It looked as if it was true enough no one had used it since she went out of it that night eleven years before. The same things were there; the bed was in the same position; so was her dressing table, and over by the big window that opened to her side porch was the same little low chair she always sat in to put on her shoes and stockings. It took her a long way back; it made old things very strangely real. She sat down in her little chair now and looked over at a picture of the Madonna Edith had once given her on her birthday. She could hear people moving about downstairs, hear voices. She had never in her whole life felt as alone.
And then she grew angry. Harriett had no right to treat her like that! She had worked; she had suffered; she had done her best in meeting the hard things of living. She had gone the way of women, met the things women meet. Why, she had done her own washing! Harriett had no right to treat her as if she were clear outside the common things of life.
She rose and went to the window and lowering it leaned out. She had grown used to turning from hard things within to the night. There in the South-west, where they slept out of doors, she had come to know the night. Ever since that it had seemed to have something for her, something from which she could draw. And after they had gone through those first years and the fight was not for keeping life but for making a place for it in the world, she had many times stepped from a cramping little house full of petty questions she did not know how to deal with, from a hard little routine that threatened their love out to the vast, still night of that Colorado valley and always something had risen in herself which gave her power. So many times that had happened that instinctively she turned to the outside now, leaning her head against the lowered casing. The oak tree was gently tapping against the house—that same old sound that had gone all through her girlhood; the familiar fragrance of a flowering vine on the porch below; the thrill of the toads off there in the little ravine, a dog's frolicsome barking; the laughter of some boys and girls who were going by—old things those, sweeping her back to old things. Down in the next block some boys were singing that old serenading song, "Good-night, Ladies." Long ago boys had sung it to her. She stood there listening to it, tears running down her face.
She was startled by a tap at the door; dashing her hands across her face she eagerly called, "Come in."
"Deane's here, Ruth," said Ted. "Wants to see you. Shall I tell him to come in here?"
She nodded, but for an instant Ted stood there looking at her. She was so strange. She had been crying, and yet she seemed so glad, so excited about something.
"Oh, Deane," she cried, holding out her two hands to him, laughter and sobs crowding out together, "talkto me! How's your mother? How's your Aunt Margaret's rheumatism? What kind of an automobile have you? What about your practice? What about your dog? Why, Deane," she rushed on, "I'm just starving for things like that! You know I'm just Ruth, don't you, Deane?" She laughed a little wildly. "And I've come home. And I want to know about things. Why I could listen for hours about what streets are being paved—and who supports old Mrs. Lynch! Don't you see, Deane?" she laughed through tears. "But first tell me about Edith! How does she look? How many children has she? Who are her friends? And oh, Deane—tell me,—does sheeversay anything about me?"
They talked for more than two hours. She kept pouring out questions at him every time he would stop for breath. She fairly palpitated with that desire to hear little things—what Bob Horton did for a living, whether Helen Matthews still gave music lessons. She hung tremulous upon his words, laughing and often half crying as he told little stories about quarrels and jokes—about churches and cooks. In his profession he had many times seen a system craving a particular thing, but it seemed to him he had never seen any need more pitifully great than this of hers for laughing over the little drolleries of life. And then they sank into deeper channels—he found himself telling her things he had not told anyone: about his practice, about the men he was associated with, things he had come to think.
And she talked to him of Stuart's health, of their efforts at making a living—what she thought of dry farming, of heaters for apple orchards; the cattle business, the character of Western people. She told him of the mountains in winter—snow down to their feet; of Colorado air on a winter's morning. And then of more personal, intimate things—how lonely they had been, how much of a struggle they had found it. She talked of the disadvantage Stuart was at because of his position, how he had grown sensitive because of suspicion, because there were people who kept away from him; how she herself had not made friends, afraid to because several times after she had come to know the people around her they had "heard," and drawn away. She told it all quite simply, just that she wanted to let him know about their lives. He could see what it was meaning to her to talk, that she had been too tight within and was finding relief. "I try not to talk much to Stuart about things that would make him feel bad," she said. "He gets despondent. It's been very hard for Stuart, Deane. He misses his place among men."
She fell silent there, brooding over that—a touch of that tender, passionate brooding he knew of old. And as he watched her he himself was thinking, not of how hard it had been for Stuart, but of what it must have been to Ruth. That hunger of hers for companionship told him more than words could possibly have done of what her need had been. He studied her as she sat there silent. She was the same old Ruth, but a deepened Ruth; there was the same old sweetness, but new power. He had a feeling that there was nothing in the world Ruth would not understand; that bars to her spirit were down, that she would go out in tenderness to anything that was of life—to sorrow, to joy, with the insight to understand and the warmth to care. He looked at her: worn down by living, yet glorified by it; hurt, yet valiant. The life in her had gone through so much and circumstances had not been able to beat it down. And this was the woman Amy said it was insulting of him to ask her to meet!
She looked up at him with her bright, warm smile. "Oh, Deane, it's been so good! You don't know how you've helped me. Why you wouldn't believe," she laughed, "how much better I feel."
They had risen and he had taken her hand for goodnight. "You always helped me, Deane," she said in her simple way. "You never failed me. You don't know"—this with one of those flashes of feeling that lighted Ruth and made her wonderful—"how many times, when things were going badly, I've thought of you—and wanted to see you."
They stood there a moment silent; the things they had lived through together, in which they had shared understanding, making a spiritual current between them. She broke from it with a light, fond: "Dear Deane, I'm so glad you're happy. I want you to be happy always."
Those words kept coming back to him after he had gone to bed: "I'm so glad you're happy—I want you to be happy always." Amy was asleep when he came home, or he took it for granted that she was asleep and was careful not to disturb her, for it was past midnight. He wished she would turn to him with a sleepy little smile. He wanted to be made to feel that it was true he was happy, that he was going to be happy always. That night was not filled with the sweetness of love's faith in permanence. He tried to put away the thought of how Amy had looked as she said those things about Ruth. Knowing the real Ruth, his feeling about her freshened, deepened, he could not bear to think of Amy as having said those things. He held it off in telling himself again that that was what the people of the town had done, that he himself had not managed well. He would try again—a little differently. Amy was really so sweet, so loving, he told himself, that she would come to be different about this. Though he did not dwell on that, either—upon her coming to be different; her face in saying those things was a little too hard to forget. He kept up a pretence with himself on the surface, but down in his heart he asked less now; he was not asking of love that complete sharing, that deep understanding which had been his dream before he talked to Amy. He supposed things would go on about the same—just that that one thing wouldn't be, was the thought with which he went to sleep, making his first compromise with his ideal for their love. Just as he was falling asleep there came before him, half of dreams, Ruth's face as it had been when she seemed to be brooding over the things life brought one. It was as if pain had endowed her with understanding. Did it take pain to do it?
He had an early morning call to make and left home without really talking to Amy. When he woke in the morning, yearning to be back in the new joy of her love, he was going to tell her that he was sorry he had hurt her, sorry there was this thing they looked at differently, but that he loved her with his whole heart and that they were going to be happy just the same, and then maybe some time they'd "get together" on this. It was a thing he would not have said he would do, but there are many things one will do to get from the shadow back into that necessary sunlight of love.
However, there was not opportunity then for doing it; he had to hurry to the hospital and Amy gave him no chance for such a moment with her. She had the manner of keeping up an appearance of going on as if nothing had happened; as if that thing were left behind—frosted over. She kissed him good-by, but even in that there seemed an immense reservation. It made him unhappy, worried him. He told himself that he would have to talk to Amy, that it wouldn't do to leave the thing that way.
It had been so easy to talk to Ruth; it seemed that one could talk to her about anything, that there was no danger of saying a thing and having it bound back from a wall of opinions and prejudices that kept him from her. There was something resting, relaxing, in the way one could be one's self with Ruth, the way she seemed to like one for just what one was. He had always felt more at ease with her than with anyone else, but now he more than ever had the feeling that her mind was loosened from the things that held the minds of most of the women he knew. It was a great thing not to have those holdbacks in talking with a friend, to be freed of that fear of blundering into a thing that would be misunderstood. He did not face the fact that that was just the way it was with Amy, that there was constantly the fear of saying something that would better have been left unsaid. But he was thinking that being free to say what one was feeling was like drawing a long breath.
And in thinking of it as he went about his calls that morning, in various homes, talking with a number of people, it occurred to him that many of those things he had come to think, things of which he did not often try to talk to others, he had arrived at because of Ruth. It was amazing how his feeling about her, thoughts through her, had run into all his thinking. It even occurred to him that if it had not been for her he might have fallen into accepting many things more or less as the rest of the town did. It seemed now that as well as having caused him much pain she had brought rich gain; for those questionings of life, that refusal placidly to accept, had certainly brought keener satisfactions than he could have had through a closer companionship with facile acceptors. Ruth had been a big thing in his life, not only in his heart, but to his mind.
He had come out of the house of one of his patients and was standing on the steps talking with the woman who had anxiously followed him to the door. The house was directly across the street from the Lawrences'. Edith was sitting out on the porch; her little girl of eight and the boy, who was younger, were with her. They made an attractive picture.
He continued his reassuring talk to the woman whose husband was ill, but he was at the same time thinking of Ruth's eager questionings about Edith, about Edith's children, her hunger for every smallest thing he could tell her. When he went down to his car Edith, looking up and seeing him, gayly waved her hand. He returned the salute and stood there as if doing something to the car. Sitting there in the morning sunshine with her two children Edith looked the very picture of the woman for whom things had gone happily. Life had opened its pleasantest ways to Edith. He could not bring himself to get in his car and start away; he could not get rid of the thought of what it would mean to Ruth if Edith would go to see her, could not banish the picture of Ruth's face if Edith were to walk into the room. And because he could not banish it he suddenly turned abruptly from his car and started across the street and up the steps to the porch.
She smiled brightly up at him, holding out her hand. "Coming up to talk to me? How nice!"
He pulled up a chair, bantering with the children.
"I know what you've come for," Edith laughed gayly. "You've come to hear about how lovely Amy was at the tea yesterday. You want to know all the nice things people are saying about her."
His face puckered as it did when he was perplexed or annoyed. He laughed with a little constraint as he said: "That would be pleasant hearing, I admit. But it was something else I wanted to talk to you about just now, Edith."
She raised her brows a little in inquiry, bending forward slightly, waiting, her eyes touched with the anticipation of something serious. He felt sure his tone had suggested Ruth to her; that indicated to him that Ruth had been much in her mind.
"I had a long visit with Ruth last night," he began quietly.
She did not speak, bending forward a little more, her eyes upon him intently, anxiously.
"Edith?"
"Yes, Deane?"
He paused, then asked simply: "Edith, Ruth is very lonely. Won't you go to see her?"
She raised her chin in quick, startled way, some emotion, he did not know just what, breaking over her face.
"I thought I'd come and tell you, Edith, how lonely—how utterly lonely—Ruth is, because I felt if you understood you would want to go and see her."
Still Edith did not speak. She looked as though she were going to cry.
"Ruth's had a hard time, Edith. It's been no light life for her—you don't have to do more than look in her eyes to know that. I wish you could have heard the way she asked about you—poured out questions about you. She loves you just as she always did, Edith. She's sorrowed for you all through these years."
A tear brimmed over from Edith's blue eyes and rolled slowly—unheeded—down her cheek. His heart warmed to her and he took hope as he watched that tear.
"She was crazy to know about your children. That's been a grief to her, Edith. Ruth should be a mother—you know that. You must know what a mother she would have made. If you were to take your youngsters to see her—" He broke off with a laugh, as if there was no way of expressing it.
Edith looked away from him, seemed to be staring straight into a rose bush at the side of the porch.
"Couldn't you?" he gently pressed.
She turned to him. "I'd like to, Deane," she said simply, "but, "—her dimmed eyes were troubled—"I don't see how I could."
"Why not?" he pursued. "It's simple enough—just go and see her. We might go together, if that would seem easier."
She was pulling at a bit of sewing in her lap. "But, Deane, itisn'tsimple," she began hesitatingly. "It isn't just one's self. There's society—the whole big terrible question. If it were just a simple, individual matter,—why, the truth is I'd love to go and see Ruth. If it were just a personal thing—why don't you know that I'd forget everything—except that she's Ruth?" Her voice choked and she did not go on, but was fumbling with the sewing in her lap.
He hitched his chair forward anxiously, concentrated on his great desire to say it right, to win Edith for Ruth. Edith was a simple sort of being—really, a loving being; if she could only detach herself from what she pathetically called the whole terrible question—if he could just make her see that the thing she wanted to do was the thing to do. She looked up at him out of big grieving eyes, as if wanting to be convinced, wanting the way opened for the loving thing she would like to do.
"But, Edith," he began, as composedly and gently as he could, for she was so much a child in her mentality it seemed she must be dealt with gently and simply, "isit so involved, after all? Isn't it, more than anything else, just that simple, personal matter? Why not forget everything but the personal part of it? Ruth is back—lonely—in trouble. Things came between you and Ruth, but that was a long time ago and since that she's met hard things. You're not a vindictive person; you're a loving person. Then for heaven's sake whywouldn'tyou go and see her?"—it was impossible to keep the impatience out of that last.
"I know," she faltered, "but—society—"
"Society!" he jeered. "Forgetsociety, Edith, and be just a human being! Ifyoucan forget—forgive—what seemed to you the wrong Ruth didyou—ifyourheart goes out to her—then what else is there to it?" he demanded impatiently.
"But you see,"—he could feel her reaching out, as if thinking she must, to the things that had been said to her, was conscious of her mother's thinking pushing on hers as she fumbled, "but oneisn'tfree, Deane. Societyhasto protect itself. What might not happen—if it didn't?"
He tried to restrain what he wanted to say to that—keep cool, wise, and say the things that would get Edith. He was sure that Edith wanted to be had; her eyes asked him to overthrow those things that had been fastened on her, to free her so that the simple, human approach was the only one there was to it, justify her in believing one dared be as kind, as natural and simple and real as one wanted to be. He was sure that in Edith's heart love for her friend was more real than any sense of duty to society.
"But after all what is society, Edith?" he began quietly. "Just a collection of individuals, isn't it? Why must it be so much harder than the individuals comprising it? If it is that—then there's something wrong with it, wouldn't you think?"
He looked around at the sound of a screen door closing. Edith's mother had stepped out on the porch. He knew by her startled look, her quick, keen glance at him, that she had heard his last words. She stepped forward holding up her hands in mock dismay, with a laughing: "What a large, solemn issue for an early morning conversation!"
Deane tried to laugh but he was not good at dissembling and he was finding it hard to conceal his annoyance at the interruption. Talking to Mrs. Lawrence was very different from talking to Edith. Edith, against her own loving impulses, tried to think what she thought she ought to think; Mrs. Lawrence had hardened into the things she thought should be thought, and at once less loving and more intelligent than Edith, she was fixed where her daughter was uncertain, complacent where Edith was troubled. She was one of those women who, very kind to people they accept, have no tendrils of kindness running out to those whom they do not approve. Her qualities of heart did not act outside the circle of her endorsement. With the exception of Ruth's brother Cyrus, no one in the town had been harder about her than Edith's mother. He had all the time felt that, let alone, Edith would have gone back to Ruth.
He had risen and pulled up a chair for Mrs. Lawrence and now stood there fumbling with his hat, as if about to leave. It seemed to him he might as well.
"Why, my dears!" exclaimed the older woman with a sort of light dryness, "pray don't let me feel I have broken up a philosophic discussion."
"Deane was asking me to go and see Ruth, mother," said Edith, simply and not without dignity.
He saw her flush, her quick look up at him, and then the slight tightening of her lips.
"And doesn't it occur to Deane," she asked pleasantly, "that that is rather a strange thing to ask of you?"
"She is very lonely, Deane says," said Edith tremulously.
Mrs. Lawrence was threading a needle. "I presume so," she answered quietly.
Deane felt the blood rising in him. Somehow that quiet reply angered him as no sharp retort could have done. He turned to Edith, rather pointedly leaving her mother out. "Well," he asked bluntly, "will you go?"
Edith's eyes widened. She looked frightened. She stole a look at her mother, who had serenely begun upon her embroidery.
"Why, Deane!" laughed the mother, as if tolerantly waving aside a preposterous proposal, "how absurd! Of course Edith won't go! How could she? Why should she?"
He made no reply, fearing to let himself express the things which—disappointed—he was feeling.
Mrs. Lawrence looked up. "If you will just cast your mind back," she said, her voice remaining pleasant though there was a sting in it now, "to the way Ruth treated Edith, I think it will come home to you, Deane, that you are asking a rather absurd thing."
"But Edith says,"—he made a big effort to speak as quietly as she did—"that that personal part of it is all right with her. She says that she would really like to go and see Ruth, but doesn't think she can—on account of society."
Mrs. Lawrence flushed a little at his tone on that last, but she seemed quite unruffled as she asked: "And you see no point in that?"
He had sat down on the railing of the porch. He leaned back against a pillar, turning a little away from them as he said with a laugh not free of bitterness: "I don't believe I quite get this idea about society." Abruptly he turned back to Mrs. Lawrence. "What is it? A collection of individuals for mutual benefit and self-protection, I gather. Protection against what? Their own warmest selves? The most real things in them?"
Mrs. Lawrence colored, though she was smiling composedly enough. Edith was not smiling. He saw her anxious look over at her mother, as if expecting her to answer that, and yet—this was what her eyes made him think—secretly hoping she couldn't.
But Mrs. Lawrence maintained her manner of gracious, rather amused tolerance with an absurd hot-headedness, perversity, on his part. "Oh, come now, Deane," she laughed, "we're not going to get into an absurd discussion, are we?"
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lawrence," he retorted sharply, "but I don't think it an absurd discussion. I don't consider a thing that involves the happiness of as fine a human being as Ruth Holland an absurd thing to discuss!"
She laid down her work. "Ruth Holland," she began very quietly, "is a human being who selfishly—basely—took her own happiness, leaving misery for others. She outraged society as completely as a woman could outrage it. She was a thief, really,—stealing from the thing that was protecting her, taking all the privileges of a thing she was a traitor to. She was not only what we call a bad woman, she was a hypocrite. More than that, she was outrageously unfaithful to her dearest friend—to Edith here who loved and trusted her. Having no respect for marriage herself, she actually had the effrontery—to say nothing of the lack of fine feeling—to go to the altar with Edith the very night that she herself outraged marriage. I don't know, Deane, how a woman could do a worse thing than that. The most pernicious kind of woman is not the one who bears the marks of the bad woman upon her. It's the woman like Ruth Holland, who appears to be what she is not, who deceives, plays a false part. If you can't see that society must close in against a woman like that then all I can say, my dear Deane, is that you don't see very straight. You jeer about society, but society is nothing more than life as we have arranged it. It is an institution. One living within it must keep the rules of that institution. One who defies it—deceives it—must be shut out from it. So much we are forced to do in self-defence. Weowethat to the people who are trying to live decently, to be faithful. Life, as we have arranged it, must be based on confidence. We have to keep that confidence. We have to punish a violation of it." She took up her sewing again. "Your way of looking at it is not a very large way, Deane," she concluded pleasantly.
Edith had settled back in her chair—accepting, though her eyes were grieving. It was that combination which, perhaps even more than the words of her mother, made it impossible for him to hold back.
"Perhaps not," he said; "not what you would call a large way of looking at it. But do you know, Mrs. Lawrence, I'm not sure that I care for that large way of looking at it. I'm not sure that I care a great deal about an institution that smothers the kindly things in people—as you are making this do in Edith. It sometimes occurs to me that life as we have arranged it is a rather unsatisfactory arrangement. I'm not sure that an arrangement of life which doesn't leave place for the most real things in life is going to continue forever. Ruth was driven into a corner and forced to do things she herself hated and suffered for—it was this same arrangement of life forced that on her, you know. You talk of marriage. But you must know there was no real marriage between Marion Averley and Stuart Williams. And I don't believe you can deny that there is a real marriage between him and Ruth Holland." He had risen and now moved a little toward the steps. "So you see I don't believe I care much for your 'society,' Mrs. Lawrence," he laughed shortly. "This looks to me like a pretty clear case of life against society—and I see things just straight enough that life itself strikes me as rather more important than your precious 'arrangement' of it!"
That did not bring the color to Mrs. Lawrence's face; there seemed no color at all there when Deane finished speaking. She sat erect, her hands folded on her sewing, looking at him with strangely bright eyes. When she spoke it was with a certain metallic pleasantness. "Why, very well, Deane," she said; "one is at perfect liberty to choose, isn't one? And I think it quite right to declare one's self, as you have just done, that we may know who is of us and who is not." She smiled—a smile that seemed definitely to shut him out.
He looked at Edith; her eyes were down; he could see that her lips trembled. "Good-by," he said.
Mrs. Lawrence bowed slightly and took up her sewing.
"Good-by, Edith," he added gently.
She looked up at him and he saw then why she had been looking down. "Good-by, Deane," she said a little huskily, her eyes all clouded with tears. "Though how absurd!" she quickly added with a rather tremulous laugh. "We shall be seeing you as usual, of course." But it was more appeal than declaration.
Ruth was different after her talk with Deane that night. Ted felt the change in her when he went up to say goodnight. The constraint between them seemed somehow to have fallen away. Ruth was natural now—just Ruth, he told himself, and felt that talking to Deane had done her good. He lingered to chat with her awhile—of the arrangements for the night, various little things about the house, just the things they naturally would talk of; his feeling of embarrassment, diffidence, melted quite away before her quiet simplicity, her warm naturalness. She had seemed timid all day—holding back. Now she seemed just quietly to take her place. He had been afraid of doing or saying something that would hurt her, that had kept him from being natural, he knew. But now he forgot about that. And when Ruth put her hands up on his shoulders and lifted her face to kiss him goodnight he suddenly knew how many lonely nights there had been. "I'm so glad I've got you back, Ted," she said; "I want to talk to you about heaps of things."
And Ted, as he went to bed, was thinking that there were heaps of things he wanted to talk to Ruth about. He hadn't had much of anybody to talk to about the things one does talk to one's own folks about. His father had been silent and queer the last couple of years, and somehow one wouldn't think of "talking" to Harriett. He and Ruth had always hit it off, he told himself. He was glad she had found her feet, as he thought of it; evidently talking with Deane had made her feel more at home. Deane was a bully sort! After he had fallen into a light sleep he awakened and there came all freshly the consciousness that Ruth was back, asleep in her old room. It made him feel so good; he stretched out and settled for sleep with satisfaction, drowsily thinking that therewereheaps of things he wanted to talk to Ruth about.
Ruth, too, was settling to sleep with more calm, something nearer peace than it had seemed just a little while before she was going to find in her father's house. Talking with Deane took her in to something from which she had long felt shut out. It was like coming on a camp fire after being overawed by too long a time in the forest—warmth and light and cheerful crackling after loneliness in austere places. Dear Deane! he was always so good to her; he always helped. It was curious about Deane—about Deane and her. There seemed a strange openness—she could not think of it any other way—between them. Things she lived through, in which he had no part, drew her to him, swung her back to him. There was something between his spirit and hers that seemed to make him part even of experiences she had had with another man, as if things of the emotions, even though not shared, drew them together through the spirit. Very deeply she hoped that Deane would be happy. She wished she might meet his wife, but probably she wouldn't. She quickly turned from that thought, wanting to stay by the camp fire. Anyway, Deane was her friend. She rested in that thought of having a friend—someone to talk to about things small and droll, about things large and mysterious. Thoughts needed to be spoken. It opened something in one to speak them. With Stuart she had been careful not to talk of certain things, fearing to see him sink into that absorption, gloom, she had come to dread.
She cried a little after she had crept into her bed—her own old bed; but they were just tears of feeling, not of desolation. The oak tree was tapping against the house, the breeze, carrying familiar scents, blew through the room. She was back home. All the sadness surrounding her homecoming could not keep out the sweet feeling of being back that stole through her senses.
Next morning she went about the house with new poise; she was quiet, but it was of a different quality from the quiet of the day before. Flora Copeland found herself thinking less about maintaining her carefully thought out manner toward Ruth. She told herself that Ruth did not seem like "that kind of a woman." She would forget the "difficult situation" and find herself just talking with Ruth—about the death of her sister Mary's little girl, of her niece who was about to be married. There was something about Ruth that made one slip into talking to her about things one was feeling; and something in the quiet light of her tired sweet eyes made one forget about not being more than courteous. Even Laura Abbott, the nurse, found herself talking naturally to this Ruth Holland, this woman who lived with another woman's husband, who was more "talked about" than any woman in the town had ever been. But somehow a person just forgot what she really was, she told a friend; she wasn't at all like you'd expect that kind of a person to be. Though of course there were terribly embarrassing things—like not knowing what to call her.
Between Ruth and Harriett things went much better than they had the day before. Ruth seemed so much herself when they met that afternoon that unconsciously Harriett emerged from her uncertainty, from that fumbling manner of the day before. The things holding them apart somehow fell back before the things drawing them together. They were two sisters and their father was dying. The doctor had just been there and said he did not believe Mr. Holland could live another day. They were together when he told them that; for the moment, at least, it melted other things away.
They stood at the head of the stairs talking of things of common concern—the efficiency of the nurse, of Ted, who had been with his father more than any of the rest of them, for whom they feared it would be very hard when the moment came. Then, after a little pause made intimate by feeling shared, Harriett told when she would be back, adding, "But you'll see to it that I'm telephoned at once if—if I should be wanted, won't you, Ruth?"—as one depending on this other more than on anyone else. Ruth only answered gently, "Yes, Harriett," but she felt warmed in her heart. She had been given something to do. She was depended on. She was not left out.
She sat beside her father during the hour that the nurse had to be relieved. Very strongly, wonderfully, she had a feeling that her father knew she was there, that he wanted her there. In the strange quiet of that hour she seemed to come close to him, as if things holding them apart while he was of life had fallen away now that he no longer was life-bound. It was very real to her. It was communion. Things she could not have expressed seemed to be flowing out to him, and things he could not have understood seemed reaching him now. It was as if she was going with him right up to the border—a long way past the things of life that drove them apart. The nurse, coming back to resume duty, was arrested, moved, by Ruth's face. She spoke gently in thanking her, her own face softened. Flora Copeland, meeting Ruth in the hall, paused, somehow held, and then, quite forgetful of the manner she was going to maintain toward Ruth, impulsively called after her: "Are you perfectly comfortable in your room, Ruth? Don't you—shan't I bring in one of the big easy chairs?"
Ruth said no, she liked her own little chair, but she said it very gently, understanding; she had again that feeling of being taken in, the feeling that warmed her heart.
She went in her room and sat quietly in her little chair; and what had been a pent up agony in her heart flowed out in open sorrowing: for her mother, who was not there to sit in her room with her; for her father, who was dying. But it was releasing sorrowing, the sorrowing that makes one one with the world, drawing one into the whole life of human feeling, the opened heart that brings one closer to all opened hearts. It was the sadness that softens; such sadness as finds its own healing in enriched feeling. It made her feel very near her father and mother; she loved them; she felt that they loved her. She had hurt them—terribly hurt them; but it all seemed beyond that now; they understood; and she was Ruth and they loved her. It was as if the way had been cleared between her and them. She did not feel shut in alone.
Ted hesitated when he came to her door a little later, drew back before the tender light of her illumined face. It did not seem a time to break in on her. But she held out her hand with a little welcoming gesture and, though strangely subdued, smiled lovingly at him as she said, "Come on in, Ted."
Something that the boy felt in her mood made him scowl anew at the thing he had to tell her. He went over to the window, his back to her, and was snapping his finger against the pane. "Well," he said at last, gruffly, "Cy gets in today. Just had a wire."
Ruth drew back, as one who has left exposed a place that can be hurt draws back when hurt threatens. Ted felt it—that retreating within herself, and said roughly: "Much anybody cares! Between you and me, I don't think father would care so very much, either."
"Ted!" she remonstrated in elder sister fashion.
"Cy's got a hard heart, Ruth," he said with a sudden gravity that came strangely through his youthfulness.
Ruth did not reply; she did not want to say what she felt about Cy's heart. But after a moment the domestic side of it turned itself to her. "Will Louise come with him, Ted?"
"No," he answered shortly.
His tone made her look at him in inquiry, but he had turned his back to her again. "I was just wondering about getting their room ready," she said.
For a moment Ted did not speak, did not turn toward her. Then, "We don't have to bother getting any room ready for Cy," he said, with a scoffing little laugh.
Ruth's hand went up to her throat—a curious movement, as if in defense. "What do you mean, Ted?" she asked in low quick voice.
Ted's finger was again snapping the window pane. Once more he laughed disdainfully. "Our esteemed brother is going to the hotel," he jeered.
As Ruth did not speak he looked around. He could not bear her face. "Don't you care, Ruth," he burst out. "Why, what's the difference?" he went on scoffingly. "The hotel's a good place. He'll get along all right down there—and it makes it just so much the better for us."
But even then Ruth could not speak; it had come in too tender a moment, had found her too exposed; she could only cower back. Then pride broke through. "Cyrus needn't go to the hotel, Ted. If he can't stay in the same house with me—even when father is dying—then I'll go somewhere else."
"You'll not!" he blazed, with a savagery that at once startled and wonderfully comforted her. "If Cy wants to be a fool, let him be a fool! If he can't act decent—then let him do what he pleases—or go to the devil!"
She murmured something in remonstrance, but flooded with gratefulness for the very thing she tried to protest against. And then even that was struck out. She had brought about this quarrel, this feeling, between the two brothers. Ted's antagonism against Cyrus, comforting to her, might work harm to Ted. Those were the things she did. That was what came through her.
The comfort, communion, peace of a few minutes before seemed a mockery. Out of her great longing she had deluded herself. Now she was cast back; now she knew. It was as if she had only been called out in order to be struck back. And it seemed that Ted, whom she had just found again, she must either lose or harm. And the shame of it!—children not coming together under their father's roof when he was dying! Even death could not break the bitterness down. It made her know just how it was—just where she stood. And she thought of the town's new talk because of this.
"It's pretty bad, isn't it, Ted?" she said finally, looking up to him with heavy eyes.
Ted flushed. "Cy makes it worse than it need be," he muttered.
"But it is pretty bad, isn't it?" she repeated in a voice there was little life in. "It was about as bad as it could be for you all, wasn't it?"
"Well, Ruth," he began diffidently, "of course—of course this house hasn't been a very cheerful place since you went away."
"No," she murmured, "of course not." She sat there dwelling upon that, forming a new picture of just what it had been. "It really made a big difference, did it, Ted?—even for you?" She asked it very simply, as one asking a thing in order to know the truth.
Ted sat down on the bed. He was shuffling his feet a little, embarrassed, but his face was finely serious, as if this were a grave thing of which it was right they talk.
"Of course I was a good deal of a kid, Ruth," he began. "And yet—" He halted, held by kindness.
"Yes?" she pressed, as if wanting to get him past kindness.
"Well, yes, Ruth, it was—rather bad. I minded on account of the fellows, you see. I knew they were talking and—" Again he stopped; his face had reddened. Her face too colored up at that.
"And then of course home—you know it had always been so jolly here at home—was a pretty different place, Ruth," he took it up gently. "With Cy charging around, and mother and father so—different."
"And they were different, were they, Ted?" she asked quietly.
He looked at her in surprise. "Why, yes, Ruth, they certainly were—different."
Silence fell between them, separately dwelling upon that.
"Just how—different?" Ruth asked, for it seemed he was not going on.
"Why—mother stopped going out, and of course that made her all different. You know what a lot those parties and doings meant to mother."
She did not at once speak, her face working. Then: "I'm sorry," she choked. "Need she have done that, Ted?" she added wistfully after a moment.
He looked at her with that fine seriousness that made him seem older than he was—and finer than she had known. "Well, I don't know, Ruth; you know you don't feel very comfortable if you think people are—talking. It makes you feel sort of—out of it; as if there was something different about you."
"And father?" she urged, her voice quiet, strangely quiet. She was sitting very still, looking intently at Ted.
"Well, father rather dropped out of it, too," he went on, his voice gentle as if it would make less hard what it was saying. "He and mother just seemed to want to draw back into their shells. I think—" He stopped, then said: "I guess you really want to know, Ruth; it—it did make a big difference in father. I think it went deeper than you may have known—and maybe it's only fair to him you should know. It did make a difference; I think it made a difference even in business. Maybe that seems queer, but don't you know when a person doesn't feel right about things he doesn't get on very well with people? Father got that way. He didn't seem to want to be with people."
She did not raise her eyes at that. "Business hasn't gone very well, has it, Ted?" she asked after a moment of silence, still not looking up.
"Pretty bad. And of coursethatgets Cy," he added.
She nodded. "I guess there's a good deal to be said on Cy's side," she murmured after a little, her hands working and her voice not steady.
Ted grunted something disdainful, then muttered: "He played things up for all they were worth. Don't you think he ever missed anything!"
"Was that why Cy left town, Ted?" Ruth asked, speaking all the while in that low, strange voice.
"Oh, he claims so," scoffed Ted. "But he can't make me believe any family humiliation would have made him leave town if he hadn't had a better thing somewhere else. But of course hesaysthat. That it was too hard for him and Louise! Too bad about that little doll-face, isn't it?"
Ruth made a gesture of remonstrance, but the boyish partisanship brought the tears she had until then been able to hold back.
Ted rose. And then he hesitated, as if not wanting to leave it like this. "Well, Ruth, I can tell you one thing," he said gently, a little bashfully; "with all Cy's grand talk about the wrong done mother and father, neither of them ever loved him the way they loved you."
"Oh,didthey, Ted?" she cried, and all the held back feeling broke through, suffusing her. "Theydid?—in spite of everything? Tell me about that, Ted! Tell me about it!"
"Mother used to talk a lot to me," he said. "She was always coming into my room and talking to me about you."
"Oh,wasshe, Ted?" she cried again, feeling breaking over her face in waves. "Shedidtalk about me? What did she say? Tell me!"
"Just little things, mostly. Telling about things you had said and done when you were a kid; remembering what you'd worn here and there—who you'd gone with. Oh,—you know; just little things.
"Of course," he went on, Ruth leaning forward, hanging on his words, "I was a good deal of a kid then; she didn't talk to me much about the—serious part of it. Maybe that was the reason she liked to talk to me—because she could just talk about the little things—old things. Though once or twice—"
"Yes, Ted?" she breathed, as he paused there.
"Well, she did say things to me, too. I remember once she said, 'It wasn't like Ruth. Something terrible happened. She didn't know what she was doing.'"
Ruth's hands were pressed tight together; unheeded tears were falling on them.
"And she used to worry about you, Ruth. When it was cold and she'd come into my room with an extra cover she'd say—'I wish I knew that my girl was warm enough tonight.'"
At that Ruth's face went down in her hands and she was sobbing.
"I don't know what I'm talking like this for!" muttered the boy angrily. "Making you feel so bad!"
She shook her head, but for a little could not look up. Then she choked: "No, I want to know. Never mind how it hurts, I want to know." And then, when she had controlled herself a little more she said, simply: "I didn't know it was like that. I didn't know mother felt—like that."
"She'd start to write to you, and then lots of times she wouldn't seem to know how. She wanted to write to you lots more than she did. But I don't know, Ruth, mother was queer. She seemed sort of bewildered. She—wasn't herself. She was just kind of powerless to do anything about things. She'd come in this room a lot. Sit in here by herself. One of the last days mother was around she called me in here and she had that dress you wore to Edith Lawrence's wedding spread out on the bed and was—oh, just kind of fussing with it. And the reason she called me in was that she wanted to know if I remembered how pretty you looked in it that night."
But Ruth had thrown out a hand for him to stop, had covered her face as if shutting something out. "Oh, I'm sorry, Ruth!" murmured Ted. "I'm a fool!" he cried angrily. But after a minute he added haltingly, "And yet—you did want to know, and—maybe it's fairer to mother, Ruth. Maybe—" but he could not go on and went over and stood by the window, not wanting to leave her like that, not knowing what to do.
"Well, one thing I want you to know, Ruth," he said, as he did finally turn to the door. "I've been talking along about how hard it was for the rest of us, but don't for a minute think I don't see how terrible it was foryou. I get that, all right."
She looked up at him, wanting to speak, but dumb; dumb in this new realization of how terrible it had been for them all.
An hour later she had to get away from that room. She did not know where she was going, but she had to have some escape. Just the physical act of getting away was something.
Ted and Harriett were talking in the lower hall. They looked in inquiry at the hat she held and her face made Ted lay a hand on her arm. She told them she had to have exercise—air—and was going out for a little walk. She thought Harriett looked aghast—doubtless preferring Ruth be seen as little as possible. But she could not help that; she had to get away—away from that room, that house, away from those old things now newly charged. Something left with them shut down around her as a fog in which she could not breathe. Ted asked if he should go with her, but she shook her head and started for the side door, fearing he might insist. He called after her that Harriett was going to have Cyrus stay at her house, that she could make room for him. He said it with a relief which told how he had really hated having his brother go to the hotel. As she turned with something about that being better, she noticed how worn and worried Harriett looked, and then hurried on, wanting to get away, to escape for a little while from that crushing realization of how hard she made things for them all. But she could not shut out the thought of the empty rooms upstairs at their house—Cyrus's old home—and the crowded quarters at Harriett's. Yet of course this would be better than the hotel; she was glad Harriett and Ted had been able to arrange it; she hoped, for their sakes, that Cyrus would not, to emphasize his feeling, insist upon staying downtown.
She walked several blocks without giving any thought to where she was going. She was not thinking then of those familiar streets, of the times she had walked them. She was getting away, trying, for a little while, to escape from things she had no more power to bear. She could not have stayed another minute in her old room.
A little ahead of her she saw a woman sitting in a market wagon, holding the horse. She got the impression that the woman was selling vegetables. She tried to notice, to be interested. She could see, as she came along toward the wagon, that the vegetables looked nice and fresh. She and Stuart had raised vegetables once; they had done various things after what money they had was exhausted and, handicapped both by his lack of ruggedness and by the shrinking from people which their position bred in them, they had to do the best they could at making a living. And so she noticed these vegetables, but it was not until she was close to her that she saw the woman had relaxed her hold on the lines and was leaning forward, peering at her. And when she came a little nearer this woman—a thin, wiry little person whose features were sharp, leaned still further forward and cried: "Why, how do you do? How d'do, Ruth!"
For a moment Ruth was too startled to make any reply. Then she only stammered, "Why, how do you do?"
But the woman leaned over the side of the wagon. Ruth was trying her best to think who she was; she knew that she had known her somewhere, in some way, but that thin, eager little face was way back in the past, and that she should be spoken to in this way—warm, natural—was itself too astonishing, moving, to leave her clear-headed for casting back.
And then, just as she seemed about to say something, her face changed a little. Ruth heard a gate click behind her and then a man, a stolid farmer, he appeared, came up to the wagon. The woman kept nodding her head, as if in continued greeting, but she had leaned back, as though she had decided against what she had been about to say. Ruth, starting on, still bewildered, stirred, nodded and smiled too; and then, when the man had jumped in the wagon and just as the horse was starting, the woman called: "It seems awful good to have you back on these streets, Ruth!"
Ruth could only nod in reply and hurried on; her heart beat fast; her eyes were blurring. "It seems awful good to have you back on these streets, Ruth!" Wasthatwhat she had said? She turned around, wanting to run after that wagon, not wanting to lose that pinched, shabby, eager little woman who was glad to have her back on those streets. But the wagon had turned a corner and was out of sight. Back on those streets! It opened her to the fact that she was back on them. She walked more slowly, thinking about that. And she could walk more slowly; she was less driven.
After a block of perplexed thinking she knew who that woman was; it flashed from her memory where she had known that intent look, that wistful intentness lighting a thin little face. It was Annie Morris, a girl in her class at the high-school, a plain, quiet girl—poor she believed she was, not in Ruth's crowd. Now that she searched back for what she remembered about it she believed that this Annie Morris had always liked her; and perhaps she had taken more notice of her than Edith and the other girls had. She could see her now getting out of the shabby buggy in which she drove in to school—she lived somewhere out in the country. She remembered talking to her sometimes at recess—partly because she seemed a good deal alone and partly because she liked to talk to her. She remembered that she was what they called awfully bright in her classes.
That this girl, whom she had forgotten, should welcome her so warmly stirred an old wondering: a wondering if somewhere in the world there were not people who would be her friends. That wondering, longing, had run through many lonely days. The people she had known would no longer be her friends. But were there not other people? She knew so little about the world outside her own life; her own life had seemed to shut down around her. But she had a feeling that surely somewhere—somewhere outside the things she had known—were people among whom she could find friends. So far she had not found them. At the first, seeing how hard it would be, how bad for them both, to have only each other, she had tried to go out to people just as if there were nothing in her life to keep her back from them. And then they would "hear"; that hearing would come in the most unforeseen little ways, at the most unexpected times; usually through those coincidences of somebody's knowing somebody else, perhaps meeting someone from a former place where they had already "heard"; it was as if the haphazardness of life, those little accidents of meetings that were without design, equipped the world with a powerful service for "hearing," which after a time made it impossible for people to feel that what was known in one place would not come to be known in another. After she had several times been hurt by the drawing away of people whom she had grown to like, she herself drew back where she could not be so easily hurt. And so it came about that her personality changed in that; from an outgoing nature she came to be one who held back, shut herself in. Even people who had never "heard" had the feeling she did not care to know them, that she wanted to be let alone. It crippled her power for friendship; it hurt her spirit. And it left her very much alone. In that loneliness she wondered if there were not those other people—people who could "hear" and not draw away. She had not found them; perhaps she had at times been near them and in her holding back—not knowing, afraid—had let them go by. Of that, too, she had wondered; there had been many lonely wonderings.
She came now to a corner where she stopped. She stood looking down that cross street which was shaded by elm trees. That was the corner where she had always turned for Edith's. Yes, that was the way she used to go. She stood looking down the old way. She wanted to go that way now!
She went so far as to cross the street, and on that far corner again stood still, hesitating, wanting to go that old way. It came to her that if this other girl—Annie Morris—a girl she could barely remember, was glad to see her back, then surely Edith—Edith—would be glad to see her. But after a moment she went slowly on—the other way. She remembered; remembered the one letter she had had from Edith—that letter of a few lines sent in reply to her two letters written from Arizona, trying to make Edith understand.
"Ruth"—Edith had written—she knew the few words by heart; "Yes, I received your first letter. I did not reply to it because it did not seem to me there was anything for me to say. And it does not seem to me now that there is anything for me to say." It was signed, "Edith Lawrence Blair." The full signature had seemed even more formal than the cold words. It had hurt more; it seemed actually to be putting in force the decree that everything between her and Edith was at an end. It was never to be Ruth and Edith again.
As she walked slowly on now, away from Edith's, she remembered the day she walked across that Arizona plain, looking at Edith's letter a hundred times in the two miles between the little town and their cabin. She had gone into town that day to see the doctor. Stuart had seemed weaker and she was terribly frightened. The doctor did not bring her much comfort; he said she would have to be patient, and hope—probably it would all come right. She felt very desolate that day in the far-away, forlorn little town. When she got Edith's letter she did not dare to open it until she got out from the town. And then she found those few formal, final words—written, it was evident, to keep her from writing any more. The only human thing about it was a little blot under the signature. It was the only thing a bit like Edith; she could see her making it and frowning over it. And she wondered—she had always wondered—if that little blot came there because Edith was not as controlled, as without all feeling, as everything else about her letter would indicate. As she looked back to it now it seemed that that day of getting Edith's letter was the worst day of all the hard years. She had been so lonely—so frightened; when she saw Edith's handwriting it was hard not to burst into tears right there at the little window in the queer general store where they gave out letters as well as everything else. But after she had read the letter there were no tears; there was no feeling of tears. She walked along through that flat, almost unpeopled, half desert country and it seemed that the whole world had shrivelled up. Everything had dried, just as the bushes along the road were alive and yet dried up. She knew then that it was certain there was no reach back into the old things. And that night, after they had gone to bed out of doors and Stuart had fallen asleep, she lay there in the stillness of that vast Arizona night and she came to seem in another world. For hours she lay there looking up at the stars, thinking, fearing. She reached over and very gently, meaning not to wake him, put her hand in the hand of the man asleep beside her, the man who was all she had in the world, whom she loved with a passion that made the possibility of losing him a thing that came in the night to terrorize her. He had awakened and understood, and had comforted her with his love, lavishing upon her tender, passionate assurance of how he was going to get strong and make it all come right for them both. There was something terrible in that passion for one another that came out of the consciousness of all else lost. They had each other—there were moments when that burned with a terrible flame through the feeling that they had nothing else. That night they went to sleep in a wonderful consciousness of being alone together in the world. Time after time that swept them together with an intensity of which finally they came to be afraid. They stopped speaking of it; it came to seem a thing not to dwell upon.
The thought of Edith's letter had brought some of that back now. She turned from it to the things she was passing, houses she recognized, new houses. Walking on past them she thought of how those homes joined. With most of them there were no fences between—one yard merging into another. Children were running from yard to yard; here a woman was standing in her own yard calling to a woman in the house adjoining. She passed a porch where four women were sitting sewing; another where two women were playing with a baby. There were so many meeting places for their lives; they were not shut in with their own feeling. That feeling which they as individuals knew reached out into common experiences, into a life in common growing out of individual things. Passing these houses, she wanted to share in that life in common. She had been too long by herself. She needed to be one with others. Life, for a time, had a certain terrible beauty that burned in that sense of isolation. But it was not the way. One needed to be one with others.
She thought of how it was love, more than any other thing, that gave these people that common life. Love was the fabric of it. Love made new combinations of people—homes, children. The very thing in her that had shut her out was the thing drawing them into that oneness, that many in one. Homes were closed to her because of that very impulse out of which homes were built.
She had, without any plan for doing so, turned down the little street where she used to go to meet Stuart. And when she realized where she was going thoughts of other things fell away; the feeling of those first days was strangely revivified, as if going that old way made her for the moment the girl who had gone that way. Again love was not a thing of right or wrong, it was the thing that had to have its way—life's great imperative. Going down that old street made the glow of those days—the excitement—come to life and quicken her again. It was so real that it was as if she were living it again—a girl palpitating with love going to meet her lover, all else left behind, only love now! For the moment those old surroundings made the old days a living thing to her. The world was just one palpitating beauty; the earth she walked was vibrant; the sweetness of life breathed from the air she breathed. She was charged with the joy of it, bathed in the wonder. Love had touched her and taken her, and she was different and everything was different. Her body was one consciousness of love; it lifted her up; it melted her to tenderness. It made life joyous and noble. She lived; she loved!
Standing on the spot where they had many times stood in moments of meeting a very real tenderness for that girl was in the heart of this woman who had paid so terribly for the girl's love. It brought a feeling that she had not paid too much, that no paying was ever too much for love. Love made life; and in turn love was what life was for. To live without it would be going through life without having been touched alive. In that moment it seemed no wrong love could bring about would be as deep as the wrong of denying love. There was again that old feeling of rising to something higher in her than she had known was there, that feeling of contact with all the beauty of the world, of being admitted to the inner sweetness and wonder of life. She had a new understanding of what she had felt; that was the thing added; that was the gift of the hard years.
And of a sudden she wanted terribly to see her mother. It seemed if she could see her mother now that she could make her understand. She saw it more simply than she had seen it before. She wanted to tell her mother that she loved because she could not help loving. She wanted to tell her that after all those years of paying for it she saw that love as the thing illumining her life; that if there was anything worthy in her, anything to love, it was in just this—that she had fought for love, that she would fight for it again. She wanted to see her mother! She believed she could help the hurt she had dealt.
She had walked slowly on, climbing a little hill. From there she looked back at the town. With fresh pain there came the consciousness that her mother was not there, that she could not tell her, that she had gone—gone without understanding, gone bewildered, broken. Her eyes dimmed until the town was a blur. She wanted to see her mother!
She was about to start back, but turned for a moment's look the other way, across that lovely country of little hills and valleys—brooks, and cattle in the brooks, and fields of many shades of green.
And then her eye fixed upon one thing and after that saw no other thing. Behind her was the place where the living were gathered together; but over there, right over there on the next hill, were the dead. She stood very still, looking over there passionately through dimmed eyes. And then swiftly, sobbing a little under her breath, she started that way. She wanted to see her mother!
And when she came within those gates she grew strangely quiet. Back there in the dwelling place of the living she had felt shut out. But she did not feel shut out here. As slowly she wound her way to the hillside where she knew she would find her mother's grave, a strange peace touched her. It was as if she had come within death's tolerance; she seemed somehow to be taken into death's wonderful, all-inclusive love for life. There seemed only one distinction: they were dead and she still lived; she had a sense of being loved because she still lived.
Slowly, strangely comforted, strangely taken in, she passed the graves of many who, when she left, had been back there in the place of the living. The change from dwelling place to dwelling place had been made in the years she was away. It came with a shock to find some of those tombstones; she found many she had thought of as back there, a few hills away, where men still lived. She would pause and think of them, of the strangeness of finding them here when she had known them there—of life's onward movement, of death's inevitability. There were stones marking the burial places of friends of her grandfather—old people who used to come to the house when she was a little girl; she thought with a tender pleasure of little services she had done them; she had no feeling at all that they would not want her to be there. Friends of her father and mother too were there; yes, and some of her own friends—boys and girls with whom she had shared youth.
She sat a long time on the hillside where her mother had been put away. At first she cried, but they were not bitter tears. And after that she did not feel that, even if she could have talked to her mother, it would be important to say the things she had thought she wanted to say. Here, in this place of the dead, those things seemed understood. Vindication was not necessary. Was not life life, and should not one live before death came? She saw the monuments marking the graves of the Lawrences, the Blairs, the Williams', the Franklins,—her mother's and her father's people. They seemed so strangely one: people who had lived. She looked across the hills to the town which these people had built. Right beside her was her grandfather's grave; she thought of his stories of how, when a little boy, he came with his people to that place not then a town; his stories of the beginnings of it, of the struggles and conflicts that had made it what it was. She thought of their efforts, their disappointments, their hopes, their loves. Their loves.... She felt very close to them in that. And as she thought of it there rose a strange feeling, a feeling that came strangely strong and sure: If these people who had passed from living were given an after moment of consciousness, a moment when they could look back on life and speak to it, she felt that their voices, with all the force they could gather, would be raised for more living. Why did we not live more abundantly? Why did we not hold life more precious? Were they given power to say just one word, would they not, seeing life from death, cry—Live!
Twilight came; the world had the sweetness of that hour just before night. A breeze stirred softly; birds called lovingly—loving life. The whole fragrance of the world was breathed into one word. It was as if life had caught the passionate feeling of death; it was as if that after consciousness of those who had left life, and so knew its preciousness, broke through into things still articulate. The earth breathed—Live!