“Take care of your mother, Ruth,” he said at parting, “and of yourself, my pale darling.”
“Don’t worry about me, Father,” she said, pulling up his furred collar; “indeed, I am well and happy. If you could believe me, perhaps you would love me as much as you used to.”
“As much! My child, I never loved you better than now; remember that. I think I have forgotten everybody else in you.”
“Don’t, dear! it makes me feel miserable to think I should cause you a moment’s uneasiness. Won’t you believe that everything is as I wish it?”
“If I could, I should have to lose the memory of the last four months. Well, try your best to forgive me, child.”
“Unless you hate me, don’t hurt me with that thought again. I forgive you? I, who am the cause of it all?”
He kissed her tear-filled eyes tenderly, and turned with a sign to her mother.
They watched to the last his loved face at the window, Ruth with a sad smile and a loving wave of her handkerchief.
Over at the mole it is not a bad place to witness tragedies. Pathos holds the upper hand, and the welcomes are sometimes as heart-rending as the leave-takings. A woman stood on the ferry with a blank, working face down which the tears fell heedlessly; a man, her husband, turned from her, drew his hat down over his eyes, and stalked off toward the train without a backward glance. Parting is a figure of death in this respect,--that only those who are left need mourn; the others have something new beyond.
The fire-light threw grotesque shadows on the walls. Ruth and Louis in the library made no movement to ring for lights; it was quite cosey as it was. They had both drawn near the crackling wood-blaze, Ruth in a low rocker, Arnold in Mr. Levice’s broad easy-chair.
“I surely thought you intended going to the concert this evening, Louis,” she said, looking across at him. “I fancy Mamma expected you to accompany her.”
“What! Voluntarily put myself into the cold when there is a fire blazing right here? Ah, no. At any rate, your mother is all right with the Lewises, and I am all right with you.”
“I give you a guarantee I shall not bite; you look altogether too hard for my cannibalistic propensities.”
“It is something not to be accounted soft. I think a redundancy of flesh overflows in trickling sentimentality. My worst enemy could not accuse me of either fault.”