Ruth (50 page)

"He must know something of it," said she. "Does he feel it much?"

"Very much," said Mr Benson. Jemima shook her head sadly.

"It is hard upon him," said she.

"It is," Mr Benson replied.

For in truth, Leonard was their greatest anxiety indoors. His health
seemed shaken, he spoke half sentences in his sleep, which showed
that in his dreams he was battling on his mother's behalf against an
unkind and angry world. And then he would wail to himself, and utter
sad words of shame, which they never thought had reached his ears. By
day, he was in general grave and quiet; but his appetite varied, and
he was evidently afraid of going into the streets, dreading to be
pointed at as an object of remark. Each separately in their hearts
longed to give him change of scene, but they were all silent, for
where was the requisite money to come from?

His temper became fitful and variable. At times he would be most
sullen against his mother; and then give way to a passionate remorse.
When Mr Benson caught Ruth's look of agony at her child's rebuffs,
his patience failed; or rather, I should say, he believed that a
stronger, severer hand than hers was required for the management of
the lad. But, when she heard Mr Benson say so, she pleaded with him.

"Have patience with Leonard," she said. "I have deserved the anger
that is fretting in his heart. It is only I who can reinstate myself
in his love and respect. I have no fear. When he sees me really
striving hard and long to do what is right, he must love me. I am not
afraid."

Even while she spoke, her lips quivered, and her colour went and came
with eager anxiety. So Mr Benson held his peace, and let her take her
course. It was beautiful to see the intuition by which she divined
what was passing in every fold of her child's heart, so as to be
always ready with the right words to soothe or to strengthen him. Her
watchfulness was unwearied, and with no thought of self-tainting in
it, or else she might have often paused to turn aside and weep at the
clouds of shame which came over Leonard's love for her, and hid it
from all but her faithful heart; she believed and knew that he was
yet her own affectionate boy, although he might be gloomily silent,
or apparently hard and cold. And in all this, Mr Benson could not
choose but admire the way in which she was insensibly teaching
Leonard to conform to the law of right, to recognise Duty in the mode
in which every action was performed. When Mr Benson saw this, he
knew that all goodness would follow, and that the claims which his
mother's infinite love had on the boy's heart would be acknowledged
at last, and all the more fully because she herself never urged them,
but silently admitted the force of the reason that caused them to be
for a time forgotten. By-and-by Leonard's remorse at his ungracious
and sullen ways to his mother—ways that alternated with passionate,
fitful bursts of clinging love—assumed more the character of
repentance; he tried to do so no more. But still his health was
delicate; he was averse to going out-of-doors; he was much graver
and sadder than became his age. It was what must be, an inevitable
consequence of what had been; and Ruth had to be patient, and pray in
secret, and with many tears, for the strength she needed.

She knew what it was to dread the going out into the streets after
her story had become known. For days and days she had silently shrunk
from this effort. But one evening towards dusk, Miss Benson was busy,
and asked her to go an errand for her; and Ruth got up and silently
obeyed her. That silence as to inward suffering was only one part of
her peculiar and exquisite sweetness of nature; part of the patience
with which she "accepted her penance." Her true instincts told her
that it was not right to disturb others with many expressions of her
remorse; that the holiest repentance consisted in a quiet and daily
sacrifice. Still there were times when she wearied pitifully of
her inaction. She was so willing to serve and work, and every one
despised her services. Her mind, as I have said before, had been
well cultivated during these last few years; so now she used all the
knowledge she had gained in teaching Leonard, which was an employment
that Mr Benson relinquished willingly, because he felt that it would
give her some of the occupation that she needed. She endeavoured to
make herself useful in the house in every way she could; but the
waters of housekeeping had closed over her place during the time of
her absence at Mr Bradshaw's—and, besides, now that they were trying
to restrict every unnecessary expense, it was sometimes difficult
to find work for three women. Many and many a time Ruth turned over
in her mind every possible chance of obtaining employment for her
leisure hours, and nowhere could she find it. Now and then Sally, who
was her confidante in this wish, procured her some needlework, but
it was of a coarse and common kind, soon done, lightly paid for. But
whatever it was, Ruth took it, and was thankful, although it added
but a few pence to the household purse. I do not mean that there was
any great need of money; but a new adjustment of expenditure was
required—a reduction of wants which had never been very extravagant.

Ruth's salary of forty pounds was gone, while more of her "keep,"
as Sally called it, was thrown upon the Bensons. Mr Benson received
about eighty pounds a year for his salary as minister. Of this, he
knew that twenty pounds came from Mr Bradshaw; and when the old man
appointed to collect the pew-rents brought him the quarterly amount,
and he found no diminution in them, he inquired how it was, and
learnt that, although Mr Bradshaw had expressed to the collector his
determination never to come to chapel again, he had added, that of
course his pew-rent should be paid all the same. But this Mr Benson
could not suffer; and the old man was commissioned to return the
money to Mr Bradshaw, as being what his deserted minister could not
receive.

Mr and Miss Benson had about thirty or forty pounds coming in
annually from a sum which, in happier days, Mr Bradshaw had invested
in Canal shares for them. Altogether their income did not fall much
short of a hundred a year, and they lived in the Chapel-house free of
rent. So Ruth's small earnings were but very little in actual hard
commercial account, though in another sense they were much; and Miss
Benson always received them with quiet simplicity. By degrees, Mr
Benson absorbed some of Ruth's time in a gracious and natural way. He
employed her mind in all the kind offices he was accustomed to render
to the poor around him. And as much of the peace and ornament of life
as they gained now, was gained on a firm basis of truth. If Ruth
began low down to find her place in the world, at any rate there was
no flaw in the foundation.

Leonard was still their great anxiety. At times the question seemed
to be, could he live through all this trial of the elasticity of
childhood? And then they knew how precious a blessing—how true a
pillar of fire, he was to his mother; and how black the night, and
how dreary the wilderness would be, when he was not. The child and
the mother were each messengers of God—angels to each other.

They had long gaps between the pieces of intelligence respecting
the Bradshaws. Mr Bradshaw had at length purchased the house at
Abermouth, and they were much there. The way in which the Bensons
heard most frequently of the family of their former friends, was
through Mr Farquhar. He called on Mr Benson about a month after the
latter had met Jemima in the street. Mr Farquhar was not in the habit
of paying calls on any one; and though he had always entertained and
evinced the most kind and friendly feeling towards Mr Benson, he had
rarely been in the Chapel-house. Mr Benson received him courteously,
but he rather expected that there would be some especial reason
alleged, before the conclusion of the visit, for its occurrence; more
particularly as Mr Farquhar sat talking on the topics of the day in a
somewhat absent manner, as if they were not the subjects most present
to his mind. The truth was, he could not help recurring to the last
time when he was in that room, waiting to take Leonard a ride, and
his heart beating rather more quickly than usual at the idea that
Ruth might bring the boy in when he was equipped. He was very full
now of the remembrance of Ruth; and yet he was also most thankful,
most self-gratulatory, that he had gone no further in his admiration
of her—that he had never expressed his regard in words—that no one,
as he believed, was cognisant of the incipient love which had grown
partly out of his admiration, and partly out of his reason. He was
thankful to be spared any implication in the nine-days' wonder which
her story had made in Eccleston. And yet his feeling for her had been
of so strong a character, that he winced, as with extreme pain, at
every application of censure to her name. These censures were often
exaggerated, it is true; but when they were just in their judgment of
the outward circumstances of the case, they were not the less painful
and distressing to him. His first rebound to Jemima was occasioned by
Mrs Bradshaw's account of how severely her husband was displeased at
her daughter's having taken part with Ruth; and he could have thanked
and almost blessed Jemima when she dropped in (she dared do no more)
her pleading excuses and charitable explanations on Ruth's behalf.
Jemima had learnt some humility from the discovery which had been
to her so great a shock; standing, she had learnt to take heed lest
she fell; and when she had once been aroused to a perception of the
violence of the hatred which she had indulged against Ruth, she was
more reticent and measured in the expression of all her opinions. It
showed how much her character had been purified from pride, that now
she felt aware that what in her was again attracting Mr Farquhar was
her faithful advocacy of her rival, wherever such advocacy was wise
or practicable. He was quite unaware that Jemima had been conscious
of his great admiration for Ruth; he did not know that she had ever
cared enough for him to be jealous. But the unacknowledged bond
between them now was their grief, and sympathy, and pity for Ruth;
only in Jemima these feelings were ardent, and would fain have
become active; while in Mr Farquhar they were strongly mingled
with thankfulness that he had escaped a disagreeable position,
and a painful notoriety. His natural caution induced him to make
a resolution never to think of any woman as a wife until he had
ascertained all her antecedents, from her birth upwards; and the
same spirit of caution, directed inwardly, made him afraid of giving
too much pity to Ruth, for fear of the conclusions to which such
a feeling might lead him. But still his old regard for her, for
Leonard, and his esteem and respect for the Bensons, induced him to
lend a willing ear to Jemima's earnest entreaty that he would go and
call on Mr Benson, in order that she might learn something about the
family in general, and Ruth in particular. It was thus that he came
to sit by Mr Benson's study fire, and to talk, in an absent way, to
that gentleman. How they got on the subject he did not know, more
than one-half of his attention being distracted; but they were
speaking about politics, when Mr Farquhar learned that Mr Benson took
in no newspaper.

"Will you allow me to send you over my
Times
? I have generally
done with it before twelve o'clock, and after that it is really
waste-paper in my house. You will oblige me by making use of it."

"I am sure I am very much obliged to you for thinking of it. But do
not trouble yourself to send it; Leonard can fetch it."

"How is Leonard now?" asked Mr Farquhar, and he tried to speak
indifferently; but a grave look of intelligence clouded his eyes as
he looked for Mr Benson's answer. "I have not met him lately."

"No!" said Mr Benson, with an expression of pain in his countenance,
though he, too, strove to speak in his usual tone.

"Leonard is not strong, and we find it difficult to induce him to go
much out-of-doors."

There was a little silence for a minute or two, during which Mr
Farquhar had to check an unbidden sigh. But, suddenly rousing himself
into a determination to change the subject, he said:

"You will find rather a lengthened account of the exposure of Sir
Thomas Campbell's conduct at Baden. He seems to be a complete
blackleg, in spite of his baronetcy. I fancy the papers are glad to
get hold of anything just now."

"Who is Sir Thomas Campbell?" asked Mr Benson.

"Oh, I thought you might have heard the report—a true one, I
believe—of Mr Donne's engagement to his daughter. He must be glad
she jilted him now, I fancy, after this public exposure of her
father's conduct." (That was an awkward speech, as Mr Farquhar felt;
and he hastened to cover it, by going on without much connexion:)

"Dick Bradshaw is my informant about all these projected marriages
in high life—they are not much in my way; but since he has come
down from London to take his share in the business, I think I have
heard more of the news and the scandal of what, I suppose, would
be considered high life, than ever I did before; and Mr Donne's
proceedings seem to be an especial object of interest to him."

"And Mr Donne is engaged to a Miss Campbell, is he?"

"Was engaged; if I understood right, she broke off the engagement to
marry some Russian prince or other—a better match, Dick Bradshaw
told me. I assure you," continued Mr Farquhar, smiling, "I am a very
passive recipient of all such intelligence, and might very probably
have forgotten all about it, if the
Times
of this morning had not
been so full of the disgrace of the young lady's father."

"Richard Bradshaw has quite left London, has he?" asked Mr Benson,
who felt far more interest in his old patron's family than in all the
Campbells that ever were or ever would be.