Ruth Hall Part 28

"There is not a whit of exaggeration in it," said Mr. Walter. "The Professor has. .h.i.t you off to the life."

"Well, I suppose it would be wasting breath to discuss the point with you," said Ruth, "so I will merely remark that I was highly amused when he said I should make a good actress. I have so often been told that."

"True; Comedy would be your forte, though. How is it that when looking about for employment, you never contemplated the stage?"

"Well, you know, Mr. Walter, that we May-Flower descendents hold the theatre in abhorrence. For myself, however, I can speak from observation, being determined not to take that doctrine on hearsay; I have witnessed many theatrical performances, and they only served to confirm my prejudices against the inst.i.tution. I never should dream of such a means of support. Your Professor made one great mistake; for instance," said Ruth, "he thinks my physique is feeble. Do you know that I can walk longer and faster than any six women in the United States?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Walter, "I know all about that; I have known you, under a strong impetus, do six days' work in one, and I have known you after it prostrated with a nervous headache which defied every attempt at mitigation. He is right, Ruth, your mind often tires your body completely out."

"Another thing, your Professor says I do not like to be found fault with; now this is not quite true. I do not object, for instance, to _fair_ criticism. I quarrel with no one who denies to my writings literary merit; they have a right to hold such an opinion, a right to express it. But to have one's book reviewed on hearsay, by persons who never looked between the covers, or to have isolated paragraphs circulated, with words italicized, so that gross constructions might be forced upon the reader, which the author never could dream of; then to have paragraphs taken up in that state, credited to you, and commented upon by horrified moralists,--that is what I call unfair play, Mr.

Walter. When my sense of justice is thus wounded, I do feel keenly, and I have sometimes thought if such persons knew the suffering that such thoughtlessness, to baptize it by the most charitable name, may cause a woman, who must either weep in silence over such injustice, or do violence to her womanly nature by a public contention for her rights, such outrages would be much less frequent. It seems to me," said she earnestly, "were I a man, it would be so sweet to use my powers to defend the defenceless. It would seem to me so impossible to use that power to echo the faintest rumor adverse to a woman, or to keep cowardly silence in the shrugging, sneering, slanderer's presence, when a bold word of mine for the cause of right, might close his dastard lips."

"Bravo, Ruth, you speak like an oracle. Your sentiments are excellent, but I hope you are not so unsophisticated as to expect ever to see them put in universal practice. Editors are but men, and in the editorial profession, as in all other professions, may be found very shabby specimens of humanity. A petty, mean-spirited fellow, is seldom improved by being made an editor of; on the contrary, his pettiness, and meanness, are generally intensified. It is a pity that such unscrupulous fellows should be able to bring discredit on so intelligent and honorable a cla.s.s of the community. However," said Mr. Walter, "we all are more or less responsible, for if the better cla.s.s of editors refrained from copying abusive paragraphs, their circulation would be confined to a kennel cla.s.s whose opinion is a matter of very little consequence."

"By the way, Ruth," said Mr. Walter, after walking on in silence a few rods, "how is it, in these days of female preachers, that you never contemplated the pulpit or lecture-room?"

"As for the lecture-room," replied Ruth, "I had as great a horror of that, as far as I myself am concerned, as the profession of an actress; but not long since I heard the eloquent Miss Lucy Stone one evening, when it really did appear to me that those Bloomers of hers had a mission! Still, I never could put them on. And as to the pulpit, I have too much reverence for that to think of putting my profane foot in it.

It is part of my creed that a congregation can no more repay a conscientious, G.o.d-fearing, devoted minister, than--"

"_You_ can help 'expressing your _real_ sentiments,'" said Mr. Walter, laughing.

"As you please," replied Ruth; "but people who live in gla.s.s 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 was.h.i.+ng a little soiled face, or smoothing little rumpled ringlets, replacing a missing shoe-string or pinafore b.u.t.ton, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 th.o.r.n.y 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 G.o.d 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?"

"G.o.d forbid," murmured Ruth, kissing the child's changeful cheek; "G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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-gla.s.s.

"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 gla.s.ses with distressing deliberation: "'We understand that "Floy," the new literary star, was in very dest.i.tute circ.u.mstances 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 p.r.o.nounces '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 s.h.i.+rt-collar.

"But I understood you just now that n.o.body 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.