Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman by Arthur Quiller-Couch
Chapter VIII.
HOME-COMING.
A week later they broke camp and set forth to climb to the head of thepass.
Behind it--so Sir Oliver had learnt from old Strongtharm--lay an almostflat table-land, of pine-forest for the most part, through which formaybe half a dozen miles their river ran roughly parallel with anotherthat came down from the north-west. At one point (the old fellowdeclared) less than a mile divided their waters.
"Seems," he said, "as if Nature all along intended 'em to jine, andthen, at the last moment, changed her mind." He explained the cause oftheir severance--an outcropping ridge of rock, not above a mile inlength; but it served, deflecting the one stream to the southward, theother to north of east, so that they reached the ocean a good twentyleagues apart.
He showed a map and told Sir Oliver further that at the narrowest pointbetween the two rivers there dwelt a couple of brothers, Dave and AndyM'Lauchlin, with their households and long families, of whom all theboys were expert log-drivers, like their fathers. They were likewiseexpert boatmen, and for money, no doubt, if Sir Oliver desired, wouldnavigate the upper reaches of either stream for him. Of these reachesthe old man could tell little save that their currents ran moderately--"nothing out of the way." The M'Lauchlins sent all their timber down tosea by the more northerly stream. "Our river 'd be the better by far,three-fourths of its way, but--" with a jerk of his thumb--"the Gap,yonder, makes it foolishness."
Sir Oliver asked many questions, studying the map; and ended byborrowing it.
He had it spread on his knee when Ruth came out of the cabin for thelast time, having said farewell to her household gods.
"What are you reading?" she asked.
"A map." He folded it away hastily.
"And I am not to see it?"
"Some day. Some day, if the owner will sell, you shall have it framed,with our travels marked out upon it. But, just now, it holds a smallsecret."
She questioned him no further. "Come," she said, "reach your arm in atthe window and draw the bolt, and afterwards we will pull the shutterand nail it. Are you going inside for a last look around?"
He laughed. "Why? The knapsacks are here, ready."
"Our home!"
"I take the soul of it with me, taking you."
It was prettily said. Yet perversely she remembered how he had oncespoken of Margaret Dance, saying, "Let the dead bury their dead."
The sky, after six angry days--two sullen, four tempestuous--was clearagain and promised another stretch of fair weather. This wasimportant, for they counted on having to sleep a night in the openbefore reaching the M'Lauchlins' camp. Old Strongtharm had told SirOliver of a cave at the head of the pass and directed him how to findit. Should the sky's promise prove false, they would descend back tothe hut. Snow was their one serious peril.
They carried but the barest necessaries; for although the worst of thefalls lay below and behind them, the upper part of the Gap was arduousenough, and the more difficult for being unknown; also Sir Oliver hadold Strongtharm's assurance that the M'Lauchlins would furnish them withall things requisite for voyaging by water.
Sir Oliver climbed in silence. He was flinging a bridge, albeit a shortone, across the unknown, and the risk of it weighed on him. For himselfthis would have counted nothing, but he was learning the lesson commonto all male animals whose mates for the first time travel beside them.As for Ruth, it was wonderful--the course of the path once turned, thesmall home left out of sight--how securely she breasted the upward path.Her lover and she were as gods walking, treading the roof of the world.
Through thickets they climbed, and by stairways beside the singingfalls. In a pool below one of these falls they surprised a great loonthat had resorted here to live solitary through his moulting-season.He rose and winged away with a cry like an inhuman laugh; and theyrecognised a sound which had often been borne down the gorge--once ortwice at night, to awake and puzzle them.
They came to the uppermost fall a good hour before sunset, and after alittle search Sir Oliver found the cave. They could have pushed on, butdecided to sleep here: and they slept soundly, being in truth more wearythan their spirits, exhilarated in the high air, allowed them to guess.
They might, as it turned out, by forcing the march, have found theM'Lauchlins' settlement before dusk. For scarcely had they travelledfive miles next morning before they came on an outpost of it: a largehut, half dwelling-house, half boat-shed. It stood in a clearing on theleft shore, and close by the water's edge was a young man, patching thebottom of an upturned canoe. Two children--a boy and a girl--haddropped their play to watch him. A flat-bottomed boat lay moored to thebank, close by.
The children, catching sight of our travellers, must have uttered someexclamation; for the young man turned quickly, and after a brief lookcalled "Good-morning." There was a ford (he shouted) fifty yardsupstream; but no need to wade. Let them wait a minute and he wouldfetch them.
He laid down his tools, unmoored the flat-bottomed boat, and poledacross. On the way back he told them that he was Adam M'Lauchlin, sonof David. The little ones were children of his father by a second wife;but he had seven brothers and sisters of his own. . . . Yes, theirsettlement stood by the other river; at no great distance. "If you'llhark, maybe you can hear the long saws at work. . . ."
He led them to it, the small children bringing up the rear of theprocession. The _Z'm--Z'm_ of the saws grew loud in Ruth's ears beforecrossing the ridge she spied the huts between the trees--a congregationof ten or a dozen standing a little way back from a smooth-flowingriver. Between the huts and the river were many saw-pits, with men atwork.
At young Adam's hail the men in view desisted, quite as though he hadsounded the dinner horn. Heads of others emerged from the pits.Within a minute there was a small crowd gathered, of burly fellowsdiffusing the fragrance of pine sawdust, all stamped in their degreeswith the M'Lauchlin family likeness, and all eager to know thestrangers' business.
Sir Oliver explained that he wanted a boat and two strong guides, toexplore the upper waters. He would pay any price, in moderation.
"Ay," said their spokesman. He wore a magnificent iron-grey beardpowdered with saw-dust; and he carried a gigantic pair of shoulders, butrheumatism had contracted them to a permanent stoop. "Ay, I'm nofearin' about the pay. You'll be the rich man, the Collector fromBoston."
Ruth was startled. She had supposed herself to be travelling deep intothe wilderness. She had yet to learn that in the wilderness, where mentraffic in little else, they exchange gossip with incredible energy--talk it, in fact, all the time. In those early colonial days thesettlers overleapt and left behind them leagues of primeval forest, toall appearance inviolate. But the solitude was no longer virgin. Wherefoot of man had once parted the undergrowth the very breath of the windfollowed and threaded its way after him, bearing messages to and fro.
"I'm no speirin'," said the oldster cautiously. "But though our ladshave never been so far, there's talk of a braw house buildin'."
Here, somewhat hastily, Sir Oliver took him aside, and they spent twentyminutes or so in converse together. Ruth waited.
He came back and selected young Adam, with a cousin of his--a taciturnyouth, by name Jesse, son of Andrew--to be their boatman. Five or sixof the young men were evidently eager to be chosen; but none disputedhis choice. Rome, which reaches everywhere, reigned in the forest here;its old law of family unquestioned and absolute. The two youths swungoff to pack and provision the canoe. An hour later they reported thatall was ready; and by three in the afternoon the voyagers were on theirway up-stream.
The voyage lasted four days and was seldom laborious; for the river ranin long loops through the table-land, and with an easy current.But here and there shallow runs of rock made stairways for it from onelevel to another, and each of these miniature rapids compelled aportage; so that towards the end of the second day the young men hadeach a red shoulder spot chafed by the canoe's weight.
For two days the forest hemmed them in so closely that although frosthad half-stripped the deciduous trees, the eye found few vistas savealong the river ahead. On either hand was drawn a continuous curtain ofmossed stems and boughs overlapping and interlacing their delicatetwigs. Scarcely a bird sang within the curtain; scarcely a woodlandsound broke in upon the monotonous plash of the paddles. Alder, birch,maple, pine, spruce, and hemlock--the woods were a lifeless tapestry.Ahead curved and stretched the waterway, rippled now and again by amusk-rat crossing, swimming with its nose and no more above water.
A little before noon on the third day they emerged from this forest upona wide track of burnt land; and certain hills of which the blue summitshad for some hours been visible above the tree-tops on their right, nowtook shape from the base up, behind thin clumps of birch, poplar, andspruce--all of them (but the spruce especially) ragged and stunted ingrowth. For the rest this burnt land resembled a neglected pasture,being carpeted for the most part with moss and blueberry. A mysteriousblight lay over all, and appeared to extend to the foot of the hills.
All through the afternoon the chine of these hills closed the landscape;purpled at times by passing clouds, at times lit up by sun-rays thatdefined every bush and seam on the slopes. All through the afternoonthe folded gullies between the slopes unwound themselves interminably,little by little, as the voyagers traced up the river, paddling almostdue southward, along its loops and meanders.
But by nightfall they had turned the last spur of the range, and thenext morning opened to them a vastly different landscape: an undulatingcountry, wooded like a park, with hills indeed, but scattered ones tothe south and west, and behind the hills the faint purple dome of afar-distant mountain, so faintly seen that at first Ruth mistook it fora cloud.
She could not tell afterwards--though she often asked herself thequestion--at what point the landscape struck her as being strangelyfamiliar. Yet she was sure that the recognition came to her suddenly.Sir Oliver since the morning's start had been indisposed to talk.From time to time he drew out his map and consulted it. The M'Lauchlinlads, on the other hand, seemed to be restless. During the halt for themidday meal they drew aside together and Ruth heard them conversing ineager whispers.
Possibly this stirred some expectation in her, which passed intosurmise, into certainty. Late in the afternoon she drew in the paddleshe had been plying, laid it across the canoe, and called softly,--
"Oliver!"
He turned. She was pointing to a hill now full in view ahead of them.
"That cliff . . . you remember--the eagles?"
He laughed as though the question amused him.
"It is very like. Yes, certainly, it is very like. But wait until weopen the clump of trees yonder. . . ."
They opened it, and her heart gave a leap. A moment before she had beensure this was the very hill. His laugh had confirmed it. . . .She remembered how, at the foot of it, just such a river as this loopeditself through the plain. . . . But, lo! in the opening gap, inch byinch, a long building displayed itself: a mansion, gleaming white, witha pillared front and pillared terraces, rising--terrace on terrace--fromthe woodland, into which a cascade of water, spouting half-way down theslope, plunged and was lost.
She sat dumb. His eyes were upon her; and he laughed quietly.
"It is yours--as you commanded. See!"
He flung out a hand to the left. She beheld a clearing--an avenue, thatran like a broad ribbon to the summit of a flat-topped rise.
"You demanded sight of the ocean," he was saying, and his voice seemedto lose itself in the beat of the churning paddles. "We cannot see itfrom here; but from the house--_your_ house--you shall look on it everyday. Did you not bid me remove a mountain?"
For the rest of the way she sat as in a dream. One of the M'Lauchlinlads had produced a cow-horn and was blowing it lustily. . . .They came to shore by river-stairs of stone, where two servants in theVyell livery stood like statues awaiting them.
It was falling dusk when Sir Oliver disembarked and gave her his hand.The men-servants, who had bent to hold the canoe steady as she steppedashore, drew themselves erect and again touched foreheads to their lordand lady.
Still as in a dream, her arm resting within her lover's, she went up thebroad stairways from terrace to terrace. Above her the long facade waslit with window after window blazing welcome.
At the head of the perron, under the colonnaded portico, other tallmen-servants stood in waiting, mute, deferential. She passed betweentheir lines into a vast entrance hall, and there, almost as her footcrossed its threshold, across the marbled floor little Miss Quiney camerunning a-flutter, inarticulate, with reaching hands.
Ruth drew back, almost with a cry. But before she could resist, Tatty'sarms were about her and Tatty's lips lifted, pressed against eithercheek. She suffered the embrace.
"My darling Ruth!--at last!" Then with a laugh, "And in what strangeclothes! . . . But come--come and be arrayed!" She caught Ruth's coldhand and led her towards the staircase. "Nay, never look about you so:your eyes will not take in a tenth of all the wonders!"
Later, as an Indian gong sounded below, he came from his dressing-roominto the great bride-chamber where she stood, arrayed in satin, beforeher mirror, hesitating as her fingers touched one after another of thejewels scattered on the dressing-table under the waxen lights. Her maidslipped away discreetly.
"Well?" he asked. He was resplendent in a suit of sapphire velvet, withcravat and ruffles of old Spanish lace. "Is my love content withher home-coming?"
She crossed her arms slowly.
"You are good to me," she said. "You do me too great honour, my lord."
He laughed, and catching up a necklace of diamonds from thedressing-table, looped it across her throat, clasped it, leaned over hershoulder and kissed her softly between the ear and the cheek's delicateround. Their eyes met in the mirror.
"I invited the Quiney," he said gaily, "to give you a feeling of homeamong these strange faces. She will not dine with us, though, unlessyou choose."
"Let us be alone, to-night!" she pleaded.
"So be it. . . . But you shiver: you are cold. No? Then weary,perhaps--yes, and hungry. I've a backwoods hunger, for my part.Let us go down and dine."
BOOK IV.
LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING.
Chapter I.
BATTY LANGTON, CHRONICLER.