Read Ebook: Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time by Fern Fanny

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Ebook has 582 lines and 52532 words, and 12 pages

always made her shiver; so little Katy threaded her way along, with a troubled, anxious, care-worn look, never glancing in at the shopkeepers' tempting windows, and quite forgetting Johnny Galt's pretty bunch of flowers, till she stood trembling with her hand on the latch of her grandfather's counting-room door.

"No, Sir," said Katy, with a culprit look, twisting the corner of her apron, and struggling to keep from crying.

"Why don't your mother go to work and earn something?" asked Mr. Ellet.

"She cannot get any work to do," replied Katy; "she tries very hard, grandpa."

"She is sick," said Katy.

"Yes, Sir," said Katy meekly, as she closed the door.

"What is the matter, my dear?" said a gentleman, lifting a handful of Katy's shining curls from her face; "why do you cry, my dear?"

"Where is he, dear? tell me, and I will take you to him, shall I?"

"If you please, Sir," said Katy, innocently, "he has gone to heaven."

"God help you," said the gentleman, with moistened eyes, "where had you been when I met you?"

"Please, Sir--I--I--I had rather not tell," replied Katy, with a crimson blush.

"Very odd, this," muttered the gentleman; "what is your name, dear?"

"Katy, Sir."

"Katy what?" asked the gentleman. "Katy-did, I think! for your voice is as sweet as a bird's."

"Katy Hall, Sir."

"Hall? Hall?" repeated the gentleman, thoughtfully; "was your father's name Harry?"

"Yes," said Katy.

"Was he tall and handsome, with black hair and whiskers?"

"Did he live at a place called 'The Glen,' just out of the city?"

"Yes," said Katy.

"My child, my poor child," said the gentleman, taking her up in his arms and pushing back her hair from her face; "yes, here is papa's brow, and his clear, blue eyes, Katy. I used to know your dear papa."

"Yes?" said Katy, with a bright, glad smile.

"I used to go to his counting-house to talk to him on business, and I learned to love him very much, too. I never saw your mamma, though I often heard him speak of her. In a few hours, dear, I am going to sail off on the great ocean, else I would go home with you and see your mamma. Where do you live, Katy?"

Little Katy stood shading her eyes with her hand till the gentleman was out of sight; it was so nice to see somebody who "loved papa;" and then she wondered why her grandfather never spoke so to her about him; and then she wished the kind gentleman were her grandpapa; and then she wondered what it was he had put in the bag for mamma; and then she recollected that her mamma told her "not to loiter;" and then she quickened her tardy little feet.

Katy had been gone now a long while. Ruth began to grow anxious. She lifted her head from the pillow, took off the wet bandage from her aching forehead, and taking little Nettie upon her lap, sat down at the small window to watch for Katy. The prospect was not one to call up cheerful fancies. Opposite was one of those large brick tenements, let out by rapacious landlords, a room at a time at griping rents, to poor emigrants, and others, who were barely able to prolong their lease of life from day to day. At one window sat a tailor, with his legs crossed, and a torn straw hat perched awry upon his head, cutting and making coarse garments for the small clothing-store in the vicinity, whose Jewish owner reaped all the profits. At another, a pale-faced woman, with a handkerchief bound round her aching face, bent over a steaming wash-tub, while a little girl of ten, staggering under the weight of a basket of damp clothes, was stringing them on lines across the room to dry. At the next window sat a decrepit old woman, feebly trying to soothe in her palsied arms the wailings of a poor sick child. And there, too, sat a young girl, from dawn till dark, scarcely lifting that pallid face and weary eyes--stitching and thinking, thinking and stitching. God help her!

Still, tier above tier the windows rose, full of pale, anxious, care-worn faces--never a laugh, never a song--but instead, ribald curses, and the cries of neglected, half-fed children. From window to window, outside, were strung on lines articles of clothing, pails, baskets, pillows, feather-beds, and torn coverlets; while up and down the door-steps, in and out, passed ever a ragged procession of bare-footed women and children, to the small grocery opposite, for "a pint of milk," a "loaf of bread," a few onions, or potatoes, a cabbage, some herrings, a sixpence worth of poor tea, a pound of musty flour, a few candles, or a peck of coal--for all of which, the poor creatures paid twice as much as if they had the means to buy by the quantity.

The only window which Ruth did not shudder to look at, was the upper one of all, inhabited by a large but thrifty German family, whose love of flowers had taken root even in that sterile soil, and whose little pot of thriving foreign shrubs, outside the window sill, showed with what tenacity the heart will cling to early associations.

Further on, at one block's remove, was a more pretentious-looking house, the blinds of which were almost always closed, save when the colored servants threw them open once a day, to give the rooms an airing. Then Ruth saw damask chairs, satin curtains, pictures, vases, books, and pianos; it was odd that people who could afford such things should live in such a neighborhood. Ruth looked and wondered. Throngs of visitors went there--carriages rolled up to the door, and rolled away; gray-haired men, business men, substantial-looking family men, and foppish-looking young men; while half-grown boys loitered about the premises, looking mysteriously into the door when it opened, or into the window when a curtain was raised, or a blind flew apart.

Now and then a woman appeared at the windows. Sometimes the face was young and fair, sometimes it was wan and haggard; but, oh God! never without the stain that the bitterest tear may fail to wash away, save in the eyes of Him whose voice of mercy whispered, "Go, and sin no more."

"Dear child, I am so glad you are home," said Ruth, as Katy opened the door; "I began to fear something had happened to you. Did you see your grandfather?"

"Oh, mother!" exclaimed Katy, "please never send me to my grandpa again; he said we 'should get away all the money he had,' and he looked so dreadful when he said it, that it made my knees tremble. Is it stealing, mamma, for us to take grandpa's money away?"

"No," replied Ruth, looking a hue more pallid, if possible, than before, "No, no, Katy, don't cry; you shall never go there again for money. But, where is your bag? Why! what's this, Katy. Grandpa has made a mistake. You must run right back as quick as ever you can with this money, or I'm afraid he will be angry."

"Oh, grandpa didn't give me that," said Katy; "a gentleman gave me that."

"Money!" exclaimed Katy. "Money!" clapping her hands. "Oh! I'm so glad. He didn't say it was money; he said it was something he owed papa;" and little Katy picked up a card from the floor, on which was pencilled, "For the children of Harry Hall, from their father's friend."

"Hush," whispered Katy to Nettie, "mamma is praying."

"Well, I never!" said Biddy, bursting into Ruth's room in her usual thunder-clap way, and seating herself on the edge of a chair, as she polished her face with the skirt of her dress. "As sure as my name is Biddy, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Well, I've been expecting it. Folks that have ears can't help hearing when folks quarrel."

"What are you talking about?" said Ruth. "Who has quarreled? It is nothing that concerns me."

"But, Biddy--"

"Don't be afther keeping me, ma'am; Pat has shouldhered me trunk, and ye see I can't be staying when things is as they is."

The incessant cries of Mrs. Skiddy's bereaved baby soon bore ample testimony to the truth of Biddy's narration, appealing to Ruth's motherly sympathies so vehemently, that she left her room and went down to offer her assistance.

There sat Mr. John Skiddy, the forlorn widower, the ambitious Californian, in the middle of the kitchen, in his absconded wife's rocking-chair, trotting a seven months' baby on the sharp apex of his knee, alternately singing, whistling, and wiping the perspiration from his forehead, while the little Skiddy threw up its arms in the most frantic way, and held its breath with rage, at the awkward attempts of its dry nurse to restore peace to the family.

"Let me sweeten a little cream and water and feed that child for you, Mr. Skiddy," said Ruth. "I think he is hungry."

Ruth adroitly looked out the window, while Mr. Skiddy wiped his face and sopped his neckcloth, after which she busied herself in picking up the ladles, spoons, forks, dredging-boxes, mortars, pestles, and other culinary implements, with which the floor was strewn, in the vain attempt to propitiate the distracted infant.

Ruth took the poor worried baby tenderly, laid it on its stomach across her lap, then loosening its frock strings, began rubbing its little fat shoulders with her velvet palm. There was a maternal magnetism in that touch; baby knew it! he stopped crying and winked his swollen eyelids with the most luxurious satisfaction, as much as to say, there, now, that's something like!

Gently Ruth drew first one, then the other, of the magnetized baby's chubby arms from its frock sleeves, substituting a comfortable loose night-dress for the tight and heated frock; then she carefully drew off its shoe, admiring the while the beauty of the little blue veined, dimpled foot, while Katy, hush as any mouse, looked on delightedly from her little cricket on the hearth, and Nettie, less philosophical, was more than half inclined to cry at what she considered an infringement of her rights.

Mr. Skiddy's reflections as he walked to the bakery were of a motley character. Upon the whole, he inclined to the opinion that it was "not good for man to be alone," especially with a nursing baby. The premeditated and unmixed malice of Mrs. Skiddy in leaving the baby, instead of Sammy or Johnny, was beyond question. Still, he could not believe that her desire for revenge would outweigh all her maternal feelings. She would return by-and-bye; but where could she have gone? People cannot travel with an empty purse; but, perhaps even now, at some tantalizing point of contiguity, she was laughing at the success of her nefarious scheme; and Mr. Skiddy's face reddened at the thought, and his arms instinctively took an a-kimbo attitude.

Tea being over, the boarders dispersed their various ways; Ruth notifying Mr. Skiddy of her willingness to take the child whenever it became unmanageable. Then Mr. Skiddy, very gingerly, and with a cat-like tread, put away the tea-things, muttering an imprecation at the lid of the tea-pot, as he went, for falling off. Then, drawing the evening paper from his pocket, and unfurling it, he put up his weary legs and commenced reading the news.

Hark! a muffled noise from the cradle! Mr. Skiddy started, and applied his toe vigorously to the rocker--it was no use. He whistled--it didn't suit. He sang--it was a decided failure. Little Skiddy had caught sight of the pretty bright candle, and it was his present intention to scream till he was taken up to investigate it.

How the victimized man worried through the long evening and night--how he tried to propitiate the little tempest with the castor, the salt-cellar, its mother's work-box, and last, but not least, a silver cup he had received for his valor from the Atlantic Fire Company--how the baby, all-of-a-twist, like Dickens' young hero kept asking for "more"--how he laid it on its back, and laid it on its side, and laid it on its stomach, and propped it up on one end in a house made of pillows, and placed the candle at the foot of the bed, in the vain hope that that luminary might be graciously deemed by the infant tyrant a substitute for his individual exertions--and how, regardless of all these philanthropic efforts, little Skiddy stretched out his arms imploringly, and rooted suggestively at his father's breast, in a way to move a heart of stone--and how Mr. Skiddy said several words not to be found in the catechism--and how the daylight found him as pale as a potato sprout in a cellar, with all sorts of diagonal lines tattoed over his face by enraged little finger nails--and how the little horn, that for years had curled up so gracefully toward his nose, was missing from the corner of his moustache--are they not all written in the ambitious Californian's repentant memory?

The following Monday, when her washing was finished, Ruth wiped the suds from her parboiled fingers on the kitchen roller, and ascending the stairs, knocked at the door of her cousin's chamber. Mrs. Millet was just putting the finishing touches to the sleeves of a rich silk dress of Leila's, which the mantau-maker had just returned.

"How d'ye do, Ruth," said she, in a tone which implied--what on earth do you want now?

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