruth thought smiling to herself, “in this superlatively ridiculous
posture.”
“The Queen Mama is more than anxious to welcome you with wide-open
arms,” continued Pontycroft.
“Ah?” Ruth slightly raised her eyebrows.
“Yes. It's true she kicked a bit,” said Ponty. He got to his feet and
with his handkerchief flapped a straw or two from his knee. “But Bertram
made a devil of a row; there was no standing it she explained to me with
tears in her eyes. The Queen Mama has had to capitulate, and Bertram's
counting these very moments as ever are, pining to hear you have
accepted him. I'm to go _de ce pas_ to the telegraph office and wire
'yes'--so soon as you've made your haughty little mind up that you'll
have him.”
“Ah,” Ruth said. “It is very interesting----”
But suddenly she felt her heart leap into her throat. She trembled,
yet she spoke resolutely. “Harry,” she said, “Harry--you've told me
something startling and--not very important. But why don't you tell me
that the woman who wrote the letter--is dead?”
An unaccountable stillness fell for an instant over the landscape. Ruth
left her bench under the oak and walked off, walked away to where the
rocks come cropping up along the brow of the hill. The panorama spread
before her was one of fresh, palely verdant meadows and woods; the
Mantic, turbulent from spring freshets, was bordered with trees in the
early paleness of their green leaves; the green frail rondures of the
Wigwam foliage in delicate and varied shades,--these were dappled
with sunlight and blue sky. A far panoply of purple hills, marking the
borderland, shutting away the boisterous outer world as by a charmed
circle, enclosed the small, the joyous world of the little inland town,
the valley and the seven hills of Oldbridge.
Pontycroft approached mechanically, slowly. He stood by Ruth's side, he
looked off with her at this exquisite efflorescence of spring in the new
world.
“It's a beautiful view,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Europe
could scarcely do better.... And so Lucilla told you?” he queried,
carelessly. “Put not thy trust in woman. She vowed by her most sacred
vows she'd never say a word until I told her to.”
“I dare say I wormed it out of her,” Ruth replied, laughing, and,--it
was too apparent,--she was laughing at him.
“I don't quite gather what it is that makes you so merry this morning,”
said Pontycroft; “unless it is this heavenly Spring day, and that's
enough for twenty hopes and fears to rap and knock and enter in our
souls.... But please do recollect that while you loiter, considering
the indisputably lovely landscape, there's a chap in Altronde
waiting--impatient's no word for it--for a wire. Kindly give your
attention to the Royal Incident, the real question of actuality, for a
moment, and let me be off as soon as possible to the Post Office.”
“Long ago, I seem to remember,” Ruth said, slowly, “long ago, I seem to
hear myself saying in a garden in Florence, that the Royal Incident was
closed. It is closed. I haven't changed my mind, on the contrary. If you
must of your will leave my hill at this perfect hour and--and be sending
messages to the other side of the world--then, you needs must! But--pray
remember your own favourite saw, that 'opportunity comes once in a
lifetime.' Jobias goes home at noon, can't he take your message? If
Prince, I beg his pardon, King,--if Bertram has to live in suspense for
a few hours, let that be my little revenge. 'If it feed nothing else, it
will feed my revenge,'” laughed Ruth.
Having given expression to this heartless sentiment, she began to tread,
cautiously, among the flowers--the saxifrage, the violets, the little
green-golden buttercups between,--her light steps responding with love
to what she was pleased to think was their caress. From the plain and
from the woods mounted gentle homely sounds, the hautbois of the New
England Spring--the blows of a distant axe, the felling of trees, a
carpenter's hammer taptapping,--and children's cries resounding as they
romped at play; all mounted together, in a joyous choiring, with birds'
songs and twitterings which fell about them from every tree far and
near; the earth, the sky--musical, alive with carols and thanksgiving.
“I bring a garland for your head of flowers fresh and fair,” Ruth
hummed, pacing a little ahead of Pontycroft, and her foot rhythmically
touched ground at each stress of the song.
“'I had, once, a double double grandmother,' my friend Jack Enderfield
is fond of saying,” said Ruth, as she continued her walk to the measure
of the verse. “A great, great, so great _Meregrand!_ She was French.
Her name was Priscilla. Priscilla Mulline. She's rather a person in
New England History--you'll forgive my mentioning her. When the man she
cared for came, as emissary from the man she didn't care for, to ask
her to marry him--do you remember what she answered?” Ruth kept her
eyes fixed upon the tips of her toes, and they, like little mice, little
white mice, went in and out, below the flounces of her gown.
Pontycroft gasped,--took a step towards her. But his lean and bony
face, which for a moment had betrayed him, assumed again the look of
disillusion.
“Oh,” he rejoined, “the foolish girl made hash of her future,
perpetrated a _mot_ which, no doubt, she lived to repent. A _mot_ which
one of your American poets has quite suitably recorded. By it, Miss
Priscilla Mulline lost her chance of making a very good match. She lost
her golden opportunity. She cut off her chances of having a jolly good
time in a big, jolly world.”
“You're abominable,” Ruth said, and permitted herself two actions very
much at variance,--she stamped her foot and she smiled obliquely at the
object of her wrath. “You're abominable. I want you to tell me what she
answered.”
“Oh, you've forgotten it?” said he. “I've well-nigh forgotten it
myself.... I believe, though, she did ask the chap Alden why the deuce
(pardon the expletive) he didn't speak for himself. Am I right?”
“Well, why didn't he?” enquired Ruth, impatiently.
“Because he was a duffer, I suppose,” said Ponty, with a fine effect of
ending the discussion. “But now, my dear young one, be serious. Here's
your chance....” Pontycroft's voice became argumentative. “I've crossed
the ocean to lay a crown at your feet. A crown from which you may get
considerable fun and splendour. Bertram's rich, you're rich. You are,
both of you, handsome, virtuous, clever, and at the mating age. You can
make of your little Principality, your Kingdom, the centre of the
enlightenment and art of Europe. Find me a philosopher, an artist, or a
man of wit who doesn't appreciate a King! Under your wise encouragement
Art, at last, will come into her own.... Oh, think of the poor devils of
hangers-on of Genius you'll be able to lift from Purgatories of
obscurity into the light!”
“You've made one trifling mistake,” interrupted Ruth; “there's something
I have not told you, an element you must omit from the equation of that
Castle in Altronde you are building for me. I'm not rich.... The Town
of Wyoming, let me tell you, is no more. My millions, and a good thing
too--have collapsed. They've shrunken to the few thousands you invested,
ages ago, do you remember? in British Consols? On them I shall run this
dear old place,--I shall dress, modestly----”
“Ruth, Ruth, Ruth!” interrupted Pontycroft, aghast.
“Yes, it all occurred about a week ago while you were at sea, and
that, I suppose, is why you didn't hear of it. These accidents, here
in America, happen so often. Marconi didn't find the item of sufficient
importance, I dare say, to give it a place.”
“Well.... Here's a kettle of fish! Whew!” whistled Pontycroft. “You
young limb of mischief, why didn't you tell me? _Ouf_” cried he, with a
great pant of relief. “_Ouf_,--poor Bertram! He has no luck.” They had
been sauntering, backwards and forward, over a grassy road which runs
up hill and down dale through the green-sward planted with apple trees.
Pontycroft leaned, now, against a tree. He gazed at Ruth without a word.
A rosy-tipped cluster of apple blossoms nodded just above his head.
He reached up, plucked it; and offered it to the lady with the crimson
sunshade who stood in the sunlight before him.
“'Oh, Fairy Godmother! Feel my heart,'” Ruth whispered, under her
breath. “I should like to show you my Riviera,” she said hastily,
reddening under his gaze, and she stuck the apple blossoms into her
belt.
Ruth skirted the grey rocks which crop above the brow of the hill to the
left. She led Pontycroft down a green bank to a patch of brighter green
nestling for quite a distance under the shelter of the overhanging
cliffs. Here were eglantine, here were violets in profusion; Solomon's
seal, red and purple columbine; and the purple liverwort, and a shower
of those frail white wind-flowers called anemones, although in no wise
do they resemble their European cousins. Young ferns, pale green fronds,
sprang vigorously from the clefts in the rocks, juniper and barberry
bushes and a savin lent here and there a hardy note and an added shelter
to the scattering of spring blossoms.
“It's so exclusive here,” laughed Ruth, taking a lichen-covered seat
formed in the grey stone. “These canny flowers have discovered the place
for themselves after the habit of the land.... Sit down,” she invited
him. She crossed her hands in her lap, she looked towards him; a
mischievous light glanced bewitchingly in her dark eyes.
“Dear child,” Pontycroft began--he was trying, very hard, to resume his
paternal air.
“Please don't 'dear child' me any more--I haven't brought you here for
that,” petulantly cried Ruth. “I won't have you for a father and
I've already got an uncle, and I don't think you'd make, for me, a
satisfactory brother.”
“Miss Adgate,” said Pontycroft, he possessed himself of one of her
hands, and examining it carefully (it was, as we know a very white hand
with slim and rosy fingers), “Miss Adgate, I have a proposition to make
to you. Since my schemes, since all my weary plottings and plannings for
a Royal End for you, do, it seems, gang aft agley,--though, and mark my
words, Bertram is no stickler for lucre; but since they've been knocked
flat on the head by a blow of chance, let me suggest that we make a
fresh start, let us consider a new alliance for you.
“Here,” he said--he laid a large bony hand tightly, as though afraid
of its escape, over the little hand he held in his,--“here is a novel,
international situation, a situation, free, thank goodness, of any
blessed complications. Shall you and I,”--he lifted the hand to his lips
again, he touched his lips tenderly to each finger-tip, and Ruth looked
on--“shall you and I get married? Shall we run this dear place together?
Shall we love it, live in it? I had dreamed, for you, infant, of a royal
end. What will you? Heaven mercifully disposes.... But I _had_ dreamed
for you a Royal End!”
“I do not like being proposed to in this manner,” said Ruth, rounding
upon him with a smiling face.
“Oh, my dear, blessed angel little Ruth!” cried Pontycroft, letting
himself go. “Ruth... Hopelessly, hopelessly, denied me--found at last.
Little Lady Precious Ruth! Ruth whom I love, Ruth whom I dote on--Ruth
whom I've worshipped ever since she was a toddling child in her father's
house... Ruth!” Miss Adgate could feel the beating of Pontycroft's
heart as she stayed against his side.
“Shall we live here together?” he asked presently. “You--you--of course
you love this old place! I love it because you do. And Thou, singing
beside me in the Wilderness! It needs us, doesn't it? This peaceful
Wilderness, this New England Garden of Eden!”
“Eden, from which William Rutherford has killed the snake,” laughed Ruth
blinking a crystal tear that rolled down her cheek.
“Rutherford?” Pontycroft frowned, “_who_ is William Rutherford?”
“Oh, nobody. No one in particular,” Ruth hastened to reply. “A mere
mighty hunter before the Lord.” And Pontycroft did not pursue the
subject of William Rutherford.
“But,” said Ruth a trifle anxiously, in a moment, “we must go abroad
from time to time? We could never forsake Pontycroft.
“Oh, hang Pontycroft. Lucilla shall have it for her kids.”
“I want it for mine,” said Ruth. Then she looked away and blushed
crimson--and then she laughed.
“What is the motto, Harry, of your house?” she queried, irrelevantly.
“I've forgotten.”
“It once was,” Pontycroft said, and he smiled at her: “_Super mare,
super fluvia._”
“Once?” said Ruth, a little shyly, “_once?_ And now?”
“_Constantia_, now, henceforth,” he whispered with a throbbing of the
heart.... “But will your uncle be pleased at all this?” he enquired.
“My uncle?” said Ruth, waking from a reverie. “Oh--he would have liked
me to marry Rutherford, I imagine. But if you're awfully nice to him,
and if you let him see how infatuated you are with Barracks Hill--he'll
end, I know, by giving me and you his blessing. But I won't give up
England--and I want Italy, too,--Venice, Rome!” wilfully persisted Ruth.
“You precious little piece of covetous cosmopolitanism! Haven't you
learned that if in Heaven, may be, it is given us to be everywhere--in
this life: One Paradise, one Eden? In this world one Eden shall suffice,
for things learned on earth may or may not be practised in Heaven; but
love is, ever was, the language of repetition. In this life the lesson
is to be contented with a single Paradise.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Miss Adgate, laying her hand on Ponty's mouth. “Oh,
middle-aged sentiment... not in the Catechism. Don't, I beg, say it
again!”
He seized the hand, he pressed his lips to it, he pressed it against his
breast.
“Even an infant like you,” he whispered, “let alone a world-worn chap
like the man you propose to take as a husband, can't stand perpetual
motion.”
“Very well,” Ruth compromised, “shall we alternate with a year in
England, one here, one in Italy, Jobias and Paolina to pack for us. That
will make it easy.”
“Ah,” laughed Pontycroft, “you shall see! The pendulum is bound to
narrow its oscillations! We'll earn a well-needed rest,--_here_.”
“Oh me!” sighed Ruth, “ah me!” cried Ruth. “In that event how charmed
our ancestors will be. But, I forgot! You haven't heard the story.” Ruth
told it gaily and waited, curious to see what Harry Pontycroft would
say.
“Dear young one, these old four-posters,” he began--“are the most
dangerous things to sleep in,” and Ruth was seized with laughter.
“But I'll never sell them to the nearest dealer in old bric-a-brac.
Rather,” she concluded, “we'll do as you advised, we'll take the
greatest care not to offend our forbears. But-----” her forefinger went
up impressively, “but a destiny was in preparation for us--I felt it,
Harry, on the very day after I reached here. Harry, I felt, I knew,
Destiny had something up her sleeve. The day I went for a walk alone,”
said Ruth, with a serious air. “It is a delicious destiny... to be
married in the little Parish church by that Saint of a Priest and to
live here, 'forever afterwards'!” (with a malicious nod,) “with a break
now and then to Europe.”
“Moreover and because journeys end in lovers' meeting, we'll probably
have a June wedding,” Pontycroft unexpectedly suggested, wise in his
generation.
“A June wedding!... I've built better than I knew,” exclaimed Ruth.
“I've asked a house party of friends, friends of yours, Lucilla's and
mine, to come here in June. Let them haste to the wedding--I'll have
Jackie Enderfield for page and he shall carry my train.”
“Another admirer,” Ponty said resigned.
“The merest bit of a boy of twelve. Without him, without my uncle, these
wits like as not had perished utterly. Jack when he's a man intends to
marry a woman with a low voice and a red glint in her hair. He will turn
Catholic with my consent and go abroad and write. He doesn't believe
either in Divorce--in other words, you perceive he _is_ an intellectual.
But,” she said, rising, “we've forgotten--oh, we've forgotten to send
that message by Jobias to poor King Bertram! We shall have to take it
ourselves.”
Henry Pontycroft and Ruth descended the hill along the violet-sprinkled
road.
“Ruth,” he urged, as they went their way, “for conscience sake,
consider,--consider, little Ruth,” he said, “ah, consider.... It is not
yet too late, infant, and I had dreamed for Ruth Adgate of a Royal End!”
“Ah,” Miss Adgate replied; a little happy sigh escaped from her lips;
she looked down at the apple blossoms in her belt,--strange to say, the
apple blossoms were fresh as though just plucked.
“Harry,” she replied, with a little quizzical look, “I, too, had dreamed
for Ruth Adgate of a Royal End.... Both our dreams have come true! _Love
is the Royal End_.”