CHAPTER XXIV
IT was five months later, sometime during the last of September, that I again heard directly from Ruth and her love-affair with Breckenridge Sewall.
Miss Kavenaugh, the dollar-and-a-half-a-day university seamstress, had come to help me with my muslin curtains. Miss Kavenaugh is a very much-sought-after lady, and when I am able to secure her for a day, I give up everything else, sit down and sew with her. She plans, cuts and bastes, and I run the chain-stitch machine like mad. We had been working since eight A. M. in my darling new bedroom that looks out on my row of late dahlias. I could hardly keep my eyes on the machine-needle because of the distracting flame of several maple-trees against some dark green cedars across the lake. Will and I had been in our new house about two weeks and we adored it! I was perched on the step-ladder at the particular moment the telephone bell rang, hanging the last muslin curtain in the room we called Ruth's. Miss Kavenaugh was puttering with the cretonne overhangings, pulling and patting them as tenderly as if they had been dainty dresses hung up on forms.
It was Ruth on the telephone calling me from town.
"I'm in here shopping," she said. "Can you possibly come in and have lunch? Do, if you can. I want to see you."
Now whenever Ruth did honour me with an invitation to luncheon it was in quite a different manner. To-day she actually asked me to set the hour and seemed inclined to adapt her plans to mine. I didn't want to leave Miss Kavenaugh in the least (she couldn't give me another day for a week), but if Ruth was as anxious to see me as all that, I decided I had better meet her if it broke a bone. I told her I would be at the appointed place at one-thirty.
Since June, Will and I had been buried in a little out-of-the-way spot in Newfoundland. The few letters that I had received had scarcely mentioned Ruth's affairs. Only one from my sister herself early in July had given me any inkling that Mrs. Sewall was acting on my suggestion. In that letter Ruth had briefly said that her engagement to Breck would probably not be announced till fall, and asked me to say nothing about the matter to any one. I was delighted not to.
Ruth was looking as pretty as ever, when I finally found myself sitting opposite to her at one of the side tables in the dining-room of the only hotel in town where she will condescend to eat. If she had anything of importance on her mind she certainly exhibited no outward agitation. She was dressed in a scant, tailor-made white serge suit, and had on a big, floppy, soft, fur-felt hat, which no other woman I know would have attempted to wear. It was lavender in shade and the brim drooped as if it had lost all its stiffening. Around the crushed crown was tied a piece of hemp rope. I never saw a hat like it in any shop. Ruth is always discovering odd, outlandish "shapes" in the millinery line and trimming them up with things no one ever thought of putting on a hat before. This particular creation looked as if it had been blown on to Ruth's head, but I must say it had landed at just the right angle to reveal a bit of her pretty hair, and to frame her face in a halo of soft mauve.
"What shall we eat?" asked Ruth in a bored little way, and tossed me a menu. After we had decided on mock-turtle soup, sweet-breads a-la-something, little peas, and Waldorf salad (Ruth isn't the kind to pick up a ham-sandwich and cup of coffee at a lunch-counter, I can tell you) and the superior-looking waiter had departed, Ruth opened her shopping bag and tossed two dress samples down upon the white cloth.
"What do you think of these?" she asked nonchalantly.
I wondered if Ruth had dragged me all the way in town, occupied and busy as I had been at home, to show me dress samples. Always the psychological moment to share a confidence, or to announce a startling piece of news, is after the waiter has departed with your order. But Ruth took her own time.
"I'm trying a new tailor," she went on. "I've ordered the black-and-white stripe. It's very good in the piece. By the way, don't you prefer butter without salt? Waiter!" Ruth is very imperious when she is in a hotel. Clerks and maids and bell-boys simply fly to obey when Ruth gives an order. We were supplied with crescents, corn-muffins and slim brown-bread sandwiches, fresh butter, ice-water and two napkins apiece, before a man lunching alone at the next table could get his glass refilled.
It wasn't until we were well started on our elaborate menu, that Ruth thought best to gratify my curiosity. It was while she was pouring the tea, and after I had given up hope that she had anything thrilling to announce to me after all, that she asked, "Sugar, I believe?" and then as she dropped one little crystal cube into the cup added, "Oh, by the way, I've broken my engagement to Breck Sewall."
I didn't show a trace of wonder or surprise.
"Is that so?" I said, as if I didn't much care if she had, and then after I had taken a swallow of tea I asked, "How did that happen?"
"Oh, I simply decided to," Ruth replied shortly; and as if the subject were closed, she inquired, "How's the new house?"
I was simply aching to ask a few questions, but I didn't allow myself even one.
"Oh, it's very nice," I replied; "we've been in it two weeks now."
"How did the lavender room turn out?" asked Ruth, travelling away as fast as possible from the subject of her engagement.
"Your room, Ruth, you mean," I replied patiently. "Very well, I think."
"Is it finished yet? I mean could any one sleep in it—to-night?"
"Will you come home with me, Ruth?" I asked eagerly.
"I thought I might—possibly, if you'd like to have me, and if you have an empty bed. At least," she added, "I'm not going back to The Homestead."
"Oh, you're not!" I replied, vaguely wondering if it were the tailor who was keeping her or the manicurist. "Well, I can lend you a nightgown and you can buy a tooth-brush."
"Oh, my trunk is at the station," said Ruth. "I was determined to go somewhere. You see things are not very pleasant for me just now in Hilton. Besides, Edith and I have quarrelled."
It wasn't very charitable to rejoice at such an announcement; it wasn't very noble of me, I suppose, to delight that conditions at Hilton were too disagreeable for Ruth to remain there; but remember I had always wanted to shelter my sister—remember I had always been jealous of her loyalty and devotion to Edith, and remember, also, ever since the plans of our house had been put on paper, I had hoped and almost prayed that some one would wish to sleep in the southeast chamber.
I reached for a biscuit to help conceal my feelings.
"Well," I said steadily, "your room is ready, and you're free to use it or not, as you wish."
"It won't be for very long," apologised Ruth, "and perhaps I can help you settle. You mustn't let me be the least bother. I haven't forgotten, you know," she said smiling, "how to wipe dishes."
"Didn't there used to be a lot of them in the old days at home," I remarked.
"And wasn't I horrid?" she followed up in a sudden burst of generosity. "Wasn't I horrid about helping? I was never very nice to you, I'm afraid, Lucy."
"Of course you were!" I scoffed.
"Oh, I know I wasn't, but you used to be awfully rabid. It seems to me you've improved a great deal in that respect since you were married. I noticed it when I visited you last spring." She stopped a moment. Then, "I want to tell you," she went on, "that I think you were awfully decent about Breck Sewall. You may not have liked him, but I appreciated your not trying to urge and influence me, the way Will did. If you had mixed yourself up in the affair too much I wouldn't feel like coming to you now."
I lowered my eyes as a hypocrite should.
"Of course not," I murmured ashamed.
Suddenly Ruth shoved her tea-cup to one side, her plate to the other, and folding her hands on the table in front, abruptly launched out into the midst of the details of her broken engagement.
"Edith," she began, "is willing to humiliate herself to any degree for the sake of a promotion in the social world. Now I'm too proud to stoop to some things. Edith actually advised me to marry Breck without Mrs. Sewall's approval. She said Mrs. Sewall would be sure to come around once the affair was settled. Could you imagine me in such a position?"
"Oh," I said, "didn't Mrs. Sewall approve?"
"Haven't you heard?" asked Ruth. "Every one else has. It has been anything but pleasant. When I wrote you that my engagement wouldn't be announced till fall it was simply because I hadn't heard from Mrs. Sewall. Breck said he hadn't told his mother and I believed him. She was ill or something, and I was willing to wait until it seemed wise to break the news to her. I was willing to meet her half-way, you see. I meant to be patient with Mrs. Sewall. Of course I realise I have no money nor position; but I won't be insulted by any one! She opened Grassmere in August, and brought along with her a young niece of hers, a Miss Oliphant—a silly creature, I thought; and she set in entertaining for her as she's never entertained before. Hilton has never been so gay, and everyone who was within the range of possibility was invited to Grassmere—everybody except Edith and me. Think of it! Think of the insult! It was the most pointed thing you ever saw. Edith is simply furious. Mrs. Sewall avoids her everywhere she sees her, and me too for that matter. I don't mind so much. It is Edith whom it stings so. I simply long for a chance to cut Mrs. Sewall. That's my attitude. However I don't enjoy being gossiped about, and all Hilton is buzzing. Oh, it's horrid!"
"I should say so," I murmured, stunned by the disaster I had caused.
"Well, during it all Breck has kept right on coming to see me—late every night after his social engagements at Grassmere. That was the feature I hated most, and the one that Edith, on the other hand, clung to as our only hope of salvation. But I'm not the kind to become the secret fancy of any man, even if he is the King of England. If I'm not good enough for his mother to recognise, then I don't want anything of him. Anyhow I consider myself, from the point of view of culture and education, superior to the Sewalls!"
"Of course," I agreed.
"The whole thing has made me sick and tired of the social game," ejaculated Ruth. "I don't believe there's any such thing as pure, unadulterated friendship between people who are socially ambitious. Why, some of the girls, who I thought were my best friends, have been acting very cool and offish since they've observed Mrs. Sewall's attitude towards me. And both Edith and I are omitted from lots of other people's parties besides the Sewalls, simply because Mrs. Sewall and Miss Oliphant are often the guests of honour. Oh, I think that all women are vain and selfish and insincere, and, if sometimes they appear thoughtful or sacrificing, it's simply because such an attitude toward someone will help them up another rung on the ladder. I'd like to get away from society for a while. It almost seems," Ruth added vehemently, "as if I'd like to enter a convent!"
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry, Ruth" I began.
"There's nothing for you to be sorry about. You couldn't help it. If I only had more money," Ruth went on, "I'd travel. I'd escape this sort of life. But what can any one do on my income? Eight hundred dollars! And I won't take any more from Edith."
"Did you quarrel very badly?" I dared to ask.
"Oh, quite. She went into an awful passion when I told her that I'd broken the engagement. She called me a short-sighted little fool! Breck, you see, wanted me to marry him in spite of his mother. Imagine me eloping! I wouldn't do such a vulgar thing. Edith said that her mother had run off with her father (imagine comparing me to that impossible Mrs. Campbell!) and that if I didn't marry Breck everybody would think he had gotten tired of me—cast me off, and all that sort of thing. I don't get angry often, but I gave Edith a piece of my mind that I guess she'll remember for a long time, and Alec didn't like it a bit. So this morning I just decided to decamp."
"But of course Breck will follow you," I suggested cheerfully.
"Oh, no, he won't. I've quarrelled with him too." Ruth smiled. "I seem to have quarrelled with everybody. But Breck threatened, and threats never have the least effect on me. He really did want to marry me, in spite of what people said about his marked attentions to this Oliphant girl. He was crazy to marry me. Things got to an awful pitch of excitement and one night three days ago, he said that if I wouldn't run off with him in the dark like some common girl in a newspaper story, and get married by a country parson along the road somewhere, he wasn't going to spend any more of his time waiting around. He said that Gale—that's Miss Oliphant—would marry him, mother or no mother; she had some heart and feeling in her. I told him that I on the other hand wouldn't lower my self-respect one iota, for love, or position, or any other reason. And so . . . well, here I am, with all my bridges burned. By the way," Ruth broke off, "please don't ask me to discuss this matter with Will. He was too intolerant last spring for me to care to talk it over with him now."
"You needn't mention it to him," I assured her.
"You can imagine," said Ruth, "that I'm not feeling very much like talking about it to any one."
"I understand, and we won't refer to it at all. I know how hard it is, Ruth,—but time—"
"Oh, time!" replied my sophisticated sister. "There's no scar on my heart for time to heal. You see now, don't you, how safe it is to keep such affairs strictly in the region of one's head."
Two or three weeks later I received a letter from Mrs. Sewall. I didn't know her writing but I saw Grassmere engraved on the envelope, so I suspected before I broke the seal.
"My dear Mrs. Maynard,"You will be interested to know that the engagement of Miss Gale Oliphant to my son is to be publicly announced on Wednesday next. But for you I am afraid this very happy alliance might not have been arranged. Relying absolutely on what you told me I could expect from your sister I have acted on your suggestion, with these results. I was sorry to treat so lovely a girl as your sister seems to be in so cruel a manner, but such an object-lesson seemed to me the most effectual way of showing what a future relation with me might prove to be. Let me say I think she is a very fine-principled and high-minded girl, and another season when I shall return to Grassmere with my son and his bride I trust I may see a great deal of her. Another season I hope I may set everything right with Mrs. Alexander Vars also, whom it seemed necessary to sacrifice for a little while to our cause, if, in fact, I cannot do something toward reparation this year in the few weeks left before I return to New York. Let me add with all heartiness that I am particularly anticipating the pleasure of entertaining, sometime soon, an old fellow-soldier of mine.
"Take off your hat," I said to my husband late that night. "You promised you would. The engagement is broken. Breck Sewall is going to marry his cousin, and Ruth is in bed in the southeast chamber."
During the weeks immediately following Ruth's decision in regard to Breck Sewall, she became an absorbingly interesting proposition, to herself. For the first month she wouldn't show any interest in anything outside her own problem. Ruth has admirers where-ever she goes and under any circumstances; and as soon as it was learned that she was staying with me the telephone began to ring every day—the door-bell every night or so with would-be suitors. But Ruth wouldn't see any of her callers or accept any invitations. She assumed such a blasé and indifferent attitude toward life that it worried me. She used to take long walks alone over the hills and improvise by the hour by firelight in our living-room. Evenings after dinner she spent in her own room reading Marcus Aurelius, Omar Khayyam, Oscar Wilde and Marie Bashkirtseff. I used to find the books missing from the book-shelves, and discover them on the couch in Ruth's room later. A drop-light arranged on a small table by the head of the couch, a soft down quilt wrapped around a china-silk negligee, and Ruth nestled down inside of all that, was the picture to which Will and I always sang out good-night when we closed our door at ten P.M. She used to devote several hours a day to writing, but whether it was a novel or an epic poem that she was so busy about, I didn't know. She kept her papers safely locked away in her trunk and I didn't like to intrude on her intimacy. I think Ruth rather enjoyed herself during these first days after the settlement of her affair with Breck. Her newly-won independence, her freedom, brought about entirely by her own will and volition, filled her with a little self-admiration. She appealed to herself as rather an unique and remarkable young person, bearing the interesting distinction of a broken engagement. She was young and fresh and lovely, and belonged to no one; her future lay in her own hands; she didn't know what she should do with it, but it was hers—hers alone, and full of all sorts of exciting possibilities.
"I don't want to see anything more of men for a long time," she would say. "I haven't decided yet what I'm going to go into, but I want to do something. I want to see all sides of life. I have had enough of society and bridge and silly girls who only want to get married. I'm seriously considering settlement work in New York. Sometime I'd like to go to Paris and study sculpture."
At the end of Ruth's third week with us—one Saturday night, I believe it was—the door-bell rang about eight o'clock. The maid answered it and when she came upstairs and passed by the door of Will's study (which is a little room over the front door and where we sit evenings) I said with a sigh of relief, "Thank goodness, it's for Ruth. I did want to finish this ruffle." And a moment later I added, "I wonder what excuse she'll send down to-night."
I was surprised five minutes later by Ruth's appearance in the doorway. She had put on a favourite gown of hers—crow-black meteor satin, so plain it had kind of a naked appearance, with a V-shaped neck that showed a bit of Ruth's throat. There wasn't a scrap of any kind of trimming on it.
"Will you hook this up please?" she asked, and when I had finished, "Thanks," she said, and with no explanation went downstairs.
"I wonder who it can be!" I exclaimed after she had departed. "It's the first one she has seen."
Will looked up and smiled.
"Oh, it's just a man. Rest assured that this pose of Ruth's can't last much longer. Three weeks of a diet that excludes all forms of masculine admiration is a long fast for Ruth. They'll be calling here thick and fast now."
But it wasn't just a man! About nine-thirty I stole down the back stairs to get two pieces of chocolate cake and two glasses of milk for Will and me. I peeked into the front hall before crawling back again.
"Will," I said two minutes later, "leaning up against the Chippendale chair in the hall is a man's walking-stick and it has got a plain silver top like Bob Jennings'. I introduced Bob to Ruth last week at a Faculty Tea and he walked home with her, before I was ready to leave. It does seem odd that he didn't send cards up to us too, doesn't it?"
It was almost eleven o'clock before I heard the front door close and Ruth snapping off the lights in the living-room. Will was staying up late to-night, and I had put on a soft wrapper and curled up in the Morris-chair with a magazine. The door was slightly ajar, and as Ruth passed it on her way to bed she stopped just outside, and asked softly:
"Are you both still up?"
"Surely," I replied. "Come in."
She came over and stood by the table where Will was working.
"Can you be torn away from your precious books for a while, Will?" she asked sweetly.
"Of course I can," he replied.
"Because," Ruth went on, "I want to tell you something." She paused.
"Yes?" encouraged Will. "Fire away."
"I suppose," Ruth continued, "you two are wondering when I am going home. I've been here nearly a month now and I ought to decide what I am going to do. I'd like your advice if you're not too busy."
"Certainly I'm not," Will responded heartily.
Ruth can be very complimentary and deferential when she chooses. She chose so to be now. Will closed his books. Ruth was standing by the table; her tapering finger-tips just reached the mahogany surface, she leaned lightly on them; her face was in the shadow, for the only light was Will's low reading-lamp, and her arms suddenly appearing out of the dark were startlingly white and pretty.
"It was Mr. Jennings who called to-night," she went on. "I saw him because he rather interested me last week when I met him at one of your Faculty Teas. I was talking with him to-night a little about my life. It came in after I had read him a few of my verses, which he said he would be kind enough to give me his opinion about, when I told him last week that I wrote a little. He suggested a plan that rather appealed to me. I don't know what you think of it, but he says that there are a lot of girls who take special courses here at Shirley (Shirley is the girls' college connected with the university) and that, even though I'm not a college girl, he thinks he could arrange for me to take a course or two in poetry and literature. He wants me to develop my talent. Oh, I'd love to do it!" Ruth exclaimed, suddenly enthusiastic. "Mr. Jennings is so encouraging! He thinks I really might write something worth while some day. I've always thought that poetry was the very highest form of expression. Mr. Jennings thinks so too. He says, Lucy, that you attend certain courses connected with the university that would be excellent for me. He says that I could go to some of those afternoons with you perhaps. He's going to get the Shirley catalogue and lay out a course of study for me. Do you suppose, Will, that you could find a place for me to room somewhere around here?"
"To room, Ruth? Why, we should want you to stay right here with us," I exploded.
"Oh, of course," Ruth scoffed, "I couldn't break in on you and Will that way."
"But, Ruth," I began.
"Oh, no, Lucy, I wouldn't do that. I've been fifth wheel at The Homestead for years, but I don't intend to be here."
"Nonsense," said Will; "we'd like to have you. Lucy spent a lot of time preparing that room you're in and—"
"No. Please. I shan't listen. Why, you haven't even talked it over. Wait till morning anyway. I simply came in to ask your advice on my turning into a 'blue-stocking.' Do you think it absolutely ridiculous?"
We thought it was splendid—both Will and I. We talked and planned and built air-castles with Ruth till after midnight. She even read us some of her pretty verses and before she went to bed at one A. M. she had already become a poetess of renown with contributions appearing frequently in the most exclusive magazines.
A new-found genius slept in the southeast chamber that night, and at seven A. M. when the sun and I crawled into her room together we found her fast asleep with one hand tucked cosily under her cheek. Her hair, which is neither blonde nor brown but kind of a dull mouse-colour and almost mauve when she wears the right shade, was braided and flung up back over the pillow. Upon the pillow beside her lay her left hand upturned and free from jewellery of any kind. That upturned hand had kind of an appealing, wistful expression about it that made me want to cry. Somehow the sight of Ruth's bare unpromised hand making the only dent on the surface of the pillow by her side filled me with a wave of thanksgiving. She breathed softly, regularly, her violet-tinted eyelids quivering a little, a half-smile lingering in the corners of her mouth. A fly lit on Ruth's chin and, unmolested, walked audaciously up along the flushed, velvety surface of her cheek. It stopped just beneath her long-curved eyelashes. She didn't stir—just kept on with her even, measured breathing and her steady sleep. I frightened that bold creature away with a wave of my hand. I honestly believe that Breck Sewall hadn't disturbed my sister any more than the fly on her cheek. She seemed to me the most superbly virginal creature I had ever gazed upon.
I sat down and touched her shoulder softly.
"It's morning," I said, and when she was entirely awake I continued, "It's morning, and you wanted us to wait till morning. We've talked it all over together alone and we both still want you to stay with us as long as you possibly can. Why, Ruth, we built this room for you—especially for you—and I do hope you'll like it well enough to stay."
"It's prettier than my room at Edith's," replied Ruth. Then suddenly she put out her hand and touched my knee. "Lucy," she said, "I'm crazy to stay. I'd hate a stuffy boarding-house."
"Of course you would!"
"This is so adorably fresh and clean and simple. Have you and Will really talked it all over? I think I ought not to stay, but I'll promise not to be the least bother in the world."
"Bother!" I exclaimed.
"I'll be busy with my studies daytimes and keep out of the way evenings. Really," she asked, "do you want me?"
"We really do," I said solemnly.
She turned and suddenly sat up beside me on the edge of the bed. She was a lovely creature with her long thick hair, her white arms, and her pretty, soft, beribboned nightgown falling off one shoulder. She seemed too lovely to be my sister. She flung one arm around my shoulders.
"Lucy," she exclaimed, "from this time on, I'm going to be nice to you."
I don't remember that Ruth had ever before put her arm around me of her own accord. A lump came in my throat. Tears blinded me. I got up hastily and began putting down the windows.