Home > Authors Index > Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch > Lady Good-for-Nothing > This page
Lady Good-for-Nothing, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
||
Book 3. The Bridals - Chapter 6. "Yet He Will Come--" |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ BOOK III. THE BRIDALS CHAPTER VI. "YET HE WILL COME--" The cabin stood close above the fall. It was built of oak logs split in two, with the barked and rounded sides turned outward. Pete Vanders would have found pine logs more tractable and handier to come by, and they would have outlasted his time; but, being a Dutchman, he had built solidly by instinct. Also, he had chosen his ledge cunningly or else with amazing luck. A stairway shaped in the solid rock--eight treads and no more--led down to the very brink of the first cascade; yet through all these years, with their freshets and floods, the cabin had clung to its perch. Within doors the ears never lost the drone of the waters. There were top-notes that lifted or sank as the wind blew, but below them the deep bass thundered on. Ruth had doffed her riding-dress for a bodice and short skirt of russet, and moved about the cabin tidying where she had tidied a score of times already. Through the window-opening drifted wisps of smoke, aromatic and pungent, from the fire she had built in an angle of the crags a few yards from the house. (It had been the Dutchman's hearth. She had found it and cleared the creepers away, and below them the rock-face was yet black with the smoke of old fires.) Some way up the gorge, where, at the foot of a smaller waterfall, the river divided and swirled about an island covered with sweet grass--a miniature meadow--her mare grazed at will. About a fortnight ago, having set aside three days for the search, on the second Ruth had found a circuitous way through the woods. A part of it she had cleared with a billhook, and since then Madcap had trodden a rough pathway with her frequent goings and comings. It had immensely lightened the labour of furnishing, but she feared that the pasturage would last but a day or two. Her lover, when he came, must devise means of sending the mare back. She never doubted his coming. He would probably miss the bridle-path, the opening of which she had carefully hidden, and be forced to make the ascent on foot. But he would come. See, she was laying out his clothes for him! He had sent to Sweetwater, at her request, two valises full, packed by Manasseh; and she had conveyed them hither with the rest of the furniture. Carefully now she made her selection from the store: coat, breeches of homespun and leather, stout boots, moccasined leggings such as the Indians wore, woollen shirts--but other shirts also of finest cambric--with underclothes of silk, and delicate nightshirts, and silken stockings that could be drawn like soft ribbons between the fingers. She thrilled as she handled them garment by garment. Along the wall hung his two guns, with shot-bag and powder-flask. Here was his home. Here were his clothes. . . . She had forgiven him, hours ago, without necessity for his pleading. So would he forgive her. After all, what store did he set by church ceremony. He had vowed to her a dozen times that he set none. He loved her; that was enough, and assurance of his following. He would confess that she had been right. . . . As she moved about, touching, smoothing this garment and that, there crossed her memory the Virgilian refrain--
She hummed the lines: "_Nihil ille deos_"--he cared nothing for church rites; "_nil carmina_"--she needed no incantations. She never doubted that he would arrive; but, as the day wore on, she told herself that very likely he had missed his road. He would arrive hungered, in any event. . . . She stepped out to the cooking-pot, and, on her way, paused for a long look down the glen. The sun, streaming its rays over the high pines behind her, made rainbows in the spray of the fall and cast her shadow far over the hollow at her feet. The water, plunging past her, shot down the valley in three separate cascades, lined with slippery rock, in the crevices of which many ferns had lodged and grew, waving in the incessantly shaken air. From the pool into which the last cascade tumbled--a stone dislodged by her foot dropped to it almost plumb--the stream hurtled down the glen, following the curve of its sides until they overlapped; naked cliffs above, touched with sunlight, their feet set in peat, up which the forest trees clambered as if in a race for the top--pines leading, with heather and scrubby junipers, oaks and hemlocks some way behind; alders, mostly by the waterside, with maples in swampy patches, and here and there a birch waving silver against the shadow. The pines kept their funereal plumes, like undertakers who had made a truce with death by making a business of it. But these deciduous trees, that had rioted in green through spring and summer, wrapped themselves in robes to die, the thinner the more royal; the maples in scarlet, the swamp-oak in purple--bloody purple where the sun smote on its upper boughs. Already the robes had worn thin, and their ribs showed. Leaves strewed the flat rock where Ruth stood, looking down. She was not thinking of the leaves, nor of the fall of the year. She was thinking that her lord would be hungered. She went back to her cooking-pot under the cliff overhung with heath and juniper. Herself fearless--or less fearful than other women--she did not for some time let her mind run on possible accidents to him. He was a man, and would arrive, though tired and hungered. Not until the sun sank behind the upper pines did any sense of her own loneliness assail her. Then she bethought her that with night, if he delayed, the forest would wrap her around, formless, haunted by wild beasts. The singing of birds, never in daylight utterly drowned by the roar of the fall, had ceased about her; the call of the hidden chickadees, the cheep-cheep of a friendly robin, hopping in near range of the cooking-pot, the sawing of busy chipmunks. These sounds had ceased; but she did not feel the silence until, far up the valley behind her, a loon sent forth its sole unhappy cry. It rang a moment between the cliffs. As it died away she felt how friendly had been these casual voices, and wondered what beasts the forest might hold. She went back to the cabin, lit a lamp, and lifted one of the guns off its rack. She charged it--well she had learnt how to charge a gun. Twilight was falling. The fire burned beneath the cooking-pot; but, seated on the flat stone with the gun laid across her knees and the fall sounding beneath her, she had another thought--that the fire, set in an angle of the rock, and moreover hidden around the house's corner, was but a poor signal. It shed no ray down the glen. She would light another fire on the flat stone. In the dusk she collected dry twigs, piled stouter sticks above them, covered the whole with leaves, and lit it, fetching a live brand from under the cooking-pot. The flame leapt up, danced over the leaves, died down and again revived. When assured that it was caught, she sat beside it, staring across the flame over the valley now swallowed in darkness, still with the gun laid across her knees. "Ruth! O Ruth!" His voice came up over the roar of the fall--which, while he stumbled among the boulders below, had drowned his footsteps. "Dear! Ah--have a care!" "Yes; hold a light. . . . It must be dangerous here." She snatched a brand from the fire. She had collected a fresh heap of twigs and leaves in the lap of her gown, groping in the dusk for them; and his first sight of her had been as she stood high emptying them in a red stream to feed the flames. A witch she seemed, pouring sacrifice on that wild altar, while the light of it danced upon her face and figure. Having gained the ledge of the second cascade, he anchored himself on good foothold and stared up, catching breath before he hailed. Her first glimpse of him, as she held the blazing stick over the edge of the fall, was of a face damp with sweat or with spray, and of his hands reaching up the slimed rock, feeling for a grip. "Ah, be careful! Shall I come down to you?" For the first time she realised his peril. "_Over rocks that are steepest_," he quoted gaily, between grunts of hard breathing. He had handhold now. "Hero on her tower--and faith, Leander came near to swimming for it--once or twice" (grunt) "_Over the mountains, And over the waves_--hullo! that rock of yours overhangs. What's to the left?" (grunt) "Grass? I mistrust grass on these ledges. . . . Reach down your hand, dear Ruth, to steady me only. . . ." She flung herself prone on the flat rock beside the fire, and gave a hand to him. He caught it, heaved himself over the ledge with a final grunt of triumph, and dropped beside her, panting and laughing. "You might have killed yourself!" she shivered. "And whom, then, would you have reproached?" "You might have killed yourself--and then--and then I think I should have died too." "Ruth!" "My lord will be hungry. He shall rest here and eat." He flung a glance towards the cabin; or rather--for the dusk hid its outlines--towards the light that shone cosily through the window-hatch. "Not yet!" she murmured. "My lord shall rest here for a while." She was kneeling now to draw off his shoes. He drew away his foot, protesting. "Child, I am not so tired, but out of breath, and--yes--hungry as a hunter." "My lord will remember. It was the first service I ever did for him." It may have been an innocent wile to anchor him fast there and helpless. . . . At any rate she knelt, and drew off his shoes and carried them to a little distance. "Next, my lord shall eat," she said; and having rinsed her hands in the stream and spread them a moment to the flame to dry, sped off to the cabin. In a minute she was back with glasses and clean napkins, knives, forks, spoons, and a bottle of wine; from a second visit she returned with plates, condiments, and a dish of fruit. Then, running to the cooking-pot, she fetched soup in two bowls. "And after that," she promised, "there will be partridges. Mr. Strongtharm shot them for me, for I was too busy. They are turning by the fire on a jack my mother taught me to make out of threads that untwist and twist again. . . . Shall I sit here, at my lord's feet?" "Sit where you will, but close; and kiss me first. You have not kissed me yet--and it is our wedding day. Our wedding feast! O Ruth--Ruth, my love!" "Our wedding feast! . . . Could it be better! O my dear, dear lord! . . . But I'll not kiss you yet." "Why, Ruth?" "Why, sir, because I will not--and that's a woman's reason. Afterwards--but not now! You boasted of your hunger. What has become of it?"
He praised her roasting of the partridges. "To-morrow," she answered, "you shall take your gun and get me game. We must be good providers. To-morrow--" "To-morrow--and for ever and ever--" He poured wine and drank it slowly. "Ah, look up at the heavens! And we two alone. Is this not best, after all? Was I not right?" "Perhaps," he answered after a pause. "It is good, at all events." "To-morrow we will explore; and when this place tires us--but my lord has not praised it yet--" "Must I make speeches?" "No. When this place tires us, we will strike camp and travel up through the pass. It may be we shall find boatmen on the upper waters, and a canoe. But for some days, O my love, let these only woods be enough for us!" Their dessert of fruit eaten, she arose and turned to the business of washing-up. He would have helped; but she mocked him, having hidden his shoes. "You are to rest quiet, and obey!" Before setting to work she brought him coffee and a roll of tobacco-leaf, and held a burning stick for him while he lit and inhaled. For twenty minutes, perhaps, he watched her, stretched on the rock, resting on his elbow, his hunger appeased, his whole frame fatigued, but in a delicious weariness, as in a dream. Far down the valley the full moon thrust a rim above the massed oaks and hemlocks. It swam clear, and he called to her to come and watch it. She did not answer. She had slipped away to the house--as he supposed to restore the plates to their shelves. Apparently it took her a long while. . . . He called again to her. The curtain of the doorway was lifted and she stood on the threshold, all in white, fronting the moon. "Will my lord come into his house?" Her voice thrilled down to him. . . . Then she remembered that he stood there shoeless; and, giving a little cry, would have run barefoot down the moonlit rocky steps, preventing him. But he had sprung to his unshod feet, and with a cry rushed up to her, disregarding the thorns. She sank, crossing her arms as a slave--in homage, or, it may be, to protect her maiden breasts. "No, no--" she murmured, sliding low within his arms. "Look first around, if our house be worthy!" But he caught her up, and lifting her, crushing her body to his, carried her into the hut. _ |
||