There was something almost terrible to Ruth, in seeing her cold, calm father so moved. She had never realized what awfully solemn things tears were till she saw them on her father's cheeks, and felt them falling hot on her head, from eyes so unused to weeping. The kisses she gave him were very soft and clinging—full of tender, soothing touches. Then father and daughter knelt together, and the long, long struggle with sin and pride and silence was concluded.
Do you think this was a lasting victory for Ruth Erskine? You do not understand the power of "that old serpent, the Devil," if you can not think how he came to her again and again in the silence of her own room, even into the midst of her rejoicings over the newly-washed soul, even while the joy in heaven among the angels was still ringing out over her father, came whispering to her heart to say:
"Oh, I can't, I can't. Think of it! The Erskines! How can we endure it? Is it possible that we must? Perhaps the woman would rather live as she is."
As if that had anything to do with the question of right and wrong! The very next instant Ruth curled her lip sneeringly over her own folly. She never forgot that night, nor how the conflict waged. She tried to imagine herself saying "mother" to one who really had a nominal right to the title. Not that it was an unfamiliar word to her. The old aunt who had occupied the mother's place in the household since Ruth was a wee creature of two years, she had learned almost from the instincts of childhood to call "mamma." And as she grew older and was unused to any other name for Mrs. Wheeler, the widowed aunt, she toned it into the familiar and comfortable word "mother," and had always spoken to and of her in that name.
Yet she knew very well how little the title meant to her. She had loved this old lady with a sort of pitying, patronizing love, realizing even very early in her life that she, herself, had more self-reliance, more executive ability, in her little finger, than was spread all over the placid lady who early learned that "Ruthie" was to do precisely as she pleased.
Such a cipher was this same old lady in the household, that when a long lost son appeared on the surface, during Ruth's absence at Chautauqua, proving, sturdy old Californian as he was, to have a home and place for his mother, and a heart to take her with him, her departure caused scarcely a ripple in the well-ordered household of the Erskines.
She had been its nominal head for eighteen years, but the real head who was absent at Chautauqua, had three or four perfectly trained servants, who knew their young mistress' will so well, that they could execute it in her absence as well as when she was present.
So when Ruth took, in the eyes of everybody, the position that had really been hers so long, it made no sort of change in her plans or ways. And beyond a certain lingering tenderness when she spoke of her by that familiar title, "mother," there was no indication that the woman who had had so constant and intimate connection with her life was remembered.
But this name applied to another, and that other, one whom she had never seen in her life, and who yet was actually to occupy the position of head of the household—her father's wife, in the eyes of society her mother, spoken of as such, herself asked, "How is your mother?" or "What does your mother think of this?" Would anyone dare to use that name to her? No one had so spoken of her aunt. They all knew she was only her aunt, though she chose to pet her by the use of that tender name. Could she bear all these things and a hundred others that would come up?
"Marion," she said the next day as she chanced to meet that young lady on the street, "I have something to tell you. I want to call on you to witness that I shall never again be guilty of that vainglorious absurdity of saying that I am ready for anything. One can never know whether this is true or not; at least I am sure I never can. What I am to say in the future is simply, 'Lord, make me willing to do what there is for me to do this day.' Remember that in a few days you will understand what I mean."