Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time

“As you please,” replied Ruth; “but people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. But here we are at home; don’t you hear the ‘whir – whir’?”

CHAPTER LXXVII

And now our heroine had become a regular business woman. She did not even hear the whir – whir of the odd lodger in the attic. The little room was littered with newspapers, envelopes, letters opened and unopened, answered and waiting to be answered. One minute she might be seen sitting, pen in hand, trying, with knit brows, to decipher some horrible cabalistic printer’s mark on the margin of her proof; then writing an article for Mr. Walter, then scribbling a business letter to her publishers, stopping occasionally to administer a sedative to Nettie, in the shape of a timely quotation from Mother Goose, or to heal a fracture in a doll’s leg or arm. Now she was washing a little soiled face, or smoothing little rumpled ringlets, replacing a missing shoe-string or pinafore button, then wading through the streets while Boreas contested stoutly for her umbrella, with parcels and letters to the post-office, (for Ruth must be her own servant,) regardless of gutters or thermometers, regardless of jostling or crowding. What cared she for all these, when Katy would soon be back – poor little patient, suffering Katy? Ruth felt as if wings were growing from her shoulders. She never was weary, or sleepy, or hungry. She had not the slightest idea, till long after, what an incredible amount of labor she accomplished, or how her mother’s heart was goading her on.

“Pressing business that Mis. Hall must have,” said her landlady, with a sneer, as Ruth stood her dripping umbrella in the kitchen sink. “Pressing business, running round to offices and the like of that, in such a storm as this. You wouldn’t catch me doing it if I was a widder. I hope I’d have more regard for appearances. I don’t understand all this flying in and out, one minute up in her room, the next in the street, forty times a day, and letters by the wholesale. It will take me to inquire into it. It may be all right, hope it is; but of course I like to know what is going on in my house. This Mis. Hall is so terrible close-mouthed, I don’t like it. I’ve thought a dozen times I’d like to ask her right straight out who and what she is, and done with it; but I have not forgotten that little matter about the pills, and when I see her, there’s something about her, she’s civil enough too, that seems to say, ‘don’t you cross that chalk-mark, Sally Waters.’ I never had lodgers afore like her and that old Bond, up in the garret. They are as much alike as two peas. She goes scratch – scratch – scratch; he goes whir – whir – whir. They haint spoke a word to one another since that child was sick. It’s enough to drive anybody mad, to have such a mystery in the house. I can’t make head nor tail on’t. John, now, he don’t care a rush-light about it; no more he wouldn’t, if the top of the house was to blow off; but there’s nothing plagues me like it, and yet I aint a bit curous nuther. Well, neither she nor Bond make me any trouble, there’s that in it; if they did I wouldn’t stand it. And as long as they both pay their bills so reg’lar, I shan’t make a fuss; I should like to know though what Mis. Hall is about all the time.”

Publication day came at last. There was the book. Ruth’s book! Oh, how few of its readers, if it were fortunate enough to find readers, would know how much of her own heart’s history was there laid bare. Yes, there was the book. She could recall the circumstances under which each separate article was written. Little shoeless feet were covered with the proceeds of this; a little medicine, or a warmer shawl was bought with that. This was written, faint and fasting, late into the long night; that composed while walking wearily to or from the offices where she was employed. One was written with little Nettie sleeping in her lap; another still, a mirthful, merry piece, as an escape-valve for a wretched heartache. Each had its own little history. Each would serve, in after-days, for a land-mark to some thorny path of by-gone trouble. Oh, if the sun of prosperity, after all, should gild these rugged paths! Some virtues – many faults – the book had – but God speed it, for little Katy’s sake!

“Let me see, please,” said little Nettie, attracted by the gilt covers, as she reached out her hand for the book.

“Did you make those pretty pictures, mamma?”

“No, my dear – a gentleman, an artist, made those for me —I make pictures with a-b-c’s.”

“Show me one of your pictures, mamma,” said Nettie.

Ruth took the child upon her lap, and read her the story of Gertrude. Nettie listened with her clear eyes fixed upon her mother’s face.

“Don’t make her die – oh, please don’t make her die, mamma,” exclaimed the sensitive child, laying her little hand over her mother’s mouth.

Ruth smiled, and improvised a favorable termination to her story, more suitable to her tender-hearted audience.

“That is nice,” said Nettie, kissing her mother; “when I get to be a woman shall I write books, mamma?”

“God forbid,” murmured Ruth, kissing the child’s changeful cheek; “God forbid,” murmured she, musingly, as she turned over the leaves of her book; “no happy woman ever writes. From Harry’s grave sprang ‘Floy.’”

CHAPTER LXXVIII

“You have a noble place here,” said a gentleman to Ruth’s brother, Hyacinth, as he seated himself on the piazza, and his eye lingered first upon the velvet lawn, (with its little clumps of trees) sloping down to the river, then upon the feathery willows now dipping their light green branches playfully into the water, then tossing them gleefully up to the sunlight; “a noble place,” said he, as he marked the hazy outline of the cliffs on the opposite side, and the blue river which laved their base, flecked with many a snowy sail; “it were treason not to be poetical here; I should catch the infection myself, matter-of-fact as I am.”

“Do you see that steamer yonder, floating down the river, Lewis?” said Hyacinth. “Do you know her? No? well she is named ‘Floy,’ after my sister, by one of her literary admirers.”

“The – ! your sister? ‘Floy’ – your sister! why, everybody is going mad to know who she is.”

“Exactly,” replied Hyacinth, running his white fingers through his curls; “‘Floy’ is my sister.”

“Why the deuce didn’t you tell a fellow before? I have wasted more pens, ink, and breath, trying to find her out, than I can stop to tell you about now, and here you have kept as mum as a mouse all the time. What did you do it for?”

“Oh, well,” said Hyacinth, coloring a little, “‘Floy’ had an odd fancy for being incog., and I, being in her confidence, you know, was on honor to keep her secret.”

“But she still wishes it kept,” said Lewis; “so her publishers, whom I have vainly pumped, tell me. So, as far as that goes, I don’t see why you could not have told me before just as well as now.”

Hyacinth very suddenly became aware of “an odd craft in the river,” and was apparently intensely absorbed looking at it through his spy-glass.

“Hyacinth! I say, Hyacinth!” said the pertinacious Lewis, “I believe, after all, you are humbugging me. How can she be your sister? Here’s a paragraph in – Sentinel, saying – ” and Lewis drew the paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and put on his glasses with distressing deliberation: “‘We understand that “Floy,” the new literary star, was in very destitute circumstances when she first solicited the patronage of the public; often wandering from one editorial office to another in search of employment, while wanting the commonest necessaries of life.’ There, now, how can that be if she is ‘your sister’? and you an editor, too, always patronizing some new contributor with a flourish of trumpets? Pooh, man! you are hoaxing;” and Lewis jogged him again by the elbow.

“Beg your pardon, my dear boy,” said Hyacinth, blandly, “but ’pon my honor, I haven’t heard a word you were saying, I was so intent upon making out that craft down the river. I’m a little afraid of that fog coming up, Lewis; suppose we join Mrs. Ellet in the drawing-room.”

“Odd – very odd,” soliloquized Lewis. “I’ll try him again. —

“Did you read the panegyric on ‘Floy’ in ‘The Inquisitor’ of this morning?” said Lewis. “That paper, you know, is decidedly the highest literary authority in the country. It pronounces ‘Floy’s’ book to be an ‘unquestionable work of genius.’”

“Yes,” replied Hyacinth, “I saw it. It is a great thing, Lewis, for a young writer to be literarily connected;” and Hyacinth pulled up his shirt-collar.

“But I understood you just now that nobody knew she was your sister, when she first published the pieces that are now collected in that book,” said Lewis, with his characteristic pertinacity.

“There’s that craft again,” said Hyacinth; “can’t you make her out, Lewis?”

“No – by Jove,” replied Lewis, sarcastically; “I can’t make anything out. I never was so be-fogged in my life;” and he bent a penetrating glance on the masked face before him. “It is past my finding out, at least just now; but I’ve a Yankee tongue in my head, so I don’t despair, with time and perseverance;” and Lewis followed Hyacinth into the house.

“Confounded disagreeable fellow,” soliloquized Hyacinth, as he handed him over to a knot of ladies in the drawing-room; “very awkward that paragraph; I wish I had the fellow who wrote it, at pistol-shot distance just now; well, if I am badgered on the subject of ‘Floy’s’ poverty, I shall start a paragraph saying, that the story is only a publisher’s trick to make her book sell; by Jove, they don’t corner me; I have got out of worse scrapes than that before now, by the help of my wits and the lawyers, but I don’t think a paper of any influence would attack me on that point; I have taken care to secure all the more prominent ones, long ago, by judicious puffs of their editors in the Irving Magazine. The only one I fear is the – , and I will lay an anchor to windward there this very week, by praising the editor’s last stupid editorial. What an unmitigated donkey that fellow is.”

CHAPTER LXXIX

“How are you, Walter,” said Mr. Lewis, extending his hand; “fine day; how goes the world with you? They say you are a man who dares to ‘hew to the line, let the chips fly in whose face they will.’ Now, I want you to tell me if ‘Floy’ is really a sister of Hyacinth Ellet, the editor of ‘The Irving Magazine.’ I cannot believe it, though he boasted of it to me the other day, I hear such accounts of her struggles and her poverty. I cannot see into it.”

“It is very easily understood,” said Mr. Walter, with a dark frown on his face; “Mr. Hyacinth Ellet has always had one hobby, namely – social position. For that he would sacrifice the dearest friend or nearest relative he had on earth. His sister was once in affluent circumstances, beloved and admired by all who knew her. Hyacinth, at that time, was very friendly, of course; her husband’s wine and horses, and his name on change, were things which the extravagant Hyacinth knew how to appreciate.

“Hall (‘Floy’s’ husband) was a generous-hearted, impulsive fellow, too noble himself to see through the specious, flimsy veil which covered so corrupt a heart as Hyacinth’s. Had he been less trusting, less generous to him, ‘Floy’ might not have been left so destitute at his death. When that event occurred, Hyacinth’s regard for his sister evaporated in a lachrymose obituary notice of Hall in the Irving Magazine. The very day after his death, Hyacinth married Julia Grey, or rather married her fortune. His sister, after seeking in vain to get employment, driven to despair, at last resorted to her pen, and applied to Hyacinth, then the prosperous editor of the Irving Magazine, either to give her employment as a writer, or show her some way to obtain it. At that time Hyacinth was constantly boasting of the helping hand he had extended to young writers in their extremity, (whom, by the way, he paid in compliments after securing their articles,) and whom, he was constantly asserting, had been raised by him from, obscurity to fame.”

“Well,” said Lewis, bending eagerly forward; “well, he helped his sister, of course?”

“He did no such thing, sir,” said Mr. Walter, bringing his hand down on the table; “he did no such thing, sir; but he wrote her a cool, contemptuous, insulting letter, denying her all claim to talent, (she had sent him some specimen articles,) and advising her to seek some unobtrusive employment, (what employment he did not trouble himself to name,) and then ignored her existence; and this, too, when he was squandering money on ‘distressed’ actresses, etc.”

“Well?” said Mr. Lewis, inquiringly.

“Well, sir, she struggled on bravely and single-handed, with the skeleton Starvation standing by her hearth-stone – she who had never known a wish ungratified during her married life, whose husband’s pride in her was only equalled by his love. She has sunk fainting to the floor with hunger, that her children might not go supperless to bed. And now, when the battle is fought and the victory won, he comes in for a share of the spoils. It is ‘my sister “Floy,”’ and ’tis his ‘literary reputation which was the stepping-stone to her celebrity as a writer.’

“To show you how much ‘his reputation has helped her,’ I will just state that, not long since, I was dining at a restaurant near two young men, who were discussing ‘Floy.’ One says, ‘Have you read her book?’ ‘No,’ said the other, with a sneer, ‘nor do I want to; it is enough for me that Hyacinth Ellet claims her as a sister; that is enough to damn any woman.’ Then,” continued Mr. Walter, “there was an English paper, the editor of which, disgusted with Hyacinth’s toadyisms, fopperies, and impudence while abroad, took occasion to cut up her book (as he acknowledged) because the writer was said to be Ellet’s sister. That is the way his reputation has helped her.”

“No wonder she is at sword’s-point with him,” remarked Mr. Lewis.

“She is not at sword’s-point with him,” replied Mr. Walter. “She simply chooses to retain the position her family assigned her when she was poor and obscure. They would not notice her then; she will not accept their notice now.”

“Where was the old man, her father, all this time?” said Mr. Lewis, “was he alive and in good circumstances?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Walter; “and once in awhile he threw her a dollar, just as one would throw a bone to a hungry dog, with a ‘begone!’”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Mr. Lewis, as he passed out, “what a heartless set.”

CHAPTER LXXX

Ruth returned from her daily walk to the Post Office, one morning, with a bundle of letters, among which was one from Mr. Walter. Its contents were as follows:

“Dear Sister Ruth:

“I wonder if you are enjoying your triumph half as much as I? But how should you, since you do not know of it? Your publishers inform me that orders are pouring in for your book faster than they can supply them. What do you think of that? ‘Floy,’ you have made a decided hit; how lucky that you had the foresight to hold on to your copyright. $800 will not be a circumstance to the little fortune you are going to make. Your success is glorious; but I don’t believe you are half as proud of it as I am.

“And now, I know of what you are thinking as well as if I were by your side. ’Tis of the little exile, ’tis of Katy. You would fly directly to bring her home. Can I be of any service to you in doing this? Business takes me your way day after to-morrow. Can you curb your impatience to see her till then? If so, I will accompany you. Please write me immediately.

“Yours truly, John Walter.

“P. S. – I send you a batch of letters, which came by this morning’s mail, directed to ‘Floy,’ office of the Household Messenger.”

Ruth tossed the “batch of letters” down unopened, and sprang to her feet; she tossed up Nettie; she kissed the astonished child till she was half strangled; she laughed, she cried, and then she sat down with her forehead in both her hands, for a prolonged reverie.

What good news about the book! How could she wait two days before she brought back Katy! And yet it would be a happy thing, that Mr. Walter, whose name was synonymous with good tidings, should be associated with her in the return of the child. Yes, she would wait. And when Katy was secured, what then? Why, she would leave forever a city fraught with such painful associations; she would make her a new home. Home? Her heart leaped! – comforts for Nettie and Katy, – clothes – food, – earned by her own hands! – Tears trickled through Ruth’s fingers, and her heart went out in a murmured prayer to the “God of the widow and fatherless.”

“May I play house with these?” said Nettie, touching Ruth’s elbow, and pointing to the unopened letters.

“No, little puss,” said Ruth, “not yet. Wait a bit till I have glanced at them;” and she broke the seal of one.

It was an offer of marriage from a widower. He had read an article of hers on “Step-Mothers,” and was “very sure that a woman with such views could not fail to make a good mother for his children.” He was thirty-five – good-looking, (every man who had written her a love-letter was!) good disposition – warm-hearted – would love her just as well as if he had never bent an adoring knee to Mrs. Dorrance No. 1 – was not at all set in his ways – in fact preferred she should, in everything, save him the trouble of choice; would live in any part of the Union she desired, provided she would only consent to the union. These last two words Mr. Dorrance had italicised, as indicating, probably, that he considered it a pun fit even for the critical eye of an authoress.

“Oh, pshaw!” said Ruth, throwing the letter to Nettie, “make anything you like of it, pussy; it is of no value to me.” The next letter ran as follows:

“Madam:

“I have the honor to be guardian to a young Southern lady (an orphan) of large fortune, who has just completed her education. She has taken a suite of apartments, and given me orders to furnish them without regard to expense, according to her fancy. I have directions to procure busts of Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, and several other distinguished female writers, among whom Miss Le Roy includes ‘Floy,’ (I have not the pleasure, madam, of knowing your true name,) with whose writings she has become familiar, and who is as great a favorite with her as she is with the multitude who have paid tribute to her genius.

“Please send me a line, (my address as below,) allowing me to inform my ward how her favorite wish can be best carried out.

“Yours truly, Thomas Pearce.”

Ruth glanced around her little dark room and smiled. “I would rather, instead, that an artist would take a sketch of my room, now,” said she; “that little black stove, where I have so often tried in vain to thaw my frozen fingers – that rickety old bed – the old deal table, with its yellow bowl of milk – that home-made carpet – those time-worn chairs – and then you, my little bright fairy, in the foreground;” and she pushed back the soft, glossy curls from Nettie’s fair brow.

“No, no,” said Ruth, “better reserve the niche destined for ‘Floy’ for some writer to whom ambition is not the hollow thing it is to me.

“Well, what have we here? Another letter?” Ruth broke the seal of letter No. 3, and read:

“Dear Madam:

“I am a poor devil, and worse editor; nevertheless, I have started a paper. If you will but allow me to put your name on it as Assistant Editress, I am sure it will go like a locomotive. If, in addition to this little favor, you could also advance me the sum of one hundred dollars, it would be an immense relief to your admirer,

“John K. Staples.

“P. S. – Be sure you direct to John K. Staples, as there is another John Staples in this place, who is a great rascal.

“J. K. S.”

“Well!” exclaimed Ruth, “I did not believe I should ever be astonished again, but then – I had not heard from Mr. Staples. But here is another letter. Let us see what the contents of No. 4 are.”

Letter No. 4 ran as follows:

“Dear ‘Floy’:

“I am a better son, a better brother, a better husband, and a better father, than I was before I commenced reading your articles. May God bless you for the words you have spoken (though unintentionally) so directly to me. May you be rewarded by Him to whom the secrets of all hearts are known.

“Your grateful friend, M. J. D.”

“This will repay many a weary hour,” said Ruth, as her tears fell upon the page.

CHAPTER LXXXI

The rain had poured down without mitigation for seven consecutive days; the roads were in a very plaster-y state; dissevered branches of trees lay scattered upon the ground; tubs and hogsheads, which careful housewives had placed under dripping spouts, were full to overflowing; the soaked hides of the cattle looked sleek as their owners’ pomatum’d heads of a Sunday; the old hen stood poised on one leg at the barn-door, till even her patience had given out; the farmers had mended all the old hoe and rake handles, read the Almanac through and through, and worn all the newspapers and village topics threadbare, when the welcome sun at last broke through the clouds, and every little and big puddle in the road hastened joyfully to reflect his beams.

Old Doctor Hall started down cellar for his “eleven o’clock mug of cider;” to his dismay he found his slippered pedestals immersed in water, which had risen above the last step of the cellar-stairs.

“A pretty piece of work this rain has made, Mis. Hall,” said the doctor, stamping his wet feet and blowing his nose, as he returned from his visit to the lower regions; “the water has overflowed the cellar, and got most up to those hams that you set such store by. You’d better tell Bridget to climb over the heads of those barrels, and get the hams out before they are clean sp’iled.”

Before the last words had fairly left the doctor’s mouth the old lady’s cap-strings were seen flying towards the kitchen.

“I shan’t do it, for anybody,” exclaimed the new help, as she placed her red arms a-kimbo. “I’m not going to risk my neck going over those tittlish barrels in that dark cellar, for all the hams that was ever cured.”

“You can carry a lamp with you,” suggested the old lady.

“I shan’t do it, I tell you,” said the vixen; “help is skerse out here in the country, and I can get a new place before sundown, if I like.”

“Katy!” screamed the old lady, with a shrill voice, “Katy!”

Katy started from her corner and came out into the entry, in obedience to the summons.

“Come here, Katy; Bridget is as contrary as a mule, and won’t go into the cellar to get those hams. I cannot go in after ’em, nor the doctor either, so you must go in and bring them out yourself. Climb up on those barrel heads, and then feel your way along to the further corner; go right down the cellar-stairs now, quick.”

“Oh, I cannot! I dare not!” said Katy, trembling and shrinking back, as the old lady pushed her along toward the cellar-door.

“I’m so afraid,” said the child, peeping down the cellar-stairs, with distended eyes, “oh, don’t make me go down in that dark place, grandma.”

“Dark, pooh!” said the old lady; “what are you afraid of? rats? There are not more than half-a-dozen in the whole cellar.”

“Can’t Bridget go?” asked Katy; “oh, I’m so afraid.”

“Bridget won’t, so there’s an end of that, and I’m not going to lose a new girl I’ve just got, for your obstinacy; so go right down this minute, rats or no rats.”

“Oh, I can’t! if you kill me I can’t,” said Katy, with white lips, and clinging to the side of the cellar door.

“But I say you shall,” said the old lady, unclinching Katy’s hands; “don’t you belong to me, I’d like to know? and can’t I do with you as I like?”

“No!” said Ruth, receiving the fainting form of her frightened child; “no!”

“Doctor! doctor!” said the old lady, trembling with rage; “are you master in this house or not?”

“Yes – when you are out of it,” growled the doctor; “what’s to pay now?”

“Why, matter enough. Here’s Ruth,” said the old lady, not noticing the doctor’s taunt; “Ruth interfering between me and Katy. If you will order her out of the house, I will be obliged to you. I’ve put up with enough of this meddling, and it is the last time she shall cross this threshold.”