the New York stock board.
“I don’t see that there is much risk,” said the Squire, at length.
“The timber is worth more than the mortgage; and if that coal seam does
run there, it’s a magnificent fortune. Would you like to try it again in
the spring, Phil?”
Like to try it! If he could have a little help, he would work himself,
with pick and barrow, and live on a crust. Only give him one more
chance.
And this is how it came about that the cautious old Squire Montague was
drawn into this young fellow’s speculation, and began to have his serene
old age disturbed by anxieties and by the hope of a great stroke of luck.
“To be sure, I only care about it for the boy,” he said. The Squire was
like everybody else; sooner or later he must “take a chance.”
It is probably on account of the lack of enterprise in women that they
are not so fond of stock speculations and mine ventures as men. It is
only when woman becomes demoralized that she takes to any sort of
gambling. Neither Alice nor Ruth were much elated with the prospect of
Philip’s renewal of his mining enterprise.
But Philip was exultant. He wrote to Ruth as if his fortune were already
made, and as if the clouds that lowered over the house of Bolton were
already in the deep bosom of a coal mine buried. Towards spring he went
to Philadelphia with his plans all matured for a new campaign. His
enthusiasm was irresistible.
“Philip has come, Philip has come,” cried the children, as if some great
good had again come into the household ; and the refrain even sang itself
over in Ruth’s heart as she went the weary hospital rounds. Mr. Bolton
felt more courage than he had had in months, at the sight of his manly
face and the sound of his cheery voice.
Ruth’s course was vindicated now, and it certainly did not become Philip,
who had nothing to offer but a future chance against the visible result
of her determination and industry, to open an argument with her. Ruth
was never more certain that she was right and that she was sufficient
unto herself. She, may be, did not much heed the still small voice that
sang in her maiden heart as she went about her work, and which lightened
it and made it easy, “Philip has come.”
“I am glad for father’s sake,” she said to Philip, that thee has come.
I can see that he depends greatly upon what thee can do. He thinks women
won’t hold out long,” added Ruth with the smile that Philip never exactly
understood.
“And aren’t you tired sometimes of the struggle?”
“Tired? Yes, everybody is tired I suppose. But it is a glorious
profession. And would you want me to be dependent, Philip?”
“Well, yes, a little,” said Philip, feeling his way towards what he
wanted to say.
“On what, for instance, just now?” asked Ruth, a little maliciously
Philip thought.
“Why, on–” he couldn’t quite say it, for it occurred to him that he was
a poor stick for any body to lean on in the present state of his fortune,
and that the woman before him was at least as independent as he was.
“I don’t mean depend,” he began again. “But I love you, that’s all. Am
I nothing–to you?” And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had
said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation
on either side, between man and woman.
Perhaps Ruth saw this. Perhaps she saw that her own theories of a
certain equality of power, which ought to precede a union of two hearts,
might be pushed too far. Perhaps she had felt sometimes her own weakness
and the need after all of so dear a sympathy and so tender an interest
confessed, as that which Philip could give. Whatever moved her–the
riddle is as old as creation–she simply looked up to Philip and said in
a low voice, “Everything.”
And Philip clasping both her hands in his, and looking down into her
eyes, which drank in all his tenderness with the thirst of a true woman’s