If Ruth, in the privacy of her heart, realized that she was sailing toward dangerous rapids, the premonition gave her no unpleasant fears. Possibly she used no lens, being content to glide forever on her smooth stream of delight. When the sun blinds us, we cannot see the warning black lurking in the far horizon. Without doubt the girl’s soul and sympathies were receiving their proper food. Life was full for her, not because she was occupied,—for a busy life does not always prove a full one,—but because she entered thoroughly into the lives of others, struggled with their struggles, triumphed in their triumphs, and was beginning to see in everything, good or bad, its necessity of existence. Under ordinary circumstances one cannot see much misery without experiencing a world of disillusion and futile rebellion of spirit; but Ruth was not living just at that time under ordinary circumstances.
Something of the nature of electricity seemed to envelop her, that made her pulses bound, her lips quick to smile, and her eyes shine like twin dreamstars. She seemed to be moving to some rapturous music unheard save only by herself. At night, alone with her heart, she dared hardly name to herself the meaning of it all, a puritanic modesty withheld her. Yet all the sweet humility of which she was possessed could not banish from her memory the lingering clasp of a hand, the warm light that fell from eyes that glanced at her. For the present, these were grace sufficient for her daily need. Given the perfume, what need to name the flower?
Her family, without understanding it, noted the difference in their different ways. Mrs. Levice saw with a thrill of delight that she was growing more softly beautiful. Her father, holding his hands a few inches from her shoulders, said, one morning, with a drolly puzzled look, “I am afraid to touch you; sparks might fly.”
Arnold surprised her standing in the gloaming by a window, her hands clasped over her head, a smile parting her lips, her eyes haunting in the witchery of their expression. By some occult power her glance fell unconsciously on him; and he beheld, with mingled amazement and speculation, a rosy hue overspread her face and throat; her hands went swiftly to her face as if she would hide something it might reveal, and she passed quickly from the room. Arnold sat down to solve this problem of an unknown quantity.
Ruth’s birthday came in its course, a few days after her meeting with Rose Delano.
The family celebrated it in their usual simple way, which consisted only in making the day pass pleasantly for the one whose day of days it was,—a graceful way of showing that the birth has been a happy one for all concerned.
On this evening of her twenty-second birthday, Ruth seemed to be in her element. She had donned, in a spirit of mischief, a gown she had worn five years before on the occasion of some festivity. The girlish fashion of the white frock, with its straight, full skirt to her ankles, the round baby waist, and short puffs on her shoulders made a very child of her.
“Who can imagine me seventeen?” she asked gayly as she entered the library, softly lighted by many wax candles. Her mother, who was again enjoying the freedom of the house, and who was now snugly ensconced in her own particular chair, looked up at her.
“That little frock makes me long to take you in my lap,” said she, brightly.
“And it makes me long to be there,” answered Ruth, throwing herself into her mother’s arms and twining her arms about her neck.
“How now, Mr. Arnold, you can’t scare me tonight with your sarcastic disapproval!” she laughed, glancing provokingly over at her cousin seated in a deep blue-cushioned chair.
“I have no desire to scare you, little one,” he answered pleasantly. “I only do that to children or grown-up people.”
“And what am I, pray, good sir?”
“You are neither; you are neither child or woman; you are neither flesh nor spirit; you are uncanny.”
“Dear me! In other words, I am a conundrum. Who will guess me?”
“You are the Sphinx,” replied her cousin.
“I won’t be that ugly-faced thing,” she retorted; “guess again.”
“Impossible. Once acquire a sphinx’s elusiveness and you are a mystery perpetual. You alone can unriddle the riddle.”
“I can’t. I give myself up.”
“Not so fast, young woman,” broke in her father, shutting his magazine and settling his glasses more firmly upon his nose; “that is an office I alone can perform. Who has been hunting on my preserves?”
“Alas! They are not tempting, so be quite calm on that score.” She sat up with a forlorn sigh, adding, “Think of it, Father, twenty-two, and not a heart to hang on my chatelaine.”
“Hands are supposed to mean hearts nowadays,” said Louis, reassuringly; “I am sure you have mittened one or two.”
“Oh, yes,” she answered, laughing evasively, “both of little Toddie Flynn’s. Mamma, don’t you think I am too big a baby for you to hold long?” She sprang up, and drawing a stool before her father’s chair, exclaimed,—
“Now, Father, a grown-up Mother-Goose story for my birthday; make it short and sweet and with a moral like you.”
Mr. Levice patted her head and rumpled the loosely gathered hair.
“Once upon a time,” he began, “a little boy went into his father’s warehouse and ate up all the sugar in the land. He did not die, but he was so sweet that everybody wanted to bite him. That is short and sweet; and what is the moral?”
“Selfishness brings misery,” answered Ruth, promptly; “clever of both of us, but what is the analogy? Louis, you look lonesome over there. I feel as if I were masquerading; come nearer the footlights.”
“And get scorched for my pains? Thanks; this is very comfortable. Distance adds to illusion.”
“You don’t mean to admit you have any illusions, do you? Why, those glasses of yours could see through a rhinoceros, I verily believe. Did you ever see anything you did not consider a delusion and a snare?”
“Yes; there is a standing institution of whose honest value there is no doubt.”
“And that is?”
“My bed.”
“After all, it is a lying institution, my friend; and are you not deposing your masculine muse,—your cigar? Oh, that reminds me of the annual peace-pipe.”
She jumped up, snatched a candle, and left the room. As she turned toward the staircase she was arrested by the ringing of the doorbell. She stood quite still, holding the lighted candle while the maid opened the door.
“Is Miss Levice in?” asked the voice that made the little candle-light seem like myriads of swimming stars. As the maid answered in the affirmative, she came mechanically forward and met the bright-glancing eyes of Dr. Kemp.
“Good-evening,” she said, holding out her disengaged hand, which he grasped and shook heartily.
“Is it Santa Filomena?” he asked, smiling into her eyes.
“No, only Ruth Levice, who is pleased to see you. Will you step into the library? We are having a little home evening together.”
“Thank you. Directly.” He slipped out of his topcoat, and turning quietly to her, said, “But before we go in, and I enact the odd number, I wish to say a few words to you alone, please.”
She bent a look of inquiry upon him, and meeting the gaze of his compelling eyes, led him across the hall into the drawing-room. He noticed how the soft light she held made her the only white spot in the dark room, till, touching a tall silver lamp, she threw a rosy halo over everything. That it was an exquisite, graceful apartment he felt at a glance.
She placed her candle upon a tiny rococo table, and seated herself in a quaint, low chair overtopped by two tiny ivory horns that spread like hands of blessing above her head. The doctor declined to sit down, but stood with one hand upon the fragile table and looked down at her.
“I am inclined to think, after all,” he said slowly, “that you are in truth the divine lady with the light. It is a pretty name and a pretty fame,—that of Santa Filomena.”
What had come over her eyelids that they refused to be raised?
“I think,” he continued with a low laugh, “that I shall always call you so, and have all rights reserved. May I?”
“I am afraid,” she answered, raising her eyes, “that your poem would be without rhyme or reason; a candle is too slight a thing for such an assumption.”
“But not a Rose Delano. I saw her to-day, and at least one sufferer would turn to kiss your shadow. Do you know what a wonderfully beautiful thing you have done? I came to-night to thank you; for any one who makes good our ideals is a subject for thanks. Of course, the thing had no personal bearing upon myself; but being an officious fellow, I thought it proper to let you know that I know. That is my only excuse for coming.”
“Did you need an excuse?”
“That, or an invitation.”
“Oh, I never thought of you—as—as—”
“As a man?”
How to answer this? Then finally she said,—
“As caring to waste an evening.”
“Would it be a waste? There is an old adage that one might adapt, then, ‘A wilful waste makes a woful want.’ Want is a bad thing, so economy would not be a half-bad idea. Shall we go in to your family now, or will they not think you have been spirited away?”
He took the candle from her, and they retraced their steps. As she turned the handle of the door, she said,—
“Will you give me the candle, please, and walk in? I am going upstairs.”
“Are you coming down again?” he asked, standing abruptly still.
“Oh, yes. Father,” she called, opening wide the door, “here is Dr. Kemp.”
With this announcement she fled up the staircase.
She had come up for some cigars; but when she got into her father’s room, she seated herself blindly and looked aimlessly down at her hands. What a blessed reprieve this was! If she could but stay here! She could if it were not for the peace-pipe. Such a silly performance too! Father kept those superfine cigars over in the cabinet there. Should she bring only two as usual? Then she was going? Why not? It would look very rude not to do so. Besides, she wondered what they were talking about. She supposed she must have looked very foolish in that gown with her hair all mussed; and then his eyes—— She arose suddenly and walked to the dressing-table with her light. After all, it was not very unbecoming. Had her face been so white all the evening? Louis liked her face to be colorless. Oh, she had better hurry down.
“Here comes the chief!” cried her mother as she entered. “Now, Doctor, you can see the native celebrating her natal day.”
“She enacts the witch,” said her father “and sends us, living, to the happy hunting-grounds. Will you join us, Doctor?”
“If Lachesis thinks me worthy. Is the operation painful?”
He received no answer as Ruth came forward with a box of tempting Havanas. She selected one, and placing the box on a chair, reached to the high-tiled mantel-shelf, whence she took a tiny pair of scissors and deftly cut off the point of the cigar. She seemed quite unconscious that all were watching her. Louis handed her a lighted match, and putting the cigar between her lips, she lit it into life. The doctor was amused.
She blew up a wreath of the fragrant smoke and handing it to her father, said,—
“With this year’s love, Father.”
The doctor grew interested.
She took another, and lighting it as gracefully, and without the slightest approach to Bohemianism, gave it into Louis’s outstretched hand.
“Well?” he suggested, holding it from his lips till she had spoken.
“I can think of nothing you care for sufficiently to wish you.”
“Nothing?”
“Unless,” with sudden mischief, “I wish you a comfortable bed all the year round—and pleasant dreams, Louis.”
“That is much,” he answered dryly as he drew a cloud of smoke.
The doctor became anticipative.
Ruth’s embarrassment was evident as she turned and offered him a cigar.
“Do you smoke?” she asked, holding out the box.
“Like a chimney,” he replied, looking at her, but taking none, “and in the same manner as other common mortals.”
She stood still, but withdrew her hand a little as if repelling the hint his words conveyed; whereupon he immediately selected a cigar, saying as he did so, “So you were born in summer,—the time of all good things. Well, ‘Thy dearest wish, wish I thee,’ and may it not pass in the smoking!”
She swept him a deep, mock courtesy.
After this, Ruth sat a rather silent listener to the conversation. She knew that they were discussing the pros and cons of the advantages for a bachelor of club life over home life. She knew that Louis was making some brilliantly cynical remarks,—asserting that the apparent privacy of the latter was delusive, and that the reputed publicity of the former was deceptive, as it was even more isolated than the latter. All of which the doctor laughed down as untruly epigrammatic.
“Then there is only one loophole for the poor bachelor,” Mrs. Levice summed up, “and that is to marry. Louis complains of the club, and thinks himself a sort of cynosure in a large household. You, Doctor, complain of the want of coseyness in a bachelor establishment. To state it simply, you need a wife.”
“And oust my Pooh-ba! Madame, you do not know what a treasure that old soldier of mine is. If I call him a veritable Martha, I shall but be paying proper tribute to the neatness with which he keeps my house and linen; he entertains my palate as deliciously as a Corinne her salon, and—is never in my way or thoughts. Can you commend me any woman so self-abnegatory?”
“Many women, but no wife, I am glad to say. But you need one.”
“So! Pray explain wherein the lack is apparent.”
“Oh, not to me, but—”
“You mean you consider a wife an adjunct to a doctor’s certificate.”
“It is a great guarantee with women,” put in Louis, “as a voucher against impatience with their own foibles. They think only home practice can secure the adequate tolerance. Eh, Aunt Esther?”
“Nonsense, Louis!” interrupted Mr. Levice; “what has that to do with skill?”
“Skill is one thing; the manner of man is another—with women.”
“That is worth considering—or adding to the curriculum,” observed Kemp, turning his steady, quiet gaze upon Arnold.
Ruth noticed that the two men had taken the same position,—vis—vis to each other in their respective easy-chairs, their heads thrown back upon the cushions, their arms resting on the chair-arms. Something in Louis’s veiled eyes caused her to interpose.
“Will you play, Louis?” she asked.
“Not to-night, ma cousine,” he replied, glancing at her from lowered lids.
“It is not optional with you to-night, Louis,” she insisted playfully, rising; “we—desire you to play.”
“Or be punished for treason? Has your Majesty any other behest?”
“No; I shall even turn the leaves for you.”
“The leaves of what,—memory? I’ll play by rote.”
He strolled over to the piano and sat down. He struck a few random chords, some soft, some florid, some harsh, some melting; he strung them together and then glided into a dreamy, melodious rhythm, that faded into a bird-like hallelujah,—swelling now into grandeur, then fainting into sobs, then rushing into an allegro so brilliantly bewildering that when the closing chords came like the pealing tones of an organ, Ruth drew a long sigh with the last lingering vibrations.
“What is that?” asked Levice, looking curiously at his nephew, who, turning on his music-chair, took up his cigar again.
“That,” he replied, flecking an ash from his coat lapel, “has no name that I know of; some people call it ‘The Soul.’”
A pained sensation shot through Ruth at his words, for he had plainly been improvising, and he must have felt what he had played.
“Here, Ruth, sing this,” he continued, turning round and picking up a sheet of music.
“What?” she asked without moving.
“‘The bugle;’ I like it.”
Kemp looked at her expectantly. He said he had not known she sang; but since she did, he was sure her voice was contralto.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because your face is contralto.”
She turned from his eyes as if they hurt her, and walked over to Louis’s side.
It could hardly be called singing. Louis had often said that her voice needed merely to be set to rhythmic time to be music; in pursuance of which idea he would put into her hand some poem that touched his fancy, tell her to read it, and as she read, he would adapt to it an accompaniment according to the meaning and measure of the lines,—grandly solemn, daintily tripping, or wildly inspiriting. It was more like a chant than a song. To-night he chose Tennyson’s Bugle-song. Her voice was subservient to the accompaniment, that shook its faint, sweet bugle-notes at first as in a rosy splendor; it rose and swelled and echoed and reverberated and died away slowly as if loath to depart. Arnold’s playing was the poem, Ruth’s voice the music the poet might have heard as he wrote, sweet as a violin, deep as the feeling evolved,—for when she came to the line beginning, “oh, love, they die in yon rich sky,” she might have stood alone with one, in some high, clear place, so mellow was the thrill of her voice, so rapt the expression of her face. Kemp looked as if he would not tire if the sound should “grow forever and forever.”
Mrs. Levice was wakeful after she had gone to bed. Her husband also seemed inclined to prolong the night, for he made no move to undress.
“Jules,” said she in a low, confidential tone, “do you realize that our daughter is twenty-two?”
He looked at her with a half-smile.
“Is not this her birthday?”
“Her twenty-second, and she is still unmarried.”
“Well?”
“Well, it is time she were. I should like to see it.”
“So should I,” he acquiesced with marked decision.
Mrs. Levice straightened herself up in bed and looked at her husband eagerly.
“Is it possible,” she exclaimed, “that we have both thought of the same parti?”
It was now Mr. Levice’s turn to start into an interested position.
“Of whom,” he asked with some restraint, “are you speaking?”
“Hush! Come here; I have longed for it for some time, but have never breathed it to a soul,—Louis.”
“Levice had become quite pale, but as she pronounced the familiar name, the color returned to his cheek, and a surprised look sprang into his eyes.
“Louis? Why do you think of such a thing?”
“Because I think them particularly well suited. Ruth, pardon me, dear, has imbibed some very peculiar and high-flown notions. No merely commonplace young man would make her happy. A man must have some ideas outside of what his daily life brings him, if she is to spend a moment’s interested thought on him. She has repelled some of the most eligible advances for no obvious reasons whatever. Now, she does not care a rap for society, and goes only because I exact it. That is no condition for a young girl to allow herself to sink into; she owes a duty to her future. I am telling you this because, of course, you see nothing peculiar in such a course. But it is time you were roused; you know one look from you is worth a whole sermon from me. As to my thinking of Louis, well, in running over my list of eligibles, I found he fulfilled every condition,—good-looking, clever, cultivated, well-to-do, and—of good family. Why should it not be? They like each other, and see enough of each other to learn to love. We, however, must bring it to a head.”
“First provide the hearts, little woman. What can I do, ask Louis or Ruth?”
“Jules,” she returned with vexation, “how childish! Don’t you feel well? Your cheeks are rather flushed.”
“They are somewhat warm. I am going in to kiss the child good-night; she ran off while I saw Dr. Kemp out.”
Ruth sat in her white dressing-gown, her heavy dark hair about her, her brush idle in her hand. Her father stood silently in the doorway, regarding her, a great dread tugging at his heart. Jules Levice was a keen student of the human face, and he had caught a faint glimpse of something in the doctor’s eyes while Ruth sang. He knew it had been harmless, for her back had been turned, but he wished to reassure himself.
“Not in bed yet, my child?”
She started up in confusion as he came in.
“Of what were you thinking, darling?” he continued, putting his hand under her soft white chin and looking deeply into her eyes.
“Well,” she answered slowly, “I was not thinking of anything important; I was thinking of you. We are going to Beacham’s next week—and have you any fine silk shirts?”
He laughed a hearty, relieved laugh.
“Well, no,” he answered; “I leave all such fancies to your care. So we go next week. I am glad; and you?”
“I? Oh, I love the country in its summer dress, you know.”
“Yes. Well, good-night, love.” He took her face between his hands, and drawing it down to his, kissed it. Still holding her, he said with sweet solemnity,—
“‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee.
“‘The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.
“‘The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.’”
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