Mrs. Tascher was comforted, though the void made by Ruth's absence was almost like death, the wide space seemed so unspannable. She wrote back at once in all the fulness of her heart, and Ruth was not so absorbed in grief for the loss of her lover but that she appreciated and was deeply grateful for the tender, unfailing affection of her friend. Mrs. Tascher, who felt that the sharpest knife was the best to be used in a case of urgent surgical necessity, wrote briefly that the doctor and Miss Custer were married—that Miss Custer had begged for at least three months' preparation, but the doctor was impatient; and so, as soon as she was able to stand the journey to Boston, where her friends and property were, they had joined hands and started.
"The marriage took place in the parlor," Mrs. Tascher wrote, "and the household were invited to be present. I, however, had a bad headache and could not get down stairs; Bruce pleaded 'business;' and poor Hugh, whose boyish affections have been cruelly tampered with, had a fishing engagement. So there was nobody but Aunt Ruby and her 'help' to witness the touching ceremony except the minister and his wife. It was touching, I suppose: Miss Custer wept bitterly at being so 'neglected,' and Ebling is mortally offended with Bruce."
Three years went by; which space of time Mrs. Tascher spent chiefly in Florida and New York, going back and forth as the seasons changed in obedience to medical authority. At last she concluded to try a few weeks in Westbrook again. Aunt Ruby, who still kept boarders—all strangers, however—gave her the old rooms up stairs with their pleasant windows. Here she sat and wrote to Ruth a few days after her arrival.
Ruth had become quite contented, and even happy, under the warm Syrian sun, watching with earnest, loving eyes the development of barbarism and heathenism into civilization and Christianity, though it seemed very much to her sometimes as if she had lost her place and personality in the world. She was swallowed up in the great pagan East, and was nothing to the land that owned her—to the people that were her people. She was dead to the life and world to which she had been born.
The family of her guardian, together with some of their pupils, had removed to a little village up the side of the mount to spend a few of the hottest weeks, as was their custom. The mail was regularly brought up by a young Arab riding a mule. One evening, when Ruth had gone to sit alone on one of the grassy terraces overlooking the sea and the luxuriant foliage and vegetation below—a thing she liked, though it usually made her pensive and a little sad—a young Syrian girl ran down and gave her a letter. It was Mrs. Tascher's, and I will take the liberty to transcribe a part of it here:
"Aunt Ruby has furnished me with a good many surprising items in regard to the fortunes and actions of our old associates. Bruce (he was a splendid fellow—wasn't he?—solid, practical and all that), who, you remember, had a good deal of means, has built himself a house, something quite elegant. It stands on that little knoll on the other side of the town, overlooking the river. I mean to go over and take a look at it some day: it is said to be beautifully furnished, and is kept by an old maiden aunt of our friend. Bruce, by the way, is in Europe, though what took him there I cannot conjecture, unless he means to bring home a European exportation in the shape of a wife. I wish, my dear, you had taken a fancy to him: I always thought he admired you. You don't mind my probing an old wound—do you?—because I want to speak of some of the others. Miss Custer's fortune, as it turned out, was extremely limited. She had, I believe, enough to furnish a small rented house here, and she and the doctor immediately went to housekeeping. But time, which settles all things and places them in their true light and relations, has brought to the notice of this precious pair that they are very ill adapted to each other: it is even said that they quarrel. The coarser gossips affirm that Mrs. Ebling is lazy and shiftless, and that the doctor is disheartened and neglects his business. I have seen him once, and can judge something of his state by his bearing and looks. He is certainly not the sort of man I once thought he would make. Whether there is better stuff in him than what we see developed, or whether he owes what he is entirely to circumstances, is an unsolvable question. I am inclined to think that every person has the making of two individuals in him—one bad, the other good. What a pity that a man usually has only one chance! If he makes a mistake he is lost. My dear Ruth, in the whole course of my life I have kept my eyes upon the infallible law of cause and effect; and I know this, that wrong-doing inevitably brings its own retribution."
When Ruth took her eyes from this letter and fixed them upon the distant blue water-depths they were brimful of tears. "Yes, wrong-doing is followed by retribution," she thought, "but where is the reward for right-doing?"
Oh, she felt so lonely in that far-off heathen land, with the shadow of others' wrong-doing lying always across her path! Why must she suffer and be alone?
A step from behind startled her, and she sprang up and turned round. A pair of black eyes were smiling at her from a handsome, familiar face. "Oh, Mr. Bruce!" she cried, and flew up the steps, holding out both her hands.
"I have come such a long way to see you," said Bruce, "that my motive must be pretty conspicuous: I don't mean to try to conceal it. Perhaps you have never thought of me as a man you would be at all likely to marry. Still, I have made it my business to come and ask you, and I thought I might better let you know my errand at once, instead of leaving you to guess it from any clownish efforts of mine to do the agreeable to you."