Cyrus Holland died just before daybreak next morning. It seemed to Deane Franklin that he had only just fallen asleep when the telephone beside him was ringing. When tired out he slept through other noises, but that one always instantly reached—a call to him that got through sleep. He wakened just enough to reach out for the 'phone and his "Hello!" was cross. Was there never a time when one could be let alone? But the voice that came to him banished both sleep and irritation. It was Ruth's voice, saying quietly, tensely: "Deane? I'm sorry—but we want you. There's a change. I'm sure father's going."
He was dressing almost the instant he hung up the receiver. To Amy, who had roused, he said: "It's Ruth. Her father's going. I can't do a thing—but they want me there."
At first Amy made no reply. He thought nothing about that, engrossed in getting dressed as quickly as possible. When she burst out, "So of course you're going!" he was dumbfounded at the passionateness of her voice. He looked at her in astonishment; then, for the first time the other side of it, as related to their quarrel about Ruth, turned itself to him. "Why, of course I'm going, Amy," he said quietly.
"It makes a difference who it is, doesn't it?" she cried, stormily. "The other night when somebody called you and there wasn't a thing you could do, yousaidso! Youtoldthem they mustn't ask you! Butthisis different, isn't it?"
The words had piled up tumultuously; she seemed right on the verge of angry, tumultuous tears. He paused in what he was doing. "Why, Amy," he murmured in real astonishment. And then helplessly repeated in tender reproach, "Why, Amy!"
But she laughed, it seemed sneeringly. He colored, quickly finished dressing and left the room without saying anything more.
When she heard the front door close, heard Deane running down the steps, she sat up in bed and burst into tears of rage. Always that woman! Running away to her in the middle of the night! He didn'thaveto go! There was nothing for him to do as a doctor—he could do nothing for a man who had been dying for a couple of days. Hesaidthat—just a couple of nights before when someone wanted him to come. But this was Ruth Holland! She had only to telephone. Of course he'd go anywhere—any time—for her! Her sobs grew more and more passionate. Her head down on her knees she rocked back and forth in that miserable fury only jealousy and wounded pride can create.
This gathered together, brought to a head, the resentment accumulating through a number of incidents. That afternoon she had gone over to the Lawrences' to thank Edith and her mother for the flowers from the tea which they had sent her that morning. They had urged her to run in often, to be friendly. Her unhappiness about her talk with Deane the night before, when he had actually proposed that she go to see this Ruth Holland, made her want to be with friends; she wanted to see people who felt as she did that—though it did not so present itself to her—she might fortify herself in the conviction that Deane was preposterously wrong, and she taking the only course a good woman could take in relation to a bad one. She was prepared to feel that men did not see those things as clearly as women did, that it was woman who was the guardian of society, and that she must bear with man in his failure to see some things right. She had been eager to strengthen herself in that feeling, not alone because it would, in her own mind, get her out of reach of any possible charge of hardness or narrowness, but because it would let her break through her feeling against Deane; she wanted to get back to the days of his complete adoration of her, back where his passion for her would sweep all else out of their world. She knew well enough that Deane loved her, but there was a tightened up place around her knowing that. It made her miserable. Things would not be right until she found a way through that tightened up place—a way that would make her right and Deane wrong, but would let her forgive, largely and gently understanding. Such, not thought out, were the things that took her to the Lawrences' that afternoon.
It was apparent that Edith had been crying. She and her mother were gracious to Amy, but there was a new constraint. She felt uncomfortable. When they were alone Edith broke out and told her how she was just sick at heart about Ruth. Deane had been there that morning urging her to go and see Ruth—instantly there was all anew that tightening up that held her from Deane, that feeling against him and against this Ruth Holland that was as if something virulent had been poured into her blood, changing her whole system. Edith cried as she told how Deane and her mother had quarreled because he felt so strongly on the subject, and didn't seem able to understand her mother's standpoint. Then, she too wanting to set herself right with herself, she went over the whole story—the shock to her, how it had hurt her ideal of friendship, had even seemed to take something from the sanctity of her own marriage. She silenced something within herself in recounting the wrong done her, fortified herself in repeating the things she had from her mother about one's not being free, about what the individual owed to society.
Amy went home in a turmoil of resentment against her husband. It was hard to hold back the angry tears. A nice position he was putting himself in—going about the town pleading for this woman whom nobody would take in!—estranging his friends—yes, probably hurting his practice. Andwhy?Whywas he so wrought up about it? Why was he making a regular business of going about fighting her battles? Well,onething it showed! It showed how much consideration he had for his own wife. When she came in sight of their house it was harder than ever to hold back the tears of mortification, of hot resentment. She had been so sure she was going to be perfectly happy in that house! Now already her husband was turning away from her—humiliating her—showing how much he thought of another woman, andsucha woman! She did not know what to do with the way she felt, did not know how to hold from the surface the ugly things that surged through her, possessed her. Until now she had had nothing but adulation from love. A pretty, petted girl she had formed that idea of pretty women in youth that it was for men to give love and women graciously to accept it. For her vanity to be hurt by a man who had roused her passion turned that passion to fury against him and made it seem that a great wrong had been done her.
As she approached she saw that Deane was standing before the house talking to a woman in a vegetable wagon. He had one foot up on the spoke of the wheel and was talking more earnestly than it seemed one would be talking to a vegetable woman. Doubtless she was one of his patients. As she came up he said: "Oh, Amy, I want you to know Mrs. Herman."
She stiffened; his tone in introducing her to a woman of what she thought of as the lower classes seeming just a new evidence of his inadequate valuation of her.
"Your husband and I went to school together," said Mrs. Herman, pleasantly, but as if explaining.
"Oh?" murmured Amy.
Deane abruptly moved back from the wagon. "Well, you do that, Annie. Ruth would love to see you, I know."
Sothatwas it! She turned away with a stiff little nod to the woman in the wagon. Always the same thing!—urging Tom, Dick and Harry to go and see that woman!—taking up with a person like this, introducing his wife in that intimate way to a woman who peddled vegetables just because she was willing to go and see Ruth Holland! She didn't know that she had to stand such things!—she didn't know that shewould. She guessed she could show him that she wasn't going to play second fiddle to that Ruth Holland!
Deane came to the door of the room where she was taking off her hat. Her fingers were trembling so that she could scarcely get the pins. "That little woman you were so chilly to is a pretty fine sort, Amy," he said incisively.
"Because she is going to see Ruth Holland?" she retorted with an excited laugh.
"Oh, you were pretty stand-offish before you knew that," he answered coolly.
Vanity smarting from deeper hurts made her answer, haughtily: "I'm rather inexperienced, you know, in meeting people of that class."
In his heart too there were deeper disappointments than this touched. "Well, I must say—" he began hotly, "I think if I felt as snobbish as that I'd try pretty hard to conceal it!"
Amy was carefully putting away her hat; she had an appearance of cold composure, of a sense of superiority. It was because she wanted to keep that that she did not speak. The things within would so completely have destroyed it.
"I guess you don't understand, Amy," said Deane, quieted by her silence; "if you knew all about Annie Morris I think you'd see she is a woman worth meeting." Thinking of his talk with Edith and her mother that morning, he added, a good deal of feeling breaking into his voice: "A good sight more so than some of the people you are meeting!"
"And of course," she could not hold back, "they—those inferior people—won't go to see Ruth Holland, and this wonderful woman will! That's the secret of it, isn't it?"
"It's one thing that shows her superiority," he replied coolly. "Another thing is her pluck—grit. Her husband is a dolt, and she's determined her three children shall have some sort of a show in life, so she's driven ahead—worked from daylight till dark many a time—to make decent things possible for them."
"Well, that's very commendable, I'm sure," replied Amy mildly, appearing to be chiefly concerned with a loose button on the wrap she had just taken off.
"And with all that she's kept her own spirit alive; she's not going to let life get clear ahead ofher, either. She's pretty valiant, I think." He was thinking again of Edith and her mother as he added contentiously, "I don't know any woman in this town I'd rather talk to!"
Amy, appearing quite outside the things that were disturbing him, only smiled politely and threaded a needle for sewing on the button. He stood there in the doorway, fidgeting, his face red. She seemed so uncaring; she seemed so far away. "Oh, Amy!" he cried, miserably, appealingly.
Quickly she looked up; her mouth, which had been so complacent, twitched. He started toward her, but just then the doorbell rang. "I presume that's your mother," she said, in matter of fact tone.
Mrs. Franklin was with them for dinner that night. Amy's social training made it appear as if nothing were disturbing her. She appeared wholly composed, serene; it was Deane who seemed ill at ease, out of sorts.
After dinner he had to go to the hospital and when she was alone with his mother Amy was not able to keep away from the subject of Ruth Holland. For one thing, she wanted to hear about her, she was avid for detail as to how she looked, things she had done and said—that curious human desire to press on a place that hurts. And there was too the impulse for further self-exoneration, to be assured that she was right, to feel that she was injured.
All of those things it was easy to get from Mrs. Franklin. Amy, not willing to reveal what there had been between her and Deane, and having that instinct for drawing sympathy to herself by seeming self-depreciation, spoke gently of how she feared she did not altogether understand about Deane's friend Ruth Holland. Was she wrong in not going with Deane to see her?
Mrs. Franklin's explosion of indignation at the idea, and the feeling with which, during the hour that followed, she expressed herself about Deane's friend Ruth Holland, acted in a double fashion as both fortification and new hurt. Mrs. Franklin, leader in church and philanthropic affairs, had absolutely no understanding of things which went outside the domain of what things should be. The poor and the wicked did terrible things that society must do something about. There was no excuse whatever for people who ought to know better. That people should be dominated by things they ought not to feel was perversity on their part and the most wilful kind of wickedness. She had Mrs. Lawrence's point of view, but from a more provincial angle. Deane did not get his questioning spirit, what she called his stubbornness, from his mother.
Added to what she as a church woman and worker for social betterment felt about the affair was the resentment of the mother at her son's having been, as she put it, dragged into the outrage. She grew so inflamed in talking of how this woman had used Deane that she did not take thought of how she was giving more of an impression of her power over him than might be pleasant hearing for Deane's young wife. The indignation of the whole Franklin family at what they called the way Deane had been made a cat's paw was fanned to full flame in this preposterous suggestion that Amy should go to see Ruth Holland. In her indignation at the idea she gave a new sense of what the town felt about Ruth, and she was more vehement than tactful in her expressions against Deane for holding out that way against the whole town. "It just shows, my dear," she said, "what a woman of no principle can do with a man!"
Amy, hurt to the quick in this thought of the mysterious lure of a woman of no principle, remarked casually, "She's wonderfully attractive, I presume."
Mrs. Franklin was not too blunted by indignation to miss the pain that was evident in the indifferently asked question. Hastily—more hastily than subtly, she proceeded to depreciate the attractions of Ruth Holland, but in the depreciation left an impression of some quality—elusive, potent—which more than beauty or definite charm gave her power. Edith too had spoken of that "something" about Ruth; a something one never forgot; a something, she said, that no one else had.
And now, awakened by Deane's having been called by this woman in the night, herself alone there and he hurrying to Ruth Holland, the barriers of pride broke down and she cried because she was sorry for herself, because she was hurt and outraged that she should be hurt, because for the first time in her whole life she was thwarted—not having her way, set aside. She completely lost her hold on herself, got up and stormed about the room. When she looked at her face in the mirror she saw that it was hideous. She couldn't help it!—she didn't care! The resentment, rage, in her heart was like a poison that went all through her. She was something that didn't seem herself. She thought horrible things and ground her teeth and clenched her hands and let her face look as ugly as it could. She hated this woman! She wished some horrible thing would happen to her! She hated Deane Franklin! The passion he had roused in her all turned into this feeling against him. She wouldn't stand it! She wouldn't stay there and play second fiddle to another woman—she, a bride! Fresh tears came with that last. Her mother and father would never have treated her that way. They didn't think Deane Franklin good enough for her, anyway! She would go back home!Thatwould make things pretty hard for him! That would show what this woman had done! And he'd be sorry then—would want her back—and she wouldn't come. She finally found control in that thought of her power over him used to make him suffer.
Deane, meanwhile, was hurrying through the streets that had the unrealness of that hour just before morning. That aspect of things was with him associated with death; almost always when he had been on the streets at that hour it was because someone was fighting death. It was so still—as if things were awed. And a light that seemed apart from natural things was formed by the way the street lights grew pale in the faint light of coming day. Everyone was sleeping—all save those in a house half a dozen blocks away, the house where they were waiting for death.
He was on foot, having left his car down at the garage for some repairs after taking his mother home. As he slowed for a moment from a walk that was half run he thought of how useless his hurrying was. What in the world could he do when he got there? Nothing save assure them he could do nothing. Poor Ruth!—it seemed she had so much, so many hard things. This was a time when one needed one's friends, but of course they couldn't come near her—on account of society. Though—his face softened with the thought—Annie Morris would come, she not being oppressed by this duty to society. He thought of the earnestness of her thin face as she talked of Ruth. That let in the picture of Amy's face as he introduced them. He tried not to keep seeing it. He did think, however, that it was pretty unnecessary of Amy to have talked to his mother about Ruth. All that was unyielding in him had been summoned by the way his mother talked to him going home—"going for him" like that because he had wanted Amy to go and see Ruth. That, it seemed to him, was something between him and Amy. He would not have supposed she would be so ready to talk with some one else about a thing that was just between themselves. There had been that same old hardening against his mother when she began talking of Ruth, and that feeling that shut her out excluded Amy with her. And he had wanted Amy with him.
Hurrying on, he tried not to think of it. He didn't know why Amy had talked to his mother about it—perhaps it just happened so, perhaps his mother began it. He seized upon that. And Amy didn't understand; she was young—her life had never touched anything like this. He was going to talk to her—really talk to her, not fly off the handle at the first thing she would say. He told himself that he had been stupid, hard—a bungler. It made him feel better to tell himself that. Yes, he certainly had been unsympathetic, and it was a shame that anything had come to make Amy unhappy—and right there at first, too! Why, it was actually making her sick! When he went back after taking his mother home Amy said she had a bad headache and didn't want to talk. She was so queer that he had taken her at her word and had not tried to talk to her—be nice to her. It seemed now that he hadn't been kind; it helped him to feel that he hadn't been kind. And it was the headache, being roused in the night when she was not well that had made her so—well, so wrought up about his answering to the call of the Hollands—old patients, old friends. He was going to be different; he was going to be more tender with Amy—that would be the way to make her understand. Such were the things his troubled mind and hurt heart tried to be persuaded of as, thinking at the same time of other things—the death to which he was hurrying, how hard it would be for Ruth if Cyrus didn't speak to her—he passed swiftly by the last houses where people slept and turned from a world tinged with the strangeness of an hour so little known to men's consciousness, softly opened the door and stepped into the house where death was touching life with that same unreality with which, without, day touched night.
Miss Copeland, wrapped in a bathrobe, sat in the upstairs hall. "He's still breathing," she whispered in that voice which is for death alone. In the room Ruth and Ted stood close together, the nurse on the other side of the bed. Ruth's hair was braided down her back; he remembered when she used to wear it that way, he had one of those sudden pictures of her—on her way to school, skipping along with Edith Lawrence. She turned, hearing him, and there was that rush of feeling to her eyes that always claimed him for Ruth, that quick, silent assumption of his understanding that always let down bars between them. But Ruth kept close to Ted, as if she would shield him; the boy looked as Deane had seen novices look in the operating room.
There was nothing for him to do beyond look at his patient and nod to the nurse in confirmation that it would be any minute now. He walked around to Ted and Ruth, taking an arm of each of them and walking with them to the far side of the room.
"There's nothing to do but wait," he said.
"I wish Harriett and Cyrus would get here," whispered Ruth.
"You telephoned?"
"Before I did you—but of course it's a little farther."
They stood there together in that strange silence, hearing only the unlifelike breathing of the man passing from life. Listening to it, Ruth's hand on Deane's arm tightened. Soothingly he patted her hand.
Then, at a movement from the nurse, he stepped quickly to the bed. Ruth and Ted, close together, first followed, then held back. A minute later he turned to them. "It's over," he said, in the simple way final things are said.
There was a choking little cry from Ted. Ruth murmured something, her face all compassion for him. But after a moment she left her brother and stood alone beside her father. In that moment of seeing her face, before turning away because it seemed he should turn away, Deane got one of the strangest impressions of his life. It was as if she was following her father—reaching him; as if there was a fullness of feeling, a rising passionate intensity that could fairly overflow from life. Then she turned back to Ted.
Cyrus and Harriett had entered. There was a moment when the four children were there together. Cyrus did not come up to the bed until Ruth had left. Deane watched his face as—perfunctorily subdued, decorous, he stood where Ruth had stood a moment before. Then Cyrus turned to him and together they walked from the room, Cyrus asking why they had not been telephoned in time.
Deane lingered for a little while, hating to go without again seeing Ruth and Ted. He tapped at Ruth's door; he was not answered, but the unlatched door had swung a little open at his touch. He saw that the brother and sister were out on the little porch opening off Ruth's room. He went out and stood beside them, knowing that he would be wanted. The sun was just rising, touching the dew on the grass. The birds were singing for joy in another day. The three who had just seen death stood there together in silence.
The two days when the natural course of life was arrested by death had passed. Their father had been buried that afternoon, and in the early evening Ted and Ruth were sitting on the little upper porch, very quiet in the new poignant emptiness of the house. Many people had been coming and going in those last few days; now that was over and there was a pause before the routine of life was to be resumed. The fact that the nurse had gone seemed to turn the page.
Ruth had just asked how long Cyrus was going to stay and Ted replied that he wanted to stay on a week or perhaps more, attending to some business. She knew how crowded it must be for them at Harriett's, knew that if she went away Cyrus would come home. There seemed nothing more to keep her; she would like to be with Ted awhile, but it seemed she could not do that without continuing a hard condition for them all. They could settle into a more natural order of things with her not there. It was time for her to go.
It was hard to have to think that. She would love to have stayed a little while. She had been away so long—wanting home for so long. She knew now, facing the going away, how much she had secretly hoped might result from this trip back home.
She had seen a number of people in the past few days—relatives, old friends of the family, friends of Ted. She had done better in meeting them than, just a little while before, she would have thought possible. Something remained with her from that hour at her mother's grave, that strange hour when she had seemed to see life from outside, beyond it. That had summoned something within herself that no personal hurt could scatter, as if taking her in to something from which no circumstance could drive her out. She had felt an inner quiet, a steadiness within; there was power in it, and consolation. It took her out of that feeling of having no place—no right to a place, the feeling that had made her wretched and powerless. She was of life; her sure inner sense of the reality and beauty of that seemed a thing not to be broken down from without. It was hers, her own. It sustained her; it gave her poise. The embarrassment of other people gave way before her simple steadiness. She had had but the one point of contact with them—that of her father's death; it made her want more, made going away hard. It was hard to leave all the old things after even this slight touch with them again.
And that new quiet, that new force within was beginning to make for new thinking. She had thought much about what she had lived through—she could not help doing that, but she was thinking now with new questionings. She had not questioned much; she had accepted. What was gathering within her now was a feeling that a thing so real, so of life as her love had been should not be a thing to set her apart, should not be a thing to blight the lives that touched hers. This was not something called up in vindication, a mere escape from hard thinking, her own way out from things she could not bear; it was deeper than that, far less facile. It came from that inner quiet—from that strange new assurance—this feeling that her love should not have devastated, that it was too purely of life for that; that it was a thing to build up life, to give to it; this wondering, at once timid and bold, if there was not something wrong with an order that could give it no place, that made it life's enemy.
She had been afraid of rebellious thinking, of questionings. There had been so much to fight, so much to make her afraid. At first all the strength of her feeling had gone into the fight for Stuart's health; she was afraid of things that made her rebellious—needing all of herself, not daring to break through. The circumstances had seemed to make her own life just shut down around her; and even after those first years, living itself was so hard, there were so many worries and disappointments—her feeling about it was so tense, life so stern—that her thoughts did not shoot a long way out into questionings. She had done a thing that cut her off from her family; she had hurt other people and because of that she herself must suffer. Life could not be for her what it was for others. She accepted much that she did not try to understand. For one thing, she had had no one to talk to about those things. Seeing how Stuart's resentment against the state of things weakened him, keeping him from his full powers to meet those hard conditions, she did not encourage their talking of it and had tried to keep herself from the thinking that with him went into brooding and was weakening. She had to do the best she could about things; she could not spend herself in rebellion against what she had to meet. Like a man who finds himself on a dizzy ledge she grew fearful of much looking around.
But now, in these last few days, swept back into the wreckage she had left, something fluttered to life and beat hard within her spirit, breaking its way through the fearfulness that shut her in and sending itself out in new bolder flights. Not that those outgoings took her away from the place she had devastated; it was out of the poignancy of her feeling about the harm she had done, out of her new grief in it that these new questionings were born. The very fact that she did see so well, and so sorrowingly, what she had done, brought this new feeling that it should not have been that way, that what she had felt, and her fidelity to that feeling—ruthless fidelity though it was—should not have blighted like this. There was something that seemed at the heart of it all in that feeling of not being ashamed in the presence of death—she who had not denied life.
Silence had fallen between her and Ted, she saddened in the thought of going away and open to the puzzling things that touched her life at every point; looking at Ted—proud of him—hating to leave him now just when she had found him again, thinking with loving gratefulness and pride of how generous and how understanding he had been with her, how he was at once so boyish and so much more than his years. The fine seriousness of his face tonight made him very dear and very comforting to her. She wanted to keep close to him; she could not bear the thought of again losing him. If her hard visit back home yielded just that she would have had rich gain from it. She began talking with him about what he would do. He talked freely of his work, as if glad to talk of it; he was not satisfied with it, did not think there was much "chance" there for him. Ted had thought he wanted to study law, but his father, in one of his periods of depression, had said he could not finish sending him through college and Ted had gone into one of the big manufactories there. He was in the sales department, and he talked to Ruth of the work. He told her of his friends, of what they were doing; they talked of many things, speaking of the future with that gentle intimacy there can be between those sorrowing together for things past. Their sensitive consciousness of the emptiness of the house—the old place, their home,—brought them together through a deep undercurrent of feeling. Their voices were low as they spoke of more intimate things than it is usual to speak of without constraint, something lowered between them as only a grief shared can lower bars to the spirit, their thinking set in that poignant sense of life which death alone seems able to create.
Ted broke a pause to say that he supposed it was getting late and he must be starting for Harriett's. Cyrus had asked him to come over awhile that evening. Mr. McFarland, their family lawyer, was going out of town for a few days, leaving the next morning. He was coming in that evening, more as the old friend than formally, to speak to them about some business matters, Cyrus's time being limited and there being a number of things to arrange.
"I hate leaving you alone, Ruth," said Ted, lingering.
She looked over to him with quick affectionate smile. "I don't mind, Ted. Somehow I don't mind being alone tonight."
That was true. Being alone would not be loneliness that evening. Things were somehow opened; all things had so strangely opened. She had been looking down the deep-shadowed street, that old street down which she used to go. The girl who used to go down that street was singularly real to her just then; she had about her the fresh feeling, the vivid sense, of a thing near in time. Old things were so strangely opened, old feeling was alive again: the wild joy in the girl's heart, the delirious expectancy—and the fear. It was strange how completely one could get back across the years, how things gone could become living things again. That was why she was not going to mind being alone just then; she had a sense of the whole flow of her life—living, moving. It did not seem a thing to turn away from; it was not often that things were all open like that.
"I shouldn't wonder if Deane would drop in," said Ted, as if trying to help himself through leaving her there alone.
"He may," Ruth answered. She did not say it with enthusiasm, much as she would like to talk with Deane. Deane was just the one it would be good to talk with that night. But Deane never mentioned his wife to her. At first, in her preoccupation, and her pleasure in seeing him, she had not thought much about that. Then it had come to her that doubtless Deane's wife would not share his feeling about her, that she would share the feeling of all the other people; that brought the fear that she might, again, be making things hard for Deane. She had done enough of that; much as his loyalty, the rare quality of his affectionate friendship meant to her, she would rather he did not come than let the slightest new shadow fall upon his life because of her. And yet it seemed all wrong, preposterous, to think anyone who was close to Deane, anyone whom he loved, should not understand this friendship between them. She thought of how, meeting after all those years, they were not strange with each other. That seemed rare—to be cherished.
"What's Deane's wife like, Ted?" she asked.
"I haven't met her," he replied, "but I've seen her. She's awfully good-looking; lots of style, and carries herself as if—oh, as if she knew she was somebody," he laughed. "And I guess Deane thinks sheis," he added with another laugh. "Guess he decided that first time he met her. You know he stopped in Indianapolis to see a classmate who was practising there—met her at a party, I believe, and—good-by Deane! But somehow she isn't what you'd expect Deane's wife to be," he went on more seriously. "Doesn't look that way, anyhow. Looks pretty frigid, I thought, and, oh—fixed up. As if she wasn't just real."
Ruth's brows puckered. If there was one thing it seemed the wife of Deane Franklin should be, it was real. But doubtless Ted was wrong—not knowing her. It did not seem that Deane would be drawn to anyone who was not real.
She lingered in the thought of him. Real was just what Deane was. He had been wonderfully real with her in those days—days that had made the pattern of her life. Reality had swept away all other things between them. That carried her back to the new thinking, the questions. It seemed it was the things not real that were holding people apart. It was the artificialities people had let living build up around them made those people hard. People would be simpler—kinder—could those unreal things be swept away. She dwelt on the thought of a world like that—a world of people simple and real as Deane Franklin was simple and real.
She was called from that by a movement and exclamation from Ted, who had leaned over the railing. "There goes Mildred Woodbury," he said,—"and alone."
His tone made her look at him in inquiry and then down the street at the slight figure of a girl whose light dress stood out clearly between the shadows. Mildred was the daughter of a family who lived in the next block. The Woodburys and the Hollands had been neighbors and friends as far back as Ruth could remember. Mildred was only a little girl when Ruth went away—such a pretty little girl, her fair hair always gayly tied with ribbons. She had been there with her mother the night before and Ruth had been startled by her coming into the room where she was and saying impulsively: "You don't remember me, do you? I'm Mildred—Mildred Woodbury."
"And you used to call me Wuth!" Ruth had eagerly replied.
It had touched her, surrounded as she was by perfunctoriness and embarrassment that this young girl should seek her out in that warm way. And something in the girl's eyes had puzzled her. She had returned to thought of it more than once and that made her peculiarly interested in Ted's queer allusion to Mildred now.
"Well?" she inquired.
"Mildred's getting in rather bad," he said shortly.
"Getting—what do you mean, Ted?" she asked, looking at him in a startled way.
"People are talking about her," he said.
"People are—?" she began, but stopped, looking at him all the while in that startled way.
"Talking about her," he repeated. "I guess it's been going on for some time—though I didn't hear about it until a little while ago."
"About what, Ted?" Her voice faltered and it seemed to make him suddenly conscious of what he was saying, to whom he spoke.
"Why,"—he faltered now too, "Mildred's acting sort of silly—that's all. I don't know—a flirtation, or something, with Billy Archer. You don't know him; he came here a few years ago on some construction work. He's an engineer. He is a fascinating fellow, all right," he added.
Ruth pushed back her chair into deeper shadow. "And—?" she suggested faintly.
"He's married," briefly replied Ted.
She did not speak for what seemed a long time. Ted was beginning to fidget. Then, "How old is Mildred, Ted?" Ruth asked in a very quiet voice.
"About twenty, I guess; she's a couple of years younger than I am."
"And this man?—how old is he?" That she asked a little sharply.
"Oh, I don't know; he's in the older crowd; somewhere in the thirties, I should say."
"Well—" But she abruptly checked what she had sharply begun to say, and pushed her chair still further back into shadow. When Ted stole a timid glance at her a minute later he saw that she seemed to be holding her hands tight together.
"And doesn't Mildred's mother—?" It seemed impossible for her to finish anything, to say it out.
He shook his head. "Guess not. It's funny—but you know a person's folks—"
There was another silence; then Ted began to whistle softly and was looking over the railing as if interested in something down on the lawn.
"And you say people are really—talking about Mildred, Ted?" Ruth finally asked, speaking with apparent effort.
He nodded. "Some people are snubbing her. You know this town is long on that," he threw in with a short laugh. "I saw Mrs. Brewer—remember her?—she used to be Dorothy Hanlay—out and out snub Mildred at a party the other night. She came up to her after she'd been dancing with Billy—Lord knows how many times she'd danced with him that night—and Mrs. Brewer simply cut her. I saw it myself. Mildred got white for a moment, then smiled in a funny little way and turned away. Tough on her, wasn't it?—for really, she's a good deal of a kid, you know. And say, Ruth, there's something mighty decent about Edith—about Mrs. Blair. She saw it and right afterwards she went up to Mildred, seemed particularly interested in her, and drew her into her crowd. Pretty white, don't you think? That old hen—Mrs. Brewer—got red, let me tell you, for Edith can put it all over her, you know, on being somebody, and thatgother—good and plenty!"
There was a queer little sound from Ruth, a sound like a not quite suppressed sob; Ted rose, as if for leaving, and stood there awkwardly, his back to her. He felt that Ruth was crying, or at least trying not to cry. Why had he talked of a thing like that? Why did he have to bring in Edith Lawrence?
It seemed better to go on talking about it now, as naturally as he could. "I never thought there was much to Mildred," he resumed, not turning round. "She always seemed sort of stuck up with the fellows of our crowd. But I guess you never can tell. I saw her look at Billy Archer the other night." He paused with a little laugh. "There wasn't anything very stuck up about that look."
As still Ruth did not speak he began to talk about the property across the street being for sale. When he turned around for taking leave—it being past the time for going to Harriett's—it made him furious at himself to see how strained and miserable Ruth's face was. She scarcely said good-by to him; she was staring down the street where Mildred had disappeared a few moments before. All the way over to Harriett's he wondered just what Ruth was thinking. He was curious as well as self-reproachful.
When Ted entered the living-room at his sister Harriett's he felt as if something damp and heavy had been thrown around him. He got the feeling of being expected to contribute to the oppressiveness of the occasion. The way no one was sitting in a comfortable position seemed to suggest that constraint was deemed fitting. Cyrus was talking to Mr. McFarland with a certain self-conscious decorousness. Harriett's husband, the Rev. Edgar Tyler, sat before the library table in more of his pulpit manner than was usual with him in his household, as if—so it seemed to Ted—the relation of death to the matter in hand brought it particularly within his province. Ted had never liked him; especially he had hated his attitude about Ruth—his avowed sorrowfulness with which the heart had nothing to do. He resented the way his brother-in-law had made Harriett feel that she owed it to the community, to the church, not to countenance her sister. Harriett had grown into that manner of striving to do the right thing. She had it now—sitting a little apart from the others, as if not to intrude herself. Sitting there with those others his heart went out to Ruth; he wasforher, he told himself warmly, and he'd take nothing off of Cy about her, either! He watched Cyrus and thought of how strange it was that a brother and sister should be as different as he and Ruth were. They had always been different; as far back as he could remember they were different about everything. Ruth was always keyed up about something—delighted, and Cy was always "putting a crimp" in things. As a little boy, when he told Ruth things he was pleased about they always grew more delightful for telling her; and somehow when you told Cyrus about a jolly thing it always flattened out a little in the telling.
A shrinking from the appearance of too great haste gave a personal color to the conversation. It was as old friend quite as much as family solicitor that the lawyer talked to them, although the occasion for getting together that night was that Cyrus might learn of an investment of his father's which demanded immediate attention.
Mr. McFarland spoke of that, and then of how little else remained. He hesitated, then ventured: "You know, I presume, that your father has not left you now what he would have had ten years ago?"
Ted saw Cyrus's lips tighten, his eyes lower. He glanced at Harriett, who looked resigned; though he was not thinking much of them, but of his father, who had met difficulties, borne disappointments. He was thinking of nights when his father came home tired; mornings when he went away in that hurried, harassed way. He could see him sitting in his chair brooding. The picture of him now made him appear more lonely than he had thought of him while living. And now his father was dead and they were sitting there talking over his affairs, looking into things that their father had borne alone, things he had done the best he could about. He wished he had tried harder to be company for him. In too many of those pictures which came now his father was alone.
He heard Cyrus speaking. "Yes," he was saying, "father was broken by our personal troubles." There was a pause. Ted did not raise his eyes to his brother. He did not want to look at him, not liking his voice as he said that. "It is just another way," Cyrus went on, "in which we all have to suffer for our family disgrace."
Ted felt himself flushing. Why need Cy have said that! Mr. McFarland had turned slightly away, as if not caring to hear it.
And then Cyrus asked about their father's will.
The attorney's reply was quiet. "He leaves no will."
Ted looked at him in surprise. Then he looked at Cyrus and saw his startled, keen, queer look at the attorney. It was after seeing his brother's face that he realized what this meant—that if his father left no will Ruth shared with the rest of them. Suddenly his heart was beating fast.
"How's that?" Cyrus asked sharply.
"There was a will, but he destroyed it about two month's ago."
"He—? Why!" Cyrus pressed in that sharp voice.
Ted felt certain that the lawyer liked saying what he had to say then. He said it quietly, but looking right at Cyrus. "He destroyed his will because it cut off his daughter Ruth."
Ted got up and walked to the window, stood there staring out at the street lights. Bless dad! He wished he could see him; he would give almost anything to see him for just a minute. He wished he had known; he would love to have told his father just how corking he thought that was. He stood there a minute not wanting to show the others how much he was feeling—this new, warm rush of love for his father, and his deep gladness for Ruth. He thought of what it would mean to her, what it would mean to know her father had felt like that. He had had to leave her there at home alone; now he could go home and tell her this news that would mean so much.
When he turned back to the group it was to see that he was not alone in being moved by what they had heard. Harriett too had turned a little away from the others and was looking down. He saw a tear on her face—and liked her better than he ever had before. Then he looked at her husband and in spite of all he was feeling it was hard not to smile; his brother-in-law's face looked so comical to him, trying to twist itself into the fitting emotions. Ted watched him unsparingly for a minute, maliciously saying to himself: "Keep on, old boy, you'll make it after a little!"
Then he looked at his brother and his face hardened, seeing too well what new feeling this roused in Cyrus against Ruth, reading the resentment toward their father for this final weakening in his stand against her.
"Well—" Cyrus began but did not go on, his lips tightening.
"Your father said," the lawyer added, "that if there was one of his children—more than the others—needed what he could do for her, it was his daughter Ruth."
He was looking at Ted, and Ted nodded eagerly, thinking now of what, in the practical sense, this would mean to Ruth. Mr. McFarland turned back to Cyrus as he remarked: "He spoke of Ruth with much feeling."
Cyrus flushed. "I guess father was pretty much broken—in mind as well as body—at that time," he said unpleasantly.
"His mind was all right," answered the lawyer curtly.
He left a few minutes later; Harriett, who went with him to the door, did not return to the room. The two men and Ted sat for a moment in silence. Then Cyrus turned upon him as if angered by what he divined him to be feeling. "Well," he said roughly, "I suppose you're pleased?"
"I'm pleased, all right," replied Ted with satisfaction. He looked at the minister. "Good thing, for I guess I'm the only fellow here who is."
Harriett's husband colored slightly. "I am neither pleased nor displeased," was his grave reply. "Surely it was for your father to do as he wished. For a father to forgive a child is—moving. I only hope," he added, "that it will not seem in the community to mean the countenancing—" He paused, looking to Cyrus for approval.
Then Ten blazed out. "Well, if you want to know what I think, I don't think a little 'countenancing' of Ruth is going to do this community—or anybody else—any harm!"
Cyrus looked at him with that slightly sneering smile that always enraged Ted. "You're proud of your sister, I suppose?" he inquired politely.
Ted reddened. Then he grew strangely quiet. "Yes," he said, "I believe I am. I've come pretty close to Ruth these last few days, and I think that's just what I am—proud of her. I can't say I'm proud of what Ruth did; I'd have to think more about that. But I'm proud of what sheis. And I don't know—I don't know but what it's what a personisthat counts." He fell silent, thinking of what he meant by that, of the things he felt in Ruth.
Cyrus laughed mockingly. "Rather a curious thing to be proud of, I should say. What she 'is' is—"
Ted jumped up. "Don't say it, Cy! Whatever it is you're going to say—just don't say it!"
Cyrus had risen and was putting in his pocket a paper Mr. McFarland had given him. "No?" he said smoothly, as if quite unperturbed. "And why not?"
At that uncaring manner something seemed to break inside Ted's head, as if all the things Cyrus had said about Ruth had suddenly gathered there and pressed too hard. His arm shot out at his brother.
"That's why not!" he cried.
He had knocked Cyrus back against the wall and stood there threatening him. To the minister, who had stepped up, protesting, he snapped: "None ofyourput-in! And after this, just be a little more careful inyourtalk—see?"
He stepped back from Cyrus but stood there glaring, breathing hard with anger. Cyrus, whose face had gone white, but who was calm, went back to the table and resumed what he had been doing there.
"A creditable performance, I must say, for the day of your father's funeral," he remarked after a moment.
"That's all right!" retorted Ted. "Don't think I'm sorry! I don't know any better way to start out new—start out alone—than to tell you what I think of you!—let you know that I'll not take a thing off of you about Ruth. You've done enough, Cy. Now you quit. You kept mother and father away when they didn't want to be kept away—and I want to tell you that I'monto you, anyway. Don't think for a minute that I believe it's your great virtue that's hurting you. You can't put that over on me. It's pride and stubbornness and just plain meanness makes you the way you are! Yes, I'm glad to have a chance to tell you what I think of you—and then I'm through with you, Cy. I think you're a pin-head! Why, you haven't got the heart of a flea! I don't know how anybody as fine as Ruth ever came to have a brother like you!"
His feeling had grown as he spoke, and he stopped now because he was too close to losing control; he reddened as his brother—calm, apparently unmoved—surveyed him as if mildly amused. That way Cyrus looked at him when they were quarrelling always enraged him. If he would onlysaysomething—not stand there as if he were too superior to bother himself with such a thing! He knew Cyrus knew it maddened him—that that was why he did it, and so it was quietly that he resumed: "No, Cy, I'm not with you, and you might as well know it. I'm for Ruth. You've got the world on your side—and I know the arguments you can put up, and all that, but Ruth's got a—" he fumbled a minute for the words—"Ruth's got a power and an understanding about her that you'll never have. She's got a heart. More than that, she's got—character."
He paused, thinking, and Cyrus did speak then. "Oh, I don't think I'd use that word," he said suavely.
"No, you wouldn't; you wouldn't see it, but that's just what I mean." He turned to the minister. "Character, I say, is what my sister Ruth has got. Character is something more than putting up a slick front. It's something more than doing what's expected of you. It's a kind of—a kind of being faithful to yourself.Beingyourself. Oh, I know—" at a sound from his brother—"just how you can laugh at it, but there's something to it just the same. Why, Ruth's got more real stuff in her than you two put together! After being with her these days you, Cy, strike a fellow as pretty shallow."
That brought the color to his brother's face. Stung to a real retort, he broke out with considerable heat: "If to have a respect for decency is 'shallow'—!" He quickly checked himself as the door opened and Harriett's maid entered.
She paused, feeling the tension, startled by their faces. "Excuse me, sir," she said to the minister, "but Mrs. Tyler said I was to tell you she had gone out for a few minutes. She said to tell you she had gone to see her sister."
She looked startled at Ted's laugh. After she had gone he laughed again. "Hard luck!" he said to his brother-in-law, and walked from the room.
He did not go directly home. He was too upset to face Ruth just then; he did not want her to know, it would trouble her. And he wanted to walk—walk as fast as he could, walk off steam, he called it. His heart was pounding and there seemed too much blood in his head. But he wasn't sorry, he told himself. Cy would have it in for him now, but what did he care for that? He could get along without him. But his lips trembled as he thought that. He had had to get along without his mother; from now on he would have to get along without his father. He had a moment of feeling very much alone. And then he thought of Ruth. Yes,—there was Ruth! He wheeled toward home. He wanted to tell her. He hoped Harriett hadn't got it told; he wanted to tell her himself. Bless dad! He loved him for doing that. If only he'd known it in time to let him know what he thought of him for doing it!
Harriett had been with Ruth for half an hour and still she had not told her what she had come to tell her. She was meaning to tell it before she left, to begin it any minute now, but, much as she wanted to tell it, she shrank from doing so. It seemed that telling that would open everything up—and they had opened nothing up. Harriett had grown into a way of shrinking back from the things she really wanted to do, was unpracticed in doing what she felt like doing.
Acting upon an impulse, she had started for Ruth. There had been a moment of real defiance when she told Mamie to tell Mr. Tyler that she had gone to see her sister. She had a right to go and see her sister! No one should keep her from it. Her heart was stirred by what her father had done about Ruth. It made her know that she too felt more than she had shown. His having done that made her want to do something. It moved her to have this manifestation of a softening she had not suspected. It reached something in her, something that made her feel a little more free, more bold, more loving. His defiance, for she felt that in it too, struck a spark in her. She even had a secret satisfaction in the discomfiture she knew this revelation of her father's—what they would call weakening—caused her husband and her brother. Unacknowledged dissatisfactions of her own sharpened her feeling about it. She had not looked at either her husband or Cyrus when the announcement was made, but beneath her own emotion was a secret, unacknowledged gloating at what she knew was their displeasure, at their helplessness to resent. Ted was a dear boy! Ted's shining eyes somehow made her know just how glad she herself was.
So she had hurried along, stirred, eager to tell Ruth. But once with her she held back from telling her, grew absurdly timid about it. It seemed so much else might come when that came—things long held back, things hard to let one's self talk about.
And then Ruth was so strange tonight. After that first day it had been easy to talk with Ruth; that first embarrassment over, she had seemed simple and natural and Harriett could talk with her about the little things that came up and at times just forget the big thing that held them apart. After that first meeting she had felt much more comfortable with Ruth than she would have supposed the terrible circumstances would let her feel. But tonight Ruth was different, constrained, timid; she seemed holding herself back, as if afraid of something. It made Harriett conscious of what there was holding them apart. She did not know how to begin what she had been so eager to tell.
And so they talked of surface things—current things: the service that afternoon; some of the relatives who had been there; of old friends of their father's. They kept away from the things their hearts were full of.
Ruth had been glad to see Harriett; it touched her that Harriett should come. But she was nervous with her; it was true that she was holding back. That new assurance which had helped her through the last few days had deserted her. Since Ted told her of Mildred that inner quiet from which assurance drew was dispelled. She seemed struck back—bewildered, baffled. Was it always to be that way? Every time she gained new ground for her feet was she simply to be struck back to new dismays, new incertitudes, new pain? Had she only deluded herself in that feeling which had created the strengthening calm of the last few days?
After Ted left her she had continued to sit looking down the street where Mildred had gone; just a little while before she had been looking down that street as the way she herself had gone—the young girl giving herself to love, facing all perils, daring all things for the love in her heart. But now she was not thinking of the love in Mildred's heart; she was thinking of the perils around her—the pity of it—the waiting disaster. A little while before it had seemed there should always be a place in the world for love, that things shutting love out were things unreal. And now she longed to be one with Edith in getting Mildred back to those very things—those unreal things that would safeguard. The mockery of it beat her back, robbing her of the assurance that had been her new strength. That was why Harriett found her strange, hard to talk to. She wanted to cower back. She tried not to think of Mildred—to get back to herself. But that she could not do; Mildred was there in between—confusing, a mockery.
Harriett spoke of the house, how she supposed the best thing to do would be to offer it for sale. Ruth looked startled and pained. "It's in bad repair," Harriett said; "it's all run down. And then—there's really no reason for keeping it."
And then they fell silent, thinking of years gone—years when the house had not been all run down, when there was good reason for keeping it. To let the house go to strangers seemed the final acknowledgment that all those old things had passed away. It was a more intimate, a sympathetic silence into which that feeling flowed—each thinking of old days in that house, each knowing that the other was thinking of those days. Harriett could see Ruth as a little girl running through those rooms. She remembered a certain little blue gingham dress—and Ruth's hair braided down her back; pictures of Ruth with their grandfather, their mother, their father—all those three gone now. She started to tell Ruth what she had come to tell her, then changed it to something else, still holding back, afraid of emotion, of breaking through, seeming powerless and hating herself for being powerless. She would tell that a little later—before she left. She would wait until Ted came in. She seized upon that, it let her out—let her out from the thing she had been all warm eagerness to do. To bridge that time she asked a few diffident questions about the West; she really wanted very much to know how Ruth lived, how she "managed." But she put the questions carefully, it would seem reluctantly, just because almost everything seemed to lead to that one thing,—the big thing that lay there between her and Ruth. It was hard to ask questions about the house Ruth lived in and not let her mind get swamped by that one terrible fact that she lived there with Stuart Williams—another woman's husband.
Harriett's manner made Ruth bitter. It seemed Harriett was afraid to talk to her, evidently afraid that at any moment she would come upon something she did not want to come near. Harriett needn't be so afraid!—she wasn't going to contaminate her.
And so the talk became a pretty miserable affair. It was a relief when Flora Copeland came in the room. "There's someone here to see you, Ruth," she said.
"Deane?" inquired Ruth.
"No, a woman."
"A woman?"—and then, at the note of astonishment in her own voice she laughed in an embarrassed little way.
"Yes, a Mrs. Herman. She says you may remember her as Annie Morris. She says she went to school with you."
"Yes," said Ruth, "I know." She was looking down, pulling at her handkerchief. After an instant she looked up and said quietly: "Won't you ask her to come in here?"
The woman who stood in the doorway a moment later gave the impression of life, work, having squeezed her too hard. She had quick movements, as if she were used to doing things in a hurry. She had on a cheap, plain suit, evidently bought several years before. She was very thin, her face almost pinched, but two very live eyes looked out from it. She appeared embarrassed, but somehow the embarrassment seemed only a surface thing. She held out a red, rough hand to Ruth and smiled in a quick, bright way as she said: "I don't know that you remember me, Ruth."
"Oh, yes I do, Annie," Ruth replied, and held on to the red, rough hand.
"I didn't know; I'm sure," she laughed, "that you've always meant more to me than I could to you."
After Ruth had introduced Harriett the stranger explained that with: "I thought a great deal of Ruth when we were in school together. She never knew it—she had so many friends." A little pause followed that.
"So I couldn't bear to go away," Annie went on in her rather sharp, bright way, "without seeing you, Ruth. I hope I'm not intruding, coming so—soon."
"You are not intruding, Annie," said Ruth; her voice shook just a little.
Ted had come home, and came in the room then and was introduced to Annie, with whom, though frankly surprised at seeing her, he shook hands warmly. "But we do know each other," he said.
"Oh, yes," she laughed, "I've brought you many a cauliflower."
"And oh, those eggs!" he laughed back.
Again there was a slight pause, and then Annie turned to Ruth with the manner of being bound to get right into the thing she had come to say. "I didn't wait longer, Ruth, because I was afraid you might get away and I wondered,"—this she said diffidently, as one perhaps expecting too much—"if there was any chance of your coming out to make me a little visit before you go back.
"You know,"—she turned hastily to Ted, turning away from the things gathering in Ruth's eyes, "the country is so lovely now. I thought it might do Ruth good. She must be tired, after the long journey—and all. I thought a good rest—" She turned back to Ruth. "Don't you think, Ruth," she coaxed, "that you'd like to come out and play with my baby?"
And then no one knew what to do for suddenly Ruth was shaken with sobs. Ted was soothing her, telling Annie that naturally she was nervous that night. "Ted," she choked, in a queer, wild way, laughing through the sobs, "did youhear? She wants me to come out and play with herbaby!"
Harriett got up and walked to the other side of the room. Ruth—laughing, crying—was repeating: "She wants me to play with herbaby!" Harriett thought of her own children at home, whom Ruth had not seen. She listened to the plans Annie and Ted and Ruth were making and wretchedly wished she had done differently years before.
Ruth had been with Annie for five days now; the original three days for which she had said she could come had been lengthened to a week, and she knew that she would not want to go even then. For here was rest. Here she could forget about herself as set apart from others. Here she did not seem apart. After the stress of those days at home it was good to rest in this simple feeling of being just one with others. It was good to lie on the grass under the trees, troubled thoughts in abeyance, and feel spring in the earth, take it in by smell and sound. It was wonderfully good to play with the children, to lie on the grass and let the little two year old girl—Annie's baby—pull at her hair, toddling around her, cooing and crowing. There was healing in that. It was good to be some place where she did not seem to cause embarrassment, to be where she was wanted. After the strain of recent events the simple things of these days were very sweet to her. It had become monstrous always to have to feel that something about her made her different from other people. There was something terrible in it—something not good for one. Here was release from that.
And it was good to be with Annie; they had not talked much yet—not seriously talked. Annie seemed to know that it was rest in little things Ruth needed now, not talk of big ones. They talked about the chickens and the cows, the flowers and the cauliflowers, about the children's pranks. It was restoring to talk thus of inconsequential things; Ruth was beginning to feel more herself than she had felt in years. On that fifth day her step was lighter than when she came; it was easier to laugh. Hers had once been so sunny a nature; it was amazingly easy to break out of the moroseness with which circumstances had clouded her into that native sunniness. That afternoon she sat on the knoll above the house, leaning back against a tree and smiling lazily at the gamboling of the new little pigs.
Annie was directing the boy who had been helping her cut asparagus to carry the baskets up where Ruth was sitting. "I'm going to talk to you while I make this into bunches, Ruth," she called.
"I'll help," Ruth called back with zest.
They talked at first of the idiosyncrasies of asparagus beds, of the marketing of it; then something Annie said set Ruth thinking of something that had happened when they were in high school. "Oh, do you remember, Annie—" she laughingly began. There was that sort of talk for awhile—"Do you remember...?" and "Oh, whatever became of...?"
As they worked on Ruth thought of the strangeness of her being there with this girl who, when they were in school together, had meant so little to her. Her own work lagged, watching Annie as with quick, sure motions she made the asparagus into bunches for market. She did things deftly and somehow gave the feeling of subordinating them to something else, of not letting them take all of her. Ruth watched her with affectionate interest; she wore an all-over gingham apron, her big sun hat pushed back from her browned, thin face; she was not at all attractive unless one saw the eager, living eyes—keenly intelligent eyes. Ruth thought of her other friends—the girls who had been her friends when she was in school and whom she had not seen now; she wondered why it was Annie had none of the feeling that kept those other girls away.
Annie's husband was a slow, stolid man; Ruth supposed that in his youth, when Annie married him, he had perhaps been attractive in his stalwartness. He was sluggish now; good humored enough, but apparently as heavy in spirit as in body. Things outside the material round of life—working, eating, sleeping—simply did not seem to exist for him. At first she wondered how Annie could be content with life with him, Annie, who herself was so keenly alive. Thinking of it now it seemed Annie had the same adjustment to him that she had to the asparagus,—something subordinated, not taking up very much of herself. She had about Annie, and she did not know just why she had it, the feeling that here was a person who could not be very greatly harmed, could not be completely absorbed by routine, could not, for some reason she could not have given, be utterly vanquished by any circumstance. She went about her work as if that were one thing—and then there were other things; as if she were in no danger of being swallowed up in her manner of living. There was something apart that was dauntless. Ruth wondered about her, she wanted to find out about her. She wanted for herself that valiant spirit, a certain unconquerableness she felt in Annie.
Annie broke a pause to say: "You can't know, Ruth, how much it means to have you here."
Ruth's face lighted and she smiled; she started to speak, but instead only smiled again. She wanted to tell what it meant to her to be there, but that seemed a thing not easily told.
"I wish you could stay longer," Annie went on, all the while working. "So—" she paused, and continued a little diffidently—"so we could really get acquainted; really talk. I hardly ever have anyone to talk to," she said wistfully. "One gets pretty lonely sometimes. It would be good to have someone to talk to about the things one thinks."
"What are the things you think, Annie?" Ruth asked impulsively.
"Oh, no mighty thoughts," laughed Annie; "but of course I'm always thinking about things. We keep alive by thinking, don't we?"
Ruth gave her a startled look.
"Perhaps it's because I haven't had from life itself much of what I'd like to have," Annie was going on, "that I've made a world within. Can't let life cheat us, Ruth," she said brightly. "If we can't have things in one way—have to get them in another."
Again Ruth looked at her in that startled way. Annie did not see it, reaching over for more asparagus; she was all the time working along in that quick, sure way—doing what she was doing cleverly and as if it weren't very important. "Perhaps, Ruth," she said after a minute, "that that's why my school-girl fancy for you persisted—deepened—the way it has." She hesitated, then said simply: "I liked you for not letting life cheat you."
She looked up with a quick little nod as she said that but found Ruth's face very serious, troubled. "But I don't think I've done what you mean, Annie," she began uncertainly. "I did what I did—because I had to. And I'm afraid I haven't—gone on. It begins to seem to me now that I've stayed in a pretty small place. I've been afraid!" she concluded with sudden scorn.
"That isn't much wonder," Annie murmured gently.
"But with me," she took it up after a little, "I've had to go on." Her voice went hard in saying it. "Things would have just shut right down on me if I would have let them," she finished grimly.
"I married for passion," she began quietly after a minute. "Most people do, I presume. At least most people who marry young."
Ruth colored. She was not used to saying things right out like that.
"Romantic love is a wonderful thing," Annie pursued; "I suppose it's the most beautiful thing in the world—while it lasts." She laughed in a queer, grim little way and gave a sharp twist to the knot she was tying. "Sometimes it opens up to another sort of love—love of another quality—and to companionship. It must be a beautiful thing—when it does that." She hesitated a moment before she finished with a dryness that had that grim quality: "With me—it didn't.
"So there came a time," she went on, and seemed newly to have gained serenity, "when I saw that I had to give up—go under—or get through myself what I wasn't going to get through anyone else. Oh, it's not the beautiful way—not the complete way. But it's one way!" she flashed in fighting voice. "I fought for something, Ruth. I held it. I don't know that I've a name for it—but it's the most precious thing in life. My life itself is pretty limited; aside from the children"—she softened in speaking of them—"my life is—pretty barren. And as for the children"—that fighting spirit broke sharply through, "they're all the more reason for not sinking into things—not sinking intothem," she laughed.
As she stopped there Ruth asked eagerly, eyes intently upon her: "But just what is it you mean, Annie? Just what is it you fought for—kept?"
"To be myown!" Annie flashed back at her, like steel.
Then she changed; for the first time her work fell unheeded in her lap; the eyes which a minute before had flashed fight looked far off and were dreamy; her face, over which the skin seemed to have become stretched, burned by years of sun and wind, quivered a little. When she spoke again it was firmly but with sadness. "It's what we think that counts, Ruth. It's what we feel. It's what weare. Oh, I'd like richer living—more beauty—more joy. Well, I haven't those things. For various reasons, I won't have them. That makes it the more important to have all I can take!"—it leaped out from the gentler thinking like a sent arrow. "Nobody holds my thoughts. They travel as far as they themselves have power to travel. They bring me whatever they can bring me—and I shut nothing out. I'm not afraid!"
Ruth was looking at her with passionate earnestness.
"Over there in that town,"—Annie made a little gesture toward it, "are hundreds of women who would say they have a great deal more than I have. And it's true enough," she laughed, "that they have some things I'd like to have. But do you think I'd trade with them? Oh, no! Not much! The free don't trade with the bond, Ruth."
And still Ruth did not speak, but listened with that passionate intentness.
"There in that town," Annie went on, "are people—most a whole townful of them—who are going through life without being really awake to life at all. They move around in a closed place, doing the same silly little things—copy-cats—repeaters. They're not theirown—they're not awake. They're like things run by machinery. Like things going in their sleep. Take those girls we used to go to school with. Why, take Edith Lawrence. I see her sometimes. She always speaks sweetly to me; she means to be nice. But she moves round and round in her little place and she doesn't evenknowof the wonderful things going on in the world today! Do you think I'd trade withher?—social leader and all the rest of it!" She was gathering together the bundles of asparagus. She had finished her work. "Very sweet—very charming," she disposed of Edith, "but she simply doesn't count. The world's moving away from her, and she,"—Annie laughed with a mild scorn—"doesn't even know that!"