Ruth Hall Part 20

A thought! why could not Ruth write for the papers? How very odd it had never occurred to her before? Yes, write for the papers--why not? She remembered that while at boarding-school, an editor of a paper in the same town used often to come in and take down her compositions in short-hand as she read them aloud, and transfer them to the columns of his paper. She certainly _ought_ to write better now than she did when an inexperienced girl. She would begin that very night; but where to make a beginning? who would publish her articles? how much would they pay her? to whom should she apply first? There was her brother Hyacinth, now the prosperous editor of the Irving Magazine; oh, if he would only employ her? Ruth was quite sure she could write as well as some of his correspondents, whom he had praised with no n.i.g.g.ardly pen. She would prepare samples to send immediately, announcing her intention, and offering them for his acceptance. This means of support would be so congenial, so absorbing. At the needle one's mind could still be brooding over sorrowful thoughts.

Ruth counted the days and hours impatiently, as she waited for an answer. Hyacinth surely would not refuse _her_ when in almost every number of his magazine he was announcing some new contributor; or, if _he_ could not employ her _himself_, he surely would be brotherly enough to point out to her some one of the many avenues so accessible to a man of extensive newspaperial and literary acquaintance. She would so gladly support herself, so cheerfully toil day and night, if need be, could she only win an independence; and Ruth recalled with a sigh Katy's last visit to her father, and then she rose and walked the floor in her impatience; and then, her restless spirit urging her on to her fate, she went again to the post office to see if there were no letter. How long the clerk made her wait! Yes, there _was_ a letter for her, and in her brother's hand-writing too. Oh, how long since she had seen it!

Ruth heeded neither the jostling of office-boys, porters, or draymen, as she held out her eager hand for the letter. Thrusting it hastily in her pocket, she hurried in breathless haste back to her lodgings. The contents were as follows:

"I have looked over the pieces you sent me, Ruth. It is very evident that writing never can be _your_ forte; you have no talent that way. You may possibly be employed by some inferior newspapers, but be a.s.sured your articles never will be heard of out of your own little provincial city. For myself I have plenty of contributors, nor do I know of any of my literary acquaintances who would employ you. I would advise you, therefore, to seek some _un.o.btrusive_ employment. Your brother,

"HYACINTH ELLET."

A bitter smile struggled with the hot tear that fell upon Ruth's cheek.

"I have tried the un.o.btrusive employment," said Ruth; "the wages are six cents a day, Hyacinth;" and again the bitter smile disfigured her gentle lip.

"No talent!"

"At another tribunal than his will I appeal."

"Never be heard of out of my own little provincial city!" The cold, contemptuous tone stung her.

"But they shall be heard of;" and Ruth leaped to her feet. "Sooner than he dreams of, too. I _can_ do it, I _feel_ it, I _will_ do it," and she closed her lips firmly; "but there will be a desperate struggle first,"

and she clasped her hands over her heart as if it had already commenced; "there will be scant meals, and sleepless nights, and weary days, and a throbbing brow, and an aching heart; there will be the chilling tone, the rude repulse; there will be ten backward steps to one forward.

_Pride_ must sleep! but--" and Ruth glanced at her children--"it shall be _done_. They shall be proud of their mother. _Hyacinth shall yet be proud to claim his sister._"

"What is it, mamma?" asked Katy, looking wonderingly at the strange expression of her mother's face.

"What is it, my darling?" and Ruth caught up the child with convulsive energy; "what is it? only that when you are a woman you shall remember this day, my little pet;" and as she kissed Katy's upturned brow a bright spot burned on her cheek, and her eye glowed like a star.

CHAPTER LVII.

"Doctor?" said Mrs. Hall, "put down that book, will you? I want to talk to you a bit; there you've sat these three hours, without stirring, except to brush the flies off your nose, and my tongue actually aches keeping still."

"Sh-sh-sh," said the doctor, running his forefinger along to guide his purblind eyes safely to the end of the paragraph. "Sh-sh. 'It--is es-ti-ma-ted by Captain Smith--that--there--are--up'ards--of--ten-- hundred--human--critters--in--the--Nor-West--sett-le-ment.' Well--Mis.

Hall--well--" said the doctor, laying a faded ribbon mark between the leaves of the book, and pus.h.i.+ng his spectacles back on his forehead, "what's to pay now? what do you want of me?"

"I've a great mind as ever I had to eat," said the old lady, pettishly, "to knit twice round the heel of this stocking, before I answer you; what do you think I care about Captain Smith? Travelers always lie; it is a part of their trade, and if they don't it's neither here nor there to me. I wish that book was in the Red Sea."

"I thought you didn't want it _read_," retorted the irritating old doctor.

"Now I suppose you call that funny," said the old lady. "I call it simply ridiculous for a man of your years to play on words in such a frivolous manner. What I was going to say was this, _i. e._ if I can get a chance to say it, if _you_ have given up all idea of getting Harry's children, _I_ haven't, and now is the time to apply for Katy again; for, according to all accounts, Ruth is getting along poorly enough."

"How did you hear?" asked the doctor.

"Why, my milliner, Miss Tiffkins, has a nephew who tends in a little grocery-shop near where Ruth boards, and he says that she buys a smaller loaf every time she comes to the store, and that the milkman told him that she only took a pint of milk a day of him now; then Katy has not been well, and what she did for doctors and medicines is best known to herself; she's so independent that she never would complain if she had to eat paving stones. The best way to get the child will be to ask her here on a visit, and say we want to cure her up a little with country air. You understand? that will throw dust in Ruth's eyes, and then we will take our own time about letting her go back you know. Miss Tiffkins says her nephew says that people who come into the grocery-shop are very curious to know who Ruth is; and old Mr. Flake, who keeps it, says that it wouldn't hurt her any, if she is a lady, to stop and talk a little, like the rest of his customers; he says, too, that her children are as close-mouthed as their mother, for when he just asked Katy what business her father used to do, and what supported them now he was dead, and if they lived all the time on bread and milk, and a few such little questions, Katy answered, 'Mamma does not allow me to talk to strangers,' and went out of the shop, with her loaf of bread, as dignified as a little d.u.c.h.ess."

"Like mother, like child," said the doctor; "proud and poor, proud and poor; that tells the whole story. Well, shall I write to Ruth, Mis.

Hall, about Katy?"

"No," said the old lady, "let me manage that; you will upset the whole business if you do. I've a plan in my head, and to-morrow, after breakfast, I'll take the old chaise, and go in after Katy."

In pursuance of this plan, the old lady, on the following day, climbed up into an old-fas.h.i.+oned chaise, and turned the steady old horse's nose in the direction of the city; jerking at the reins, and clucking and gee-ing him up, after the usual awkward fas.h.i.+on of s.e.xegenarian female drivers. Using Miss Tiffkin's land-mark, the little black grocery-shop, for a guide-board, she soon discovered Ruth's abode; and so well did she play her part in commiserating Ruth's misfortunes, and Katy's sickly appearance, that the widow's kind heart was immediately tortured with the most unnecessary self-reproaches, which prepared the way for an acceptance of her invitation for Katy "for a week or two;" great promises, meanwhile, being held out to the child of "a little pony to ride," and various other tempting lures of the same kind. Still little Katy hesitated, clinging tightly to her mother's dress, and looking, with her clear, searching eyes, into her grandmother's face, in a way that would have embarra.s.sed a less artful manoeuverer. The old lady understood the glance, and put it on file, to be attended to at her leisure; it being no part of her present errand to play the unamiable.

Little Katy, finally won over, consented to make the visit, and the old chaise was again set in motion for home.

CHAPTER LVIII.

"How d'ye do, Ruth?" asked Mr. Ellet, the next morning, as he ran against Ruth in the street; "glad you have taken my advice, and done a sensible thing at last."

"I don't know what you mean," answered Ruth.

"Why, the doctor told me yesterday that you had given Katy up to them, to bring up; you would have done better if you had sent off Nettie too."

"I have not 'given Katy up,'" said Ruth, starting and blus.h.i.+ng deeply; "and they could not have understood it so; she has only gone on a visit of a fortnight, to recruit a little."

"Pooh--pooh!" replied Mr. Ellet. "The thing is quietly over with; now don't make a fuss. The old folks expect to keep her. They wrote to me about it, and I approved of it. It's the best thing all round; and, as I just said, it would have been better still if Nettie had gone, too. Now don't make a fool of yourself; you can go once in awhile, I suppose, to see the child."

"_How_ can I go?" asked Ruth, looking her father calmly in the face; "it costs fifty cents every trip, by railroad, and you know I have not the money."

"That's for you to decide," answered the father coldly; "I can't be bothered about such trifles. It is the way you always do, Ruth, whenever I see you; but it is time I was at my office. Don't make a fool of yourself, now; mind what I tell you, and let well alone."

"Father," said Ruth; "father--"

"Can't stop--can't stop," said Mr. Ellet, moving rapidly down street, to get out of his daughter's way.

"Can it be possible," thought Ruth, looking after him, "that he could connive at such duplicity? Was the old lady's sympathy a mere stratagem to work upon my feelings? How unnecessarily I reproached myself with my supposed injustice to her? Can _good_ people do such things? Is religion only a fable? No, no; 'let G.o.d be true, and every man a liar.'"

CHAPTER LIX

"Is this 'The Daily Type' office?" asked Ruth of a printer's boy, who was rus.h.i.+ng down five steps at a time, with an empty pail in his hand.

"All you have to do is to ask, mem. You've got a tongue in your head, haven't ye? women folks generally has," said the little ruffian.

Ruth, obeying this civil invitation, knocked gently at the office door.

A whir of machinery, and a bad odor of damp paper and cigar smoke, issued through the half-open crack.

"I shall have to walk in," said Ruth, "they never will hear my feeble knock amid all this racket and bustle;" and pus.h.i.+ng the door ajar, she found herself in the midst of a group of smokers, who, in slippered feet, and with heels higher than their heads, were whiffing and laughing, amid the pauses of conversation, most uproariously. Ruth's face crimsoned as heels and cigars remained in _statu quo_, and her glance was met by a rude stare.

"I called to see if you would like a new contributor to your paper,"

said Ruth; "if so, I will leave a few samples of my articles for your inspection."