But Ruth was wrong. There was destined to be a slip ’twixt the cup and her sweet lip just then, for that same evening Captain Bream received a telegram from London, which induced him to leave Yarmouth hastily to see a friend, he said, and keep an old-standing engagement. He promised, however, to be back in two or three days at furthest.
Chapter Fifteen.
A Cloud comes over Ruth’s Hopes, and dims their Brightness.
To prevent the reader supposing that there is any deep-laid scheme or profound mystery with which we mean to torment him during the course of our tale, we may as well say at once that the little plot, which Ruth had in view, and which began to grow quite into a romance the longer she pondered it, was neither more nor less than to bring Captain Bream and Mrs David Bright face to face.
Ruth had what we may style a constructive mind. Give her a few rough materials, and straight-way she would build a castle with them. If she had not enough of material, she immediately invented more, and thus continued her castle-building. Being highly imaginative and romantic, her structures were sometimes amazing edifices, at which orthodox architects might have turned up their noses—and with some reason, too, for poor little Ruth’s castles were built frequently on bad foundations, and sometimes even in the air, so that they too often fell in splendid ruins at her feet!
It would not be just however, to say that none of Ruth’s buildings stood firm. Occasionally she built upon a good foundation. Now and then she made a straight shot and hit the mark. For instance, the little edifice of cuffs and comforters to the North Sea trawlers survived, and remains to the present day a monument of usefulness, (which few monuments are), and of well-placed philanthropy. It may not, perhaps, be just to say that Ruth actually laid the foundation—conceived the first idea—of that good work, but she was at all events among the first builders, became an active overseer, and did much of the work with her own hands. Still, as we have said, too many of Ruth’s castles came to the ground, and the poor thing was so well used to the sight of falling material that she had at last begun to be quite expert in detecting the first symptoms of dissolution, and often regarded them with despairing anxiety. It was so with her when Captain Bream was summoned so suddenly away from Yarmouth.
Eagerly, anxiously, had she planned to get him down to that town for the purpose of confronting him with Mrs David Bright—the reason being that, from various things the captain had said to her at different times, and from various remarks that Mrs Bright had made on sundry occasions, she felt convinced that the North Sea fisherman’s wife was none other than Captain Bream’s long-lost sister!
It would be well-nigh impossible, as well as useless, to investigate the process of reasoning and the chain of investigation by which she came to this conclusion, but having once laid the foundation, she began to build on it with her wonted enthusiasm, and with a hopefulness that partial failure could not destroy.