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<h2>CHAPTER TWELVE</h2> Everyone who talked about it—and that meant all who knew anything about it—blamed Deane Franklin for not stopping Ruth. Perhaps the reason he did not try to defend himself was simply that he could not hope to show how simple was his acceptance of the fact that it would have been impossible to stop her. To understand that, one would have to have seen. Oh, to be sure, he could have put obstacles in her way, tightened it around her, but anything he might have done would only have gone to making it harder for Ruth to get away; it would not have kept her from going. And after all, he himself saw it as, if not the thing she should do, the thing—it being what it was then—she could not help doing. But one would have to have seen Ruth's face, would need to have been with her in those days to understand that. As to warning her family, as he was so blamed by them and by all the town for not doing, that would have seemed to him just one of those things he could have thrown in her way. He did feel that he must try to talk to her of what it was going to mean to her people; he saw that she saw, that it had cruel power to make her suffer—and no power to stop her. Nothing could have stopped her; she was like a maddened thing—desperate, ruthless, indomitable. She would have fought the world; she would have let the whole world suffer. Love's fear possessed her utterly. He had had the feeling all along that it was rushing on to disaster. He stood back from it now with something like awe: a force not for him to control. And he, with it from within, was the only one who did not condemn Stuart Williams for letting Ruth go. A man, and older than she, they scorned him for letting an infatuated girl throw her life away like that. And it was not only that he saw that the man was sick and broken; it was that he saw that Stuart, just as Ruth, had gone in love beyond his power to control love, that he was mastered, not master, now. And in those last days, at least, it was Ruth who dominated him. There was something terrible in the simplicity with which she saw that she had to go; she never once admitted it to the things that were to be argued about. He talked to her, they both tried to talk to her, about the danger of getting tuberculosis. When he began on that she laughed in his face—and he could not blame her. As if that could keep her! And as she laughed her tortured eyes seemed mockingly to put to him—"What difference would it make?" When, after it all came out, he did not join the outraged town in the outcry against Ruth, when it further transpired that he had known about her going and had not tried to stop it, he was so much blamed that it even hurt his practice. There were women who said they would not countenance a young physician who had the ideas of life he must have. His own people were incensed at what they called the shameful advantage Ruth had taken of him, holding that she, as an evil woman, had exerted an influence over him that made him do what was against his own nature. As to the Hollands, there had been a stormy hour with Mr. Holland and Cyrus, and a far worse half hour with Mrs. Holland, when her utterly stricken face seemed to stiffen in his throat the things he wanted to say for Ruth, things that might have helped Ruth's mother. And then he was told that the Hollands were through, not alone with Ruth, but with him. But he was called there two years later when Mrs. Holland was dying. She had been begging for him. That moved him deeply because of what in itself it told of her long yearning for Ruth. After that there were a number of years when he was not inside that gate. Cyrus did not speak to him and the father might as well not have done so. He was amazed, then, when Mr. Holland finally came to him about his own health. "I've come to you, Deane," he said, "because I think you're the best doctor in town now—and I need help." And then he added, and after that first talk this was the closest to speaking of it they ever came: "And I guess you didn't understand, Deane; didn't see it right. You were young—and you're a queer one, anyway." Perhaps the reason he was never able to do better in explaining himself, or in defending Ruth, was simply because in his own thinking about it there were never arguments, or thoughts upon conduct, but always just that memory of Ruth's face as he had seen it in revealing moments. Everyone saw something that Ruth should have done differently. In the weeks they spent upon it they found, if not that they would be able to forgive her, at least that they could think of her with less horror had she done this, had she not done that. But Ruth lived through that week seeing little beyond the one thing that she must get through it. She was driven; she had to go ahead, bearing things somehow, getting through them. She had a strange power to steel herself, to keep things, for the most part, from really getting through to her. She could not go ahead if she began letting things in. She sealed herself over and drove ahead with the singleness of purpose, the exclusions, of any tormented thing. It was all terrible, but it was as if she were frozen at the heart to all save the one thing. She stayed through the week because it was the time of Edith Lawrence's wedding and she was to be maid-of-honor. "I'll have to stay till after Edith's wedding," she said to Deane and Stuart. Then on her way home from Deane's office she saw that she could not go on with her part in Edith's wedding. That she could see clearly enough despite the thing driving her on past things she should be seeing. What would she say to Edith?—how get that over? Someone was giving a party for Edith that night; every day now things were being given for her. She must not go to them. How could she go? It would be absurd to expect that of herself. She would have to tell Edith that she could not be her bridesmaid. What a terrible thing Edith would think that was! She would have to give a reason—a big reason. What would she tell her?—that she had been called away?—but where? Should she tell her the truth? Could she? Edith would find it almost unbelievable. It was almost unbelievable to herself that her life could be permeated by a thing Edith knew nothing about. It was another of the things she would have said, had she known her story only through hearing it, would not be possible. But it was with Edith as it was with her own family—simply that such a thing would never occur to her. She winced in thinking of it that way. A number of times she had been right on the edge of a thing it seemed would surely be disclosing, but it strangely happened she had never quite gone over that edge. For one thing, Edith had been away from Freeport a good deal in those three years. Mrs. Lawrence had opposed Edith's marrying so young, and had taken her to Europe for one year, and in the last year they had spent part of the time in California. In the last couple of months, since Edith's return from the West, she had spoken of Ruth's not seeming like herself, of fearing she was not well. She had several times hurt Edith's feelings by refusing, for no apparent reason, to do things with her. But she had always been able to make that up afterwards and in these plans for the wedding she and Edith had been drawn close again. When she went over to the Lawrences' late that afternoon she had decided that she would tell Edith. It seemed she must. She could not hope to tell it in a way that would make Edith sympathize. There was not time for that, and she dared not open herself to it. She would just say it briefly, without any attempts at justifying it. Something like: "Edith, there's been something you haven't known. I'm not like you. I'm not what you think I am. I love Stuart Williams. We've loved each other for a long time. He's sick. He's got to go away—and I'm going with him. Good-bye, Edith,—and I hope the wedding goes just beautifully." But that last got through—got down to the feeling she had been trying to keep closed, the feeling that had seemed to seal itself over the moment she saw that she must go with Stuart. "I hope the wedding goes just beautifully!" Somehow the stiff little phrase seemed to mean all the old things. There was a moment when she knew: knew that she was walking those familiar streets, that she would not be walking them any more; knew that she was going over to Edith's—that all her life she had been going over to Edith's—that she would not be going there any more; knew that she was going away from home, that she loved her father and mother—Ted—her grandfather—and Terror, her dog. Realization broke through and flooded her. She had to walk around a number of blocks before she dared go to Edith's. Miss Edith was up in her room, Emma, the maid, said, taking it for granted that Ruth would go right up. Yes, she always did go right up, she was thinking. She had always been absolutely at home at the Lawrences'. They always wanted her; there were times of not wanting to see anyone else, but it seemed both Edith and her mother always wanted her. She paused an instant on the stairs, not able to push past that thought, not able to stay the loving rush of gratefulness that broke out of the thought of having always been wanted. She had a confused sense of Edith as barricaded by her trousseau. She sat behind a great pile of white things; she had had them all out of her chest for showing to some of her mother's friends, she said, and her mother had not yet put them back. Ruth stood there fingering a wonderfully soft chemise. It had come to her that she was not provided with things like these. What would Edith think of her, going away without the things it seemed one should have? It seemed to mark the setting of her apart from Edith, though there was a wave of tenderness—she tried to hold it back but could not—for dear Edith because she did have so many things like this. Edith was too deep in the occupation of getting married to mark an unusual absorption in her friend. She was full of talk about what her mother's friends had said of her things, the presents that were coming in, her dress for the party that night, the flowers for the wedding. It made Edith seem very young to her. And in her negligee, her hair down, she looked childish. Her pleasure in the plans for her wedding seemed like a child's pleasure. It seemed that hurting her in it would be horribly like spoiling a child's party. Edith's flushed face, her sparkling eyes, her little excited, happy laugh made it impossible for Ruth to speak the words she had come to say. For three days it went on like that: going ahead with the festivities, constantly thinking she would tell Edith as soon as they got home from this place or that, waiting until this or that person had gone, then dumb before the childish quality of Edith's excitement, deciding to wait until the next morning because Edith was either too happy or too tired to talk to her that night. That ingenuousness of her friend's pleasure in her wedding made Ruth feel, not only older, but removed from her by experience. Those days of her own frozen misery were days of tenderness for Edith, that tenderness which one well along the road of living feels for the one just setting feet upon the path. She was never able to understand how she did get through those days. It was an almost unbelievable thing that, knowing, she was able, up to the very last, to go right on with the old things, was able to talk to people as if nothing were different, to laugh, to dance. There were times when something seemed frozen in her heart and she could go on doing the usual things mechanically, just because she knew so well how to do them; then there were other times when every smallest thing was stabbed through and through with the consciousness that she would not be doing it again. And yet even then, she could go on, could appear the same. They were days of a terrible power for bearing pain. When the people of the town looked back to it, recalling everything they could about Ruth Holland in those days, some of them, remembering a tenderness in her manner with Edith, talked of what a hypocrite she was, while others satisfied themselves of her utter heartlessness in remembering her gaiety. It was two days before the wedding when she saw that she was not going to be able to tell Edith and got the idea of telling Edith's mother. Refusing to let herself consider what she would say when she began upon it, she went over there early that morning—Edith would not be up. Mrs. Lawrence was at breakfast alone. Ruth kept herself hard against the welcoming smile, but it seemed she was surely going to cry when, with a look of concern, Mrs. Lawrence exclaimed: "Why, Ruth dear, how pale you are!" She was telling Emma to bring Ruth a cup of coffee, talking of how absurd it was the way the girls were wearing themselves out, how, for that reason, she would be glad when it was all over. She spoke with anxiety of how nervous Edith had grown in the past week, how tired she was as a result of all the gaiety. "We'll have to be very careful of her, Ruth," she said. "Don't go to Edith with any worries, will you? Come to me. The slightest thing would upset Edith now." Ruth only nodded; she did not know what to say to that; certainly, after that, she did not know how to say the things she had come to tell. For what in the world could upset Edith so much as to have her maid-of-honor, her life-long friend, the girl she cared for most, refuse, two days before her wedding, to take her part in it? "And you can do more than anyone else, Ruth," Mrs. Lawrence urged. "You know Edith counts so on you," she added with an intimate little smile. And again Ruth only nodded, and bent over her coffee. She had a feeling of having been caught, of being helpless. Mrs. Lawrence was talking about the caterer for the wedding; she wished it were another kind of salad. Then she wanted Ruth to come up and look at her dress; she wasn't at all satisfied with the touch of velvet they had put on it. After that some one else came in and Mrs. Lawrence was called away. Ruth left without saying what she had come to say. She knew now that she would not say it. She went home seeing that she must go through with the wedding. It was too late now to do anything else. Edith would break down—her pleasure in her wedding spoiled; no, Edith must be spared—helped. She must do this for Edith. No matter what people thought of her, no matter what Edith herself thought—though wouldn't she understand? Ruth considered with a tortured wistfulness—the thing to do now was to go through with it. Edith must look beautiful at her wedding; her happiness must be unmarred. Later, when she was away with Will—happy—she could bear it better. And she would understand that Ruth had wished to spare her; had done it to help her. She held that thought with her—and drove ahead. There were moments in those last two days at home when it seemed that now her heart was indeed breaking: a kindly note in the voice of her father or mother—one of Ted's teasing jokes—little requests from her grandfather; then doing things she had done for years and knowing while doing them that she would not be doing them any more—the last time she cut the flowers, and then that last night when she went to bed in her own room, the room she had had ever since old enough to have a room of her own. She lay there that night and listened to the branches of the great oak tapping the house. She had heard that sound all her life; it was associated with all the things of her life; it seemed to be speaking for all those things—mourning for them. But the closest she came to actual breaking down was that last day when her dog, laying his head upon her knee, looked with trust and affection up into her eyes. As she laid her hand upon his head his eyes seemed to speak for all the love she had known through all the years. It seemed she could not bear it, that her heart could not bear it, that she would rather die. But she did bear it; she had that terrible power for bearing. If only she had told her mother, they said over and over again. But if she told her mother she would not go—that was how she saw that; they would not let her; or rather, she would have no strength left to fight through their efforts to keep her. And then how could she tell her mother when her mother would never in the world understand? She did not believe that her mother could so much as comprehend that she could love where she should not, that a girl like Ruth—or rather, Ruth—could love a man it was not right she love. She had never talked with her mother of real things, had never talked with her of the things of her deepest feeling. She would not know how to do it now, even had she dared. Her mother helped her dress for the wedding, talking all the while about plans for the evening—just who was going to the church, the details about serving. Ruth clung to the thought that those were the things her mother was interested in; they always had been, surely they would continue to be. In her desperation she tried to think that in those little things her mother cared so much about she would, after a time, find healing. With that cruel power for bearing pain she got away from home without breaking down; she got through that last minute when she realized she would not see Ted or her grandfather again,—they would not be at the wedding and would be in bed when she returned from it, and she was to leave that night on the two o'clock train. It was unbelievable to her that she had borne it, but she had driven ahead through utter misery as they commented on her dress, praising her and joking with her. That was in the living-room and she never forgot just how they were grouped—her grandfather's newspaper across his knees; Mary, who had worked for them for years, standing at the door; her dog Terror under the reading table—Ted walking round and round her. Deane was talking with her father in the hall. Her voice was sharp as she went out and said: "We must hurry, Deane." The wedding was unreal; it seemed that all those people were just making the movements of life; there were moments when she heard them from a long way off, saw them and was uncertain whether they were there. And yet she could go on and appear about the same; if she seemed a little queer she was sure it was attributed to natural feeling about her dearest friend's wedding—to emotion, excitement. There were moments when things suddenly became real: a moment alone with Edith in her room, just before they went to the church; a moment when Mrs. Lawrence broke down. Walking down the aisle, the words of the service—that was in a vague, blurred world; so was Edith's strained face as she turned away, and her own walking down the aisle with Deane, turning to him and smiling and saying something and feeling as if her lips were frozen. Yet for three hours she laughed and talked with people. Mrs. Williams was at the reception; several times they were in the same group. Oh, it was all unreal—terrible—just a thing to drive through. There was a moment at the last when Edith clung to her, and when it seemed that she could not do the terrible thing she was going to do, that she was not going to do it—that the whole thing was some hideous nightmare. She wanted to stay with Edith. She wanted to be like Edith. She felt like a little girl then, just a frightened little girl who did not want to go away by herself, away from everything she knew, from people who loved her. She did not want to do that awful thing! She tried to pretend for a moment she was not going to do it—just as sometimes she used to hide her face when afraid. At last it was all over; she had gone to the train and seen Edith and Will off for the East. Edith's face was pressed against the window of the Pullman as the train pulled out. It was Ruth she was looking for; it was to Ruth her eyes clung until the train drew her from sight. Ruth stood there looking after the train; the rest of their little group of intimate friends had turned away—laughing, chattering, getting back in the carriages. Deane finally touched Ruth's arm, for she was standing in that same place looking after the train which had now passed from sight. When he saw the woe of her wet face he said gruffly: "Hadn't we better walk home?" He looked down at her delicate slippers, but better walk in them than join the others looking like that. He supposed walking would not be good for that frail dress; and then it came to him, and stabbed him, that it didn't much matter. Probably Ruth would not wear that dress again. She walked home without speaking to him, looking straight ahead in that manner she all along had of ruthlessly pressing on to something; her face now was as if it were frozen in suffering, as if it had somehow stiffened in that moment of woe when Edith's face was drawn from her sight. And she looked so tired!—so spent, so miserable; as if she ought to be cared for, comforted. He took her arm, protectingly, yearningly. He longed so in that moment to keep Ruth, and care for her! He wanted to say things, but he seemed to be struck dumb, appalled by what it was they were about to do. He held her arm close to him. She was going away! Now that the moment had come he did not know how he was going to let her go. And looking like this!—suffering like this—needing help. But he must not fail her now at the last; he must not fail her now when she herself was so worn, so wretched, was bearing so much. As they turned in at the gate he fought with all his strength against the thought that they would not be turning in at that gate any more and spoke in matter of fact tones of where he would be waiting for her, what time she must be there. But when they reached the steps they stood there for a minute under the big tree, there where they had so many times stood through a number of years. As they stood there things crowded upon them hard; Ruth raised her face and looked at him and at the anguish of her swimming eyes his hands went out to her arms. "Don't go, Ruth!" he whispered brokenly. "Ruth!—don't go!" But that made her instantly find herself, that found the fight in her, to strengthen herself, to resist him; she was at once erect, indomitable, the purpose that no misery could shake gleamed through her wet eyes. Then she turned and went into the house. Her mother called out to her, sleepily asking if she could get out of her dress by herself. She answered yes, and then Mrs. Holland asked another sleepy question about Edith. Then the house was still; she knew that they were all asleep. She got her dress off and hung it carefully in the closet. She had already put some things in her bag; she put in a few more now, all the while sobbing under her breath. She took off her slippers. After she had done that she stood looking at her bed. She saw her nightgown hanging in the closet. She wanted to put on her nightgown and get into bed! She leaned against the bed, crying. She wanted to put on her nightgown and get into bed! She was so tired, so frightened, so worn with pain. Then she shook herself, steeled again, and began putting on her shoes; put on her suit, her hat, got out her gloves. And then at the very last she had to do what she had been trying to make herself do all that day, and had not dared begin to do. She went to her desk and holding herself tight, very rapidly, though with shaking hand, wrote this note: <blockquote>"Dear Mother; I'm going away. I love Stuart Williams. I have for a long time. Oh, mother—I'm so sorry—but I can't help it. He's sick. He has to go away, so you see I have to go with him. It's terrible that it is like this. Mother, try to believe that I can't help it. After I get away I can write to you more about it. I can't now. It will be terrible for you—for you all. Mother, it's been terrible for me. Oh, try not to feel any worse than you can help. People won't blame you. I wish I could help it. I wish—Can't write more now. Write later. I'm so sorry—for everybody. So good to me always. I love all—Ruth." </blockquote> She put her head down on the desk and cried. Finally she got up and blindly threw the note over on her bed; with difficulty, because of the shaking of her hands, put on her gloves, picked up her bag. And then she stood there for a moment before turning off the light; she saw her little chair, her dressing-table. She reached up and turned off the light and then for another moment stood there in the darkened room. She listened to the branches of the oak tree tapping against the house. Then she softly opened her bedroom door and carefully closed it behind her. She could hear her father's breathing; then Ted's, as she passed his door. On the stairs she stood still: she wanted to hear Ted's breathing again. But she had already gone where she could not hear Ted's breathing. Her hand on the door, she stood still. There was something so unreal about this, so preposterous—not a thing that really happened, that could happen to her. It seemed that in just a minute she would wake up and find herself safe in her bed. But in another minute she was leaning against the outside door of her home, crying. She seemed to have left the Ruth Holland she knew behind when she finally walked down the steps and around the corner where Deane was waiting for her. They spoke scarcely a word until they saw the headlight of her train. And then she drew back, clinging to him. "Ruth!" he whispered, holding her, "don't!" But that seemed to make her know that she must; she straightened, steeled herself, and moved toward the train. A moment later she was on the platform, looking down at him. When she tried to smile good-by, he whirled and walked blindly away. She did not look from the window as long as the lights of the town were to be seen. She sat there perfectly still, hands tight together, head down. For two hours she scarcely moved. Such strange things shot through her mind. Maybe her mother, thinking she was tired, would not go to her room until almost noon. At least she would have her coffee first. Had she remembered to put Edith's handkerchiefs in her bag? Had anyone else noticed that the hook at the waist of Edith's dress had come unfastened? Edith was on a train too—going the other way. How strange it all was! How terrible beyond belief! Just as she neared the junction where she would meet Stuart and from which they would take the train South together, the thought came to her that none of the rest of them might remember always to have water in Terror's drinking pan. When she stepped from the train she was crying—because Terror might want a drink and wonder why she was not there to give it to him. He would not understand—and oh, he would miss her so! Even when Stuart, stepping from the darkness to meet her, drew her to him, brokenly whispering passionate, grateful words, she could not stop crying—for Terror, who would not understand, and who would miss her so! He became the whole world she knew—loving, needing world, world that would not understand, and would miss her so! The woman who, on that train from Denver, had been drawn into this story which she had once lived was coming now into familiar country. She would be home within an hour. She had sometimes ridden this far with Deane on his cases. Her heart began to beat fast. Why, there was the very grove in which they had that picnic! She could scarcely control the excitement she felt in beginning to find old things. There was something so strange in the old things having remained there just the same when she had passed so completely away from them. Seeing things she knew brought the past back with a shock. She could hardly get her breath when first she saw the town. And there was the Lawrences'! Somehow it was unbelievable. She did not hear the porter speaking to her about being brushed off; she was peering hungrily from the window, looking through tears at the town she had not seen since she left it that awful night eleven years before. She was trembling as she stood on the platform waiting for the slowing train to come to a stop. There was a moment of wanting to run back in the car, of feeling she could not get off. The train had stopped; the porter took her by the arm, thinking by her faltering that she was slipping. She took her bag from him and stood there, turned a little away from the station crowd. Ted Holland had been waiting for that train, he also with fast beating heart; he too was a little tremulous as he hurried down to the car, far in the rear, from which passengers were alighting from the long train. He scanned the faces of the people who began passing him. No, none of them was Ruth. His picture of Ruth was clear, though he had not seen her for eleven years. She would be looking about in that eager way—that swift, bright way; when she saw him there would be that glad nodding of her head, her face all lighting up. Though of course, he told himself, she would be older, probably a little more—well, dignified. The romance that secretly hung about Ruth for him made him picture her as unlike other women; there would be something different about her, he felt. The woman standing there half turned from him was oddly familiar. She was someone he knew, and somehow she agitated him. He did not tell himself that that was Ruth—but after seeing her he was not looking at anyone else for Ruth. This woman was not "stylish looking." She did not have the smart look of most of the girls of Ruth's old crowd. He had told himself that Ruth would be older—and yet it was not a woman he had pictured, or rather, it was a woman who had given all for love, not a woman who looked as if she had done just the things of women. This woman stooped a little; care, rather than romance, had put its mark upon her; instead of the secretly expected glamour of those years of love there had been a certain settling of time. He knew before he acknowledged it that it was Ruth, knew it by the way this woman made him feel. He came nearer; she had timidly—not with the expected old swiftness—started in the direction he was coming. She saw him—knew him—and in that rush of feeling which transformed her anything of secret disappointment was swept from him. He kissed her, as sheepishly as a brother would any sister, and was soon covering his emotion with a practical request for her trunk check. But as they walked away the boy's heart was strangely warmed. Ruth was back! As to Ruth, she did not speak. She could not. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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