"I didn't come just to make you feel bad, Miss Ruth. I want you to tell
me what I ought to do, what I can do. I ought to do something to help
the girl. Bad as she is, she's sick, and she's a woman. I don't know
where Tom is, and I'm that baby's grandfather." His voice choked, but he
went on. "Of course I ought not to trouble you, but I don't know what to
do, I don't know what to do. My wife"--
The poor old man stopped. He is not polished, but he has the instinct of
a good man to screen his wife, and plainly was afraid he might say
something which would seem to reflect on her.
"My wife," he said, evidently changing the form of his words, "is
dreadfully put out, as she naturally would be, and of course I don't
like to talk much with her about it. I thought you might help me, Miss
Ruth."
Never in my life have I felt more helpless. I tried to think clearly,
but the only thing I could do was to try to comfort him. I have no
remembrance of what I said, and I believe it made very little
difference. What he wanted was sympathy. I had no counsel to give, but I
think I sent Deacon Daniel away somewhat comforted. I could only advise
him to wait and see what was needed. He of course must have thought of
this himself, but he liked to have me agree with him and be good to him.
He will do his duty, and what is more he will do his best, but he will
do it with very little help from Mrs. Webbe, I am afraid. Poor Deacon
Daniel! I could have put my arms round his neck and kissed his
weather-beaten cheek, but he would not have understood. I suppose he
would have been frightened half out of his wits, and very likely would
have thought that I had suddenly gone mad. It is so hard to comfort a
slow-minded person; he cannot see what you mean by a caress. Yet I hope
that Deacon Daniel went away somewhat heartened. Oh, if Tom could only
realize the sorrow I saw in his father's eyes, I think he would have his
punishment.
March 29. When Deacon Webbe said last night that he did not know where
Tom was, I thought for just a moment of the sealed address Tom left me.
I was so taken up with pity, however, that the thought passed from my
mind. After the Deacon was gone I wondered whether I should have spoken
of the letter; but it seemed to me that it was better to have said
nothing. I thought I should open it before saying anything; and I needed
to consider whether the time had come when I was justified in reading
it. Tom trusted me, and I was bound by that; yet surely he ought to be
told the state of things. It was imperative that he should know about
the poor girl. I have never been able to be sure why he did not let his
family know where he was, but I fear he may have quarreled with them.
Now he must be told. Oh, it is such wretched business, so sad and
dreadful!
I went upstairs after thinking by the fire until it had burned to
embers, and indeed until the very ashes were cold. I took out Tom's
letter, and for a moment I was half sick at the thought that he had
degraded himself so. It seemed almost as if in holding his letter I was
touching her, and I would gladly have thrown it in the fire unopened.
Then I was ashamed to be so squeamish and so uncharitable, and realized
how foolish I was. The sealed envelope had in it a card with Tom's
address in New York, and this note:--
"If you open this it must mean that you know. I have nothing to say in
my own defense that you could understand; only this is true, Ruth: I
have never really cared for any woman in the world but you. You will not
believe it, and you will not be likely to find it very easy to forgive
me for saying it now, but it is true. I never knew better how completely
you have possession of me than I do just at this moment, when I know I
am writing what you will read hating me. No, I suppose you can't really
hate anybody; but you must despise me, and it is an insult for me to say
I love you. But I have loved you all my life, and I cannot help it. I
shall go on till I die, even if you do not speak to me again in my whole
life. Do not make me come home unless I must. Forgive me, if you can."
The note had neither end nor beginning. I was so overcome by it all, by
the pity of it, that I could not trust myself to think. I sat down and
wrote to Tom just this message, without salutation or signature:--
"Your father has been here to see me. The Brownrig girl is ill of
pneumonia. Her baby was born night before last, and is alive."
I sent this off to-day. What he will do I cannot tell. I cannot even be
sure what he ought to do, and I had no right to urge him to come or to
stay away. Certainly for him to marry that outcast creature seems
impossible; but if he does not the baby must go through life with a
brand of shame on her. The world is so cruel to illegitimate children!
Perhaps it has to be; at least Father believed that the only
preservation of society lay in this severity; but I am a woman, and I
think of the children, who are not to blame. Things are so tangled up in
human relations that one thread cannot be drawn taut without bringing
about tragedies on other lines.
Yet to marry this girl--Oh, it is not possible! To think of Tom Webbe's
living in the same house with that dreadful creature, of his having it
known that he had married such a woman--
It is horrible, whichever way I look at it. I cannot be kind in my
thoughts to one of them without being cruel to the other. I am so
thankful that I have not to decide. I know I should be too weak to be
just, and then I should be always unhappy at the wrong I had done. Now,
whatever I was called upon to take the responsibility of was done when I
had written to Tom.