"What time is it?" asked Ruth, too lazy to turn over and look at her clock.
"Ten to seven."
"Do close my shutters for me. I"ll sleep an hour or two." She hazily made out the figure in the doorway. "You"re dressed, aren"t you?" she inquired sleepily.
"Yes," replied Susan. "I"ve been waiting for you to wake."
Something in the tone made Ruth forget about sleep and rub her fingers over her eyes to clear them for a view of her cousin.
Susan seemed about as usual--perhaps a little serious, but then she had the habit of strange moods of seriousness. "What did you want?" said Ruth.
Susan came into the room, sat at the foot of the bed--there was room, as the bed was long and Ruth short. "I want you to tell me what my mother did."
"Did?" echoed Ruth feebly.
"Did, to disgrace you and--me."
"Oh, I couldn"t explain--not in a few words. I"m so sleepy.
Don"t bother about it, Susan." And she thrust her head deeper into the pillow. "Close the shutters."
"Then I"ll have to ask Aunt f.a.n.n.y--or Uncle George or everybody--till I find out."
"But you mustn"t do that," protested Ruth, flinging herself from left to right impatiently. "What is it you want to know?"
"About my mother--and what she did. And why I have no father--why I"m not like you--and the other girls."
"Oh--it"s nothing. I can"t explain. Don"t bother about it. It"s no use. It can"t be helped. And it doesn"t really matter."
"I"ve been thinking," said Susan. "I understand a great many things I didn"t know I"d noticed--ever since I was a baby. But what I don"t understand----" She drew a long breath, a cautious breath, as if there were danger of awakening a pain. "What I don"t understand is--why. And--you must tell me all about it. . . . Was my mother bad?"
"Not exactly bad," Ruth answered uncertainly. "But she did one thing that was wicked--at least that a woman never can be forgiven for, if it"s found out."
"Did she--did she take something that didn"t belong to her?"
"No--nothing like that. No, she was, they say, as nice and sweet as she could be--except---- She wasn"t married to your father."
Susan sat in a brown study. "I can"t understand," she said at last. "Why--she _must_ have been married, or--or--there wouldn"t have been me."
Ruth smiled uneasily. "Not at all. Don"t you really understand?"
Susan shook her head.
"He--he betrayed her--and left her--and then everybody knew because you came."
Susan"s violet-gray eyes rested a grave, inquiring glance upon her cousin"s face. "But if he betrayed her---- What does "betray"
mean? Doesn"t it mean he promised to marry her and didn"t?"
"Something like that," said Ruth. "Yes--something like that."
"Then _he_ was the disgrace," said the dark cousin, after reflecting.
"No--you"re not telling me, Ruth. _What_ did my mother do?"
"She had you without being married."
Again Susan sat in silence, trying to puzzle it out. Ruth lifted herself, put the pillows behind her back. "You don"t understand--anything--do you? Well, I"ll try to explain--though I don"t know much about it."
And hesitatingly, choosing words she thought fitted to those innocent ears, hunting about for expressions she thought comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the s.e.xes--an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up from other girls--the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them. Susan listened with increasing amazement.
"Well, do you understand?" Ruth ended. "How we come into the world--and what marriage means?"
"I don"t believe it," declared Susan. "It"s--awful!" And she shivered with disgust.
"I tell you it"s true," insisted Ruth. "I thought it was awful when I first heard--when Lottie Wright took me out in their orchard, where n.o.body could listen, and told me what their cook had told her. But I"ve got kind of used to it."
"But it--it"s so, then; my mother did marry my father," said Susan.
"No. She let him betray her. And when a woman lets a man betray her without being married by the preacher or somebody, why, she"s ruined forever."
"But doesn"t marriage mean where two people promise to love each other and then betray each other?"
"If they"re married, it isn"t betraying," explained Ruth. "If they"re not, it is betraying." Susan reflected, nodded slowly.
"I guess I understand. But don"t you see it was my father who was the disgrace? He was the one that promised to marry and didn"t."
"How foolish you are!" cried Ruth. "I never knew you to be stupid."
"But isn"t it so?" persisted Susan.
"Yes--in a way," her cousin admitted. "Only--the woman must keep herself pure until the ceremony has been performed."
"But if he said so to her, wasn"t that saying so to G.o.d just as much as if the preacher had been there?"
"No, it wasn"t," said Ruth with irritation. "And it"s wicked to think such things. All I know is, G.o.d says a woman must be married before she--before she has any children. And your mother wasn"t." Susan shook her head. "I guess you don"t understand any better than I do--really."
"No, I don"t," confessed Ruth. "But I"d like to see any man more than kiss me or put his arm round me without our having been married."
"But," urged Susan, "if he kissed you, wouldn"t that be like marriage?"
"Some say so," admitted Ruth. "But I"m not so strict. A little kissing and that often leads a man to propose." Susan reflected again. "It all sounds low and sneaking to me," was her final verdict. "I don"t want to have anything to do with it. But I"m sure my mother was a good woman. It wasn"t her fault if she was lied to, when she loved and believed. And anybody who blames her is low and bad. I"m glad I haven"t got any father, if fathers have to be made to promise before everybody or else they"ll not keep their word."
"Well, I"ll not argue about it," said Ruth. "I"m telling you the way things are. The woman has to take _all_ the blame." Susan lifted her head haughtily. "I"d be glad to be blamed by anybody who was wicked enough to be that unjust. I"d not have anything to do with such people."
"Then you"d live alone."
"No, I shouldn"t. There are lots of people who are good and----"
"That"s wicked, Susan," interrupted Ruth. "All good people think as I tell you they do."
"Do Aunt f.a.n.n.y and Uncle George blame my mother?"
"Of course. How could they help it, when she----" Ruth was checked by the gathering lightnings in those violet-gray eyes.