He said it seriously; but of course she took it for granted that he spoke in jest, albeit the jest puzzled her a little. Indeed when she glanced up at him he was smiling, with his eyes on the distant landscape.
"The mountain too," he added, "if the trees will not suffice. Though not by faith, it shall be removed."
Chapter X.
THREE LADIES.
"You may smoke," said Dicky politely, setting down his glass.
"Thank you," answered Mr. Hanmer. "But are you sure? In my experience of houses there's always some one that objects."
Dicky lifted his chin. "We call this the nursery because it has always been the nursery. But I do what I like here."
Mr. Hanmer had accepted the boy's invitation to pay him a visit ashore and help him to rig a model cutter—a birthday gift from his father; and the pair had spent an afternoon upon it, seated upon the floor with the toy between them and a litter of twine everywhere, Dicky deep in the mysteries of knots and splices, the lieutenant whittling out miniature blocks and belaying-pins with a knife that seemed capable of anything.
They had been interrupted by Manasseh, bearing a tray of refreshments— bread and honey and cakes, with a jug of milk for the one; for the other a decanter of brown sherry with a dish of ratafia biscuits. The repast was finished now, and Dicky, eager to fall to work again, feared that his friend might make an excuse for departing.
Mr. Hanmer put a hand in his pocket and drew out his pipe.
"Your father would call it setting a bad example, I doubt?"
To this the boy, had he been less loyal, might have answered that his father took no great stock in examples, bad or good. He said: "Papa smokes. He says it is cleaner than taking snuff; and so it is, if you have ever seen Mr. Silk's waistcoat."
So Mr. Hanmer filled and lit his pipe, doing wonders with a pocket tinder-box. Dicky watched the process gravely through every detail, laying up hints for manhood.
"I ought to have asked you before," he said. "Nobody comes here ever, except Mr. Silk and the servants."
Hapless speech and bootless boast! They had scarcely seated themselves to work again, the lieutenant puffing vigorously, before they heard footsteps in the corridor, with a rustle of silks, and a hand tapped on the door.
It opened as Dicky jumped to his feet, calling "Come in!"—and on the threshold appeared Mrs. Vyell, in walking dress. Dicky liked "Mrs. Harry," as he called her; but he stared in dismay at two magnificent ladies in the doorway behind her, and more especially at the elder of the twain, who, attired in puce-coloured silk, stiff as a board, walked in lifting a high patrician nose and exclaiming,—
"Fah! What a detestable odour!"
Mr. Hanmer hurriedly hid his pipe and scrambled up, stammering an apology. Dicky showed more self-possession. He gave a little bow to the two strangers and turned to Mrs. Harry.
"I am sorry, Aunt Sarah. But I didn't know, of course, that you were coming and bringing visitors."
"To be sure you did not, child," said Mrs. Harry with a good-natured smile. She was a cheerful, commonsensical person, pleasant of face rather than pretty, by no means wanting in wit, and radiant of happiness, just now, as a young woman should be who has married the man of her heart. "But let me present you—to Lady Caroline Vyell and Miss Diana."
Dicky bowed again. "I am sorry, ma'am," he repeated, addressing Lady Caroline. "Mr. Hanmer has put out his pipe, you see, and the window is open."
Lady Caroline carried an eyeglass with a long handle of tortoise-shell. Through it she treated Dicky to a deliberate and disconcerting scrutiny, and lowered it to turn and ask Mrs. Harry,—
"You permit him to call you 'Aunt Sarah'?"
Mrs. Harry laughed. "It sounds better, you will admit, than
'Aunt Sally,' and don't necessitate my carrying a pipe in my mouth.
Oh yes," she added, with a glance at the boy's flushed face, "Dicky and
I are great friends. In any one's presence but Mr. Hanmer's I would say
'the best of friends.'"
Lady Caroline turned her eyeglass upon Mr. Hanmer. "Is this—er— gentleman his tutor?" she asked.
The question, and the sight of the lieutenant's mental distress, set Mrs. Harry laughing again. "In seamanship only. Mr. Hanmer is my husband's second-in-command and one of the best officers in the Navy."
"I consider smoking a filthy habit," said Lady Caroline.
"Yes, ma'am," murmured Mr. Hanmer.
The odious eyeglass was turned upon Dicky again. He, to avoid it, glanced aside at Miss Diana. He found Miss Diana less unpleasant than her mother, but attractive only by contrast. She was a tall woman, handsome but somewhat haggard, with a face saved indeed from peevishness by its air of distinction, but scornful and discontented. She had been riding, and her long, close habit became her well, as did her wide-brimmed hat, severely trimmed with a bow of black ribbon and a single ostrich feather.
"Diana," said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare, "the child favours his mother."
"Indeed!" the girl answered indifferently. "I never met her."
"Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe. We must get him to show it to us. A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking—though after a style I abominate." She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained: "One of your helpless clinging women. In my experience that sort does incomparably the worst mischief."
"Oh, hush, please!" murmured Mrs. Harry.
But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughts aloud. "Going to sea, is he? Well, on the whole Oliver couldn't do better. The boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; and at sea a lad stands on his own feet—eh, Mr.—I did not catch your name?"
"Hanmer, ma'am."
"Well, and isn't it so?"
"Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer. "If ever your ladyship had been in the Navy—"
"God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected.
"—you'd have found that—that a good deal of kissing goes by favour, ma'am."
"H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs. Harry had done laughing. "The child will not lack protection, of course. Whether 'tis to their credit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience for—er—obligations of this kind."
On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them, Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packing the child off to sea.
"They will take 'em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, it appears, has no objection."
"She is not returning to Carolina by sea."
"No; but she can influence her husband. I must have another talk with her . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor's wife, more than presentable. One had hardly indeed looked to find such natural good manners in this part of the world. Her mother was a Quakeress, she tells me: yet she laughs a good deal, which I had imagined to be against their principles. She doesn't say 'thee' and 'thou' either."
"I heard her tutoyer her husband."
"Indeed? . . . Well," Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently, "Harry is a lucky man. When one thinks of the dreadful connections these sailors are only too apt to form—though one cannot wholly blame them, their opportunities being what they are . . . But, as I was saying, Oliver couldn't have done better, for himself or for the child. At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; and since he has this craze for salt water—curious he should resemble his uncle in this rather than his father—one may almost call it providential. . . . At the same time, my dear, I wish you could have shown a little more interest."
"In the child? Why?"
"Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt questions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family, remember. He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himself out not a little—"
"I can believe that," said Diana brusquely.
"And it says much. All men are selfish, and Oliver as a youth was very far from being an exception. I find the change in him significant of much. . . . At the same time you have mixed enough in the world, dear, to know that young men will be young men, and this sort of thing happens, unfortunately."
"If, mamma, you suppose I bear Cousin Oliver any grudge because of this child—"
"I am heartily glad to hear you say it. There should be, with us women, a Christian nicety in dealing with these—er—situations; in retrospect, at all events. A certain—disgust, shall we say?—is natural, proper, even due to our sex: I should think the worse—very far the worse—of my Diana did she not feel it. But above all things, charity! . . . And let me tell you, dear, what I could not have told at the time, but I think you are now old enough to know that such an experience is often the best cure for a man, who thereafter, should he be fortunate in finding the right woman, anchors his affections and proves the most assiduous of husbands. This may sound paradoxical to you—"
"Dear mamma"—Diana hid a smile and a little yawn together—"believe me it does not."
"Such a man, then," pursued Lady Caroline, faintly surprised, "is likely to be the more appreciative of any kindness shown to—er—what I may call the living consequence of his error."
"Why not say 'Dicky' at once, mamma, and have done with it."
"To Dicky, then, if you will; but I was attempting to lay down the general rule which Dicky illustrates. A little gentle notice taken of the child not only appeals to the man as womanly in itself, but delicately conveys to him that the past is, to some extent, condoned. He has sown his wild oats: he is, so to speak, range; but he is none the less grateful for some assurance—"
Lady Caroline's discourse had whiled the way back to Sabines, to the drawing-room; and here Diana wheeled round on her with the question, sudden and straight,—
"Do you suppose that Cousin Oliver is range, as you call it?"
"My child, we have every reason to believe so."
"Then what do you make of this?" The girl took up a small volume that lay on the top of the harpsichord, and thrust it into her mother's hands.
"Eh? What?" Lady Caroline turned the book back uppermost and spelled out the title through her eyeglass. "'Ovid'—he's Latin, is he not? Dear, I had no notion that you kept up your studies in that—er— tongue."
"I do not. I have forgot what little I learned of it, and that was next to nothing. But open the book, please, at the title-page."
"I see nothing. It has neither book-plate nor owner's signature." (Indeed Ruth never wrote her name in her books. She looked upon them as her lord's, and hers only in trust.)
"The title-page, I said. You are staring at the flyleaf."
"Ah, to be sure—" Lady Caroline turned a leaf. "Is this what you mean?" She held up a loose sheet of paper covered with writing.
"Read it."
The elder lady found the range of her eyeglass and conned—in silence and without well grasping its purport—the following effusion:—
Other maids make Love a foeman,
Lie in ambush to defeat him;
I alone will step to meet him
Valiant, his accepted woman.
Equal, consort in his car,
Ride I to his royal war.
Victims of his bow and targe,
Yet who toyed with lovers' quarrels,
Envy me my braver laurels!
Lord! thy shield of shadow large
Lift above me, shout the charge!
"Well?"
"I make nothing of it," owned Lady Caroline. "It appears to be poetry of a sort—probably some translation from the Latin author."
"You note, at least, that the handwriting is a woman's?"
"H'm, yes," Lady Caroline agreed.
"Nothing else?"
"Dear, you speak in riddles."
"It is a riddle," said Diana. "Take the first letter of each line, and read them down, in order."
"O, L, I, V, E, R V, Y, E, L, L," spelled Lady Caroline, and lowered her eyeglass. "My dear, as you say, this cannot be a mere coincidence."
"Did I say that?" asked Diana.
"But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps?
She was infatuated enough."
"It was not she," said Diana positively.
"Somebody can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance."
"Ah, you too think of him?"
"As a clergyman—and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's—he would be likely to know—"
"—And to tell? You are quite right, mamma: I have asked him."
Chapter XI.
THE ESPIAL.
Ruth Josselin came down from the mountain to the stream-side, where, by a hickory bush under a knoll, her mare Madcap stood at tether. Slipping behind the bush—though no living soul was near to spy on her— she slid off her short skirt and indued a longer one more suitable for riding; rolled the discarded garment into a bundle which she strapped behind the saddle; untethered the mare, and mounted.
At her feet the plain stretched for miles, carpeted for the most part with short sweet turf and dotted in the distance with cattle, red in the sunlight that overlooked the mountain's shoulder. These were Farmer Cordery's cattle, and they browsed within easy radius of a clump of elms clustered about Sweetwater Farm. Some four miles beyond, on the far edge of the plain, a very similar clump of elms hid another farm, Natchett by name, in like manner outposted with cattle; and these were the only habitations of men within the ring of the horizon.
The afternoon sun cast the shadow of the mountain far across this plain, almost to the confines of Sweetwater homestead. A breeze descended from the heights and played with Ruth's curls as she rested in saddle for a moment, scanning the prospect; a gentle breeze, easily out-galloped. Time, place, and the horse—all promised a perfect gallop; her own spirits, too. For she had spent the day's hot hours in clambering among the slopes, battling with certain craggy doubts in her own mind; and with the afternoon shadow had come peace at heart; and out of peace a certain careless exultation. She would test the mare's speed and enjoy this hour before returning to Tatty's chit-chat, the evening lamp, and the office of family prayer with which Farmer Cordery duly dismissed his household for the night.
She pricked Madcap down the slope, and at the foot of it launched her on the gallop. Surely, unless it be that of sailing on a reach and in a boat that fairly heels to the breeze, there is no such motion to catch the soul on high. The breeze met the wind of her flight and was beaten by it, but still she carried the moment of encounter with her as a wave on the crest of which she rode. It swept, lifted, rapt her out of herself—yet in no bodiless ecstasy; for her blood pulsed in the beat of the mare's hoofs. To surrender to it was luxury, yet her hand on the rein held her own will ready at call; and twice, where Sweetwater brook meandered, she braced herself for the water-jump, judging the pace and the stride; and twice, with many feet to spare, Madcap sailed over the silver-grey riband.
All the while, ahead of her, the mountain lengthened its shadow. She overtook and passed it a couple of furlongs short of the homestead; passed it—so clearly defined it lay across the pasture—with a firmer hold on the rein, as though clearing an actual obstacle. . . . She was in sunlight now. Before her a wooden fence protected the elms and their enclosure. At the gate of it by rule she should have drawn rein.
She had never leapt a gate; had attempted a bank now and then, but nothing serious. Her success at the water-jumps tempted her; and the mare, galloping with her second wind, seemed to feel the temptation every whit as strongly.
In the instant of rising to it Ruth wondered what Farmer Cordery would say if she broke his top bar. . . . The mare's feet touched it lightly— rap, rap. She was over.
A wood pile stood within the gate to the left, hiding the house. She had passed the corner of it before she could bring Madcap to a standstill, and was laughing to herself in triumph as she glanced around.
Heavens!
The house was of timber, with a deep timbered verandah; and in the verandah, not twenty paces away, beside a table laid for coffee, stood Tatty with three ladies about her—three ladies all elegantly dressed and staring.
Ruth's hand went up quickly, involuntarily, to her dishevelled hair; and at the same moment the little lady, as though making a bolt from captivity, stepped down from the verandah and came shuffling across the yard towards her, almost at a run.
"Ruth, dear!" she panted. "Oh, dear, dear! I am so glad you have come!"
"Why, what's the matter?" The girl, scenting danger, faced it. She swung herself down from the saddle-crutch, picked up her skirt, and taking Madcap's rein close beside the curb, walked slowly up to the verandah. "Have they been bullying you, dear?" she asked in a low quiet voice.
"They have come all this way to see us—Lady Caroline Vyell, and Miss Diana; yes, and Mrs. Captain Vyell—'Mrs. Harry,' as Dicky calls her. They have ferreted us out, somehow—and the questions they have been asking! I think, dear—I really think—that in your place I should walk Madcap round to her stable and run indoors for a tidy-up before facing them. A minute or two to prepare yourself—I can easily make your excuses."
"And a moment since you were calling me to come and deliver you!" answered Ruth, still advancing. "Present me, please."
Little Miss Quiney, turning and running ahead, stammered some words to Lady Caroline, who paid no heed to them or to her but kept her eyeglass lifted and fixed upon Ruth. Miss Diana stood a pace behind her mother's shoulder; Mrs. Harry, after a glance at the girl, turned and made pretence to busy herself with the coffee-table.
"So you are the young woman!" ejaculated Lady Caroline.
"Am I?" said Ruth quietly, and after a profound curtsy turned sideways to the mare. "A lump of sugar, Tatty, if you please. . . . I thank you, ma'am—" as Mrs. Harry, anticipating Miss Quiney, stepped forward with a piece held between the sugar-tongs. "And I think she even deserves a second, for clearing the yard gate."
She fed the gentle creature and dismissed her. "Now trot around to your stall and ask one of the boys to unsaddle you!" She stood for ten seconds, may be, watching as the mare with a fling of the head trotted off obediently. Then she turned again and met Mrs. Harry's eyes with a frank smile.
"It is the truth," she said. "We cleared the gate. Come, please, and admire—"
Mrs. Harry, in spite of herself, stepped down from the verandah and followed. The others stood as they were, planted in stiff disapproval.
The girl led Mrs. Harry to the corner of the wood pile. "Admire!" she repeated, pointing with her riding-switch; and then, still keeping the gesture, she sank her voice and asked quickly, "Why are you here? You have a good face, not like the others. Tell me."
"Lady Caroline—" stammered Mrs. Harry, taken at unawares. "She has a right, naturally, to concern herself—"
"Does he know?"
"Sir Oliver? No—I believe not. . . . You see, the Vyells are a great family, and 'family' to them is a tremendous affair—a religion almost. Whatever touches one touches all; especially when that one happens to be the head of his house."
"Is that how Captain Vyell—how your husband—feels it?—No, please keep looking towards the gate. I mean no harm by these questions, and you will not mind answering them, I hope? It gives me just a little more chance of fair play."
"To tell you the truth," said Mrs. Harry, pretending to study the jump, "I looked at you because I could not help it. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman."
"Thank you," answered Ruth. "But about 'Captain Harry,' as we call him?
I suppose he, as next of kin, is most concerned of all?"
"He did not tell me about you, if that is what you mean; or rather he told me nothing until I questioned him. Then he owned that there was such a person, and that he had seen you. But he does not even know of this visit; he imagines that Lady Caroline is taking me for a pleasure trip, just to view the country."
Ruth turned towards the house. "You will tell him, of course," she said gravely, "when you return to the ship."
"I—I suppose I shall," confessed Mrs. Harry, and added, "There's one thing. You may suppose that, as his wife, I am as much concerned as any—perhaps more than these others. But I don't want you to think that I suggested hunting you up."
"I do not think anything of the sort. In fact I am sure you did not."
"Thank you."
Ruth had a mind to ask "Who, then, had brought them?" but refrained.
She had guessed, and pretty surely.
"Well," she said with half a laugh, "you have been good and given me time to recover. It's heavy odds, you see, and—and I have not been trained for it, exactly. But I feel better. Shall we go back and face them?"
"One moment, again!" Mrs. Harry's kindly face hung out signals of
distress. "It's heavy odds, as you say. Everything's against you.
But the Lord knows I'm a well-meaning woman, and I'd hate to be unjust.
If only I could be sure—if only you would tell me—"
Ruth stood still and faced her.
"Look in my eyes."
Mrs. Harry looked and was convinced. "But you love him," she murmured; "and he—"
"Ah, ma'am," said Ruth, "I answer you one question, and you would ask me another!"
Chapter XII.
LADY CAROLINE.
She walked back to the verandah.
"I understand," she said, "that Lady Caroline wishes a word with me."
With a slight bow she led the way through a low window that opened upon the Corderys' best parlour, through that apartment, and across a passage to the door of a smaller room lined with shelves—formerly a stillroom or store-chamber for home-made wines, cordials, preserves, but now converted into a boudoir for her use. Its one window looked out upon the farmyard, now in shadow, and a farther doorway led to the dairy. It stood open, and beyond it the eye travelled down a vista of cool slate flags and polished cream-pans.
On the threshold Ruth stood aside to let Lady Caroline enter; followed, and closed the door; stepped across and closed the door of the dairy. Lady Caroline meanwhile found a seat, and, lifting her eyeglass, studied at long range the library disposed upon the store shelves.
"We had best be quite frank," said she, as Ruth came back and stood before her.
"If you please."
"Of course it is all very scandalous and—er—nauseating, though I dare say you are unable to see it in that light. I merely mention it in justice to myself, lest you should mistake me as underrating or even condoning Sir Oliver's conduct. You will guess, at any rate, how it must shock my daughter."
"Yes," said Ruth; and added, "Why did you bring her?"
The girl's attitude—erect before her, patient, but unflinching—had already gone some way to discompose Lady Caroline. This straight question fairly disconcerted her; the worse because she could not quarrel with the tone of it.
"I wish," she answered, "my Diana to face the facts of life, ugly though they may be." As if aware that this hardly carried conviction—for, despite herself, something in Ruth began to impress her—she shifted ground and went on, "But we will not discuss my daughter, please. The point is, this state of things cannot continue. It may be hard for you—I am trying to take your view of it—but what may pass in a young man of blood cannot be permitted when he succeeds to a title and the— er—headship of his family. It becomes then his duty to give that family clean heirs. I put it plainly?"
Ruth bent her head for assent.
"Oliver Vyell, as no doubt you know, has already been mixed up in one entanglement, and has a child for reminder."
"Oh, but Dicky is the dearest child! The sweetest-natured, the cleanest-minded! Have you not seen him yet?"
Lady Caroline stared. As little as royalty did she understand being cross-questioned. It gave her a quite unexpected sense of helplessness.
"I fear you do not at all grasp the position," she said severely. "After all, I had done better to disregard your feelings, whatever they may be, and come to terms at once."
"No," answered Ruth, musing; "I do not understand the position; but I want to, more than I can say—and your ladyship must help me, please." She paused a moment. "In New England we prize good birth, good breeding, and what we too call 'family'; but I think the word must mean something different to you who live at home in England."
"I should hope so!" breathed Lady Caroline.
"It must be mixed up somehow with the great estates you have held for generations and the old houses you have lived in. No," she went on, as Lady Caroline would have interrupted; "please let me work it out in my own way, and then you shall correct me where I am wrong. . . . I have often thought how beautiful it must be to live in such an old house, one that has all its corners full of memories—the nurseries most of all— of children and grandchildren, that have grown up in gentleness and courtesy and honour—"
"Good Lord!" Lady Caroline interjected. "You mean"—Ruth smiled— "that I am talking like a book? That is partly my fault and partly our New England way; because, you see, we have to get at these things from books. Does it, after all, matter how—if only we get it right? . . . There's a tradition—what, I believe, you call an 'atmosphere'—and you are proud of it and very jealous."
"If you see all this," said Lady Caroline, mollified, "our business should be easier, with a little common sense on your part."
"And it knits you," pursued Ruth, "into a sort of family conspiracy— the womenkind especially—like bees in a hive. The head of the family is the queen bee, and you respect him amazingly; but all the same you keep your own judgment, and know when to thwart and when to disobey him, for his own and the family's good. I think you disobeyed Sir Oliver in coming here; or, at least, deceived him and came here without his knowledge."
"I am not accustomed," said Lady Caroline, rising, "to direct my conduct upon my nephew's advice."
"That, more or less, is what I was trying to say. Dear madam, let me warn you to do so, if you would manage his private affairs."
They faced each other now, upon declared war. Lady Caroline's neck was suffused to a purplish red behind the ears. She gasped for speech. Before she found it there came a tapping on the door, and Diana Vyell entered.
Chapter XIII.
DIANA VYELL.
"Have you not finished yet?" Miss Diana closed the door, glanced from one to the other, and laughed with a genial brutality. "Well, it's time I came. Dear mamma, you seem to be getting your feathers pulled."
There was a byword among the Whig families at home (who, by intermarrying, had learned to gauge another's weaknesses), that "the Pett medal showed ill in reverse." Miss Diana had heard the saying. As a Vyell—the Vyells were, before all things, critical—she knew it to be just, as well as malicious; but as a dutiful daughter she ought to have remembered.
As it was, her cool comment stung her mother to fury. The poor lady pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered (there is no more elegant word for the very inelegant exhibition),—
"A strumpet! One that has been whipped through the public streets."
There was a dreadful pause. Miss Diana, the first to recover herself, stepped back to the door and held it open.
"You must excuse dear mamma," she said coolly. "She has overtired herself."
But Lady Caroline continued to point a finger trembling with passion.
"Her price!" she shrilled. "Ask her that. It is all these creatures ever understand!"
Miss Diana slipped an arm beneath her elbow and firmly conducted her forth. Ruth, hearing the door shut, supposed that both women had withdrawn. She sank into a chair, and was stretching out her arms over the table to bury her face in them and sob, when the voice of the younger said quietly behind her shoulder,—
"It is always hard, after mamma's tantrums, to bring the talk back to a decent level. Nevertheless, shall we try?"
Ruth had drawn herself up again, rallying the spirit in her. It was weary, bruised; but its hour of default was not yet. Her voice dragged, but just perceptibly, as she answered Miss Vyell, who nodded, noting her courage and wondering a little,—
"I am sorry."
"Sorry?"
"Yes; it was partly my fault—very largely my fault. But your mother angered me from the first by assuming—what she had no right to assume. It was horrible."
Diana Vyell seated herself, eyed her steadily for a moment, and nodded again. "Mamma can be raide, there's no denying. She was wrong, of course; that's understood. . . . Still, on the whole you have done pretty well, and had your revenge."
Ruth's eyes widened, for this was beyond her.
Diana explained. "You have let us make the most impossible fools of ourselves. It may have been more by luck than by good management, as they say; but there it is. Now don't say that revenge isn't sweet. . . . I've done you what justice I can; but if you pose as an angel from heaven, it's asking too much." While Ruth considered this, she added, "I don't know if you can put yourself in mamma's place for a moment; but if you can, the hoax is complete enough, you'll admit."
"I had rather put myself in yours."
Their eyes met, and Diana's cheek reddened slightly. "You are an extraordinary girl," she said, "and there seems no way but to be honest with you. Unfortunately, it's not so easy, even with the best will in the world. Can you understand that?"
"If you love him—"
"Oh, for pity's sake spare me!" Diana bounced up and stepped to the window. The red on her cheek had deepened, and she averted it to stare out at the poultry in the yard. "You are unconscionable," she said after a while, with a vexed laugh. "I have known my cousin Oliver since we were children together. Really, you know, you're almost as brutal as mamma. . . . The truth? Let me see. Well, the truth, so near as I can tell it, is that I just let mamma have her head, and waited to see what would happen. This was her expedition, and I took no responsibility for it from the first."
"I understand." Ruth, watching the back of her head, spoke musingly, with pursed lips.
"Excuse me"—Diana wheeled about suddenly—"you cannot possibly understand just yet. This last was my tenth season in London. One grows weary . . . and then in the confusion of papa's death— It comes to this, that I was ready for anything to get out of the old rut. I—I—shall we say that I just cast myself on fate? It may have been at the back of my head that whatever happened might be worse, but couldn't well be wearier. But if you think I had any design of setting my cap at him—"
"Hush!" said Ruth softly. "I had no such thought."
"And if you had, you would not have cared," said Diana, eyeing her again long and steadily. "Mamma—you really must forgive mamma. If you knew them, there was never a Pett that was not impayable. Mamma spoke of asking your price. . . . As if, for any price, he would give you up!"
"I have no price to ask, of him or of any one."
"No, and you need have none. I am often very disagreeable," said Diana candidly, "but my worst enemy won't charge me with disparaging good looks in other women."
"May I use your words," said Ruth, with a shy smile, "and say that you have no need?"
"Rubbish! And don't talk like that to me, sitting here and staring you in the face, or I may change my mind again and hate you! I never said I didn't envy. . . . But there, the fault was mine for speaking of 'good looks' when I should have said, 'Oh, you wonder!'" broke off Diana. "May I ask it—one question?"
"Twenty, if you will."
"It is a brutal one; horrible; worse even than mamma's."
"As I remember," said Ruth gravely, "Lady Caroline asked none. It was I who did the questioning, and—and I am afraid that led to the trouble."
Diana laughed, and after a moment the two were laughing together.
"But what is your question?"
"No, I cannot ask it now." Diana shook her head, and was grave again.
"Please!"
"Well, then, tell me—" She drew back, slightly tilting her chin and narrowing her eyes, as one who contemplates a beautiful statue or other work of art. "Is it true they whipped that, naked, through the streets?"
Ruth bent her head.
"It is true."
"I wonder it did not kill you," Diana murmured.
"I am strong; strong and very healthy. . . . It broke something inside; I hardly know what. But there's a story—I read it the other day—about a man who wandered in a dark wood, and came to a place where he looked into hell. Just one glimpse. He fainted, and when he awoke it was daylight, with the birds singing all around him. But he was changed more than the place, for he listened and understood all the woodland talk—what the birds were saying, and the small creeping things. And when he went back among men he answered at random, and yet in a way that astonished them; for he saw and heard what their hearts were saying, at the back of their talk. . . . Of course," smiled Ruth, "I am not nearly so wonderful as that. But something has happened to me—"
Diana nodded slowly. "—Something that, at any rate, makes you terribly disconcerting. But what about Oliver? They tell me that he browbeat the magistrates and insisted on sitting beside you."
Ruth's eyes confirmed it. They were moist, yet proud. They shone.
"I had always," mused Diana, "looked on my cousin as a carefully selfish person, even in the matter of that Dance woman. You must have turned his head completely."
"It was not that."
Diana stared, the low tone was so earnest, vehement even. "Well, at all events I know him well enough to assure you he will never give you up."
"Ah!" Ruth drew a long sigh over the joy in her heart, and, a second later, hated herself for it.
"—until afterwards."
"Afterwards?" the girl echoed.
"Afterwards. My cousin Oliver is a tenacious man, and you would seem to have worked him up to temporary heroics. But I beg you to reflect that what for you must have been a real glimpse into hell"—Diana shivered—" was likely enough for him no more than an occasion for posing. Fine posing, I'll allow." She paused. "It didn't degrade him, actually. He's a Vyell; and as another of 'em I may tell you there never was a Vyell could face out actual degradation. You almost make me wish we were capable of it. To lose everything—" She paused again. "You make it more alluring, somehow, than the prospect of endless London seasons—Diana Vyell, with a fading face and her market missed—that's how they'll put it—and, pour me distraire this side of the grave, the dower-house, a coach, a pair of wind-broken horses, and the consolations of religion! If we were capable of it. . . . But where's the use of talking? We're Vyells. And—here's my point—Oliver is a Vyell. He may be strong-willed, but—did mamma happen to talk at all about the 'Family'?"
"I think," answered Ruth with another faint flash of mirth, "it was I who asked her questions about it."
Diana threw out her hands, laughing. "You are invincible! Well, I cannot hate you; and I've given you my warning. Make him marry you; you can if you choose, and now is your time. If there should be children— legitimate children, O my poor mamma!—there will be the devil to pay and helpless family councils, all of which I shall charge myself to enjoy and to report to you. If there should be none, we're safe with Mrs. Harry. She'll breed a dozen. . . . Am I coarse? Oh, yes, the Vyells can be coarse! while as for the Petts—but you have heard dear mamma."
They talked together for a few minutes after this. But their talk shall not be reported: for with what do you suppose it dealt?
—With Dress. As I am a living man, with Dress.
In the midst of it, and while Ruth listened eagerly to what Diana had to tell of London fashions, Lady Caroline's voice was heard summoning her daughter away.
Diana rose. "It is close upon dusk," she said, "and Mrs. Harry has command of the waggon. She drives very well—not better than I perhaps; but she understands this country better. All the same, the road—call it an apology for one—bristles with tree-stumps, and mamma's temper will be unendurable if the dark overtakes us before we reach the next farm. I forget its name."
"Natchett?"
"Yes, Natchett. We spend the night there."
"But why did not Mr. Silk drive you over?"
"Did mamma tell you he was escorting us?"
"No. I guessed."
"Nasty little fellow. Sloppy underlip. I cannot bear him. Can you?"
"I do not like him."
"It's a marvel to me that my cousin tolerates him. . . . By the way, I shall not wonder if he—Oliver, I mean—loses his temper heavily when he learns of our expedition, and bundles us straight back to Europe. I warned mamma."
"So—I am afraid—did I."
"Yes?"—and again they laughed together.
"My poor parent! . . . She assured me that her duty to the Family was her armour of proof. Hark! She's calling again."
They found Lady Caroline impatient in the verandah. Ruth, to avoid speech with her, walked away to the waggon. Farmer Cordery stood at the horse's head, and Mrs. Harry beside the step, ready to mount and take the reins.
But for some reason Mrs. Harry delayed to mount. "Is it you?" she said vaguely and put out a hand, swaying slightly. Ruth caught it.
"Are you ill?"
They were alone together for a moment and hidden from the farmer, who stood on the far side of the horse.
"Nothing—a sudden giddiness. It's quite absurd, too; when I've been as strong as a donkey all my life."
Ruth asked her a question. . . . Some word of woman's lore, dropped years ago by her own silly mother, crossed her memory. (They had been outspoken, in the cottage above the beach.) It surprised Mrs. Harry, who answered it before she was well aware, and so stood staring, trembling with surmise.
"God bless you!" Ruth put out an arm on an impulse to clasp her waist, but checked it and beckoned instead to Diana.
"You take the reins and drive," she commanded.
Diana questioned her with a glance, but obeyed and climbed on board. Ruth was helping Mrs. Harry to mount after her when Lady Caroline thrust herself forward, by the step.
Now since Diana had hold of the reins, and Mrs. Harry was for the moment in no condition to lend a hand, and since Lady Caroline would as lief have touched leprosy as have accepted help from Ruth Josselin, her ascent into the van fell something short of dignity. The rearward of her person was ample; she hitched her skirt in the step, thus exposing an inordinate amount of not over-clean white stocking; and, to make matters worse, Farmer Cordery cast off at the wrong moment and stood back from the horse's head.
"Losh! but I'm sorry," said he, gazing after the catastrophic result. "Look at her, there, kickin' like a cast ewe. . . ." He turned a serious face on Ruth and added, "Vigorous, too, for her years."
Ruth, returning to the verandah, bent over little Miss Quiney, who sat unsmiling, with rigid eyes. "Dear Tatty,"—she kissed her—"were they so very dreadful?"
Miss Quiney started as if awaking from a nightmare.
"That woman—darling, whatever her rank, I cannot term her a lady!—"
"Go on, dear."
"I cannot. Sit beside me, here, for a while, and let me feel my arm about you. . . ."
They sat thus for a long while silent, while twilight crept over the plain and wrapped itself about the homestead.
Ruth was thinking. "If I forfeit this, it will be hardest of all."
Chapter XIV.
MR. SILK PROPOSES.
Farmer Cordery had six grown sons—Jonathan, George, William, Increase,
Homer, and Lemuel—the eldest eight-and-twenty, the youngest sixteen.
All were strapping fellows, and each as a matter of course had fallen
over head and ears in love with Ruth.
They were good lads and knew it to be hopeless. She had stepped into their home as a goddess from a distant star, to abide with them for a while. They worshipped, none confessing his folly; but it made them her slaves, and emulous to shine before her as though she had been a queen of tournay. Because of her presence (it must be sadly owned) challengings, bickerings, even brotherly quarrels, disturbed more and more the patriarchal peace of Sweetwater Farm. "I dunno what's come over the boys," their father grumbled; "al'ays showing off an' jim-jeerin'. Regilar cocks on a dunghill. A few years agone I'd 've cured it wi' the strap; but now there's no remedy."
William had challenged his eldest brother Jonathan to "put" a large round-shot that lay in the verandah. Their father had brought it home from the capture of Louisbourg as a souvenir. Jonathan and George had served at Louisbourg too, in the Massachusetts Volunteers; but William, though of age to fight, had been left at home to look after the farm and his mother. It had been a sore disappointment at the time; now that Jonathan and George had taken on a sudden to boast, it rankled. Hence the challenge. The three younger lads joined in. If they could not defeat their seniors, they could at least dispute the mastery among themselves. Thereupon in all seriousness (ingenuous youths!) they voted that Miss Josselin should be asked to umpire.
The contest took place next morning after breakfast, in a paddock beyond the elms, with Ruth for umpire and sole spectator. Nothing had been said to the farmer, who was fast losing his temper with "these derned wagerings," and might have come down with a veto that none dared disobey. He had ridden off, however, at sun-up to the mountain, to look after the half-wild hogs he kept at pasture among the woods at its base.
Ruth measured out the casts conscientiously. In no event would the young men have disputed her arbitrament; but, as it happened, this nicety was thrown away. Jonathan's "put" of forty feet—the shot weighed close upon sixteen pounds—easily excelled the others', who were sportsmen and could take a whipping without bad blood or dispute. The winner crowed a little, to be sure; it was the New England way. But Lemuel the youngest, who had outgrown his strength, had made a deplorable "put," and the rest jeered at him, to relieve their feelings. The boy fired up. "Oh, have your laugh!" he blazed, with angry tears in his eyes. "But when it comes to running, there's not one of you but knows I can put circles round him."
"Take you on, this moment," answered up young Increase. "Say, boys, we'll all take him on."
Jonathan had no mind for any such "foolishness." He had won, and was content; and running didn't become the dignity of a grown man. "We didn't run at Louisbourg, I guess." George echoed him. George could out-tire even Jonathan at wood-cutting, but had no length of leg.
But Ruth having compassion on the boy's hurt feelings, persuaded them. They could refuse no straight request of hers. She pointed to an outlying elm that marked the boundary of the second pasture field beyond the steading. This should be the turning-post, and would give them a course well over half a mile, with a water-jump to be crossed twice. She ranged them in line, and dropped her handkerchief for signal.
They were off. She stood with the sun at her back and watched the race. George, of the short legs, broad shoulders, and bullet head, was a sprinter (as we call it nowadays) and shot at once to the front, with Homer not far behind, and Increase disputing the third place with Lemuel. Jonathan and William made scarcely a show of competing. The eldest lad, indeed, coming to the brook, did not attempt to jump, but floundered heavily through it, scrambled up the farther bank, and lumbered on in hopeless pursuit. It was here that Lemuel's long easy stride asserted itself, and taking first place he reached the tree with several yards' lead.
"He will win at his ease now," said Ruth to herself; and just at that moment her ears caught the sound of a horse's footfall. She turned; but the sun shone full in her eyes, and not for a second or two did she recognise her visitor, Mr. Silk.
He was on horseback, and, stooping from his saddle, was endeavouring just now—but very unhandily—to unhasp the gate with the crook of his riding-whip. Ruth did not offer to go to his help.
He managed it at last, thrust the horse through by vigorous use of his knees, and was riding straight up to the house. But just then he caught sight of her, changed his course, and came towards her at a walk.
"Ah, good-morning!" he called.
"Good-morning."
He dismounted. "Thought I'd ride over and pay you a call. The ladies will not be starting on their return journey for another couple of hours. So I borrowed a horse."
"Evidently."
"There's something wrong with him, I doubt." Mr. Silk was disagreeably red and moist.
"I dare say he is not used to being ridden mainly—or was it wholly?—on the curb."
He grinned. "Well, and I'm not used to riding, and that's a fact. But"—he leered the compliment—"there are few dangers I would not brave for a glance from Miss Josselin."
"You flatter me, sir. But I believe you braved a worse, yesterday, without claiming that reward."
"Ah! You mean that Sir Oliver will be angry when he gets wind of our little expedition? The ladies persuaded me—Adam's old excuse; I can deny nothing to the sex. . . . But what have we yonder? A race?"
"It would appear so."
"A very hollow one, if I may criticise. That youngster moves like a deer. . . . And what is his reward to be?—another glance of these bright eyes? Ah, Miss Josselin, you make fools—and heroes—of us all!"
Ruth turned from him to applaud young Lemuel, who came darting into the enclosure.
"See old Jonathan!" panted the boy, looking back and laughing. "That's how they ran at Louisbourg. . . . Miss Josselin, you should have made it a mile and I'd have shown you some broken-winded ones." He laughed again and turned in apology to Mr. Silk. "I'll take your horse to stable, sir, if you'll let me catch my breath."
The others came straggling up, a little abashed at sight of the stranger, but not surprised out of their good manners.
"A clergyman?" said Jonathan. "My father will be home before sundown, sir. He will be proud if you can stay and have dinner with us."
Mr. Silk explained that he had ridden over from Natchett to call on Miss Josselin and had but an hour to spare. They insisted, however, that he must eat before leaving, and they led away his horse to bait, leaving him and Ruth together.
"Will you come into the house?" she asked.
"With your leave we can talk better here. . . . So you guessed that I made one of the party? Miss Vyell told me."
"It was not difficult to guess."
"And you admired my courage?"
Ruth's eyebrows went up to a fine arch. "When you were careful to keep in hiding?"
"From motives of delicacy, believe me. It occurred to me that Lady Caroline might—er—speak her mind, and I had no wish to be distressed by it, or to distress you with my presence."
"I thank you for so much delicacy, sir."
"But Lady Caroline—let us do her justice! She calls a spade a spade, but there's no malice in it. You stood up to her, I gather. We've been discussing you this morning, and you may take my word she don't think the worse of you for it. They're sportsmen, these high-born people. I come of good family myself, and know the sort. 'Slog and take a slogging; shake hands and no bad blood'—that's their way. The fine old British way, after all." Mr. Silk puffed his cheeks and blew.
"You have been discussing me with Lady Caroline?"
"Yes," he answered flatly. "Yes," he repeated, and rolled his eyes. "All for your good, you know. Of course she started by calling you names and taking the worst for granted. But I wouldn't have that."
"Go on, sir, if you please."
"I wouldn't have it, because I didn't believe it. If I did—hang it!—
I shouldn't be here. You might do me that justice."
"Why are you here?"
"I'm coming to that; but first I want you to open your eyes to the position. You may think it's all very pretty and romantic and like Fair Rosamond—without the frailty as yet: that's granted. But how will it end? Eh? That's the question, if you'd bring your common sense to bear on it."
"Suppose you help me, sir," said Ruth meekly.
"That's right. I'm here to help, and in more ways than one. . . . Well, I know Sir Oliver; Lady Caroline knows him too; and if it's marriage you're after, you might as well whistle the moon. You don't believe me?" he wound up, for she was eyeing him with an inscrutable smile.
She lifted her shoulder a little. "For the sake of your argument we will say that it is so."
"Then what's to be the end? I repeat. Look here, missy. We spar a bit when we meet, you and I; but I'd be sorry to see you go the way you're going. 'Pon my honour I would. You're as pretty a piece of flesh as a man could find on this side of the Atlantic, and what's a sharp tongue but a touch of spice to it? Piquancy, begad, to a fellow like me! . . . And—what's best of all, perhaps—you'd pass for a lady anywhere."
She shrank back a pace before this incredible vulgarity; but not even yet did she guess the man's drift.
"So I put it to you, why not?" he continued, flushing as he came to the point and contemplated his prey. "You don't see yourself as a parson's wife, eh? You're not the cut. But for that matter I'm not the ordinary cut of parson. T'other side of the water we'd fly high. They'll not have heard of Port Nassau, over there, nor of the little nest at Sabines; and with Lady Caroline to give us a jump-off—I have her promise. She runs a Chapel of her own, somewhere off St. James's. Give me a chance to preach to the fashionable—let me get a foot inside the pulpit door—and, with you to turn their heads in the Mall below, strike me if I wouldn't finish up a Bishop! La belle Sauvage—they'd put it around I'd found my beauty in the backwoods, and converted her. . . . Well, what d'ye say? Isn't that a prettier prospect than to end as Sir Oliver's cast-off?"
She put a hand backwards, and found a gate-rail to steady her.
"Ah! . . . How you dare!" she managed to murmur.
"Dare? Eh! you're thinking of Sir Oliver?" He laughed easily. "Lady Caroline will put that all right. He'll be furious at first, no doubt; my fine gentleman thinks himself the lion in the fable—when he shares out the best for himself, no dog dares bark. But we'll give him the go-by, and afterwards he can't squeal without showing himself the public fool. . . . Squeal? I hope he will. I owe him one."
At this moment young George and Increase Cordery came past the far corner of the house with their team, their harness-chains jingling as they rode afield. At sight of them a strong temptation assailed Ruth, but she thrust it from her.
"Sir"—she steadied her voice—"bethink you, please, that I have only to lift a hand and those two, with their brothers, will drag you through the farm pond."
Before he could answer, she called to them. As they turned and walked their horses towards her she glanced at Mr. Silk, half mischievously in spite of her fierce anger. He was visibly perturbed; but his face, mottled yellow with terror, suggested loathing rather than laughter.
"I am sorry to trouble you, but will you please fetch Mr. Silk's horse?
He must return at once."
When they were gone she turned to him.
"I am sorry to dismiss you thus, sir, after the—the honour you have done me; the more sorry because you will never understand."
Indeed—his scare having passed—he was genuinely surprised, indignant.
"I understand this much," he answered coarsely, "that I've offered to make you an honest woman, but you prefer to be—" The word was on his tongue-tip, but hung fire there.
She had turned her back on him, and stood with her arms resting for support on the upper rail of the gate. She heard him walk away towards the stable-yard. . . . By-and-by she heard him ride off—heard the click of the gate behind him. A while after this she listened, and then bowed her face upon her arms.
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."