"You are angry," was his response. "When you put on your grand air it is
no use to argue with you; but I've made up my mind to be plain.
Everybody says you took the baby because you are fond of him."
I could feel myself stiffening in manner with every word, but I could
not help it. I had certainly a right to be offended; but I tried to
speak as naturally as I could.
"I don't know, George," was my reply, "what business it is of
everybody's; and if it were, why should I not be fond of Tom?"
He flushed and scowled, and got up from his seat.
"Oh, if you take it that way," he answered, "of course there's nothing
more for me to say."
I was hurt and angry, but before anything more could be said Rosa showed
Tom in. He said good-morning to George stiffly, but Tom is always
instinctively polite, I think. George had toward him an air plainly
unfriendly. I do not understand why George should feel as he does about
my adopting Thomasine, but in any case he has no right to behave as he
did. I felt between the two men as if I were hardly able to keep the
peace, and as if on the slightest provocation, George would fly out. It
was absurd, of course, but the air seemed to be full of unfriendliness.
"I suppose we need not be very long over business," I said, trying with
desperation to speak brightly. "I've been over the papers, Tom, and I
can assure you they are all right. I'm something of a lawyer, you
know."
George interposed, as stiffly as possible, that he must urge me to have
the instrument read aloud, in order that I might realize what I was
doing. I assured him I knew perfectly what the paper was, even if it
were called an instrument.
"Ruth is entirely right," Tom put in emphatically. "There is not the
slightest need of dragging things out."
"I can understand that you naturally would not want any delay," George
retorted sharply.
Tom turned and looked at him with an expression which made George change
color, but before anything worse could be said, I hurried to ask Tom to
ring for Rosa to act as a witness. I looked in my turn at George, and I
think he understood how indignant I was.
"It's outrageous for you to burden yourself with his brat," George
muttered under his breath as Tom went across the room to the bell-rope.
"You forget that you are speaking of my daughter," I answered him, with
the most lofty air I could manage to assume.
He turned on his heel with an angry exclamation, and no more objections
were made. George never showed me this unpleasant side of his character
before in all the years I have known him. For the moment he behaved like
a cad, like nothing else than a cad. Something very serious must have
been troubling him. He must have been completely unstrung before he
could be so disagreeable.
Rosa came in, and the signing was done. After the business was finished
George lingered as if he wished to speak with me. Very likely he wished
to apologize, but my nerves were not in tune for more talk with him,
and in any case it was better to ignore all that had been unpleasant.
"You have no more business, have you, George?" I asked him directly.
"Tom of course will want to see the daughter he has given away. I didn't
let him see her first for fear he'd refuse to part with her."
George had no excuse for staying after that, and he was just leaving the
room when Rosa reappeared with Tomine. The darling looked like a cherub,
and was in a mood truly angelic. George scowled at her as if the dear
little thing had done him some wrong, and hurried away. I do not
understand how he could resist my darling, or why he should feel so
about her. It is, I suppose, friendship for me; but he should realize a
little what a blessing baby is to my lonely life.
Tom stood silent when Rosa took Thomasine up to him. He did not offer to
touch the tiny pink face, and I could fancy how many thoughts must go
through his mind as he looked. While he might not regret the dead woman,
indeed, while he could hardly be other than glad that Julia was not
alive, he must have some feeling about her which goes very deep. I
should think any man who was not wholly hard must have some tenderness
toward the mother of his child, no matter who or what she was. It moves
even me, to think of such a feeling; and I could not look at Tom as he
stood there with the living child to remind him of the dead mother.
It seemed a long time that he looked at baby, and we were all as quiet
as if we had been at prayer. Then Tom of his own accord kissed Tomine.
He has never done it before except as I have asked him. He came over to
me and held out his hand.
"I must go back to haying," he said. Then he held my hand a minute, and
looked into my eyes. "Make her as much like yourself as you can, Ruth,"
he added; "and God bless you."
The tears came into my eyes at his tone, and blinded me. Before I could
see clearly, he was gone. I hope he understood that I appreciated the
generosity of his words.
July 3. I am troubled by the thought of yesterday. George went away so
evidently out of sympathy with what I had done, and very likely thinking
I was unfriendly, that it seems almost as if I had really been unkind. I
must do something to show him that I am the same as ever. Perhaps the
best thing will be to have his wife to tea. My mourning has prevented my
doing anything for them, and secretly, I am ashamed to say, this has
been a relief. I can ask them quietly, however, without other guests.
July 8. I feel a little as if I had been shaken up by an earthquake, but
I am apparently all here and unhurt. Day before yesterday Cousin
Mehitable descended upon me in the wake of her usual telegram,
determined to bear me away to Europe, despite, as she said, all the
babies that ever were born. She had arranged my passage, fixed the date,
engaged state-rooms, and cabled for a courier-maid to meet us at
Southampton; and now I had, she insisted, broken up all her
arrangements.
"It's completely ungrateful, Ruth," she declared. "Here I have been
slaving to have everything ready so the trip would go smoothly for you.
I've done absolutely every earthly thing that I could think of, and now
you won't go. You've no right to back out. It's treating me in a way I
never was treated in my whole life. It's simply outrageous."
I attempted to remind her that she had been told of my decision to stay
at home long before she had made any of her arrangements; but she
refused to listen.
"I could bear it better," she went on, "if you had any decent excuse;
but it's nothing but that baby. I must say I think it's a pretty severe
reflection on me when you throw me over for any stray baby that happens
to turn up."
I tried again to put in a protest, but the tide of Cousin Mehitable's
indignation is not easily stemmed.
"To think of your turning Cousin Horace's house into a foundling
hospital!" she exclaimed. "Why don't you put up a sign? Twenty babies
wouldn't be any worse than one, and you'd be able to make a martyr of
yourself to some purpose. Oh, I've no patience with you!"
I laughed, and assured her that there was no sort of doubt of the truth
of her last statement; so then she changed her tone and begged me not to
be so obstinate.
Of course I could not yield, for I cannot desert baby; and in the end
Cousin Mehitable was forced to give me up as incorrigible. Then she
declared I should not triumph over her, and she would have me know that
there were two people ready and just dying to take my place. I knew she
could easily find somebody.
The awkward thing about this visit was that Cousin Mehitable should be
here just when I had asked the Westons to tea. I always have a late
dinner for Cousin Mehitable, although Hannah regards such a perversion
of the usual order of meals as little less than immoral; and so George
and his wife found a more ceremonious repast than I had intended. I
should have liked better to have things in their usual order, for I
feared lest Mrs. Weston might not be entirely at her ease. I confess I
had not supposed she might think I was endeavoring to impress her with
my style of living until she let it out so plainly that I could not by
any possibility mistake her meaning. She evidently wished me to know
that she saw through my device; and of course I made no explanations.
It was an uncomfortable meal. Cousin Mehitable refused to be
conciliating. She examined the bride through her lorgnette, and I could
see that Mrs. Weston was angered while she was apparently fascinated.
George was taciturn, and I could not make things go smoothly, though I
tried with all my might. By the time the guests went, I felt that my
nerves were fiddlestrings.
"Well," Cousin Mehitable pronounced, as soon as the door had closed
behind them, "of all the dowdy frumps I ever saw, she is the worst. I
never saw anybody so overdressed."
"She was overdressed," I assented; "but you behaved horribly. You
frightened her into complete shyness."
"Shyness! Humph!" was her response. "She has no more shyness than a
brass monkey. That's vulgar, of course, Ruth. I meant it to be to match
the subject."
I put in a weak defense of Mrs. Weston, although I honestly do find her
a most unsatisfactory person. She is self-conscious, and somehow she
does not seem to me to be very frank. Very likely, moreover, she had
been disconcerted by the too evident snubs of my unmanageable cousin.
"If I snubbed her," was the uncompromising rejoinder with which a
suggestion of this sort was met, "I'm sure I am not ashamed of it. To
think of her saying that you evidently wanted to show Tuskamuck how to
do things in style! Does she think any person with style would let her
into the house?"