IN the course of time it became to Susan Erskine, who was watching with eager interest the story of her sister’s life, a question of painful moment as to how the watchful Christ would come to the rescue of his straying sheep. For, as the days passed, it grew most painfully apparent that Ruth was straying. She did not gain in the least. This being the case, it is of course equivalent to saying that she lost. Steadily her husband proved the fact that his was the stronger nature, and that he was leading, not being led. Yet his wife did not get entirely out of the way—not far enough out indeed, to claim the few pitiful returns that the world has for service. She staid always in that wretched middle state, not belonging to the world fully, nor yet fully to Christ; hence, continuous soreness of heart, developing alternately in gloom and irritability.

There came at last a messenger to her home and heart—a little, tender, helpless one, just helpless enough and clinging enough to gather all the tendrils of the heart around and bind them closely. How that baby was loved! There have been babies loved before—many a heart has bowed before the shrine of such an idol; but perhaps never baby, from grandfather down to the little hired nurse, whose duty it was in the course of time to keep said baby amused, had such patient, persistent, willing slaves as had this young heir of the house of Burnham. As for Ruth, she found that she had never even dreamed of the depth of mother-love. A sort of general interest in healthy, cleanly, well-dressed children had been one of her pastimes. She had imagined herself somewhat fond of certain types of childhood, while aware that she shrank in horror from certain other types. But this new, strange rush of emotions which filled her heart almost to bursting was an experience of which she had had no conception. From that hour those who watched Ruth anxiously to see whether the sweet young life which was a part of herself would win her back to her covenant vows, saw with ever-deepening pain that this new-born soul was only another and a stronger idol. With all the fierceness of her strong nature, with all the unrest of her dissatisfied heart, did the mother bow before this tiny soul and bring it worship. She discovered at last that self-sacrifice was easy; that sleepless nights, and restless days, and the pressure of many cares and responsibilities were as nothing, provided baby’s comfort demanded any or all of these.

Now she withdrew entirely from the prayer-meetings, and ceased her fitful attempts at being identified with the Sabbath-school. She was even most rare in her attendance on the regular Sabbath service. Did not baby require a mother’s care? This was her trust—God-given surely, if anything ever was—and therefore she was to consider it as a work from him.

There is no error so fatal as a half truth. To be sure, this theory was not carried out in all respects. The mother found time for social life. She was seen frequently at concerts and lectures, and entertainments of various sorts, but this, she said, was a duty she owed to her husband. And it really seemed as though there were no voice left in her heart to remind her that the duties she owed to Christ were being neglected. And Susan, watching and waiting, began to ask her heart half fearfully, “How will he speak to her next?” That he would speak to her, and that effectually, she fully believed, for Ruth was surely one of his own. How strange that she would wander and make it necessary for the Shepherd to seek her with bleeding feet, “over the mountains, wild and bare,” instead of resting securely and sweetly within the fold!

Meantime the domestic machinery of the Burnham household worked more smoothly than it is always wont to do under the peculiar family relations.

Ruth, whatever her faults, was fully alive to the special cause of comfort in her household. She never ceased to realize that one of the greatest blessings of her lot in life was the sudden descent upon her of a sister. Such a faithful, thoughtful, self-sacrificing sister!—one who really seemed to be as “wise as a serpent, and as harmless as a dove.” Even Ruth, though she had an idea that she fully appreciated her, did not see the extent of her influence over those untutored girls. Daily her power over them increased; the development in them mentally was something of which their father was unceasingly proud; not the less, perhaps, did it give him satisfaction because there was coupled with it a development of refinement of tone and manner, a growing sense of the fitness of things, and an evident and hearty relish for the advantages which his wealth was able to afford them.

Over one thing Susan pondered and prayed, and watched with no little anxiety: the girls were willing to be her pupils in any other study save that of personal religion; they were in a degree interested in Bible study; they by no means shrank from it; they respected her views, they talked freely with her as to creeds and doctrines; but when it came to pressing their personal need of Christ as a Saviour from sin, they were strangely apathetic.

“Had they inherited their father’s distaste for all the personalities of religion?” Susan questioned, “or had their first delicious glimpse of this new world, given under the new mother’s tutelage, so stamped their ambitions that they had no room for deeper thoughts?” From this last solution she shrank; it made such an awfully solemn matter of personal responsibility; yet when she saw the almost reverence in which they held this new mother’s views of whatever pertained to outside life, she could not but feel that there had been stamped upon their hearts the belief that she who had reigned so long in the fashionable world knew all about the important things, and had shown them what they were! At least, Susan felt sure that, could Ruth have realized the influences she possessed over the unformed minds of her two daughters, she would have shrunken from using it for trivialities.

As for Ruth, the girls had become secondary matters to her. She had carried her point; she had proved that dress and attention to the many refinements of life would make a vast difference in these two; she had shown their father that it was through sheer neglect that they grew to be the painful trials which they were; she had proved to him that her course was the right one. There was no skeleton in their country home now, to be avoided painfully. The girls were not perfect in deportment, it is true; but so rapid had been their advancement in certain ways, and so skillful was the brain which planned their outward adornings, that they might safely endure introductions as Judge Burnham’s daughters, in any circle where it was desirable to present them. Ruth felt, watching them, that even the famous criminal lawyer himself would never have recognized in them the two distressing specimens which he had characterized as “discarded American help.” She had shown her husband, also, that country life was not only endurable, but, in many respects, desirable; indeed, so satisfied had he become with his lovely rural home, that, when it was announced as important for baby’s health that the entire season should be spent there, he offered no objection, and agreed with alacrity to Ruth’s plan that Susan should take the girls for a peep at life at Long Branch, and leave them to the solitude of home. “Very well,” he had said, “provided you will, on their return, leave Susan in charge of his lordship, and run away with me to the mountains for a few days.” And Ruth had laughed, and shrugged her handsome shoulders, and exclaimed over the folly of trying to coax a mother from her six-months-old baby, for any mountains in the world; and then she had looked proudly over toward the lace-curtained crib, and rejoiced in the fact that the hero sleeping there had power enough to hold father as well as mother a meek worshipper at his shrine; for, if Judge Burnham really was an idolater, his only son was the supreme idol in his inmost heart.

So the summer plans were carried out. Ruth serenely discussed seaside outfits, and decided, with the tone of one who realized that her word was law, as to whether Minta would look better in a salmon-colored evening dress, and whether Seraph was too young for a satin-trimmed one. Long ago Susan, apparently without thought on the subject, had started the habit of softening the objectional name into this euphonious one; and Ruth remarked to her husband that perhaps time would develop the fact that there was almost a prophecy in the name, if Sereph’s voice continued to develop in strength and sweetness, under culture. On the whole, there was serene satisfaction in the survey of her handiwork where these girls were concerned; they bade fair to do justice to her discernment, and afford food for pride. Still, as I said, they were secondary. So that they were always well dressed, and sat properly at table, and entered a room properly, and bowed gracefully to her callers, and treated her with unfailing respect, she was at rest concerning them. Almost, she had so trodden her conscience under foot that in these days had she really very little trouble in the thought that her best for them had ignored the best which life had for any soul.

Susan packed, and arranged, and listened to her numerous directions, and went off to take her first summering away from cares, which of one sort or another had held her for a lifetime—went with a shade of anxiety on her face which was not for herself, nor yet because of her responsibility in regard to these two unfledged worldlings, but for the Christian mother hovering over the lace-curtained crib in the rose-hued nursery; and her heart went murmuring, “How will He speak to her next?”

Not many days after, the next call of the Shepherd came. You are prepared to hear what it was—that little, sheltered, watched-over baby fell sick; not very sick; not so but that the doctor went and came with a cheery air, and told the anxious mother that they would have her darling as chirk as ever in a day or two, and Judge Burnham believed him, and laughed at the mother’s dreary face, and made light of her fears; but poor Ruth did not believe him, and went about her mother cares and hung over her sick darling with an ever-increasing, deadening weight at her heart. He was not the family physician of the Erskines—Dr. Mitchell—Judge Burnham didn’t believe in him, so the coming and going doctor was the one associated with the dark days wherein they had waited and watched over Ruth’s father.

Whether it was that association, or whatever it was, Ruth shrank a little from Dr. Bacon, and was not able to give him her full confidence. Dark days were these, and they dragged their slow lengths along, and brought regularly the longer and darker nights, for it is at night that we hang most hopelessly over our sick, and the silence and quietness of the home grew oppressive to Ruth. She wished for Susan, she would gladly have had the girls coming and going, yet it seemed foolish to send for them; there was a skillful nurse, and there were neighbors, who, though they had been almost ignored by the fine family at the Hill, yet directly they heard that there was sickness, came and went with their thoughtful offers of assistance. Why, even Mrs. Ferris, with her loud voice and her uncouth ways, came and was welcomed by Ruth, because of the humble work which she did in the kitchen that tended to baby’s comfort.

And still the doctor came and went with his story that the baby would be all right in a few days; but the days of mending did not come, and the shadow deepened and darkened, though as yet it seemed to be seen only by the mother’s heart, and in that heart a war was being waged which in fierceness and length of conflict so far transcended all Ruth’s other struggles with life as to make them pale into nothingness before her. And the struggle was such that no human heart could intermeddle, for it was between Ruth and God! She realized in those days that she had actually had many a struggle with the great God before, without recognizing it as such, or at least calling it by its right name.

At first there was wild, fierce rebellion; she clung to her baby, held him, indeed, so fiercely that he wailed feebly, and looked up into her face almost in terror, and she cried out that she could not—indeed, would not—give him up; no, not even to the Giver! And the little face grew daily more wasted, and the little hands more feeble, and the moments of wakeful recognition shorter, and the hours of half stupor longer, and the doctor grew less cheery when he came, and Judge Burnham grew restless and nervous—went later every day to town and returned earlier, and was, in his silent, restrained, yet passionate way, fully as rebellious as his wife.