Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 51

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

He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in control. "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 have another."

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 the public scourge something had broken, letting her free of opinion, to love the good and hate the evil for their own sakes, under this second and more mysterious visitation, she kept her courage indeed, but certainty was hers no longer; nor was she any longer free of opinion, but hardened her heart against it consciously, as against an enemy.

Not otherwise can I account for the image of Ruth Josselin--my Lady Vyell--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 unseemly nods and becks, anon pa.s.sionately denounced; now purely s.h.i.+ning, now balefully, above and between the clouds of those times; but always a star and an object of wonder.

"In all Ma.s.sachusetts," writes the Reverend Hiram Williams, B.D., in his tract ent.i.tled _A Shoe Over Edom_, "was no stronghold of Satan to compare with that built on a slope to the rearward of Boston, by Sir O--V--, Baronet. Here with a woman, born of this Colony, of pa.s.sing wit and beauty (both alike the dower of the Evil One), he kept house to the scandal of all devout persons, entertaining none but professed Enemies of our Liberties, Atheists, Gamesters." Here one may pause and suspect the reverend castigator of confusing several dislikes in one argument. It is done sometimes, even in our own day, by religious folk who polemise in politics. "Cards they played on the Sabbath. Plays they rehea.r.s.ed too, by Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreve and others, whose names may guarantee their lewdness. . . . The woman, I have said, was fair; but of that sort their feet go down ever _to_ h.e.l.l. . . ."

"My Noll's _Belle Sauvage_," writes Langton to Walpole, "continues a riddle. I shall never solve it; yet 'till I have solved it, expect me not. 'Tis certain she loves him; and because she loves him, her loyalty 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 the old clouded days I never took money from Noll, nor borrowed a s.h.i.+lling that I didn't repay within the week. She is a puzzle, I say; but somehow the key lies in this--_She is a woman that pays her debts_. . . .

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

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

As she pa.s.ses through Paris we get a glimpse of her in the Memoirs of that agreeable rattle, Arnauld de Jouy:--

"I must not forget to tell of an amusing little comedy of error played at the Opera-house this season (1752). All Paris was agog to see 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 am a.s.sured 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 her first visit to the Opera, but none could say whose box she intended to honour. . . . It turned out to be the Duc de Luxembourg's, and upon my lady's entrance--a little late--the whole audience rose to its feet in homage, though Visconti happened just then to be midway in an _aria_. The singer faltered at the interruption, perplexed; her singing stopped, and lifting her eyes to the lines of boxes she dropped a sweeping curtsy--to the opposite side of the house! . . .

All eyes turn, and behold! right opposite to Beauty Number One, into the box of Mme. the Marechale de Lowendahl there has just entered a Beauty Number Two, not one whit less fair--so regally fair indeed that the audience, yet standing, turn from one to the other, uncertain which to salute. Nor were they resolved when the act closed.

"Meantime my Lady Coventry (for in truth the first-comer was she) has sent her husband out to the _foyer_, to make enquiries. He comes back and reports her to be the lady of Sir Oliver Vyell, a great American 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 Pocahontas herself, then,' says the Gunning, and very prettily sends across after the second Act, desiring the honour of her acquaintance.

Nay, this being granted, she goes herself to the Marechale's box, and the pair sit together in full view of all--a superb challenge, and made with no show (as I believe, with no feeling) of jealousy. The audience is entranced. . . . Report said later that my Lady Coventry, who was given to these small indiscretions, asked almost in her first breath, yet breathlessly, her rival's age. Her rival smiled and told it. 'Then you are older than I--but how long have you been married?'

This, too, her rival told her. 'Then,' sighed the Gunning, 'perhaps you do not love your lord as I love my Cov. It _is_ wearing to the looks; but 'faith, I cannot help it!'"

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

"_June 4_. A cause between Sir Oliver Vyell, baronet, plaintiff, and the lady of the late Sir Thomas, defendant, was tried in the Court of King's Bench by a special jury. The subject of the litigation was a will of Sir Thomas, suspected to be made when he was not of sound mind; and it appeared that he had made three--one in 1741, another in 1744, and a third in 1746. In the first only a slender provision was made for his lady, by the second a family estate in Devons.h.i.+re, of 2,000 pounds per annum, was given her for her life, and by the third the whole estate real and personal was left to be disposed of at her discretion without any provision for the heir-at-law. The jury, after having withdrawn for about an hour and a half, set aside the last and confirmed the second. In a hearing before the Lord Chancellor some time afterwards in relation to the costs, it was deemed that the lady should pay them all, both at common law and in Chancery."

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

But one letter of hers abides, kept in contrition by the woman to whom she wrote it, and in this surely the n.o.ble soul of her mounts like a star and s.h.i.+nes, clear above the wreck of her life.

"MY DEAR MRS. HARRY,--"

"Let there be few words between us. My child did not live, and I shall never bear my lord another; therefore, outside of your feelings and mine, what you did or left undone matters not at all in this world. You talk of the next, and there you go beyond me; but if there be a next world, and my forgiveness can help you there, why you had it long ago! . . . 'You reproach yourself constantly,' you say; 'You should have told him and you withheld 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 I should have known the temptation.

"Yours affectionately,"

"RUTH."

The law business ended, she and Sir Oliver sailed for Boston and spent a few weeks at Eagles. He had resigned the Collectors.h.i.+p of Customs, but with no intent to return and make England his home.

His attachment to Eagles had grown; he was perpetually making fresh plans to enlarge and adorn it; and he proposed henceforth, laying aside all official cares, to spend his summers in New England, his winters in the softer climate of Lisbon.

BOOK V.

LISBON AND AFTER.

Chapter I.

ACT OF FAITH.

"How is it possible for people beholding that glorious Body to wors.h.i.+p any Being but Him who created it!"

Upon the stroke of nine the procession filed forth into the Square.

It was headed by about a hundred Dominican friars, bearing the banner of their founder. The banner displayed a Cross betwixt an olive tree and a sword, with the motto _Just.i.tia et Misericordia_.

After the Dominicans walked five penitents; each with a sergeant, or Familiar, attending. Two of the five wore black mitres, three were bareheaded. All walked barefoot, clad in black sleeveless coats, and each carried a long wax candle. These had escaped the extreme sentence; and after them came one, a woman, who had escaped it also, but narrowly and as by fire. In token of this her black robe was painted over with flames, having their points turned downward.

Close behind followed three men on whose san-benitos the flames pointed upward. These were being led to execution, and two of them who carried boards on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, painted with dogs and serpents, were to die by fire for having professed doctrines contrary to the Faith; the third, who carried no board, was a "Relapsed," and might look forward to the privilege of being strangled before being cast to the flame. To each of these three was a.s.signed, in addition to the Familiar, a couple of Jesuit priests, to walk beside him and exhort him.

The man who was to be strangled came through the gateway of the Inquisition Office with his gaze bent to the ground, apparently insensible to the mob of sightseers gathered in the Square.

The doomed man who followed--a mere youth, and, by his face, a Jew--stared about him fiercely and eagerly. The third was an old man, with ragged hair and beard, and a complexion bleached by long imprisonment in the dark. He halted, blinking, uncertain how to plant his steps. Then, feeling rather than seeing the sun, he stretched up both arms to it, dropping his taper, calling aloud as might a preacher, "How is it possible for people, beholding that glorious Body, to wors.h.i.+p any Being but Him who created it!"

A Jesuit at his side flung an arm across the old man's mouth; and as quickly the Familiar whipped out a cloth, pulled his head back, and gagged him. The young Jew had turned and was staring, still with his fierce, eager look. He was wheeled about and plucked forward.

Next through the gateway issued a troupe of Familiars on horseback, some of them n.o.bles of the first families in Portugal; after them the Inquisitors and other Officers of the Court upon mules; last of all, amid a train of n.o.bles, the Inquisitor-General himself on a white horse led by two grooms: his delicate hands resting on the reins, his face a pale green by reason of the sunlight falling on it through a silken scarf of that colour pendant over the brim of his immense black hat.

All this pa.s.sed before Ruth's eyes, and close, as she sat in the mule-chaise beside Sir Oliver. She would have drawn the leathern curtains, but he had put out a hand forbidding this.