Reuben

“ The streets are thronged with Celestials weaving back and forth. Even Reuben is fascinated by the substratum of actual sin around him. It is a panopticon of strange sights; little rooms in which are huddled together groups of odd-looking women making shoes; eye and ear doctors busily operating on meek-faced patrons; unknown fruits and vegetables, costly wares and curious trinkets; omnipresent female chattels and moral and physical lepers jostle one another. One peep into an inner chamber, and with the sickening fumes of opium in his nostrils Reuben seeks the outer air. ”

“ Ruth inclined her head to Ferdinand, gave a nod and a smile to Reuben (who nodded back rather gloomily) , and passed like a sunbeam into the shadow of the porch. Fuller took up his 'cello in a big armful, and followed, with the brethren in his rear. Ferdinand, feeling Reuben's company to be distasteful, lingered in it with a perverse hope that the young man might address him, and Reuben stood rather sullenly by to mark his own sense of social contrast by allowing the gentleman to enter first. ”

“ Reuben was glad to escape into his farm work. The atmosphere of sickness was like a cloud, which grew blacker and blacker the nearer one came to its heart. Its heart was that little room in the gable, where he spent those wretched nights, disturbed by Harry's moaning. Out of doors, in the yard or the cowshed or the stable, he breathed a cleaner atmosphere. The heaviness, the vague remorse, grew lighter. And strange to say, out on Boarzell, which was the cause of his trouble, they grew lightest of all. ”

“ The solitary walk through the thick woods calmed his emotion before he reached Woodside.
He found a tidy room, a tempting tea-table, and smiling faces waiting to welcome him.
"That's my boy!" exclaimed Reuben, coming forward and grasping his hand; "I telled Hannah to keep the tea back a spell, 'cause I knowed you wouldn't disappoint us."
"As if I ever thought you would, Ishmael! Reuben is always prophesying things that can't fail to come true, like the rising of the sun in the east every day, and so forth. ”

“ A chawbacon gallant, the very antipodes of the other—but then Love was born in Arcady, and favours a rustic wooer. Poor Reuben’s homely image rose before her—heroic hobnails, sentiment in a smock, but honest and clear-seeing within the limits of his vision. Reuben had seen, and dared to expostulate—and been smartly caned by Cartouche for his presumption. And Reuben had blubbered—that was fatal. A crying man is always contemptible. ”

“ There were mornings when no children came to Reuben’s house, when some woman more pitiful, some man more brave than the others, crept near and laid food on the threshold, then fled away to tell in trembling of the cries they had heard as of some wild beast mad with fury, or some lost soul shrieking in the torment of despair. ”

“ And when Reuben saw the girl of his heart in vivacious public talk with a young man of another social sphere he was quite naturally a great deal more perturbed than he need have been. The gentleman admired her, and it was not outside the nature of things that she might admire the gentleman. He came up, therefore, mighty serious, and shook hands with Fuller and the brethren, and then with Ruth, with an air of severity which was by no means usual with him. ”

“ Reuben hurriedly exclaimed. “It is only because I want Barbara. He would say the same to anyone else that asked for his daughter. You know me, rabbi; you have known me a long time, ever since I was a child. I do not pretend to be an angel, but I am not bad. I love the girl, and I can take good care of her. I don’t want to see his old wine glass again. I’d smash it into a——”
Reuben’s jaw fell, and his eyes stared vacantly at the wall. The rabbi followed his gaze, and, seeing nothing, turned to Reuben in surprise. ”

“ Reuben's plan was to fatten it well before he sowed his seed. Complaints of his night-soil came all the way from Grandturzel; Vennal, humorously inclined, sent him a bag of rotten fish; on the rare occasions his work allowed him to meet other farmers at the Cocks, his talk was all of lime, guano, and rape-cake, with digressions on the possibilities of seaweed. He was manure mad.
The neighbours despised and mistrusted his enthusiasm. There he was, thinking of nothing but his land, when Harry, his only brother, lay worse than dying. But Reuben often thought of Harry. ”

“ Peace, the long-exiled housemate, stealing back,
Might smile, with careworn lips. There, hand in hand,
They patiently abode, like two that wait.
Silent they sat together, Reuben’s gaze
Fix’d idly on the once dear apple boughs,
And Mercy watching the long thro’-shine turn
To pillars and to pennons of green light
Her window lily-leaves. They seldom look’d
At one another, very seldom spoke;
Sometimes a fitful word or two might slip.
“She tries you, Reuben.” “Nay, she tends thee, lass!” ”

“ Judith sat there listening, cutting open her novel, and throwing in a remark from time to time.
Every word that was uttered seemed a brick in the wall that was building between herself and Reuben.
In this crisis of his career, so long looked forward to, so often discussed, he had no need, no thought of her. Adelaide, Esther, Rose, all had more claim on him than she; she was shut out from his life.
Reuben, disappointed, defeated: in such a one she would always, in spite of himself, have felt her rights. ”

“ He would speak to Ruth after church, and at least decide his own chances. The vicar's sermon was brief, for the good man had no rival, and could afford to please himself; but its duration, short as it was, gave Reuben ample time to be rejected and accepted a score of times over, and to gild the future with the rosiest or cloud it with the most tempestuous of colors. The Earl of Barfield, according to his custom, had arrived late, and it comforted Reuben a little to think that in his presence, at all events, the young gentleman could make no progress with his love affairs. ”

“ Then Reuben half rose in his seat to lash them into a last furious gallop, and, snorting with rebellion, they tore onward toward the seminary road.
At the corner, three doors from the home of the Minster ladies, Reuben deemed it prudent to draw up. There was evidently a considerable throng in the road in front of the house, and that still others were on the lawn within the gates was obvious from the confused murmur which came therefrom. Some boys were blowing spasmodically on fish-horns, and rough jeers and loud boisterous talk rose and fell throughout the dimly visible assemblage. ”

“ But at present I am not writing an essay on speculation or enterprise, but the history of Reuben Purves, the Speculator; and I shall therefore begin with it at once. Reuben was born in Galashiels, than which I do not know a more thriving town, or one more beautifully situated, on all the wide Borders. As you pass it, seated on the outside of the Chevy-Chase coach on a summer day (if perchance a sunny shower shall have fallen) , it lies before you as a long and silvered line, the blue slates reflecting back the sunbeams. In its streets, cleanliness and prosperity join hands ”

“ There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?
Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. ”

“ It was, I believe—I may be wholly wrong—a picture of Reuben, looking in an agony of unavailing sorrow into the pit from which his brothers had drawn the boy they hated to sell him to the Midianites. I cannot recollect the details plainly, and little remains but a memory of dim-lit azure and glowing scarlet. Even though the pit was quaintly depicted as a draw-well, with a solid stone coping, the pretty absurdity of the thought only made one love the fancy better. ”

“ Here was Reuben, here was she, face to face—alive—together.
He came slowly forwards, his eyelids drooping, an air of almost wooden immobility on his face. The black frock-coat which he wore, and in which he had that day attended Mr. Ronaldson’s funeral, brought out the unusual sallowness of his complexion. There was a withered, yellow look about him to-night which forcibly recalled his mother.
Judith’s heart grew very soft as she watched him shaking hands with her aunt and uncle.
“He is not well,” she thought; then: “He always comes last to me.” ”

“ And, oh! don’t you trust him! Don’t you trust him, I say! He’s not fit to be with you. Oh, my God!—don’t I know Horace Boyce!”
Reuben stood silent, still looking down gravely into the girl’s flashing eyes. What she had said annoyed and disturbed him, but what he thought chiefly about was how to avoid bringing on an explanation which must wound and humiliate her feelings. ”

“ Reuben said, "the word 'agitate' suggested fluttering. I might translate: 'Why was it that Daedalus fluttered safe wings?'" He glanced up, honestly feeling as apologetic as a puppy caught in flagrante with a ravished shoe. "To me, sir, Daedalus was no butterfly."
Ben knocked his Ovid on the floor and scrambled after it. Reuben guessed he was trying to divert the lightning, but Mr. Hibbs paid the uproar no heed at all, staring at Reuben with a twitching nose. You could never quite predict Gideon Hibbs: the next moment might be hell, or sudden sunshine, or merely another sneeze. ”

“ Why I remember it I do not know, for Reuben, who was standing where he could look into the library when our father came out and saw the settle and the general sitting at one end of it, was chattering about it in my ear at the very moment our father was giving his orders.
“‘Reuben is a man now, and I have asked him more than once since then how the general looked at that critical instant. It is important to me, very, very important, and to him, too, now that he has come to know a man’s passions and temptations. ”

“ Reuben's pain and sorrow, mingled with his religious hope, seemed now to terminate in despair, and transformed the inoffensive man into a raging demon. He rushed to a cart which supported a great number of spectators, just opposite the auction block, and tore out a heavy cart stave, made of red oak, and before the panic-stricken crowd could arrest his arm, he struck his master to the ground, and beat his brains literally out. ”

“ Some one of the words must have been wrong, for the little man rose up gibbering from a toothless gap and came for him viciously, the scissors raised like a hatchet. Reuben was able to scream at last and fling himself away——
Into the warmth where Ben—Oh, this is waking!—where Ben was saying: "Hush thee, Ru, hush! Don't be so afeared! I'm here, I'm with thee."
As Reuben slept on, peacefully after his nightmare, morning imperceptibly arrived, a pallor in an unfamiliar window long dark; much more time must pass, Ben knew, before true dawn. ”

“ In his revolt against this weakness, Reuben had burned the little scented note for which so reverential a treasure-box had been made in his desk. But this was of no avail. He could never enter that small inner room where he now sat without glancing at the drawer which had once been consecrated to the letter.
It was humiliating that he should prove to have so little sense and strength. He bit his cigar fiercely with annoyance when this aspect of the case rose before him. If love meant anything, it meant a mutual sentiment. ”

“ He carried his violin case tucked beneath his arm—a fact which of itself gave him an unworthy aspect in Ferdinand's eyes—and he had shaken hands with Ruth without raising his hat. A denizen of Heydon Hay who had taken off his hat in the open air to a woman would have been scoffed by his neighbors, and would probably have startled the woman herself as much as his own sense of propriety. But all the same Reuben's salute seemed mutilated and boorish to the man of more finished breeding, and helped to mark him as unworthy to be the suitor of so charming a creature as the rustic beauty. ”

“ Reuben waited for no further information. He said something about not knowing it was so late, bade the landlady a rather abrupt farewell, and went his way.
Down the narrow street he hurried, turned a corner, and found himself in front of the house indicated, outside which all was dark. Nobody near, and, with the exception of himself, not a soul to be seen. Inside, he could hear voices, and the more plainly from the top sash of the window being a little way open. ”

“ They watched in company therefore, all night, without any disturbance, rather to Reuben’s disgust, who said at seven o’clock in the morning,
“Well, we’ve kept thy books safe, but otherwise, are just as we were; this man must know when watch is kept, and is wise enough to stay away out of trouble.”
“Don’t be so sure the books are all right,” said Isaac, drearily.
“What!” cried Reuben, “would thou have me take up thy absurd and profane notions! Let us look for ourselves;” ”

“ Reuben lighted a couple of the candles, then turning to his companion, who was lying on the bed frigging slowly his standing prick, as if keeping it in a state ready for use, said, "Will, it's time His Lordship was here now, what a good job I broke away from you just now, or you would have spent and spoilt all; he likes to see us looking ready and randy, but if he thinks we have been fucking or frigging by ourselves he would damn us, and bolt off in a rage." ”