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Lady Good-for-Nothing, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Book 2. Probation - Chapter 10. Three Ladies |
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_ BOOK II. PROBATION CHAPTER X. THREE LADIES "You may smoke," said Dicky politely, setting down his glass. "Thank you," answered Mr. Hanmer. "But are you sure? In my experience of houses there's always some one that objects." Dicky lifted his chin. "We call this the nursery because it has always been the nursery. But I do what I like here." Mr. Hanmer had accepted the boy's invitation to pay him a visit ashore and help him to rig a model cutter--a birthday gift from his father; and the pair had spent an afternoon upon it, seated upon the floor with the toy between them and a litter of twine everywhere, Dicky deep in the mysteries of knots and splices, the lieutenant whittling out miniature blocks and belaying-pins with a knife that seemed capable of anything. They had been interrupted by Manasseh, bearing a tray of refreshments-- bread and honey and cakes, with a jug of milk for the one; for the other a decanter of brown sherry with a dish of ratafia biscuits. The repast was finished now, and Dicky, eager to fall to work again, feared that his friend might make an excuse for departing. Mr. Hanmer put a hand in his pocket and drew out his pipe. "Your father would call it setting a bad example, I doubt?" To this the boy, had he been less loyal, might have answered that his father took no great stock in examples, bad or good. He said: "Papa smokes. He says it is cleaner than taking snuff; and so it is, if you have ever seen Mr. Silk's waistcoat." So Mr. Hanmer filled and lit his pipe, doing wonders with a pocket tinder-box. Dicky watched the process gravely through every detail, laying up hints for manhood. "I ought to have asked you before," he said. "Nobody comes here ever, except Mr. Silk and the servants." Hapless speech and bootless boast! They had scarcely seated themselves to work again, the lieutenant puffing vigorously, before they heard footsteps in the corridor, with a rustle of silks, and a hand tapped on the door. It opened as Dicky jumped to his feet, calling "Come in!"--and on the threshold appeared Mrs. Vyell, in walking dress. Dicky liked "Mrs. Harry," as he called her; but he stared in dismay at two magnificent ladies in the doorway behind her, and more especially at the elder of the twain, who, attired in puce-coloured silk, stiff as a board, walked in lifting a high patrician nose and exclaiming,-- "Fah! What a detestable odour!" Mr. Hanmer hurriedly hid his pipe and scrambled up, stammering an apology. Dicky showed more self-possession. He gave a little bow to the two strangers and turned to Mrs. Harry. "I am sorry, Aunt Sarah. But I didn't know, of course, that you were coming and bringing visitors." "To be sure you did not, child," said Mrs. Harry with a good-natured smile. She was a cheerful, commonsensical person, pleasant of face rather than pretty, by no means wanting in wit, and radiant of happiness, just now, as a young woman should be who has married the man of her heart. "But let me present you--to Lady Caroline Vyell and Miss Diana." Dicky bowed again. "I am sorry, ma'am," he repeated, addressing Lady Caroline. "Mr. Hanmer has put out his pipe, you see, and the window is open." Lady Caroline carried an eyeglass with a long handle of tortoise-shell. Through it she treated Dicky to a deliberate and disconcerting scrutiny, and lowered it to turn and ask Mrs. Harry,-- "You permit him to call you 'Aunt Sarah'?" Mrs. Harry laughed. "It sounds better, you will admit, than 'Aunt Sally,' and don't necessitate my carrying a pipe in my mouth. Oh yes," she added, with a glance at the boy's flushed face, "Dicky and I are great friends. In any one's presence but Mr. Hanmer's I would say 'the best of friends.'" Lady Caroline turned her eyeglass upon Mr. Hanmer. "Is this--er-- gentleman his tutor?" she asked. The question, and the sight of the lieutenant's mental distress, set Mrs. Harry laughing again. "In seamanship only. Mr. Hanmer is my husband's second-in-command and one of the best officers in the Navy." "I consider smoking a filthy habit," said Lady Caroline. "Yes, ma'am," murmured Mr. Hanmer. The odious eyeglass was turned upon Dicky again. He, to avoid it, glanced aside at Miss Diana. He found Miss Diana less unpleasant than her mother, but attractive only by contrast. She was a tall woman, handsome but somewhat haggard, with a face saved indeed from peevishness by its air of distinction, but scornful and discontented. She had been riding, and her long, close habit became her well, as did her wide-brimmed hat, severely trimmed with a bow of black ribbon and a single ostrich feather. "Diana," said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare, "the child favours his mother." "Indeed!" the girl answered indifferently. "I never met her." "Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe. We must get him to show it to us. A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking--though after a style I abominate." She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained: "One of your helpless clinging women. In my experience that sort does incomparably the worst mischief." "Oh, hush, please!" murmured Mrs. Harry. But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughts aloud. "Going to sea, is he? Well, on the whole Oliver couldn't do better. The boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; and at sea a lad stands on his own feet--eh, Mr.--I did not catch your name?" "Hanmer, ma'am." "Well, and isn't it so?" "Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer. "If ever your ladyship had been in the Navy--" "God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected. "--you'd have found that--that a good deal of kissing goes by favour, ma'am." "H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs. Harry had done laughing. "The child will not lack protection, of course. Whether 'tis to their credit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience for--er--obligations of this kind."
"They will take 'em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, it appears, has no objection." "She is not returning to Carolina by sea." "No; but she can influence her husband. I must have another talk with her . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor's wife, more than presentable. One had hardly indeed looked to find such natural good manners in this part of the world. Her mother was a Quakeress, she tells me: yet she laughs a good deal, which I had imagined to be against their principles. She doesn't say 'thee' and 'thou' either." "I heard her _tutoyer_ her husband." "Indeed? . . . Well," Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently, "Harry is a lucky man. When one thinks of the dreadful connections these sailors are only too apt to form--though one cannot wholly blame them, their opportunities being what they are . . . But, as I was saying, Oliver couldn't have done better, for himself or for the child. At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; and since he has this craze for salt water--curious he should resemble his uncle in this rather than his father--one may almost call it providential. . . . At the same time, my dear, I wish you could have shown a little more interest." "In the child? Why?" "Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt questions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family, remember. He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himself out not a little--" "I can believe _that_," said Diana brusquely. "And it says much. All men are selfish, and Oliver as a youth was very far from being an exception. I find the change in him significant of much. . . . At the same time you have mixed enough in the world, dear, to know that young men will be young men, and this sort of thing happens, unfortunately." "If, mamma, you suppose I bear Cousin Oliver any grudge because of this child--" "I am heartily glad to hear you say it. There should be, with us women, a Christian nicety in dealing with these--er--situations; in retrospect, at all events. A certain--disgust, shall we say?--is natural, proper, even due to our sex: I should think the worse--very far the worse--of my Diana did she not feel it. But above all things, charity! . . . And let me tell you, dear, what I could not have told at the time, but I think you are now old enough to know that such an experience is often the best cure for a man, who thereafter, should he be fortunate in finding the right woman, anchors his affections and proves the most assiduous of husbands. This may sound paradoxical to you--" "Dear mamma"--Diana hid a smile and a little yawn together--"believe me it does not." "Such a man, then," pursued Lady Caroline, faintly surprised, "is likely to be the more appreciative of any kindness shown to--er--what I may call the living consequence of his error." "Why not say 'Dicky' at once, mamma, and have done with it." "To Dicky, then, if you will; but I was attempting to lay down the general rule which Dicky illustrates. A little gentle notice taken of the child not only appeals to the man as womanly in itself, but delicately conveys to him that the past is, to some extent, condoned. He has sown his wild oats: he is, so to speak, _range_; but he is none the less grateful for some assurance--" Lady Caroline's discourse had whiled the way back to Sabines, to the drawing-room; and here Diana wheeled round on her with the question, sudden and straight,-- "Do you suppose that Cousin Oliver is _range_, as you call it?" "My child, we have every reason to believe so." "Then what do you make of this?" The girl took up a small volume that lay on the top of the harpsichord, and thrust it into her mother's hands. "Eh? What?" Lady Caroline turned the book back uppermost and spelled out the title through her eyeglass. "'Ovid'--he's Latin, is he not? Dear, I had no notion that you kept up your studies in that--er-- tongue." "I do not. I have forgot what little I learned of it, and that was next to nothing. But open the book, please, at the title-page." "I see nothing. It has neither book-plate nor owner's signature." (Indeed Ruth never wrote her name in her books. She looked upon them as her lord's, and hers only in trust.) "The title-page, I said. You are staring at the flyleaf." "Ah, to be sure--" Lady Caroline turned a leaf. "Is this what you mean?" She held up a loose sheet of paper covered with writing. "Read it." The elder lady found the range of her eyeglass and conned--in silence and without well grasping its purport--the following effusion:-- Victims of his bow and targe,
"I make nothing of it," owned Lady Caroline. "It appears to be poetry of a sort--probably some translation from the Latin author." "You note, at least, that the handwriting is a woman's?" "H'm, yes," Lady Caroline agreed. "Nothing else?" "Dear, you speak in riddles." "It _is_ a riddle," said Diana. "Take the first letter of each line, and read them down, in order." "O, L, I, V, E, R V, Y, E, L, L," spelled Lady Caroline, and lowered her eyeglass. "My dear, as you say, this cannot be a mere coincidence." "_Did_ I say that?" asked Diana. "But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps? She was infatuated enough." "It was not she," said Diana positively. "_Somebody_ can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance." "Ah, you too think of him?" "As a clergyman--and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's--he would be likely to know--" "--And to tell? You are quite right, mamma: I have asked him." _ |
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