She told her mother in a few words at luncheon that she had arranged to take Spanish lessons from a young protege of Dr. Kemp, who had been ill and was in want.
“And I was thinking,” she added with naive policy, “that I might combine a little business with pleasure this afternoon,—pay off some of those ever urgent calls you accuse me of outlawing, and at the same time try to get up a class of pupils for Miss Delano. What do you think?”
“That would be nice; don’t forget Mrs. Bunker. I know you don’t like her, but you must pay a call for the musical which we did not attend; and she has children who might like to learn Spanish. I wonder if I could take lessons too; it would not be exciting, and I am not yet so old but I may learn.”
“You might ask the doctor. He has almost dismissed himself now; and after we get back from the country perhaps Jennie would join us two in a class. Mother and daughter can then go to school together.”
“It is very fortunate,” Mrs. Levice observed pensively, sipping her necessary glass of port, “that C—— sent your hat this morning to wear with your new gown. Isn’t it?”
“Fortunate!” Ruth exclaimed, laughing banteringly; “it is destiny.”
So Mrs. Levice slipped easily into Ruth’s plan from a social standpoint, and Ruth slipped out, trim and graceful, from her mother’s artistic manipulations.
Meanwhile Mrs. Levice intended writing some delayed letters till her husband’s return, which promised to be early in the afternoon.
She had just about settled herself at her desk when Jennie Lewis came bustling in. Mrs. Lewis always brought in a sense of importance; one looked upon her presence with that exhilarating feeling with which one anticipates the latest number of a society journal.
“Go right on with your writing, Aunt Esther,” she said after they had exchanged greetings. “I have brought my work, so I shall not mind the quiet in the least.”
“As if I would bore you in that way!” returned Mrs. Levice, with a laughing glance at her, as she closed her desk. “Lay off your things, and let us have a downright comfortable afternoon. Don’t forget a single sensation; I am actually starving for one.”
Mrs. Lewis smiled grimly as she fluffed up her bang with her hat-pin. She drew up a second cosey rocking-chair near her aunt’s, drew out her needle and crochet-work, and as the steel hook flashed in and out, her tongue soon acquired its accustomed momentum.
“Where is Ruth?” she began, winding her thread round her chubby, ring-bedecked finger.
“She is paying off some calls for a change.”
“Indeed! Got down to conventionality again?” “You would not call her unconventional, would you?”
“Oh, well; every one has a right to an opinion.”
Mrs. Levice glanced at her inquiringly. Without doubt there was an underground mine beneath this non-committal remark. Mrs. Lewis rocked violently backward and forward without raising her eyes. Her face was beet-red, and it looked as if an explosion were imminent. Mrs. Levice waited with no little speculation as to what act of Ruth her cousin disapproved of so obviously. She like Jennie; every one who knew her recognized her sterling good heart; but almost every one who knew her agreed that a grain of flour was a whole cake, baked and iced, to Mrs. Lewis’s imagination, and these airy comfits were passed around promiscuously to whoever was on hand. Not a sound broke the portentous silence but the decided snap with which Mrs. Lewis pulled her needle through, and the hurricane she raised with her rocking.
“I was at the theatre last night.”
The blow drew no blood.
“Which theatre?” asked Mrs. Levice, innocently.
“The Baldwin; Booth played the ‘Merchant of Venice.’”
“Did you enjoy it?” queried her aunt, either evading or failing to perceive the meaning.
“I did.” A pause, and then, “Did Ruth?”
Mrs. Levice saw a flash of daylight, but her answer hinted at no perturbation.
“Very much. Booth is her actor-idol, you know.”
“So I have heard.” She spread her crochet work on her knee as if measuring its length, then with striking indifference picked it up again and adjusted her needle,—
“She came in rather late, didn’t she?”
“Did she?” questioned Mrs. Levice, parrying with enjoyment the indirect thrusts. “I did not know; had the curtain risen?”
“No; there was plenty of time for every one to recognize her.”
“I had no idea she was so well known.”
“Those who did not know her, knew her escort. Dr. Kemp is well known, and his presence is naturally remarked.”
“Yes; his appearance is very striking.”
“Aunt Esther!” The vehemence of Mrs. Lewis’s feelings sent her ball of cotton rolling to the other end of the room.
“My dear, what is it?” Mrs. Levice turned a pair of bright, interested eyes on her niece.
“You know very well what I wish to say: everybody wondered to see Ruth with Dr. Kemp.”
“Why?”
“Because every one knows that she never goes out with any gentleman but Uncle or Louis, and we all were surprised. The Hoffmans sat behind us, and Miss Hoffman leaned forward to ask what it meant. I met several acquaintances this morning who had been there, and each one made some remark about Ruth. One said, ‘I had no idea the Levices were so intimate with Dr. Kemp;’ another young girl laughed and said, ‘Ruth Levice had a swell escort last night, didn’t she?’ Still another asked, ‘Anything on the tapis in your family, Mrs. Lewis?’ And what could I say?”
“What did you say?”
Mrs. Levice’s quiet tone did not betray her vexation. She had feared just such a little disturbance from the Jewish community, but her husband’s views had overruled hers, and she was now bound to uphold his. Nevertheless, she hated anything of the kind.
“I simply said I knew nothing at all about it, except that he was your physician. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have said more.”
“There is no more to be said. Dr. Kemp and Ruth have become friendly through their mutual interest in several poor patients; and in the course of conversation one morning he heard that Ruth was anxious to see this play, and had no escort. So he asked her, and her father saw no objection to her going. It is a pity she didn’t think to hand round a written explanation to her different Jewish friends in the theatre.”
“There you go, Aunt Esther! Jewish friends! I am sure that no matter how indifferent Uncle is to such things, you must remember that our Jewish girls never go alone to the theatre with any one outside of the family, and certainly not with a Christian.”
“What has that to do with it, so long as he is a gentleman?”
“Nothing. Only I didn’t think you cared to have Ruth’s name coupled with one.”
“No, nor with any one. But as I cannot control people’s tongues—”
“Then I would not give them cause for wagging. Aunt Esther, is there anything between Ruth and Dr. Kemp?”
“Jennie, you surprise and anger me. Do you know what you insinuate?”
“I can’t help it. Either you are crazy, or ignorant of what is going on, and I consider it my duty to enlighten you,”—a gossip’s duties are all away from home,—“unless, of course, you prefer to remain in blissful or wilful ignorance.”
“Speak out, please.”
“Of course I knew you must have sanctioned her going last night, though, I must confess, I still think you did very wrongly; but do you know where she went this morning?”
Mrs. Levice was put out. She was enough of a Jewess to realize that if you dislike Jewish comment, you must never step out of the narrowly conventional Jewish pathway. That Ruth, her only daughter, should be the subject of vulgar bandying was more bitter than wormwood to her; but that her own niece could come with these wild conjectures incensed her beyond endurance.
“I do know,” she said in response to the foregoing question. “Ruth is not a sneak,—she tells me everything; but her enterprises are so mild that there would be no harm if she left them untold. She called on a poor young girl who, after a long illness, desires pupils in Spanish.”
“A friend of Dr. Kemp.”
“Exactly.”
“A young girl, unmarried, who, a few weeks ago, through a merciful fate, lost her child at its birth.”
The faint flush on Mrs. Levice’s cheek receded.
“Who told you this?” she questioned in an even, low voice.
“I thought you could not know. Mrs. Blake, the landlady where the girl lives, told me.”
“And how, pray, do you connect Ruth with this girl?”
“I will tell you. Mrs. Blake does my white sewing. I was there this morning; and just as I went into her room, I saw Ruth leaving another farther down the hall. Naturally I asked Mrs. Blake who had the room, and she told me the story.”
“Naturally.” The cutting sarcasm drove the blood to Mrs. Lewis’s face.
“For me it was; and in this case,” she retorted with rising accents, “my vulgar curiosity had its vulgar reward. I heard a scandalous account of the girl whom my cousin was visiting, and, outside of Dr. Kemp, Ruth is the only visitor she has had.”
“I am sorry to hear this, Jennie.”
“I know you are, Aunt Esther. But what I find so very queer is that Dr. Kemp, who pretends to be her friend,—and I have seen them together many times,—should have sent her there. Don’t you?”
“I do not understand it at all,—neither Ruth nor him.”
“Surely you don’t think Ruth knew anything of this?” questioned Mrs. Lewis, leaning forward and raising her voice in horror.
“Of course not,” returned Mrs. Levice, rather lamely. She had long ago acknowledged to herself that there were depths in her daughter’s nature that she had never gauged.
“I know what an idol his patients make of him, but he is a man nevertheless; and though you may think it horrible of me, it struck me as very suggestive that he was that girl’s only friend.”
“Therefore he must have been a good friend.”
Mrs. Lewis bounded from her chair and turned a startled face to Mr. Levice, who had thus spoken, standing in the doorway. Mrs. Levice breathed a sigh of hysterical relief.
“Good-afternoon, Jennie,” he said, coming into the room and shaking her hand; “sit down again. Good-afternoon Esther;” he stooped to kiss his wife.
Mrs. Lewis’s hands trembled; she looked, to say the least, ashamed. She had been caught scandal-mongering by her uncle, Jules Levice, the head and pride of the whole family.
“I am sorry I heard what I did, Jennie; sorry to think that you are so poor as to lay the vilest construction on an affair of which you evidently know nothing, and sorry you could not keep your views to yourself.” It was the habit of all of Levice’s relatives to listen in silence to any personal reprimand the dignified old man might offer.
“I heard a good part of your conversation, and I can only characterize it as—petty. Can’t you and your friends see anything without springing at shilling-shocker conclusions? Don’t you know that people sometimes enjoy themselves without any further design? So much for the theatre talk. What is more serious is the fact that you could so misjudge my honorable friend, Dr. Kemp. Such a thing, Jennie, my girl, would be as remote from Dr. Kemp’s possibilities as the antipodes. Remember, what I say is indisputable. Whether Ruth knew the story of this girl or not, I cannot say, but either way I feel assured that what she did was well done—if innocently; if with knowledge, so much the better. And I venture to assert that she is not a whit harmed by the action. In all probability she will tell us all the particulars if we ask her. Otherwise, Jennie, don’t you think you have been unnecessarily alarmed?” The benign gentleness of his question calmed Mrs. Lewis.
“Uncle,” she replied earnestly, “in my life such things are not trivial; perhaps because my life is narrower. I know you and Ruth take a different view of everything.”
“Don’t disparage yourself; people generally do that to be contradicted or to show that they know their weaknesses and have never cared to change them. A woman of your intelligence need never sink to the level of a spiteful chatterbox; every one should keep his tongue sheathed, for it is more deadly than a sword. Your higher interests should make you overlook every little action of your neighbors. You only see or hear what takes place when the window is open; you can never judge from this what takes place when the window is shut. How are the children?”
By dint of great tenderness he strove to make her more at ease.
Ruth, confronted with their knowledge, confessed, with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, her contretemps.
“And,” she said in conclusion, “Father, Mamma, nothing you can say will make me retract anything I have done or purpose doing.”
“Nothing?” repeated her father.
“I hope you won’t ask me to, but that is my decision.”
“My darling, I dislike to hear you call yourself a mule,” said her father, looking at her with something softer than disapproval; “but in this case I shall not use the whip to turn you from your purpose. Eh, Esther?”
“It is Quixotic,” affirmed Mrs. Levice; “but since you have gone so far, there is no reasonable way of getting out of it. When next I see the doctor, I shall speak to him of it.”
“There will be no occasion, dear,” remonstrated the indulgent father, at sight of the annoyed flash in Ruth’s eyes; “I shall.”
By which it will be seen that the course of an only child is not so smooth as one of many children may think; every action of the former assumes such prominence that it is examined and cross-examined, and very often sent to Coventry; whereas, in a large family, the happy-go-lucky offspring has his little light dimmed, and therefore less remarked, through the propinquity of others.
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