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Fidelity

<h2>CHAPTER TWENTY</h2> The two days when the natural course of life was arrested by death had passed. Their father had been buried that afternoon, and in the early evening Ted and Ruth were sitting on the little upper porch, very quiet in the new poignant emptiness of the house. Many people had been coming and going in those last few days; now that was over and there was a pause before the routine of life was to be resumed. The fact that the nurse had gone seemed to turn the page. Ruth had just asked how long Cyrus was going to stay and Ted replied that he wanted to stay on a week or perhaps more, attending to some business. She knew how crowded it must be for them at Harriett's, knew that if she went away Cyrus would come home. There seemed nothing more to keep her; she would like to be with Ted awhile, but it seemed she could not do that without continuing a hard condition for them all. They could settle into a more natural order of things with her not there. It was time for her to go. It was hard to have to think that. She would love to have stayed a little while. She had been away so long—wanting home for so long. She knew now, facing the going away, how much she had secretly hoped might result from this trip back home. She had seen a number of people in the past few days—relatives, old friends of the family, friends of Ted. She had done better in meeting them than, just a little while before, she would have thought possible. Something remained with her from that hour at her mother's grave, that strange hour when she had seemed to see life from outside, beyond it. That had summoned something within herself that no personal hurt could scatter, as if taking her in to something from which no circumstance could drive her out. She had felt an inner quiet, a steadiness within; there was power in it, and consolation. It took her out of that feeling of having no place—no right to a place, the feeling that had made her wretched and powerless. She was of life; her sure inner sense of the reality and beauty of that seemed a thing not to be broken down from without. It was hers, her own. It sustained her; it gave her poise. The embarrassment of other people gave way before her simple steadiness. She had had but the one point of contact with them—that of her father's death; it made her want more, made going away hard. It was hard to leave all the old things after even this slight touch with them again. And that new quiet, that new force within was beginning to make for new thinking. She had thought much about what she had lived through—she could not help doing that, but she was thinking now with new questionings. She had not questioned much; she had accepted. What was gathering within her now was a feeling that a thing so real, so of life as her love had been should not be a thing to set her apart, should not be a thing to blight the lives that touched hers. This was not something called up in vindication, a mere escape from hard thinking, her own way out from things she could not bear; it was deeper than that, far less facile. It came from that inner quiet—from that strange new assurance—this feeling that her love should not have devastated, that it was too purely of life for that; that it was a thing to build up life, to give to it; this wondering, at once timid and bold, if there was not something wrong with an order that could give it no place, that made it life's enemy. She had been afraid of rebellious thinking, of questionings. There had been so much to fight, so much to make her afraid. At first all the strength of her feeling had gone into the fight for Stuart's health; she was afraid of things that made her rebellious—needing all of herself, not daring to break through. The circumstances had seemed to make her own life just shut down around her; and even after those first years, living itself was so hard, there were so many worries and disappointments—her feeling about it was so tense, life so stern—that her thoughts did not shoot a long way out into questionings. She had done a thing that cut her off from her family; she had hurt other people and because of that she herself must suffer. Life could not be for her what it was for others. She accepted much that she did not try to understand. For one thing, she had had no one to talk to about those things. Seeing how Stuart's resentment against the state of things weakened him, keeping him from his full powers to meet those hard conditions, she did not encourage their talking of it and had tried to keep herself from the thinking that with him went into brooding and was weakening. She had to do the best she could about things; she could not spend herself in rebellion against what she had to meet. Like a man who finds himself on a dizzy ledge she grew fearful of much looking around. But now, in these last few days, swept back into the wreckage she had left, something fluttered to life and beat hard within her spirit, breaking its way through the fearfulness that shut her in and sending itself out in new bolder flights. Not that those outgoings took her away from the place she had devastated; it was out of the poignancy of her feeling about the harm she had done, out of her new grief in it that these new questionings were born. The very fact that she did see so well, and so sorrowingly, what she had done, brought this new feeling that it should not have been that way, that what she had felt, and her fidelity to that feeling—ruthless fidelity though it was—should not have blighted like this. There was something that seemed at the heart of it all in that feeling of not being ashamed in the presence of death—she who had not denied life. Silence had fallen between her and Ted, she saddened in the thought of going away and open to the puzzling things that touched her life at every point; looking at Ted—proud of him—hating to leave him now just when she had found him again, thinking with loving gratefulness and pride of how generous and how understanding he had been with her, how he was at once so boyish and so much more than his years. The fine seriousness of his face tonight made him very dear and very comforting to her. She wanted to keep close to him; she could not bear the thought of again losing him. If her hard visit back home yielded just that she would have had rich gain from it. She began talking with him about what he would do. He talked freely of his work, as if glad to talk of it; he was not satisfied with it, did not think there was much "chance" there for him. Ted had thought he wanted to study law, but his father, in one of his periods of depression, had said he could not finish sending him through college and Ted had gone into one of the big manufactories there. He was in the sales department, and he talked to Ruth of the work. He told her of his friends, of what they were doing; they talked of many things, speaking of the future with that gentle intimacy there can be between those sorrowing together for things past. Their sensitive consciousness of the emptiness of the house—the old place, their home,—brought them together through a deep undercurrent of feeling. Their voices were low as they spoke of more intimate things than it is usual to speak of without constraint, something lowered between them as only a grief shared can lower bars to the spirit, their thinking set in that poignant sense of life which death alone seems able to create. Ted broke a pause to say that he supposed it was getting late and he must be starting for Harriett's. Cyrus had asked him to come over awhile that evening. Mr. McFarland, their family lawyer, was going out of town for a few days, leaving the next morning. He was coming in that evening, more as the old friend than formally, to speak to them about some business matters, Cyrus's time being limited and there being a number of things to arrange. "I hate leaving you alone, Ruth," said Ted, lingering. She looked over to him with quick affectionate smile. "I don't mind, Ted. Somehow I don't mind being alone tonight." That was true. Being alone would not be loneliness that evening. Things were somehow opened; all things had so strangely opened. She had been looking down the deep-shadowed street, that old street down which she used to go. The girl who used to go down that street was singularly real to her just then; she had about her the fresh feeling, the vivid sense, of a thing near in time. Old things were so strangely opened, old feeling was alive again: the wild joy in the girl's heart, the delirious expectancy—and the fear. It was strange how completely one could get back across the years, how things gone could become living things again. That was why she was not going to mind being alone just then; she had a sense of the whole flow of her life—living, moving. It did not seem a thing to turn away from; it was not often that things were all open like that. "I shouldn't wonder if Deane would drop in," said Ted, as if trying to help himself through leaving her there alone. "He may," Ruth answered. She did not say it with enthusiasm, much as she would like to talk with Deane. Deane was just the one it would be good to talk with that night. But Deane never mentioned his wife to her. At first, in her preoccupation, and her pleasure in seeing him, she had not thought much about that. Then it had come to her that doubtless Deane's wife would not share his feeling about her, that she would share the feeling of all the other people; that brought the fear that she might, again, be making things hard for Deane. She had done enough of that; much as his loyalty, the rare quality of his affectionate friendship meant to her, she would rather he did not come than let the slightest new shadow fall upon his life because of her. And yet it seemed all wrong, preposterous, to think anyone who was close to Deane, anyone whom he loved, should not understand this friendship between them. She thought of how, meeting after all those years, they were not strange with each other. That seemed rare—to be cherished. "What's Deane's wife like, Ted?" she asked. "I haven't met her," he replied, "but I've seen her. She's awfully good-looking; lots of style, and carries herself as if—oh, as if she knew she was somebody," he laughed. "And I guess Deane thinks she is," he added with another laugh. "Guess he decided that first time he met her. You know he stopped in Indianapolis to see a classmate who was practising there—met her at a party, I believe, and—good-by Deane! But somehow she isn't what you'd expect Deane's wife to be," he went on more seriously. "Doesn't look that way, anyhow. Looks pretty frigid, I thought, and, oh—fixed up. As if she wasn't just real." Ruth's brows puckered. If there was one thing it seemed the wife of Deane Franklin should be, it was real. But doubtless Ted was wrong—not knowing her. It did not seem that Deane would be drawn to anyone who was not real. She lingered in the thought of him. Real was just what Deane was. He had been wonderfully real with her in those days—days that had made the pattern of her life. Reality had swept away all other things between them. That carried her back to the new thinking, the questions. It seemed it was the things not real that were holding people apart. It was the artificialities people had let living build up around them made those people hard. People would be simpler—kinder—could those unreal things be swept away. She dwelt on the thought of a world like that—a world of people simple and real as Deane Franklin was simple and real. She was called from that by a movement and exclamation from Ted, who had leaned over the railing. "There goes Mildred Woodbury," he said,—"and alone." His tone made her look at him in inquiry and then down the street at the slight figure of a girl whose light dress stood out clearly between the shadows. Mildred was the daughter of a family who lived in the next block. The Woodburys and the Hollands had been neighbors and friends as far back as Ruth could remember. Mildred was only a little girl when Ruth went away—such a pretty little girl, her fair hair always gayly tied with ribbons. She had been there with her mother the night before and Ruth had been startled by her coming into the room where she was and saying impulsively: "You don't remember me, do you? I'm Mildred—Mildred Woodbury." "And you used to call me Wuth!" Ruth had eagerly replied. It had touched her, surrounded as she was by perfunctoriness and embarrassment that this young girl should seek her out in that warm way. And something in the girl's eyes had puzzled her. She had returned to thought of it more than once and that made her peculiarly interested in Ted's queer allusion to Mildred now. "Well?" she inquired. "Mildred's getting in rather bad," he said shortly. "Getting—what do you mean, Ted?" she asked, looking at him in a startled way. "People are talking about her," he said. "People are—?" she began, but stopped, looking at him all the while in that startled way. "Talking about her," he repeated. "I guess it's been going on for some time—though I didn't hear about it until a little while ago." "About what, Ted?" Her voice faltered and it seemed to make him suddenly conscious of what he was saying, to whom he spoke. "Why,"—he faltered now too, "Mildred's acting sort of silly—that's all. I don't know—a flirtation, or something, with Billy Archer. You don't know him; he came here a few years ago on some construction work. He's an engineer. He is a fascinating fellow, all right," he added. Ruth pushed back her chair into deeper shadow. "And—?" she suggested faintly. "He's married," briefly replied Ted. She did not speak for what seemed a long time. Ted was beginning to fidget. Then, "How old is Mildred, Ted?" Ruth asked in a very quiet voice. "About twenty, I guess; she's a couple of years younger than I am." "And this man?—how old is he?" That she asked a little sharply. "Oh, I don't know; he's in the older crowd; somewhere in the thirties, I should say." "Well—" But she abruptly checked what she had sharply begun to say, and pushed her chair still further back into shadow. When Ted stole a timid glance at her a minute later he saw that she seemed to be holding her hands tight together. "And doesn't Mildred's mother—?" It seemed impossible for her to finish anything, to say it out. He shook his head. "Guess not. It's funny—but you know a person's folks—" There was another silence; then Ted began to whistle softly and was looking over the railing as if interested in something down on the lawn. "And you say people are really—talking about Mildred, Ted?" Ruth finally asked, speaking with apparent effort. He nodded. "Some people are snubbing her. You know this town is long on that," he threw in with a short laugh. "I saw Mrs. Brewer—remember her?—she used to be Dorothy Hanlay—out and out snub Mildred at a party the other night. She came up to her after she'd been dancing with Billy—Lord knows how many times she'd danced with him that night—and Mrs. Brewer simply cut her. I saw it myself. Mildred got white for a moment, then smiled in a funny little way and turned away. Tough on her, wasn't it?—for really, she's a good deal of a kid, you know. And say, Ruth, there's something mighty decent about Edith—about Mrs. Blair. She saw it and right afterwards she went up to Mildred, seemed particularly interested in her, and drew her into her crowd. Pretty white, don't you think? That old hen—Mrs. Brewer—got red, let me tell you, for Edith can put it all over her, you know, on being somebody, and that got her—good and plenty!" There was a queer little sound from Ruth, a sound like a not quite suppressed sob; Ted rose, as if for leaving, and stood there awkwardly, his back to her. He felt that Ruth was crying, or at least trying not to cry. Why had he talked of a thing like that? Why did he have to bring in Edith Lawrence? It seemed better to go on talking about it now, as naturally as he could. "I never thought there was much to Mildred," he resumed, not turning round. "She always seemed sort of stuck up with the fellows of our crowd. But I guess you never can tell. I saw her look at Billy Archer the other night." He paused with a little laugh. "There wasn't anything very stuck up about that look." As still Ruth did not speak he began to talk about the property across the street being for sale. When he turned around for taking leave—it being past the time for going to Harriett's—it made him furious at himself to see how strained and miserable Ruth's face was. She scarcely said good-by to him; she was staring down the street where Mildred had disappeared a few moments before. All the way over to Harriett's he wondered just what Ruth was thinking. He was curious as well as self-reproachful. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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