Ruth Hall Part 19

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Ruth, "my friend Mary."

"Died yesterday, ma'am; her husband left her here for her health, while he went to Europe."

"Can I see the Superintendent," asked Ruth; "I must speak to him."

Ruth followed the gate-keeper up the ample steps into a wide hall, and from thence into a small parlor; after waiting what seemed to her an age of time, Mr. Tibbetts, the Superintendent, entered. He was a tall, handsome man, between forty and fifty, with a very imposing air and address.

"I am pained to learn," said Ruth, "that a friend of mine, Mrs. Leon, lies dead here; can I see the body?"

"Are you a relative of that lady?" asked Mr. Tibbetts, with a keen glance at Ruth.

"No," replied Ruth, "but she was very dear to me. The last time I saw her, not many months since, she was in tolerable health. Has she been long with you, Sir?"

"About two months," replied Mr. Tibbetts; "she was hopelessly crazy, refused food entirely, so that we were obliged to force it. Her husband, who is an intimate friend of mine, left her under my care, and went to the Continent. A very fine man, Mr. Leon."

Ruth did not feel inclined to respond to this remark, but repeated her request to see Mary.

"It is against the rules of our establishment to permit this to any but relatives," said Mr. Tibbetts.

"I should esteem it a great favor if you would break through your rules in my case," replied Ruth; "it will be a great consolation to me to have seen her once more;" and her voice faltered.

The appeal was made so gently, yet so firmly, that Mr. Tibbetts reluctantly yielded.

The matron of the establishment, Mrs. Bunce, (whose advent was heralded by the clinking of a huge bunch of keys at her waist,) soon after came in. Mrs. Bunce was gaunt, sallow and bony, with restless, yellowish, glaring black eyes, very much resembling those of a cat in the dark; her motions were quick, brisk, and angular; her voice loud, harsh, and wiry.

Ruth felt an instantaneous aversion to her; which was not lessened by Mrs. Bunce asking, as they pa.s.sed through the parlor-door:

"Fond of looking at corpses, ma'am? I've seen a great many in my day; I've laid out more'n twenty people, first and last, with my own hands.

Relation of Mrs. Leon's, perhaps?" said she, curiously peering under Ruth's bonnet. "Ah, only a friend?"

"This way, if you please, ma'am;" and on they went, through one corridor, then another, the ma.s.sive doors swinging heavily to on their hinges, and fastening behind them as they closed.

"Hark!" said Ruth, with a quick, terrified look, "what's that?"

"Oh, nothing," replied the matron, "only a crazy woman in that room yonder, screaming for her child. Her husband ran away from her and carried off her child with him, to spite her, and now she fancies every footstep she hears is his. Visitors always thinks she screams awful. She can't harm you, ma'am," said the matron, mistaking the cause of Ruth's shudder, "for she is chained. She went to law about the child, and the law, you see, as it generally is, was on the man's side; and it just upset her. She's a sight of trouble to manage. If she was to catch sight of your little girl out there in the garden, she'd spring at her through them bars like a panther; but we don't have to whip her _very_ often."

"Down here," said the matron, taking the shuddering Ruth by the hand, and descending a flight of stone steps, into a dark pa.s.sage-way. "Tired arn't you?"

"Wait a bit, please," said Ruth, leaning against the stone wall, for her limbs were trembling so violently that she could scarcely bear her weight.

"_Now_," said she, (after a pause,) with a firmer voice and step.

"This way," said Mrs. Bunce, advancing towards a rough deal box which stood on a table in a niche of the cellar, and setting a small lamp upon it; "she didn't look no better than that, ma'am, for a long while before she died."

Ruth gave one hurried glance at the corpse, and buried her face in her hands. Well might she fail to recognize in that emaciated form, those sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, the beautiful Mary Leon. Well might she shudder, as the gibbering screams of the maniacs over head echoed through the stillness of that cold, gloomy vault.

"Were you with her at the last?" asked Ruth of the matron, wiping away her tears.

"No," replied she; "the afternoon she died she said, 'I want to be alone,' and, not thinking her near her end, I took my work and sat just outside the door. I looked in once, about half an hour after, but she lay quietly asleep, with her cheek in her hand,--so. By-and-bye I thought I would speak to her, so I went in, and saw her lying just as she did when I looked at her before. I spoke to her, but she did not answer me; she was dead, ma'am."

O, how mournfully sounded in Ruth's ears those plaintive words, "I want to be alone." Poor Mary! aye, better even in death 'alone,' than gazed at by careless, hireling eyes, since he who should have closed those drooping lids, had wearied of their faded light.

"Did she speak of no one?" asked Ruth; "mention no one?"

"No--yes; I recollect now that she said something about calling Ruth; I didn't pay any attention, for they don't know what they are saying, you know. She scribbled something, too, on a bit of paper; I found it under her pillow, when I laid her out. I shouldn't wonder if it was in my pocket now; I haven't thought of it since. Ah! here it is," said Mrs.

Bunce, as she handed the slip of paper to Ruth.

It ran thus:--"I am not crazy, Ruth, no, no--but I shall be; the air of this place stifles me; I grow weaker--weaker. I cannot die here; for the love of heaven, dear Ruth, come and take me away."

"Only three mourners,--a woman and two little girls," exclaimed a by-stander, as Ruth followed Mary Leon to her long home.

CHAPTER LV.

The sudden change in Mrs. Skiddy's matrimonial prospects necessitated Ruth to seek other quarters. With a view to still more rigid economy, she hired a room without board, in the lower part of the city.

Mrs. Waters, her new landlady, was one of that description of females, whose vision is bounded by a mop, scrubbing-brush, and dust-pan; who repudiate rainy washing days; whose hearth, Jowler, on the stormiest night, would never venture near without a special permit, and whose husband and children speak under their breath on baking and cleaning days. Mrs. Waters styled herself a female physician. She kept a sort of witch's cauldron constantly boiling over the fire, in which seethed all sorts of "mints" and "yarbs," and from which issued what she called a "potecary odor." Mrs. Waters, when not engaged in stirring this cauldron, or in her various house-keeping duties, alternated her leisure in reading medical books, attending medical lectures, and fondling a pet skull, which lay on the kitchen-dresser.

Various little boxes of brown-bread-looking pills ornamented the upper shelf, beside a row of little dropsical chunky junk bottles, whose labels would have puzzled the most erudite M. D. who ever received a diploma. Mrs. Waters felicitated herself on knowing how the outer and inner man of every son of Adam was put together, and considered the times decidedly "out of joint;" inasmuch that she, Mrs. Waters, had not been called upon by her country to fill some medical professorship.

In person Mrs. Waters was barber-pole-ish and ram-rod-y, and her taste in dress running mostly to stringy fabrics, a.s.sisted the bolster-y impression she created; her hands and wrists bore a strong resemblance to the yellow claws of defunct chickens, which children play "scare"

with about Thanksgiving time; her feet were of turtle flatness, and her eyes--if you ever provoked a cat up to the bristling and scratching point, you may possibly form an idea of them.

Mrs. Waters condescended to allow Ruth to keep the quart of milk and loaf of bread, (which was to serve for her bill of fare for every day's three meals,) on a swing shelf in a corner of the cellar. As Ruth's room was at the top of the house, it was somewhat of a journey to travel up and down, and the weather was too warm to keep it up stairs; to her dismay she soon found that the cellar-floor was generally more or less flooded with water, and the sudden change from the heated air of her attic to the dampness of the cellar, brought on a racking cough, which soon told upon her health. Upon the first symptom of it, Mrs. Waters seized a box of pills and hurried to her room, a.s.suring her that it was "a sure cure, and only three shillings a box."

"Thank you," said Ruth; "but it is my rule never to take medicine unless--"

"Oh, oh," said Mrs. Waters, bridling up; "I see--unless it is ordered by a physician, you were going to say; perhaps you don't know that _I_ am a physician--none the worse for being a female. I have investigated things; I have dissected several cats, and sent in an a.n.a.lysis of them to the Medical Journal; it has never been published, owing, probably, to the editor being out of town. If you will take six of these pills every other night," said the doctress, laying the box on the table, "it will cure your cough; it is only three shillings. I will take the money now, or charge it in your bill."

"Three shillings!" Ruth was aghast; she might as well have asked her three dollars. If there was anything Ruth was afraid of, it was Mrs.

Waters' style of woman; a loaded cannon, or a regiment of dragoons, would have had few terrors in comparison. But the music must be faced; so, hoping to avoid treading on her landlady's professional toes, Ruth said, "I think I'll try first what dieting will do, Mrs. Waters."

The door instantly banged to with a crash, as the owner and vender of the pills pa.s.sed out. The next day Mrs. Waters drew off a little superfluous feminine bile, by announcing to Ruth, with a malignity worthy of her s.e.x, "that she forgot to mention when she let her lodgings, that she should expect her to scour the stairs she traveled over, at least once a week."

CHAPTER LVI.

It was a sultry morning in July. Ruth had risen early, for her cough seemed more troublesome in a reclining posture. "I wonder what that noise can be?" said she to herself; whir--whir--whir, it went, all day long in the attic overhead. She knew that Mrs. Waters had one other lodger beside herself, an elderly gentleman by the name of Bond, who cooked his own food, and whom she often met on the stairs, coming up with a pitcher of water, or a few eggs in a paper bag, or a pie that he had bought of Mr. Flake, at the little black grocery-shop at the corner.

On these occasions he always stepped aside, and with a deferential bow waited for Ruth to pa.s.s. He was a thin, spare man, slightly bent; his hair and whiskers curiously striped like a zebra, one lock being jet black, while the neighboring one was as distinct a white. His dress was plain, but very neat and tidy. He never seemed to have any business out-doors, as he stayed in his room all day, never leaving it at all till dark, when he paced up and down, with his hands behind him, before the house. "Whir--whir--whir." It was early sunrise; but Ruth had heard that odd noise for two hours at least. What _could_ it mean? Just then a carrier pa.s.sed on the other side of the street with the morning papers, and slipped one under the crack of the house door opposite.