Rosa refuses to see anything in the incident which is in the least to the discredit of Ranny. I was in the garden this morning, and overheard her defending her lover against Hannah's severe censures upon him and upon Rosa for siding with him.
"Why shouldn't he beat his own wife when she deserved it," Rosa demanded, "and she nothing but a hateful, sharp-nosed pig?"
"She isn't his wife," Hannah retorted, apparently not prepared to protest against a doctrine so well established as that a man might beat his spouse.
"Well, she was, anyhow," persisted Rosa; "and that's the same thing. You can't put a man and his wife apart just by going to law. Father O'Rafferty said so."
"Oh, you can't, can't you?" Hannah said with scornful deliberation. "Then you're a nice girl to betalking about marrying Ranny Gargan, if he's got one wife alive already."
This blow struck too near home, I fear, for Rosa's voice was pretty shrill when she retorted.
"What do you know about marrying anyhow, Hannah Elsmore? Nobody wants to marry you, I'll be bound."
It seemed to be time to interfere, so I went nearer to the window and called to Rosa to come out to baby and me.
"Rosa," I said, when she appeared, flushed and angry, "I wish you wouldn't quarrel with Hannah."
"Then what for's she all the time twitting me about Ranny Gargan?" demanded the girl with angry tears in her eyes. "She don't know what it is to care for a man anyhow, and what for does she be taking me up short when I'm that bad in my mind a'ready I can't stand it? Ranny Gargan's old beast of a wife's got him into a scrape, but that don't make any difference to me. I ain't going back on him."
I established myself on the grass beside the sun-dial, and took baby, sweet and lovely, into my arms.
"I am sorry, Rosa," I said when we were settled comfortably. "I hoped you'd got over thinking about Ranny Gargan. He is certainly not the sort of man to make you happy, even if he were free. He'd never think of sparing you or letting you have your own way."
"Who's wanting to have their own way, Miss Privet?" demanded my astonishing handmaid; and then went on in her usual fashion of striking me breathless when she comes to discourse of love and marriage. "That ain't what women marry for, Miss Privet. They're just made so they marry to be beatand broke and abused if that's what pleases the men; and that's the way they're best off."
"But, Rosa," I put in, "you always talk as if you'd be meekness itself if a husband wanted to abuse you, but I confess I never thought you would be at all backward about defending yourself."
A droll look came into her rosy Irish face, and a funny little touch of brogue into her voice.
"I'd think if he loved me the way he ought to, Miss Privet, he'd be willing to take a whack himself now and then, just in the way of love. Besides," she added, "I'd come it round Ranny when it was anything I really wanted. Any man's soft enough if a woman knows how to treat him right."
I abandoned the discussion, as I am always forced to abandon a talk of this sort with Rosa. I suppose in her class the crude doctrine that it is the right of the man to take and the duty of the woman to give still exists with a good deal of simplicity and force, but it almost stops my breath to hear Rosa state it. It is like a bit of primeval savagery suddenly thrust into my face in the midst of nineteenth-century civilization. The worst of it all is, moreover, to feel the habits of old generations buzzing dizzily in my ears until I have a confused sensation as if in principle the absurd vagaries of Rosa might be right. I am tinglingly aware that fibres which belonged to some remote progenitress, some barbaric woman captured by force, perhaps, after the marriage customs of primitive peoples, retain the instinct of submission to man and respond to Rosa's uncivilized theories. I have a sort of second sense that if a man I loved came and asserted a brutal sovereignty over me, it would appeal to these inherited instincts asright and proper, according to the order appointed by nature. I know what nonsense this is. The sense of justice has in the modern woman displaced the old humiliating subjection,—although if one loved a man the subjection would not be humiliating, but just the highest pleasure. I can conceive of a woman's being so fond of a man that to be his abject slave would be so much the happiest thing in the world that to serve him to her very utmost would be so great a delight as almost to be selfishness.
How Father would have shouted over a page like this! I would not have supposed even Rosa could have spurred me into such an attempt at philosophy, and I hardly believed I knew so many long words. After all I doubt if Rosa and I are so far apart in our instincts; only she has the coolness to put them into words I only imitate, and cannot pretend to rival.
September 24. It is delightful to see how really fond Tom is becoming of baby. I came home from a walk this afternoon, and there in the parlor was Tom down on the floor with Tomine, shaking his head at her like a bear, and making her laugh. Rosa beamed from the background with the most complete approval. He sprang up when I appeared, but I ignored all the strangeness, and only said how glad I was to see him. I think he liked my taking as a matter of course his being there, and very likely this was what made him confess he had been in two or three times to play with baby when he knew that I was not at home.
"I saw you going down the other side of the river," he said, "so I came to keep Thomasine from being lonesome."
I returned that it was not very complimentary to tell me he had tried to avoid me, but that I appreciated how much more fascinating baby was than I, so he need not apologize; and the end of it was that after this nonsense had broken the ice we sat on the floor together to entertain her ladyship. She was pleased to be in the most sunny mood imaginable, and responded to our fooling most graciously. With truly feminine preference, however, she bestowed most of her attention upon the man. She is a more entrancing creature every day; and she certainly has her father's eyes. I compared them this afternoon.
September 26. The reading-room seems really at last to be coming into being. I have found a place for it. It is a kind of square box over the post-office, but with furniture and pictures it can be made rather attractive. I have made out a list of periodicals, and sent to Boston for framed photographs for the walls. To-day I went to talk over the plan with Deacon Richards.
The mill was fragrant with its sweet mealy smell, and Deacon Daniel was as dusty as a moth-miller. As I stood in the doorway waiting for him to come down from the wheel, where he was doing something or other about the hopper, I fell to humming the old rhyme we sang as children when we went by the mill:—
"'Miller, miller, musty-poll,How many bags of wheat you stole?''One of wheat and one of rye.''You naughty miller, you must die!'"
"'Miller, miller, musty-poll,How many bags of wheat you stole?''One of wheat and one of rye.''You naughty miller, you must die!'"
"That isn't very polite," Deacon Daniel said, coming up behind me before I knew he had left his perch.
I turned and greeted him smilingly, repeating the last line:—
"You naughty miller, you must die!"
"You naughty miller, you must die!"
"I suppose I must," he assented; "but it won't be for stealing, Miss Ruth."
I love the old mill, with its great beams and its continual sound of dashing water and the chirruping of the millstones grinding away at the corn like an insatiate monster that can never have enough. The smell of the meal, too, is so pleasant, and even the abundant dust is so clean and fresh it seems to belong there. The mellow light through the dim windows and the shadows hiding in every corner have always from childhood appealed to my imagination. I find there always a soothing and serene mood.
"I want your advice, Deacon Richards," I said.
"So as not to follow it?" he demanded. "That's what women generally want of advice."
I assured him I was ready to follow his advice if it were good, and so we talked about the reading-room. I told him it seemed to me that if it was to go on properly it should have a head; somebody to manage it and be responsible for the way in which it was carried on.
"But you will do that yourself," he said.
I answered that it must be a man, for it was nonsense to think of a woman's running a reading-room for men. He looked at me for a moment with his droll grin, and then he was pleased to say that for a woman I had a remarkable amount of common sense. I thanked him for the compliment to my sex, and then asked if he would undertake the business, and promise not to freeze the readers out the way he did the prayer-meetings.
"I'm not the sort of person you want," he answered, chuckling at my allusion to the fire question. "I've sense enough to know that without being a woman. Why don't you ask Tom Webbe?"
I confessed that I had thought of Tom, but—And there I stuck, for I could hardly tell the deacon how I thought gossip had already said enough about Tom and myself without my giving folk any more to talk about.
"I don't know what that 'but' means," he remarked, grinning more than ever, as if he did know perfectly. "Anyway, there's nobody in town who could do it so well. All the men and boys like him, and he has a level head. He's the only one of the young fellows that's been to college, and he ought to know more about books than any of the rest of them. Besides, he needs something to take up his mind."
I felt the deacon was right, and I began to ask myself whether my personal feelings should be allowed to count in such a matter. Still I could hardly make up my mind to take the responsibility of putting Tom at the head of a reading-room I had started. If nothing else were to be considered I did not want my connection with the plan to be too prominent, and gossip about Tom would be just the thing to keep my name always to the front.
"I hope you are sensible enough to do one thing," Deacon Daniel went on, "and that is to have everybody who uses the room pay for it. It needn't be much, but they'll respect it and themselves more if they pay something, and it'll give them the right to grumble."
"I don't want them to grumble," I returned.
"Oh, nobody cares much for anything he can'tgrumble about," was his reply, with a laugh; "but really they are twice as likely to grumble if you pay for everything than if they help. That's the way we are made."
I told him that he was an old cynic, but I saw in a moment he was right about the value that would be put on a thing which was paid for. If the men feel they are helping to support the reading-room they will take a good deal more interest in it.
"Tom Webbe will manage them all right," the deacon declared. "He'll let them grumble just enough, and make them so contented they'll think they're having their own way while he's going ahead just the way he thinks best. He's the only man for the place."
Perhaps he is; and indeed the more I think about it, the more I see the deacon is right. It would certainly be good for Tom, and that is a good deal. I wonder what I ought to do?
What Deacon Daniel said about the way in which Tom would manage the men has been running through my mind. I wonder that I, who have known Tom so well, never thought before of how great his power is to control people. It showed itself when he was a boy; and if he had carried out his plan to study law it would have been—I do wonder if Tom is working by himself, and if that is the reason he borrowed those law-books?
September 27. Old lady Andrews has solved the question for me. I am so glad I thought to go to her for advice. She suggests that we have a committee, and make Deacon Richards chairman. Then Tom can be put on, and really do the work.
"It wouldn't do at all for you to put Tom Webbe at the head alone, my dear," she said. "It would make talk, and Aunt Naomi would have you married to him a dozen times before the week was over; but this way it will be all right."
I asked her if committees did not usually have three on them, and she answered that Deacon Richards would know.
"I belong to an old-fashioned generation, my dear, and I never can feel that it's quite respectable for a woman to know about committees and that sort of thing. I'm sure in my day it wouldn't have been thought well-bred. But Deacon Daniel will know. He's always on committees at church conferences and councils."
Once more I visited the mill, and told Deacon Daniel of old lady Andrews' suggestion. He agreed at once, and declared the plan was better than that of having one man at the head.
"It'll be much the same thing as far as managing the reading-room goes," he observed, stroking his chin thoughtfully, "but somehow folks like committees, and they generally think they have a better show if three or four men are running things than if there's only one. Of course one man always does manage, but a committee's more popular."
Deacon Daniel was very sure that the committee should have three on it, and when I asked who should be the other man he said:—
"If it were anybody else but you, Miss Ruth, I shouldn't think it was any use to say it, but you'll see what I mean. I think Cy Turner is the man for the third place."
"The blacksmith?" I asked, a good deal surprised."I'm afraid I don't see what you mean. I don't even know him."
The deacon grinned down on me from his height, and made me a characteristic retort.
"He doesn't look as if he'd kept awake nights on that account."
The blacksmith's jolly round face and twinkling eyes as I had seen him on the street now and then came up before my mind, and I felt the full force of the deacon's irony. I told him that he was impertinent, and asked why he named Mr. Turner.
"Because," he answered, seriously, "what you want is for the folks that haven't any books at home and don't have a chance to read to get interested in the reading-room. If Cy Turner takes hold of it, he'll do more than anybody else in town could do to make it go among just those folks. He's shrewd and good-natured, and everybody that knows him likes him. He'll have all the boys in the reading-room if he has to take them there by the collar, and if he does they'll think it's fine."
I could see at once the wisdom of the deacon's idea. I asked how Tom and the blacksmith would work together, and was assured that Mr. Turner has a most unlimited admiration for Tom, so that the two would agree perfectly. I made up my mind on the spot, and decided to go at once to interview the blacksmith, from whose shop I could hear above the whirring of the mill the blows on the anvil. I had no time on the little way from the mill to the blacksmith shop to consider what I should say to Mr. Turner, and I passed the time in hoping there would be no men about. It made no difference; he was so straightforward and simple, so kindly and human,that I felt at ease with him from the first. He was luckily alone, so I walked in boldly as if I were in the habit of visiting the forge every day of my life. He looked surprised to see me, but not in the least disconcerted. The self-respecting coolness of a New England workingman is something most admirable. Mr. Turner was smutty and dressed in dirty clothes, leather apron and all, but his manners were as good as those of the best gentleman in the land. There is something noble in a country where a common workingman will meet you with no servility and without any self-consciousness. I liked Mr. Turner from the moment I saw his face and heard his voice, rich and cheery, and I was won by his merry eyes, which had all the time a twinkling suggestion of a smile ready to break out on the slightest occasion. I went straight to my errand, and nothing could have been better than the way in which he received my proposition. He had no false modesty, and no over-assurance. He evidently knew that he could do what was required, he was undisguisedly pleased to be asked, and he was troubled by no doubts about social proprieties or improprieties.
"I suppose Mr. Webbe will do most of what work there is to do," I said, "but he will be an easy person to work with on a committee, I should think."
"Yes, marm, he will," the blacksmith responded heartily. "There ain't a squarer fellow alive than Tom Webbe. Tom's been a bit wild, perhaps; but he's an awful good fellow just the same, if you know him. I'm pleased to be on the committee with him, Miss Privet; and I'll do my best. I think the boys'll do about as I want 'em to."
I had only to see Mr. Turner to understand whyDeacon Daniel had chosen him. I think the committee—but "oh, good gracious mercy me," as the old woman in the story says, it just occurs to me that I have not said a word to Tom about the whole business!
September 28. It is strange that my only difficulty in arranging about the reading-room should come from Tom, on whom I had counted as a matter of course; but it is fortunate that I had assumed he would serve, for this is what made him consent. When I saw him to-day, and told him what I had done, he at first said he could not possibly have anything to do with the whole matter.
"I thank you, Ruth," he said, "but don't you see I had better not give folks any occasion to think of me at all just now? The gossips need only to be reminded of my being alive, and they will begin all over again."
"Tom," I asked him desperately, "are you never going to get over this bitter feeling? I can't bear to have you go on thinking that everybody is talking about you."
"I don't blame them for talking," was his answer.
I assured him he would have been pleased if he could have heard the way in which Mr. Turner spoke of him yesterday.
"Oh, Cy! he is too good-hearted to fling at anybody."
"But Deacon Richards was just as friendly," I insisted.
"Yes, he would be. It isn't the men, Ruth; they are ready to give a fellow a chance; but the women"—
He did not seem to know how to finish his sentence, and I reminded him that I too was a woman.
"Oh, you," responded Tom, "you're an angel. You might almost be a man."
I laughed at him for putting men above angels, and so by making him smile, by coaxing him, and appealing to his friendliness to back me up now I had committed myself, I prevailed upon him to serve. I am sure it will be good for the reading-room, and I am equally sure it will be good for Tom. Why in the world this victory should have left me a little inclined to be blue, I do not understand.
October 5. I went this afternoon to walk on the Rim road. The day was beyond words in its beauty,—crisp, and clear, and rich with all that vitality which nature seems so full of in autumn, as if it were filling itself with life to withstand the long strain of the winter. The leaves were splendid in their color, and shone against the sky as if they were full of happiness. Perhaps it was the day that made it possible for me to see the red house without a pang, but I think it was the sense of baby at home, well and happy, and learning, unconsciously of course, to love me with every day that goes over her small head. A thin thread of smoke trickled up from the chimney, and I thought I ought to go in to see if the old grandmother was there. I wonder if it is right not to try if the blessed granddaughter might not soften her old heart, battered and begrimed if it be. Nobody answered my knock, however, and so I did not see Mrs. Brownrig, for which I was selfishly glad. She has not been very gracious when I have sent her things, so I was not, I confess, especially anxious for an interview. I went away smiling to myself over a saying of Father's: "There is nothing so pleasant as a disagreeable duty conscientiously escaped."
October 6. I really know something which hasescaped the acuteness of Aunt Naomi, and I feel greatly puffed up in consequence. Deacon Richards has been here this evening, and as it was rather cool I had a brisk, cheery fire.
"I do like to be warm," he said, stretching out his hand luxuriously to the blaze. "I never could understand why I feel the cold so. I should think it was age, if it hadn't always been so from the time I was a boy."
I thought of the cold vestry, and smiled to myself as I wondered if Deacon Daniel had ascetic ideas of self-torture.
"Then I should think you would be fond of big fires," I observed.
"I am," he responded, "only they make me sleepy. I'm like a kitten; I go to sleep when I get warmed through."
I laughed outright, and when he asked me what I was laughing at I told him it was partly at the idea of his being like a kitten, and partly because I had found him out.
"It is all very well for you to keep the vestry as cold as a barn so that you can keep awake," I added; "but don't you think it is unfair to the rest of the congregation to freeze them too?"
He looked rather disconcerted a moment, and then grinned, though sheepishly.
"Heat makes other people sleepy too," he said defensively.
I chaffed him a little, and told him I should send a couple of loads of wood to the vestry, and that if it were necessary I would give him a bottle of smelling-salts to keep him awake, but certainly the room must be warmer. I declared I would not have dear old ladyAndrews exposed to the danger of pneumonia, even if he was like a kitten. It is really quite as touching as it is absurd to think of his sitting in prayer-meeting shivering and uncomfortable because he feels it his duty to keep awake. In biblical times dancing before the Lord was a legitimate form of worship; it is almost a pity that sleeping before the Lord cannot be put among proper religious observances. Dear Miss Charlotte always sleeps—devoutly, I am sure—at every prayer-meeting, and then comes out declaring it has been a beautiful meeting. I have no doubt she has been spiritually refreshed, even if she has nodded. Father used to say that no religion could be permanent until men were able to give their deity a sense of humor; and I do think a supreme being which could not see the humorous side of Deacon Richards' pathetic mortification of the flesh in his frosty vestry could hardly have the qualifications necessary to manage the universe properly.
October 12. Ranny Gargan has settled the question of marriage for the present at least. He has remarried his first wife to prevent her from bringing suit against him. As Miss Charlotte rather boldly said, he has legitimized the beating by marrying the woman.
Rosa takes the matter coolly. She says she is glad to have things so she can't think of Ranny, for now she can take Dennis, and not bother any more about it.
"It's a comfort to any woman not to have to decide what man she'll marry," she remarked with her amazing philosophy.
"Then you'd like to have somebody arrange a marriage for you, Rosa," I said, rather for the sake of saying something.
"Arrange, is it?" she cried, bristling up suddenly. "What for would I have somebody making my marriage? I'd like to see anybody that would dare!"
The moral of which seems to be that if Rosa is so much of a philosopher that she sometimes seems to me to be talking scraps out of old heathen sages, she is yet only a woman.
October 20. Aunt Naomi had about her when she came stealthily in this afternoon an air of excitement so evident as almost to be contagious. I could see by the very hurry of her sliding step and the extra tightness of her veil that something had stirred her greatly.
"What is it, Aunt Naomi?" I asked at once. "You fairly bristle with news. What's happened?"
She smiled and gave a little cluck, but my salutation made her instantly moderate her movements. She sat down with a composed and self-contained air, and only by the unusually vigorous swinging of her foot showed that she was not as serene as on ordinary occasions.
"Who said anything had happened?" she demanded.
I returned that she showed it by her looks.
"Something is always happening, I suppose."
I know Aunt Naomi well enough to understand that the quickest way of coming at her tidings was to pretend indifference, so I asked no more questions, but made a careless remark about the weather.
"What made you think anything had happened?" persisted she.
"It was simply an idea that came into my head,"was my reply. "I hope Deacon Daniel keeps the vestry warm in these days."
Aunt Naomi was not proof against this parade of indifference, and in a moment she broke out with her story.
"Well," she declared, "Tom Webbe seems bound to be talked about."
"Tom Webbe!" I echoed. "What is it now?"
I confess my heart sank with the fear that he had become desperate with the pressure of weary days, and had somehow defied all the narrow conventionalities which hem him in here in this little town.
"It's the Brownrig woman," Aunt Naomi announced. "If you get mixed up with that sort of creatures there's no knowing what you'll come to."
"But what about her?" I demanded so eagerly that I became suddenly conscious of the keen curiosity which my manner brought into her glance. "What has she been doing?" I went on, trying to be cool.
It was only by much questioning that I got the story. Had it not been for my real interest in Tom I would not have bothered so much, but as it was she had me at her mercy, and knew it. What happened, so far as I can make out, is this: The Brownrig woman has been worse than ever since Julia's death. She has been drunk in the streets more than once, and I am afraid the help she has had from Tom and others has only led her to greater excesses. Once Deacon Richards came upon her lying in the ditch beside the road, and she has made trouble more than once, besides disturbing the prayer-meeting.
Last evening Tom came upon a mob of men and boys down by the Flatiron Wharf, and in the midst of them was Mrs. Brownrig, singing and howling.They were baiting her, and saying things to provoke her to more outrageous profanity.
"They do say," observed Aunt Naomi with what seemed to me, I am ashamed to say, an unholy relish, "her swearing was something awful. John Deland told me he never heard anything like it. He said no man could begin to come up to it."
"John Deland, that owns the smoke-houses?" I put in. "What was he doing there? I always thought he was a decent man."
"So he is. He says," she returned with her drollest smile, "he was just passing by and couldn't help hearing. I dare say you couldn't have helped hearing if you'd been passing by."
"I should have passed pretty quickly then; but what did Tom Webbe do?"
She went on to say that Tom had come upon this disgraceful scene, and found the crowd made up of all the lowest fellows in town. The men were shouting with laughter, and the old woman was shrieking with rage and intoxication.
"John Deland says as soon as Tom saw what was going on and who the woman was, he broke through the crowd, and took her by the arm, and told her to come home. She cursed him, and said she wouldn't go; and then she cried, and they had a dreadful time. Then somebody in the crowd—John says he thinks it was one of the Bagley boys that burnt Micah Sprague's barn. You remember about that, don't you? They live somewhere down beyond the old shipyard"—
"I remember that the Spragues' barn was burned," answered I; "but what did the Bagley boy do last night?"
"He called out to Tom Webbe to get out of the way, and not spoil the fun. Then Tom turned on the crowd, and I guess he gave it to them hot and heavy."
"I'm sure I hope he did!" I said fervently.
"He said he thought they might be in better business than tormenting an old drunken woman like that, and called them cowards to their faces. They got mad, and wanted to know what business it was of his, anyway. Then he blazed out again, and said"—
I do not know whether the pause Aunt Naomi made was intentionally designed to rouse me still further, or whether she hesitated unconsciously; but I was too excited to care.
"What did he say?" I asked breathlessly.
"He told them she was his mother-in-law."
"Tom Webbe said that? To that crowd?" cried I, and I felt the tears spring into my eyes. It was chiefly excitement, of course, but the pluck of it and the hurt to Tom came over me in a flash. "What did they do?"
"They just muttered, and got out of the way. John Deland said it wasn't two minutes before Tom was left alone with the old woman, and then he took her home. It's a pity she wouldn't drink herself to death."
"I think it is, Aunt Naomi," was my answer; though I wished to add that the sentiment was rather a queer one to come from anybody who believes as she does.
I do not know what else Aunt Naomi said. Indeed when she had told her tale she seemed in something of a hurry to leave, and I suspect her of going on to repeat it somewhere else. Tom's sin has left a trail of consequences behind it which he could never havedreamed of. I cannot tell whether I pity him more for this or honor him for the courage with which he stood up. Poor Tom!
October 24. An odd thing has happened to the Westons. A man came in the storm last night and dropped insensible on the doorstep. He might have lain there all night, and very likely would have died before morning, but George, when he started for bed, chanced to open the door to look at the weather. He found the tramp wet and covered with sleet, and at first thought that he was either dead or drunk. When he had got him in and thawed out by the kitchen fire, the man proved to be ill. George sent for Dr. Wentworth, and had a bed made up in the shed-chamber, but when he told me this morning he said it seemed rather doubtful if the tramp could live.
"What did Mrs. Weston say?" I asked.
I do not know how I came to ask such a question, and I meant nothing by it. George, however, stiffened in a moment as if he suspected me of something unkind.
"Mrs. Weston didn't like my taking him into the house," he said. "She thought I ought to have sent him off to the poor-farm."
"You could hardly do that last night," I returned, wondering how I could have offended him. "I am afraid the tramp's looks set her against him."
"She hasn't seen him. She'd gone to bed before I found him last night, and this morning he is pretty sick. Dr. Wentworth says he can't be moved now. He's in a high fever, and keeps talking all the time."
It is so very seldom we hear of tramps in Tuskamuck that it is strange to have one appear like this, and it is odd he chose George's house to tumble down at, as it is a little out of the road. Tramps have a law of their own, however, and never do what one would expect of them. I hope his illness will not be serious. I offered to do what I could, but George said they could take care of the man for the present. Then he hesitated, and flushed a little as if confused.
"I am sorry," he said, "it should happen just now, for Gertrude ought not to be troubled when—when she isn't well."
It is a pity, and I hope no harm will come of it, but if Mrs. Weston has not seen the tramp and has not been startled, I do not see why any should.
October 26. If I could be superstitious, I think I should be now; but of course the whole thing is nonsense. People are talking—in forty-eight hours! How gossip does spring and spread!—as if there were something peculiar about that tramp. There is nothing definite to say except that he came to George's house, which is a little off from the main street, and that in his delirium he keeps calling for some person he says he knows is there, and he will surely find, no matter how she hides. The idea of the sick in a delirium is always painful, and the talk about this man makes it doubly so. I am afraid the fact that Mrs. Weston's servants do not like her has something to do with the whispers in the air. Dislike will create suspicion on the slightest excuse, and there can be nothing to connect her with this dying tramp. What could there be? I wish Aunt Naomi would not repeat such unpleasant things.
October 27. I have been with Tom hanging the pictures in the new reading-room, and everything is ready for the opening when the magazines and the books come. Next Wednesday is the first of the month, and then we will have it opened. Tom has already a list of over twenty men and boys who have joined, and lame Peter Tobey is to be janitor. It is delightful to see how proud and pleased he is. He can help his mother now, and the poor boy was pathetic in the way he spoke of that. He only mentioned it, but his tone touched me to the quick.
Tom and I had a delightful afternoon, hanging pictures, arranging the furniture, and seeing that everything was right. Mr. Turner and Deacon Richards came in just as we finished, and the three men were so simple in their interest, and so hearty about it, that I feel as if everything was going forward in just the right spirit. Mr. Turner saw where a bracket was needed for one of the lamps, and said at once he would make one to-morrow. It was charming to see how pleased he was to find there was something he could furnish, and which nobody else at hand could have supplied. We are always pleased to find we are not only needed, but we are needed in some particular way which marks our personal fitness for the thing to be done. Deacon Daniel brought a big braided rug that an old woman at the Rim had made by his orders. He was in good spirits because he had helped the old woman and the reading-room at the same time. Tom was happy because he was at work, and in an atmosphere that was friendly; and I was happy because I could not help it. And so when we locked the room, and came home in the early twilight, I felt at peace with all the world.
Tom came in and had a frolic with Tomine, and when he went he held my hand a moment, looking into my face as if to impress me with what he said.
"Thank you, Ruth," were the words; "I think you'll succeed in making me human again. Good-night."
If I am helping him to be reconciled with the world and himself I am more glad than I can tell.
October 28. The earthquake always finds us unprepared, and to-night it has come. I feel dazed and queer, as if life had been shaken to its foundations, and as if it were trembling about me.
George came in suddenly—My hand trembles so that I am writing like an old woman. If the chief object of keeping a journal is to help myself to be sane and rational, I must have better control over my nerves.
About seven o'clock, as I sat sewing, I heard Hannah open the front door to somebody. I half expected a deacon, as it generally is a deacon in the evening, but the door opened, and George came rushing in. His hurry and his excited manner made me see at once that something unusual had happened. His face was pale, his eyes wild, and somehow his whole air was terrifying.
"What is the matter?" I cried, jumping up to meet him.
He tried to speak, but only gave a sort of choking gasp.
"Has anything happened?" I asked him. "Your wife"—
"I haven't any wife," he interrupted.
The shock was terrible, for I thought at once shemust be dead, and I made some sort of a horrified exclamation. Then we stared at each other a minute. I supposed something had happened to her, and that he had from the force of old habit come to me in hope of comfort.
"I never had a wife," he went on, almost angrily, and as if I had disputed him.
I do not know what we said then or how we said it. It was a long time before I could understand, and even now it seems like a bad dream. Somehow he made me understand that the tramp who was sick at their house had kept calling out in his delirium for Gertrude and declaring he had found her, that she need not hide, for he would surely find her wherever she hid. The servants talked of it, and George knew it a day or two ago. I do not know whether he suspected anything or not. Very likely he could hardly tell himself. Finally one of the girls told Mrs. Weston, and she acted very strangely. She wanted to have a description of the man, and at last she insisted on going herself to peep at him, to see what he was like. George happened to come home just at the time Mrs. Weston had crept up to the door of the shed-chamber. Some exclamation of hers when she saw her husband roused the sick man, who sat up in bed and screamed that he knew his wife's voice, and he would see her. George caught her by the arm, pushed the door wide open with his foot, and led her into the chamber. She held back, and cried out, and the tramp, half wild with delirium, sprang out of bed, shouting to George: "Take your hands off of my wife!"
George declares that even then he should not have believed the tramp was really speaking the truth ifGertrude hadn't confirmed it. He thought the man was out of his head, and the worst of his suspicion was that the stranger had known Mrs. Weston somewhere. As soon as the tramp spoke, however, she fell down on her knees and caught George's hand, crying over and over: "I thought he was dead! I thought he was dead!" It must have been a fearful thing for both of them; and then Gertrude fainted dead away at George's feet. The girl who had been taking care of the tramp was out of the room at the moment, but she heard George calling, and came in time to take her mistress away; while George got the tramp back to bed, and soothed him into some sort of quiet. Then he rushed over here. I urged him to go back at once, telling him his wife would want him, and that it might after all be a mistake.
"I don't want ever to set eyes on her again," he declared doggedly. "She's cheated me. She told me I was the first man she ever cared for, and I never had a hint she'd been married. She made a fool of me, but thank God I'm out of that mess."
"What do you mean?" I asked him. "You are talking about your wife."
"She isn't my wife, I tell you," persisted he. "I'll never live with her again."
He must have seen how he shocked me, and at last he was persuaded to go home. I know I must see him to-morrow, and I have a cowardly desire to run away. I have a hateful feeling of repulsion against him, but that is something to be overcome. At any rate both he and his poor wife need a friend if they ever did, and I must do the best I can.
I cannot wonder George should be deeply hurt by finding that Mrs. Weston had a husband beforeand did not tell him. She can hardly have loved him or she must have been honest with him. It may have been through her love and fear of losing him that she did not dare to tell; though from what I have seen of her I haven't thought her much given to sentiment. How dreadful it must be to live a life resting on concealment. I have very likely been uncharitable in judging her, for she must always have been uneasy and of course could not be her true self.
October 29. Some rumor of the truth has flown about the town, as I was sure when I saw Aunt Naomi coming up the walk this forenoon. Sometimes I think she sees written on walls and fences the things which have happened or been said in the houses which they surround. She has almost a second sight; and if I wished to do anything secret I would not venture to be in the same county with her.
She seated herself comfortably in a patch of sunshine, and looked with the greatest interest at the mahonia in bloom on the flower-stand by the south window. She spoke of the weather and of Peter's silliness, told me where the sewing-circle was to be next week, and approached the real object of her call with the deliberation of a cat who is creeping up behind a mouse. When she did speak, she startled me.
"I suppose you know that tramp over to the Westons' died this morning," she remarked, so carelessly it might have seemed an accident if her eye had not fairly gleamed with eagerness.
"Died!" I echoed.
"Yes, he's dead," she went on. "He had some sort of excitement yesterday, they say, and it seems to have been the end of him."
She watched me as if to see whether I would give any sign of knowing more of the matter than she did, but for once I hope I baffled her penetration. I made some ordinary comment, which could not have told her much.
"It's very queer a tramp should go to that particular house to die," observed Aunt Naomi, as if she were stating an abstract truth in which she had no especial interest.
I asked what there was especially odd about it.
"Well, for one thing," she answered, "he asked the way there particularly."
I inquired how she knew.
"Al Demmons met him on the Rim road," she continued, not choosing, apparently, to answer my question directly, "and this man wanted to know where a man named Weston lived who'd married a woman from the West called something Al Demmons couldn't remember. Al Demmons said that George Weston was the only Weston in town, and that he had married a girl named West. Then the man said something about 'that used to be her name.' It's all pretty queer, I think."
To this I did not respond. I would not get into a discussion which would give Aunt Naomi more material for talk. After a moment of silence, she said:—
"Well, the man's dead now, and I suppose that's the end of him. I don't suppose Mrs. Weston's likely to tell much about him."
"Aunt Naomi," I returned, feeling that even if all the traditions of respect for my elders were broken I must speak, "doesn't it seem to you harm might come of talking about this tramp as if he were some mysterious person connected with Mrs. Weston's lifebefore she came to Tuskamuck? It isn't strange that somebody should have known her, and when once a tramp has had help from a person he hangs on."
She regarded me with a shrewd look.
"You wouldn't take up cudgels for her that way if you didn't know something," she observed.
After that there was nothing for me to say. I simply dropped the subject, and refused to talk about the affairs of the Westons at all. I am so sorry, however, that gossip has got hold of a suspicion. It was to be expected, I suppose, and indeed it has been in the air ever since the man came. I am sorry for the Westons.
October 30. After the earthquake a fire,—I wonder whether after the fire will come the still, small voice! It is curious that out of all this excitement the feeling of which I am most conscious after my dismay and my pity is one of irritation. I am ashamed to find in my thought so much anger against George. He had perhaps a right to think as he did about my affection for him, though it is inconceivable any gentleman should say the things he said to me last night. Even if he were crazy enough to suppose I could still love him, how could he forget his wife; how could he be glad of an excuse to be freed from her; how could he forget the little child that is coming? Oh, I am like Jonah when he was so sure he did well to be angry! I am convinced I can have no just perception of character at all, for this George Weston is showing himself so weak, so ungenerous, so cruel, that he has either been changed vitally or I did not really know him. I was utterly deceived in him. No; I will not believe that. We have all of us possibilities in different directions. I wish I could remember the passage where Browning says a man has two sides, one for the world and one to show a woman when he loves her. Perhaps one side is as true as the other; and what I knew was a possible George, I am sure.
He came in yesterday afternoon with a look of hard determination. He greeted me almost curtly, and added in the same breath:—
"The man is dead. She's confessed it all. He was her husband, and she was never my wife legally at all. She says she thought he was dead."
"Then there's only one thing to do," I answered. "You can get Mr. Saychase to marry you to-day. Of course it can be arranged if you tell him how the mistake arose, and he won't speak of it."
He laughed sneeringly.
"I haven't any intention of marrying her," he said.
"No intention of marrying her?" I repeated, not understanding him. "If the first ceremony wasn't legal, another is necessary, of course."
"She cheated me," he declared, his manner becoming more excited. "Do you suppose after that I'd have her for my wife? Besides, you don't see. She was another man's wife when she came to live with me, and"—
I stared at him without speaking, and he began to look confused.
"No man wants to marry a woman that's been living with him," he blurted out defiantly. "I suppose that isn't a nice thing to say to you, but any man would understand."
I was silent at first, in mere amazement and indignation. The thing seemed so monstrous, so indelicate,so cruel to the woman. She had deceived him and hidden the fact that she had been married, but there was no justice in this horrible way of looking at it, as if her ignorance had been a crime. I could hardly believe he realized what he was saying. Before I could think what to say, he went on.
"Very likely you think I'm hard, Ruth; and perhaps I shouldn't feel so if it hadn't come about through her own fault. If she'd told me the truth"—
"George!" I burst out. "You don't know what you are saying! You didn't take her as your wife for a week or a month, but for all her life."
"She never was my wife," he persisted stubbornly.
I looked at him with a feeling of despair,—not unmixed, I must confess, with anger. Most of all, however, I wanted to reach him; to make him see things as they were; and I wanted to save the poor woman. I leaned forward, and laid my fingers on his arm. My eyes were smarting, but I would not cry.
"But if there were no question of her at all," I pleaded, "you must do what is right for your own sake. You have made her pledges, and you can't in common honesty give them up."
"She set me free from all that when she lied to me. I made pledges to a girl, not to another man's wife."
"But she didn't know. She thought she was free to marry you. She believed she was honestly your wife."
"She never was, she never was."
He repeated it stubbornly as if the fact settled everything.
"She was!" I broke out hotly. "She was your wife; and she is your wife! When a man and awoman honestly love each other and marry without knowing of any reason why they may not, I say they are man and wife, no matter what the law is."
"Suppose the husband had lived?" he demanded, with a hateful smile. "The law really settles it."
"Do you believe that?" I asked him. "Or do you only wish to believe it?"
He looked at me half angrily, and the blood sprang into his cheeks. Then he took a step forward.
"She came between us!" he said, lowering his voice, but speaking with a new fierceness.
I felt as if he had struck me, and I shrank back. Then I straightened up, and looked him in the eye.
"You don't dare to say that aloud," I retorted. "You left me of your own accord. You insult me to come here and say such a thing, and I will not hear it. If you mean to talk in that strain, you may leave the house."
He was naturally a good deal taken aback by this, and perhaps I should not—Yes, I should; I am glad I did say it. He stammered something about begging my pardon.
"Let that go," interrupted I, feeling as if I had endured about all that I could hear. "The question is whether you are not going to be just to your wife."
"You fight mighty well for her," responded George, "but if you knew how she"—
"Never mind," I broke in. "Can't you see I am fighting for you? I am trying to make you see you owe it to yourself to be right in this; and moreover you owe it to me."
"To you?" he asked, with a touch in his voice which should have warned me, but did not, I was so wrapped up in my own view of the situation.
"Yes, to me. I am your oldest friend, don't you see, and you owe it to me not to fail now."
He sprang forward impulsively, holding out both his hands.
"Ruth," he cried out, "what's the use of all this talk? You know it's you I love, and you I mean to marry."
I know now how a man feels when he strikes another full in the face for insulting him. I felt myself growing hot and then cold again; and I was literally speechless from indignation.
"I went crazy a while for a fool with a pretty face," he went rushing on; "but all that"—
"She is your wife, George Weston!" I broke in. "How dare you talk so to me!"
He was evidently astonished, but he persisted.
"We ought to be honest with each other now, Ruth," he said. "There's too much at stake for us to beat about the bush. I know I've behaved like a fool and a brute. I've hurt you and—and cheated you, and you've had every reason to throw me over like a sick dog; but when you made up the money I'd lost and didn't let Mr. Longworthy suspect, I knew you cared for me just the same!"
"Cared for you!" I blazed out. "Do you think I could have ruined any man's life for that? I love you no more than I love any other man with a wife of his own!"
"That's just it," he broke in eagerly. "Of course I knew you couldn't own you cared while she"—
The egotism of it, the vulgarity of it made me frantic. I was ashamed of myself, I was ashamed of him, and I felt as if nothing would make him see the truth. Never in my whole life have I spoken to any humanbeing as I did to him. I felt like a raging termagant, but he would not see.
"Stop!" I cried out. "If you had never had a wife, I couldn't care for you. I thought I loved you, and perhaps I did; but all that is over, and over forever."
"You've said you'd love me always," he retorted.
Some outer layer of courtesy seemed to have cracked and fallen from him, and to have left an ugly and vulgar nature bare. The pathos of it came over me. The pity that a man should be capable of so exposing his baser self struck me in the midst of all my indignation. I could not help a feeling, moreover, that he had somehow a right to reproach me with having changed. Thinking of it now in cooler blood I cannot see that since he has left me to marry another woman he has any ground for reproaching me; but somehow at the moment I felt guilty.
"George," I answered, "I thought I was telling the truth; I didn't understand myself."
The change in his face showed me that this way of putting it had done more to convince him than any direct denial. His whole manner altered.
"You don't mean," he pleaded piteously, "you've stopped caring for me?"
I could only tell him that certainly I had stopped caring for him in the old way, and I begged him to go back to his wife. He said little more, and I was at last released from this horrible scene. All night I thought of it miserably or I dreamed of it more miserably still. That poor woman! What can I do for her? I hope I have not lost the power of influencing George, for I might use it to help her.
November 3. How odd are the turns that fate plays us. Sometimes it seems as if an unseen power were amusing himself tangling the threads of human lives just as Peter has been snarling up my worsted for pure fun. Only a power mighty enough to be able to do this must be too great to be so heartless. I suppose, too, that the pity of things is often more in the way in which we look at them than it is in the turn which fate or fortune has given to affairs. The point of view changes values so.
All this is commonplace, of course; but it is certainly curious that George's wife should be in my house, almost turned out of her husband's. When I found her on the steps the other night, wet with the rain, afraid to ring, afraid of me, and terrified at what had come upon her, I had no time to think of the strange perversity of events which had brought this about. She had left George's house, she said, because she was afraid of him and because he had said she was to go as soon as she was able. He had called her a horrible name, she added, and he had told her he was done with her; that she must in the future take care of herself and not expect to live with him. I know, after seeing the cruel self George showed the other day, that he could be terrible, and he would have less restraint with his wife than with me. In the evening,as soon as it was really dark, in the midst of the storm, she came to me. She said she knew how I must hate her, that she had said horrid things about me, but she had nowhere else to go, and she implored I would take her in. She is asleep now in the south chamber. She is ill, and I cannot tell what the effects of her exposure will be. Dr. Wentworth looks grave, but he does not say what he thinks.
What I ought to do is the question. She has been here two days, and her husband must have found out by this time what I suppose everybody in town knows,—where she is. I cannot fold my hands and let things go. I must send for George, much as I shrink from seeing him. How can I run the risk of having another scene like the one on Friday? and yet I must do something. She can do nothing for herself. It should be a man to talk with George; but I cannot ask Tom. He and George do not like each other, and he could not persuade George to do right to Gertrude. Perhaps Deacon Richards might effect something.
November 5. After all my difficulty in persuading Deacon Richards to interfere, his efforts have come to nothing. George was rude to him, and told him to mind his own affairs. I suppose dear old Deacon Daniel had not much tact.
"I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself," the Deacon said indignantly, "and that he was a disgrace to the town; but it didn't seem to move him any."
"I hope he treated you well," I answered dolefully. "I am sorry I persuaded you to go."
"He was plain enough," Deacon Daniel responded grimly. "He didn't mince words any to speak of."
I must see him myself. I wish I dared consult Tom, but it could not do any good. I must work it out alone; but what can I say?
November 6. Fortunately, I did not have to send for George. He appeared this afternoon on a singular errand. He wanted to pay me board for his wife until she was well enough to go away. I assured him he need not be troubled about board, because I was glad to do what I could for his wife; and I could not help adding that I did not keep a lodging-house.
"I'm willing to be as kind to her while she's here as I can," he assured me awkwardly, "and of course I shall not let her go away empty-handed."
"She is not likely to," I retorted, feeling my cheeks get hot. "Dr. Wentworth says she cannot be moved until after the baby comes."
He flushed in his turn, and looked out of the window.
"I don't think, Ruth," was his reply, "we can discuss that. It isn't a pleasant subject."
There are women, I know, who can meet obstinacy with guile. I begin to understand how it may be a woman will stoop to flatter and seem to yield, simply through despair of carrying her end by any other means. The hardness of this man almost bred in me a purpose to try and soften him, to try to bewitch him, somehow to fool and ensnare him for his own good; to hide how I raged inwardly at his injustice and cruelty, and to pretend to be acquiescent until I had accomplished my end. I cannot lie, however, even in acts, and all that sort of thing is beyond my power as well as my will. I realized how hopeless it was for me to try to do anything with him, and I rose.
"Very likely you are right," I said. "It is evidently useless for us to discuss anything. Now I can only say good-by; but I forbid you to come into my house again until you bring Mr. Saychase with you to remarry you to Gertrude."
He had risen also, and we stood face to face.
"Do you suppose," he asked doggedly, "now I am free I'd consent to marry any woman but you? I'll make you marry me yet, Ruth Privet, for I know perfectly well you love me. Think how long we were engaged."
I remembered the question he asked me when he came back from Franklin after he had seen her: "How long have we been engaged?"
"I shall keep your wife," was all I said, "until she is well and chooses to go. George, I beg of you not to let her baby be born fatherless."
A hateful look came into his eyes.
"I thought you were fond of fatherless babies," he sneered.
"Go," I said, hardly controlling myself, "and don't come here again without Mr. Saychase."
"If I bring him it will be to marry you, Ruth."
Something in me rose up and spoke without my volition. I did not know what I was saying until the words were half said. I crossed the room and rang the bell for Rosa, and as I did it I said:—
"I see I must have a husband to protect me from your insults, and I will marry Tom Webbe."
Before he could answer, Rosa appeared.
"Rosa," I said, and all my calmness had come back, "will you show Mr. Weston to the door. I am not at home to him again until he comes with Mr. Saychase."
She restrained her surprise and amusement better than I expected, but before she had had time to do more than toss her head George had rushed away without ceremony. By this time, I suppose, every man, woman, and child in town knows that I have turned him out of my house.
November 7. "And after the fire a still, small voice!" I have been saying this over and over to myself; and remembering, not irreverently, that God was in the voice.
I have had a talk with Tom which has moved me more than all the trouble with George. The very fact that George so outraged all my feelings and made me so angry kept me from being touched as I might have been otherwise; but this explanation with Tom has left me shaken and tired out. It is emotion and not physical work that wears humanity to shreds.
Tom came to discuss the reading-room. He is delighted that it has started so well and is going on so swimmingly; and he is full of plans for increasing the interest. I was, I confess, so preoccupied with what I had made up my mind to say to him I could hardly follow what he was saying. I felt as if something were grasping me by the throat. He looked at me strangely, but he went on talking as if he did not notice my uneasiness.
"Tom," I broke out at last, when I could endure it no longer, "did you know that Mrs. Weston is here, very ill?"
"Yes," was all he answered.
"And, Tom," I hurried on, "George won't remarry her."
"Won't remarry her?" he echoed. "The cur!"
"He was here yesterday," I went on desperately, "and he said he is determined to marry me."
Tom started forward with hot face and clenched fist.
"The blackguard! I wish I'd been here to kick him out of the house! What did you say to him?"
"I told him he had insulted me, and forbade him to come here again without Mr. Saychase to remarry them," I said. Then before Tom's searching look I became so confused he could not help seeing there was more.
"Well?" he demanded.
He was almost peremptory, although he was courteous. Men have such a way in a crisis of instinctively taking the lead that a woman yields to it almost of necessity.
"Tom," I answered, more and more confused, "I must tell you, but I hope you'll understand. I had a frightful time with him. I was ashamed of him and ashamed of myself, and very angry; and when he said he'd make me marry him sometime, I told him"—
"Well?" demanded Tom, his voice much lower than before, but even more compelling.
"I told him," said I, the blood fairly throbbing in my cheeks, "that I should marry you. You've asked me, you know!"
He grew fairly white, but for a moment he did not move. His eyes had a look in them I had never seen, and which made me tremble. It seemed to me that he was fighting down what he wanted to say, and to get control of himself.
"Ruth," he asked me at last, with an odd hoarseness in his voice, "do you want George Weston to marry that woman?"
"Of course I do," I cried, so surprised and relieved that the question was not more personal the tears started to my eyes. "I want it more than anything else in the world."
Again he was still for a moment, his eyes looking into mine as if he meant to drag out my most secret thought. These silences were too much for me to bear, and I broke this one. I asked him if he were vexed at what I had said to George, and told him the words had seemed to say themselves without any will of mine.
"I could only be sorry at anything you said, Ruth," he returned, "never vexed. I only think it a pity for you to link your name with mine."
I tried to speak, but he went on.
"I've loved you ever since I was old enough to love anything. I've told you that often enough, and I don't think you doubt it. I had you as my ambition all the time I was growing up. I came home from college, and you were engaged, and all the good was taken out of life for me. I've never cared much since what happened. But if I've asked you to love me, Ruth, I never gave you the right to think I'd be base enough to be willing you should marry me without loving me."
Again I tried to speak, though I cannot tell what I wished to say. I only choked and could not get out a word.
"Don't talk about it. I can't stand it," he broke in, his voice husky. "You needn't marry me to make George Weston come up to the mark. I'll take care of that."
I suppose I looked up with a dread of what might happen if he saw George, and of course Tom couldnot understand that my concern was for him and not for George. He smiled a bitter sort of smile.
"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I'll treat him tenderly for your sake."
I was too confused to speak, and I could only sit there dazed and silent while he went away. It was not what he was saying that filled me with a tumult till my thoughts seemed beating in my head like wild birds in a net. Suddenly while he was speaking, while his dear, honest eyes full of pain were looking into mine, the still, small voice had spoken, and I knew that I cared for Tom as he cared for me.
November 8. I realize now that from the morning when Tom and I first stood with baby in my arms between us I have felt differently toward him. It was at the moment almost as if I were his wife, and though I never owned it to myself, even in my most secret thought, I have somehow belonged to him ever since. I see now that something very deep within has known and has from time to time tried to tell me; but I put my hands to the ears of my mind. Miss Fleming used to try to teach us things at school about the difference between the consciousness and the will, and other dark mysteries which to me were, and are, and always will be utterly incomprehensible, and I suppose some kind of a consciousness knew what the will wouldn't recognize. That sounds like nonsense now it is on paper, but it seemed extremely wise when I began to write it. No matter; the facts I know well enough. It is wonderful how a woman will hide a thing from herself, a thing she knows really, but keeps from being conscious she knows by refusing to let her thoughts put it into words.
To myself I seem shamefully fickle,—and yet it seems also as if I had never changed at all, but that it was always Tom I have been fond of, even when I fully believed it was George. Of course this is only a weak excuse; but at least I have been fond of Tom as a friend from my childhood. He has always commanded me, too, in a way. He has done what I wished and what I thought best; but I have always known he could be influenced only so far, and that if I wanted what he did not believe in he could be as stubborn as a rock. The hardness of his mother shows itself in him as the stanch foundation for the gentleness he gets from his father.
Miss Charlotte came in for a moment to-day, and by instinct she knew that something had made me happy. She was full of sympathy for a moment, and then, I think, some suspicion came into her dear old head which she would not have there.
"Ruth, my dear," she said in her rough way, "you look too cheerful for the head of a foundling asylum and a house of refuge. I hope you've made George Weston promise to marry his own wife,—though if I made the laws it wouldn't be necessary for a man to marry a woman more than once. I've no idea of weddings that have to come round once in so often like house-cleaning."