Now, this was the last sentence that Ruth Erskine had expected to hear. She had studied over possible conversations, and schooled herself to almost every form, but not this.
“What do you mean?” she asked, returning the earnest gaze with one full of bewilderment.
“Why, I mean that I have some dim conception of how hard, how awfully hard all this is! Two strangers to come into your home and claim, not the attention accorded to guests, but the position belonging to home! It is dreadful! I have felt so sorry for you, and for myself, all day, that I could not keep the tears from my eyes. I want to make myself as endurable as possible. If you will only show me how I will try very hard.”
What was Ruth Erskine to reply to this? It was hard; she felt too truthful to disclaim it. Just now it seemed to her almost impossible to endure it. She tried to turn it off lightly.
“Oh, we shall live through it,” she said, and the attempt to make her voice unconstrained startled even herself. Susan abated not one whit the earnestness in her voice.
“I know we shall,” she said. “Because it must be done—because it is right—and because we each have an Almighty Helper. I asked your father, and mine, as soon as ever I saw him, whether you were a Christian. It seemed to me it would be an impossible ordeal if you were not. He is my father, Ruth. I know it is hard for you to hear me use that name, which you have supposed for so many years belonged exclusively to you. If it had been right, I could almost have made myself promise never to use it. But it wouldn’t be the right way to manage, I am sure. Ruth, you and I shall both breathe freer, and understand each other better, if we admit from the first, that father has done wrong in this thing. Now I know that is dreadful to say. But remember, he is my father. I am not to blame because he loved your mother better than he ever could mine. I am not to blame for a bit of the tragedy any more than you are. And I have been a sufferer, just as you are. All my life I have been without a father’s love and care. All my life I have had to imagine what the name ‘father’ must mean. I am not blaming him; I am simply looking at facts. We shall do better to face this thing. I really had something to forgive. He admitted it. I have forgiven him utterly, and my heart just bleeds for him and for you. But then we shall, as you say, get through all the embarrassments, and come off conquerors in the end.”
Utter silence on Ruth’s part. How shall I confess to you that this conversation disappointed and angered her? She was nerved to bear heavy crosses. If this new sister had been arrogant, or cringing, or insufferably rude and exacting, I think Ruth would have borne it well. But this simple, quiet facing of difficulties like a general—this grave announcement that she, too, had been a sufferer—even the steady tone in which she pronounced that word “father,” gave Ruth a shiver of horror. The worst of it was—yes, the very worst of it was—this girl had spoken truth. She was a sufferer, and through no fault of her own, through Judge Erskine’s pride and self-will. Here was the sting—it was her father’s fault—this father who had been one of her strongest sources of pride during all her proud days of life. “It is true enough,” she told herself, bitterly. “But she need not have spoken it—I don’t want to hear it.” And then she turned away and went out of the room—went down-stairs, and paused in the hall again, resting her arm on that chair and trying to still the tumult in her angry heart.
As for the sister, looking after her with sad eyes, she turned the key on her at last, and then went over to the great, beautiful bed—more beautiful than any on which she had ever slept—and bowed before it on her knees. What if Ruth Erskine had had to contend with a sister who never got down on her knees! Yet she positively did not think of that. It seemed to her that nothing could make the cross more bitter than it was. She opened the door at last, quietly enough, and went forward to where her father was standing, waiting for her, or for some one—something to come to him and help him in his bewilderment. He looked ten years older than when she saw him two weeks ago, and there was that appealing glance in his eyes that touched his daughter. A moment before she had felt bitter toward him. It was gone now.
“I brought Judge Burnham home with me,” he said, speaking quickly, as if to forestall any words from her. “He is an old friend. He was a pet of your mother’s, Ruth, in his boyhood, and he knew all about her, and about——this. I thought it would be better than to be quite alone at first.”
“Yes,” Ruth said, in a tone that might be assenting, or it might simply be answering. In her heart she did not believe that it would be better for them to have Judge Burnham in their family circle, and she wished him away. Was not the ordeal hard enough without having an outsider to look on and comment?