THE HUT BY THE BEACH.
“And you’ll never hold up your head again!
No more will any of us. The disgrace of it!
the disgrace of it!”
Ruth stood in the middle of the wretched room, with
her hands hanging slack and her eyes bent wearily
upon her mother, who had collapsed upon a block of
sawn timber, and sat there, with sack apron cast over
her head, rocking her body.
“Hush, ye fool!” said old Josselin, and
spat out of window. Mechanically, by habit, his
dim eyes swept along the beach by the breakers’
edge. “What’s the use, any way?”
he added.
“We, that always carried ourselves so high,
for all our being poor! It’s God’s
mercy that took your father before he could see this
day. ’Twould have broken his sperrit.
Your father a Josselin, and me a Pocock, with lands
of my own—if right was law in this world;
and now to be stripped naked and marched through the
streets!”
Ruth’s eyes met the Collector’s.
He stood within the doorway, and was regarding her
curiously. She did not plead or protest; only,
as their eyes met, a flush rose to her cheek, and
he guessed rightly that the touch of shame was for
her mother, not for herself. The flush deepened
as old Josselin turned and said apologetically,—
“You mustn’t mind M’ria. She’s
weak-minded. Always was; but sence her husband
was drowned—he was my second son—she’ve
lost whatever wits she had. The gal here was
born about that time.” Here the old man
launched into some obstetrical guesswork, using the
plainest words. It embarrassed the Collector;
the girl did not so much as wince.
“Poor might be stood,” moaned the woman;
“but poor and shamed!” Then of a sudden,
as though recollecting herself, she arose with an air
of mincing gentility. “Ruth,” she
said, “it’s little we can offer the gentleman,
but you might get out the bread and cheese,
after his being so kind to you.”
“Sit down, you dormed fool,” commanded
her father-in-law. “Here, fetch your seat
over to the look-out, an’ tell me if that’s
a log I see floatin’. She’s wonderful
good at that,” he explained, without lowering
his voice, “and it’ll keep her quiet.
It’s true, though, what she said about the
property. Thousands of acres, if she had her
rights—up this side of the Kennebee.”
He jerked a thumb northwards. “The Pococks
bought it off one of the Gorges, gettin’ on for
a hundred years sence; and by rights, as I say, a
seventh share oughter be hers. But lawyers!
The law’s like a ship’s pump: pour
enough in for a start, and it’ll reward ye with
floods. But where’s the money to start
it?”
The Collector scarcely heard him. His eyes were
on Ruth’s face. He had walked briskly down
from the Town Square to the Bowling Green Inn, refreshed
himself, let saddle his horse, and set forth, leaving
orders for his coach to follow. At the summit
of the hill above Port Nassau he had overtaken the
cart with the poor girl lying in it, had checked his
pace to ride alongside, and so, disregarding Mr. Trask’s
counsel, had brought her home. Nay, dismissing
the men with a guinea apiece, he had desired them
to return to Mr. Trask and report his conduct.
