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

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Chapter VI.

  CHILDLESS MOTHER.

  In the sad and cheated days that followed, she, with the milk ofmotherhood wasting in her, saw with new eyes--saw many thingsheretofore hidden from her.

  She did not believe in any scriptural God. But she believed--shecould not help believing--in an awful Justice overarching all humanlife with its law, as it overarched the very stars in heaven.And this law she believed to rest in goodness, accessible to the pureconscience, but stern against the transgressor.

  Because she believed this, she had felt that the marriage rite, withsuch an one as Mr. Silk for intercessor between her vows and a cleanHeaven, could be but a sullying of marriage. Yes, and she felt itstill; of this, at any rate, she was sure.

  But in her pride--as truly she saw it, in her pride of chastity--shehad left the child out of account. _He_ had inherited the world toface, not armed with her weapon of scorn. _He_ had not won freedomthrough a scourge. He had grown to his fate in her womb, and in thewomb she had betrayed him.

  She had been blind, blind! She had lived for her lover and herself.To him and to her (it had seemed) this warm, transitory lifebelonged; a fleeting space of time, a lodge leased to bliss. . . .Now she fronted the truth, that between the selfish rapture of loversHeaven slips a child, smiling at the rapture, provident for the race.Now she read the secret of woman's nesting instinct; the underlyingwisdom stirring the root of it, awaking passion not to satisfypassion, but that the world may go on and on to its unguessed ends.Now she could read ironically the courtship of man and maid, dallyingby river-paths, beside running water, overarched by boughs that hadprotected a thousand such courtships. Each pair in turn--poor fools!--had imagined the world theirs, compressed into their grasp; whereasthe wise world was merely flattering, coaxing them, preparing for thechild.

  She should have been preparing, too. For what are women made but formotherhood? She? She had had but a hand to turn, a word to utter,and this child--healthily begotten, if ever child was, and to claim,if ever child could, the best--has broken triumphing through the gateof her travail. But she had betrayed him. The new-born spirit hadarrived expectant, had cast one look across the threshold, and withone wail had fled. Through and beyond her answering wail, as shelaid her head on the pillow, she heard the lost feet, the smallbetrayed feet, pattering away into darkness.

  When she grew stronger, it consoled her a little to talk with Mrs.Strongtharm; not confiding her regrets and self-reproaches, butspeculating much on this great book of Maternity into which she hadbeen given a glimpse. The metaphor was Mrs. Strongtharm's.

  "Ay," said that understanding female, "a book you may call it, and awonderful one; written by all the women, white an' black, copper-skinan' red-skin, that ever groped their way in it with pangs an' joys;for every one writes in it as well as reads. What's more, 'tis allin one language, though they come, as my man would say, from all theairts o' Babel."

  "I wonder," mused Ruth, "if somewhere in it there's a chapter wouldtell me why, when I lie awake and think of my lost one, 'tis hisfootsteps I listen for--feet that never walked!"

  "Hush ye, now. . . . Isn't it always their feet, the darlings!Don't the sound of it, more'n their voices, call me to door a dozentimes a day? . . . I never bore child; but I made garments in hopeo' one. Tell me, when you knitted his little boots, wasn't itdifferent from all the rest?"

  "Ah, put them away!"

  "To be sure, dearie, to be sure--all ready for the next."

  "I shall never have another child."

  Mrs. Strongtharm smiled tolerantly.

  "Never," Ruth repeated; "never; I know it."

  With the same assurance of prophesy she answered her lover on hisreturn, a bare two months later.

  "But you must have known. . . . Even your letters kept it secret.Yet, had you written, the next ship would have brought me. Surelyyou did not doubt _that?_"

  "No."

  "Then why did you not tell me?"

  It was the inevitable question. She had forestalled it so often inher thoughts that, when uttered at last, it gave her a curioussensation of re-enacting some long-past scene.

  "I thought you did not care for children."

  He was pacing the room. He halted, and stared at her in sheerastonishment. Many a beautiful woman touches the height of herbeauty after the birth of her first child; and this woman had neverstood before him in loveliness that, passing comprehension, so nearlytouched the divine. But her perversity passed comprehension yetfarther.

  "Do you call that an answer?" he demanded.

  "No. . . . You asked, and I had to say something; but it is noanswer. Forgive me. It was the best I could find."

  He still eyed her, between wrath and admiration.

  "I think," she said, after a pause, "the true answer is just that Idid wrongly--wrongly for the child's sake."

  "That's certain. And your own?"

  "My own? That does not seem to me to count so much. . . . Neither ofus believe that a priest can hallow marriage; but once I felt thatthe touch of a certain one could defile it."

  "You have never before reproached me with that."

  "Nor mean to now. I chose to run from him; but, dear, I do not askto run from the consequences."

  "The blackguard has had his pretty revenge. Langton told me of it. . . . All the prudes of Boston gather up their skirts, he says."

  "What matter? Are we not happier missing them? . . . Honester,surely, and by that much at any rate the happier."

  "Marry me, and I promise to force them all back to your feet."

  She laughed quietly, almost to herself, a little wearily. "Can younot see, my dear lord, that I ask for no such triumph? It is good ofyou--oh, I see how good!--to desire it for me. But did we want thesepeople in our forest days?"

  "One cannot escape the world," he muttered.

  "What? Not when the world is so quick to cast one out?"

  "Ruth," he said, coming and standing close to her, "I do not believeyou have given me the whole answer even yet. The true reason,please!"

  "Must a woman give all her reasons? . . . She follows her fate, andat each new turning she may have a dozen, all to be forgotten at thenext."

  "I am sure you harbour some grudge--some reservation?" His eyesquestioned her.

  She kept him waiting for some seconds.

  "My lord, women have no consistency but in this--they are jealouswhen they love. As your slave, I demand nothing; as your mistress, Idemand only you. But if you wished also to set me high among women,you should have given me all or nothing. . . . You did not offer totake me with you. I was not worthy to be shown to that proud folk,your family."

  "If you had breathed a wish, even the smallest hint of one--"

  "I had no wish, save that you should offer it. I had only somepride. I was--I am--well content; only do not come back and offer methese women of Boston, or anything second best in your eyes, howevermuch the gift may cost you."

  "Have it as you will," said he, after a long pause. "I was wrong,and I beg your pardon. But I was less wrong than your jealousysuspects. My family will welcome you. Forgive me that I thought itwell--that it might save you any chance of humiliation--to preparethem."

  She swept him a curtsy. "They are very good," she said.

  He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well incontrol. "But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me. . . . Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child's sake.He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite!But for another, should another be born--"

  "There would be time," she said quietly. "But we shall never haveanother."

  She had hardened strangely. It was as if the milk of motherhood,wasting in her, had packed itself in a crust about her heart.He loved her; she never ceased to love him; but whereas under thepublic scourge something had broken, letting her free of opinion, tolove the good and hate the evil for their own sakes, under thissecond and more mysterious visitation, sh
e kept her courage indeed,but certainty was hers no longer; nor was she any longer free ofopinion, but hardened her heart against it consciously, as against anenemy.

  Not otherwise can I account for the image of Ruth Josselin--my LadyVyell--Lady Good-for-Nothing--as under these various names it flits,for the next few years, through annals, memoirs, correspondence,scandalous chronicles; now vindicated, now glanced at with unseemlynods and becks, anon passionately denounced; now purely shining, nowbalefully, above and between the clouds of those times; but always astar and an object of wonder.

  "In all Massachusetts," writes the Reverend Hiram Williams, B.D., inhis tract entitled _A Shoe Over Edom_, "was no stronghold of Satan tocompare with that built on a slope to the rearward of Boston, by SirO--V--, Baronet. Here with a woman, born of this Colony, of passingwit and beauty (both alike the dower of the Evil One), he kept houseto the scandal of all devout persons, entertaining none but professedEnemies of our Liberties, Atheists, Gamesters." Here one may pauseand suspect the reverend castigator of confusing several dislikes inone argument. It is done sometimes, even in our own day, byreligious folk who polemise in politics. "Cards they played on theSabbath. Plays they rehearsed too, by Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreveand others, whose names may guarantee their lewdness. . . . Thewoman, I have said, was fair; but of that sort their feet go downever _to_ Hell. . . ."

  "My Noll's _Belle Sauvage_," writes Langton to Walpole, "continues ariddle. I shall never solve it; yet 'till I have solved it, expectme not. 'Tis certain she loves him; and because she loves him, herloyalty allows not hint of sadness even to me, his best friend.Guess why she likes me? 'Tis because (I am sure of it) even in theold clouded days I never took money from Noll, nor borrowed ashilling that I didn't repay within the week. She is a puzzle, Isay; but somehow the key lies in this--_She is a woman that pays herdebts_. . . .

  "They sail for Europe next spring; but not, as I understand forEngland, where his family may not receive her, and where byconsequence he will not expose her to their slights. If I have madeyou impatient to set eyes on her, you must e'enpack and pay thatlong-promised visit to Florence. She is worth the pilgrimage."

  They sailed in the early spring of 1752--Langton with them--and dulycame to port in the Tagus. From Lisbon, after a short stay, theytravelled to Paris, and from Paris across Switzerland to Italy,visiting in turn Turin, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Rome, Naples, andreturning from that port to Lisbon, where (the situation so charmedhim) Sir Oliver bought and furnished a villa overlooking the Tagus.

  As she passes through Paris we get a glimpse of her in the Memoirs ofthat agreeable rattle, Arnauld de Jouy:--

  "I must not forget to tell of an amusing little comedy of errorplayed at the Opera-house this season (1752). All Paris was agog tosee the famous English--or rather Irish--beauty, my Lady Coventry,newly arrived in the Capital. She was one of the Gunning sisters,over whom all London had already lost its head so wildly that I amassured a shoemaker made no small sum by exhibiting their_pantoufles_ to the porters and chairmen at three sous a gaze. . . .On a certain night, then, it was rumoured that she would pay herfirst visit to the Opera, but none could say whose box she intendedto honour. . . . It turned out to be the Duc de Luxembourg's, andupon my lady's entrance--a little late--the whole audience rose toits feet in homage, though Visconti happened just then to be midwayin an _aria_. The singer faltered at the interruption, perplexed;her singing stopped, and lifting her eyes to the lines of boxes shedropped a sweeping curtsy--to the opposite side of the house! . . .All eyes turn, and behold! right opposite to Beauty Number One, intothe box of Mme. the Marechale de Lowendahl there has just entered aBeauty Number Two, not one whit less fair--so regally fair indeedthat the audience, yet standing, turn from one to the other,uncertain which to salute. Nor were they resolved when the actclosed.

  "Meantime my Lady Coventry (for in truth the first-comer was she) hassent her husband out to the _foyer_, to make enquiries. He comesback and reports her to be the lady of Sir Oliver Vyell, a greatAmerican Governor [But here we detect de Jouy in a slight error]newly arrived from his Province; that she is by birth an American,and has never visited Europe before. 'She must be Pocahontasherself, then,' says the Gunning, and very prettily sends acrossafter the second Act, desiring the honour of her acquaintance.Nay, this being granted, she goes herself to the Marechale's box, andthe pair sit together in full view of all--a superb challenge, andmade with no show (as I believe, with no feeling) of jealousy. Theaudience is entranced. . . . Report said later that my Lady Coventry,who was given to these small indiscretions, asked almost in her firstbreath, yet breathlessly, her rival's age. Her rival smiled and toldit. 'Then you are older than I--but how long have you been married?'This, too, her rival told her. 'Then,' sighed the Gunning, 'perhapsyou do not love your lord as I love my Cov. It _is_ wearing to thelooks; but 'faith, I cannot help it!'"

  From Lisbon Sir Oliver paid several flying visits to England, wherehis suit against Lady Caroline still dragged. Nor was it concludeduntil the summer of 1754, when the _Gentleman's Magazine_ yields usthe following:--

  "_June 4_. A cause between Sir Oliver Vyell, baronet, plaintiff, andthe lady of the late Sir Thomas, defendant, was tried in the Court ofKing's Bench by a special jury. The subject of the litigation was awill of Sir Thomas, suspected to be made when he was not of soundmind; and it appeared that he had made three--one in 1741, another in1744, and a third in 1746. In the first only a slender provision wasmade for his lady, by the second a family estate in Devonshire, of2,000 pounds per annum, was given her for her life, and by the thirdthe whole estate real and personal was left to be disposed of at herdiscretion without any provision for the heir-at-law. The jury,after having withdrawn for about an hour and a half, set aside thelast and confirmed the second. In a hearing before the LordChancellor some time afterwards in relation to the costs, it wasdeemed that the lady should pay them all, both at common law and inChancery."

  Thus we see our Ruth by glimpses in these years which were far frombeing the best or the happiest of her life--"an innocent life, yetfar astray."

  But one letter of hers abides, kept in contrition by the woman towhom she wrote it, and in this surely the noble soul of her mountslike a star and shines, clear above the wreck of her life.

  "MY DEAR MRS. HARRY,--"

  "Let there be few words between us. My childdid not live, and I shall never bear my lord another; therefore,outside of your feelings and mine, what you did or left undonematters not at all in this world. You talk of the next, and thereyou go beyond me; but if there be a next world, and my forgivenesscan help you there, why you had it long ago! . . . 'You reproachyourself constantly,' you say; 'You should have told him and youwithheld the letter;' 'You did wickedly'--and the rest. Oh, my dear,will you not see that I have been a mother, too, and understand?In your place I might have done the same. Yes? No? At any rate Ishould have known the temptation.

  "Yours affectionately,"

  "RUTH."

  The law business ended, she and Sir Oliver sailed for Boston andspent a few weeks at Eagles. He had resigned the Collectorship ofCustoms, but with no intent to return and make England his home.His attachment to Eagles had grown; he was perpetually making freshplans to enlarge and adorn it; and he proposed henceforth, layingaside all official cares, to spend his summers in New England, hiswinters in the softer climate of Lisbon.

  BOOK V.

  LISBON AND AFTER.