BITTER HERBS.
THE morning of the night which had closed in gloom, opened to Ruth
Erskine with a faint promise of better things. Not so much that,
either; rather, she resolved on heroism. The sun shone, and the air
was fresh with the breath of coming spring. The outlook seemed more
hopeful. Ruth resolved upon trying Flossy’s way. She would pray about
this matter; she would nerve herself for duty and trial: she would
bear whatever of disagreeableness came athwart her plans. No matter
how obstinate or offensive this new woman proved herself to be on
the question of wardrobe, she would bravely face the ordeal, and do
what she could. No amount of offensiveness should cause her to lose
self-control. It was childish and useless to yield in this way, and
let inevitable trials crush one. She did not mean to do it. Her father
should see that she could be as strong over _real_ trials, as Flossy
Shipley could be over imaginary ones; for what had that little kitten
ever had to try her? This Ruth said, with a curl of her handsome upper
lip.
She went about her morning duties with something like the briskness
of her old life, and settled herself to Bible-reading, resolved on
finding something to help her. She had not yet learned the best ways
of reading in the Bible; indeed, she had not given that subject the
attention which Flossy had. To begin a chapter, and read directly and
seriously through it, getting what information she could, was the most
that she, as yet, knew about the matter. And the chapter occurring next
to the one that she read yesterday was the fifth of Romans: “Therefore
being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein
we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so,
but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh
patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” Thus on,
through the solemn and wonderful chapter, heeding the words indeed;
getting some sort of idea of St. Paul’s meaning, and yet not making his
experience personal, in the least; not realizing that the sentence,
“We have peace with God,” included Ruth Erskine; not seeing, at least,
that it was a present promise, referring to present experience; not
realizing anything, save a desire to be armed for unpleasant and
continuous duties, and a dim idea that reading the Bible was one of the
preparations which were given her to make. In much the same spirit, she
knelt to pray. She was humble, she was reverent, she was in earnest,
she prayed for strength, for wisdom, for patience; and the words were
strictly proper, and in accordance with the desires. The prayer, to a
listener, would have breathed the spirit of confidence and faith; yet
it must be confessed that Ruth Erskine arose from her knees without any
sense of having really communed with Christ, without any realization
of his presence, and without any very definite expectation of receiving
actual, practical benefit from the exercise. She did not realize the
feeling, and yet she possessed somewhat of the same spirit of the child
who prayed: “Dear Jesus, help me to be good to-day. I know I can be
good if I try, and I intend to try; but you can help me if you want
to!” Remember, I do not say that she realized it; but that does not
alter the fact that she went out from her room, to meet the trials of
the day, strong in the strength of her own resolves. She repaired at
once to Mrs. Judge Erskine’s room, determined to be very composed and
patient, and to combat whatever disagreeable or dissenting thing might
be said with forbearance and kindness.
Mrs. Erskine’s objection to new and fine clothing must be overcome,
but it should be done wisely. She resolved to say nothing to Susan
beforehand. She would not admit, even to herself, that her father’s
evident confidence in Susan’s powers was a trial to her; but, all the
same, she determined to show him that she, too, had powers, and that
she could manage matters without Susan’s help.
Alas for Ruth! Mrs. Erskine was not in the least averse to
fine feathers. She was not lofty, nor angry, nor hurt; she was
good-naturedly and ungrammatically and exasperatingly loquacious. It
would have been much easier for Ruth to endure ill-temper. She was
nerved for that. Unconsciously she had planned for and prayed for
self-control, to enable her to endure, not what she would meet in Mrs.
Erskine, but what she would have had to contend with in herself, had
she been in Mrs. Erskine’s place; and as, given the same circumstances,
the two would act in a totally different manner, failure was inevitable.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Erskine, heartily, in answer to Ruth’s low knock.
“Land alive! come right in, don’t stop to rap. What’s the use of being
so particular with one’s folks? I been a wishin’ you would run in and
have a chat. I was tellin’ your pa, only last night, how chirk and
nice we could all be here, if you would be sort of sociable, you know,
and not so stiff and proud-like. Not that you mean to be proud, I
s’pose; Susan says you don’t. She says it’s natural for some folks to
be haughty. I s’pose it is. But, land alive! I’m glad I’m not one of
them kind. Haughty folks always did shrivel me right up. Set down here
by the fire. I think these grates is real comfortable. I told your
pa, last night, that I wouldn’t have shivered over an old barn of a
wood-stove, all these years, if I’d known what comfortable things there
was in the world. How dreadful pale you look! Is it natural for you to
look so like a ghost all the time?”
“I am not accustomed to having a great deal of color in my face, I
believe,” Ruth answered, sitting squarely and stiffly in the most
uncomfortable chair she could find in the room, and feeling, just then,
that to be an actual ghost would be a positive relief.
“Well, now, I don’t believe it’s nature for any human being to be so
like a sheet as that. If I was your pa, I’d have you through a course
of medicine in less than no time. You need strengthenin’ up. You ought
to have some Peruvian bark, or some quassia chips, or some kind of
bitter stuff steeped up for you to drink. It would do you a power of
good, I know it would. You jest let me fix you up a mess, like I do
Susan, and see what it’ll do for you. S’prise your pa with the change
in you, I dare say.”
Poor Ruth! She felt as though stuff that was bitter enough had been
mixed and steeped, and held to her lips, and that she was being obliged
to drink it to the very dregs. _Did_ she need it? Was it possible that
the Divine Physician saw her need of such bitter herbs as these which
had fallen to her lot? She started, and even flushed a little over the
sudden thought. _She_ did not believe it. This was her _father’s_ sin,
not hers. It had only fallen upon her because of the old, solemn law:
“The iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children.” She
hurried her thoughts away from it. It would not do to sit in that room,
with that woman staring at her, and indulge in questionings like these.
“I came in to see if I could be of any assistance to you in the way of
shopping. You will need something new, I suppose, before the gathering
of friends which my father proposes to have.”
Ruth had decided to take it as a matter of course that new garments
were to be bought, and thus forestall, if she could, haughty
objections. She need not have been thus careful. Mrs. Erskine had
stated truly that she was not one of the “haughty” sort. She had no
objection to any number of new dresses, and to their being made as
elaborately as possible.
“Now you speak of it, I dare say I do,” she said, leaning back
complacently in her comfortable little rocker. “In fact, your pa spoke
of that very thing this morning. He said like enough you would ’tend
to it, and he filled my pocket-book up handsome. There ain’t a stingy
streak about your pa. I knew that, years and years ago, when he was
a young man. It was the very first thing that drawed me to him—the
free kind of way in which he threw around his money. It seemed so
noble-like, specially when I was drivin’ every nerve to keep soul and
body together, and lived among folks that didn’t dare to say their
bodies was their own, for fear they would have ’em seized on for debt,
and took to jail. I tell you that was livin’! You don’t know nothing
about it, and I hope to the land that you never will.”
What could Ruth do but groan inwardly, and wish that her father had
been, in his youth, the veriest miser that ever walked the earth!
Anything, so that this terrible woman would not have been “drawed” to
him. She tried to hurry the question:
“What have you thought of getting?” she asked, nervously twisting
and untwisting the tassels of the tidy against which she leaned, and
feeling disagreeably conscious that a glow of color had mounted to her
very temples in her efforts at self-control.
“Land alive, I don’t know. I’ve thought of a dozen different dresses
since your pa told me this morning what he wanted. He wants things to
be awful nice, I can see that; and why shouldn’t he? A man that’s got
money and is free with it has a right to say what he will have, I’m
sure. I think it ought to be something bright, like something—well,
_bridie_, you know.”
This last with such a distressing little simper that it was almost more
than Ruth could do to keep from rushing from that awful room, and
declaring to her father that she would have no more to do with this
thing. He should fight his dreadful battles alone. But outwardly she
held still, and the shrill, uncultured little voice went on:
“You see I _am_ almost like a bride, meeting your pa’s friends so for
the first time, though land knows it is long enough ago that I planned
what to wear when I should meet ’em. It took longer to get ready than I
expected.”
There was not even a spice of bitterness in this sentence. If there had
been—if there had been a suggestion that this woman felt somewhat of
her own wrongs, Ruth thought that she could have borne it better. But
the tone was simply contemplative, as of one who was astonished, in a
mild way, over the tragedy that life had managed to get up for her.
“You see,” she continued, “I hadn’t a chance for much dressin’ or
thinkin’ about it; your pa was so weak that I had about all I could
do to fix bitters and things, and manage to keep the breath of life
in his body. And many’s the time when I thought he’d beat, and die
right before my face and eyes in spite of me. Then he went off on
that journey afore he was able, and I’ve always believed, and always
shall, that he didn’t rightly know what he was about after that, for
quite a spell. So now I think more than likely it would please him to
have things kind of gay and lively. I ain’t said anything about it
to Susan—she ha’n’t no special interest in dressing up, anyway, and
she and I don’t always agree about what looks nice, but I think your
pa would like it if I had a green silk—bright, rich green, you know,
nothing dull and fady. I saw one when I was a girl—fact is, I sewed on
it—and it was for a bride, too, and I said to myself then, says I, ‘If
_I’m_ ever a bride, I’ll have a dress as much like this as two peas.’
I’ve been a good while about it, but that’s neither here nor there.
I’ve got a beautiful red bow; that wide, rich-looking kind of ribbon;
a woman give it to me for tending up to her poor girl afore she died.
She had the consumption, and I took care of her off and on a good share
of the fall, and she give me this ribbon. It’s real nice, though land
knows I didn’t want pay for doing things for her poor girl. ’Twan’t
_pay_, neither, for the matter of that; it was just to show they felt
grateful, you know, and I’ve always set store by that ribbon. I’ve
never wore it, because Susan she thought it wan’t suited to our way of
livin’ and no more it wan’t, though we lived nice enough in a small
way. Your pa never skimped us on money, though, land alive! I didn’t
dream of his havin’ things about him like he has, and I was always for
tryin’ to lay up, ’cause I didn’t know how much money he had, and I
didn’t know but he’d come to poverty some day. Rich folks do, and I was
for savin’, and Susan didn’t object. Susan is a good girl as ever was.
And so the red bow is just as nice as ever it was—not a mite soiled nor
nothing, and I think it would go lovely with a green silk dress, don’t
you?”
“No,” said Ruth, severely and solemnly. Not another word could she have
forced her white lips to say, and I don’t know how to explain to you
what awful torture this talk was to her. The truth is, to those of you
who do not, because of a fine subtle, inner sympathy, understand it
already, it is utterly unexplainable.
“Land alive!” said Mrs. Erskine, startled by the brief, explosive
answer, and by the white, set lips, “don’t you? Now, I thought you
would. You dress so like a picture yourself, I thought you would know
all about it, and your pa said you knew what was what as well as the
next one.”
Think of Judge Erskine’s aristocratic lips delivering such a sentence
as that!
“Now, I had a geranium once, when I was a girl. It was the only pretty
thing I had in the world, and I set store by it, for more reasons
than one. It was give to me by my own aunt on my father’s side. It
was pretty nigh all she had to give, poor thing! They was dreadful
poor like the rest of us, and she give me this the very winter she
died. I had it up in my room, and it kept a blowing and blowing all
winter long—I never see the like of that thing to blow! And I used to
stand and look at it, just between daylight and dark. It stood right
by my one window, where the last streak of daylight come in, and I
used to squeeze in there between the table and the wall to make my
button-holes, and when it got so dark I jest couldn’t take another
stitch, I’d stand and look at the thing all in blow, and I thought I
never see anything so pretty in all my life, and I made up my mind then
and there, that a green silk dress, about the color of them leaves, and
a red ribbon about the color of them blossoms, would be the prettiest
thing to wear in the world. I got the bow a good many years ago, and I
was always kind of savin’ on it up, waiting for the dress.” Just here
there was the faintest little breath of a sigh. “But, then, if you
don’t think it would be the thing, why I’m willing to leave it to you.
Your pa said you’d see that everything was ship-shape.”
“I think,” said Ruth, and her voice was hollow, even to herself, “I
think that my father’s taste would be a plain, black silk, with white
lace at the throat. If you desire to please him, I am sure you will
make that choice.”
“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Judge Erskine, and she couldn’t help looking a
bit dismayed. “Land alive! do you think so? Black! why it will make
folks think of a funeral, won’t it?”
“No,” said Ruth, “black is worn on all occasions by persons who know
enough to wear it.” Then she arose. She had reached the utmost limit
of endurance. Another sentence from this woman she felt would have
driven her wild. Yet she was doomed to hear one more before she closed
the door after herself.
“Well, now, if you honestly think it will be best, I s’pose I’ll agree
to it, as your pa seemed to think things must go your way. But I don’t
quite like it, jest because it seems kind of bad luck. I don’t believe
them notions about black clothes at merry-makings, you know, though
when I was a girl folks honestly thought so, and it seems kind of
pokerish to run right into ’em. I never would begin to clean house of a
Friday—some bad luck was sure to come; and as for seein’ the moon over
my left shoulder, I won’t do it, _now_—not if I can help it. But black
silk ain’t so funeral as bombazine and such, and I s’pose—”
Here Ruth slammed the door, and put both trembling hands to her ears,
and ran across the hall to the refuge of her own room, and closed, and
locked, and _bolted_ her door.
As for Mrs. Erskine, she relapsed of necessity into silence, and for
the space of five minutes ceased her rocking and looked meditatively
into the glowing grate. Then she arose, and for the second time that
morning her speech was heralded by the breath of a sigh, as she said
aloud, “I ain’t no ways certain that I can ever make head or tail to
that girl.” Then she went to her new and elegant dressing-bureau, and
opened a drawer, and drew from under a pile of snowy clothing a little
box, and took therefrom, wrapped in several folds of tissue paper, the
treasured bow. She had kept it choicely for fourteen years, always with
a dim sense of feeling that the time might come when life would so have
opened to her that she would be able to add to it the green silk dress,
and appear in triumph. Besides, it represented to her so much gratitude
and affection, and there was actually on her small, worn, withered
face, the suspicion of a tear, as she carefully folded and replaced it.
Her audible comment was: “A black silk dress and a white lace bow! land
alive!”