It was late when Ruth went to sleep that night; she and Annie talked through the evening—of books Annie was reading, of the things which were interesting her. She was rich in interests; ideas were as personal things to her; she found personal satisfactions in them. She was following things which Ruth knew little about; she had been long away from the centers of books, and out of touch with awakened people. A whole new world seemed to open from these things that were vital to Annie; there was promise in them—a quiet road out from the hard things of self. There were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas. Everywhere were new attempts at a better way of doing things. She had been away from all that; what she knew of the world's new achievement had seemed unreal, or at least detached, not having any touch with her own life. But as disclosed by Annie those things became realities—things to enrich one's own life. It kindled old fires of her girlhood, fanned the old desire to know. Personal things had seemed to quell that; the storm in her own life had shut down around her. Now she saw that she, like those others whom Annie scorned, had not kept that openness to life, had let her own life shut her in. She had all along been eager for books, but had not been fortunate in the things she had come upon. She had not had access to large libraries—many times not even to small ones; she had had little money for buying books and was so out of touch with the world that she had not had much initiative in trying to get hold of things. She felt now that she had failed miserably in that, but there were years when she was like a hurt thing that keeps in hiding, most of all wanting to escape more hurt. It had been a weakness—she clearly saw that now, and it had been weakening to her powers. Most of the books she had come upon were of that shut-in life Annie scorned, written from within that static living, and for it. People in them had the feeling it was right people should have, unless there were bad people in the book, and then they were very definitely bad. Many of those books had been not only unsatisfying, but saddening to her, causing her to feel newly apart from the experiences of people of her kind.
But now Annie's books let her glimpse a new world—a world which questioned, a world of protest, of experiment, a world in which people unafraid were trying to find the truth, trying to build freshly, to supplant things outworn with the vital forms of a new reality. It was quickening. It made her eager. She was going to take some of those books home, she would send for others, would learn how to keep in touch with this new world which was emerging from the old. It was like breaking out from a closed circle. It was adventure!
Even after she went to her room that night, late though it was, she did not go at once to bed. She sat for a time looking off at the lights of that town for which she had so long grieved, the town that had shut her out. The fact that it had shut her out had been a determining thing in her life, to her spirit. She wondered now if perhaps she had not foolishly spent herself in grieving for a thing that would have meant little could she have had it. For it seemed now that it had remained very much a fixed thing, and now she knew that, with it all, she herself had not been fixed. The things of which Annie talked, things men of this new day were expressing, roused her like this, not because they were all new, but because of her own inner gropings. Within herself she had been stumbling toward some of those things. Here was the sure expression of some halting thoughts of her own. It was exciting to find that there were people who were feeling the things that, even in that timid, uncertain way, she had come to feel by herself. She had been half afraid to formulate some of the things that had come into her mind. This gathered together the timid little shoots. She was excited about the things of which Annie talked—those new ideals of freedom—not so much because they were new and daring and illumining things, as because they did not come all alien. There was something from within to go out to them. In that—not that there were interesting things she could have from without—but that she, opened to the new stimulus, could become something from within, was the real excitation, the joy of the new promise was there. And this new stir, this promise of new satisfactions, let her feel that her life was not all mapped out, designed ahead. She went to sleep that night with a wonderful new feeling of there being as much for her in life as she herself had power to take.
And she woke with that feeling; she was eager to be up, to be out in the sunshine. Annie, she found, had gone early to town with her vegetables. Ruth helped eleven-year-old Dorothy, the eldest child, get off for school and walked with her to the schoolhouse half a mile down the road. The little girl's shyness wore away and she chatted with Ruth about school, about teachers and lessons and play. Ruth loved it; it seemed to set the seal of a human relationship upon her new feeling. What a wonderful thing for Annie to have these children! Today gladness in there being children in the world went out past sorrow in her own deprivation. The night before she had said to Annie, "You have your children. That makes life worth while to you, doesn't it?" And Annie, with that hard, swift look of being ruthless for getting at the truth—for getting her feeling straight and expressing it truly, had answered, "Not in itself. I mean, it's not all. I think much precious life has gone dead under that idea of children being enough—letting them be all.Wecount—Icount! Just leaving life isn't all; living it while we're here—that counts, too. And keeping open to it in more than any one relationship. Suppose they, in their turn, have that idea; then life's never really lived, is it?—always just passed on, alwaysput off." They had talked of that at some length. "Certainly I want my children to have more than I have," Annie said. "I am working that they may. But in that working for them I'm not going to let go of the fact that I count too. Now's my only chance," she finished in that grim little way as one not afraid to be hard.
Thinking back to that it seemed to Ruth a bigger mother feeling than the old one. It was not the sort of maternal feeling to hem in the mother and oppress the children. It was love in freedom—love that did not hold in or try to hold in. It would develop a sense of the preciousness of life. It did not glorify self-sacrifice—that insidious foe to the fullness of living.
Thinking of that, and going out from that to other things, she sat down on a log by the roadside, luxuriating in the opulence and freshness of the world that May morning, newly tuned to life, vibrant with that same fresh sense of it, glad gratefulness in return to it, that comes after long sickness, after imprisonment. The world was full of singing birds that morning,—glorious to be in a world of singing birds! The earth smelled so good! There were plum trees in bloom behind her; every little breeze brought their fragrance. The grass under her feet was springy—the world was vibrant, beautiful, glad. The earth seemed so strong, so full of still unused powers, so ready to give.
She sat there a long time; she had the courage this morning to face the facts of her life. She was eager to face them, to understand them that she might go on understandingly. She had the courage to face the facts relating to herself and Stuart. That was a thing she had not dared do. With them, lovehadto last, for love was all they had. They had only each other. They did not dare let themselves think of such a thing as the love between them failing.
Well, it had not failed; but she let herself see now how greatly it had changed. There was something strangely freeing in just letting herself see it. Of course there had been change; things always changed. Love changed within marriage—she did not know why she should expect it to be different with her. But in the usual way—within marriage—it would matter less for there would be more ways of adapting one's self to the changing. Then one could reach out into new places in life, gaining new channels, taking on new things as old ones slipped away, finding in common interests, common pleasures, the new adjustment for feeling. But with them life had seemed to shut right down around them. And they had never been able to relax in the reassuring sense of the lastingness of their love. She had held herself tense in the idea that there was no change, would be none. She had a feeling now of having tried too hard, of being tired through long trying. There was relief in just admitting that she was tired. And so she let herself look at it now, admitting that she had been clutching at a vanished thing.
It would have been different, she felt, had the usual channels of living been opened to them. Then together they could have reached out into new experiences. Their love had been real—great. Related to living, surely it could have remained the heart of life. Her seeing now that much of the life had gone out of it did not bear down upon her with the great sadness she would have expected. She knew now that in her heart she had known for a long time that passion had gone. Facing it was easier than refusing to see. It ceased to be a terrible thing once one looked at it. Of this she was sure: love should be able to be a part of the rest of life; the big relationship, but one among others; the most intense interest, but one with other interests. Unrooted, detached, it might for the time be the more intense, but it had less ways of saving itself. If simply, naturally, they could have grown into the common life she felt they might have gone on without too much consciousness of change, growing into new things as old ones died away, half unconsciously making adjustments, doubtless feeling something gone but in the sharing of new things not left desolate through that sense of the passing of old ones. Frightened by the thought of having nothing else, they had tried too hard. She was tired; she believed that Stuart too was tired.
There was a certain tired tenderness in her thinking of him. Dear Stuart, he loved easy pleasant living. It seemed he was not meant for the too great tests, for tragically isolated love. She knew that he had never ceased to miss the things he had let go—his place among men, the stimulus of the light, pleasant social relationships with women. He was meant for a love more flexibly related to living, a love big and real but fitted more loosely, a little more carelessly, to life. There was always so deep a contrition for his irritations with her. The whole trouble was indicated right there, that the contrition should be all out of proportion to the offence. It would have been better had he felt more free to be irritated; one should not have to feel frightened at a little bit of one's own bad temper—appalled at crossness, at hours of ennui. Driving them back together after every drifting apart all of that made for an intensity of passion—passion whipped to life by fear. But that was not the way to grow into life. Flames kindled by fear made intense moments but after a time left too many waste places between them and the lives of men.
Today her hope for the future was in the opening of new places. She was going back with new vision, new courage. They must not any longer cling together in their one little place, coming finally to actual resentment of one another for the enforced isolation. They must let themselves go out into living, dare more, trust more, lose that fear of rebuff, hope for more from life,claimmore. As she rose and started towards home there was a new spring in her step. For her part, she was through with that shrinking back! She hoped she could bring Stuart to share her feeling, could inspire in him this new trust, new courage that had so stimulated and heartened her. Her hope for their future lay there.
Climbing a hill she came in sight of the little city which they had given up, for which they had grieved. Well, they had grieved too much, she resolutely decided now. There were wider horizons than the one that shut down upon that town. She was not conquered! She would not be conquered. She stood on the hilltop exulting in that sense of being free. She had been a weakling to think her life all settled! Only cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder—but surely one should not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to grant that it had failed. But now it seemed that it failed if it did not leave her bigger than it had found her. Her eyes filled in response to the stern beauty of that. Not that one stay with love in the same place, but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it send one on.
Eyes still dimmed with the feeling of it, she stood looking as if in a final letting go at that town off there on the bend of the river. It became to her the world of shut-in people, people not going on, people who loved and never saw the meaning of love, whose experiences were not as wings to carry them, but as walls shutting them in. She was through grieving for those people. She was going on—past them—so far beyond them that her need for them would fall away.
She was conscious of an approaching horse and buggy and stepped aside; then walked on, so aglow with her own thoughts that a passing by did not break in upon her. She did not even know that the girl in the run-about had stopped her horse. At the cry: "Oh—I'm so glad!" she was as startled as if she had thought herself entirely alone.
It was a big effort to turn, to gather herself together and speak. She had been so far away, so completely possessed that it took her an instant to realize that the girl leaning eagerly toward her was Mildred Woodbury.
Mildred was moving over on the seat, inviting her to get in. "I'm so glad!" she repeated. "I went to Mrs. Herman's, and was so disappointed to miss you. I thought maybe I'd come upon you somewhere," she laughed gladly, though not without embarrassment.
There was a moment of wanting to run away, of really considering it. She knew now—had remembered, realized—what it was about Mildred.
Her instinct to protect herself from this young girl was the thing that gained composure for her. At first it was simply one of those physical instincts that draw us back from danger, from pain; and then she threw the whole force of her will to keeping that semblance of composure. Her instinct was not to let reserves break down, not to show agitation; to protect herself by never leaving commonplace ground. It was terribly hard—this driving back the flood-tide of feeling and giving no sign of the struggle, the resentment. It was as if every nerve had been charged to full life and then left there outraged.
But she could do it; she could appear pleasantly surprised at Mildred's having come to take her for a drive, could talk along about the little things that must be her shield against the big ones. Something in her had gone hard in that first moment of realizing who Mildred was. She was not going to be driven back again! And so she forced herself to talk pleasantly of the country through which they went, of Mildred's horse, of driving and riding.
But it was impossible not to grow a little interested in this young Mildred Woodbury. She sat erect and drove in a manner that had the little tricks of worldliness, but was somehow charming in spite of its artificiality. Ruth was thinking that Mildred was a more sophisticated young person than she herself had been at that age. She wondered if sophistication was increasing in the world, if there was more of it in Freeport than there used to be.
They talked of Ruth's father, of Mildred's people, of the neighborhood both knew so well. From that it drifted to the social life of the town. She was amused, rather sadly amused, at Mildred's air of superiority about it; it seemed so youthful, so facile. Listening to Mildred now pictures flashed before her: she and Edith Lawrence—girls of about fifteen—going over to the Woodburys' and eagerly asking, "Could we take the baby out, Mrs. Woodbury?" "Now you'll be very, very careful, girls?" Mrs. Woodbury would say, wrapping Mildred all up in soft pink things. "Oh,yes, Mrs. Woodbury," they would reply, a little shocked that she could entertain the thought of their not being careful. And then they would start off cooing girlish things about the cunning little darling. This was that baby—in spite of her determination to hold aloof from Mildred there was no banishing it; no banishing the apprehension that grew with the girl's talk. For Mildred seemed so much a part of the very thing for which she had this easy scorn. Something in the way she held the lines made it seem she would not belong anywhere else. She looked so carefully prepared for the very life for which she expressed disdain.
She tried to forget the things that were coming back to her—how Mildred would gleefully hold up her hands to have her mittens put on when she and Edith were about to take her out, and tried too to turn the conversation—breaking out with something about Mrs. Herman's children. But it became apparent that Mildred was not to be put off. Everything Ruth would call up to hold her off she somehow forced around to an approach for what she wanted to say.
And then it came abruptly, as if she were tired of trying to lead up to it. "I've been wanting to see you—Ruth," she hesitated over the name, but brought it out bravely, and it occurred to Ruth then that Mildred had not known how to address her. "When I heard you were here," she added, "I was determined you shouldn't get away without my seeing you."
Ruth looked at her with a little smile, moved, in spite of herself, by the impetuousness of the girl's tone, by something real that broke through the worldly little manner.
"I don't feel as the rest of them do." She flushed and said it hurriedly, a little tremulously; and yet there was something direct and honest in her eyes, as if she were going to say it whether it seemed nice taste or not. It reached Ruth, went through her self-protective determination not to be reached. Her heart went out to Mildred's youth, to this appeal from youth, moved by the freshness and realness beneath that surface artificiality, saddened by this defiance of one who, it seemed, could so little understand how big was the thing she defied, who seemed so much the product of the thing she scorned, so dependent on what she was apparently in the mood to flout. "I don't know that they are to be blamed for their feeling, Mildred," she answered quietly.
"Oh, yes, they are!" hotly contended the girl. "It's because they don't understand. It's because theycan'tunderstand!" The reins had fallen loose in her hand; the whip sagged; she drooped—that stiff, chic little manner gone. She turned a timid, trusting face to Ruth—a light shining through troubled eyes. "It's love that counts, isn't it,—Ruth?" she asked, half humble, half defiant.
It swept Ruth's heart of everything but sympathy. Her hand closed over Mildred's. "What is it, dear?" she asked. "Just what is it?"
Mildred's eyes filled. Ruth could understand that so well—what sympathy meant to a feeling shut in, a feeling the whole world seemed against. "It's with me—as it was with you," the girl answered very low and simply. "It's—like that."
Ruth shut her eyes for an instant; they were passing something fragrant; it came to her—an old fragrance—like something out of things past; a robin was singing; she opened her eyes and looked at Mildred, saw the sunshine finding gold in the girl's hair. The sadness of it—of youth and suffering, of pain in a world of beauty, that reach of pain into youth, into love, made it hard to speak. "I'm sorry, dear," was all she could say.
They rode a little way in silence; Ruth did not know how to speak, what to say; and then Mildred began to talk, finding relief in saying things long held in. Ruth understood that so well. Oh, she understood it all so well—the whole tumult of it, the confused thinking, the joy, the passion,—the passion that would sacrifice anything, that would let the whole world go. Here it was again. She knew just what it was.
"So you can see," Mildred was saying, "what you have meant to me."
Yes, she could see that.
They were driving along the crest of the hills back of the town. Mildred pointed to it. "That town isn't the whole of the world!" she exclaimed passionately, after speaking of the feeling that was beginning to form there against herself. "What do I care?" she demanded defiantly. "It's not the whole of the world!"
Ruth looked at it. She could see the Lawrence house—it had a high place and was visible from all around; Mildred's home was not far from there; her own old home was only a block farther on. She had another one of those flashing pictures from things far back: Mrs. Woodbury—Mildred's mother—standing at the door with a bowl of chicken broth for Mrs. Holland—Ruth's mother—who was ill. "I thought maybe this would taste good," she could hear Mrs. Woodbury saying. Strange how things one had forgotten came back. Other things came back as for a moment she continued to look at the town where both she and Mildred had been brought up, where their ties were. Then she turned back to Mildred, to this other girl who, claimed by passionate love, was in the mood to let it all go. "But that's just what it is, Mildred," she said. "The trouble is, itisthe whole of the world."
"It's the whole of the social world," she answered the look of surprise. "It's just the same everywhere. And it's astonishing how united the world is. You give it up in one place—you've about given it up for every place."
"Then the whole social world's not worth it!" broke from Mildred. "It's not worth—enough."
Ruth found it hard to speak; she did not know what to say. She had a flashing sense of the haphazardness of life, of the power, the flame this found in Mildred that the usual experiences would never have found, of how, without it, she would doubtless have developed much like the other girls of her world—how she might develop because of it—how human beings were shaped by chance. She looked at Mildred's face—troubled, passionate, a confused defiance, and yet something real there looking through the tumult, something flaming, something that would fight, a something, she secretly knew, more flaming, more fighting, than might ever break to life in Mildred again. And then she happened to look down at the girl's feet—the very smart low shoes of dull kid, perfectly fitted, high arched—the silk stockings, the slender ankle. They seemed so definitely feet for the places prepared, for the easier ways, not fitted for going a hard way alone. It made her feel like a mother who would want to keep a child from a way she herself knew as too hard.
"But what are you going to put in the place of that social world, Mildred?" she gently asked. "There must be something to fill its place. What is that going to be?"
"Love will fill its place!" came youth's proud, sure answer.
Ruth was looking straight ahead; the girl's tone had thrilled her—that faith in love, that courage for it. It was so youthful!—so youthfully sure, so triumphant in blindness. Youth would dare so much—youth knew so little. She did not say anything; she could not bear to.
"Love can fill its place!" Mildred said again, as if challenging that silence. And as still Ruth did not speak she demanded, sharply, "Can't it?"
Ruth turned to her a tender, compassionate face, too full of feeling, of conflict, to speak. Slowly, as if she could not bear to do it, she shook her head.
Mildred looked just dazed for a moment, then so much as if one in whom she had trusted, on whom she had counted for a great deal had failed her that Ruth made a little gesture as if to say it was not that, as if to say she was sorry it seemed like that.
Mildred did not heed it. "But it has with you," she insisted.
"It hasnot!" leaped out the low, savage answer that startled the woman from whom it came. "It has not!" she repeated fiercely.
Her rage was against the feeling that seemed to trick one like that; the way lovegotone—made one believe that nothing else in the world mattered but just itself. It wasn't fair! It was cruel! That made her savage—savage for telling Mildred the other side of it, the side love blinded her too. In that moment it seemed that love was a trap; it took hold of one and persuaded one things were true that weren't true! Just then it seemed a horrible thing the way love got one through lovely things, through beauty and tenderness, through the sweetest things—then did as it pleased with the life it had stolen in upon. Fiercely she turned the other face, told Mildred what love in loneliness meant, what it meant to be shut away from one's own kind, what that hurting of other lives did to one's self, what isolation made of one, what it did to love. Things leaped out that she had never faced, had never admitted for true; the girl to whom she talked was frightened and she was frightened herself—at what she told of what she herself had felt, feeling that she had never admitted she had had. She let the light in on things kept in the dark even in her own soul—a cruel light, a light that spared nothing, that seemed to find a savage delight in exposing the things deepest concealed. She would show the other side of it! There was a certain gloating in doing it—getting ahead of a thing that would trick one. And then that spent itself as passion will and she grew quieter and talked in a simple way of what loneliness meant, of what longing for home meant, of what it meant to know one had hurt those who had always been good to one, who loved and trusted. She spoke of her mother—of her father, and then she broke down and cried and Mildred listened in silence to those only half-smothered sobs.
When Ruth was able to stop she looked up, timidly, at Mildred. Something seemed to have gone out of the girl—something youthful and superior, something radiant and assured. She looked crumpled up. The utter misery in her eyes, about her mouth, made Ruth whisper: "I'm sorry, Mildred."
Mildred looked at her with a bitter little laugh and then turned quickly away.
Ruth had never felt more wretched in her life than when, without Mildred having said a word, they turned in the gate leading up to Annie's. She wanted to say something to comfort. She cast around for something. "Maybe," she began, "that it will come right—anyway."
Again Mildred only laughed in that hard little way.
When they were half way up the hill Mildred spoke, as if, in miserable uncertainty, thinking things aloud. "Mrs. Blair has asked me to go to Europe with her for the summer," she said, in a voice that seemed to have no spring left in it. "She's chaperoning a couple of girls. I could go with them."
"Oh,do, Mildred!" cried Ruth. "Do that!" It seemed to her wonderfully tender, wonderfully wise, of Edith. She was all eagerness to induce Mildred to go with Edith.
But there was no answering enthusiasm. Mildred drooped. She did not look at Ruth. "I could do that," she said in a lifeless way, as if it didn't matter much what she did.
When they said good-by Mildred's broken smile made Ruth turn hastily away. But she looked back after the girl had driven off, wanting to see if she was sitting up in that sophisticated little way she had. But Mildred was no longer sitting that way. She sagged, as if she did not care anything about how she sat. Ruth stood looking after her, watching as far as she could see her, longing to see her sit up, to see her hold the whip again in that stiff, chic little fashion. But she did not do it; her horse was going along as if he knew there was no interest in him. Ruth could not bear it. If only the whip would go up at just that right little angle! But it did not. She could not see the whip at all—only the girl's drooping back.
When Mildred had passed from sight Ruth slowly turned toward the house. She noticed the vegetable wagon there in front of the barn—so Annie had come home. She turned away from the kitchen door she had been about to enter; she did not want to talk to Annie just then. But when she had passed around to the other side of the house she saw, standing with their backs to her in the little flower garden, Annie and a woman she was astonished to recognize as her sister Harriett.
She made a move toward the little hill that rose behind the house. She would get away! But Mr. Herman appeared just then at the top of the hill. He saw her; he must see that she had seen the others. So she would have to stay and talk to Harriett. It seemed a thing she absolutely could not do. It had come to seem she was being made some kind of sport of, as if the game were to buffet her about between this feeling and that, let her gain a little ground, get to a clearing, then throw her back to new confusion. That day, anyway, she could bear no more of it. It was hard to reply to Mr. Herman when he called something to her. Annie heard their voices and then she had to join her and Harriett.
"Why, Ruth!" Annie cried in quick solicitude upon seeing Ruth's face, "you went too far. How hateful of you," she laughed, as if feeling there was something to laugh off, "to come looking like this just when I have been boasting to your sister about how we've set you up!"
"You do look tired, Ruth," said Harriett compassionately.
Harriett said she had come for a little visit with Ruth, and Annie proposed that they go up under the trees at the crest of the hill back of the house. It was where Ruth had sat with Annie just the day before. As she sat down there now it seemed it was ages ago since she and Annie had sat there tying the asparagus into bunches.
Annie had come up with some buttermilk for them. As she handed Ruth hers she gave her shoulder an affectionate little pat, as if, looking at her face, she wanted to tell her to take heart. Then she went back to the house, leaving the two sisters alone.
They drank their buttermilk, talking of it, of Annie's place, of her children. In a languid way Ruth was thinking that it was good of Harriett to come and see her; had she come the day before, she would have been much pleased. In that worn way, she was pleased now; doubtless it had been hard for Harriett to come—so busy, and not well. Perhaps her coming meant real defiance. Anyway, it was good of her to come. She tried to be nice to Harriett, to talk about things as if she liked having her there to talk with. But that final picture of Mildred's drooping back was right there before her all the time. As she talked with Harriett about the price of butter and eggs—the living to be had in selling them, she was all the while seeing Mildred—Mildred as she had been when Ruth got into the buggy; as she said, "Love can take its place!"—as she was when she drove away. She had a sick feeling of having failed; she had failed the very thing in Mildred to which she had elected to be faithful in herself. Andwhy? What right had one to say that another was not strong enough? How did oneknow? And yet she wanted Mildred to go with Edith; she believed that she would—now. That blighting sense of failure, of having been unfaithful, could not kill a feeling of relief. Did it mean that she was, after all, just like Edith? Had her venturing, her experience, left her much as she would have been without it? Just before meeting Mildred she was strong in the feeling of having gained something from the hard way she had gone alone. She was going on! That was what it had shown her—that one was to go on. Then she had to listen to Mildred—and she was back with the very people she had felt she was going on past—one with those people she had so triumphantly decided were not worth her grieving for them.
She had been so sure—so radiantly sure, happy in that sense of having, at last, found herself, of being rid of fears and griefs and incertitudes. Then she met Mildred. It came to her then—right while she was talking with Harriett about what Flora Copeland was going to do now that the house would be broken up—that it was just that thing which kept the world conservative. It was fear for others. It was that feeling she had when she looked down at Mildred's feet.
One did not have that feeling when one looked at one's own feet. Fear of pain for others was quite unlike fear for one's self. Courage for one's self one could gain; in the fires of the heart that courage was forged. When the heart was warm with the thing one wanted to do one said no price in pain could be too great. But courage for others had to be called from the mind. It was another thing. When it was some one else,—one younger, one who did not seem strong—then one distrusted the feeling and saw large the pain. Oneknewone could bear pain one's self. There was something not to be borne in thinking of another's pain. That was why, even among venturers, few had the courage to speak for venturing. There was something in humankind—it was strongest in womankind—made them, no matter how daring for themselves, cautious for others. And perhaps that, all crusted round with things formal and lifeless, was the living thing at the heart of the world's conservatism.
Harriett was talking of the monument Cyrus thought there should be at the cemetery; Ruth listened and replied—seemed only tired, and all the while these thoughts were shaping themselves in her inner confusion and disheartenment. She would rather have stopped thinking of it, but could not. She had been too alive when checked; there was too much emotion in that inner confusion. She wondered if she would ever become sure of anything; if she would ever have, and keep, that courage of confidence which she had thought, for just a few radiant moments, she had. She would like to talk to Annie about it, but she had a feeling that she was not fit to talk to Annie. Annie was not one of those to run back at the first thought of another's pain. That, too, Annie could face. Better let them in for pain than try to keep them from life, Annie would say. She could hear her saying it—saying that even that concern for others was not the noblest thing. Fearing would never set the world free, would be Annie's word. Not to keep people in the safe little places, but to shape a world where there need not be safe little places! While she listened to what Harriett said of how much such a monument as Cyrus wanted would cost, she could hear Annie's sharp-edged little voice making those replies to her own confusion, could hear her talking of a sterner, braver people—hardier souls—who would one day make a world where fear was not the part of kindness. Annie would say that it was not the women who would protect other women who would shape the future in which there need not be that tight little protection.
She sighed heavily and pushed back her hair with a gesture of great weariness. "Poor Ruth!" it made Harriett murmur, "you haven't really got rested at all, have you?"
She pulled herself up and smiled as best she could at her sister, who had spoken to her with real feeling. "I did," she said with a little grimace that carried Harriett back a long way, "then I got so rested I got to thinking about things—then I got tired again." She flushed after she had said it, for that was the closest they had come to the things they kept away from.
"Poor Ruth," Harriett murmured again. "And I'm afraid," she added with a little laugh, "that now I'm going to make you more tired."
"Oh, no," said Ruth, though she looked at her inquiringly.
"Because," said Harriett, "I've come to talk to you about something, Ruth."
Ruth's face made her say, "I'm sorry, Ruth, but I'm afraid it's the only chance. You see you're going away day after tomorrow."
Ruth only nodded; it seemed if she spoke she would have to cry out what she felt—that in common decency she ought to be let alone now as any worn-out thing should be let alone, that it was not fair—humane—to talk to her now. But of course she could not make that clear to Harriett, and with it all she did wonder what it was Harriett had to say. So she only looked at her sister as if waiting. Harriett looked away from her for an instant before she began to speak: Ruth's eyes were so tired, so somber; there was something very appealing about her face as she waited for the new thing that was to be said to her.
"I have felt terribly, Ruth," Harriett finally began, as if forcing herself to do so, "about the position in which we are as a family. I'll not go into what brought it about—or anything like that. I haven't come to talk about things that happened long ago, haven't come with reproaches. I've just come to see if, as a family, we can't do a little better about things as they are now."
She paused, but Ruth did not speak; she was very still now as she waited. She did not take her eyes from Harriett's face.
"Mother and father are gone, Ruth," Harriett went on in a low voice, "and only we children are left. It seems as if we ought to do the best we can for each other." Her voice quivered and Ruth's intense eyes, which did not leave her sister's face, dimmed. She continued to sit there very still, waiting.
"I had a feeling," Harriett went on, "that father's doing what he did was as a—was as a sign, Ruth, that we children should come closer together. As if father couldn't see his way to do it in his lifetime, but did this to leave word to us that we were to do something. I took it that way," she finished simply.
Ruth's eyes had brimmed over; but still she did not move, did not take her eyes from her sister's face. She was so strange—as if going out to Harriett and yet holding herself ready at any moment to crouch back.
"And so," Harriett pursued, all the while in that low voice, "that is the way I talked to Edgar and Cyrus. I didn't bring Ted into it," she said, more in her natural way, "because he's just a boy, and then—" she paused as if she had got into something that embarrassed her—"well, he and Cyrus not feeling kindly toward each other just now I thought I could do better without Ted."
Ruth flushed slightly at the mention of the feeling between her brothers; but still she did not speak, scarcely moved.
Harriett was silent a moment. "That's one of the reasons," she took it up, "why I am anxious to do something to bring us together. I don't want Ted to be feeling this way toward Cyrus. And Edgar, too, he seems to be very bitter against. It makes him defiant. It isn't good for him. I think Ted has a little disposition to be wild," she said in a confidential tone.
Ruth spoke then. "I hadn't noticed any such disposition," she said simply.
"Well, he doesn't go to church. It seems to me he doesn't—accept things as he ought to."
Ruth said nothing to that, only continued to look at her sister, waiting.
"So I talked to them," Harriett went on. "Of course, Ruth, there's no use pretending it was easy. You know how Cyrus feels; he isn't one to change much, you know." She turned away and her hand fumbled in a little patch of clover.
"But we do want to do something, Ruth," she came back to it. "We all feel it's terrible this way. So this is what Edgar proposed, and Cyrus agreed to it, and it seems to me the best thing to do." She stopped again, then said, in a blurred sort of voice, fumbling with the clover and not looking at Ruth: "If you will leave the—your—if you will leave the man you are—living with, promising never to see him again,—if you will give that up and come home we will do everything we can to stand by you, go on as best we can as if nothing had happened. We will try to—"
She looked up—and did not go on, but flushed uncomfortably at sight of Ruth's face—eyes wide with incredulity, with something like horror.
"You don'tmeanthat, do you, Harriett?" Ruth asked in a queer, quiet voice.
"But we wanted to do something—" Harriett began, and then again halted, halted before the sudden blaze of anger in Ruth's eyes.
"And you thoughtthis—" She broke off with a short laugh and sat there a moment trying to gain control of herself. When she spoke her voice was controlled but full of passion. "I don't think," she said, "that I've ever known of a more monstrous—a more insulting proposal being made by one woman to another!"
"Insulting?" faltered Harriett.
Ruth did not at once reply but sat there so strangely regarding her sister. "So this is your idea of life, is it, Harriett?" she began in the manner of one making a big effort to speak quietly. "This is your idea of marriage, is it? Here is the man I have lived with for eleven years. For eleven years we've met hard things together as best we could—worked, borne things together. Let me tell you something, Harriett. Ifthatdoesn't marry people—tellmesomething. If that doesn't marry people—just tell me, Harriett,what does?"
"But you know you're not married, Ruth," Harriett replied, falteringly—for Ruth's burning eyes never left her sister's face. "You know—really—you're not married. You know he's not divorced, Ruth. He's not your husband. He's Marion Averley's."
"You think so?" Ruth flung back at her. "You really think so, do you, Harriett? After those years together—brought together by love, united by living, by effort, by patience, by courage—I ask you again, Harriett,—if the things there have been between Stuart Williams and me can't make a marriage real—what can?"
"The law is the law," murmured Harriett. "He is married to her. He never was married to you."
Ruth began hotly to speak, but checked it with a laugh and sat there regarding her sister in silence. When she spoke after that her voice was singularly calm. "I'm glad to know this, Harriett; glad to know just what your ideas are—yours and Edgar's and Cyrus's. You have done something for me, after all. For I've grieved a great deal, Harriett, for the things I lost, and you see I won't do that any more. I see now—see what those things are. I see that I don't want them."
Harriett had colored at that, and her hand was fumbling in the little patch of clover. When she looked up at Ruth there were tears in her eyes. "But what could we do, Ruth?" she asked, gently, a little reproachfully. "We wanted to do something—what else could we do?"
Her tone touched Ruth. After all, what else—Harriett being as she was—could she do? Monstrous as the proposal seemed to her, it was Harriett's way of trying to make things better. She had come in kindness, and she had not been kindly received. It was in a different voice that Ruth began: "Harriett, don't you see, when you come to look at it, that I couldn't do this? Down in your heart—way down in your heart, Harriett—don't you see that I couldn't? Don't you see that if I left Stuart now to do the best he could by himself, left him, I mean, for this reason—came creeping back myself into a little corner of respectability—the crumbs that fall from the tables of respectability—! Youknow, Harriett Holland," she flamed, "that if I did that I'd be less a woman, not a better one?"
"I—I knew it would be hard," granted Harriett, unhappily. "Of course—after such a long time together—But you're not married to him, Ruth," she said again, wretchedly. "Why"—her voice fell almost to a whisper—"you're living in—adultery."
"Well if I am," retorted Ruth—"forgive me for saying it, Harriett—that adultery has given me more decent ideas of life than marriage seems to have given you!"
Her feeling about it grew stronger as the day wore on. That evening she got the Woodburys' on the telephone and asked for Mildred. She did not know just what she would say, she had no plan, but she wanted to see Mildred again. She was told, however, that Mildred had gone to Chicago on a late afternoon train. At the last minute she had decided to go to Europe with Mrs. Blair, the servant who was speaking said, and had gone over to Chicago to see about clothes.
Ruth hung up the receiver and sat looking into the telephone. Then she laughed. So Mildred had been "saved."
On the afternoon of her last day in Freeport Ruth took a long tramp with Deane. She was going that night; she was all ready for leaving when Deane came out and asked if he couldn't take her for a ride in his car. She suggested a walk instead, wanting the tramp before the confinement of travelling. So they cut through the fields back of Annie's and came out on a road well known to them of old. They tramped along it a long way, Ruth speaking of things she remembered, talking of old drives along that road which had been a favorite with all of their old crowd. They said things as they felt like it, but there was no constraint in their silences. It had always been like that with her and Deane. Finally they sat down on a knoll a little back from the road, overlooking pastures and fields of blowing green.
"I love these little hills," Ruth murmured; "so many little hills," she laughed affectionately—"and so green and blowy and fruitful. With us it's a great flat valley—a plain, and most of it dry—barren. You have to do such a lot to make things grow. Here things just love to grow. And trees!" she laughed.
"But mountains there," suggested Deane.
"Yes, but a long way off from us, and sometimes they seem very stern, Deane. I've so many times had the feeling I couldn't get beyond them. Sometimes they have seemed like other things I couldn't hope to cross." After a little she said: "These little hills are so gentle; this country so open."
Deane laughed shortly. "Yes, the hills are gentle. The country is open enough!"
She laughed too. "It is beautiful country, Deane," she said, as if that were the thing mattering just then. There was an attractive bit of pasture just ahead of them: a brook ran through it—a lovely little valley between two of those gentle hills.
Deane was lying on the grass a little way from her—sprawled out in much his old awkward way, his elbow supporting his head, hat pulled down over his eyes. It was good to be with him this last afternoon. It seemed so much as it used to be; in that moment it was almost as if the time in between had not been. It was strange the way things could fall away sometimes—great stretches of time fall away and seem, for a little while, to leave things as they had been long before.
"Well, Ruth," Deane said at last, "so you're going back."
"Going back, Deane," she answered.
So much they did not say seemed to flow into that; the whole thing was right there, opened, living, between them. It had always been like that with her and Deane. It was not necessary to say things out to him, as it was with everyone else. Their thinking, feeling, seemed to come together naturally, of itself; not a matter of direction. She looked at Deane stretched out there on the grass—older, different in some ways—today he looked as if something was worrying him—yet with it all so much the Deane of old. It kept recurring as strange that, after all there had been in between, they should be together again, and that it could be as it used to be. Just as of old, a little thing said could swing them to thinking, feeling, of which perhaps they did not speak, but which they consciously shared. Many times through the years there had come times when she wanted nothing so much as to be with Deane, wanted to say things to him that, she did not know just why, there would have been no satisfaction in saying to Stuart. Even things she had experienced with Stuart she could, of the two, more easily have talked of with Deane. It was to Deane she could have talked of the things Stuart made her feel. Within a certain circle Stuart was the man to whom she came closest; somehow, with him, she did not break from that circle. She had always had that feeling of Deane's understanding what she felt, even though it was not he who inspired the feeling. That seemed a little absurd to her—to live through things with one man, and have what that living made of her seem to swing her to some one else.
Thinking of their unique companionship, which time and distance and circumstances had so little affected, she looked at Deane as he lay there near her on the grass. She was glad to have this renewal of their old friendship, which had always remained living and dear to her. And now she was going away for another long time. It was possible she would never see him again. It made her wish she could come closer to what were now the big things in his life.
"I'm so glad, Deane," she said, somewhat timidly, "about you."
He pushed back his hat and looked up in inquiry.
"So glad you got married, goose!" she laughed.
At his laugh for that she looked at him in astonishment, distinctly shocked. He was chewing a long spear of grass. For a moment he did not speak. Then, "Amy's gone home," he said shortly.
Ruth could only stare at him, bewildered.
He was running his hand over the grass near him. She noticed that it moved nervously. And she remarked the puckered brows that had all along made her think he was worried about something that day—she had thought it must be one of his cases. And there was that compression of the lips that she knew of old in Deane when he was hurt. Just then his face looked actually old, the face of a man who has taken hard things.
"Yes, Amy's gone home for a little while," he said in a more matter of fact voice, but a voice that had a hard ring. He added: "Her mother's not well," and looked up at Ruth with that characteristic little screwing up of his face, as if telling her to make what she could of it.
"Why, that's too bad," she stammered.
Again he looked up at her in that queer way of mixed feeling, his face showing the marks of pain and yet a touch of teasing there too, mocking her confusion, looking like a man who was suffering and yet a little like a teasing boy. Then he abruptly pulled his hat down over his eyes again, as if to shade them from the sun, and lay flat on his back, one heel kicking at the grass. She could not see his eyes, but she saw his mouth; that faint touch of pleasure in teasing which had perversely lurked in pain had gone now; that twist of his compressed lips was pure pain.
She was utterly bewildered, and so deeply concerned that she had to get ahead of Deane some way, not let him shut himself in with a thing that made his mouth look as if he was bearing physical pain. And then a new thought shot into her concern for him, a thought that seemed too preposterous to entertain, but that would not go away. It did not seem a thing she could speak of; but as she looked at Deane, his mouth more natural now, but the suggestion of pain left there, she had a sudden new sense of all that Deane had done for her. She couldn't leave things like this, no matter how indelicate she might seem.
"Deane," she began timidly, "I don't—in any way—for any reason—make things hard for you, do I?"
For the moment he did not speak, did not push his hat back so she could see his eyes. Then she saw that he was smiling a little; she had a feeling that he was not realizing she could see the smile; it was as if smiling to himself at something that bitterly amused him. It made her feel rather sick; it let that preposterous idea spread all through her.
Then he sat up and looked quizzically at her. "Well, Ruth, you don't expect me to deny, do you, that you did make a thing or two rather hard?" He said it with that touch of teasing. "Was I so magnanimous," he added dryly, "that I let you lose sight of the fact that I wanted you?"
Ruth colored and felt baffled; she was sure he knew well enough that was not what she referred to. He looked at her, a little mockingly, a little wistfully, as if daring her to go on.
"I wasn't talking about things long ago, Deane," she said. "I wondered—" She hesitated, looking at him in appeal, as if asking him to admit he understood what she meant without forcing her to say such a thing.
For a minute he let the pain look out of his eyes at her, looked for all the world as if he wanted her to help him. Then quickly he seemed to shut himself in. He smiled at her in a way that seemed to say, half mockingly, "I've gone!" He hurt her a little; it was hard to be with Deane and feel there was something he was not going to let her help him with. And it made her sick at heart; for surely he knew what she was driving at, driving at and edging away from, and if he could have laughed at her fears wouldn't he have done so? She thought of all Deane had done for her, borne for her. It would be bitter indeed if it were really true she was bringing him any new trouble. But howcouldit be true? It seemed too preposterous; surely she must be entirely on the wrong track, so utterly wrong that he had no idea what it was she had in mind.
As they sat there for a moment in silence she was full of that feeling of how much Deane had done for her, of a longing to do something for him. Gently she said: "I must have made things very hard for you, Deane. The town—your friends—your people, because of me you were against them all. That does make things hard—to be apart from the people you are with." She looked at him, her face softened with affectionate regret, with a newly understanding gratitude. "I've not been very good for your life, have I, Deane?" she said, more lightly, but her voice touched with wistfulness.
He looked at her, as if willing to meet that, as if frankly considering it. "I can't say that you've been very good for my happiness, Ruth," he laughed. And then he said simply, with a certain simple manliness, "But I should say, Ruth, you have been very good for my life." His face contracted a little, as if with pain. That passed, and he went on in that simple way: "You see you made me think about things. It was because of you—through you—I came to think about things. That's good for our lives, isn't it?" That he said sternly, as if putting down something that had risen in him. "Because of you I've questioned things, felt protest. Why, Ruth," he laughed, "if it hadn't been for you I might have taken things in the slick little waytheydo,"—he waved a hand off toward the town. "So just see what I owe you!" he said, more lightly, as if leaving the serious things behind. Then he began to speak of other things.
It left Ruth unsatisfied, troubled. And yet it seemed surely a woman would be proud of a man who had been as fine in a thing, as big and true and understanding, as Deane had been with her. Surely a woman would be proud of a man who had so loyally, at such great cost, been a woman's friend, who, because of friendship, because of fidelity to his own feeling, would stand out that way against others. She tried to think that, for she could not go back to what Deane had left behind. And yet she could not forget that she had not met Amy.
They walked toward home talking quietly about things that happened to come up, more as if they were intimate friends who had constant meetings than as if they had been years apart and were about to part for what would probably be years more. But that consciousness was there underneath; it ruled the silences, made their voices gentler. It was very sweet to Ruth, just before again leaving all home things behind, to be walking in the spring twilight with Deane along that road they knew when they were boy and girl together.
Twilight was deepening to evening when they came to the hill from which they could see the town. They stood still looking off at it, speaking of the beauty of the river, of the bridge, of the strangeness of the town lights when there was still that faint light of day. And then they stood still and said nothing, looking off at that town where they had been brought up. It was beautiful from there, bent round a curve in the broad river, built upon hills. She was leaving it now—again leaving it. She had come home, and now she was going away again. And now she knew, in spite of her anger of the day before, in spite of all there had been to hurt her, in spite of all that had been denied her, that she was not leaving it in bitterness. In one sense she had not had much from her days back home; but in a real sense, she had had much. She looked at that town now with a feeling of new affection. She believed she would always have that feeling of affection for it. It stood to her for things gone—dear things gone; for youth's gladness, for the love of father and mother, for many happy things now left behind. But now that she had come back, had gone through those hard days, she was curiously freed from that town. She had this new affection for it in being freed of it. She would always love it because of what it had meant in the past, but love it as one does love a thing past. It seemed she had to come back to it to let it lose its hold on her. It was of the past, and she knew now that there was a future. What that future was to be she did not know, but she would turn from this place of the past with a new sense of the importance of the future. Standing there with Deane on the hilltop at evening, looking off at that town where they had both been brought up, she got a sense of the significance of the whole thing—the eleven years away, and the three years preceding those years; a sense too of the meaning of those days just past, those recent days at home when there were times of being blinded by the newly seen significance of those years of living. They had been hard days because things had been crowded so close; it had come too fast; currents had met too violently and the long way between cause and effect had been lighted by flashes too blinding. It had been like a great storm in which elements rush together. It had almost swept her down, but she had come through it and this was what she had brought out of it: a sense of life as precious, as worth anything one might have to pay for it, a stirring new sense of the future as adventure. She had been thinking of her life as defined, and now it seemed that the future was there, a beautiful untouched thing, a thing that was left, hers to do what she could with. Somehow she had broken through, broken through the things that had closed in around her. A great new thing had happened to her: she was no longer afraid to face things! In those last few days she had been tossed, now this way, now that; it seemed she had rather been made a fool of, but things had got through to her—she was awake, alive, unafraid. Something had been liberated in her. She turned to Deane, who was looking with a somber steadiness ahead at the town. She touched his arm and he looked at her, amazed at her shining eyes, shining just as they used to when as a girl she was setting out for a good time, for some mischief, excitement.
"Well, anyway, Deane," she said in a voice that seemed to brush everything else aside, "we're alive!"
The summer had gone by and Ted Holland, who had gone West with Ruth in May, was back in Freeport "breaking up the house." The place was offered for sale; things had to be cleared out in one way or another. What none of the children wanted was being sold to anybody who did happen to want it; what nobody wanted was to be given away to such people as had to take what they could get. And there was a great deal of it not even in the class for giving away; "just truck" Ted kept callously calling it to Harriett and their Cousin Flora. He whistled vigorously over some of the "truck,"—a worn dog's collar, an old pair of the queer kind of house shoes his mother wore, a spectacle case he had used to love to hear his father snap shut, dusty, leaky sofa-pillows that had bristled with newness in the "den" which was the delight of his sixteen-year-old heart. He kept saying to Cousin Flora that there was no end to the junk—old school readers, Ruth's party slippers. Just burn it all up, he said, in a crisp voice of efficiency; what was it good for, anyhow? Certainly it had taught him a lesson. He'd never keep anything.
They had been at it for a week—sorting, destroying, disbursing, scattering what a family's life through a generation had assembled, breaking up "the Hollands." Ted, in his own room that morning, around him the things he was going to put in his trunk for taking back West, admitted to himself that it was gruesome business.
Things were over; things at home were all over. This pulling to pieces drove that home hard. Father and mother were gone and now "their stuff" was being got out of the way. After this there would not even be a place where the things they had used were. But he would be glad when they could get through with it; he was finding that there was something wrenching about things that were left, things that had been used and that now there was no longer any use for. The sight of them stabbed as no mere thinking about things could do. It was hard work throwing away "truck" that something seemed to cling to. It was hard to reallygetit, he was thinking; a family lived in a place—seemed really a part of that place, an important part, perhaps; then things changed—people died, moved away, and that family simplywasn'tany more—and things went on just about the same. Whistling, he put some shirts in his trunk, trying to fix his mind on how many new shirts he needed.
He was going back West—to live, to work. Not right where Ruth was, in southwestern Colorado, but in the country a little to the north. He and a fellow he had made friends with out there had bought an apple orchard—the money he was to have from his father would go into it and some of Ruth's money—she wanted him to invest some of hers with his. It was that had made it possible for him to go in with this fellow. He was glad he could do it. The West had "got" him. He believed he could make things go.
And he shouldn't have liked staying on in Freeport. Too many things were different for him to want to stay there. And too many things hurt. Ruth had come to mean too much to him to let him be happy with people who felt as the people there did about her.
He heard Harriett downstairs and went down to speak to her about the price the stove man offered for the kitchen range. He remembered his mother's delight in that range as new; somehow it made him hate selling it for this pittance.
Harriett thought, however, that they had better let it go. One couldn't expect to get much for old things, and they didn't want it on their hands.
They stayed there awhile in the dining-room, considering the problem of getting out of the way various other things there was no longer any use for. Harriett was looking at the bay window. "If the Woodburys take the house," she said, "they won't want these shades."
"Oh, no," replied Ted, "they wouldn't be good enough for Mildred."
The Woodburys had been there the night before to look at the house; they thought of buying it and Mildred, just recently home from Europe with Edith Blair—they had had a hard time getting home, because of the war—had, according to his own way of putting it, made Ted tired. She was so fretful with her father and her ideas of how the place could perhaps be made presentable by being all done over had seemed to Ted "pretty airy." He'd rather strangers had the house. He heard that Mildred was going about a lot with Bob Gearing—one of the fellows in town who had money.
Ted pulled out his watch. "I want to get down and see Deane at his noon office hours," he said.
Harriett turned from the window. "What have you got to see him about?" she asked sharply.
"Why—just see him," he answered in surprise. "Why shouldn't I want to see him? Haven't seen him since I got back. He'll want to hear about Ruth."
Harriett seemed about to speak, then looked at the door of the kitchen, where a man was packing dishes. "I don't think I'd go to him forthat," she said in lowered voice.
Ted looked at her in bewildered inquiry.
"Mrs. Franklin has left him," she said shortly. She glanced at the kitchen door, then added in a voice that dropped still lower: "And the talk is that it's because of Ruth."
For a minute Ted just stood staring at her. Then his face was aflame with angry blood. "Thetalk!" he choked. "So that's the new 'talk'! Well—"
"S—h," warned Harriett, and stepped over and closed the kitchen door.
"I'd like to tell some of them what I think of their 'talk,'" he blazed. "Oh, I'd like to tell some of thesewarts—"
"Ted!" she admonished, nodding her head toward the closed door.
"What do I care? I'd like to have 'em hear me! Iwantthem to know that I—" He broke off and stood looking at her. "It doesn't seem to worry you much!" he thrust at her.
"It did, Ted," she said patiently. "I—it did." She looked so distressed, so worn as she said it that it mollified him until she added: "And still, you mustn't be too hard on people. A woman who has put herself in that position—"
"There you go! 'Put herself' in that position! Put herself!" he jeered angrily, "in that position! As if the position was something Ruth got into on purpose! And after all these years!—still talking about her 'position.' Let me tell you something! I'll tell you the woman that's 'put herself' in the position I'd think would make her hate herself! That's Mrs. Williams!She'sthe one that's 'put herself'—"
"Ted," she broke in sternly, "you mustnot!"
But, "You make mesick!" he flung back at her and snatched hat and coat from the hall rack and left the house with a violent bang of the front door.
He did not go down to Deane's office. He stalked ahead, trying to hold down the bitter rage that was almost choking him. At one time when he looked up he saw that he was passing the house Deane Franklin had built before his marriage and noted that it was closed, all the shades were clear down. Flower beds that had been laid out in the spring had been let go. It looked all wrong to see a new place so deserted, so run down. He remembered seeing Deane working out in that yard in the spring. He hurried on by. His heart was hot with resentment—real hatred—of the town through which he walked. He loathed the place! he told himself. Picking on Ruth forthis—ready to seize on her for anything that put her in bad! He had been with Ruth for four months. He knew now just how things were with her. It gave him some idea of what it was she had gone through. It made him hate the town that had no feeling for her.
He had walked out from town, not giving any thought to where he was going, just walking because he had to be doing something. He was about to cross a little bridge and stepped to the side of the road to let the vehicle right behind him get ahead. He stood glaring down at the creek and did not look up until he heard the wagon, just as it struck the bridge, stop. Then he saw that it was a woman driving the market wagon and recognized her as Mrs. Herman, who had been so good to Ruth.
He stepped up eagerly to greet her; his face quickly cleared as he held out his hand and he smiled at her with a sudden boyish warmth that made her face—it was thin, tired—also light with pleasure. He kept shaking her hand; it seemed wonderfully good of her to have come along just then—she was something friendly in a hostile world. He went out eagerly, gratefully, to the something friendly. He had had about all he could stand of the other things, other feelings. He had told Ruth that he would be sure to go and see Mrs. Herman. He got in with her now and they talked of Ruth as they jogged through the country which he now noticed was aflame with the red and gold of October.
He found himself chatting along about Ruth just as if there was not this other thing about her—the thing that made it impossible to speak of her to almost anyone else in the town. It helped a lot to talk of Ruth that way just then. He had seemed all clogged up with hatred and resentment, fury at the town made him want to do something to somebody, and pity for Ruth made him feel sick in his sense of helplessness. Now those ugly things, those choking, blinding things fell away in his talking about Ruth to this woman who wanted to hear about her because she cared for her, who wanted to hear the simple little things about her that those other people had no interest in. He found himself chatting along about Ruth and Stuart—their house, their land, the field of peas into which they turned their sheep, the potatoes grown on their place that summer. He talked of artesian wells and irrigation, of riding western horses and of camping in the mountains. Thinking of it afterwards he didn't know when he had talked so much. And of course, as everyone was doing those days, they talked about the war. She was fairly aflame with feeling about it.
He rode all the way home with Mrs. Herman, stayed for lunch and then lingered about the place for an hour or more after that. He felt more like himself than he had at any time since coming home; he could forget a little about that desolate house that was no longer to be his home, and the simple friendly interest of this woman who was Ruth's friend helped to heal a very sore place in his heart.
But afterwards, back there at home where it was as if he was stripping dead years, what came over him was the feeling that things were not as they had seemed out there with Mrs. Herman. She was like that, but in being that way she was different from the whole world, at least from practically the whole of the world that he knew. Working with old things cast him back to it all. He brooded over it there in the desolate place of things left behind; the resentful feeling toward the town, together with that miserable, helpless feeling of passionate pity for Ruth settled down upon him and he could not throw it off.
He saw Deane that night; he saw him at the Club where he went to play a game of pool, because he had to get away from the house for awhile. Deane was sitting apart from the various groups, reading a magazine. Ted stood in the door of that room looking at him a minute before Deane looked up from the page. He saw that his face was thinner; it made him look older; indeed he looked a good deal older than when, just the spring before, Ted used to see him working around that place that was all shut up now. And in that moment of scrutiny he saw something more than just looking older. If you didn't know Deane you'd think—well, you'd think you didn't want to know him. And he looked as if he didn't care about your knowing him, either; he looked as if he'd thank people to let him alone. Then he glanced up and saw Ted and it seemed there were a few people he didn't want to have let him alone.
But though he brightened on seeing him, looked like himself as he came quickly up to shake hands, he was not like himself in the talk that followed. It was as if he wanted to be, tried to be, but he was constrained in asking about the West, "the folks." He seemed to want to hear, yet he wasn't like himself, though Ted could scarcely have defined the difference. He was short in what he said, cut things off sharply, and in little pauses his face would quickly settle to that moroseness. Ted told of his own plans and Deane was enthusiastic about that. Then he fell silent a moment and after that said with intensity: "I wishIwas going to pull out from here!"
"Well, why don't you?" laughed Ted, a little diffidently.
"Haven't got the gumption, I guess," said Deane more lightly, and as he smiled gave Ted the impression of trying to pull himself out from something.
Later in the evening a couple of men were talking of someone who was ill. "They have Franklin, don't they?" was asked, and the answer came, "Not any more. They've switched."
Walking home, he thought it had been said as if there was more to it, as if there had been previous talk about other people who had "switched." Why, surely it couldn't be that because—for some reason or other—his wife had left him people were taking it out on his practice? That seemed not only too unfair but too preposterous. Deane was the best doctor in town. What had his private affairs—no matter what the state of them—got to do with him as a physician? Surely eventhattown couldn't be as two-by-four as that!
But it troubled him so persistently that next morning, when they were alone together in the attic, he brought himself to broach it to Harriett, asking, in the manner of one interested in a thing because of its very absurdity, just what the talk was about Ruth and the Franklins.