And then she stopped to laugh.
So it was a blessed thing that Ruth Burnham, going out from the home which had sheltered her, felt that she went with her husband.
CHAPTER XVIII.
EMBARRASSMENT AND MERRIMENT.
I SUPPOSE there was never a bride going out from her home, with her husband, who was more silent than was our Ruth. It was the silence of constraint, too. It was such a little journey! ten miles or so, by train, then five by carriage, and then—what were they coming to? If only it had been her husband’s happy home, where treasures were waiting to greet him, and be clasped to his heart, Ruth felt that it would have been so much easier.
Yet I think, very likely, she did not understand her own heart. Probably the easiest excuse that we can make for ourselves, or for our shrinking from duties, is, “If it were only something else, I could do it.” I think it quite likely that had Ruth been going to just such a home as she imagined would make her cross lighter, she would have been jealous of those clasping hands and tender kisses. The human heart is a strange instrument, played upon in all sorts of discords, even when we think there is going to be music. As it was, the certainty of her husband’s disapproval, the sense of strangeness, and the sense of shrinking from the new trials, and the questioning as to whether, after all, she had done right, all served to depress Ruth’s heart and hush her voice, to such a degree that she felt speech was impossible. I want to linger a minute over one sentence—the questioning as to whether, after all, she had done right. There is no more miserable state of mind than this. It is such dreadful ground for the Christian to occupy! Yet, practically, half the Christians in the world are there. Theoretically, we believe ourselves to be led, even in the common affairs of life, by the All-wise Spirit of God; theoretically, we believe that He can make no mistake; theoretically, we believe that it is just as easy to get an answer from that Spirit—“a word behind thee,” as the Bible phrases it, directing us which way to go—as it is to hear our human friend answer to our call. But, practically, what do we believe? What is the reason that so much of our life is given up to mourning over possible mistakes? Is it because we choose to decide some questions for ourselves without bringing them to the test of prayer? or because, having asked for direction, we failed to watch for the answer, or expect it, and so lost the “still small voice?” Or is it, sometimes, because having heard the voice, we regret its direction and turn from it, and choose our own?
Ruth Burnham was conscious of none of these states. She had prayed over this matter; indeed, it seemed to her that she had done little else than pray, of late; and, in some points, she was strong, feeling that her feet had been set upon a rock. But in others there was, at this too late moment, a sense of faltering. “Might she not,” asked her conscience of her, “have yielded somewhat? Would it have worked any ill for them both to have gone away from everybody for a few weeks, as Judge Burnham so desired to do, and have learned to know and help each other, and have learned to talk freely together about this new home, and have grown stronger together, before facing this manifest duty?”