All these questions Ruth held, for the time being, at bay, and arranged and directed and criticised with her usual calm superiority of manner, and with the assurance of one who knew exactly what she wanted, and intended not to stop short of entire satisfaction. And she didn’t. She was more critical and troublesome, even, than usual; and the “Madame” would have told you that that was unnecessary. And, at last, after many delays, and changes of plan and trimmings, and changes of patterns, involving vexatious delays on “Madame’s” part, they were free of her for the day, and could pursue their round of shopping more at leisure. But Ruth was in no mood for shopping, other than the necessary things that must be ordered to the “Madame’s” without delay. She was tired and fretted; she wanted something to cool and quiet her.
She dispatched the necessary shopping with great care, indeed, but with unusual speed, leaving the girls, meantime, seated in the carriage, instead of in the great store, where they would have delighted to be.
The business of lunching had been dispatched some time before—as soon, indeed, as they had left the dress-making establishment. Ruth had chosen an obscure place for refreshment, not choosing to risk the danger of fashionable acquaintances, at the places with which she was familiar. Consequently, she had been able to do little else than gather her skirts about her, to protect them from careless and hurried waiters, and to curl her aristocratic nose behind her handkerchief, at the unwonted smells combining around her; while the girls, famished by the drain on their nerves, and having, by reason of the excitement of the morning, been unable to indulge in much breakfast, made a hearty meal, not at all disturbed by the sights and sounds and odors which made eating an impossibility to Ruth. This little matter served to add to her discomfort and her sense of gloom; for, when people are hungry, they are much more ready to yield to gloom. All the shopping done that she could bring herself to give attention to, she consulted her watch, and learned with dismay, that there was an hour and a half before train-time. What was to be done with it?
She thought of her husband’s office; but suppose the criminal lawyer should be there? In any case, there would be those dreadful students to stare, and nudge each other and giggle. Ruth dreaded a giggle more than she did a bullet. Assuredly, she would not go there! Neither was her city home to be thought of. She was not in a mood to present her husband’s daughters to Mrs. Judge Erskine; neither did she intend that those daughters, in their present attire, or with their present attainments, should come in contact with her. So, as the gloomy-faced woman rode listlessly along, on an up-town car, while the two girls were bobbing their heads swiftly from one window to another, endeavoring to take in all the strange sights, she was engaged in trying to decide what to do with time. A blackboard bulletin, before one of the public halls, caught her notice, and her quick eye took in the large lettering: “Bible Reading! Harry Morehouse! Here, at Four O’clock! Come!” Before she had reached the inviting word, she had signaled the car, and the bewildered girls were following her whither she would.
“There is an hour or more before we can go home,” she said in explanation. “Let us go to this meeting. Perhaps it will be interesting.”
They were entirely willing; in fact, they were in a state of maze. Anything that this remarkable woman—who knew her way so composedly through this great whirling city—suggested, they were willing to help carry out. So they mounted the steps to the large, light, social-looking room, where people were already thronging in. No acquaintances to be feared here. Ruth did not now know many who frequented such meetings, or were to be found in this part of the city. In the distance she caught a glimpse Marion, but she shrank back, unwilling to be recognized even by her; for Marion had her beautiful daughter beside her, and the contrast would be too strikingly painful. Presently the meeting opened. Ruth looked about her for Harry Morehouse, a name with which she was not unfamiliar. But she almost curled her lip in disappointment, she was so amazed at the insignificance of this little, boyish man! “As if he could help anybody!” her heart said, in scorn. “What exaggerated reports do get into the papers about people!” And then, presently, she did just what many another person has done, who has listened to Harry Morehouse’s rendering of Scripture—forgot to think of the man, and gave earnest heed to the words which he was reading; words which, someway, had a sound—strangely familiar though they were—as if she had never heard them before.
“Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” What was there in the familiar verse that thrilled so through Ruth Burnham’s soul? “That which satisfieth not.” She needed only her own experience to show her that one who understood the human heart spoke those words! How freely she had been giving labor! and how strangely unsatisfying it all seemed to her to-day! She fairly hungered and thirsted after a higher grasp of the Infinite Arm, reached down. A great longing came over her to hide herself away in him. She was so tired and so tried, and a long line of petty trials stared her in the face. She felt like turning away from them all; and yet she mustn’t. Well, then, she felt like reaching higher ground—getting up where the air was purer—where these endless details of dress and position would trouble her less—where such women as “Madame,” the dressmaker, would have no power to flush her cheek and set her heart to angry beatings by a high-bred stare. Suddenly a new thought flashed across her heart. These girls—what had she been doing for them? How had she been trying to satisfy them? In the days that they had spent together, she remembered that she had not once alluded, even in the most remote manner, to anything higher, or better, or more satisfying, than these new things, which, at best, were to perish with the using. Had she not, by her example, left the impress of her first influence upon them to the effect that well-furnished rooms and carefully-adorned bodies were the important things on which to spend one’s strength?
“Well,” she said within her disturbed self, “I have no time.”
“No time?” inquired that other inner self, which is forever at war with its fellow. “Is it because you have been employed on more important matters?”
This almost angered Ruth; it flushed her face, and she said: