Chapter VIII: The Bay Window

"WELL?" asked Dr. Brown, as the carriage rolled swiftly homewards, Dobbin as well as the coachman knowing that they had done for the day. "Well?"

Ruth knew that question would come, and she was not prepared to answer it at the moment.

"Is she all you expected?" he asked, as she did not volunteer any answer. He had anticipated a stream of enthusiastic delight, and was surprised and almost dismayed.

"She is far more than I expected," said Ruth slowly, as if making up her mind as she went along. "Quite different—and nicer in every way than I expected—"

"Then you are not disappointed?"

"No, I am not disappointed," said Ruth, "but do you know, father, I can hardly tell you yet what I feel. With Mrs. Arundel, you come down to the heart of things; you do not just skim the surface."

They relapsed into silence; Dr. Brown because he was so surprised at all Ruth said, and Ruth because her mind was full, and she could not forget the look of that earnest face, which had seemed like a glimpse into a new world.

After dinner, Ruth told her father that Mrs. Arundel had asked her to come and show them the old house, and that she had promised to go directly after her violin lesson in the morning.

Her father was interested in this, and reminded her of different excellencies to be pointed out.

"I wish he would take it," he said, "for numbers of people feel as if the practice clung round that house, and if any strange doctor set up there, we should lose half the patients, I believe."

"I hope he will," said Ruth, "but these rainy days will not show it off."

However, the morrow turned out sunny, to Ruth's great joy.

And when she called for Mrs. Arundel, she found her with her hat on ready, and Dr. Arundel came in almost directly, and proposed to set out at once.

"Have you been over the house in this road?" asked Ruth, a little timidly, as they shut the gate behind them.

"Yes, we have already been this morning. It is on the same plan as our lodgings," said Mrs. Arundel, "so we could judge pretty well. But we do not like that flight of steps up to the door."

"No," answered Ruth, "and Morris says they do take up a servant's time, and a doctor has to have them so clean!"

She laughed and blushed. "Please excuse me if I give advice! My father says I know everything! He is laughing at me, of course. But indeed I do not mean to be interfering!"

"I am quite sure of that," said Dr. Arundel heartily, "and we shall be most grateful for any hints. We are young at it, besides being strangers here."

They had already turned their steps to the old house, and in a few minutes were standing at the familiar door, and Ruth produced her father's latchkey.

"Father has kept on this house till he had a partner," she remarked, as they stepped into a square hall, which opened flat from the street.

"This is the dining-room," said Ruth, turning to a pleasant room on the right. "It is very cheerful at breakfast, because it faces east, and people cannot see in much with wide thin curtains. We used to have a plant in each window which made a nice shield."

Then she opened a door at the back of the room, and Mary gave an exclamation of delight, for the whole of the end of the room they entered was filled up with a low bay window opening with French doors out to the lawn, which sloped gently away from the house, down and down, till it was lost in graceful shrubs and foliage, between which could be seen a green meadow and the glittering water of the river.

"How lovely!" Mary exclaimed, turning to her husband. "Oh, Arthur!"

"Does it suit you better than the Worcester Road, Mary? Because, as far as we have seen, it suits me."

"Then there is the surgery on that side," pursued Ruth, "and the kitchens behind it. I will wait here while you look at the rest of it, for you will like to be able to take it all in quietly. My father hardly liked my coming, for fear I should be too enthusiastic—"

Dr. Arundel smiled. "I do not mind a little enthusiasm in this workaday world. Come, Mary, as Miss Brown wishes it, we will go up 'and take it all in' as she suggests."

Ruth sat down on the window seat, and looked out over the well-remembered prospect. She had never entered the old home since her mother's death, and every corner of the rooms was associated with her presence, not as the invalid which she had been at The Firs, but as the mother who had been the centre and joy of her father's life, and of hers.

And then her mind flew to those brief weeks in which sudden illness had come on, and though they had moved to high ground, how all had been unavailing. But it was not that which Ruth dwelt on now; somehow the sloping garden and the gleaming river had brought back one memorable day.

It was about a week before they moved, and Ruth remembered afterwards that her mother had latterly got used to sitting in the garden a great deal, and even had a couch lifted out there to rest on. It had also become the practice for Morris to bring her work out to keep her mother company. But Ruth had never guessed what it meant. She was busy with her lessons, and went in and out to the High School only full of the absorbing interest of her education.

But one Friday afternoon, when she came through the house to find her mother in the garden and ran to her with the exclamation, "There! I'm 'off duty till Monday,' as the nurses say," she noticed that her mother looked up at her more earnestly than usual, and that Morris got up with her needle in her hand, and began to move towards the house.

"Don't go, Morris!" she had said.

But Morris murmured something about "Your mother's tea."

And Ruth threw her bag of books down on the grass, and bent and kissed her mother in her usual careless, loving little way.

Ah, the last time that kiss was ever careless!

"Sit down, dear," said her mother gently, and something in the tone struck Ruth as unusual. "I wanted—I wanted to see you—"

"Why, little mother, you see me often enough, don't you?" Ruth had answered. "Have I been too full of my girls and my music?" she added, with compunction. "I did not mean it."

"No, dearest—oh, no. But, Ruth—I do not know how to tell you—but I must—I have not been very strong lately."

"No; but the new house is to make you well, you know! We shall soon be up there, and father thinks—"

"He 'hopes,' Ruth—he does not think. But in case I do not get well, in case I get more weak, I wanted to tell you something—"

Ruth heard as if in a dream. There was a sound of rushing in her ears, and she felt cold chills creeping over her.

"Ruth, dear!" The thin hand was put out and took hers. She had never noticed how thin it was till that moment. "Ruth, dear, there is something I want to say to you very much. Lately I have been thinking—thinking about preparing to meet God! At first, when I began to be ill, it was a very dreadful thought. I remembered so many things that I wished had been different. I was overwhelmed at first to remember that I had lived without thinking much about God at all, or trying to please Him; I had never given it a thought. Oh, Ruth! What I felt when I had to confess I had never given God a thought!

"And then Morris tried to comfort me. She read me a verse out of her little textbook:

"'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'

"And she told me how she had found Jesus Christ 'faithful to forgive,' and how glad and happy she had been ever since.

"And, Ruth, I was so miserable and so hopeless, that I just did as dear old Morris read from that text. I confessed everything to my Saviour, Who had died for me, and I found Him faithful to forgive—"

And then Ruth remembered how she had burst away from the detaining hand, and had rushed indoors and up to her own room. She remembered flinging herself down by her window, and looking at that prospect!

She remembered how green the trees were, how the river had sparkled in the sunshine, and how she had cried out in her bitterness that God was hard and cruel, for did not her mother mean that she was surely going to die?

From that day, Ruth was an altered girl. Her school life, her interest in the town doings, everything seemed swept away by the thought that God was cruel, and if it was necessary to love Him, she never would have that eternal life which her mother spoke of with such growing joy.

She shut her heart up, and nothing that her mother or Morris could say seemed to make the least impression.

"I did without it before, and I must do without it now," she once said to Morris, in a hard tone, "so let me alone, Morris!"

So as Ruth gazed at the prospect, all that scene swept over her. If ever it had come across her, she dismissed the unwelcome thought as quickly as she could, rushing at her German or music with all the energy of her young, strong nature, and striving to forget that she had ever had a mother who had looked at her out of wistful eyes, and who had whispered that last day:

"'We love Him, because He first loved us!'"

But her reverie was interrupted, and she was brought back to the present by voices on the stairs. With a sudden start, she thought—

"And now, when at last I have got a friend, she thinks the same as—'that!'"