Rosa came in, and the signing was done. After the business was finished George lingered as if he wished to speak with me. Very likely he wished to apologize, but my nerves were not in tune for more talk with him, and in any case it was better to ignore all that had been unpleasant.

"You have no more business, have you, George?" I asked him directly.

"Tom of course will want to see the daughter he has given away. I didn't let him see her first for fear he'd refuse to part with her."

George had no excuse for staying after that, and he was just leaving the room when Rosa reappeared with Tomine. The darling looked like a cherub, and was in a mood truly angelic. George scowled at her as if the dear little thing had done him some wrong, and hurried away. I do not understand how he could resist my darling, or why he should feel so about her. It is, I suppose, friendship for me; but he should realize a little what a blessing baby is to my lonely life.

Tom stood silent when Rosa took Thomasine up to him. He did not offer to touch the tiny pink face, and I could fancy how many thoughts must go through his mind as he looked. While he might not regret the dead woman, indeed, while he could hardly be other than glad that Julia was not alive, he must have some feeling about her which goes very deep. I should think any man who was not wholly hard must have some tenderness toward the mother of his child, no matter who or what she was. It moves even me, to think of such a feeling; and I could not look at Tom as he stood there with the living child to remind him of the dead mother.

It seemed a long time that he looked at baby, and we were all as quiet as if we had been at prayer. Then Tom of his own accord kissed Tomine.

He has never done it before except as I have asked him. He came over to me and held out his hand.

"I must go back to haying," he said. Then he held my hand a minute, and looked into my eyes. "Make her as much like yourself as you can, Ruth,"

he added; "and G.o.d bless you."

The tears came into my eyes at his tone, and blinded me. Before I could see clearly, he was gone. I hope he understood that I appreciated the generosity of his words.

July 3. I am troubled by the thought of yesterday. George went away so evidently out of sympathy with what I had done, and very likely thinking I was unfriendly, that it seems almost as if I had really been unkind. I must do something to show him that I am the same as ever. Perhaps the best thing will be to have his wife to tea. My mourning has prevented my doing anything for them, and secretly, I am ashamed to say, this has been a relief. I can ask them quietly, however, without other guests.

July 8. I feel a little as if I had been shaken up by an earthquake, but I am apparently all here and unhurt. Day before yesterday Cousin Mehitable descended upon me in the wake of her usual telegram, determined to bear me away to Europe, despite, as she said, all the babies that ever were born. She had arranged my pa.s.sage, fixed the date, engaged state-rooms, and cabled for a courier-maid to meet us at Southampton; and now I had, she insisted, broken up all her arrangements.

"It's completely ungrateful, Ruth," she declared. "Here I have been slaving to have everything ready so the trip would go smoothly for you.

I've done absolutely every earthly thing that I could think of, and now you won't go. You've no right to back out. It's treating me in a way I never was treated in my whole life. It's simply outrageous."

I attempted to remind her that she had been told of my decision to stay at home long before she had made any of her arrangements; but she refused to listen.

"I could bear it better," she went on, "if you had any decent excuse; but it's nothing but that baby. I must say I think it's a pretty severe reflection on me when you throw me over for any stray baby that happens to turn up."

I tried again to put in a protest, but the tide of Cousin Mehitable's indignation is not easily stemmed.

"To think of your turning Cousin Horace's house into a foundling hospital!" she exclaimed. "Why don't you put up a sign? Twenty babies wouldn't be any worse than one, and you'd be able to make a martyr of yourself to some purpose. Oh, I've no patience with you!"

I laughed, and a.s.sured her that there was no sort of doubt of the truth of her last statement; so then she changed her tone and begged me not to be so obstinate.

Of course I could not yield, for I cannot desert baby; and in the end Cousin Mehitable was forced to give me up as incorrigible. Then she declared I should not triumph over her, and she would have me know that there were two people ready and just dying to take my place. I knew she could easily find somebody.

The awkward thing about this visit was that Cousin Mehitable should be here just when I had asked the Westons to tea. I always have a late dinner for Cousin Mehitable, although Hannah regards such a perversion of the usual order of meals as little less than immoral; and so George and his wife found a more ceremonious repast than I had intended. I should have liked better to have things in their usual order, for I feared lest Mrs. Weston might not be entirely at her ease. I confess I had not supposed she might think I was endeavoring to impress her with my style of living until she let it out so plainly that I could not by any possibility mistake her meaning. She evidently wished me to know that she saw through my device; and of course I made no explanations.

It was an uncomfortable meal. Cousin Mehitable refused to be conciliating. She examined the bride through her lorgnette, and I could see that Mrs. Weston was angered while she was apparently fascinated.

George was taciturn, and I could not make things go smoothly, though I tried with all my might. By the time the guests went, I felt that my nerves were fiddlestrings.

"Well," Cousin Mehitable p.r.o.nounced, as soon as the door had closed behind them, "of all the dowdy frumps I ever saw, she is the worst. I never saw anybody so overdressed."

"She was overdressed," I a.s.sented; "but you behaved horribly. You frightened her into complete shyness."

"Shyness! Humph!" was her response. "She has no more shyness than a bra.s.s monkey. That's vulgar, of course, Ruth. I meant it to be to match the subject."

I put in a weak defense of Mrs. Weston, although I honestly do find her a most unsatisfactory person. She is self-conscious, and somehow she does not seem to me to be very frank. Very likely, moreover, she had been disconcerted by the too evident snubs of my unmanageable cousin.

"If I snubbed her," was the uncompromising rejoinder with which a suggestion of this sort was met, "I'm sure I am not ashamed of it. To think of her saying that you evidently wanted to show Tuskamuck how to do things in style! Does she think any person with style would let her into the house?"

I thanked her for the compliment to me.

"Oh, bother!" she retorted. "You are only a goose, with no sense at all.

To think you once thought of marrying that country b.o.o.by yourself!"

I was too much hurt to reply, and probably my face showed my feeling, for Cousin Mehitable burst into a laugh.

"You needn't look so grumpy about it," she cried. "All's well that ends well. You're safely out of that, thank heaven!"

I felt that loyalty to George required that I should protest, but she interrupted me.

"Don't be a humbug, Ruth," she said; "and for pity's sake don't be such a fool as to try to humbug yourself. You're not a sentimental schoolgirl to moon after a man, especially when he's shown what his taste is by taking up with such a horror as Mrs. Weston."

"I am fond of him," I a.s.serted, stubbornly enough.

She seized me by the shoulders, and looked with her quick black eyes into mine so that I felt as if she could see down to my very toes.

"Can you look me in the face, Ruth Privet, and tell me you really care for a man who could marry that ignorant, vulgar, dowdy woman just for her pretty face? Can you fool yourself into thinking that you haven't had a lucky escape from a man that's in every way your inferior? You know you have! Why, can you honestly think now for a moment of marrying him without feeling your backbone all gooseflesh?"

Fortunately she did not insist upon my answering her, but shook me and let me go. I doubt if I could have borne to have her press her questions. I was suddenly conscious that George has changed or that my idea of him has altered; and that if he were still single, I could not marry him under any circ.u.mstances.

Cousin Mehitable went home this morning, but her talk has been in my mind all day.

It comes over me that I have lost more than George. His loving another did not deprive me of the power or the right to love him, and his marriage simply set him away from my life. In some other life, if there be one, I might have always been sure he would come back to me. I cannot help knowing I fed his higher nature, and I helped him to grow, while his wife appeals to something lower, even if it is more natural and human. I felt that in some other possible existence he would see more clearly, and she would no longer satisfy him. Now I begin to feel that I have lost more than I knew. I have lost not only him, but I have lost--no, I cannot have lost my love for him. It is only that to-night I am foolish. It is rainy, dreary, hopeless; and seeing Mrs. Weston through Cousin Mehitable's eyes has put things all askew.

Yet why not put it down fearlessly, since I have begun? If I am to write at all it should be the truth. I am beginning to see that the man I loved was not George Weston so much as a creature I conjured up in his image. I see him now in a colder, a more sane light, and I find that I am not looking at the man who filled my heart and thought. He has somehow changed. This would be a comfort to some, I suppose. I see now how Mother felt about him. She never thought him what he seemed to me, and she always believed that sooner or later I should be disappointed in him. I should not have been disappointed if I had married him--I think!

Yet now I see how he is under the influence of his wife--But no, it is not her influence only; I see him now, I fear, as he is when he is free to act his true self, unmoved by the desire to be what I would have had him. He was influenced by me. I knew it from the very first, and I see with shame how proud of it I was. Yet it gave me a chance to help him, to grow with him, to feel that we were together developing and advancing. Oh, dear, how cold and superior, and conceited it sounds now it is on paper! It truly was not that I thought I was above him; but it is surely the part of a woman to inspire her lover and to grow into something better with him. Now it seems as if whatever George did he did for me, and not because of any inner love for growth. He appears now less worthy by just so much as what he was seems to me higher than what he is. I have lost what he was. It is cruel that I cannot find the George I cared for. It is hard to believe he existed only in my mind.

July 9. I have been reading over what I wrote last night. It troubles me, and it has a most self-righteous flavor; but I cannot see that it is not true. It troubles me because it is true. I remember that I wondered when George tired of me if the same would have come about if we had married. Am I so changeable that if I had been his wife I should have tried him by my severe standards, and then judged him unworthy? I begin to think the Pharisees were modest and self-distrustful as compared to self-righteous me. It is terribly puzzling. If I were his wife I should surely feel that my highest duty was to help him, to bring out whatever is best in him. I think I should have been too absorbed in this ever to have discovered that I was idealizing him. Now I am far enough away from him to see him clearly. The worse part of him has come out; and very likely I am not above a weak feminine jealousy which makes me incapable of doing him justice. I believe if I had been his wife I might have kept him--Yet he was already tired of my influence!

Such speculations are pretty unprofitable work. The only thing to keep in mind now is that he is my friend, and that it is for me to do still whatever I can for him. I confess that Cousin Mehitable is right. I am no longer sorry I did not marry George, but I still care for him sincerely, and mean to serve him in every way possible.

July 12. Miss Charlotte came in this morning while I was playing with Tomine, and hailed me as a mother in Israel. She is a great admirer of baby, but she declines to touch her.

"I'm too big and too rough," she says. "I know I should drop her or break her, or forget she isn't a plant, and go to snipping her with my pruning-shears. You'd better keep her. You've the motherly way with you."

It must please any woman to be told that she has the motherly way, and just now I certainly need it. Miss Charlotte came to talk with me about Kathie. The poor child has been growing more and more morbid all summer, and I do not see what is to be done for her. I have tried to comfort and help her, but as her troubles are religious I am all but helpless.

Miss Charlotte went over the Cove yesterday on one of her roving tramps in the woods,--"bushwhacking," as she calls it,--and found Kathie roaming about in Elder's Cut-down, wringing her hands and crying aloud like a mad thing.

"You can't tell what a start it gave me, Ruth," she said. "I heard her, and I thought of wild beasts and wild Indians, and all sorts of horrors.

Then when I saw her, I didn't know her at first. Her hair was all tousled up, and she wrung her hands in the craziest way."

"Did you speak to her?" I asked.