Ruth Erskine's Crosses

by Pansy

The two girls came down a trifle earlier than the others, and were in the hall near the doorway, where the soft, yellow sunlight rested on them, when Judge Burnham descended the stairs. Half-way down he paused, with a surprised, irresolute air, as his eyes rested on the two apparent strangers, and then, as one of them turned suddenly, and he caught a glimpse of her face, the surprise deepened into bewilderment. Who were these young ladies who were so at home in his house in the privacy of a Sabbath morning? This was the first thought. And the second, “It is not—can it be possible that they are my daughters!” Then, it is almost surprising that he did not at once feel humiliated over the fact that outward adornings had power so to transform!

It was certainly a transformation! Rich, quiet-toned silks, just the right tint to accord well with skin and eyes, made in that indescribable manner which marks the finished workman, to those eyes skilled in translating it, and to other eyes it simply says, “The effect is perfect.” Wraps, and hats, and gloves, and handkerchiefs—everything in keeping. And, in place of the stretched-back hair, were soft, smooth, rolling auburn curls, completely changing the expression of the wearer’s face. Also, that unbecoming mass of shortish hair which had hung in such untidy uncouthness, was gone, and in its place wide, smooth braids, tastefully looped here and there with knots of ribbon of just the right shade.

Ruth should have been there at that moment to see the two, and to see Judge Burnham as he looked at them. She would have felt rewarded for her work. It certainly was strange what a different manner the hitherto awkward girls now assumed. A sense of conscious becomingness, if it were nothing more, had fallen upon them, and in the effort to do justice to their new selves they almost unconsciously drew the stooping shoulders straight and stood with heads erect.

“Well, upon my word!” said Judge Burnham, recovering himself at last, and advancing toward them, “I didn’t know you. I wondered what strange ladies we had here. Your fall suits are certainly very becoming.”

He chose to ignore the fact that fall suits were new experiences to them. Perhaps he really did not yet understand to what a new world they had been introduced. The two laughed, not unpleasantly, and the flush on their cheeks, toned, as it was, by the billows of soft ruchings about the throat, was certainly not unbecoming. They had taken long looks at themselves in their mirror, that morning, and it was not unpleasant to them to think that their father did not recognize them. They had already reached the place where they had no desire to have their past recognized. Some seed takes root promptly and grows rapidly.

You may imagine that the entrance of the Burnham party to the little stone church was an event in the eyes of the congregation. They had known the Burnham girls all their lives; but these “young ladies” they never saw before. It would have been curious to a student of human nature to have studied the effect which their changed appearance made on the different characters present. Certain ones looked unaffected and unconcealed amazement; others gazed up at them, and returned their nods of recognition with respectful bows, seeming to look upon them as people who had moved to an immense distance from themselves; and there were those who resented the removal, and tossed their heads and said, with their eyes, and the shape of their mouths, that they “considered themselves quite as good as those Burnham girls, if they were all decked out like peacocks!”

As for Judge Burnham, the shade of satisfied pride, in place of the mortification which he had schooled himself to feel, repaid his wife for her three weeks of effort.

Then she tried to turn away from the question of personal appearance, and give herself to the service; but she was both surprised and pained to find that, in her well-meant efforts to place these girls in their proper position before others, she had, someway, lost ground spiritually. It was all very well to resolve to turn her thoughts away from the girls, and their dresses, and their bonnets, and their hair, and their manners, but it was another thing to accomplish it. She found what, possibly, we have each discovered by experience, that it was not easy to get away on Sabbath, in church, from that which had absorbed us during the week, and indeed, a fair share of the early Sabbath itself. Try as she would to join in hymn, or Bible-reading, or even prayers, she found her mind wandering to such trivial questions as whether, after all, a shade lighter of the silk would have fitted Minta’s peculiar complexion better, or whether those gloves were not a trifle large. These thoughts were very hateful to her. She struggled hard to get away from them, and was amazed and distressed beyond measure to find that they held her captive. She waited eagerly for the sermon, hoping that it would be such an one as would hold her attention for her, since she was not able to control it herself; and behold, the text announced was one which, indeed, helped her wandering thoughts, but threw her back into the very midst of the gloom which had pressed her heart the last time she heard those words: “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?” Again her answering conscience said that was what she had been doing. Money and time and strength freely given for that which was not bread!

It had not fed her soul; on the contrary, it, or something else, had starved her. Well, what was the trouble? She had surely done that which was her duty? Yes, but did a revealing spirit whisper the words in her ear, just then?—“These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.” She had been absorbed in her labor; she had put these things first. She had risen and gone about the day, too hurried for other than a word of prayer—too hurried for any private reading. She had retired at night, too wearied in mind and body for any prayer at all! She was starved! much time gone, and no bread for her hungry soul! Also, having not fed herself, how could she have been expected to feed others? Even yet she had said almost nothing, to these daughters of hers, about the all-important matter. She had talked with them, often and long. All the details of the toilet had been gone over carefully, exhaustively, and she and they, and Judge Burnham himself, were satisfied with the results of her words in that direction. What about the direction which “satisfieth?”