Ruth

"You must do no such thing. Leave Leonard! You have no right to leave Leonard. Where could you go to?"

"To Helmsby," she said, humbly. "It would break my heart to go, but I think I ought, for Leonard"s sake. I know I ought." She was crying sadly by this time, but Mr Benson knew the flow of tears would ease her brain. "It will break my heart to go, but I know I must."

"Sit still here at present," said he, in a decided tone of command.

He went for the cup of tea. He brought it to her without Sally"s being aware for whom it was intended.

"Drink this!" He spoke as you would do to a child, if desiring it to take medicine. "Eat some toast." She took the tea, and drank it feverishly; but when she tried to eat, the food seemed to choke her.

Still she was docile, and she tried.

"I cannot," said she at last, putting down the piece of toast. There was a return to something of her usual tone in the words. She spoke gently and softly; no longer in the shrill, hoa.r.s.e voice she had used at first. Mr Benson sat down by her.

"Now, Ruth, we must talk a little together. I want to understand what your plan was. Where is Helmsby? Why did you fix to go there?"

"It is where my mother lived," she answered. "Before she was married she lived there; and wherever she lived, the people all loved her dearly; and I thought--I think, that for her sake some one would give me work. I meant to tell them the truth," said she, dropping her eyes; "but still they would, perhaps, give me some employment--I don"t care what--for her sake. I could do many things," said she, suddenly looking up. "I am sure I could weed--I could in gardens--if they did not like to have me in their houses. But perhaps some one, for my mother"s sake--oh! my dear, dear mother!--do you know where and what I am?" she cried out, sobbing afresh.

Mr Benson"s heart was very sore, though he spoke authoritatively, and almost sternly.

"Ruth! you must be still and quiet. I cannot have this. I want you to listen to me. Your thought of Helmsby would be a good one, if it was right for you to leave Eccleston; but I do not think it is. I am certain of this, that it would be a great sin in you to separate yourself from Leonard. You have no right to sever the tie by which G.o.d has bound you together."

"But if I am here they will all know and remember the shame of his birth; and if I go away they may forget--"

"And they may not. And if you go away, he may be unhappy or ill; and you, who above all others have--and have from G.o.d--remember _that_, Ruth!--the power to comfort him, the tender patience to nurse him, have left him to the care of strangers. Yes; I know! But we ourselves are as strangers, dearly as we love him, compared to a mother. He may turn to sin, and want the long forbearance, the serene authority of a parent; and where are you? No dread of shame, either for yourself, or even for him, can ever make it right for you to shake off your responsibility." All this time he was watching her narrowly, and saw her slowly yield herself up to the force of what he was saying.

"Besides, Ruth," he continued, "we have gone on falsely hitherto. It has been my doing, my mistake, my sin. I ought to have known better.

Now, let us stand firm on the truth. You have no new fault to repent of. Be brave and faithful. It is to G.o.d you answer, not to men. The shame of having your sin known to the world, should be as nothing to the shame you felt at having sinned. We have dreaded men too much, and G.o.d too little, in the course we have taken. But now be of good cheer. Perhaps you will have to find your work in the world very low--not quite working in the fields," said he, with a gentle smile, to which she, downcast and miserable, could give no response. "Nay, perhaps, Ruth," he went on, "you may have to stand and wait for some time; no one may be willing to use the services you would gladly render; all may turn aside from you, and may speak very harshly of you. Can you accept all this treatment meekly, as but the reasonable and just penance G.o.d has laid upon you--feeling no anger against those who slight you, no impatience for the time to come (and come it surely will--I speak as having the word of G.o.d for what I say) when He, having purified you, even as by fire, will make a straight path for your feet? My child, it is Christ the Lord who has told us of this infinite mercy of G.o.d. Have you faith enough in it to be brave, and bear on, and do rightly in patience and in tribulation?"

Ruth had been hushed and very still until now, when the pleading earnestness of his question urged her to answer:

"Yes!" said she. "I hope--I believe I can be faithful for myself, for I have sinned and done wrong. But Leonard--" She looked up at him.

"But Leonard," he echoed. "Ah! there it is hard, Ruth. I own the world is hard and persecuting to such as he." He paused to think of the true comfort for this sting. He went on. "The world is not everything, Ruth; nor is the want of men"s good opinion and esteem the highest need which man has. Teach Leonard this. You would not wish his life to be one summer"s day. You dared not make it so, if you had the power. Teach him to bid a n.o.ble, Christian welcome to the trials which G.o.d sends--and this is one of them. Teach him not to look on a life of struggle, and perhaps of disappointment and incompleteness, as a sad and mournful end, but as the means permitted to the heroes and warriors in the army of Christ, by which to show their faithful following. Tell him of the hard and th.o.r.n.y path which was trodden once by the bleeding feet of One. Ruth! think of the Saviour"s life and cruel death, and of His divine faithfulness. Oh, Ruth!" exclaimed he, "when I look and see what you may be--what you _must_ be to that boy, I cannot think how you could be coward enough, for a moment, to shrink from your work! But we have all been cowards. .h.i.therto," he added, in bitter self-accusation. "G.o.d help us to be so no longer!"

Ruth sat very quiet. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and she seemed lost in thought. At length she rose up.

"Mr Benson!" said she, standing before him, and propping herself by the table, as she was trembling sadly from weakness, "I mean to try very, very hard, to do my duty to Leonard--and to G.o.d," she added, reverently. "I am only afraid my faith may sometimes fail about Leonard--"

"Ask, and it shall be given unto you. That is no vain or untried promise, Ruth!"

She sat down again, unable longer to stand. There was another long silence.

"I must never go to Mr Bradshaw"s again," she said at last, as if thinking aloud.

"No, Ruth, you shall not," he answered.

"But I shall earn no money!" added she, quickly, for she thought that he did not perceive the difficulty that was troubling her.

"You surely know, Ruth, that while Faith and I have a roof to shelter us, or bread to eat, you and Leonard share it with us."

"I know--I know your most tender goodness," said she, "but it ought not to be."

"It must be at present," he said, in a decided manner. "Perhaps before long you may have some employment; perhaps it may be some time before an opportunity occurs."

"Hush," said Ruth; "Leonard is moving about in the parlour. I must go to him."

But when she stood up, she turned so dizzy, and tottered so much, that she was glad to sit down again immediately.

"You must rest here. I will go to him," said Mr Benson. He left her; and when he was gone, she leaned her head on the back of the chair, and cried quietly and incessantly; but there was a more patient, hopeful, resolved feeling in her heart, which all along, through all the tears she shed, bore her onwards to higher thoughts, until at last she rose to prayers.

Mr Benson caught the new look of shrinking shame in Leonard"s eye, as it first sought, then shunned, meeting his. He was pained, too, by the sight of the little sorrowful, anxious face, on which, until now, hope and joy had been predominant. The constrained voice, the few words the boy spoke, when formerly there would have been a glad and free utterance--all this grieved Mr Benson inexpressibly, as but the beginning of an unwonted mortification, which must last for years.

He himself made no allusion to any unusual occurrence; he spoke of Ruth as sitting, overcome by headache, in the study for quietness: he hurried on the preparations for tea, while Leonard sat by in the great arm-chair, and looked on with sad, dreamy eyes. He strove to lessen the shock which he knew Leonard had received, by every mixture of tenderness and cheerfulness that Mr Benson"s gentle heart prompted; and now and then a languid smile stole over the boy"s face.

When his bedtime came, Mr Benson told him of the hour, although he feared that Leonard would have but another sorrowful crying of himself to sleep; but he was anxious to accustom the boy to cheerful movement within the limits of domestic law, and by no disobedience to it to weaken the power of glad submission to the Supreme; to begin the new life that lay before him, where strength to look up to G.o.d as the Law-giver and Ruler of events would be pre-eminently required.

When Leonard had gone upstairs, Mr Benson went immediately to Ruth, and said,

"Ruth! Leonard is just gone up to bed," secure in the instinct which made her silently rise, and go up to the boy--certain, too, that they would each be the other"s best comforter, and that G.o.d would strengthen each through the other.

Now, for the first time, he had leisure to think of himself; and to go over all the events of the day. The half-hour of solitude in his study, that he had before his sister"s return, was of inestimable value; he had leisure to put events in their true places, as to importance and eternal significance.

Miss Faith came in laden with farm produce. Her kind entertainers had brought her in their shandry to the opening of the court in which the Chapel-house stood; but she was so heavily burdened with eggs, mushrooms, and plums, that when her brother opened the door she was almost breathless.

"Oh, Thurstan! take this basket--it is such a weight! Oh, Sally, is that you? Here are some magnum-bonums which we must preserve to-morrow. There are guinea-fowl eggs in that basket."

Mr Benson let her unburden her body, and her mind too, by giving charges to Sally respecting her housekeeping treasures, before he said a word; but when she returned into the study, to tell him the small pieces of intelligence respecting her day at the farm, she stood aghast.

"Why, Thurstan, dear! What"s the matter? Is your back hurting you?"

He smiled to rea.s.sure her; but it was a sickly and forced smile.

"No, Faith! I am quite well, only rather out of spirits, and wanting to talk to you to cheer me."

Miss Faith sat down, straight, sitting bolt-upright to listen the better.

"I don"t know how, but the real story about Ruth is found out."

"Oh, Thurstan!" exclaimed Miss Benson, turning quite white.

For a moment, neither of them said another word. Then she went on.

"Does Mr Bradshaw know?"

"Yes! He sent for me, and told me."

"Does Ruth know that it has all come out?"

"Yes. And Leonard knows."

"How? Who told him?"

"I do not know. I have asked no questions. But of course it was his mother."