Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 22

"But--oh nonsense! He was disgusting--unspeakable, I tell you. If you suppose I struck him for nothing--"

"I do not."

"You cannot think what he said."

"Something about me, was it not?" Then, as Sir Oliver stood silent, "Something a great many folk--your guests included--are quite capable of thinking about me, though they have not Mr. Silk's gift of language."

"--That gift for which (you will go on to remind me) I suffer him."

"No; that gift which (you said) trespa.s.ses beyond sufferance."

She did not remind him that he, after all, had exposed her and provoked Mr. Silk's uncleanly words.

Both were beating time now. He had come, as was meet, to offer an apology, and with no intent beyond. He found not only that Ruth Josselin was grown a woman surpa.s.sing fair, but that her mere presence (it seemed, by no will of hers, but in spite of her will) laid hold of him, commanding him to face a further intent. It was wonderful, and yet just at this moment it mattered little, that the daylight soberly confirmed what had dazzled his drunkenness over night; that her speech added good sense to beauty. . . . What mattered at the moment was a sense of urgency, oppressing and oppressed by an equal sense of helplessness.

He had set the forces working and, with that, had chosen to stand aside--in indolence partly, partly in a careful cultivated indifference, but in part also obeying motives more creditable. He had stood aside, promising the result, but himself dallying with time. And lo! of a sudden the result had overtaken him. Had he created a monster, in place of a beautiful woman, he had not been more at its mercy.

But why this sense of urgency? And why should he allow it to oppress him?

Here was a creature exquisite, desirable, educated for no purpose but to be his. Then why not declare himself, leap the last easy fence and in a short while make her his?

To be sure her education--which, as we have seen, owned one source and spring, the pa.s.sion to make herself perfect for his sake--had fas.h.i.+oned a woman very different to the woman of _his_ planning. She had built not upon his careless defective design but upon her own incessant instinct for the best. So much his last night's blunder had taught him.

He had sent for her as for a handmaid; and as a handmaid she had obeyed--but in spirit as a queen.

To put it brutally, she could raise her terms, and he as a gentleman could not beat her down. With ninety-nine women out of a hundred those higher terms could be summed up in one word--marriage. Well and again, why not? He was rich and his own master. In all but her poor origin and the scandal of an undeserved punishment she was worthy--more than worthy; and for the Colonials, among whom alone that scandal would count against her, he had a habit of contempt. He could, and would in his humour, force Boston to court her salons and hold its tongue from all but secret tattle. The thought, too, of Lady Caroline at this moment crossing the high seas to be met with the news agreeably moved him to mirth.

But somehow, face to face here, he divined that Ruth was not as ninety-nine women in the hundred; that her terms were different.

They might he less, but also they were more. They might be less.

Had she not crossed her arms and told him she was his slave? But in that very humility he read that they were more. There was no last easy fence. There was no fence at all. But a veil there was; a veil he lacked the insight to penetrate, the brutality to tear aside.

Partly to a.s.sure himself, partly to tempt her from this mysterious ring of defence, he went on, "I ought to apologise, too, for having sent Silk yesterday with my message. You received it?"

She bent her head.

"My aunt and cousin invite themselves to Boston, and give me no chance to say anything but 'Welcome.' Two pistols held to my head."

He laughed. "There's a certain downrightness in Lady Caroline.

And what do you suppose she wants?"

"Mr. Silk says she wants you to marry your cousin."

"Told you that, did he?" His eyes were on her face, but it had not changed colour; her clear gaze yet baffled him. "Well, and what do you say?"

"Must I say anything?"

"Well"--he gave a short, impatient laugh--"we can hardly pretend--can we?--that it doesn't concern you."

"I do not pretend it," she answered. "I am yours, to deal with as you will; to dismiss when you choose. I can never owe you anything but grat.i.tude."

"Ruth, will you marry me?"

He said it with the accent of pa.s.sion, stepping half a pace forward, holding out his hands. She winced and drew back a little; she, too, holding out her hands, but with the palms turned downward. Upon that movement his pa.s.sion hung fire. (Was it actual pa.s.sion, or rather a surrender to the inevitable--to a feeling that it had all happened fatally, beyond escape, that now--beautiful, wonderful as she had grown--he could never do without her? At any rate their hands, outstretched thus, did not meet.)

"You talked lightly just now," she said, and with the smallest catch in her voice, "of vows made in haste. You forget your vow that after three years I should go back--go back whence you took me--and choose."

"No," he corrected. "My promise was that you should go back and announce your choice. If some few months are to run, nothing hinders your choosing here and now. I do not ask you to marry me before the term is out, but only to make up your mind. You hear what I offer?"

She swept him a low, obedient bow. "I do, and it is much to me, my dear lord. Oh, believe me, it is very much! . . . But I do not think I want to be your wife--thus."

"You could not love me? Is that what you mean?"

"Not love you?" Her voice, sweet and low, choked on the words.

"Not love you?" she managed to repeat. "You, who came to me as a G.o.d-- to me, a poor tavern drudge--who lifted me from the cart, the scourge; lifted me out of ignorance, out of shame? Lord--love--doubt what you will of me--but not that!"

"You do love me? Then why--" He paused, wondering. The impalpable barrier hung like a mist about his wits.

"Did Andromeda not love Perseus, think you?" she asked lightly, recovering her smile, albeit her eyes were dewy.

"I am dull, then," he confessed. "I certainly do not understand."

"You came to me as a G.o.d when you saved me. Shall you come to me as less by an inch when you stoop to love me?"

"Ah!" he said, as if at length he comprehended; "I was drunk last night, and you must have time to get that image out of your mind."

She shook her head slowly. "You did not ask me last night to marry you.

I shall always, I think, be able to separate an unworthy image of you, and forget it."

"Then you must mean that I am yet unworthy."

"My dear lord," she said after a moment or two, in which she seemed to consider how best to make it plain to him, "you asked me just now to marry you, but not because you knew me to be worthy; and though you may command what you choose, and I can deny you nothing, I would not willingly be your wife for a smaller reason. Nor did you ask me in the strength of your will, your pa.s.sion even, but in their weakness.

Am I not right?"

He was dumb.

"And is it thus," she went on, "that the great ones love and beget n.o.ble children?"

"I see," he said at length, and very slowly. "It means that I must very humbly become your wooer."

"It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it were with the best of me. . . . Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and be in no hurry to choose. Your cousin--what is her name? Oh, I shall not be jealous!"

With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had prepared for her--at a farmstead under Wachusett. He was sending thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.

"Books, too, you shall have in plenty," he promised. "But there will be a dearth of tutors, I fear. I could not, for example, very well ask Mr.

Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in the wilderness."

She laughed. Her eyes sparkled already at the thought of learning to be a horsewoman.

"I will do without tutors." She spread her arms wide, as with a swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it. The palms, turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he interpreted.

"I have mewed you here too long. You sigh for liberty."