Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Chapter II.

  DONNA MARIA.

  They would dine at four o'clock. On Sundays Sir Oliver chose to dineinformally with a few favoured guests; and these to-day would makenine, not counting Mr. Langton, who might be reckoned one of thehousehold.

  By four o'clock all had arrived--the British envoy, Mr. Castres, withhis lady; Lord Charles Douglas, about to leave Lisbon after a visitof pleasure; Mrs. Hake, a sister of Governor Hardy of New York--she,with an invalid husband and two children, occupied a villa somewhatlower down the slope of Buenos Ayres; white-haired old ColonelArbuthnot, _doyen_ of the English residents; Mr. Hay, British Consul,and Mr. Raymond, one of the chiefs of the English factory, with theirwives. . . . Ruth looked at the clock. All were here save only theirhost, Sir Oliver.

  Mr. Langton, with Lord Charles Douglas, had returned from theauto-da-fe. Like his friend George Selwyn--friend these many yearsby correspondence only--Mr. Langton was a dilettante in executionsand like horrors, and had taken Lord Charles to the show, to initiatehim. He reported that they had left Sir Oliver in a press of thecrowd, themselves hurrying away on foot. He would doubtless arrivein a few minutes. Mr. Langton said nothing of the executions.

  Mr. Castres, too, ignored them. He knew, of course, that theauto-da-fe had taken place, and that the Court had witnessed it instate from a royal box. But his business, as tactful Envoy of aProtestant country, was to know nothing of this. He went on talkingwith Mrs. Hake, who--good soul--actually knew nothing of it.Her children absorbed all her care; and having heard Miriam, theyounger, cough twice that morning, she was consulting the Envoy onthe winter climate of Lisbon--was it, for instance, prophylacticagainst croup.

  At five minutes past four Sir Oliver arrived. Before apologising hestood aside ceremoniously in the doorway to admit a companion--theCountess of Montalegre.

  "I have told them," said he as Donna Maria tripped forward demurelyto shake hands, "to lay for the Countess. The business was long, byreason of an interminable sermon, and at the end there was a crush atthe exit from the Terreiro de Paco and a twenty good minutes' delay--impossible to extricate oneself. Had I not persuaded the Countess todrive me all the way home, my apologies had been a million instead ofthe thousand I offer."

  Had he brought the woman in defiance? Or was it merely to discoverhow much, if anything, Ruth suspected? If to discover, his designhad no success. Ruth saw--it needed less than half a glance--BattyLangton bite his lip and turn to the window. Lord Charles wore afaintly amused smile. These two knew, at any rate. For the othersshe could not be sure. She greeted Donna Maria with a gentlecourtesy.

  "We will delay dinner with pleasure," she said, "while mywaiting-woman attends on you."

  During the few minutes before the Countess reappeared she conversedgaily with one and another of her guests. Her face had told himnothing, and her spirit rose on the assurance that, at least, she waspuzzling him.

  Yet all the while she asked herself the same questions. Had he donethis to defy her? Or to sound her suspicions?

  In part he was defying her; as he proved at table by talking freelyof the auto-da-fe. Donna Maria sat at his right hand, and added adetail here and there to his description. The woman apparently hadno pity in her for the unhappy creatures she had seen slowly andexquisitely murdered. Were they not heretics, serpents, enemies ofthe true Faith?

  "But ah!" she cried once with pretty affectation. "You make meforget my manners! . . . Am I not, even now, talking of these thingsamong Lutherans? Your good lady, for instance?"

  At the far end of the table, Ruth--speaking across Mr. Castres andengaging Mrs. Hake's ear, lest it should be attracted by thishorrible conversation--discussed the coming war with France.She upheld that the key of it lay in America. He maintained thatIndia held it--"Old England, you may trust her; money's her blood,and the blood she scents in a fight. She'll fasten on India like abulldog." Colonel Arbuthnot applauded. "Where the treasure is,"quoted Ruth, "there the heart is also. You give it a good Britishparaphrase. . . . But her real blood--some of the best of it--beatsin America. There the French challenge her, and she'll have, spiteof herself, to take up the challenge. Montcalm! . . . He means tobuild an empire there." "Pardon me"--Mr. Castres smiledindulgently--"you are American born, and see all things American ina high light. We skirmish there . . . backwoods fighting, you maycall it."

  "With a richer India at the back of the woods. Oh! I trust England,and Pitt, when his hour comes. England reminds me of Saul, alwaysgoing forth to discover a few asses and always in the end discoveringa kingdom. Other nations build the dream, dreams being no gift ofhers. Then she steps in, thrusts out the dreamers, inherits thereality. America, though you laugh at it, has cost the best dreamingof two nations--Spain first, and now France--and the best blood ofboth. Bating Joan of Arc--a woman--France hasn't bred a finer spiritthan Montcalm's since she bred Froissart's men. But to what end?England will break that great heart of his."

  She was talking for talking's sake, only anxious to divert Mrs.Hake's ears from the conversation her own ears caught, only tooplainly.

  Mrs. Hake said, "I prefer to believe Mr. Castres. My brother writesthat every one is quitting New York, and I'm only thankful-if warmust come, over there--that we've taken our house on a three years'lease only. No one troubles about Portugal, and I must say that I'venever found a city to compare with Lisbon. The suburbs! . . . Why,this very morning I saw the city itself one pall of smoke.You'd have thought a main square was burning. Yet up here, in BuenosAyres, it might have been midsummer. . . . The children, playing inthe garden, called me out to look at the smoke. _Was_ there a fire?I must ask Sir Oliver."

  Mrs. Hake had raised her voice; but Ruth managed to intercept thequestion.

  All the while she was thinking, thinking to herself.--"And he, whocan speak thus, once endured shame to shield me! He laughs at thingsinfinitely crueller. . . . Yet they differ in degree only from whatthen stirred him to fight. . . ."

  --"Have I then so far worsened him? Is the blame mine?"

  --"Or did the curse but delay to work in him?--in him, my love and myhero? Was it foreordained to come to this, though I would at anytime have given my life to prevent it?"

  Again she thought.--"I have been wrong in holding religion to be thegreat cause why men are cruel,--as in believing that free-thoughtmust needs humanise us all. Strange! that I should discover my erroron this very day has showed me men being led by religion to deaths oftorture. . . . Yet an error it must be. For see my lord--hear how helaughs as cruelly, even, as the _devote_ at his elbow!"

  They had loitered some while over dessert, and Ruth's eye soughtDonna Maria's, to signal her before rising and leaving the gentlemento their wine. But Donna Maria was running a preoccupied glancearound the table and counting with her fingers. . . . Presently theglance grew distraught and the silly woman fell back in her chairwith a cry.

  "Jesus! We are thirteen!"

  "Faith, so we are," said Sir Oliver with an easy laugh, aftercounting.

  "And I the uninvited one! The calamity must fall on _me_--there isno other way!"

  "But indeed there is another way," said Ruth, rising with a smile."In my country the ill-luck falls on the first to leave the table.And who should that be, here, but the hostess?"