Ruth read it, and looked up with a face pale with extreme compassion.
“Reuben,” she said, “this is Aunt Rachel's handwriting. This is all her story.” She began to cry, and Reuben comforted her. “What can we do?” she asked, gently evading him. “Oh, Reuben, how pitiful, how pitiful it is!”
“Should he have it after all these years?” asked Reuben. “What can it be but a regret to him?”
“Oh yes,” she answered, with clasped hands and new tears in her eyes, “he must have it. Think of his poor spirit knowing afterwards that we had kept it from him?”
“It will be a sore grief for him to see it. I fear so. A sore grief.”
“Aunt Rachel will be less bitter when she knows. But oh, Reuben, to be parted in that way for so long! Do you see it all? He wrote to her asking her to be his wife, and she wrote back, and he never had her answer, and waited for it. And she, waiting and waiting for him, and hearing nothing, thinking she had been tricked and mocked, poor thing, and growing prouder and bitterer until she went away. I never, never heard of anything so sad.” She would have none of Reuben's consoling now, though the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Go,” she begged him--“go at once, and take it to him. Think if it were you and me!”
“It would never have happened to you and me, my darling,” said Reuben. “I'd have had 'Yes' or 'No' for an answer. A man's offer of his heart is worth a 'No, thank you,' though he made it to a queen.”
“Go at once,” she besought him. “I shall be unhappy till I know he knows!”
“Well, my dear,” said Reuben, “if you say go, I go. But I'd as lief put my hand in a fire. The poor old man will have suffered nothing like this for many a day.”
“Stop an' tek a bit o' breakfast, lad,” cried Fuller, as Reuben hurried by him, at the door which gave upon the garden. “It'll be ready i' five minutes.”
“I have my orders, sir,” said Reuben, with a pale smile. “I can't stop this morning, much as I should like to.”
Like most healthy men of vivid fancy he was a rapid walker, and in a few minutes he was in sight of his uncle's house. His heart failed him and he stopped short irresolutely. Should he send the letter, explaining where he found it, and how? He could hardly bear to think of looking on the pain the old man might endure. And yet would it not be kinder to be with him? Might he not be in need of some one? and if he were, who was there but his nephew--the one man of his kindred left alive?