RUTH AND HAROLD.
THERE had been in Judge Erskine's mind a slight sense of wonderment as
to how he should meet his daughter the morning after his astounding
appearance at prayer-meeting. Such a new and singular departure was it,
that he even felt a slight shade of embarrassment.
But, before the hour of meeting her arrived, his thoughts were turned
into an entirely new channel. He met her, looking very grave, and with a
touch of tenderness about his manner that was new to her. She, on her
part, was not much more at rest than she had been the evening before.
She realized that her heart was in an actual state of rebellion against
any form of decided Christian work that she could plan. Clearly,
something was wrong with her. If she had been familiar with a certain
old Christian, she might have borrowed his language to express in part
her feeling.
"To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I
know not." Not quite that, either, for while she said, "I _can't_ do
this thing, or that thing," she was clear-minded enough to see that it
simply meant, after all, "I will not." The will was at fault, and she
knew it. She did not fully comprehend yet that she had set out to be a
Christian, and at the same time to have her own way in the least little
thing; but she had a glimmering sense that such was the trouble.
Her father, after taking surreptitious glances at her pale face and
troubled eyes, decided finally that what was to be said must be said,
and asked, abruptly:
"When did you see Harold, my daughter?"
Ruth started, and the question made the blood rush to her face, she did
not know why.
"I saw him last evening, after prayer-meeting, I believe," she
answered, speaking in her usual quiet tone, but fixing an inquiring look
on her father.
"Did he speak of not feeling well?"
"No, sir; not at all. Why?"
"I hear that he is quite sick this morning; was taken in the night.
Something like a fit, I should judge; may be nothing but a slight
attack, brought on by late suppers. He was at the club last night. I
thought I would call after breakfast, and learn the extent of the
illness. If you want to send a message or note, I can deliver it."
That was the beginning of dreary days. Ruth prepared her note--a tender,
comforting one; but it was brought back to her; and as her father handed
it to her he said:
"He can't read it now, daughter. I dare say it would comfort him if he
could; but he is delirious; didn't know me; hasn't known any one since
he was taken in the night. Keep the letter till this passes off, then he
will be ready for it."
Very kind and sympathetic were Ruth's friends. The girls came to see
her, and kissed her wistfully, with tears in their eyes, but they had
little to say. They knew just how sick her friend was, and they felt as
though there was nothing left to say. Her father neglected his business
to stay at home with her, and in many a little, thoughtful way touched
her heavy heart, as the hours dragged by.
Not many hours to wait. It was in the early dawn of the third morning
after the news had reached her, that the door-bell pealed sharply
through the house. There was but one servant up; she answered the bell.
Ruth was up and dressed, and stood in the hall above, listening for what
that bell might bring to her. She heard the hurried voice at the door;
heard the peremptory order:
"I want to see Judge Erskine right away."
She knew the voice belonged to Nellis Mitchell, and she went down to him
in the library. He turned swiftly at the opening of the door, then stood
still, and a look of blank dismay swept over his face.
"It was your father that I wanted to see," he said, quickly.
"I know," she answered, speaking in her usual tone. "I heard your
message. My father has not yet risen. He will be down presently.
Meantime, I thought you might possibly have news of Mr. Wayne's
condition. Can you tell me what your father thinks of him this morning?"
How very quiet and composed she was! It seemed impossible to realize
that she was the promised wife of the man for whom she was asking.
Nellis Mitchell was distressed; he did not know what to say or do. His
distress showed itself plainly on his face.
"You need not be afraid to tell me," she said, half smiling, and
speaking more gently than she was apt to speak to this young man. It
almost seemed that she was trying to sustain him, and help him to tell
his story. "I am not a child you know," she added, still with a smile.
"You do not know what you are talking about," he said, hoarsely. "Ruth,
won't you please go up-stairs and tell your father I want him as soon as
possible?"
She turned from him half impatiently.
"My father will be down as soon as possible," she said, coldly. "He is
not accustomed to keep gentlemen waiting beyond what is necessary.
Meantime, if you know, will you be kind enough to give me news of Mr.
Wayne? I beg you, Mr. Mitchell, to remember that I am not a silly child,
to whom you need be afraid to give a message, if you have one."
He must answer her now; there was no escape.
"He is," he began, and then he stopped. And her clear, cold, grave eyes
looked right at him and waited. His next sentence commenced almost in a
moan. "Oh, Ruth, you _will_ make me tell you! It is all over. He has
gone."
"Gone!" she repeated, incredulously, still staring at him. "Where is he
gone?"
What an awful question! She realized it herself almost the instant it
passed her lips. It made her shudder visibly. But she neither screamed
nor fainted, nor in any way, except that strange one, betrayed emotion.
Instead, she said:
"Be seated, Mr. Mitchell, and excuse me; father is coming." Then she
turned and went back up-stairs.
He heard her firm step on the stairs as she went slowly up; and this
poor bearer of faithful tidings shut his face into both his hands and
groaned aloud for such misery as could not vent itself in any natural
way. He understood that there was something more than ordinary sorrow in
Ruth's face. It was as if she had been petrified.
Through the days that followed Ruth passed as one in a dream. Everyone
was very kind. Her father showed a talent for patience and gentleness
that no one had known he possessed.
The girls came to see her; but she would not be seen. She shrank from
them. They did not wonder at that; they were half relieved that it was
so. Such a pall seemed to them to have settled suddenly over her life
that they felt at a loss what to say, how to meet her. So when she sent
to them, from her darkened and gloomy room, kind messages of thanks for
their kindness, and asked them to further show their sympathy by
allowing her to stay utterly alone for awhile, they drew relieved sighs
and went away. This much they understood. It was not a time for words.
As for Flossy, she should not have been numbered among them. She did
not call at all; she sent by Nellis Mitchell a tiny bouquet of lilies of
the valley, lying inside of a cool, broad green lily leaf, and on a slip
of paper twisted in with it was written:
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil." How Ruth blessed her for that word! Verily she felt that
she was walking through the very blackest of the shadows! It reminded
her that she had a friend.
Slowly the hours dragged on. The grand and solemn funeral was planned
and the plans carried out. Mr. Wayne was among the very wealthy of the
city. His father's mansion was shrouded in its appropriate crape, the
rooms and the halls and the rich, dark solemn coffin glittering with its
solid silver screws and handles, were almost hidden in rare and costly
flowers. Ruth, in the deepest of mourning robes, accompanied by her
father, from whose shoulder swept long streamers of crape, sat in the
Erskine carriage and followed directly after the hearse, chief mourner
in the long and solemn train.
In every conceivable way that love could devise and wealth carry out,
were the last tokens of respect paid to the quiet clay that understood
not what was passing around it.
The music was by the quartette choir of the First Church, and was like a
wail of angel voices in its wonderful pathos and tenderness.
The pastor spoke a few words, tenderly, solemnly pointing the mourners
to One who alone could sustain, earnestly urging those who knew nothing
of the love of Christ to take refuge _now_ in his open arms and find
rest there.
But alas, alas! not a single word could he say about the soul that had
gone out from that silent body before them; gone to live forever. Was it
possible for those holding such belief as theirs to have a shadow of
hope that the end of such a life as his had been could be bright?
Not one of those who understood anything about this matter dared for an
instant to hope it. They understood the awful solemn silence of the
minister. There was nothing for that grave but silence. Hope for the
living, and he pointed them earnestly to the source of all hope; but for
the dead, silence.
What an awfully solemn task to conduct such funeral services. The pastor
may not read the comforting words: "Blessed are the dead who die in the
Lord," because before them lies one who did not die in the Lord, and
common sense tells the most thoughtless that if those are blessed who
die in the Lord there must be a reverse side to the picture, else no
sense to the statement. So the verse must be passed by. It is too late
to help the dead, and it need not tear the hearts of the living. He can
not read, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."
God forbid, prays the sad pastor in his heart, that mother or father or
friend shall so die as to go to this one, who did not die in the Lord.
We can not even hope for that. All the long line of tender, helpful
verses, glowing with light for the coming morning, shining with
immortality and unending union must be passed by; for each and every one
of them have a clause which shows unmistakably that the immortality is
glorious only under certain conditions, and in this case they have not
been met.
There must in these verses, too, be a reverse side, or else they mean
nothing. What shall the pastor do? Clearly he can only say, "In the
midst of life we are in death." That is true; his audience feel it; and
he can only pray: "So teach _us_ to number our days that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom."
But, oh, how _can_ the mothers stand by open graves wherein are laid
their sons or daughters, and endure the thought that it is a separation
that shall stretch through eternity! How wonderful that any of us are
careless or thoughtless for a moment so long as we have a child or a
friend unsafe!
During all this time of trial Ruth's three friends were hovering around
her, trying by every possible attention and thoughtfulness to help or
comfort her, and yet feeling their powerlessness in such a way that it
almost made them shrink from trying.
"Words are such a mockery," Marion said to her one evening, as they sat
together. "Sometimes I almost hate myself for trying to speak to you at
all. What can any human being say to one who is shrouded in an awful
sorrow?"
Ruth shuddered visibly.
"It _is_ an 'awful' sorrow," she said; "you have used the right word
with which to express it; but there is a shade to it that you do not
understand. I don't believe that by experience you ever will; I pray God
that you may not. Think of burying a friend in the grave without the
slightest hope of ever meeting him in peace again!"
"You have nothing to do with that, Ruth; God is the judge. I don't think
you ought to allow yourself to think of it."
"There I think you are mistaken; I believe I ought to think of it.
Marion, you know, and _I_ know, that there is simply nothing at all on
which to build a hope of meeting in peace the man we buried last week.
You think it almost shocking that I can speak of him in that way; I know
you do. People are apt to hide behind the very flimsiest veil of fancied
hopes when they talk of such things.
"Perhaps a merciful God permits some to hug a worthless hope when they
think of their dead treasures, since it can do no harm to those who are
gone; but I am not one of that class of people. Besides, I am appearing
to you, and everybody, in a false light. I am tired of it. Marion, Mr.
Wayne was not to me what he ought to have been, since I was his promised
wife. You know how I have changed of late; you know there was hardly a
thought or feeling of mine in which he could sympathize; but the worst
of it is, he never did sympathize with me in the true sense; he never
filled my heart.
"My promise to him was one of those false steps that people like me, who
are ruled by society, take because it seems to be the proper thing to do
next, or because we feel it might as well be that as anything; perhaps
because it will please one's father in a business point of view, or
please one's own sense of importance; satisfy one's desire to be
foremost in the fashionable world. I am humiliating myself to tell you,
plainly, that my promise meant not much more than that. I did not
realize how empty it was till I found that all my plans, and aims, and
hopes in life were changed. That, in short, life had come to seem more
to me than a glittering weariness, that was to be borne with the best
grace I could assume. This was nearly all I had found in society, or
hoped to find.
"I followed Mr. Wayne to the grave in the position of chief mourner,
because I felt that it was a token of respect that I owed to the memory
of the man whom I had wronged, and because I felt that the world had no
business with our private affairs; but he was not to me what people
think he was, and I feel as though I wanted you to know it, even though
it humiliates me beyond measure to make the confession. At the same time
I have an awful sorrow, too awful to be expressed in words.
"Marion, I think you will understand what I mean when I say that I
believe I have the blood of a lost soul clinging to my garments. I know
as well as I sit here to-night that I might have influenced Harold Wayne
into the right way. I know his love for me was so sincere, and so
strong, that he would have been willing to try to do almost anything
that I had asked. I believe in my soul that had I urged the matter of
personal salvation on his immediate attention, he would have given it
thought. But I _never_ did--_never_.
"Marion, even on that last evening of his life--I mean before he was
sick--when he himself invited the words, I was silent. I did not mean
to continue so; I meant, when I got ready, to speak to him about this
matter; I meant to do everything right; but I was determined to take my
own time for it, and I took it, and now he is _gone_! Marion, you know
nothing about such a sorrow as that! Now, why did I act in this insane
way?
"I know the reason, one of them at least; and the awful selfishness and
cowardice of it only brands me deeper. It was because I was afraid to
have him become a Christian man! I knew if he did I should have no
excuse for breaking the pledges that had passed between us; in plain
words, I would have no excuse for not marrying him; and I did not want
to do it! I felt that marriage vows would mean to me in the future what
they never meant in the past, and that there was really nothing in
common between Mr. Wayne and myself; that I could not assent to the
marriage service with him, and be guiltless before God. So to spare
myself, to have what looked like a conscientious excuse for breaking
vows that ought never to have been made, I deliberately sacrificed his
_soul_! Marion Wilbur, think of that!"
"You didn't mean to do that!" Marion said, in an awe-stricken voice; she
was astonished and shocked, and bewildered as to what to say.
Ruth answered her almost fiercely:
"No, I didn't mean to; and as to that, I never meant to do anything that
was not just right in my life; but I meant to have just exactly my own
way of doing things, and I tell you I took it. Now, Marion, while I
blame myself as no other person ever can, I still blame others. I was
never taught as I should have been about the sacredness of human loves,
and the awfulness of human vows and pledges. I was never taught that for
girls to dally with such pledges, to flirt with them, before they knew
anything about life or about their own hearts was a sin in the sight of
God. I ought to have been so taught.
"Perhaps if I had had a mother to teach me I should have been different;
but I am not even sure of that. Mothers seem to me to allow strange
trifling with these subjects, even if they do not actually prepare the
way. But all this does not relieve me. I have sinned; no one but myself
understands how deeply, and no one but me knows the bitterness of it.
"Now I feel as though the whole of the rest of my life must be given to
atone for this horrible fatal mistake. I wasted the last hour I ever had
with a soul, and I have before me the awful consciousness that I might
have saved it.
"It is all done now, and can never be undone; that is the saddest part
of it. But there is one thing I can do; I need never live through a like
experience again; I will give the rest of my life to atone for the past;
I will never again be guilty of coming in contact with a soul,
unprepared for death, without urging upon that soul, as often as I have
opportunity, the necessity for preparation; I see plainly that it is the
important thing in life."
There hovered over Marion's mind, while these last sentences were being
spoken, words something like these:
"The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin."
She almost said to Ruth that even for this sin the atonement had been
made; she must not try to make another. But the error that only faintly
glimmered in Ruth's sentence was so mixed with solemn and helpful truth
that she felt at a loss as to whether there was error at all, and so
held her peace.
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