Read Ebook: Ruth Erskine's Crosses by Pansy

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Ebook has 861 lines and 83878 words, and 18 pages

RUTH ERSKINE'S CROSSES.

HER CROSS SEEMS HEAVY.

SHE stood in the hall, waiting. She heard the thud of trunks and valises on the pavement outside. She heard her father's voice giving orders to driver and porter. She wondered why she did not step forward and open the door. How would other girls greet their mothers? She tried to think. Some of them she had seen--school-girls, with whom she had gone home, in her earlier life, who were wont to rush into their mother's arms, and, with broken exclamations of delight, smother her with kisses How strange it would be if she should do any such thing as that! She did not know how to welcome a mother! How should she? She had never learned.

Then there was that other one, almost harder to meet than a mother; because her father, after all, had the most responsibility about the mother; it was really his place to look after her needs and her comfort. But this sister would naturally look to her for exclusive attention. A sister! She, Ruth Erskine, with a grown-up sister, only a few years younger than herself! And yet one whom she had not only never seen, but, until the other day, of whose existence she had never heard! How perfectly unnatural it all was!

There had been daughters before, who were called on to meet new mothers. Yes, but this was an old, old mother--so old that, in the nature of things, she ought, years ago, to have been reconciled to the event, and to have accepted it as a matter of course. But what daughter, before this, had been called upon suddenly to greet, and to receive in social equality an own sister? The more she thought of it, the more unnerved she felt.

And so the door was opened at last by Judge Erskine himself. His daughter had decreed that no servant should be in attendance. She wanted as few lookers-on as possible.

"Well, daughter," he said; and, even in that swift moment, she wondered if he ever spoke that quiet-toned, "well, daughter," to that other one. Then she did come forward and hold out her hand, and receive her father's lingering kiss. Something in that, and in the look of his eyes, as he put her back from him, and gazed for an instant into hers, steadied her pulses, and made her turn with a welcome to the strangers. There was an almost pleading look in those eyes of his.

"How do you do?" she said, simply, and not coldly; and she held out her hand to the small, faded-looking woman, who shrank back, and seemed bewildered, if not frightened. "Do you feel very tired with the long journey?"

"Susan," said her father, to the third figure, who was still over by the door, engaged in counting the shawl-straps and satchels. "This is my daughter Ruth."

There was an air of ownership about this sentence, which was infinitely helpful to Ruth. What if he had said, "This is your sister Ruth?" She gave her hand. A cold hand it was, and she felt it tremble; but, even in that supreme moment, she noticed that Susan's hair was what, in outspoken language, would be called red; and that she was taller than accorded with grace, and her wrap, falling back from its confinings, showed her dress to be short-waisted, and otherwise ill-fitting. Long afterward Ruth smiled, as she thought of taking in such details at such a moment.

It transpired that there was still another stranger awaiting introduction--a gentleman, tall and grave, and with keen gray eyes, that seemed looking through this family group, and drawing conclusions.

"My daughter, Judge Burnham." This was Judge Erskine's manner of introduction. For the time, at least, he ignored the fact that he had any other daughter. Very little attention did the daughter bestow on Judge Burnham; eyes and wits were on the alert elsewhere. Here were these new people to be gotten to their rooms, and then gotten down again; and there was that awful supper-table to endure! She gave herself to the business of planning an exit.

"Father, you want to go directly to your rooms, I suppose? I have rung for Thomas, to attend to Judge Burnham, and I will do the honors of the house for Susan."

Very carefully trained were face and tone. Beyond a certain curious poise of head, which those who knew her understood betokened a strong pressure of self-control, there was nothing unusual. Really, the worst for her was to come. If she could but have made herself feel that to send a servant with this new sister would be the proper thing to do, it would have been so much easier. But for the watchful eyes and commenting tongue of that same servant she would have done it. But she sternly resolved that everything which, to the servant's eyes, would look like formality, or like hospitality extended simply to guests, should be dispensed with. It would do to ring for Thomas, to attend Judge Burnham; but a daughter of the house must have no other escort than herself. On the way up-stairs she wondered what she should say when the room door closed on them both. Here, in the hall, it was only necessary to ask which satchel should go up immediately, and which trunk went to which room. But, when all the business was settled, what then?

She began the minute the attending servant deposited the satchels, and departed:

"Do you need to make any change in dress before tea, and can I assist you in any way?"

For answer, the young girl thus addressed turned toward her earnest gray eyes--eyes that were full of some strong feeling that she was holding back--and said, with eager, heartful tones:

"I am just as sorry for you as I can be. If there is any way in which I can help to make the cross less heavy, I wish you would tell me what it is."

Now, this was the last sentence that Ruth Erskine had expected to hear. She had studied over possible conversations, and schooled herself to almost every form, but not this.

"What do you mean?" she asked, returning the earnest gaze with one full of bewilderment.

"Oh, we shall live through it," she said, and the attempt to make her voice unconstrained startled even herself. Susan abated not one whit the earnestness in her voice.

"Yes," Ruth said, in a tone that might be assenting, or it might simply be answering. In her heart she did not believe that it would be better for them to have Judge Burnham in their family circle, and she wished him away. Was not the ordeal hard enough without having an outsider to look on and comment?

"When will you be ready for supper?" she asked, and, though she tried to make her voice sound naturally, she knew it was cold and hard.

"Where did you leave Susan?" he questioned.

"In her room."

Ruth's tone was colder than before. Judge Erskine essayed to help her.

"She is the only alleviating drop in this bitter cup," he said, looking anxiously at Ruth for an assuring word. "It has been a comfort to me to think that she seemed kind and thoughtful, and in every way disposed to do right. She will be a comfort to you, I hope, daughter."

Poor Ruth! If her father had said, "She is perfectly unendurable to me; you must contrive in some way that I shall not have to see her or hear her name," it would have been an absolute relief to his daughter's hard-strained, quivering nerves. It was almost like an insult to have him talk about her being a help and a comfort! She turned from him abruptly, and felt the relief which the opening door and the entrance of Judge Burnham gave.

The supper-bell pealed its summons through the house, and Judge Erskine went in search of his wife; but Ruth called Irish Kate to "tell Miss Erskine that tea was ready," flushing to the roots of her hair over the name "Miss Erskine," and feeling vexed and mortified when she found that Judge Burnham's grave eyes were on her. Mrs. Erskine was a dumpy little woman, who wore a breakfast-shawl of bright blue and dingy brown shades, over a green dress, the green being of the shade that fought, not only with the wearer's complexion, but with the blue of the breakfast-shawl. The whole effect was simply dreadful! Ruth, looking at it, and at her, taking her in mentally from head to foot, shuddered visibly. What a contrast to the grandeur of the man beside her! And yet, what a pitiful thing human nature was, that it could be so affected by adverse shades of blue and green, meeting on a sallow skin! Before the tea was concluded, it transpired that there were worse things than ill-fitting blues and greens. Mrs. Judge Erskine murdered the most common phrases of the king's English! She said, "Susan and me was dreadful tired!" And she said, "There was enough for him and I!" She even said his'n and your'n, those most detestable of all provincialisms!

And Ruth Erskine sat opposite her, and realized that this woman must be introduced into society as Mrs. Judge Erskine, her father's wife! There had been an awkward pause about the getting seated at the table. Ruth had held back in doubt and confusion, and Mrs. Erskine had not seemed to know what her proper place should be; and Judge Erskine had said, in pleading tone: "Daughter, take your old place, this evening." And then Ruth had gone forward, with burning cheeks, and taken the seat opposite her father, as usual, leaving Mrs. Erskine to sit at his right, where she had arranged her own sitting. And this circumstance, added to all the others, had held her thoughts captive, so that she heard not a word of her father's low, reverent blessing. Perhaps, if she had heard, it might have helped her through the horrors of that evening. There was one thing that helped her. It was the pallor of her father's face. She almost forgot herself and her own embarrassment in trying to realize the misery of his position. Her voice took a gentle, filial tone when she addressed him, that, if she had but known it, was like drops of oil poured on the inflamed wounds which bled in his heart.

Altogether, that evening stood out in Ruth Erskine's memory, years afterward, as the most trying one of her life. There came days that were more serious in their results--days that left deeper scars--days of solemn sorrow, and bold, outspoken trouble. But for troubles, so petty that they irritated by their very smallness, while still they stung, this evening held foremost rank.

"I wonder," she said, in inward irritation, as she watched Mrs. Erskine's awkward transit across the room, on her father's arm, and observed that her dress was too short for grace, and too low in the neck, and hung in swinging plaits in front--"I wonder if there are no dressmakers where they came from?" And then her lip curled in indignation with herself to think that such petty details should intrude upon her now. Another thing utterly dismayed her. She had thought so much about this evening, she had prayed so earnestly, she had almost expected to sail high above it, serene and safe, and do honor to the religion which she professed by the quietness of her surrender of home and happiness; for it truly seemed to her that she was surrendering both. But it was apparent to herself that she had failed, that she had dishonored her profession. And when this dreadful evening was finally over, she shut the door on the outer world with a groan, as she said, aloud and bitterly:

"Oh, I don't know anything to prevent our home from being a place of perfect torment! Poor father! and poor me!"

If she could have heard Judge Burnham's comment, made aloud also, in the privacy of his room, it might still have helped her.

"That girl has it in her power to make riot and ruin of this ill-assorted household, or to bring peace out of it all. I wonder which she will do?"

And yet, both Judge Burnham and Ruth Erskine were mistaken.

SIDE ISSUES.

HOW did they ever get into such a dreadful snarl as this, anyway?

It was Eurie Mitchel who asked this question. She had seated her guests--Flossy Shipley and Marion Wilbur--in the two chairs her small sleeping-room contained, and then curled herself, boarding-school fashion, on the foot of her bed. To be sure it is against the rule, at this present time, for girls in boarding-schools to make sofas of their beds. So I have no doubt it was, when Eurie was a school-girl; nevertheless, she did it.

"Where should I sit?" she asked her mother, one day, when that good lady remonstrated. "On the floor?"

And her mother, looking around the room, and noting the scarcity of chairs, and remembering that there were none to spare from any other portion of the scantily-furnished house, said, "Sure enough!" and laughed off the manifest poverty revealed in the answer, instead of sighing over it. And Eurie went on, making a comfortable seat of her bed, whenever occasion required.

On this particular evening they had been discussing affairs at the Erskine mansion, and Eurie had broken in with her exclamation, and waited for Marion to answer.

"Why," said Marion, "I know very little about it. There are all sorts of stories in town, just as is always the case; but you needn't believe any of them; there is not enough truth sprinkled in to save them. Ruth says her father married at a time when he was weak, both in body and mind--just getting up from a long and very serious illness, during which this woman had nursed him with patience and skill, and, the doctors said, saved his life. He discovered, in some way--I don't know whether she told him so or not, but somehow he made the discovery--that she lost possession of her heart during the process, and that he had gotten it, without any such intention on his part, and, in a fit of gratitude, he married her in haste, and repented at leisure."

"How perfectly absurd!" said Eurie, in indignation. "The idea that he had no way of showing his gratitude but by standing up with her, and assenting to half a dozen solemn statements, none of which were true, and making promises that he couldn't keep! I have no patience with that sort of thing."

"Well, but," said Flossy, coming in with gentle tone and alleviating words, just as she always did come into the talk of these two. "The woman was a poor, friendless girl then, living a dreadful boarding-house life, entirely dependent on her needle for her daily bread. Think how sorry he must have been for her!"

Eurie's lip curled.

"He might have been as sorry for me as he pleased, and I dare say I shouldn't have cared if he had expressed his sorrow in dollars and cents; but to go and marry me, promise to love and cherish, and all that sort of thing, and not to mean a word of it, was simply awful."

"Have you been studying the marriage service lately?" Marion asked, with a light laugh and a vivid blush. "You seem strangely familiar with it."

"Why, I have heard it several times in my life," Eurie answered, quickly, her cheeks answering the other's blushes. "And I must say it seems to me a ceremony not to be trifled with."

"Oh, I think so too!" Flossy said, in great seriousness and sweet earnestness. "But what I mean is, Judge Erskine, of course, did not realize what he was promising. It was only a little after Ruth's mother died, you know, and he--well, I think he could not have known what he was about."

"I should think not!" said Eurie. "And then to deliberately desert her afterward! living a lie all these years! I must say I think Judge Erskine has behaved as badly as a man could."

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