“When will you be ready for supper?” she asked, and, though she tried to make her voice sound naturally, she knew it was cold and hard.
“Why, as soon as Judge Burnham and——they come down,” he said, hesitatingly. What were they all going to call each other? Should he say “your mother,” or should he say “Mrs. Erskine?” He could not tell which of the two seemed most objectionable to him, so he concluded to make that foolish compromise and say “they.”
“Where did you leave Susan?” he questioned.
“In her room.”
Ruth’s tone was colder than before. Judge Erskine essayed to help her.
“She is the only alleviating drop in this bitter cup,” he said, looking anxiously at Ruth for an assuring word. “It has been a comfort to me to think that she seemed kind and thoughtful, and in every way disposed to do right. She will be a comfort to you, I hope, daughter.”
Poor Ruth! If her father had said, “She is perfectly unendurable to me; you must contrive in some way that I shall not have to see her or hear her name,” it would have been an absolute relief to his daughter’s hard-strained, quivering nerves. It was almost like an insult to have him talk about her being a help and a comfort! She turned from him abruptly, and felt the relief which the opening door and the entrance of Judge Burnham gave.
The supper-bell pealed its summons through the house, and Judge Erskine went in search of his wife; but Ruth called Irish Kate to “tell Miss Erskine that tea was ready,” flushing to the roots of her hair over the name “Miss Erskine,” and feeling vexed and mortified when she found that Judge Burnham’s grave eyes were on her. Mrs. Erskine was a dumpy little woman, who wore a breakfast-shawl of bright blue and dingy brown shades, over a green dress, the green being of the shade that fought, not only with the wearer’s complexion, but with the blue of the breakfast-shawl. The whole effect was simply dreadful! Ruth, looking at it, and at her, taking her in mentally from head to foot, shuddered visibly. What a contrast to the grandeur of the man beside her! And yet, what a pitiful thing human nature was, that it could be so affected by adverse shades of blue and green, meeting on a sallow skin! Before the tea was concluded, it transpired that there were worse things than ill-fitting blues and greens. Mrs. Judge Erskine murdered the most common phrases of the king’s English! She said, “Susan and me was dreadful tired!” And she said, “There was enough for him and I!” She even said his’n and your’n, those most detestable of all provincialisms!
And Ruth Erskine sat opposite her, and realized that this woman must be introduced into society as Mrs. Judge Erskine, her father’s wife! There had been an awkward pause about the getting seated at the table. Ruth had held back in doubt and confusion, and Mrs. Erskine had not seemed to know what her proper place should be; and Judge Erskine had said, in pleading tone: “Daughter, take your old place, this evening.” And then Ruth had gone forward, with burning cheeks, and taken the seat opposite her father, as usual, leaving Mrs. Erskine to sit at his right, where she had arranged her own sitting. And this circumstance, added to all the others, had held her thoughts captive, so that she heard not a word of her father’s low, reverent blessing. Perhaps, if she had heard, it might have helped her through the horrors of that evening. There was one thing that helped her. It was the pallor of her father’s face. She almost forgot herself and her own embarrassment in trying to realize the misery of his position. Her voice took a gentle, filial tone when she addressed him, that, if she had but known it, was like drops of oil poured on the inflamed wounds which bled in his heart.