THE INVISIBLE IDEAL.
On the flags of a London square, some days later, Ruth repeated the sigh
that had succeeded on Gallow Hill, and once more Christina asked her
what was the matter.
"I was thinking," said Ruth with a confidence born of the former
occasion, "that one day all this, too, would have been more or less
yours."
"All what, pray?"
"Every brick and slate that you can see! All this is part of the Dromard
estate; they own every inch hereabouts."
Christina's next remark was a perfectly pleasant one in itself, only it
referred to a totally different matter. And thus she treated poor Ruth.
At other times she would herself rush into the subject without warning,
and out of it the moment it wearied or annoyed her; to follow her
closely in and out required a nimble tact indeed. Nor was it easy to
know always the right thing to say, or at all delightful to feel that
the right thing to-day might be the wrong thing to-morrow. But into this
one subject Ruth was as ready to enter at a hint from Tiny as she was
now contented to quit it at her caprice. The elder sister's patience and
good temper were alike wonderful, but still more wonderful was her
faith. Instinctively she felt that all was not over between Tiny and
Lord Manister, and like many people who do not pretend to be clever, and
are fond of saying so, she believed immensely in her instincts. It must
not, however, be forgotten that her wishes for Tiny were the very best
she could conceive; and it should be remembered that she had nobody but
Tiny to watch over and care for, to think about and make plans for,
during the long days when Erskine was in the City. This was the great
excuse for Ruth, which never occurred to her husband, and was unknown
even to herself. Christina was her baby, and a very troublesome, bad
baby it was.
But what could you expect? The girl was sufficiently worried and
unsettled; she was suffering from those upsetting fluctuations of mind
which few of her kind entirely escape, but which are violent in
characters that have grown with the emotional side to the sun and the
intellectual side to the wall. In such a case the mind remains hard and
green, while the emotions ripen earlier than need be; and the fault is
the gardener's, and the gardener is the girl's mother. Now Mrs. Luttrell
was a soulless but ladylike nonentity, with an eye naturally blind to
the soul in her girls. All she herself had taught them was an unaffected
manner and the necessity of becoming married. So Ruth had married both
early and well by the favor of the gods, and Christina had restored the
average by committing more follies of all sizes than would appear
possible in the time. That in which Lord Manister was concerned had
doubtless been the most important of the series, but its sting lay
greatly in its notoriety. It had caused a light-hearted girl to see
herself suddenly in the pupils of many eyes, and to recoil in shame from
her own littleness. It had made her hate both herself and the owners of
all those eyes, but men especially, of whom she had seen far too much in
a short space of time. What she had done in England only heightened her
poor opinion of herself now that it was done. She had seen her way to
an incredibly sweet revenge, only to find it incredibly bitter. In
striking hard she had hurt herself most, as Erskine had divined; instead
of satisfying her naturally vindictive feeling toward Lord Manister that
blow had killed it. Now she forgave him freely, but found it impossible
to forgive herself; and so the generosity that was in a disordered heart
asserted itself, because she had omitted to allow for it, not knowing it
was there. Worse things asserted themselves too, such as the very solid
attractions of the position which might have been hers; to these she
could not help being fully alive, though this was one more reason why
she hated herself. Her first judgment on herself, if a mere reaction at
the beginning, became ratified and hardened as time went on. She became
what she had never been before, even when notoriety had made her
reckless--an introspective girl. And that made her twisty and queer and
unaccountable; for, to be introspective with equanimity, you must have a
bluff belief in yourself, which is not necessarily conceit, but Tiny was
not blessed with it.
"She has lost her sense of fun--that's the worst part of the whole
business!" exclaimed Erskine, one night when Christina had gone early to
bed, as she always would now. "She has ceased to be amusing or easily
amused. The empty town is boring her to the bone, and if I don't fix up
our Lisbon trip we shall have her wanting to go back to Australia.
However, I am bound to be in Lisbon by the end of next month, and I'm
keener than ever on having you two with me. I know the ropes out there,
and I could promise you both a good time--but that depends on Tiny. Let
us hope the bay will blow the cobwebs out of her head; she wasn't made
to be sentimental. I only wish I could get her to jeer at things as she
used before we went to Essingham and while we were there!"
"Don't you think it's rather a good thing she has dropped that?" Ruth
asked. "She had no respect for anything in those days."
"And her humor saved her! Pray what does she respect now?"
"Two or three people that I know of--my lord and master for one, and
another person who is only a lord."
"Look here, Ruth, I don't believe it," cried Erskine, who by this time
was pacing his study floor. "Why, she hasn't set eyes on him since the
day she refused him--with variations."
"I know--but she's had time to reflect."
"Then I hope and pray she may never have the opportunity to recant!"
"Well, I won't deny that I hope differently," replied Ruth quietly; "but
I've no reason to suppose there's any chance of it; and whatever
happens, Erskine, you needn't be afraid of my--of my meddling any more."
"My dear girl, I know that," said he cordially enough; "but of course
you tell her you're sorry for this, and you wish that. It's only natural
that you should."
"Ah, I daren't say as much to her as you think," said Ruth, with a nod
and a smile, for she was glad to know more than he did, here and there.
"You needn't be afraid of me; I have little enough influence over her.
She has only once opened her heart to me--once, and that's all."
Which was perfectly true, at the time.
But a few days later the restless girl was seized with a sudden desire
to spend her money (which is really a good thing to do when you are
troubled, if, like Christina, you have the money to spend), and as her
most irregular desires were sure to be gratified by Ruth when they were
not quite impossible, this whim was immediately indulged. It was rather
late in the afternoon, but, on the other hand, the afternoon was
extremely fine; and it was a Thursday, when men stay late in Lombard
Street on account of next day's outward mails. Consequently there was no
occasion for hurry; and so fascinated was Christina with the attractions
and temptations of several well-known establishments, and last, as well
as most of all, with those of the stores, that it was golden evening
before they breathed again the comparatively fresh air of Victoria
Street. It was like Christina to wish, at that hour, to walk home, and
"through as many parks as possible"; it was even more like her to be
extravagantly delighted with the first of these, and to insist on
"shouting" Ruth a penny chair overlooking the ornamental water in St.
James' Park.
Glad as she was to meet her sister's wishes, when she would only express
them, which she was doing with inconvenient freedom this afternoon, Ruth
did take exception to the penny chairs. Her feeling was that for the
two of them to sit down solemnly on two of those chairs was not an
entirely nice thing to do, and certainly not a thing that she would care
to be seen doing. Knowing, however, that this would be no argument with
Tiny, she merely said that it would make them too late in getting home;
and that happened to be worse than none.
"Erskine said he wouldn't be home till eight o'clock; and he told us not
to dress, as plain as he could speak," Tiny reminded her. "The other
parks won't beat this; and you shall not be late, because I'll shout a
hansom, too."
So Ruth made no more objections, though she felt a sufficient number;
and they sat down with their eyes toward the pale traces of a gentle,
undemonstrative September sunset, and were silent. Already the lamps
were lighted in the Mall, where the trees were tanned and tattered by
the change and fall of the leaf; at each end of the bridge, too, the
lamps were lighted, and reflected below in palpitating pillars of fire;
and every moment all the lights burnt brighter. Eastward a bluish haze
mellowed trees and chimneys, making them seem more distant than they
were; the noise of the traffic seemed more distant still, but it
floated inward from the four corners, like the breaking of waves upon an
islet; and here in the midst of it the stillness was strange, and
certainly charming; only Tiny was immoderately charmed. She sat so long
without speaking that Ruth leant back and watched her curiously. Her
face was raised to the pale pink sky, with wide-opened eyes and
tight-shut lips, as though the desires of her soul were written out in
the tinted haze, as you may scratch with your finger in the bloom of a
plum. She never spoke until the next quarter rang out from Westminster
and was lingering in the quiet air, when she said, "Why have we never
done this before, Ruth?"
"Well," answered Ruth, "I never did it myself before to-day; and I must
own I think it's rather an odd thing to do."
"Ah, well, heaven may be odd--I hope it is!"
Ruth began to laugh. "My dear Tiny, you don't mean to say you call this
heavenly?"
"It's near enough," said the young girl.
"But, my dear child, what stuff! The couples keep it sufficiently
earthly, I should say--and the smell of bad tobacco, and that child's
trumpet, and the midges and gnats--but principally 'Arry and 'Arriet."
"Now I just like to see them," said Christina, for once the serious
person of the two, "they're so awfully happy."
"Awfully, indeed!" cried Ruth, with a superior little laugh. "Very
vulgarly happy, I should say!" And Tiny did not immediately reply, but
her eyes had fallen as far as the fretwork of the shabby foliage in the
Mall, over which the sky still glowed; and when she spoke her words were
the words of youthful speculation. She seemed, indeed, to be thinking
aloud, and not at all sure of the sense of her thoughts.
"Very vulgarly happy!" she repeated, so long after the words had been
spoken that it took Ruth some moments to recall them. "I am trying to
decide whether there isn't something rather vulgar about all happiness
of that kind--from the highest to the lowest. Forgive me, dear--I don't
mean anything the least bit personal--I find I don't mean a word I've
said! I wasn't thinking of the happiness itself so much, but of the
desire for it. Oh, there must be something better for a girl to long
for! There _is_ something, if one only knew what it was; but nobody has
ever shown me, for instance. Still there must be something between
misery and marriage--something higher."
Her eyes had not fallen, but they shone with tears.
"I don't know anything higher than marrying the man you love," said Ruth
honestly.
"Ah, if you love him! There is no need for _you_ to know a higher
happiness, even if one were possible in your case. But look at me!"
"You must marry, too," said Ruth with facility.
"As I probably shall; but to be happy, as you are happy, one ought to be
fond of the person first, as you were; and--well, I don't think I have
ever in my life felt as you felt."
"Stuff!" said Ruth, but with as much tenderness as the word would carry.
"I wish it were," returned Christina sadly; "it's the shameful truth. I
have been going over things lately, and that's never a very cheerful
employment in my case, but I think it has taught me my own heart this
time. And I know now that I have never cared for anyone so much as for
myself--much less for Lord Manister! If I had ever really cared for him
I couldn't have treated him as I have done--no, not if he had behaved
fifty times worse in the beginning. I was flattered by him, but I think
I liked him, though I know I was dazzled by--the different things. I
would have married him; I never loved him--nor any of the others!"
"Ah, well, Tiny, I am quite sure he loves you."
"Not very deeply, I hope; I can't altogether believe in him, and I don't
much want to. It is bad enough to have one of them in deadly earnest,"
added Christina after a pause, but with a laugh.
"Is one of them--I mean another one?" asked Ruth, correcting herself
quickly.
Tiny nodded. She would not say who it was. "I don't care for him
either--not enough," she, however, vouchsafed.
"Then you don't think of marrying him, I hope?"
"No, not the man I mean"--she shook her head sadly at trees and sky--"I
like him too much to marry him unless I loved him. Only if anyone else
asked me--someone I didn't perhaps care a scrap for--I don't know what
mightn't happen. I feel so reckless sometimes, and so sick of
everything! This comes of having played at it so often that one is
incapable of the real thing; more than all, it comes of growing up with
no higher ideal than a happy marriage. And there must be something so
much nobler--if one only knew what!"
Very wistfully her eyes wandered over the fading sky. The thin, floating
clouds, fast disappearing in the darkness, were not less vague than her
desires, and not more lofty. Her soul was tugging at a chain that had
been too seldom taut.
"I know of nothing--unless you're a bluestocking," suggested poor Ruth,
"or go in for Woman's Rights!"
Then the sights and sounds of the place came suddenly home to Christina,
and her eyes fell. A child rattled by with an iron hoop. A pleasure
boat, villainously rowed, passed with hoarse shouts through the pillar
of fire below the bridge and left it writhing. Her eyes as she lowered
them were greeted with the smarting smoke of a cigar, and her nostrils
with the smell that priced it. The smoker took a neighboring chair, or
rather two, for he was not without his companion.
Christina was the first to rise.
"I have been talking utter nonsense to you, Ruth," she whispered as they
walked away; "but it was kind of you to let me go on and on. One has
sometimes to say a lot more than one means to get out a little that one
does mean; you must try to separate the little from the lot. I've been
talking on tiptoe--it was good of you not to push me over!"
They crossed the bridge, throbbing beneath the tread of many feet; in
the Mall, under the half-clothed trees, they hailed a hansom, and Ruth
greeted her reflection in the side mirror with a sigh of relief.
"We should never have done this if we hadn't been Australians," she
remarked, as though exceedingly ashamed of what they had done, as indeed
she was.
"Then that's one more good reason for thanking Heaven we _are_
Australians!" answered Tiny, with some of her old spirit. "You may think
differently, Ruth, but for my part that's the one point on which I have
still some lingering shreds of pride."
And that was how Tiny Luttrell opened her heart a second time to Ruth,
her sister, who was of less comfort to her even than before, because now
her open heart was also the cradle of a waking soul. More things than
one need name, for they must be obvious, had of late worked together
toward this awakening, until now the soul tossed and struggled within a
frivolous heart, and its cries were imperious, though ever inarticulate.
To Ruth they were but faint echoes of the unintelligible; scarce
hearing, she was contented not to try to understand. When Tiny said she
had been "talking on tiptoe," to Ruth's mind that merely expressed a
queer mood queerly. She did not see how accurately it figured the young
soul straining upward; indeed the accuracy was unconscious, and
Christina herself did not see this.
Queer as it may have been, her mood had made for nobility, and was,
therefore, memorable among the follies and worse of which, unhappily,
she was still in the thick. It passed from her not to return, yet to
lodge, perhaps, where all that is good in our lives and hearts must
surely gather and remain until the spirit itself goes to complete and to
inhabit a new temple, and we stand built afresh in the better image of
God.