University of Virginia Library

Ruth Woodburn sat alone in her own room;
A most unusual privilege,—her own,—
Hers only,—seven feet square! With Esther Hale
For house-companion, she was well content.

It was midsummer now: the crickets chirped
Along green-fringed canals and through trim yards;
And one had somehow climbed the bricks, and hid
His black limbs somewhere, just to sing to her.

And Ruth could sing herself, with pen and ink.
She soothed her heartaches so, sometimes; though close
She hid her old portfolio full of verse,—
All sentiment, she knew; but only thus
Would grief translate the blurred text of chained books
In her heart's crypt.
'T is no good place for songs,
Dungeoned in self. Birds in a darkened cage
Stop singing: a true hymn is born of light.
Still Ruth won some poor comfort from her grief,
Humming it over to herself alone,
Half hopeful of its taking wing at last.

A step was on the stair; and Esther's hand
Touched now the latch. Ruth laid the paper by,
But its thought lingered in her eyes, and ran
Into her words, despite herself.
“Sit here,
Where you can see the tree-tops and the sky,
So many yards of sheeny blue, all mine!
I never say my prayers but I thank God
That I have this, instead of staring rows
Of windows in brick walls. Only to think
Of a time come to me when loneliness
And that one sky-strip seem like luxury!
But I have room-mates plenty: crowds of thoughts,
Not always kind or smiling.
“Esther dear,
I never told, you never asked of me,—
For that I thank you,—what the trouble is
Which I have worn, like mourning, ever since
A stranger, sick, you found and took me in.
Have you the patience now to hear of it?”

“Aught that concerns you, Ruth, comes home to me;
But telling may be too great pain.”
“Relief,
Dear friend, it will be now, though once I hoped
To hide me with my sorrow in the grave.
But you will think me foolish, to have cared
For one man so that memory of him
Clouds life all over. Think me so! I am.
Owning it folly, I can talk of it.
If I can make a weary story brief,
I'll tell you of a teacher that I had.
Winter on winter, when the frozen hills
Were white ghost-giants round us, when the snow
Buried us up like Laplanders, he came,
And with old Virgil, made an Italy
Of cold New Hampshire. I, beyond the rest,
Prizing the Latin lore, we studied much
Together, in long evenings, by ourselves.
And all the bright vacations, side by side,
We wandered with the west-wind through the hills.

“To me he told his plans. His college years
Once finished, he would settle at the West,
As rovers settle,—teach, or preach, perhaps;
‘Might I not join him, some time?’ And it seemed,
At last, the only natural thing to dream
That we should have one future.
“So I lived,
Of that great garden-desert picturing
A home for us two.
“When my father died,
New cares fell on me. With her mortgaged farm
And her large family, my mother's head,
Never too clear, seemed utterly confused.
I shelved my books. I set the boys to work,
And kept a strict account of costs.
“In vain!
The two ends would not meet. Friends offered help
I was too proud to take. I heard of those
Who here had found the wherewithal to lift
Loads heavier than mine. So I came, too,
Full of my Eden-visions about work,
With the curse lifted off, and full of hope
For Ambrose and our prairie-paradise:
Not his, not mine, but ours!
“Well, he I loved—
And love still, with a difference—had gone
Part way upon his journey, sending words
Of old accustomed tenderness to me.—
I think he meant them; men are very strange.—
He met my cousin somewhere on the road,
Whom he had never seen, sweet Zillah Wray,
Bewitching as May dawns or mountain-brooks.
They talked of me. ‘She was so fond of me,
I was so good, so true, so lovable,
And knew so much, withal!’ O, I can hear
Just how she said it, with an innocent air
Of self-depreciation! ‘What was she
But a mere ignoramus?’ And the word
Rounded her lips so prettily, one sighed
To kiss them. ‘Still, she never had been taught
As Ruth had. Did he think that she could learn?’

“So Ambrose, lingering in her native town,
Called on her often,—for my sake, he said;
And taught her—not so much as she taught him.
He learned to love her; and he wrote to me,
Making confession. ‘Could they help their fate,
Their mutual fault? Could I forgive them both?
He doubted—Zillah was so different,
Seemed so much fonder of him—if I cared
Greatly to share his wandering destinies.’

“That was the penalty of reticence!
Love, I had thought, was treasure men should seek,
And prize the more, being hid. It is not so!—
Foolish Cordelia should have answered Lear!—
Man likes the false wind's wooing, wants bold flowers
To bring him incense; so much trouble saved!

“Though crushed, I was not wholly unprepared,
For I remembered Zillah. Like a dress,
Becoming, and so kept in wearing trim,
Was this unconscious show of artlessness.
Her guileful guilelessness seemed natural
As life itself. Yet Ambrose, I supposed,
Had penetration to read her and me.
It was like death to me, untwisting all
The fibres of my life from his, and still
In memory painful. But he is not mine,
Or she could not have won him. I have tried
To think with gratitude of her bright ways,
And how she will adorn his life; and yet
He seemed to need me, as I needed him.
And Zillah loves—perhaps I do her wrong—
Herself reflected in the heart she wins,
More than the man she won.”
“And,” Esther said,
“Perhaps your Ambrose also loves himself
Glassed in her admiration. Wisest men
Lose all their wisdom when a silly girl
Cobwebs their ears with flattery. To my mind,
'T is fancy's glamour, both sides; never love.”

“So I have almost thought, else were my past
With him I loved a sealed-up sepulchre
Wet by no tear of memory. But sometimes
I dream of him bewildered, shaken off
By Zillah, when she scents superior game,
Conscious of his mistake, and missing me;
Or, wedding her, hindered in all his best
For want of wifely help, and missing me.
Try as I will, the thought of him comes back,
With Zillah or without her, missing me,
Who never can return.”
“How never, Ruth?
May not all rents be mended?”
“Not of souls.
Mine, surely, will not wear a patched-up love,
Nor such as can be worn by me or her,
At change of the giver's fancy. Even now
I dimly see why disappointment came,
To lead me upward to some grander height
Of hope and labor. Still the grinding wheels
Crush on, the red drops ooze. The Juggernaut,
Experience, never heeds its victim's cry.”

“Your Ambrose was not worthy of you, Ruth.”

“Nay, that I do not know. Men cannot help
Being drawn aside by beauty.”
“Can they not?
Poor weaklings! Why do women call them ‘lords,’
Who are not their own masters? I should scorn
The man mere pretty faces could enslave.”
“You know not what you talk of, Esther dear!
A woman's heart is as perversely fixed
As man's is wavering. Some day, for yourself
You may see how it is: I hope not soon.”

“Never! My thoughts are shut fast, marriage-ward.
There is much else to live for; full as much
For woman as for man, in separateness:
Although my dream is, that the two, made one
In mutual faith, show Paradise as yet
An earthly possibility. But then
You say, dear Ruth, you never can return
To Ambrose, yet must love him. That is strange!”

“Yes, it is strange; and sad as it is strange,
And true as strange and sad. I think of him
As a wife death has summoned, who may look
Backward from heaven, and love her husband still
For the last smile he gave her, though his smiles
Are now another woman's sunshine. She
Whom he has seen safe through the gates of pearl,
Cannot go back with him across the gulf
His thoughts make, widening towards new marriage.
“Well!
My story told, let 's find some cheerier talk!”
And here came Isabel's rosy, roguish face
Half through the doorway: “Esther, there are guests
Waiting to see you,—gentlemen”: and ran,
Without another word, they knew not where.

Esther had on her working-dress, a print
Somewhat the dimmer for much washing, still
Tidy enough. She only smoothed her hair
By Ruth's six-square-inch mirror, then went down;
And who should wait there in the dining-room,
Which served for evening sittings,—sewing, talk,
And reading going on among the girls,
A dozen of them, scattered round the room,
At the bare tables,—who but Doctor Mann
And Pastor Alwyn, with them Eleanor,
Serene and ladylike, in easy chat?

Somewhat constrained, vexed that she was abashed
To meet a cultured stranger in the place
Where her lot fell, so different from his,—
Esther talked rapidly, unlike herself,
While Eleanor and her physician-friend
Went rambling through long genealogies.
A pedlar came in while they stayed, whose wares
The girls sat cheapening. A phrenologist
Displaced the pedlar, and a tide of mirth
Flowed in around the tables, as he read
The cranial character of each to each.

The guests arose to go, one much annoyed,—
The kindly Pastor, who had seldom found
Things so untoward, even in a boarding-house.
But Eleanor and young Doctor Mann had gone
Back under haunted boughs of family-trees,
Nor heard near voices. Dim shapes of the past,
Moving before them, all at hand obscured;
And he remembered but her gentle face.

Esther escaped to her third-story room,
Glad that her mates were absent,—sought the nook
She called her own, a space between the bed
And window, wide enough to hold one chair,
Where she could see the stars, unjostled, move
Across the open sky-fields. Room! more room!
Her thoughts cried out for. So to live, so cramped
As not to hear your nearest neighbor's voice
Through the surrounding jargon, was it life?
But here she was,—must make the best of it,
Till a new door should open. Even now
It swung upon its hinges, all unheard
By her. If we could watch the bursting gates
Of Destiny, should we not shrink back, awed
By their vast shadow, dazed with light beyond?
Man's eye suits his horizon. As that spreads,
Vision grows telescopic, till, beside
The throne of God, it sweeps eternity.

Meanwhile Ruth Woodburn sat uncomforted
Beneath the thickening stars; nor could she guess
That her young hopes, now beaten down like grass
Under a furious rain, would rise again
With greener vigor for that cleansing storm.

God made not any human life to rest
Only upon another human life:
Love means some better thing than that. And she
Who so had leaned upon a man she loved,
Found her dependence weakness, and not need,
Ere autumn waned. Before her heart wore off
Its rust of sorrow, and long afterward,
Through its vibrations, chords like this awoke:—