Aunt Rachel / A Rustic Sentimental Comedy

by David Christie Murray

The younger woman hid her face in her hands, and furtively watched the elder through her fingers.

Rachel read but a line, and then dropping the letter stared across the candle at Ruth, and passed a hand across her forehead, brushing her glasses away in the act. She groped for them, polished them with an automatic look, and began again. Ruth, too frightened even to sob, still looked at her, and save for the rustle of the withered paper in the withered fingers the silence was complete.

“What is this?” cried Aunt Rachel, suddenly. “Why do you bring me this?” She was standing bolt upright, with both hands clasped downward on the letter.

“It was only found last night,” said Ruth, rising and making a single step towards her. “From the hour you wrote it until then it was never seen. Reuben found it and brought it to me.”

The old maid's face went white, and but that the chair she had thrust away from her in rising rested against the mantle-piece, she would have fallen. Ruth ran towards her and set a protecting arm about her waist. Her own tears were falling fast, and her voice was altogether broken. “It was in Manzini, the book you took Reuben's letter from. He found it there, and thought it came from me, until he saw that the paper was old, and that it did not quite answer his own letter. He took it to his uncle Ezra, and the poor old man's heart is broken. Oh, aunt, his heart is broken! He had never seen it. He had waited, waited—”

She could say no more, she was so agitated by her own words, and so stricken by the stony face before her.

Suddenly the old maid melted into tears. Reuben, sitting and waiting on the bank of the hedge without, had heard Ruth's broken voice, and now he could hear Rachel weeping. The night was without a sound, and he could hear nothing but the murmurs and sobbings from the little sitting-room. Rachel cried unrestrainedly and long, and Reuben waited with exemplary patience. At last Ruth came out and whispered to him,

“Tell father I am going to stay with Aunt Rachel to-night.”

Reuben, naturally enough, would have kept her there and questioned her, but she ran back into the cottage before he could detain her, and after lingering a while bareheaded before the casket which held her, he took his way back to Fuller and gave him his daughter's message.

“Ah!” said Fuller. “At that rate it 'ud seem to be pretty well straightened out betwigst 'em. I'm glad to think it, for theer's nothin' like, harmony among them as is tied together. But hows'ever her an' the wench may mek it up, Reuben, thee'lt be a villin till the end o' the chapter.” The villany attributed to Reuben and Ezra tickled the old man greatly, and his fat body was so agitated by his mirth that his legs became unequal to their burden. He had to drop into his great cushioned arm-chair to have his laugh out. “That villany o' thine 'll be the death o' me,” he said, as he wiped his eyes.