Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman by Arthur Quiller-Couch
Chapter I.
AFTER TWO YEARS.
"Come down and play!"
Ruth, looking down from the open lattice, smiled and shook her head."I must not; I'm doing my lessons."
"Must not!" mimicked Master Dick. "You're getting stupider andstupider, living up here. If you don't look out, one of these daysyou'll turn into an old maid--just like Miss Quiney."
"Hs-s-sh! She's downstairs somewhere."
"I don't care if she hears." Dicky ran his eyes defiantly along the lineof ground-floor windows under the verandah, then upturned his faceagain. "After coming all this way on purpose to play with you," heprotested.
"You have made yourself dreadfully hot."
"I _am_ hot," the boy confessed. "I gave Piggy the slip at the foot ofthe hill, and I've run every step of the way."
"Is _he_ here?" Ruth glanced nervously toward a clump of elms aroundwhich the path from the entrance-gate curved into view. "But yououghtn't to call Mr. Silk 'Piggy,' you know. It--it's ungentlemanly."
"Why, I took the name from you! You said yourself, one day, that he wasa pig; and so he is. He has piggy eyes, and he eats too much, andthere's something about the back of his neck you must have noticed."
"It's cruel of you, Dicky, to remember and cast up what I said when Iknew no better. You know how hard I am learning: in the beginning youhelped me to learn."
"Did I?" mused Dicky. "Then I wish I hadn't, if you're going to grow upand treat me like this. Oh, very well," he added stoutly after a pause,"then I'm learning too, learning to be a sailor; and it'll be first-ratepractice to climb aloft to you, over the verandah. You don't mind myspitting on my hands? It's a way they have in the Navy."
"Dicky, don't be foolish! Think of Miss Quiney's roses." Finding himinexorable, Ruth began to parley. "I don't want to see Mr. Silk.But if I come down to you, it will not be to play. We'll creep off tothe Well, or somewhere out of hail, and there you must let me read--orperhaps I'll read aloud to you. Promise?"
"What're you reading?"
"The Bible."
Dicky pulled a face. "Well, the Bible's English, anyway," he saidresignedly. The sound of a foreign tongue always made him feelpugnacious, and it was ever a question with him how, as a gentleman, totreat a dead language. Death was respectable, but had its ownobligations; obligations which Greek and Latin somehow ignored.
The house, known as Sabines, stood high on the slope of the midmost ofBoston's three hills, in five acres of ground well set with elms.Captain Vyell had purchased the site some five years before, and hadbuilt himself a retreat away from the traffic that surged about hisofficial residence by the waterside. Of its raucous noises very few--the rattle of a hawser maybe, or a boatswain's whistle, or the yells ofsome stentorian pilot--reached to penetrate the belt of elms surroundingthe house and its green garth; but the Collector had pierced thiswoodland with bold vistas through which the eye overlooked Bostonharbour with its moving panorama of vessels, the old fort then standingwhere now stands the Navy Yard, and the broad waters of the Charlessweeping out to the Bay.
For eighteen months he, the master of this demesne, had not set footwithin its front gate; not once since the day when on a suddenresolution he had installed Ruth Josselin here, under ward of MissQuiney, to be visited and instructed in theology, the arts, and thesciences, by such teachers as that unparagoned spinster might, with hisapproval, select. In practice he left it entirely to her, and MissQuiney's taste in teachers was of the austerest. What nutriment(one might well have asked) could a young mind extract from the husks ofdoctrine and of grammar purveyed to Ruth by the Reverend MalachiHichens, her tutor in the Holy Scriptures and in the languages of Greeceand Rome?
The answer is that youth, when youth craves for it, will draw knowledgeeven from the empty air and drink it through the very pores of the skin.Mr. Hichens might be dry--inhumanly dry--and his methods repellent; butthere were the books, after all, and the books held food for her hunger,wine for her thirst. So too the harpsichord held music, though MissQuiney's touch upon it was formal and lifeless. . . . In these eighteenmonths Ruth Josselin had been learning eagerly, teaching herself in ahundred ways and by devices of which she wist not. Yet always she wasconscious of the final purpose of this preparation; nay, it possessedher, mastered her. For whatever fate her lord designed her, she wouldbe worthy of it.
He never came. For eighteen months she had not seen him. Was itcarelessly or in delicacy that he withheld his face? Or peradventure indispleasure? Her heart would stand still at times, and her face palewith the fear of it. She could not bethink her of having displeasedhim; but it might well be that he repented of his vast condescension.Almost without notice, and without any reason given, he had deported herto this house on the hill. . . . Yet, if he repented, why did hecontinue to wrap her around with kindness? Why had she these goodclothes, and food and drink, servants to wait on her, tutors to teachher--everything, in short, but liberty and young companions and hispresence that most of all she desired and dreaded?
On the slope to the south-west of the house, in a dingle well screenedwith willow and hickory, a stream of water gushed from the living rockand had been channelled downhill over a stairway of flat boulders, sothat it dropped in a series of miniature cascades before shooting out ofsight over the top of a ferny hollow. The spot was a favourite one withDicky, for between the pendent willow boughs, as through a frame, itoverlooked the shipping and the broad bosom of the Charles. Ruth and hestole away to it, unperceived of Miss Quiney; to a nook close beside thespray of the fall, where on a boulder the girl could sit and read whileDick wedged his back into a cushion of moss, somewhat higher up theslope, and recumbent settled himself so as to bring (luxurious youngdog!) her face in profile between him and the shining distance.
She had stipulated for silence while she read her lesson over; but he atonce began to beg off.
"If you won't let me talk," he grumbled, "the least you can do is toread aloud."
"But it's the Bible," she objected.
"Oh, well, I don't mind. Only choose something interesting. David andGoliath, or that shipwreck in the Acts."
"You don't seem to understand that this is a lesson, and I must readwhat Mr. Hichens sets. To-day it's about Hagar and Ishmael."
"I seem to forget about them; but fire away, and we'll hope there's astory in it."
Ruth began to read: "_And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whichshe had born unto Abraham, mocking her. Wherefore she said untoAbraham, Cast out this bondwoman_. . ."
She read on. Before she ended Dicky had raised himself to a sittingposture. "The whole business was a dirty shame," he declared."This Ishmael was his own son, eh? Then why should he cast out one sonmore than another?"
"There's a long explanation in the New Testament," said Ruth. "It's bySt. Paul; and I dare say that Mr. Hichens too, if he sees anythingdifficult in it, will say that Ishmael stands for the bond and Isaac forthe free, and Abraham had to do it, or the teaching wouldn't comeright."
"He can't make out it was fair; nor St. Paul can't neither, not if youread it to him like you did to me," asserted Dicky.
"But I shall not," answered Ruth after a pause, "and it was ratherclever of you to guess."
"Why not?"
"Because it would shock him. I used to find the Bible just as dull ashe makes it out: but one day I heard Mr. Langton standing up for it.Mr. Langton said it was the finest book in the world and the mostfascinating, if only you read it in the proper way; and the proper way,he said, is to forget all about its being divided into verses and justtake it like any other book. I tried that, and it makes all thedifference."
"You mean to say you like it?" asked Dicky, incredulous.
"I love it. I can't get away from the people in it. They are sosplendid, one moment; and, the next, they are just too mean and pettyfor words; and the queer part of it is, they never see. They tellfalsehoods, and they cheat, and the things they do to get into Palestineare simply di
"But the land was promised to them."
She had a mind to criticise that promise, but checked her lips.He was a child, and she would do no violence to the child's mind.
Getting no answer, he considered for a while, and harked back."But I don't see," he began, and halted, casting about to expresshimself. "I don't see why, if you read it like that to yourself, youshould read it differently to old Hichens. That's a sort of pretending,you know."
She turned her eyes on him, and they were straight and honest, asalways. "Oh," said she, "you are a man, of course!"
Master Dicky blushed with pleasure.
"Men," she went on, "can go the straight way to get what they wish.The way is usually hard--it ought to be hard if the man is worthanything--but it is always quite straight and simple, else it is wrong.Now women have to win through men; which means that they must go roundabout."
"But old Hichens?"
To herself she might have answered, "He only is allowed to me here.On whom else can I practise to please? But, alas! I practise for amaster who never comes!" Aloud she said, "You are excited to-day,Dicky. You have something to tell me."
"I should think I had!"
"What is it?"
"It's about Uncle Harry. Dad showed me a letter from him to-day, andhe's fought a splendid action down off Grand Bahama. Oh, you must hear!It seems he'd been beating about in his frigate for close on threemonths--on and off the islands on the look-out for those Spanish fellowsthat snap up our fruit-ships. Well, the water on board was beginning tosmell; so he ran in through the nor'-west entrance of ProvidenceChannel, anchored just inside, and sent his casks ashore to be refilled.They'd taken in the fresh stock, and the _Venus_ was weighing for seaagain almost before the last boatload came alongside.--Can't you seeher, the beauty! One anchor lifted, t'other chain shortened in, tops'lsand t'gallants'ls cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment--"
"Is that how they do it?"
"Of course it is. Well just then Uncle Harry spied a boat beating inthrough the entrance. He had passed her outside two days before--one ofthose small open craft that dodge about groping for sponges--splendidnaked fellows, the crews are. She had put about and run back in searchof him, and her news was of a Spanish guarda-costa making down towardsHavana with three prizes. Think of it! Uncle Harry was off and afterthem like a greyhound, and at sunrise next morning he sighted them in abunch. He had the wind of them and the legs of them; there isn't aspeedier frigate afloat than the _Venus_--although, he says, she wasgetting foul with weed: and after being chased for a couple of hours theSpaniard and two of the prizes hauled up and showed fight. Now for it!. . . He ran past the guarda-costa, drawing her fire, but no great harmdone; shot up under the sterns of the two prizes, that were lying nottwo hundred yards apart; and raked 'em with half-a-broadside apiece--notime, you see, to reload between. It pretty well cleaned every Spaniardoff their decks--Why are you putting your hands to your ears!"
"Go on," said Ruth withdrawing them.
"By this, of course, he had lost way and given the guarda-costa the windof him. But she couldn't reach the _Venus_ for twenty minutes and more,because of the prizes lying helpless right in her way, and in half thattime Uncle Harry had filled sail again and was manoeuvring out ofdanger. Bit by bit he worked around her for the wind'ard berth, got it,bore down again and hammered her for close upon three hours. Shefought, he says, like a rat in a sink, and when at last she pulled downher colours the two prizes had patched up somehow and were well off forHavana after the third, that had showed no fight from the beginning.Quick as lightning he gets his prisoners on board, heads off on the newchase, and by sundown has taken the prizes all three--the third one atimber-ship, full of mahogany . . . That wasn't the end of his luck,either; for the captain of the guarda-costa turned out to be ablackguard that two years ago took a British captain prisoner and cutoff his ears, which accounts for his fighting so hard. 'Didn't want tomeet me if he could help it,' writes Uncle Harry, and says the manwouldn't haul down the flag till his crew had tied him up with ropes."
"What happened to him?"
"Uncle Harry shipped him off to England. This was from Carolina, wherehe sailed in with all the four vessels in convoy. And now, guess!He has refitted there, and is sailing around for Boston, and papa haspromised to ask him to take me for a cruise, to see if he can make asailor of me!"
"But that won't be for years."
"Oh yes, it will. You can join the Navy at any age. They ship you onas a cabin-boy, or sometimes as the Captain's servant; and papa saysthat for the first cruise Uncle Harry's wife will look after me."
"But"--Ruth opened beautiful eyes of astonishment. "Your Uncle Harry isnot married? Why, more than once you have told me that you would nevertake a wife when you grew up, but be like your uncle and live only forsailing a ship and fighting."
"He is, though. It happened at Carolina, whilst the _Venus_ wasrefitting; and I believe her father is Governor there, or something ofthe sort, but I didn't read that part of the letter very carefully.There was a lot of silly talk in it, quite different from the fighting.I remember, though, he said he was coming around here for his honeymoon;and I'm glad, on the whole."
"On the whole? When you've dreamed, all this while, of seeing youruncle and growing up to be like him!"
"I mean that on the whole I'm glad he is married. It--it shows the twothings can go together after all; and, Ruth--"
She turned in some wonderment as his voice faltered, and wondered moreat sight of his young face. It was crimson.
"No, please! I want you not to look," he entreated. "I want you to turnyour face away and listen . . . Ruth," he blurted, "I love you betterthan anybody in the whole world!"
"Dear Dicky!"
"--and I think you're the loveliest person that ever was--besides beingthe best."
"It's lovely of you, at any rate, to think so." Ruth, forgetting hiscommand, turned her eyes again on Dicky, and they were dewy. For indeedshe loved him and his boyish chivalrous ways. Had he not been herfriend from the first, taking her in perfect trust, and in the hour thathad branded her and in her dreams seared her yet? Often, yet, in themid-watches of the night she started out of sleep and lay quiveringalong her exquisite body from head to heel, while the awful writingawoke and crawled and ate again, etching itself upon her flesh.
"But--but it made me miserable!" choked Dicky.
"Miserable! Why?"
"Because I wanted to grow up and marry you," he managed to saydefiantly. "And the two things didn't seem to fit at all. I couldn'tmake them fit. But of course," he went on in a cheerfuller voice, theworst of his confession over, "if Uncle Harry can be married, whyshouldn't we?"
She bent her head low over the book. Calf-love is absurd, but sohonest, so serious; and like all other sweet natural foolishness shouldbe sacred to the pure of heart.
"I ought to tell you something though," he went on gravely andhesitated.
"Yes, Dicky! What is it?"
"Well, I don't quite know what it means, and I don't like to ask any oneelse. Perhaps you can tell me. . . . I wouldn't ask it if it weren'tthat I'd hate to take you in; or if I could find out any other way."
"But what is it, dear?"
"Something against me. I can't tell what, though I've looked at myselfagain and again in the glass, trying." He met her eyes bravely, with aneffort. "Ruth, dear--what is a bastard?"
Ruth sat still. Her palms were folded, one upon another, over the bookon her knees.
"But what is it?" he pleaded.
"It means," she said quietly, "a child whose father and mother are notmarried--not properly married."
A pause followed--a long pause--and the tumbling cascade sounded louderand louder in Ruth's ears, while Dicky considered.
"Do you think," he asked at length "that papa was not properly marriedto my mother?"
"No, dear--no. And even if that wer
"It wouldn't make any! Sure?"
"Sure."
"But it might make a difference to papa," he persisted, "if ever papahad another child--like Abraham, you know--" Here he jumped to hisfeet, for she had risen of a sudden. "Why, what is the matter?"
She held out a hand. There were many dragon-flies by the fall, and forthe moment he guessed that one of them had stung her.
"Dicky," she said. "Whatever happens, you and I will be friendsalways."
"Always," he echoed, taking her hand and ready to search for the mark ofthe sting. But her eyes were fastened on the water bubbling from thewell head.
A branch creaked aloft, and to the right of the well head the hickorybushes rustled and parted.
"So here are the truants!" exclaimed a voice. "Good-morning, MissJosselin!"