CHAPTER XI.
A NEWLY-SHAPED CROSS.
RUTH Erskine, meantime, was keeping up her struggle, having intervals when she seemed to be making headway, and felt as though she had reached higher ground, only to be dropped suddenly down again, into the depths of despair by some unfortunate encounter with the new-comers. No more definite comment on the existing state of things could be made, than is shadowed in that expression, “New-comers.” They still continued to be thought of as such in the house. They did not drift into the family ways or customs—they did not assimilate. Everything was so new to them, so unlike their entire former education, that much of the time they stood one side and looked on, instead of mingling and having their individuality lost in the union. So far as Mrs. Erskine was concerned, she did not look on quietly. It had been no part of her discipline to learn quietness. She talked everywhere, under the most trying circumstances, and she seemed always to chance upon the things to say that were particularly unfortunate just then and there. This being the case, it is perhaps not strange that the rasping processes were so numerous that there was not time between them for healings. Judge Erskine, on his part, made nearly as little progress. Being a man of faultless grace and bearing, and being noted for fastidiousness, made him pre-eminently susceptible to wounds in these directions. Generally, he and Ruth maintained the strictest silence toward each other concerning their trials, they having, by tacit consent, agreed upon that as the safest course; but, occasionally, they were rasped into comparing notes. In the hall one morning, where many of their confidential conversations were held, during these days, her father stopped her, with an almost petitioning question:
“Daughter, was it very trying, yesterday, when Mrs. Blakesley called?”
“As trying as it could be, sir,” Ruth answered, still smarting so much under that recent infliction that she could not bring her voice to a sympathetic tone. “Mrs. Blakesley, being a woman who hasn’t an ounce of brains herself, has, as you may imagine, none to spare for other people. Indeed, father, I sometimes feel as though this matter of making and receiving calls was going to be too complicated a thing for me. I never was fond of such duties, as you may remember, and now it is absolute torture, long drawn out.”
“I know it,” he said, wincing, and growing paler under each stabbing word from his daughter’s lips. “It was all folly, I am afraid. I thought we would try to do just right; but I do not know but we would have felt it less, and they been just as happy, if we had resolutely closed our doors on society altogether, and borne this thing among ourselves.”
What these two people needed was some strong voice to remind them how many, and how much harder troubles life had, than they had been called upon to bear. Despite Marion Dennis’ opinion, this is—or it should be—a help. By comparison with other’s trials, we ought to be led to feel the lesser nature of our own. Failing in that, it sometimes happens to us to decide as to which of our own trials has the heaviest hand.