BOOK III.
THE BRIDALS.
Chapter I.
BETROTHED.
Sir Oliver rode back to Boston that same evening. Ruth had stipulated that his promise to her folk in the beach cottage still held good; that when the three years were out, and not a day before, she would return to them and make her announcement. Meanwhile, although the coast would soon be clear of her enemies and he desired to have her near, she begged off returning to Sabines. Here at Sweetwater Farm she could ride, with the large air about her and freedom to think. It was not that she shirked books and tutors. She would turn to them again, by-and-by. But at Sweetwater she could think things out, and she had great need of thinking.
He yielded. He was passionately in love and could deny her nothing.
He would ride over and pay his respects once a week.
So he took his leave, and Ruth abode with the Corderys and Miss Quiney. Disloyal though she felt it, she caught herself wishing, more than once, that her lord could have taken dear Tatty back with him to Boston.
I desire to depict Ruth Josselin here as the woman she was, not as an angel.
Now Tatty, when Sir Oliver had led Ruth indoors and presented her as his affianced wife, had been taken aback; not scandalised, but decidedly— and, for so slight a creature, heavily—taken aback. It is undoubted that she loved Ruth dearly; nay, so dearly that in a general way no fortune was too high to befall her darling. What dreams she had entertained for her I cannot tell. Very likely they had been at once splendid and vague. Miss Quiney was not worldly-wise, yet her wisdom did not transcend what little she knew of the world. She had great notions of Family, for example. She had imagined, may be—still in a vague way—that Sir Oliver would some day provide his protegee with a mate of good, or at least sufficient, Colonial birth. She had been outraged by Lady Caroline's suggestions. Now this, while it triumphantly refuted them, did seem to show that Lady Caroline had not altogether lacked ground for suspicion.
In fine, the dear creature received a shock, and in her flurry could not dissemble it.
Sir Oliver did not perceive this. In the first flush of conquest all men are a trifle fatuous, unobservant. No woman is. Miss Quiney's arms did not suddenly go out to Ruth. Ruth noted it. She was just: she understood. But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember indelibly whatever small thing happens at this crisis of their lives.
In the end Miss Quiney stretched forth her arms; but at first she seemed to shrivel and grow very small in her chair. Nor can her first comment be called adequate,—
"Dear sir—oh, but excuse me!—this is so sudden!"
Later, when she and Ruth were left alone, she explained, still a little tremulously, "You took me all of a heap, my dear! I can hardly realise it, even now. . . . Such a splendid position! You will go to London, I doubt not; and be presented at Court; and be called Lady Vyell. . . . Have you thought of the responsibilities?"
She had, and she had not. Her own promised splendours, the command of wealth and of a great household—this aspect of the future was blank to her as yet. But another presented itself and frightened her: it engaged her conscience in doubts even when she shook it free of fears. The Family—that mysterious shadow of which Lady Caroline no doubt showed as the ugliest projection! Ruth was conscientious. She divined that behind Lady Caroline's aggressiveness the shadow held something truly sacred and worth guarding; something impalpable and yet immensely solid; something not to be defied or laughed away because inexplicable, but venerable precisely because it could not be explained; something not fashioned hastily upon reason, but built by slow accretion, with the years for its builders—mortared by sentiments, memories, traditions, decencies, trivialities good and bad, even (may be) by the blood of foolish quarrels—but founded and welded more firmly, massed more formidably, than any structure of mere reason; and withal a temple wherein she, however chastely, might never serve without profaning it.
I do most eagerly desire you, at this point in her story, to be just to Ruth Josselin. I wish you to remember what she had suffered, in the streets, at the hands of self-righteous folk; to understand that it had killed all religion in her, with all belief in its rites, but not the essential goodness of her soul.
She at any rate, and according to the light given her, was incurably just. Weighing on the one hand her love and Oliver Vyell's, on the other the half-guessed injury their marriage might do to him and to others of his race; weighing them not hastily but through long hours of thought: carrying her doubts off to the hills and there considering them in solitude, under the open sky; casting out from the problem all of self save only her exceeding love; this strange girl—made strange by man's cruelty—decided to give herself in due time, but to exact no marriage.
Why should she? The blessing of a clergyman meant nothing to her, as she was sure it meant nothing to her lover. Why should she tie him a day beyond the endurance of his love? Beyond the death of the thing itself what sanctity could live in its husk? And, moreover, in any event was she not his slave?
So she reasoned: and let the reader call her reasoning by any name he will. By some standards it was wicked; by others wrong. It forgot one of the strongest arguments against itself, as she was in time to prove. But let none call her unchaste.
After certain weeks she brought her arguments to him; standing before him, halting in her speech a little, but entreating him with eyes as straight as they were modest. Her very childishness appealed against her arguments.
He listened, marvelled, and broke into joyous laughter. He would have none of it. Why, she was fit to be a queen!—a thousand times too good for him. His family? Their prejudices should fall down before her and worship. As little as she did he set store by rites of the Church or believe in them: but, as the world went, to neglect them would be to stint her of the chief honour. Was this fair to him, who desired to heap honours upon her and would stretch for them even beyond his power?
His passion, rather than his arguments, overbore her. That passion rejuvenated him. Once or twice it choked his voice, and her heart leapt; for she was a sensible girl and, remembering the dead Margaret Dance, had schooled herself to know that what was first love with her, drenching her heart with ecstasy, could never be first love with him. Yet now and again the miracle declared itself and instead of a lord, commanding her, he stood before her a boy: and with a boy's halting speech—ah, so much dearer than eloquence!
Beyond a doubt he was over head and ears in love. He was honest, too, in his desire to set her high and make a queen of her. In Boston, Mr. Ned Manley, architect of genius, was sitting up into the small hours of morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked. Already on a hillside between Boston and Sweetwater Farm—the hill itself could be seen from the farmstead, but not their operations, which lay on the far side—three hundred labourers were toiling in gangs, levelling, terracing, hewing down forest trees, laying foundations. Already ships were heading for Boston Harbour with statuary and wrought marble in their holds, all to beautify a palace meet for Oliver Vyell's bride. Thus love wrought in him, in a not extraordinary way if we allow for his extraordinary means. He and Ruth, between them, were beginning to sing the eternal duet of courtship:—
He.—Since that I love, this world has grown;
Yea, widens all to be possest.
She—Since that I love, it narrows down
Into one little nest.
He.—Since that I love, I rage and burn
O'erwhelming Nineveh with Rome!
She.—In vain! in vain! Fond man return—
Such doings be at home!
He had reached an age to know himself in his own despite. He was no boy, to dream of building or overthrowing empires. But he could build his love a palace. His friend Batty Langton bore with all this energy and smiled wisely.
Ruth guessed nothing of these preparations. But his vehemence broke down her scruples, overbore and swept away what she had built in hours of patient thinking. She yielded: she would be married, since he willed it.
But the debate had been; and it left Tatty, with her maxims and taken-for-granted practicalities, hard to endure at times.
"The outfit?" Tatty would suggest. "At this distance from civilisation we cannot even begin to take it in hand. Yet it should be worthy of the occasion, and men—speaking with all respect of Sir Oliver—are apt to overlook these things. Dear Ruth, I do not know if you have thought of returning to Sabines. . . . So much handier. . . ."
Ruth, half-wilfully, refused to think of returning to Sabines.
But if Tatty fussed, the Cordery lads made more than recompense for her fussing. From the hour when, at supper-time, Sir Oliver led Miss Josselin into the kitchen, his bride affianced, all discord ceased between these young men. He was their master and patron, and they thenceforth were her servants only—her equal champions should occasion ever be given.
Thenceforth too, and until the hour when at nightfall she drove away from Sweetwater Farm, she was their goddess: and as, while Phoebus served shepherd to Admetus, his fellow swains noted that never had harvest been so heavy or life so full of sweet and healthy rivalries, so these young men, who but once or twice saw Ruth Josselin after the hour of her departure, talked in scattered homesteads all their days of that good time at Sweetwater, and of the season's wonderful bearings. Undoubtedly the winter was a genial one—so genial that scarcely a day denied Ruth a bracing ride: the spring that followed seemed to rain and shine almost in obedience to Farmer Cordery's evening prayer (and it never left the Almighty in doubt of his exact wishes). Summer came, and the young men, emulous but no longer bickering, scythed down prodigious swathes; harvest-fall, and they put in their sickles among tall stalk and full ear.
Sir Oliver and Ruth watched the harvest. When all was gathered, the young men begged that she would ride home on the last load. They escorted her back to the farmstead, walking two-by-two before the cart, under the young moon.
Next evening at the same hour she bade them farewell and climbed into a light waggon that stood ready, its lamps throwing long shafts of light. Horses had been sent on ahead, with two servants for escort, and would await her at dawn, far on the road; but to-night she would sleep in the waggon, upon a scented bed of hay. The reason for this belated start Sir Oliver kept a secret from her. There was a certain hill upon the way, and he would not have her pass it by daylight. He had returned that morning to Boston; Miss Quiney with him.
Ruth's eyes were moist to leave these good folk. Farmer Cordery cleared his throat and blessed her in parting. She blessed them in return.
The waggon, after following the Boston road for a while, turned northward, bearing her by strange ways and through the night towards Port Nassau.
Chapter II.
THE RETURN.
The breakers boomed up the beach, and in the blown spray Old Josselin pottered, bareheaded and barefoot. His eyesight had grown dimmer, but otherwise his bodily health had improved, for nowadays he ate food enough: and, as for purblindness, why there was no real need to keep watch on the sea. He did it from habit.
Ruth came on him much as Sir Oliver had come on him three years before; the roar of the breakers swallowing all sound of Madcap's hoofs until she was close at his shoulder. Now as then he turned about with a puzzled face, peered, and lifted his hand a little way as if to touch his forehead.
"Your ladyship—" he mumbled, noting only her fine clothes.
"Grandfather!"
She slipped down from saddle and kissed him, in sight of the grooms, who had reined up fifty yards away.
"What? Ruth, is it? . . . Here's news, now, for your mother, poor soul!"
"How is she? Take me to her at once, please."
"Eh! . . . Your mother keeps well enough; though doited, o' course— doited. Properly grown you be, too, I must say. . . . I didn't reckernise ye comin' on me like that. Inches ye've grown."
"And you—well, you look just the same as ever; only fuller and haler."
"Do I?" The old man gave her in the old way certain details of his health. "But I'm betterin'. Food's a blessin', however ye come by it."
On a sudden, as she read his thought, the very tokens of health in his face accused her . . . and, a moment since, she had been merely glad to note them.
"Clothes too, ye'll say? I don't set store by clothes, meself; but a fine han'some quean they make of ye. That's a mare, too! Cost a hundred guineas, I shouldn't wonder. . . . Well, an' how's the gentleman keepin'? Turned into a lord, you told us, in one o' your letters: that, or something o' the sort."
"Then at any rate you have read my letters?"
"Why, to be sure. My old eyes can't tackle 'em; but your mother reads 'em out, over an' over, an' I tell her what this an' that means, an' get the sense into her head somehow."
"Take me to her." Ruth signalled to the grooms, who came forward. They were well-trained servants, recent imports from England, and Sir Oliver had billeted them where they could hear no gossip of her history. They had kept their distance with faces absolutely impassive while their mistress kissed and chatted with this old man, and they merely touched their hats, with a "Very good, miss," when she gave over the mare, saying she would walk up to the cottage and rest for an hour.
"Oo-oof! the dear old smell!" Ruth, before she turned, drew in a deep breath of it. There was no one near to observe and liken her, standing there with blown tresses and wind-wrapt skirt on the edge of Ocean, to the fairest among goddesses, the Sea-born.
She walked up the beach, the old man beside her.
"Ay: you reckernise the taste of it, I dessay. But you'd not come back to it, not you. . . . It must be nigh upon dinner: my belly still keeps time like a clock. M'ria shall cook us a few clams. Snuffin' won't bring it back like clams." He chuckled, supposing he had made a joke.
Her mother had caught sight of them from the window where she sat as usual watching the sea. As they climbed the slope, picking their way along loosely-piled wreckwood, she opened the door and stood at first fastening a clean apron and then rubbing her palms up and down upon it, as though they were sweaty and she would dry them before she shook hands.
"That's so, M'ria!" the old man shouted cheerfully, as his eyes made out the patch of white apron in the doorway. "It's our Ruth, all right— come to pay us a visit!" He bawled it, at close quarters. This was his way of conveying intelligence to the crazed brain.
Mrs. Josselin, awed by her daughter's appearance—a little perhaps, by her loveliness; more, belike, by her air of distinction and her fine dress (though this was simple enough—a riding suit of grey velvet, with a broad-brimmed hat and one black feather)—withdrew behind her back the hand she had been wiping, and stood irresolute, smiling in a timid way.
It was horrible. Ruth stretched out her arms lest in another moment her mother should bob a curtsy.
"Mother—mother!"
She took the poor creature in her arms and held her, shivering a little as she sought her lips; for Mrs. Josselin, albeit scrupulously clean, had a trace of that strange wild smell that haunts the insane. Ruth had lived with it aforetime and ceased to notice it. Now she recognised it, and shivered.
"Surely, surely," said the mother as soon as the embrace released her.
"I always said you would come back, some day. In wealth or in trouble,
I always told grandfather you would come back. . . . That hat, now—the
very latest I'll be bound. . . . And how is your good gentleman?"
"Mother! Please do not call him that!"
"Why, you ha'n't quarrelled, ha' you?"
"Indeed, no."
"That's right." Mrs. Josselin nodded, looking extremely wise. "Show a good face always, no matter what happens; and, with your looks there's no saying what you can't persuade him to. All the Pococks were good-looking, though I say it who shouldn't: and as for the Josselins—"
"Sit down, mother," Ruth commanded. She must get this over, and soon, for it was straining at her heart. "Sit down and listen to what I have to tell. Afterwards you shall get me something to eat; and while you are dishing it—dear mother, you were always briskest about the fireplace—we will talk in the old style."
"Surely, surely." Mrs. Josselin seated herself on the block-stool.
"You remember the promise? In three years—and yesterday the three years were up—I was to come back and report myself."
"Is it three years, now? Time do slip away!"
"The gel's right," corroborated old Josselin, pausing as he filled a pipe. "I remember it."
"This is what I have to report—Sir Oliver has asked me to marry him."
There was a pause. "I dunno," said the old man sourly—and Ruth knew that tone so well! He always used it on hearing good news, lest he should be mistaken for genial—"I dunno why you couldn' ha' told us that straight off, without beatin' round the bush. It's important enough."
"He has asked me to marry him, and I have said 'yes.'"
"What else could ye say?"
"Of course she said 'yes,' the darling!" Mrs. Josselin clapped her hands together, without noise. "What did I ever say but that 'twas a chance, if you used it? But when is it to be?" she added, suspiciously.
"Very soon. As soon as I please, in fact."
"You take my advice and pin him to it. The sooner the better—eh, darling?"
Ruth rose wearily. "I see the pot boiling," she said with a glance at the fireplace, "and I have been on horseback since seven o'clock. Mother, won't you give me food, at least? I am hungry as a hunter."
—But this was very nearly a fib. She had been hungry enough, half an hour ago. Now her throat worked in disgust—not at the hovel and its poverty; for these were dear—but at the thought that thus for three years her dearest had been thinking of her. It had been the home of infinite mutual tolerance, of some affection—an affection not patent perhaps—and for years it had been all she owned. Now it lived on, but was poisoned; the atmosphere of the humble place was poisoned, and through her.
"Food?"—her mother rose. "Food be sure, and a bed, deary: for you'll be sleeping here, of course?"
"No. I go on to Port Nassau; and thence in a few days to a lodging up in the back country."
"Such a mare as she's ridin' too!" put in the old man.
"I wouldn' put up at Port Nassau, if I was you," said her mother pausing as she made ready to lift the pot-handle. "They won't know what you've told us, and they'll cast up the old shame on you."
"M'ria ha'n't talked so sensible for days," said the old man.
"Joy must ha' steadied her. . . . Clams, is it? Clams, I hope."
The meal over, Ruth took leave of them, reproaching herself for her haste, though troubled to have delayed the grooms so long.
She mounted and rode forward thoughtfully.
The grooms did not wear the Vyell white and scarlet, but a sober livery of dark blue. Between more serious thoughts Ruth wondered if any one in Port Nassau would recognise her.
The hostess of the Bowling Green did not, but came to the door and dropped curtsies to her, as to a grand lady. She startled Ruth, however, by respectfully asking her name.
Ruth, who had forgotten to provide against this, had a happy inspiration.
"I am Miss Ruth," she said.
The landlady desired to be informed how to spell it. "For," said she,
"I keep a list of all the quality that honour the Bowling Green."
Ruth signed it boldly in the book presented, and ordered supper to be brought to her room; also a fire to be lit. She was given the same room in which she had knelt to pull off Oliver Vyell's boots.
Whilst supper was preparing, in a panic lest she should be recognised she tied her hair high and wound it with a rope of pearls—her lover's first gift to her. In her dress she could make little change. The waggon following in her wake would be due to-morrow with her boxes; but for to-night she must rely on the few necessaries of toilet the grooms had brought, packed in small hold-alls at their saddle bows.
Her fears proved to be idle. The meal was served by a small maid, upon whom she once or twice looked curiously. She wondered if the landlady scolded her often.
After supper she sat a long while in thought over the fire, shielding its heat from her with her hands. They were exquisite hands, but once or twice she turned them palms-uppermost, as though to make sure they bore no scars.
Chapter III.
NESTING.
She spent a week in Port Nassau, recognised by none. She walked its streets, her features half hidden by a veil; and among the Port Nassauers she passed for an English lady of quality who, by one of those freaks from which the wealthy suffer, designed to rent or build herself a house in the neighbourhood. Her accent by this time was English; by unconscious preference she had learnt it from her lover, translating and adapting it to her own musical tones. It deceived the Port Nassauers completely.
She visited many stores, always with a manservant in attendance; and, always paying down ready-money, bought of the best the little town could afford (but chiefly small articles of furniture, with some salted provisions and luxuries such as well-to-do skippers took to sea for their private tables). The waggon had arrived; it, too, contained a quantity of wine and provisions, camp furniture, clothes, etc.
At the end of the week she left Port Nassau with her purchases, the two men escorting her, the laden waggon following. They climbed the hill above the town, and struck inland from the base of the peninsula, travelling north and by west. The road—a passably good one—led them across a dip of cultivated land, shaped like a saddle-back, with a line of forest trees topping its farther ridge. This was the fringe of a considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the shade of boughs, slanting their way along a gentle declivity, with here and there glimpses of a broad plain below, and of a broad-banded river winding through it with many loops.
But these glimpses were rare, and a stranger could not guess the extent of the plain until, stepping from the forest into broad day, he found himself on the very skirts of it.
An ample plain it was; a grass ground of many thousand acres, where fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and wading-boots. For in winter one sheet of water—or of ice, as it might happen—covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many brooks that threaded their way to her. But at this season they ran low between their banks and the eye easily traced their meanderings, while the main stream itself rolled its waters in full view—in places three hundred yards wide, and seldom narrower than one hundred. Dwarf willows fringed it: at some distance back from the shore, alders and reddening maples dotted the meadows, with oaks here and there, and everywhere wild cranberry bushes in great moss-like hummocks.
It ran sluggishly, and always—however long the curve—up to its near or right bank the plain lay flat, or broken only by these hummocks. But from the farther shore the ground rose at a moderate slope, and here were farmhouses and haystacks planted above reach of the waters. A high ridge of forest backed this inhabited terrace, and dense forest filled the eastward gap through which the river passed down to these levels from the cleft hills.
At one point on the farther shore the houses had drawn together in a cluster, and towards this the road ran in a straight line on the raised causeway that had suffered much erosion from bygone floods. It cost the travellers an hour to reach the river-bank, where a ferry plied to and from the village. It was a horse-boat, but not capable of conveying the waggon, the contents of which must be unladen and shipped across in parcels, to be repacked in a cart that stood ready on the village quay. Leaving her men to handle this, Ruth crossed alone with her mare and rode on, as the ferryman directed her, past the village towards her lodging, some two miles up the stream. The house stood beside a more ancient ferry, now disused, to which it had formerly served as a tavern. It rested on stout oaken piles driven deep into the river-mud; a notable building, with a roof like the inverted hull of a galleon, pierced with dormer windows and topped by a rusty vane. Its tenants were a childless couple—a Mr. and Mrs. Strongtharm: he a taciturn man of fifty, a born naturalist and great shooter of wildfowl; she a douce woman, with eyes like beads of jet, and an incurable propensity for mothering and spoiling her neighbours' children.
The couple received her kindly, asking few questions. Their dwelling was by many sizes too large for them, and she might have taken her choice among a dozen of the old guest-chambers. But Sir Oliver had come and gone a month before and selected the best for her. Its roof-timbers, shaped like the ribs of a ship, curved outwards and downwards from a veritable keelson; and it was reached by way of a zig-zagging corridor, lit by port-holes, and adorned in every niche and corner with cases of stuffed wildfowl. Ruth supped well on game Mr. Strongtharm's gun had provided, and slept soundly, lulled between her dreams by the ripple of water swirling between the piles that supported, far below her, the house's cellarage.
She awoke at daybreak to the humming of wind; and looked forth on a leaden sky, on the river ruffled and clapping in small waves against a shrill north-easter, and on countless birds in flocks rising from the meadows and balancing their wings against it. Before breakfast-time the weather had turned to heavy rain. But this mattered nothing; she had a day's work indoors before her.
She spent the morning in unpacking the stores, which had arrived late overnight from the ferry, and in putting a hundred small touches to her bedroom and sitting-room, to make them more habitable. By noon she had finished the unpacking, and dismissed the two grooms to make their way back to Boston and report that all was well with her. It rained until three in the afternoon; and then, the weather clearing, she saddled Madcap with her own hands and rode to the edge of the forest. Little light remained when she reached its outskirts, and she peered curiously between the dim boles for a few minutes before turning for her homeward ride. She had brought a beautiful scheme in her head, and the forest was concerned in it; but for the moment, in this twilight, the forest daunted her. She had—for she differed from most maidens—left her lover to arrange all the business of the marriage ceremony, stipulating only that it must be private. But she had at the same time bound him by a lover's oath that all details of the honeymoon must be left to her; that he should neither know where and how it was to be spent, nor seek to enquire. She would meet him at the church porch in the village below—in what garb, even, she would not promise; and after the ceremony he must be ready to ride away with her—she would not promise whither.
Her project had been to build a camp far in the woods; and to this end she had made her many purchases in Port Nassau. They included, besides an array of provisions and cooking-pots, a hunter's tent such as the backwoodsmen used in their expeditions after beaver and moose. It weighed many pounds, and a part of her problem was how to convey it to any depth of the forest unaided.
The easterly gale blew itself out. The next morning broke with rifts of blue, and steadied itself, after two hours, to clear sunshine. She awoke in blithe spirits, and after breakfast went off without waste of time to saddle Madcap. By the stable door she found Mr. Strongtharm seated and polishing his gun, and paused to catechise him on the forest tracks, particularly on those leading up through Soldier's Gap—by which name he called the gorge at the head of the plain.
"The best track beyond, you'll find, lies pretty close 'longside the river," he said. "But 'tis no road for the mare. I doubt if a mule could manage it after the third mile. The river, you see, comes through in a monstrous hurry—by the look of it here you'd never guess. No, indeed, 'tisn't a river at all, properly speakin', but a whole heap o' streams tumblin' down this-a-way, that-a-way, out o' the side valleys; and what you may call the main river don't run in one body, but breaks itself up considerable over waterfalls. Rock for the most part, an' pretty steep, with splashy ground below the falls. I han't been right up the Gap these dozen years; an' a man's job it is at the best—a two days' journey. The las' time I slept the night, goin' an' comin', in Peter Vanders' lodge."
"A lodge?"
"That's what they call it. He was a trapper, and a famous one, but before my time; an' that was his headquarters—a sort o' cabin, pretty stout, just by the head in the sixth fall, or maybe 'tis the seventh— I forget. He lived up there without wife or family—" Mr. Strongtharm would have launched into further particulars about the dead trapper, whose skill and strange habits had passed into a legend in the valley. But Ruth wished to hear more of the cabin.
"It's standin', no doubt, to this day. Vanders was a Dutchman, an' Dutchmen build strong by nature. The man who built this yer house was a Dutchman, an' look at the piles of it—an the ribs you may ha' noticed. Ay, the lodge will be there yet; but you'll never find it, not unless I takes ye. That fourth fall is a teaser."
Ruth saddled her mare, and rode off in the direction of the gap, thoughtfully. Mr. Strongtharm had given her a new notion. . . .
It was close upon nightfall when she returned. She was muddy, but cheerful; and she hummed a song to herself in her chamber as she slid off her mired garments and attired herself for supper.
That song was her nesting song. Away Boston-wards, her lover, too, was building in his magnificent fashion; but Ruth had found a secret place, such as birds love, and shyly, stealthily as a mating bird, she set about planning and furnishing. It is woman's instinct. . . . Every day, as soon as breakfast was done, she saddled and rode towards the Gap, and always with a parcel or two dangling from the saddle-bow or strapped upon Madcap's back.
For the first time in her life she had money to handle; money furnished by Sir Oliver to be spent at her own disposal on the honeymoon. It seemed to her a prodigious sum, but she was none the less economical with it. I fear that sometimes she opened the bags and gloated over the coins as over a hoard. She was neither miser nor spendthrift; but unlike many girls brought up in poverty, she brought good husbandry to good fortune.
Yet "shopping"—to enter a store and choose among the goods for sale, having money to pay, but weighing quality and price—was undeniably pleasant. Twice or thrice, bethinking her of some trifle overlooked at Port Nassau, she enjoyed visiting the village store—it boasted but one—and dallying with a purchase.
She was riding back from one of these visits—it had been (if the Muse will smile and condescend) to buy a packet of hairpins—when, half-way up the village street, she spied a horseman approaching. An instant later she recognised Mr. Trask.
There was really nothing strange in her meeting him here. Mr. Trask owned a herd of bullocks, and had ridden over from Port Nassau to bargain for their winter fodder. He had not aged a day. His horse was a tall grey, large-jointed, and ugly.
Ruth wore a veil, but it was wreathed just now above the brim of her hat. Her first impulse was to draw it over her face, and her hand went up; but she desisted in pride, and rode by her old enemy with a calm face.
They passed one another, and she believed that he had not recognised her; but after a few paces she heard him check his horse.
"Hi, madam!"
She halted, and he came slowly back.
"You are Ruth Josselin," he said.
"I am, sir."
"And what are you doing here?"
She smiled at him a little scornfully. "Do you ask as a magistrate, sir, or in curiosity?"
He frowned, narrowing his eyes. "You are marvellously changed.
You appear prosperous. Has Vyell married you yet?"
"No, sir."
"Nor as yet cast you off, it would seem."
"No, sir."
"Ah, well, go your ways. You are a beautiful thing, but evil; and I would have saved ye from it. I whipped ye, remember."
Her face burned, but she held her eyes steady on him. "Mr. Trask," she said, "do you believe in hell?"
"Eh?" He was taken aback, but he could not frown away the question; for she asked it with a certain authority, albeit very courteously. "Eh? To be sure I do."
"I am going to prove to you (and some day you may take comfort from it) that, except on earth, there is no such place."
"Ye'd like to believe that, I daresay!"
"For you see," she went on, letting the sneer pass, "it is agreed that, if there be a hell, none but the wicked go there."
"Well?"
"Why, then, hell must defeat itself. For, where all are wicked together, no punishment can degrade, because no shame is felt."
"There's the pain, madam." He eyed her, and barked it in a short, savage laugh. "The torment—the worm that dies not, the fire that's not quenched. Won't these content ye, bating the shame?"
Her eyes answered his in scorn. "No, sir. Because I once suffered your cruelty, you have less understanding than I; but you have more ingenuity than the Almighty, being able, in your district, to make a hell of earth."
"You blaspheme thus to me, that honestly tried to save your soul?"
"Did you? . . . Well, perhaps you did in your fashion, and you may take this comfort for reward. Believe me, who have tried, hell is bottomless, but in its own way. Should ever you attain to it—and there may in another world be such a place for the cruel—go down boldly; and it may be you will drop through into bliss."
"You, to talk of another world!" he snapped.
"And why not, Mr. Trask? Once upon a time you killed me."
He turned his grey horse impatiently. "I whipped ye," was his parting shot. "If 'twarn't too late, I'd take pleasure to whip ye again!"
Chapter IV.
THE BRIDEGROOM.
Mr. Trask had not concluded the bargain for his winter fodder. Just a week later he rode over from Port Nassau, to clinch it, and had almost reached the foot of the descent to the river meadows when a better mounted rider overtook him.
"Ah!" said the stranger, checking his horse's stride as he passed.
"Good-morning, Mr. Trask! But possibly you do not remember me?"
"I remember you perfectly," answered Mr. Trask. "You are Sir Oliver
Vyell."
"Whom, once on a time, you sentenced to the stocks. You recall our last conversation? Well, I bear you no malice; and, to prove it, will ask leave to ride to the ferry with you. You will oblige me? I like companionship, and my one fellow-traveller—a poor horseman—I have left some way behind on the road."
"I have no wish to ride with you, Sir Oliver," said Mr. Trask stiffly. "Forbye that I consider ye a son of Belial, I have a particular quarrel with you. At the time you condescend to mention, I took it upon me to give you some honest advice—not wholly for your own sake. You flouted it, and 'that's nothing to me' you'll say; but every step we take worsens that very sin against which I warned ye, and therefore I want none of your company."
"Honest Mr. Trask," Sir Oliver answered with a laugh. "I put it to you that, having fallen in together thus agreeably, we shall make ourselves but a pair of fools if one rides ahead of the other in dudgeon. Add to this that the ferry-man, spying us, will wait to tide us over together; and add also, if you will, that I have the better mount and it lies in my will that you shall neither lag behind nor outstrip me. Moreover, you are mistaken."
"I am not mistaken. This day week I met Ruth Josselin and had speech with her."
"Satisfactory, I hope?"
"It was not satisfactory; and if I must ride with you, Sir Oliver, you'll understand it to be under protest. You are a lewd man. You have taken this child—"
Here Mr. Trask choked upon speech. Recovering, he said the most unexpected thing in the world.
"I am not as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in me to pity her the more for her comeliness. But as a matter of fact I do."
Sir Oliver stared at him. "You to pity her! You to plead her beauty to me, who took it out of the mud where you had flung her, mauled by you and left to lie like a bloody clout!"
But the armour of Mr. Trask's self-righteousness was not pierced. "I sentenced her," he replied calmly, "for her soul's welfare. Who said—what right have you to assume—that she would have been left to lie there? Rather, did I not promise you in the market-square that, her chastening over, my cart should fetch her? Did I not keep my word? And could you not read in the action some earnest that the girl would be looked after? Your atheism, sir, makes you dull in spiritual understanding."
"I am glad that it does, sir."
"If your passion for Ruth Josselin held an ounce of honesty, you would not be glad; for even in this world you have ruined her."
"Mr. Trask, I have not."
Mr. Trask glanced at him quickly.
"—Upon my honour as a gentleman I have not, neither do I desire it . . . Sir, twice in this half-mile you have prompted me to ask, What, here on this meadow, prevents my killing you? Wait; I know your answer. You are a courageous man and would say that as a magistrate you have schooled yourself to accept risks and to despise threats. Yes," Sir Oliver admitted with a laugh, "you are an infernally hard nut to crack, and somehow I cannot help liking you for it. Are you spending the night yonder, by-the-bye?" He nodded towards the village.
"No, sir. I propose returning this evening to Port Nassau."
"Then it is idle to invite you to my wedding. I am to be married at nine o'clock to-morrow."
Mr. Trask eyed him for a moment or two. Then his gaze wandered ahead to the river, where already the ferrymen had caught sight of them and were pushing the horse-boat across with long sweeps; and beyond the river to a small wooden-spired church, roofed with mossy shingles that even at this distance showed green in the slant sunlight.
"Yonder?" he asked.
"Ay: you would have been welcome."
"I will attend," said Mr. Trask. "A friend of mine—a farmer—will lodge me for the night. A hospitable man, who has made the offer a score of times. After so many refusals I am glad of an excuse for accepting."
"I stipulate that you keep the excuse a secret from him. It is to be quite private. That," said Sir Oliver, turning in saddle for a look behind him, "is one of my reasons for outriding my fellow-traveller."
"The clergyman?"
"Ay . . . To-morrow, maybe, you'll admit to having misjudged us."
"Maybe," Mr. Trask conceded. "I shall at any rate thank God, provisionally. He is merciful. But I have difficulty in believing that any good can come of it."
Chapter V.
RUTH'S WEDDING DAY.
She had left it all to him, receiving his instructions by letter. It was to be quite private, as he had told Mr. Trask. She would ride down to the village in her customary grey habit, as though on an early errand of shopping. He would lodge overnight at the Ferry Inn, and be awaiting her by the chancel step. Afterwards—ah, that was her secret! In this, their first stage in married life, he had promised—reversing the marriage vow—to obey.
Happiness bubbled within her like a spring; overshadowed by a little awe, but not to be held down. Almost at the last moment she must take Mrs. Strongtharm into her confidence. She could not help it.
"Granny," she whispered. (They were great friends.) "I am to be married to-morrow."
"Sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Strongtharm, peering at her, misdoubting that she jested.
But Ruth's face told its own tale. "May I?" asked the elder woman, and her arm went about the girl's waist. "God bless ye, dear, and send ye a long family! Who's the gentleman? Not him as came an' took the rooms for ye? He said you was a near relation o' his. . . . Well, never mind! The trick's as old as Abram."
"Be down at the church at nine to-morrow, and you shall see him, whoever he is. But it is a secret, and you are not to tell Mr. Strongtharm."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Strongtharm. "Him!"
"But you ought to make some difference," whispered the good woman next morning, after breakfast, as she was preparing to slip away to the village. "Be it but a flower in your bodice. But we've no garden, and the season's late."
Ruth took her kiss of benediction. She was scarcely listening; but the words by a strange trick repeated themselves on her brain a few minutes later, upstairs, as she went about her last preparations.
She leaned out at the lattice over the river. A lusty creeper, rooted in terra firma at the back of the house, had pushed its embrace over west side and front. The leaves, green the summer through, were now turned to a vivid flame-colour. She plucked three or four and pinned them over her bosom, glanced at the effect in the mirror, and went quickly down the stairs.
Fairer day could hardly have been chosen. "Happy is the bride the sun shines on." … In the sunshine by the stable door Mr. Strongtharm sat polishing his gun. She asked him what sport he would be after to-day.
He answered, "None. I don't reckon 'pon luck, fishing, after a body's mentioned rabbits; and I don't go gunning if I've seen a parson. A new parson, I mean. Th' old Minister's all in the day's work."
"You have seen a strange clergyman to-day?"
"Yes; as I pulled home past the Ferry. I'd been down-stream early, tryin' for eels. On my way back I saw him—over my left shoulder too. He was comin' out o' the Inn by the waterside door, wipin' his mouth: a loose-featured man, with one shoulder higher than t'other, and a hard drinker by his looks."
Ruth saddled-up and mounted in silence. Fatally she recognised the old fellow's description; but—was it possible her lover had brought this man to marry them?—this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their hands? If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy, this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous farce. If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to have everything about her pure and holy—and on this day, of all days!
Surely Oliver—she had taught herself to call him Oliver—would never misunderstand her so! Why, it was a misunderstanding that went down, down, almost to the roots. Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder . . . but here was cleavage, and from within. Say rather of such sundering. What man could remedy it? Those whom God hath joined together—ah, by such hands!
It was not possible! In all things her lover had shown himself
considerate, tender; guessing, preventing her smallest wish.
As she rode she sought back once more to the wellspring of love.
Had he not stooped to her as a god, lifted her from the mire?
It was not possible.
Yet, as she rode, the unconquerable common sense within her kept whispering that this thing was possible. . . . It darkened the sunlight. She rode as one who, having sung carelessly for miles, surmises a dreadful leap close ahead. Still she rode on, less and less sure of herself, and came to the church porch, and alighted.
The church was a plain oblong building, homely within to the last degree. The pews were of pitch-pine, the walls and rafters coated with white-wash, some of which had peeled off and lay strewing the floor. A smell of oil filled the air; it was sweet and sickly, and came from the oozings of half a dozen untended lamps. Ornament the place had none, save a decent damask cloth on the Communion table.
Oliver Vyell stood by the chancel rail. The rest of the congregation comprised Mr. Trask, seated stiff and solitary in the largest pew, Mrs. Strongtharm, and half a score of children whom Mrs. Strongtharm had collected on the way and against her will. They followed her by habit, after goodies; but just now, though they sat quiet, her reputation was suffering from a transient distrust. (Allurements to piety rarely fell in the path of a New England child; but even he was child enough to suspect them when they occurred.) At the sound of the mare's footsteps they turned their heads, one and all. Mr. Silk, clad in white surplice and nervously turning the pages of the Office by the holy table, faced about also.
Ruth was seen alighting, out there in the sunlight. She hitched the mare's bridle over a staple and came lightly stepping through the shadow of the porchway. Her lover walked down the aisle to meet her. He, too, stepped briskly, courteously.
Three paces within the doorway she came to a halt. The sunlight fell on her again, through the first of the southern windows. It flamed on the leaves pinned to her bosom.
He offered his arm. But she, that had come stepping like a wild fawn, like a fawn stood at gaze, terrified, staring past him at the figure by the table. Mr. Silk commanded an oily smile and, book in hand, advanced to the chancel step.
"Ah, no!" she murmured. "It is wicked—"
She cast her eyes around, as though for help. They did not turn—it was pitifullest of all—to him who was about to swear to help her throughout life. They turned and encountered Mr. Trask's.
With a sob, as Sir Oliver would have taken her arm, she threw it up, broke from him, and fled back through the porchway. As she drew back that one pace before fleeing, the sun fell full again on that breast-knot of scarlet leaves.
He stared after her dumbfoundered, still doubting her intent. He saw her catch at the mare's bridle, and, with a bitter curse, ran forward. But he was too late. She had mounted, and was away.
He heard the mare's hoofs clattering up the street. His own horse was stabled at the Ferry Inn. It would cost him ten minutes at least to mount and pursue. . . .
"I said 'provisionally.'" It was Mr. Trask's voice, speaking at his elbow. "Nay, man, don't strike me; since you meant business, 'tis yourself you should strike for a fool. You were a fool to invite me; but she was scared before ever she caught sight of me—by that buck-parson of yours, I guess."
He had fetched Bayard, had mounted, and was after her. He pulled rein at her lodgings. Yes, Mr. Strongtharm had seen her go by. The old fellow did not guess what was amiss; as how should he? "It's cruel for the mare's hoofs," he commented, "forcing her that pace on the hard road. She rides well, s' far as ridin' goes; but the best womankind on horseback has neither bowels nor understandin'."
He pointed towards Soldiers' Gap. "She rides there most days," he said; "but it can't be far. There's no Christian road for a horse, once you're past the second fall."
Oliver Vyell struck spur and followed. Already he had the decency to curse himself, but not yet could he understand his transgressing.
"Your atheism"—Mr. Trask had said it—"makes you dull in spiritual understanding."
Sceptics are of two orders, and religious disputants gain a potential advantage, but miss truth, by confusing them. Oliver Vyell was dull, and his dullness had betrayed him, precisely because his reason was so lucid and logical that it shut out those half-tones in which abide all men's, all women's, tenderest feelings. He knew that Ruth had no more faith than he in Christian dogma; no faith at all in what a minister's intervention could do to sanctify marriage. He had inferred that she must consider the tying of the knot by Mr. Silk, if not as a fair jest, at least as a gentle mockery, the humour of which he and she would afterwards taste together. Why had she not pleaded against rite of any kind? . . . Besides, the dog had once insulted her with a proposal. Sir Oliver never allowed Mr. Silk to guess that he had surprised his secret; and Mr. Silk, tortuous himself in all ways, could not begin to be on terms with a candid soul such as Ruth's, craving in all things to be open where it loves. Sir Oliver had supposed it a pretty lesson to put on a calm, negligent face, and command the parson, who dared not disobey, to perform the ceremony. Mr. Silk had cringed.
Likewise, when inviting Mr. Trask to the nuptials, he had looked on him but as a witness to his triumph. The very man who had sentenced her to degradation—was there not dramatic triumph in summoning him to behold her exalted?
For behind all this reasoning, of course, and below all his real passion for her, lay the poisonous, proud, Whig sense of superiority, the conviction that, desirable though she was, his choice exalted her. Would not ten thousand women—would not a hundred thousand—have counted it heaven to stand in her place?
Yet she had earnestly begged off the rite which to every one of these women would have meant everything. This puzzled him.
On second thoughts the puzzle had dissolved. She accepted his negations, and, woman-like, improved on them. The marriage service was humbug; therefore she had willed to have none of it. The attitude was touching. It might have been convenient, had he been less in love.
But he was deeply in love, so deeply that in good earnest he longed to lift and set her above all women. For this, nonsensical though they were, due rites must be observed.
At the last pinch she had broken away. Was it possible, then, that after all she did not love him? She had crossed her arms once and called herself his slave. . . .
Not for one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forced out of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count the rite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holy that to contaminate the rite is to poison all.
Not as yet did he understand one whit of this. But he vehemently desired her, and his desire was straight. Because it was straight, while he rode some inkling of the truth pierced him.
For, as he rode, he recalled how she had cast up an arm and turned to flee. His eyes had rested confusedly on the breast-knot of scarlet leaves, and it seemed to him, as he rode, that he had seen her heart beating there through her ribs.
Chapter VI.
"YET HE WILL COME—".
The cabin stood close above the fall. It was built of oak logs split in two, with the barked and rounded sides turned outward. Pete Vanders would have found pine logs more tractable and handier to come by, and they would have outlasted his time; but, being a Dutchman, he had built solidly by instinct.
Also, he had chosen his ledge cunningly or else with amazing luck. A stairway shaped in the solid rock—eight treads and no more—led down to the very brink of the first cascade; yet through all these years, with their freshets and floods, the cabin had clung to its perch. Within doors the ears never lost the drone of the waters. There were top-notes that lifted or sank as the wind blew, but below them the deep bass thundered on.
Ruth had doffed her riding-dress for a bodice and short skirt of russet, and moved about the cabin tidying where she had tidied a score of times already. Through the window-opening drifted wisps of smoke, aromatic and pungent, from the fire she had built in an angle of the crags a few yards from the house. (It had been the Dutchman's hearth. She had found it and cleared the creepers away, and below them the rock-face was yet black with the smoke of old fires.) Some way up the gorge, where, at the foot of a smaller waterfall, the river divided and swirled about an island covered with sweet grass—a miniature meadow—her mare grazed at will. About a fortnight ago, having set aside three days for the search, on the second Ruth had found a circuitous way through the woods. A part of it she had cleared with a billhook, and since then Madcap had trodden a rough pathway with her frequent goings and comings. It had immensely lightened the labour of furnishing, but she feared that the pasturage would last but a day or two. Her lover, when he came, must devise means of sending the mare back.
She never doubted his coming. He would probably miss the bridle-path, the opening of which she had carefully hidden, and be forced to make the ascent on foot. But he would come. See, she was laying out his clothes for him! He had sent to Sweetwater, at her request, two valises full, packed by Manasseh; and she had conveyed them hither with the rest of the furniture. Carefully now she made her selection from the store: coat, breeches of homespun and leather, stout boots, moccasined leggings such as the Indians wore, woollen shirts—but other shirts also of finest cambric—with underclothes of silk, and delicate nightshirts, and silken stockings that could be drawn like soft ribbons between the fingers. She thrilled as she handled them garment by garment. Along the wall hung his two guns, with shot-bag and powder-flask.
Here was his home. Here were his clothes. . . . She had forgiven him, hours ago, without necessity for his pleading. So would he forgive her. After all, what store did he set by church ceremony. He had vowed to her a dozen times that he set none. He loved her; that was enough, and assurance of his following. He would confess that she had been right. . . . As she moved about, touching, smoothing this garment and that, there crossed her memory the Virgilian refrain—
"Nihil ille deos, nil carmina curat. Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin."
She murmured it, smiling to herself as she recalled also the dour figure of Mr. Hichens in the library at Sabines, seated stiffly, listening while she construed. If only tutors guessed what they taught!
She hummed the lines: "Nihil ille deos"—he cared nothing for church rites; "nil carmina"—she needed no incantations.
She never doubted that he would arrive; but, as the day wore on, she told herself that very likely he had missed his road. He would arrive hungered, in any event. . . . She stepped out to the cooking-pot, and, on her way, paused for a long look down the glen. The sun, streaming its rays over the high pines behind her, made rainbows in the spray of the fall and cast her shadow far over the hollow at her feet. The water, plunging past her, shot down the valley in three separate cascades, lined with slippery rock, in the crevices of which many ferns had lodged and grew, waving in the incessantly shaken air. From the pool into which the last cascade tumbled—a stone dislodged by her foot dropped to it almost plumb—the stream hurtled down the glen, following the curve of its sides until they overlapped; naked cliffs above, touched with sunlight, their feet set in peat, up which the forest trees clambered as if in a race for the top—pines leading, with heather and scrubby junipers, oaks and hemlocks some way behind; alders, mostly by the waterside, with maples in swampy patches, and here and there a birch waving silver against the shadow. The pines kept their funereal plumes, like undertakers who had made a truce with death by making a business of it. But these deciduous trees, that had rioted in green through spring and summer, wrapped themselves in robes to die, the thinner the more royal; the maples in scarlet, the swamp-oak in purple—bloody purple where the sun smote on its upper boughs. Already the robes had worn thin, and their ribs showed. Leaves strewed the flat rock where Ruth stood, looking down.
She was not thinking of the leaves, nor of the fall of the year. She was thinking that her lord would be hungered. She went back to her cooking-pot under the cliff overhung with heath and juniper.
Herself fearless—or less fearful than other women—she did not for some time let her mind run on possible accidents to him. He was a man, and would arrive, though tired and hungered. Not until the sun sank behind the upper pines did any sense of her own loneliness assail her. Then she bethought her that with night, if he delayed, the forest would wrap her around, formless, haunted by wild beasts. The singing of birds, never in daylight utterly drowned by the roar of the fall, had ceased about her; the call of the hidden chickadees, the cheep-cheep of a friendly robin, hopping in near range of the cooking-pot, the sawing of busy chipmunks.
These sounds had ceased; but she did not feel the silence until, far up the valley behind her, a loon sent forth its sole unhappy cry. It rang a moment between the cliffs. As it died away she felt how friendly had been these casual voices, and wondered what beasts the forest might hold.
She went back to the cabin, lit a lamp, and lifted one of the guns off its rack. She charged it—well she had learnt how to charge a gun.
Twilight was falling. The fire burned beneath the cooking-pot; but, seated on the flat stone with the gun laid across her knees and the fall sounding beneath her, she had another thought—that the fire, set in an angle of the rock, and moreover hidden around the house's corner, was but a poor signal. It shed no ray down the glen.
She would light another fire on the flat stone. In the dusk she collected dry twigs, piled stouter sticks above them, covered the whole with leaves, and lit it, fetching a live brand from under the cooking-pot. The flame leapt up, danced over the leaves, died down and again revived. When assured that it was caught, she sat beside it, staring across the flame over the valley now swallowed in darkness, still with the gun laid across her knees.
"Ruth! O Ruth!"
His voice came up over the roar of the fall—which, while he stumbled among the boulders below, had drowned his footsteps.
"Dear! Ah—have a care!"
"Yes; hold a light. . . . It must be dangerous here."
She snatched a brand from the fire. She had collected a fresh heap of twigs and leaves in the lap of her gown, groping in the dusk for them; and his first sight of her had been as she stood high emptying them in a red stream to feed the flames. A witch she seemed, pouring sacrifice on that wild altar, while the light of it danced upon her face and figure. Having gained the ledge of the second cascade, he anchored himself on good foothold and stared up, catching breath before he hailed.
Her first glimpse of him, as she held the blazing stick over the edge of the fall, was of a face damp with sweat or with spray, and of his hands reaching up the slimed rock, feeling for a grip.
"Ah, be careful! Shall I come down to you?" For the first time she realised his peril.
"Over rocks that are steepest," he quoted gaily, between grunts of hard breathing. He had handhold now. "Hero on her tower—and faith, Leander came near to swimming for it—once or twice" (grunt) "Over the mountains, And over the waves—hullo! that rock of yours overhangs. What's to the left?" (grunt) "Grass? I mistrust grass on these ledges. . . . Reach down your hand, dear Ruth, to steady me only. . . ."
She flung herself prone on the flat rock beside the fire, and gave a hand to him. He caught it, heaved himself over the ledge with a final grunt of triumph, and dropped beside her, panting and laughing.
"You might have killed yourself!" she shivered.
"And whom, then, would you have reproached?"
"You might have killed yourself—and then—and then I think I should have died too."
"Ruth!"
"My lord will be hungry. He shall rest here and eat."
He flung a glance towards the cabin; or rather—for the dusk hid its outlines—towards the light that shone cosily through the window-hatch.
"Not yet!" she murmured. "My lord shall rest here for a while." She was kneeling now to draw off his shoes. He drew away his foot, protesting.
"Child, I am not so tired, but out of breath, and—yes—hungry as a hunter."
"My lord will remember. It was the first service I ever did for him." It may have been an innocent wile to anchor him fast there and helpless. . . . At any rate she knelt, and drew off his shoes and carried them to a little distance. "Next, my lord shall eat," she said; and having rinsed her hands in the stream and spread them a moment to the flame to dry, sped off to the cabin.
In a minute she was back with glasses and clean napkins, knives, forks, spoons, and a bottle of wine; from a second visit she returned with plates, condiments, and a dish of fruit. Then, running to the cooking-pot, she fetched soup in two bowls. "And after that," she promised, "there will be partridges. Mr. Strongtharm shot them for me, for I was too busy. They are turning by the fire on a jack my mother taught me to make out of threads that untwist and twist again. . . . Shall I sit here, at my lord's feet?"
"Sit where you will, but close; and kiss me first. You have not kissed me yet—and it is our wedding day. Our wedding feast! O Ruth—Ruth, my love!"
"Our wedding feast! . . . Could it be better! O my dear, dear lord!
. . . But I'll not kiss you yet."
"Why, Ruth?"
"Why, sir, because I will not—and that's a woman's reason. Afterwards—but not now! You boasted of your hunger. What has become of it?"
They ate for a while in silence. The stream roared at their feet. Above them, in the gap of the hills, Jupiter already blazed, and as the last of the light faded, star after star came out to keep him company.
He praised her roasting of the partridges. "To-morrow," she answered, "you shall take your gun and get me game. We must be good providers. To-morrow—"
"To-morrow—and for ever and ever—" He poured wine and drank it slowly.
"Ah, look up at the heavens! And we two alone. Is this not best, after all? Was I not right?"
"Perhaps," he answered after a pause. "It is good, at all events."
"To-morrow we will explore; and when this place tires us—but my lord has not praised it yet—"
"Must I make speeches?"
"No. When this place tires us, we will strike camp and travel up through the pass. It may be we shall find boatmen on the upper waters, and a canoe. But for some days, O my love, let these only woods be enough for us!"
Their dessert of fruit eaten, she arose and turned to the business of washing-up. He would have helped; but she mocked him, having hidden his shoes. "You are to rest quiet, and obey!"
Before setting to work she brought him coffee and a roll of tobacco-leaf, and held a burning stick for him while he lit and inhaled.
For twenty minutes, perhaps, he watched her, stretched on the rock, resting on his elbow, his hunger appeased, his whole frame fatigued, but in a delicious weariness, as in a dream.
Far down the valley the full moon thrust a rim above the massed oaks and hemlocks. It swam clear, and he called to her to come and watch it.
She did not answer. She had slipped away to the house—as he supposed to restore the plates to their shelves. Apparently it took her a long while. . . . He called again to her.
The curtain of the doorway was lifted and she stood on the threshold, all in white, fronting the moon.
"Will my lord come into his house?"
Her voice thrilled down to him. . . . Then she remembered that he stood there shoeless; and, giving a little cry, would have run barefoot down the moonlit rocky steps, preventing him.
But he had sprung to his unshod feet, and with a cry rushed up to her, disregarding the thorns.
She sank, crossing her arms as a slave—in homage, or, it may be, to protect her maiden breasts.
"No, no—" she murmured, sliding low within his arms. "Look first around, if our house be worthy!"