Chapter V.
SIR OLIVER'S HEALTH.
"De lady is here, yo' Honah!"
Manasseh announced it from the doorway and stood aside. Of the company four had already succumbed and slid from their chairs. The others staggered to their feet, Sir Oliver as promptly as any. With a face unnaturally white he leaned forward, clutching the edge of the long oval table, and stared between the silver candelabra down the broken ranks of his guests—Mr. Silk, purple of face as his patron was pale; Ned Manley, maundering the tag of a chorus; Captain St. Maur, Captain Goodacre, and Ensign Lumley, British officers captured by the French at Fort Chanseau and released to live at Boston on parole until the war should end; Mr. Fynes, the Collector's Secretary; Mr. Bythesea, Deputy-Collector; young Shem Hacksteed and young Denzil Baynes, sons of wealthy New Englanders, astray for the while, and sowing their wild oats in a society openly scornful of New England traditions.
Batty Langton's was the chair nearest the door, and Batty Langton was the one moderately sober man of the company. He had not heard, in time to interfere, the proposal to send for Ruth: it had started somewhere at the Collector's end of the table. But trifler though he was, he thought it cruel to the girl—a damnable shame—and pulled himself together to prevent what mischief he might. At the same time he felt curious to see her, curious to learn if these many months of seclusion had fulfilled the Collector's wager that Ruth Josselin would grow to be the loveliest woman in America. At Manasseh's announcement he faced about, and, with a gasp, clutched at the back of his chair.
In the doorway stood little Miss Quiney. It was so ludicrous a disappointment that for the moment no one found speech. Langton heard Goodacre, behind him, catch his breath upon a wondering "O—oh!" and felt the shock run down the table along the unsteady ranks. At the far end a voice—Mr. Silk's—cackled and burst into unseemly laughter.
Langton swung round. "Mr. Fynes," he called sharply, "oblige me, please, by silencing that clergyman—with a napkin in his mouth, if necessary."
He turned again to Miss Quiney. "Madam," he said, offering his arm, "let me lead you to a seat by Sir Oliver."
The little lady accepted with a curtsy. A faint flush showed upon either cheek bone, and in her eyes could be read the light of battle. It commanded his admiration the more that her small arm trembled against his sleeve. "The courage of it," he murmured; "and Miss Quiney of all women!"
She needed courage. The Collector's handsome face greeted her with a scowl and a hard stare; he could be intractable in his cups.
"Excuse me, madam, but I sent for Miss Josselin."
She answered him, but first made low obeisance. "Ruth Josselin will attend, sir, with all despatch. The sedan is capable of accommodating but one at a time."
There stood an empty chair on the Collector's right. To set it for her Mr. Langton had, as a preliminary, to stoop and drag aside the legs of a reveller procumbent on the floor. The effort flushed him; but Miss Quiney, with an inclination of the head, slipped into the seat as though she had seen nothing unusual.
"And it gives me the occasion," she continued respectfully, as her eyes passed over the form of young Manley opposite, who stood with his glass at an angle, spilling its wine on the mahogany, "of expressing—I thank you. . . . What? Is it Mr. Silk? A pleasure, indeed! . . .Yes, I rarely take wine, but on such an occasion as this—an occasion, as I was saying, to felicitate Sir Oliver Vyell on his accession to a title which we, who have served him, best know his capacity to adorn."
"Oh, damn!" growled the Collector under his breath.
"Half a glassful only!" Miss Quiney entreated, as Mr. Silk poured for her. She was, in fact, desperately telling herself that if she attempted to lift a full glass, her shaking hand would betray her.
"Yo' Honah—Mis' Josselin!"
Mr. Langton had caught the sound of Manasseh's footfall in the corridor without, and was on the alert before the girl entered. But at sight of her in the doorway he fell back for a moment.
Yes, the Collector's promise had come true—and far more than true.
She was marvellous.
It was by mere beauty, too, that she dazzled, helped by no jewels but the one plain rope of pearls at her throat. She stood there holding herself erect, but not stiffly, with chin slightly lifted; not in scorn, nor yet in defiance, though you were no sooner satisfied of this than a tiniest curve of the nostril set you doubting. But no; she was neither scornful nor defiant—alert rather, as a fair animal quivering with life, confronting some new experience that for the moment it fails to read. Or—borrowing her morning's simile, to convert it—you might liken her to huntress-maiden Diana, surprised upon arrested foot; instep arched, nostril quivering to the unfamiliar, eyes travelling in sudden speculation over a group of satyrs in a glade. For a certainty that poise of the chin emphasised the head's perfect carriage; as did the fashion of her head-tire, too—the hair drawn straight above the brows and piled superbly, to break and escape in two careless love-locks on the nape of the neck—in the ripple of each a smile, correcting the goddess to the woman. The right arm hung almost straight at her side, the hand ready to gather a fold of the white brocaded skirt; the left slanted up to her bosom, where its finger-tips touched the stem of a white rose in the lace at the parting of the bodice. . . .
So she stood—for ten seconds maybe—under the droop of the heavy curtain Manasseh held aside for her. The hush of the room was homage to her beauty. Her gaze, passing between the lines of his guests, sought the Collector. It was fearless, but held a hint of expectancy. Perhaps she waited for him to leave his place and come forward to receive her. But he made no motion to do this; not being, in fact, sufficient master of his legs.
"Good-evening, my lord!" She swept him a curtsy. "You sent for me?"
Before he could answer, she had lowered her eyes. They rested on a chair that happened to stand empty beside Batty Langton, and a slight inclination of the head gave Langton to understand that she wished him to offer it. He did so, and she moved to it. The men, embarrassed for a moment by their host's silence—they had expected him to answer her, but he stood staring angrily as one rebuffed—followed her cue and reseated themselves. He, too, dropped back in his chair, leaned forward for the decanter, and poured himself more wine. The buzz of talk revived, at first a word or two here and there, tentative after the check, then more confidently. Within a minute the voices were babel again.
Batty Langton pondered. A baronet should not be addressed as "my lord," and she had been guilty of a solecism. At the same time her manner had been perfect; her carriage admirably self-possessed. Her choice of a seat, too, at the end of the table and furthest from Sir Oliver—if she had come unwillingly—had been wittily taken, and on the moment, and with the appearance of deliberate ease.
"They will be calling on you presently to drink our host's health," he suggested, clearing a space of the table in front of her and collecting very dexterously two or three unused wine-glasses. Champagne? . . . Miss Quiney is drinking champagne, I see, though her neighbours have deserted it for red wine. Sir Oliver, by the way, grows lazy in pushing the decanters. . . . Shall I signal to him?"
"On no account. Champagne, if you please . . . though I had rather you kept it in readiness."
"I am sorry, Miss Josselin, but there you ask of me the one thing impossible. I cannot abide to let wine stand and wait; and champagne— watch it, how it protests!" He filled her glass and refilled his own. "By the way," he added, sinking his voice, "one is permitted to congratulate a debutante?"
"And to criticise."
"There was nothing to criticise except—Oh, well, a trifle. At home in
England we don't 'my lord' a mere baronet, you know."
"But since he is my lord?" She smiled gently, answering his puzzled stare. "How, otherwise, should I be here?"
Mr. Langton took wine to digest this. He shook his head. "You must forgive me. It is clear that I am drunk—abominably drunk—for I miss the point—"
"You accuse yourself unjustly."
"Do I? Well, I have certainly drunk a deal more wine than is good for me, and it will be revenged to-morrow. As a rule,"—he glanced around at his fellow-topers—"I pride myself that in head and legs I am inexpugnable. We all have our gifts; and i' faith until a moment ago I was patting myself on the back for owning this one."
"And why, Mr. Langton?"
"On the thought, Mistress Josselin, that I had cut out the frigate, as our tars say, and towed the prize to moorings before the others could fire a gun."
"I had hoped," she murmured, and bent her eyes on the wine-bubbles winking against the rim of her glass, "you did it in simple kindness."
"Well," he owned slowly, "and so I did. This belittling of good intentions, small enough to begin with, is a cursed habit, and I'll renounce it for once. It was little—it was nothing; yet behold me eager to be thanked."
"I thank you." She fingered the stem of the glass, not lifting her eyes. "But you have belittled me, too. I read it in books, and here on the threshold, as I step outside of books, you meet me with it. We women are always, it seems, poor ships, beating the seas, fleeing capture; and our tackle, our bravery—" She broke off, and sat musing, while her fingers played with the base of the glass.
"I take back my metaphors, Miss Josselin. I admit myself no buccaneer, but a simple ass who for once pricked ears on an honest impulse."
"That is better. But hush! Mr. Manley, yonder, is preparing to sing."
Mr. Manley, a young protege of the Collector's, had a streak of genius as an architect and several lesser gifts, among them a propensity for borrowing and a flexible tenor voice. He trolled an old song, slightly adapted—
"Here's a health unto Sir Oliver,
With a fal-la-la, lala-la-la;
Confusion to his enemies,
With a fa-la-la, lala-la-la;
And he that will not drink his health,
I wish him neither wit nor wealth,
Nor yet a rope to hang himself—
With a fa-la-la, lala-la-la."
The effort was applauded. Above the applause the bull voice of Mr. Silk shouted,—
"But Miss Josselin has not drunk it yet! Langton monopolises her.
Miss Josselin! What has Miss Josselin to say?"
The cry was taken up. "Miss Josselin! Miss Josselin!"
Batty Langton arose, glass in hand. "Is it a toast, gentlemen?"
He glanced at Sir Oliver, who sat sombre, not lifting his eyes.
"Our host permits me. . . . Then I give you 'Miss Josselin!'"
Acclamations drowned his voice here, and the men sprang up, waving their
glasses. Sir Oliver stood with the rest.
"Miss Josselin! Miss Josselin!" they shouted, and drank what their unsteady hands left unspilt. Langton waited, his full glass half upraised.
"Miss Josselin," he repeated very deliberately on the tail of the uproar, "who honours this occasion as Sir Oliver's ward."
For about five seconds an awkward silence held the company. Their fuddled memories retained scraps of gossip concerning Ruth, her history and destiny—gossip scandalous in the main. One or two glanced at the Collector, who had resumed his seat—and his scowl.
"The more reason she should drink his health." Again Mr. Silk was fugleman.
His voice braved it off on the silence. Ruth was raising her glass. Her eyes sought Miss Quiney's; but Miss Quiney's, lifted heavenward, had encountered the ceiling upon which Mr. Manley had recently depicted the hymeneals of Venus and Vulcan, not omitting Mars; and the treatment—a riot of the nude—had for the moment put the redoubtable little lady out of action.
Ruth leaned forward in her seat, lifting her glass high. It brimmed, but she spilled no drop.
"To Sir Oliver!"
Chapter VI.
CAPTAIN HARRY AND MR. HANMER.
"Guests, has he?—Out of my road, you rascal! Guests? I'll warrant there's none so welcome—"
A good cheery voice—a voice the curtain could not muffle—rang it down the corridor as on the note of a cornet.
The wine was at Ruth's lip, scarcely wetting it. She lowered the glass steadily and turned half-about in her chair at the moment when, as before a whirlwind, the curtain flew wide and a stranger burst in on the run with Manasseh at his heels.
"Oliver!" The stranger drew himself up in the doorway—a well-knit figure of a man, clear of eye, bronzed of hue, clad in blue sea-cloth faced with scarlet, and wearing a short sword at the hip. "Where's my Oliver?" he shouted. "You'll forgive my voice, gentlemen. I'm Harry Vyell, at your service, fresh from shipboard, and not hoarse with anthems like old what-d'ye-call-him." Running his gaze along the table, he sighted the Collector and broke into a view-halloo.
"Oliver! Brother Noll!" Captain Harry made a second run of it, caught his foot on the prostrate toper whom Langton had dragged out of Miss Quiney's way, and fell on his brother's neck. Recovering himself with a "damn," he clapped his left hand on Sir Oliver's shoulder, seized Sir Oliver's right in his grip and started pump-handling—"as though" murmured Langton, "the room were sinking with ten feet of liquor in the hold."
"Harry—is it Harry?" Sir Oliver stammered, and made a weak effort to rise.
"Lord! You're drunk!" Captain Harry crowed the cheerful discovery. "Well, and I'll join you—but in moderation, mind! Newly married man— if some one will be good enough to pass the decanter? . . . My dear fellow! . . . Cast anchor half an hour ago—got myself rowed ashore hot-foot to shake my Noll by the hand. Lord, brother, you can't think how good it feels to be married! Sally won't be coming ashore to-night; the hour's too late, she says; so I'm allowed an hour's liberty." Here the uxorious fellow paused on a laugh, indicating that he found irony in the word. "But Sally—capital name, Sally, for a sailor's wife; she's Sarah to all her family, Sal to me—Sally is cunning. Sally gives me leave ashore, but on condition I take Hanmer to look after me. He's my first lieutenant—first-rate officer, too—but no ladies' man. Gad!" chuckled Captain Harry, "I believe he'd run a mile from a petticoat. But where is he? Hi, Hanmer! step aft-along here and be introduced!"
A tall grave man, who had entered unnoticed, walked past the line of guests and up to his captain. He too wore a suit of blue with scarlet facings, and carried a short sword or hanger at his belt. He stood stiffly, awaiting command. The candle-light showed, beneath his right cheek bone, the cicatrix of a recent wound.
But Captain Harry, slewing round to him, was for the moment bereft of speech. His gaze had happened, for the first time, on little Miss Quiney.
"Eh?" he stammered, recovering himself. "Your pardon, ma'am. I wasn't aware that a lady—" Here his eyes, travelling to the end of the table, were arrested by the vision of Ruth Josselin. "Wh-e-ew!" he whistled, under his breath.
"Sir Oliver—" Batty Langton stood up.
"Hey?" The name gave Captain Harry yet another shock. He spun about again upon his brother. "'Sir Oliver'? Whats he saying?"
"You've not heard?" said the Collector, gripping his words slowly, one by one. "No, of course you've not. Harry, our uncle is dead."
There was a pause. "Poor old boy!" he muttered. "Used to be kind to us, Noll, after his lights. If it hadn't been for his womenkind."
"They're coming across to visit me, damn 'em!"
"What? Aunt Carrie and Di'? . . . Good Lord!"
"They're on the seas at this moment—may be here within the week."
"Good Lord!" Captain Harry repeated, and his eyes wandered again to Ruth
Josselin. "Awkward, hey? . . . But I say, Noll—you really are Sir
Oliver! Dear lad, I give you joy, and with all my heart. . . .
Gad, here's a piece of news for Sally!"
Again he came to a doubtful halt, and again with his eyes on Ruth Josselin. He was not a quick-witted man, outside of his calling, nor a man apt to think evil; but he had been married a month, and this had been long enough to teach him that women and men judge by different standards.
"Sir Oliver," repeated Langton, "Miss Josselin craves your leave to retire."
"Yes, dear"—Miss Quiney launched an approving nod towards her—"I was about to suggest it, with Sir Oliver's leave. The hour is late, and by the time the sedan-chair returns for me—"
"There is no reason, Tatty, why we should not return together," said Ruth quietly. "The night is fine; and, with Manasseh for escort, I can walk beside your chair."
"Pardon me, ladies," put in Mr. Silk. "Once in the upper town, you may be safe enough; but down here by the quay the sh—sailors—I know 'em— it's my buishness. 'Low me—join the eshcort."
But here, perceived by few in the room, a somewhat remarkable thing happened. Mr. Hanmer, who had stood hitherto like a statue, put out a hand and laid it on Mr. Silk's shoulder; and there must have been some power in that grip, for Mr. Silk dropped into his seat without another word.
Captain Harry saw it, and broke into a laugh.
"Why, to be sure! Hanmer's the very man! The rest of ye too drunk— meaning no offence; and, for me,—well, for me, you see there's Sally to be reckoned with." He laughed aloud at this simple jocularity. "Hanmer!"
"Yes, sir."
"Convoy."
"If you wish it, sir." The lieutenant bowed stiffly; but it was to be noted that the scar, which had hitherto showed white on a bronzed cheek, now reddened on a pale one.
Miss Quiney hesitated. "The gentleman, as a stranger to Boston—"
"I'll answer for Hanmer, ma'am. You'll get little talk out of him; but, be there lions at large in Boston, Jack Hanmer'll lead you past 'em."
"Like Mr. Greatheart in the parable," spoke up Ruth, whose eyes had been taking stock of the proposed escort, though he stood in the penumbra and at half the room's length away. "Tatty—if my lord permit and Lieutenant Hanmer be willing—"
She stood up, and with a curtsy to Sir Oliver, swept to the door. Miss Quiney pattered after; and Mr. Hanmer, with a bow and hand lifted to the salute, stalked out at their heels.
"I'll warrant Jack Hanmer 'd liefer walk up to a gun," swore Captain
Harry as the curtain fell behind them. "He bolts from the sight of
Sally. I'll make Sally laugh over this." But here he pulled himself up
and added beneath his voice, "I can't tell her, though."
The road as it climbed above the town toward Sabines grew rough and full of pitfalls. Even by the light of the full moon shining between the elms Miss Quiney's chairmen were forced to pick their way warily, so that the couple on the side-walk—which in comparison was well paved— easily kept abreast of them.
Ruth walked with the free grace of a Dryad. The moonlight shone now and again on her face beneath the arch of her wimple; and once, as she glanced up at the heavens, Mr. Hanmer—interpreting that she lifted her head to a scent of danger, and shooting a sidelong look despite himself—surprised a lustre as of tears in her eyes; whereupon he felt ashamed, as one who had intruded on a secret.
"Mr. Hanmer."
"Ma'am?"
"I have a favour to beg. . . . Is it true, by the way," she asked mischievously, "that to talk with a woman distresses you?"
"Ma'am—"
"My name is Ruth Josselin."
Mr. Hanmer either missed to hear the correction or heard and put it aside. "Been at sea all my life," he explained. "They caught me young."
Ruth looked sideways at him and laughed—a liquid little laugh, much like the bubbling note of a thrush. "You could not have given an answer more pat, sir. I want to speak to you about a child, caught young and about to be taken to sea. You are less shy with children, I hope?"
"Not a bit," confessed Mr. Hanmer. He added, "They take to me, though— the few I've met.
"Dick will take to you, for certain. Dicky is Sir Oliver's child."
"I didn't know—" Mr. Hanmer came to a full stop.
"No," said Ruth, as though she echoed him. "He is eight years old almost." Her eyes looked straight ahead, but she was aware that his had scanned her face for a moment, and almost she felt his start of reassurance.
"So, the child being a friend of mine, and his father having promised him a cruise in the Venus, you see that I very much want to know what manner of lady is Captain Harry's wife; and that I could not ask you point-blank because you would have set the question down to idle curiosity. . . . It might make all the difference to him," she added, getting no answer.
"A child of eight, and the country at war!" Mr. Hanmer muttered.
"His father must know that we cruise ready for action."
"I tell you, sir, what Dicky told me this morning."
"But it's impossible!"
"To that, sir, I might find you half a dozen answers. To begin with, we all know—and Sir Oliver perhaps, from private information, knows better than any of us—that peace is in sight. Here in the northern Colonies it has arrived already; the enemy has no fleet on this side of the world, and on this coast no single ship to give you any concern."
"Guarda-costas? There may be a few left on the prowl, even in these latitudes. I don't believe it for my part; we've accounted for most of 'em. Still—"
"And Captain Harry thinks so much of them that he sails from Carolina to
Boston with his bride on board!"
"You are right, Miss Josselin, and you are wrong. . . . Mistress Vyell has come to Boston in the Venus; and by reason that her husband, when he started, had as little acquaintance with fear for others as for himself. But if she return to Carolina it will be by land or when peace is signed. Love has made the Captain think; and thought has made him— well, with madam on board, I am thankful—" He checked himself.
"You are thankful he did not sight a guarda-costa." She concluded the sentence for him, and walked some way in silence, while he at her side was silent, being angry at having said so much.
"Yet Captain Harry is recklessly brave?" she mused.
"To the last degree, Miss Josselin," Mr. Hanmer agreed eagerly. "To the last degree within the right military rules. Fighting a ship's an art, you see."
It seemed that she did not hear him. "It runs in the blood," she said. She was thinking, fearfully yet exultantly, of this wonderful power of women, for whose sake cowards will behave as heroes and heroes turn to cowards.
They had outstripped the chairmen, and were at the gate of Sabines. He held it open for her. She bethought her that his last two or three sentences had been firmly spoken, that his voice had shaken off its husky stammer, and on the impulse of realised power she took a fancy to hear it tremble again.
"But if madam will not be on board to look after Dicky, the more will he need a friend. Mr. Hanmer, will you be that friend?"
"You are choosing a rough sort of nurse-maid."
"But will you?" She faced him, wonderful in the moonlight.
His eyes dropped. His voice stammered, "I—I will do my best, Miss
Josselin."
She held out a hand. He took it perforce in his rope-roughened paw, held it awkwardly for a moment, and released it as one lets a bird escape.
Ruth smiled. "The best of women," ran a saying of Batty Langton's, "if you watch 'em, are always practising; even the youngest, as a kitten plays with a leaf."
They stood in silence, waiting for the chair to overtake them.
"Tatty, you are a heroine!"
Miss Quiney, unwinding a shawl from her head under the hall-lamp, released herself from Ruth's embrace. Her nerve had been strained and needed a recoil.
"Maybe," she answered snappishly. "For my part, I'd take more comfort, just now, to be called a respectable woman."
Ruth laughed, kissed her again, and stood listening to the footsteps as they retreated down the gravelled way. Among them her ear distinguished easily the firm tread of Mr. Hanmer.
Chapter VII.
FIRST OFFER.
A little before noon next day word came to her room that Sir Oliver had called and desired to speak with her.
She was not unprepared. She had indeed dressed with special care in the hope of it; but she went to her glass and stood for a minute or two, touching here and there her seemly tresses.
Should she keep him waiting—keep him even a long while? . . . He deserved it. . . . But ah, no! She was under a vow never to be other than forthright with him; and the truth was, his coming filled her with joy.
"I am glad you have come!" These, in fact, were her first words as he turned to face her in the drawing-room. He had been standing by the broad window-seat, staring out on the roses.
"You guess, of course, what has brought me?" He had dressed himself with extreme care. His voice was steady, his eye clear, and only a touch of pallor told of the overnight debauch. "I am here to be forgiven."
"Who am I, to forgive?"
"If you say that, you make it three times worse for me. Whatever you are does not touch my right to ask your pardon, or my need to be forgiven—which is absolute."
"No," she mused, "you are right. . . . Have you asked pardon of Tatty?"
"I have, ten minutes ago. She sent the message to you."
"Tatty was heroic"—Ruth paused on the reminiscence with a smile—" and, if you will believe me, quite waspish when I told her so."
"You should have refused to come. You might have known that I was drunk, or I could never have sent."
"How does it go?" She stood before him, puckering her brows a little as she searched to remember the words—"'On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded the seven chamberlains—'"
"Spare me."
"'—to bring Vasbti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to show the people and the princes her beauty, for she was fair to look on.' Do I quote immodestly, my lord?"
"Not immodestly," he answered. "For I think—I'll be sworn—no woman ever had half your beauty without knowing it. But you quote mal a propos. Queen Vashti refused to come."
"'Therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him.'"
"I think, again, that you were not the woman to obey any such fear."
"No. Queen Vashti refused to come, being a queen. Whereas I, my lord—
"'Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?'"
"My slave?" he asked. "Setting aside last night—when I was disgustingly drunk—have you a single excuse for using that word?"
"Of your giving, none. You have been more than considerate. Of my own choosing, yes."
He stared.
"At any rate Tatty is not your slave," she went on, and he smiled with her. "I am glad you asked Tatty's pardon. Did she forgive you easily?"
"Too easily. She was aware, she said, that gentlemen would be gentlemen."
"She must have meant precisely the reverse."
"Was I pretty bad?"
She put a hand across her eyes as if to brush the image from them. "What matters the degree? It was another man seated and wearing my lord's body. That hurt."
"By God, Ruth, it shall never happen again!"
She winced as he spoke her name, and her colour rose. "Please make no promise in haste," she said.
"Excuse me; when a man takes an oath for life, the quicker he's through
with it the better—at least that's the way with us Vyells.
It's trifles—like getting drunk, for instance—we do deliberately.
Believe me, child, I have a will of my own."
"Yes," she meditated, "I believe you have a strong will."
"'Tis a swinish business, over-drinking, when all's said and done." He announced it as if he made a discovery; and indeed something of a discovery it was, for that age. "Weakens a man's self-control, besides dulling his palate. . . . They tell me, by the way, that after you left I beat Silk."
Ruth looked grave. "You did wrong, then."
"Silk is a beast."
"An excellent reason for not making him your guest; none for striking him at your own table."
"Perhaps not." Sir Oliver shrugged his shoulders. "Well, he can have his revenge, if he wants it."
"How so? As a clergyman he cannot offer to fight you, and as a coward he would not if he could."
"Is one, then, to be considerate with cowards?"
"Certainly, if you honour cowards with your friendship."
"Friendship! . . . The dog likes his platter and I suffer him for his talk. When his talk trespasses beyond sufferance, I chastise him. That's how I look at it."
"I am sorry, my lord, that Mr. Silk should make the third on your list this morning."
"Oh, come; you don't ask me to apologise to Silk!"
"To him rather than to me."
"But—oh nonsense! He was disgusting—unspeakable, I tell you. If you suppose I struck him for nothing—"
"I do not."
"You cannot think what he said."
"Something about me, was it not?" Then, as Sir Oliver stood silent, "Something a great many folk—your guests included—are quite capable of thinking about me, though they have not Mr. Silk's gift of language."
"—That gift for which (you will go on to remind me) I suffer him."
"No; that gift which (you said) trespasses beyond sufferance."
She did not remind him that he, after all, had exposed her and provoked
Mr. Silk's uncleanly words.
Both were beating time now. He had come, as was meet, to offer an apology, and with no intent beyond. He found not only that Ruth Josselin was grown a woman surpassing fair, but that her mere presence (it seemed, by no will of hers, but in spite of her will) laid hold of him, commanding him to face a further intent. It was wonderful, and yet just at this moment it mattered little, that the daylight soberly confirmed what had dazzled his drunkenness over night; that her speech added good sense to beauty. . . . What mattered at the moment was a sense of urgency, oppressing and oppressed by an equal sense of helplessness.
He had set the forces working and, with that, had chosen to stand aside—in indolence partly, partly in a careful cultivated indifference, but in part also obeying motives more creditable. He had stood aside, promising the result, but himself dallying with time. And lo! of a sudden the result had overtaken him. Had he created a monster, in place of a beautiful woman, he had not been more at its mercy.
But why this sense of urgency? And why should he allow it to oppress him?
Here was a creature exquisite, desirable, educated for no purpose but to be his. Then why not declare himself, leap the last easy fence and in a short while make her his?
To be sure her education—which, as we have seen, owned one source and spring, the passion to make herself perfect for his sake—had fashioned a woman very different to the woman of his planning. She had built not upon his careless defective design but upon her own incessant instinct for the best. So much his last night's blunder had taught him. He had sent for her as for a handmaid; and as a handmaid she had obeyed—but in spirit as a queen.
To put it brutally, she could raise her terms, and he as a gentleman could not beat her down. With ninety-nine women out of a hundred those higher terms could be summed up in one word—marriage. Well and again, why not? He was rich and his own master. In all but her poor origin and the scandal of an undeserved punishment she was worthy—more than worthy; and for the Colonials, among whom alone that scandal would count against her, he had a habit of contempt. He could, and would in his humour, force Boston to court her salons and hold its tongue from all but secret tattle. The thought, too, of Lady Caroline at this moment crossing the high seas to be met with the news agreeably moved him to mirth.
But somehow, face to face here, he divined that Ruth was not as ninety-nine women in the hundred; that her terms were different. They might he less, but also they were more. They might be less. Had she not crossed her arms and told him she was his slave? But in that very humility he read that they were more. There was no last easy fence. There was no fence at all. But a veil there was; a veil he lacked the insight to penetrate, the brutality to tear aside.
Partly to assure himself, partly to tempt her from this mysterious ring of defence, he went on, "I ought to apologise, too, for having sent Silk yesterday with my message. You received it?"
She bent her head.
"My aunt and cousin invite themselves to Boston, and give me no chance
to say anything but 'Welcome.' Two pistols held to my head."
He laughed. "There's a certain downrightness in Lady Caroline.
And what do you suppose she wants?"
"Mr. Silk says she wants you to marry your cousin."
"Told you that, did he?" His eyes were on her face, but it had not changed colour; her clear gaze yet baffled him. "Well, and what do you say?"
"Must I say anything?"
"Well"—he gave a short, impatient laugh—"we can hardly pretend—can we?—that it doesn't concern you."
"I do not pretend it," she answered. "I am yours, to deal with as you will; to dismiss when you choose. I can never owe you anything but gratitude."
"Ruth, will you marry me?"
He said it with the accent of passion, stepping half a pace forward, holding out his hands. She winced and drew back a little; she, too, holding out her hands, but with the palms turned downward. Upon that movement his passion hung fire. (Was it actual passion, or rather a surrender to the inevitable—to a feeling that it had all happened fatally, beyond escape, that now—beautiful, wonderful as she had grown—he could never do without her? At any rate their hands, outstretched thus, did not meet.)
"You talked lightly just now," she said, and with the smallest catch in her voice, "of vows made in haste. You forget your vow that after three years I should go back—go back whence you took me—and choose."
"No," he corrected. "My promise was that you should go back and announce your choice. If some few months are to run, nothing hinders your choosing here and now. I do not ask you to marry me before the term is out, but only to make up your mind. You hear what I offer?"
She swept him a low, obedient bow. "I do, and it is much to me, my dear lord. Oh, believe me, it is very much! . . . But I do not think I want to be your wife—thus."
"You could not love me? Is that what you mean?"
"Not love you?" Her voice, sweet and low, choked on the words. "Not love you?" she managed to repeat. "You, who came to me as a god— to me, a poor tavern drudge—who lifted me from the cart, the scourge; lifted me out of ignorance, out of shame? Lord—love—doubt what you will of me—but not that!"
"You do love me? Then why—" He paused, wondering. The impalpable barrier hung like a mist about his wits.
"Did Andromeda not love Perseus, think you?" she asked lightly, recovering her smile, albeit her eyes were dewy.
"I am dull, then," he confessed. "I certainly do not understand."
"You came to me as a god when you saved me. Shall you come to me as less by an inch when you stoop to love me?"
"Ah!" he said, as if at length he comprehended; "I was drunk last night, and you must have time to get that image out of your mind."
She shook her head slowly. "You did not ask me last night to marry you. I shall always, I think, be able to separate an unworthy image of you, and forget it."
"Then you must mean that I am yet unworthy."
"My dear lord," she said after a moment or two, in which she seemed to consider how best to make it plain to him, "you asked me just now to marry you, but not because you knew me to be worthy; and though you may command what you choose, and I can deny you nothing, I would not willingly be your wife for a smaller reason. Nor did you ask me in the strength of your will, your passion even, but in their weakness. Am I not right?"
He was dumb.
"And is it thus," she went on, "that the great ones love and beget noble children?"
"I see," he said at length, and very slowly. "It means that I must very humbly become your wooer."
"It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it were with the best of me. . . . Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and be in no hurry to choose. Your cousin—what is her name? Oh, I shall not be jealous!"
With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had prepared for her—at a farmstead under Wachusett. He was sending thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.
"Books, too, you shall have in plenty," he promised. "But there will be a dearth of tutors, I fear. I could not, for example, very well ask Mr. Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in the wilderness."
She laughed. Her eyes sparkled already at the thought of learning to be a horsewoman.
"I will do without tutors." She spread her arms wide, as with a swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it. The palms, turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he interpreted.
"I have mewed you here too long. You sigh for liberty."
She nodded, drawing a long breath. "I come from the sea-beach, remember."
"Say but the word, and instead of the mountain, the beach shall be yours."
"No. I have never seen a mountain. It will have the sound of waters, too—of its own cataracts. And on the plain I shall learn to gallop, and feel the wind rushing past me. These things, and a few books, and Tatty—" Here she broke off, on a sudden thought. "My lord, there is a question I have put to myself many times, and have promised myself to put to you. Why does Tatty never talk to me about God and religion and such things?"
He did not answer at once.
She went on: "It cannot only be because you do not believe in them. For Tatty is very religious, and brave as a lion; she would never be silent against her conscience."
"How do you know that I don't believe in them?"
She laughed. "Does my lord truly suppose me so dull of wit? or will he fence with my question instead of answering it?"
"The truth is, then," he confessed, "that before she saw you I thought fit to tell Miss Quiney what you had suffered—"
"She has known it from the first? I wondered sometimes. But oh, the dear deceit of her!"
"—And seeing that this same religion had caused your sufferings, I asked her to deal gently with you. She would not promise more than to wait and choose her own time. But Tatty, as you call her, is an honourable woman."
Ruth stretched out her hands.
"Ah, you were good—you were good! . . . If only my heart were a glass, and you might see how goodness becomes you!"
He took her hands this time, and laying one over another, kissed the back of the uppermost, but yet so respectfully that Miss Quiney, entering the room just then, supposed him to be merely taking a ceremonious leave.
For a few minutes he lingered out his call, hat and walking-cane in hand, talking pleasantly of his last night's guests, and with a smile that assumed his pardon to be granted. Incidentally Ruth learned how it had happened that a chair stood empty for her by Mr. Langton's side. It appeared that Governor Shirley himself had called, earlier in the evening, to offer his felicitations; and finding the seat on Sir Oliver's right occupied by a toper who either would not or could not make room, he had with some tact taken a chair at the far end of the table and vis-a-vis with his host, protesting that he chose it as the better vantage-ground for delivering a small speech. His speech, too, had been neat, happy in phrase, and not devoid of good feeling. Having delivered it, he had slipped away early, on an excuse of official business.
Sir Oliver related this appreciatively; and it had, in fact, been one of those small courtesies which, among men of English stock, give a grace to public life and help to keep the fighting clean. But in fact also (Ruth gathered) the two men did not love one another. Shirley—able and ruse statesman—had some sense of colonial independence, colonial ambition, colonial self-respect. Sir Oliver had none; he was a Whig patrician, and the colonies existed for the use and patronage of England. More than a year before, when Massachusetts raised a militia and went forth to capture Louisbourg—which it did, to the astonishment of the world—the Governor, whose heart was set on the expedition, had approached Captain Vyell and privately begged him to command it. He was answered that, having once borne the King's commission, Captain Vyell did not find a colonial uniform to his taste.
Chapter VIII.
CONCERNING MARGARET.
He called again, next morning. He came on horseback, followed by a groom. The groom led a light chestnut mare, delicate of step us a dancer, and carrying a side-saddle.
Ruth's ear had caught the sound of hoofs. She looked forth at her open window as Sir Oliver reined up and hailed, frank as a schoolboy.
"Your first riding lesson!" he announced.
"But I have no riding-skirt," she objected, her eyes opening wide with delight as they looked down and scanned the mare.
"You shall have one to-morrow." He swung himself out of saddle and gave over his own horse to the groom. "To-day you have only to learn how to sit and hold the reins and ride at a walk."
She caught up a hat and ran downstairs, blithe as a girl should be blithe.
He taught her to set her foot in his hand and lifted her into place.
"But are you not riding also?" she asked as he took the leading-rein.
"No. I shall walk beside you to-day . . . Now take up the reins—so; in both hands, please. That will help you to sit square and keep the right shoulder back, which with a woman is half the secret of a good seat. Where a man uses grip, she uses balance. . . . For the same reason you must not draw the feet back; it throws your body forward and off its true poise on the hips."
She began to learn at once and intelligently; for, unlike her other tutors, he started with simple principles and taught her nothing without giving its reason. He led her twice around the open gravelled space before the house, and so aside and along a grassy pathway that curved between the elms to the right. The pathway was broad and allowed him to walk somewhat wide of the mare, yet not so wide as to tauten the leading-rein, which he held (as she learned afterwards) merely to give her confidence; for the mare was docile and would follow him at a word.
"I am telling you the why-and-how of it all," he said, "because after this week you will be teaching yourself. This week I shall come every morning for an hour; but on Wednesday you start for Sweetwater Farm."
"And will there be nobody at the Farm to help me," she asked, a trifle dismayed.
"The farmer—his name is Cordery—rides, after a fashion. But he knows nothing of a side-saddle, if indeed he has ever seen one."
"Then to trot, canter, and gallop I must teach myself," she thought; for among the close plantations of Sabines there was room for neither. "If I experiment here, they will find me hanging like Absalom from a bough." But aloud she said nothing of her tremors.
"Dicky sits a horse remarkably well for his age," said Sir Oliver after a pause. "I had some thought to pack him off holidaying with you. But the puppy has taken to the water like a spaniel. He went off to the Venus yesterday, and it seems that on board of her he struck up, there and then, a close friendship with Harry's lieutenant, a Mr. Hanmer; and now he can talk of nothing but rigging and running-gear. He's crazed for a cruise and a hammock. Also it would seem that he used his time to win the affections of Madam Harry; which argues that his true calling is not the Navy, after all, but diplomacy."
Ruth sighed inaudibly. Dicky's companionship would have been delightful. But she knew the child's craze, and would not claim him, to mar his bliss—though she well knew that at a word from her he would renounce it.
"Diplomacy?" she echoed.
"Well," said Sir Oliver, looking straight before him. "Sally—my brother insists on calling her Sally—appears to have her head fixed well on her shoulders: she looks—as you must not forget to look— straight between the horse's ears. But your young bride is apt to be the greatest prude in the world. And Dicky, you see—"
Her hand weighed on the rein and brought the mare to a halt.
"Tell me about Dicky?"
"About Dicky?" he repeated.
"About his mother, then."
"She is dead," he answered, staring at the mare's glossy shoulder and smoothing it. His brows were bent in a frown.
"Yes . . . he told me that, in the coach, on our way from Port Nassau. It was the first thing he told me when he awoke. We had been rolling along the beach for hours in the dark; and I remember how, almost at the end of the beach, it grew light inside the coach and he opened his eyes. . . ."
She did not relate that the child had awaked in her arms.
"It was the first thing Dicky told me," she repeated; "and the only thing about—her. I think it must be the only thing he knows about her."
"Probably; for she died when he was born and—well, as the child grew up, it was not easy to explain to him. Other folks, no doubt—the servants and suchlike—were either afraid to tell or left it to me as my business. And I am an indolent parent." He paused and added, "To be quite honest, I dare say I distasted the job and shirked it."
"You did wrongly then," murmured Ruth, and her eyes were moist. "Dicky started with a great hole in his life, and you left it unfilled. Often, being lonely, he must have needed to know something of his mother. You should have told him all that was good; and that was not little, I think, if you had loved her?"
"I loved her to folly," he answered at length, his eyes still fixed on the mare's shoulder; "and yet not to folly, for she was a good woman: a married woman, some three or four years older than I and close upon twenty years younger than her husband, who was major of my regiment."
"You ran away with her? . . . Say that he was not your friend."
"He was not; and you may put it more correctly that I helped her to run away from him. He was a drunkard, and in private he ill-used her disgustingly. . . . Having helped her to escape I offered him his satisfaction. He refused to divorce her; but we fought and I ran him through the arm to avoid running him through the body, for he was a shockingly bad swordsman."
Ruth frowned. "You could not marry her?"
"No, and to kill him was no remedy; for if I could not marry an undivorced woman, as little could she have married her husband's murderer." He hunched his shoulders and concluded, "The dilemma is not unusual."
"What happened, then?"
"My mother paid twenty calls upon the Duke of Newcastle, and after the twentieth I received the Collectorship of this port of Boston. It was exile, but lucrative exile. My good mother is a Whig and devout; and there is nothing like that combination for making the best of both worlds. Indeed you may say that at this point she added the New World, and made the best of all three. She assured me that its solitudes would offer, among other advantages, great opportunity for repentance. 'Of course,' she said, 'if you must take the woman, you must.'"
He ended with a short laugh. Ruth did not laugh. Her mind was masculine at many points, but like a true woman she detested ironical speech.
"That is Mr. Langton's way of talking," she said; "and you are using it to hide your feelings. Will you tell me her name?—her Christian name only?"
"She was called Margaret—Margaret Dance. There is no reason why you should not have it in full."
"Is there a portrait of her?"
"Yes; as a girl she sat to Kneller—a Dryad leaning against an oak.
The picture hangs in my dressing-room."
"It should have hung, rather, in Dicky's nursery; which," she added, picking up and using the weapon she most disliked, "need not have debarred your seeing it from time to time."
He glanced up, for he had never before heard her speak thus sharply.
"Perhaps you are right," he agreed; "though, for me, I let the dead bury
the dead. I have no belief, remember, in any life beyond this one.
Margaret is gone, and I see not how, being dead, she can advantage me or
Dicky."
His words angered Ruth and at the same time subtly pleased her; and on second thoughts angered her the more for having pleased. She thought scorn of herself for her momentary jealousy of the dead; scorn for having felt relief at his careless tone; and some scorn to be soothed by a doctrine that, in her heart, she knew to be false.
For the moment her passions were like clouds in thunder weather, mounting against the wind; and in the small tumult of them she let jealousy dart its last lightning tongue.
"I am not learned in these matters, my lord. But I have heard that man must make a deity of something. The worse sort of unbeliever, they say, lives in the present and burns incense to himself. The better sort, having no future to believe in, idolises his past."
"Margaret is dead," he repeated. "I am no sentimentalist."
She bent her head. To herself she whispered. "He may not idolise his past, yet he cannot escape from it." . . . And her thoughts might have travelled farther, but she had put the mare to a walk again and just then her ears caught an unaccustomed sound, or confusion of sounds.
At the end of the alley she reined up, wide-eyed.
A narrow gateway here gave access to what had yesterday been a sloping paddock where Miss Quiney grazed a couple of cows. To-day the cows had vanished and given way to a small army of labourers. Broad strips of turf had vanished also and the brown loam was moving downhill in scores of wheel-barrows, to build up the slope to a level.
Sir Oliver marked her amazement and answered it with an easy laugh.
"The time is short, you see, and already we have wasted half an hour of it unprofitably. . . . These fellows appear to be working well."
She gazed at the moving gangs as one who, having come by surprise upon a hive of bees, stands still and cons the small creatures at work.
"But what is the meaning of it?"
"The meaning? Why, that for this week I am your riding-master, and that by to-morrow you will have a passable riding-school."
Chapter IX.
THE PROSPECT.
This happened on a Thursday. On the following Wednesday, a while before day-break, he met her on horseback by the gate of Sabines, and they rode forth side by side, ahead of the coach wherein Miss Quiney sat piled about with baggage, clutching in one hand a copy of Baxter's Saint's Everlasting Rest and with the other the ring of a canary-cage. (It was Dicky's canary, and his first love-offering. Yesterday had been Ruth's birthday—her eighteenth—and under conduct of Manasseh he had visited Sabines to wish her "many happy returns" and to say good-bye.)
Sir Oliver would escort the travellers for twelve miles on their way, to a point where the inland road broke into cart-tracks, and the tracks diverged across a country newly disafforested and strewn with jagged stumps among which the heavy vehicle could by no means be hauled. Here Farmer Cordery was to be in waiting with his light tilt-covered wagon.
They had started thus early because the season was hot and they desired to traverse the open highway and the clearings and to reach the forest before the sun's rays grew ardent. Once past the elms of Sabines their road lay broad before them, easy to discern; for the moon, well in her third quarter, rode high, with no trace of cloud or mist. So clear she shone that in imagination one could reach up and run a finger along her hard bright edge; and under moon and stars a land-breeze, virginally cool, played on our two riders' cheeks. Ungloving and stretching forth a hand, Ruth felt the dew falling, as it had been falling ever since sundown; and under that quiet lustration the world at her feet and around her, unseen as yet, had been renewed, the bee-ravished flowers replaced with blossoms ready to unfold, the turf revived, reclothed in young green, the atmosphere bathed, cleansed of exhausted scents, made ready for morning's "bridal of the earth and sky ":—
"As a vesture shall he fold them up. . . . In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun; which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course."
Darkling they rode, and in silence, as though by consent. Ruth had never travelled this high way before: it glimmered across a country of which she knew nothing and could see nothing. But no shadow of fear crossed her spirit. Her heart was hushed; yet it exulted, because her lord rode beside her.
They had ridden thus without speech for three or four miles, when her chestnut blundered, tripped, and was almost down.
"All right?" he asked, as she reined up and steadied the mare.
"Yes. . . . She gave me a small fright, though."
"What happened? It looked to me as if she came precious near crossing her feet. If she repeats that trick by daylight I'll cast her—as I would to-morrow, if I were sure."
"Is it so bad a trick?"
"It might break your neck. It would certainly bring her down and break her knees."
"Oh!" Ruth shivered. "Do you mean that it would actually break them?" she asked in her ignorance.
He laughed. "Well, that's possible; but I meant the skin of the knee."
"That would heal, surely?"
He laughed again. "A horse is like a woman—" he began, but checked himself of a sudden. She waited for him to continue, and he went on, "It knocks everything off the price, you see. Some won't own a horse that has once been down; and any knowledgeable man can tell, at a glance. It is the first thing he looks for."
She considered for a moment. "But if the mark had been a scratch only— and the scratch had healed—might she not be as good a horse as ever?"
"It would damage her price, none the less."
"But you are not a horse-dealer. Would you value a horse by its selling price?"
He laughed. "I am afraid," he owned, "that I should be ruled by other men's opinions. Your connoisseur does not collect chipped chinaware. . . . There's the chance, too, that the mare, having once fallen, will throw herself again by the same trick."
"And women are like horses," thought Ruth as they rode on. The night was paling about them, and she watched the rolling champaign as little by little it took shape, emerging from the morning mist and passing from monochrome into faint colours: for albeit the upper sky was clear as ever, mist filled the hollows of the hills and rolled up their sides like a smoke.
"Look!" commanded Sir Oliver, reining up and turning in his saddle.
He pointed with his horse-whip. Behind them, over a tree-clad hill, lay a long purple cloud; and above it, while he pointed, the sun thrust its edge as it were the rim of a golden paten. Ruth wheeled her mare about, to face the spectacle, and at that moment the cloud parted horizontally as though a hand had ripped the veil across. A flood of gold poured through the rent, dazzling her eyes.
The sun mounted and swam free: the upper portion of the veil floated off like a wisp and drifted down the wind. Where the glory had shone, it lingered through tint after tint—rose, pale lemon, palest sea-green— and so passed into azure and became one with the rest of the heavens.
Sir Oliver withdrew his eyes and sought hers. "When I find the need of faith," he said, "I shall turn sun-worshipper."
"You have never found that need?" she asked slowly.
"Never," he confessed. "And you?"
"Never as a need. I mean," she explained, "that though I always despised religion—yes, always, even before I came to hate it—I never doubted that some wisdom must be at watch and at work all around me, ordering the sun and stars, for instance, and separating right from wrong. I just cannot understand how any one can do without a faith of that sort: it's as necessary as breath."
He shrugged his shoulders. "To me one Jehovah's as good as another, as unnecessary, and as incredible. I find it easier to believe that chaos hurtled around until it struck out some working balance; that the stars learned their places pretty much as men and women are learning theirs to-day. A painful process, I'll grant you, and damnably tedious; but they came to it in the end, and so in the end, maybe, will poor imitative man. But," he broke off, "this faith of yours must have failed you, once."
She shivered. "No; I made no claim on it, you see. Perhaps"—with a little smile—"I did not think myself important enough. I only know that, whatever was right, those men were horribly wrong: for it must be wrong to be cruel. Then I woke up, and you were beside me—"
She would have added, "How could I doubt, then?" But her voice failed her, and she wheeled about that he might not see her tears.
He, too, turned his horse. They rode on for a few paces in silence.
"I wish," she said, recovering her voice—"I wish, for your sake, you could have felt what I have been feeling since we left Sabines; the goodness all about us, watching us out of the night and the stars."
She looked up; but the stars were gone, faded out into daylight. He pushed his horse half a pace ahead, and glanced sideways at her face. Tears shone yet in her eyes, and his own, as he quickly averted them, fell on a tall mullein growing by the roadside. Big drops of dew adhered upon its woolly leaves and twinkled in the sunshine; and by contrast he knew the colour of her eyes—that they were violet and of the night—their dew distilled out of such violet darkness as had been the quality of one or two Mediterranean nights that lingered among his memories of the Grand Tour. More and more this girl surprised him with graces foreign to this colonial soil, graces supposed by him to be classical and lost, the appanage of goddesses.
Like a goddess now she lifted an arm and pointed west, as he had pointed east. Ahead of them, to the right of the road, rose a tall hill, wooded at the base, broken at the summit by craggy terraces. Two large birds wheeled and hovered above it, high in the blue, fronting the sunlight.
"Eagles, by Jove!" cried Sir Oliver.
Ruth drew a breath and watched them. She had never before seen an eagle.
"Will they have their nest in the cliffs?" she asked.
"Perhaps. . . . No, more likely they come from Wachusett; more likely still, from the mountains beyond. They are here seeking food."
"They do not appear to be seeking food," she said after a pause during which she watched their ambits of flight circling and intersecting "See the nearest one mounting, and the other lifting on a wider curve to meet him above. One would say they followed some pattern, like folks dancing."
"Some act of homage to the sun," he suggested. "They have come down to the sea to meet him—they look over the Atlantic from aloft there—and perform in his honour. Who knows?"
Across Ruth's inner vision there flashed a memory of Mr. Hichens, black-suited and bald, bending over his Hebrew Bible and expounding a passage of Job: "Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. . . ."
To herself she said: "If it be so, the eagle's faith is mine; my lord's also, perchance, if he but knew it."
Aloud she asked, "Why are the noblest, birds and beasts, so few and solitary?"
Sir Oliver laughed. "You may include man. The answer is the same, and simple: the strong of the earth feed on the weak, and it takes all the weaklings to make blood for the few."
She mused; but when she spoke again it was not to dispute with him. "You say they look over the sea from aloft there. Might we have sight of it from the top of the hill?"
"Perhaps. There is plenty of time to make sure before the coach overtakes us—though I warn you it will be risky."
"I am not afraid."
They cantered off gaily, plunged into the woods and breasted the slope, Sir Oliver leading and threading his way through the undergrowth. By-and-by they came to the bed of a torrent and followed it up, the horses picking their steps upon the flat boulders between which the water trickled. Some of these boulders were slimed and slippery, and twice Sir Oliver reached out a hand and hauled the mare firmly on to her quarters.
The belt of crags did not run completely around the hill. At the back of it, after a scramble out of the gully, they came on a slope of good turf, and so cantered easily to the summit.
Ruth gave a little cry of delight, and followed it up with a yet smaller one of disappointment. The country lay spread at her feet like a vast amphitheatre, ringed with wooded hills. Across the plain they encircled a river ran in loops, and from the crag at the edge of which she stood a streamlet emerged and took a brave leap down the hill to join it.
"But where is the sea?"
"That small hill yonder must hide it. You see it, with its line of elms? If those trees were down, we should see the Atlantic for a certainty. If you like the spot otherwise, I will have them removed."