Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time

CHAPTER XLII

“Some folks’ pride runs in queer streaks,” said Betty, as she turned a beefsteak on the gridiron; “if I lived in such a grand house as this, and had so many fine clothes, I wouldn’t let my poor cousin stand every Monday in my kitchen, bending over the wash-tub, and rubbing out her clothes and her children’s, with my servants, till the blood started from her knuckles.”

“Do you know what dis chil’ would do, if she were Missis Ruth Hall?” asked Gatty. “Well, she’d jess go right up on dat shed fronting de street, wid ’em, and hang ’em right out straight before all de grand neighbors, and shame Missus Millet; dat’s what dis chil’ would do.”

“Poor Mrs. Ruth, she knows too much for that,” replied Betty; “she shoulders that great big basket of damp clothes and climbs up one, two, three, four flights of stairs to hang them to dry in the garret. Did you see her sit down on the stairs last Monday, looking so pale about the mouth, and holding on to her side, as if she never would move again?”

“Yes, yes,” said Gatty, “and here now, jess look at de fust peaches of de season, sent in for dessert; de Lor’ he only knows what dey cost, but niggers musn’t see noffing, not dey, if dey wants to keep dere place. But white folks is stony-hearted, Betty.”

“Turn that steak over,” said Betty; “now get the pepper; work and talk too, that’s my motto. Yes, Gatty, I remember when Mrs. Ruth’s husband used to ride up to the door of a fine morning, and toss me a large bouquet for Mrs. Millet, which Mrs. Ruth had tied up for her, or hand me a box of big strawberries, or a basket of plums, or pears, and how all our folks here would go out there and stay as long as they liked, and use the horses, and pick the fruit, and the like of that.”

“Whar’s her brudder, Massa Hyacinth? Wonder if he knows how tings is gwyin on?” asked Gatty.

“He knows fast enough, only he don’t know,” replied Betty, with a sly wink. “I was setting the table the other day, when Mrs. Millet read a letter from him to her husband. It seems he’s got a fine place in the country, where he lives with his new bride. Poor thing, I hope he won’t break her heart, as he did his first wife’s. Well, he told how beautiful his place was, and how much money he had laid out on his garden, and hot-house, and things, and invited Mrs. Millet to come and see him; and then he said, ‘he ’sposed Mrs. Ruth was getting on; he didn’t know anything about her.’”

“Know about de debbel!” exclaimed Gatty, throwing down the pepper castor; “wonder whose fault dat is, Betty? ’Spose all dese folks of ours, up stairs, will go to de bressed place? When I heard Massa Millet have prayers dis morning, I jess wanted to ask him dat. You ’member what our minister, Mr. Snowball, said las’ Sunday, ’bout de parabola of Dives and Lazarus, hey?”

“Parable,” said Betty contemptuously; “Gatty, you are as ignorant as a hippopotamus. Come, see that steak now, done to a crisp; won’t you catch it when you take it into breakfast. It is lucky I can cook and talk too.”

CHAPTER XLIII

“Something for you, ma’am,” said the maid-of-all-work to Ruth, omitting the ceremony of a premonitory knock, as she opened the door. “A bunch of flowers! handsome enough for Queen Victory; and a basket of apples all done up in green leaves. It takes widders to get presents,” said the girl, stowing away her tongue in her left cheek, as she partially closed the door.

“Oh, how pretty!” exclaimed little Nettie, to whom those flowers were as fair as Eve’s first view of Paradise. “Give me one posy, mamma, only one;” and the little chubby hands were outstretched for a tempting rose-bud.

“But, Nettie, dear, they are not for me,” said Ruth; “there must be some mistake.”

“Not a bit, ma’am,” said the girl, thrusting her head into the half-open door; “the boy said they were ‘for Mrs. Ruth Hall,’ as plain as the nose on my face; and that’s plain enough, for I reckon I should have got married long ago, if it hadn’t been for my big nose. He was a country boy like, with a ploughman’s frock on, and was as spotted in the face as a tiger-lily.”

“Oh! I know,” replied Ruth, with a ray of her old sunshiny smile flitting over her face; “it was Johnny Galt; he comes into market every day with vegetables. Don’t you remember him, Katy? He used to drive our old Brindle to pasture, and milk her every night. You know dear papa gave him a suit of clothes on the Fourth of July, and a new hat, and leave to go to Plymouth to see his mother? Don’t you remember, Katy, he used to catch butterflies for you in the meadow, and pick you nosegays of buttercups, and let you ride the pony to water, and show you where the little minnies lived in the brook? Have you forgotten the white chicken he brought you in his hat, which cried ‘peep – peep,’ and the cunning little speckled eggs he found for you in the woods, and the bright scarlet partridge berries he strung for a necklace for your throat, and the glossy green-oak-leaf-wreath he made for your hat?”

“Tell more – tell more,” said Katy, with eyes brimming with joy; “smile more, mamma.”

Aye, “Smile more, mamma.” Earth has its bright spots; there must have been sunshine to make a shadow. All hearts are not calloused by selfishness; from the lips of the honest little donor goeth up each night and morning a prayer, sincere and earnest, for “the widow and the fatherless.” The noisome, flaunting weeds of earth have not wholly choked the modest flower of gratitude. “Smile more, mamma!”

How cheap a thing is happiness! Golconda’s mines were dross to that simple bunch of flowers! They lit the widow’s gloomy room with a celestial brightness. Upon the dingy carpet Ruth placed the little vase, and dimpled limbs hovered about their brilliant petals; poising themselves daintily as the epicurean butterfly who circles, in dreamy delight, over the rose’s heart, longing, yet delaying to sip its sweets.

A simple bunch of flowers, yet oh, the tale they told with their fragrant breath! “Smile, mamma!” for those gleeful children’s sake; send back to the source that starting tear, ere like a lowering cloud it o’ercasts the sunshine of those beaming faces.

CHAPTER XLIV

“My dear,” said Mrs. Millet as the servant withdrew with the dessert, “Walter has an invitation to the Hon. David Greene’s to-night.”

No response from Mr. Millet, “the wooden man,” one of whose pleasant peculiarities it was never to answer a question till the next day after it was addressed to him.

Mrs. Millet, quite broken in to this little conjugal eccentricity, proceeded; “It will be a good thing for John, Mr. Millet; I am anxious that all his acquaintances should be of the right sort. Hyacinth has often told me how much it made or marred a boy’s fortune, the set he associated with. Herbert Greene has the air of a thorough-bred man already. You see now, Mr. Millet, the importance of Hyacinth’s advice to us about five years ago, to move into a more fashionable neighborhood; to be sure rents are rather high here, but I am very sure young Snyder would never have thought of offering himself to Leila had not we lived at the court-end of the town. Hyacinth considers it a great catch in point of family, and I have no doubt Snyder is a nice fellow. I wish before you go, Mr. Millet, you would leave the money to buy Leila a velvet jacket; it will not cost more than forty dollars (lace, trimmings, and all); it will be very becoming to Leila. What, going? oh, I forgot to tell you, that Ruth’s father was here this morning, bothering me just as I was dressing my hair for dinner. It seems that he is getting tired of furnishing the allowance he promised to give Ruth, and says that it is our turn now to do something. He is a great deal better off than we are, and so I told him; and also, that we were obliged to live in a certain style for the dear children’s sake; beside, are we not doing something for her? I allow Ruth to do her washing in our kitchen every week, provided she finds her own soap. Stop a minute, Mr. Millet; do leave the forty dollars for Leila’s jacket before you go. Cicchi, the artist, wants her to sit for a Madonna, – quite a pretty tribute to Leila’s beauty; he only charges three hundred dollars; his study is No. 1, Clive street.”

“S-t-u-d-i-o,” said Mr. Millet, (slowly and oracularly, who, being on several school committees, thought it his duty to make an extra exertion, when the king’s English was misapplied;) “s-t-u-d-i-o, Mrs. Millet;” and buttoning the eighth button of his overcoat, he moved slowly out the front door, and down the street to his counting-room, getting over the ground with about as much flexibility and grace of motion as the wooden horses on the stage.

CHAPTER XLV

“Come here, Katy,” said Ruth, “do you think you could go alone to your grandfather Ellet’s for once? My board bill is due to-day, and my head is so giddy with this pain, that I can hardly lift it from the pillow. Don’t you think you can go without me, dear? Mrs. Skiddy is very particular about being paid the moment she sends in her bill.”

“I’ll try, mamma,” replied little Katy, unwilling to disoblige her mother.

“Then bring your bonnet, dear, and let me tie it; be very, very careful crossing the streets, and don’t loiter on the way. I have been hoping every moment to be better, but I cannot go.”

“Never mind, mother,” said Katy, struggling bravely with her reluctance, as she kissed her mother’s cheek, and smiled a good-bye; but when she gained the crowded street, the smile faded away from the little face, her steps were slow, and her eyes downcast; for Katy, child as she was, knew that her grandfather was never glad to see them now, and his strange, cold tone when he spoke to her, always made her shiver; so little Katy threaded her way along, with a troubled, anxious, care-worn look, never glancing in at the shopkeepers’ tempting windows, and quite forgetting Johnny Galt’s pretty bunch of flowers, till she stood trembling with her hand on the latch of her grandfather’s counting-room door.

“That you!” said her grandfather gruffly, from under his bent brows; “come for money again? Do you think your grandfather is made of money? people have to earn it, did you know that? I worked hard to earn mine. Have you done any thing to earn this?”

“No, Sir,” said Katy, with a culprit look, twisting the corner of her apron, and struggling to keep from crying.

“Why don’t your mother go to work and earn something?” asked Mr. Ellet.

“She cannot get any work to do,” replied Katy; “she tries very hard, grandpa.”

“Well, tell her to keep on trying, and you must grow up quick, and earn something too; money don’t grow on trees, or bushes, did you know that? What’s the reason your mother didn’t come after it herself, hey?”

“She is sick,” said Katy.

“Seems to me she’s always sick. Well, there’s a dollar,” said her grandfather, looking at the bill affectionately, as he parted with it; “if you keep on coming here at this rate, you will get all my money away. Do you think it is right to come and get all my money away, hey? Remember now, you and your mother must earn some, somehow, d’ye hear?”

“Yes, Sir,” said Katy meekly, as she closed the door.

There was a great noise and bustle in the street, and Katy was jostled hither and thither by the hurrying foot passengers; but she did not heed it, she was so busy thinking of what her grandfather had said, and wondering if she could not sell matches, or shavings, or sweep the crossings, or earn some pennies somehow, that she need never go to her grandfather again. Just then a little girl her own age, came skipping and smiling along, holding her father’s hand. Katy looked at her and thought of her father, and then she began to cry.

“What is the matter, my dear?” said a gentleman, lifting a handful of Katy’s shining curls from her face; “why do you cry, my dear?”

“I want my papa,” sobbed Katy.

“Where is he, dear? tell me, and I will take you to him, shall I?”

“If you please, Sir,” said Katy, innocently, “he has gone to heaven.”

“God help you,” said the gentleman, with moistened eyes, “where had you been when I met you?”

“Please, Sir – I – I – I had rather not tell,” replied Katy, with a crimson blush.

“Very odd, this,” muttered the gentleman; “what is your name, dear?”

“Katy, Sir.”

“Katy what?” asked the gentleman. “Katy-did, I think! for your voice is as sweet as a bird’s.”

“Katy Hall, Sir.”

“Hall? Hall?” repeated the gentleman, thoughtfully; “was your father’s name Harry?”

“Yes,” said Katy.

“Was he tall and handsome, with black hair and whiskers?”

“Oh, so handsome,” replied Katy, with sparkling eyes.

“Did he live at a place called ‘The Glen,’ just out of the city?”

“Yes,” said Katy.

“My child, my poor child,” said the gentleman, taking her up in his arms and pushing back her hair from her face; “yes, here is papa’s brow, and his clear, blue eyes, Katy. I used to know your dear papa.”

“Yes?” said Katy, with a bright, glad smile.

“I used to go to his counting-house to talk to him on business, and I learned to love him very much, too. I never saw your mamma, though I often heard him speak of her. In a few hours, dear, I am going to sail off on the great ocean, else I would go home with you and see your mamma. Where do you live, Katy?”

“In – court,” said the child. The gentleman colored and started, then putting his hand in his pocket and drawing out something that looked like paper, slipped it into little Katy’s bag, saying, with delicate tact, “Tell your mamma, my dear, that is something I owed your dear papa; mind you carry it home safely; now give me a good-bye kiss, and may God forever bless you, my darling.”

Little Katy stood shading her eyes with her hand till the gentleman was out of sight; it was so nice to see somebody who “loved papa;” and then she wondered why her grandfather never spoke so to her about him; and then she wished the kind gentleman were her grandpapa; and then she wondered what it was he had put in the bag for mamma; and then she recollected that her mamma told her “not to loiter;” and then she quickened her tardy little feet.

CHAPTER XLVI

Katy had been gone now a long while. Ruth began to grow anxious. She lifted her head from the pillow, took off the wet bandage from her aching forehead, and taking little Nettie upon her lap, sat down at the small window to watch for Katy. The prospect was not one to call up cheerful fancies. Opposite was one of those large brick tenements, let out by rapacious landlords, a room at a time at griping rents, to poor emigrants, and others, who were barely able to prolong their lease of life from day to day. At one window sat a tailor, with his legs crossed, and a torn straw hat perched awry upon his head, cutting and making coarse garments for the small clothing-store in the vicinity, whose Jewish owner reaped all the profits. At another, a pale-faced woman, with a handkerchief bound round her aching face, bent over a steaming wash-tub, while a little girl of ten, staggering under the weight of a basket of damp clothes, was stringing them on lines across the room to dry. At the next window sat a decrepit old woman, feebly trying to soothe in her palsied arms the wailings of a poor sick child. And there, too, sat a young girl, from dawn till dark, scarcely lifting that pallid face and weary eyes – stitching and thinking, thinking and stitching. God help her!

Still, tier above tier the windows rose, full of pale, anxious, care-worn faces – never a laugh, never a song – but instead, ribald curses, and the cries of neglected, half-fed children. From window to window, outside, were strung on lines articles of clothing, pails, baskets, pillows, feather-beds, and torn coverlets; while up and down the door-steps, in and out, passed ever a ragged procession of bare-footed women and children, to the small grocery opposite, for “a pint of milk,” a “loaf of bread,” a few onions, or potatoes, a cabbage, some herrings, a sixpence worth of poor tea, a pound of musty flour, a few candles, or a peck of coal – for all of which, the poor creatures paid twice as much as if they had the means to buy by the quantity.

The only window which Ruth did not shudder to look at, was the upper one of all, inhabited by a large but thrifty German family, whose love of flowers had taken root even in that sterile soil, and whose little pot of thriving foreign shrubs, outside the window sill, showed with what tenacity the heart will cling to early associations.

Further on, at one block’s remove, was a more pretentious-looking house, the blinds of which were almost always closed, save when the colored servants threw them open once a day, to give the rooms an airing. Then Ruth saw damask chairs, satin curtains, pictures, vases, books, and pianos; it was odd that people who could afford such things should live in such a neighborhood. Ruth looked and wondered. Throngs of visitors went there – carriages rolled up to the door, and rolled away; gray-haired men, business men, substantial-looking family men, and foppish-looking young men; while half-grown boys loitered about the premises, looking mysteriously into the door when it opened, or into the window when a curtain was raised, or a blind flew apart.

Now and then a woman appeared at the windows. Sometimes the face was young and fair, sometimes it was wan and haggard; but, oh God! never without the stain that the bitterest tear may fail to wash away, save in the eyes of Him whose voice of mercy whispered, “Go, and sin no more.”

Ruth’s tears fell fast. She knew now how it could be, when every door of hope seemed shut, by those who make long prayers and wrap themselves in morality as with a garment, and cry with closed purses and averted faces, “Be ye warmed, and filled.” She knew now how, when the heart, craving sympathy, craving companionship, doubting both earth and heaven, may wreck its all in one despairing moment on that dark sea, if it lose sight of Bethlehem’s guiding-star. And then, she thought, “if he who saveth a soul from death shall hide a multitude of sins,” oh! where, in the great reckoning-day, shall he be found who, ’mid the gloom of so dark a night, pilots such struggling bark on wrecking rocks?

“Dear child, I am so glad you are home,” said Ruth, as Katy opened the door; “I began to fear something had happened to you. Did you see your grandfather?”

“Oh, mother!” exclaimed Katy, “please never send me to my grandpa again; he said we ‘should get away all the money he had,’ and he looked so dreadful when he said it, that it made my knees tremble. Is it stealing, mamma, for us to take grandpa’s money away?”

“No,” replied Ruth, looking a hue more pallid, if possible, than before, “No, no, Katy, don’t cry; you shall never go there again for money. But, where is your bag? Why! what’s this, Katy. Grandpa has made a mistake. You must run right back as quick as ever you can with this money, or I’m afraid he will be angry.”

“Oh, grandpa didn’t give me that,” said Katy; “a gentleman gave me that.”

“A gentleman?” said Ruth. “Why it is money, Katy. How came you to take money from a gentleman? Who was he?”

“Money!” exclaimed Katy. “Money!” clapping her hands. “Oh! I’m so glad. He didn’t say it was money; he said it was something he owed papa;” and little Katy picked up a card from the floor, on which was pencilled, “For the children of Harry Hall, from their father’s friend.”

“Hush,” whispered Katy to Nettie, “mamma is praying.”

CHAPTER XLVII

“Well, I never!” said Biddy, bursting into Ruth’s room in her usual thunder-clap way, and seating herself on the edge of a chair, as she polished her face with the skirt of her dress. “As sure as my name is Biddy, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Well, I’ve been expecting it. Folks that have ears can’t help hearing when folks quarrel.”

“What are you talking about?” said Ruth. “Who has quarreled? It is nothing that concerns me.”

“Don’t it though?” replied Biddy. “I’m thinking it will concern ye to pack up bag and baggage, and be off out of the house; for that’s what we are all coming to, and all for Mrs. Skiddy. You see it’s just here, ma’am. Masther has been threatnin’ for a long time to go to Californy, where the gould is as plenty as blackberries. Well, misthress tould him, if ever he said the like o’ that again, he’d rue it; and you know, ma’am, it’s she that has a temper. Well, yesterday I heard high words again; and, sure enough, after dinner to-day, she went off, taking Sammy and Johnny, and laving the bit nursing baby on his hands, and the boarders and all. And it’s Biddy McFlanigan who’ll be off, ma’am, and not be made a pack-horse of, to tend that teething child, and be here, and there, and everywhere in a minute. And so I come to bid you good-bye.”

“But, Biddy – ”

“Don’t be afther keeping me, ma’am; Pat has shouldhered me trunk, and ye see I can’t be staying when things is as they is.”

The incessant cries of Mrs. Skiddy’s bereaved baby soon bore ample testimony to the truth of Biddy’s narration, appealing to Ruth’s motherly sympathies so vehemently, that she left her room and went down to offer her assistance.

There sat Mr. John Skiddy, the forlorn widower, the ambitious Californian, in the middle of the kitchen, in his absconded wife’s rocking-chair, trotting a seven months’ baby on the sharp apex of his knee, alternately singing, whistling, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead, while the little Skiddy threw up its arms in the most frantic way, and held its breath with rage, at the awkward attempts of its dry nurse to restore peace to the family.

“Let me sweeten a little cream and water and feed that child for you, Mr. Skiddy,” said Ruth. “I think he is hungry.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Hall,” said Skiddy, with a man’s determined aversion to owning ‘checkmated.’ “I am getting along famously with the little darling. Papa will feed him, so he will,” said Skiddy; and, turning the maddened baby flat on his back, he poured down a whole tea-spoonful of the liquid at once; the natural consequence of which was a milky jet d’eau on his face, neckcloth, and vest, from the irritated baby, who resented the insult with all his mother’s spirit.

Ruth adroitly looked out the window, while Mr. Skiddy wiped his face and sopped his neckcloth, after which she busied herself in picking up the ladles, spoons, forks, dredging-boxes, mortars, pestles, and other culinary implements, with which the floor was strewn, in the vain attempt to propitiate the distracted infant.

“I think I will spare the little dear to you a few minutes,” said Skiddy, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, “while I run over to the bakery to get a loaf for tea. Mrs. Skiddy has probably been unexpectedly detained, and Biddy is so afraid of her labor in her absence, that she has taken French leave. I shall be back soon,” said Skiddy, turning away in disgust from the looking-glass, as he caught sight of his limpsey dicky and collapsed shirt-bosom.

Ruth took the poor worried baby tenderly, laid it on its stomach across her lap, then loosening its frock strings, began rubbing its little fat shoulders with her velvet palm. There was a maternal magnetism in that touch; baby knew it! he stopped crying and winked his swollen eyelids with the most luxurious satisfaction, as much as to say, there, now, that’s something like!

Gently Ruth drew first one, then the other, of the magnetized baby’s chubby arms from its frock sleeves, substituting a comfortable loose night-dress for the tight and heated frock; then she carefully drew off its shoe, admiring the while the beauty of the little blue veined, dimpled foot, while Katy, hush as any mouse, looked on delightedly from her little cricket on the hearth, and Nettie, less philosophical, was more than half inclined to cry at what she considered an infringement of her rights.

Mr. Skiddy’s reflections as he walked to the bakery were of a motley character. Upon the whole, he inclined to the opinion that it was “not good for man to be alone,” especially with a nursing baby. The premeditated and unmixed malice of Mrs. Skiddy in leaving the baby, instead of Sammy or Johnny, was beyond question. Still, he could not believe that her desire for revenge would outweigh all her maternal feelings. She would return by-and-bye; but where could she have gone? People cannot travel with an empty purse; but, perhaps even now, at some tantalizing point of contiguity, she was laughing at the success of her nefarious scheme; and Mr. Skiddy’s face reddened at the thought, and his arms instinctively took an a-kimbo attitude.