"Am I to tell her, Erskine?" Ruth had asked her son, on the day that she was to go to the station to meet Maybelle. He shook his head.
"No, mamma, no, I will not make it harder for you than is necessary. Yes, I know only too well how surely you would do everything for me if you could; but—I have assumed an obligation, and I do not mean to shirk it in the slightest particular. Do not tell her anything save that you wanted her—that is true, is it not?" he broke off to ask anxiously. "Then, in the evening, when she has had time to become somewhat rested from her journey, send her to me in my library and I will manage the rest."
How he managed it, or what took place during that interview which must have been strangely tragic some of the time, Ruth never fully knew. She asked no questions, and what her son and the girl revealed to her in scraps and detached expressions afterward, suggested a confidence so sacred that even she must not invade it.
She had known by the start and the swift look of pain which swept over Erskine's face when he first met Maybelle at the dinner table, that the girl in her radiant beauty suggested his dead wife. To Ruth there was a strange unlikeness to the face that she had not loved; but her heart was able to understand how Irene had been to one whom she had loved, nay worshipped, as she had her husband, a very different being, living a life solely for him, and leaving a memory that the fair girl could awaken.
Maybelle was all but overwhelmed with astonishment and a sweet timidity when Ruth told her that Erskine wanted to see her for a little while in his library.
"Not alone!" she said. "Without you, I mean? Oh! Am I not almost afraid? I mean, I shall not know what to say to him. It is all so recent, you see. I can see his beautiful character shining through his sorrow; dear Mrs. Burnham, I admire him almost as much as even his mother could wish, but I can see that a great crushing sorrow is heavy upon him, and a girl like me does not know how to touch such wounds without hurting. Does he mean to talk to me about her, do you think? Does he know that I loved her and prayed for her all the time? Oh, dear friend, don't you think he wants you too?"
Ruth kissed her tenderly, solemnly, and put her away from her. "No, dear," she said gently. "He wants to see you quite alone. He has something to tell you. You will know what to say after you have heard him; God will show you."
She closed the door after the slowly moving, half-reluctant, serious girl, and sat alone. It came to her vaguely, as one used to sacrifice, that here was another. She must sit alone with folded hands while another, and she a young girl upon whom he had never before set eyes, went down with her son into the depths of human pain. Was it always so? Was that forever the lot of motherhood, to stand aside and have some one else touch the deepest life of her children, whether in joy or pain?
The interview was long, very long. Sometimes it seemed to the waiting mother that she could not endure the strain; that she must go to that closed room and discover for herself what those two were saying to torture each other. But at last, the door across the hall opened and Maybelle came with swift feet and knelt in front of her, hid her face in the older woman's lap, and broke into a passion of weeping.
At first Ruth let the storm of pain roll on unchecked, only touching the bowed head with soothing hand and murmuring:—