“All people should be able to reap the harvest that is stored in books,” he told her. “It is through reading that one learns the wonders of the world, the mighty changes of time, and the name of the street that one is walking on. The demon of ignorance and poverty feeds on illiteracy. I will not stand for it.”
On Ruby’s sixteenth birthday, Mr. Joy sent word that he would like to see her at his home. She went, not knowing what to expect. He met her at the front door and brought her to his study.
A large bay window looked out onto a bright flower garden. There was a tea service on a silver tray and a plate of nectarines beside another plate that was filled with sponge cakes.
Mr. Joy gave Ruby a small box wrapped in red paper. She opened it. There was a necklace inside. A gold necklace with a sparkling ruby.
“As befits your name,” he told her. “And now, there is something else that I would like to discuss.”
Ruby waited, uncertain as to what would come next.
“You are a young woman of special ability,” Mr. Joy continued. “You have been given much, and you have much to offer. I would like you to consider working at the learning center. You will be paid a salary. You would be a teacher.”
Of all the things Ruby had dreamed for her future, she had never dreamed of being a teacher.
“But only men teach,” she said.
Octavius Joy smiled. “I cannot think of a single reason why a young woman is not qualified to teach. Can you?”
“No, sir. It is just, I have not heard of it being commonly done.”
“Nonsense. Mothers teach their children to read all the time.”
One month after her sixteenth birthday, Ruby began work at the learning center, assisting older, more experienced teachers. Never have students received more diligent, kindhearted instruction.
Some of them came to the learning center, anxious and frightened. Others pretended to be rougher than they really were. Ruby greeted each one with a smile and told them how happy she was that they were there. Her manner and gender made learning a more comfortable experience for women. Men wanted to be in her presence. Children adored her.
There was a patience in her face that led those who had been anxious to take readily to her. And she had words of encouragement for everyone.
A young man about twenty years of age had a laugh that was more cheerful than intelligent. Given the fact that he had been a slow boy for the first two decades of his life, it seemed unlikely that he would ever become a fast one. Indeed, at his first session, he held his paper with the alphabet on it upside down, which seemed to suit his convenience as well as if he had been holding it right side up.
“You must never belittle yourself,” Ruby told him.
A stout bald gentleman with a cheerful face had a tendency to stand with his hands in his pockets and whistle while admiring the writing on the wall as one might contemplate a painting by Rembrandt.
“Your letters are beautiful,” Ruby complimented after he struggled through his first few letters.
And to a girl of twelve who had tears of frustration in her eyes: “Queen Victoria, who sits upon the throne, began her learning with the same alphabet. She started with ‘A’ just like you. And it took her quite a while to work her royal way to ‘Z’.”
Then tragedy.
In Christopher’s fortieth year, he began to feel pain and weakness that should not have been in a man his age.
There is a dread condition that prepares its victims for death. A disease that medicine has never cured and wealth has never warded off. It is an illness that sometimes moves in giant strides and sometimes at a sluggish pace but, whether quick or slow, is certain. A condition in which the outcome of the struggle between body and soul is so sure that, day by day, the mortal part of the sufferer withers away and the spirit, feeling death at hand, welcomes the end as a lightening load.
Ruby comforted herself with the hope that Christopher would recover, as he answered with a quiet smile each day that he felt better than the day before. But he continued to grow thinner, and his eyes sank deeply into his face until his look was that of the gaunt starving man I had seen when he and Ruby first stood in the cold outside my bakery window.
Marie asked often if there was something she could do for him. Christopher’s answer was always the same.
“Nothing.”
For a while, he was strong enough to walk about with Ruby supporting him on her arm. They visited places that they remembered from the past. Each one brought some earlier event to mind, and they would linger in the sunlight with a word, a laugh . . . a fear.
One walk led them to the churchyard where Ruby’s mother was buried.
“Sometimes when I look at you,” Christopher told Ruby, “I see your mother’s spirit in your eyes. When I die, I should like to be buried as near to her grave as they can make my own.”
Ruby gave her promise, holding his hand.
“I shall never be an old man. But if I could know before I die that you will grow up to be happy and that you will come and look upon my grave from time to time, not with tears but with a smile, I could take my leave contented. You are a wonderful young woman. I love you as a daughter. I have nothing to regret but that I will not be here longer for you.”
Each day, Ruby and Marie put Christopher in a chair by the window so he could feel the fresh air. But all the air that there is in the world and all the winds that blow could not have brought new life to him.
The little home in which they had laughed for years while planning happy futures was now somber.
“You are spending too much time by my bedside,” Christopher told Ruby. “It troubles me that I am burdening you.”
“I am here because I want to be. My earliest memories are of you sitting by my side and caring for me in a hovel that was a home only because you were there. I have known no father but you. Never was a parent more kind to a child than you have been to me.”
She had never loved him more dearly than she did now. But she knew that hope was gone and death was closing fast. He could no longer move from room to room without assistance. He was so emaciated that it was hard to look upon him.
“Come close so you can hear me,” Christopher told Ruby one night. “You are as good as any person of wealth and rank in the eyes of God. And in my eyes, you are better. My greatest fear after the death of your mother was that I should die and there would be no one to look after you. Now I know that you are loved and well cared for.”
Soon, he could no longer leave his bed, so it was moved beside the window. When the rays of the sun shimmered on the wall, Christopher knew that it was day. When the reflection died away and a deepening gloom crept into the room, he knew that it was night. More and more often, he lay still without talking until a word from Ruby or Marie brightened his face for a moment. Then the light would dim.
“I
