Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  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 ridedown to the village in her customary grey habit, as though on an earlyerrand of shopping. He would lodge overnight at the Ferry Inn, and beawaiting her by the chancel step. Afterwards--ah, that was her secret!In this, their first stage in married life, he had promised--reversingthe marriage vow--to obey.

  Happiness bubbled within her like a spring; overshadowed by a littleawe, but not to be held down. Almost at the last moment she must takeMrs. Strongtharm into her confidence. She could not help it.

  "Granny," she whispered. (They were great friends.) "I am to be marriedto-morrow."

  "Sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Strongtharm, peering at her, misdoubting thatshe jested.

  But Ruth's face told its own tale. "May I?" asked the elder woman, andher arm went about the girl's waist. "God bless ye, dear, and send ye along family! Who's the gentleman? Not him as came an' took the roomsfor 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, whoeverhe 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 nextmorning, after breakfast, as she was preparing to slip away to thevillage. "Be it but a flower in your bodice. But we've no garden, andthe season's late."

  Ruth took her kiss of benediction. She was scarcely listening; but thewords by a strange trick repeated themselves on her brain a few minuteslater, upstairs, as she went about her last preparations.

  She leaned out at the lattice over the river. A lusty creeper, rootedin _terra firma_ at the back of the house, had pushed its embrace overwest side and front. The leaves, green the summer through, were nowturned to a vivid flame-colour. She plucked three or four and pinnedthem over her bosom, glanced at the effect in the mirror, and wentquickly down the stairs.

  Fairer day could hardly have been chosen. "Happy is the bride the sunshines on." ... In the sunshine by the stable door Mr. Strongtharm satpolishing 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'smentioned 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: aloose-featured man, with one shoulder higher than t'other, and a harddrinker by his looks."

  Ruth saddled-up and mounted in silence. Fatally she recognised the oldfellow's description; but--was it possible her lover had brought thisman to marry them?--this man, whose touch was defilement, to join theirhands? 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 blasphemousfarce. If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to haveeverything about her pure and holy--and on this day, of all days!

  Surely Oliver--she had taught herself to call him Oliver--would nevermisunderstand her so! Why, it was a misunderstanding that went down,down, almost to the roots. _Those whom God hath joined together let noman put asunder_ . . . but here was cleavage, and from within.Say rather of such sundering. What man could remedy it? _Those whomGod hath joined together_--ah, by such hands!

  It was not possible! In all things her lover had shown himselfconsiderate, 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 keptwhispering that this thing _was_ possible. . . . It darkened thesunlight. She rode as one who, having sung carelessly for miles,surmises a dreadful leap close ahead. Still she rode on, less and lesssure of herself, and came to the church porch, and alighted.

  The church was a plain oblong building, homely within to the lastdegree. The pews were of pitch-pine, the walls and rafters coated withwhite-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 fromthe oozings of half a dozen untended lamps. Ornament the place hadnone, save a decent damask cloth on the Communion table.

  Oliver Vyell stood by the chancel rail. The rest of the congregationcomprised Mr. Trask, seated stiff and solitary in the largest pew, Mrs.Strongtharm, and half a score of children whom Mrs. Strongtharm hadcollected on the way and against her will. They followed her by habit,after goodies; but just now, though they sat quiet, her reputation wassuffering from a transient distrust. (Allurements to piety rarely fellin the path of a New England child; but even he was child enough tosuspect them when they occurred.) At the sound of the mare's footstepsthey turned their heads, one and all. Mr. Silk, clad in white surpliceand nervously turning the pages of the Office by the holy table, facedabout also.

  Ruth was seen alighting, out there in the sunlight. She hitched themare's bridle over a staple and came lightly stepping through the shadowof 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 onher again, through the first of the southern windows. It flamed on theleaves 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 bythe table. Mr. Silk commanded an oily smile and, book in hand, advancedto the chancel step.

  "Ah, no!" she murmured. "It is wicked--"

  She cast her eyes around, as though for help. They did not turn--it waspitifullest of all--to him who was about to swear to help her throughoutlife. 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 backthat one pace before fleeing, the sun fell full again on thatbreast-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, ranforward. But he was too late. She had mounted, and was away.

  He heard the mare's hoofs clattering up the street. His own horse wasstabled at the Ferry Inn. It would cost him ten minutes at least tomount and pursue. . . .

  "I said 'provisionally.'" It was Mr. Trask's voice, speaking at hiselbow. "Nay, man, don't strike me; since you meant business, 'tisyourself 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 thatbuck-parson of yours, I guess."

  He had fetched Bayard, had mounted, and was after her. He pulled reinat 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 paceon the hard road. She rides well, s' far as ridin' goes; but the bestwomankind 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, onceyou're past the second fall."

  Oliver Vyell struck spur and followed. Already he had the decency tocurse himself, but not yet could he understand his transgressing.

  "Your atheism"--Mr. Trask had said it--"makes you dull in spiritualunderstanding."

  Sceptics are of two orders, and religious disputants gain a potentialadvantage, but miss truth, by confusing them. Oliver Vyell was dull,and his dullness had betrayed him, precisely because his reason was solucid and logical that it shut out those half-tones in which abide allmen's, all women's, tenderest feel
ings. He knew that Ruth had no morefaith than he in Christian dogma; no faith at all in what a minister'sintervention could do to sanctify marriage. He had inferred that shemust 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 wouldafterwards taste together. Why had she not pleaded against rite of anykind? . . . Besides, the dog had once insulted her with a proposal.Sir Oliver never allowed Mr. Silk to guess that he had surprised hissecret; and Mr. Silk, tortuous himself in all ways, could not begin tobe on terms with a candid soul such as Ruth's, craving in all things tobe open where it loves. Sir Oliver had supposed it a pretty lesson toput on a calm, negligent face, and command the parson, who dared notdisobey, to perform the ceremony. Mr. Silk had cringed.

  Likewise, when inviting Mr. Trask to the nuptials, he had looked on himbut as a witness to his triumph. The very man who had sentenced her todegradation--was there not dramatic triumph in summoning him to beholdher exalted?

  For behind all this reasoning, of course, and below all his real passionfor her, lay the poisonous, proud, Whig sense of superiority, theconviction that, desirable though she was, his choice exalted her.Would not ten thousand women--would not a hundred thousand--have countedit heaven to stand in her place?

  Yet she had earnestly begged off the rite which to every one of thesewomen would have meant everything. This puzzled him.

  On second thoughts the puzzle had dissolved. She accepted hisnegations, and, woman-like, improved on them. The marriage service washumbug; therefore she had willed to have none of it. The attitude wastouching. 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 tolift and set her above all women. For this, nonsensical though theywere, due rites must be observed.

  At the last pinch she had broken away. Was it possible, then, thatafter all she did not love him? She had crossed her arms once andcalled herself his slave. . . .

  Not for one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forcedout of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count therite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holythat to contaminate the rite is to poison all.

  Not as yet did he understand one whit of this. But he vehementlydesired 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 toflee. His eyes had rested confusedly on the breast-knot of scarletleaves, and it seemed to him, as he rode, that he had seen her heartbeating there through her ribs.