Fidelity Part 33

"And I'd like to know where under the sun you'd go!" he demanded hotly, irritated at the slight smile his last words had brought.

"What I will do, Stuart, after leaving you, is for me to determine, isn't it?"

"A nice way to treat me!" he cried, and threw himself down on the couch, elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. "After all these years--after all there has been--that's a _nice_ way--" he choked.

She was quick to go over and sit beside him; she leaned a little against him, her hand on his arm, just as she had sat many times when he needed her, when she brought him comfort. The thought of all those times rose in her and brought tears to her eyes that had been burning dry a moment before. She felt the feeling this had whipped to life in him and was moved by it, and by an underlying feeling of the sadness of change. For his expostulations spoke of just that--change. She knew this for the last hurt she could help him through, that she must help him through this hurt brought him by this last thing she could do for him. Something about things being like that moved her deeply. She saw it all so clearly, and so sadly. It was not grief this brought him; this was not the frenzy or the anguish in the thought of losing her that there would have been in those other years. It was shock, rather--disturbance, and the forcing home to him that sense of change. He would have gone on without much taking stock, because, as he had said, it was the thing to do. Habit, a sense of fitness, rather than deep personal need, would have made him go on. And now it was his sense that it was gone, his resentment against that, his momentary feeling of being left desolate.

She looked at his bowed head through tears. Gently she laid her hand on it. She thought of him as he stood before the automobile the other day lighting up in the gay talk with that girl. She knew, with a sudden wrench in her heart she knew it, that he would not be long desolate. She understood him too well for that. She knew that, hard as she seemed in that hour, she was doing for Stuart in leaving him the greatest thing she could now do for him. A tear fell to her hand in her clear knowing of that. There was deep sadness in knowing that, after all there had been, to leave the way cleared of herself was doing a greater thing than anything else she could do for him.

A sob shook her and he raised his face upon which there were tears and clutched her two wrists with his hands. "Ruth," he whispered, "it will come back. I feel that this has--has brought it back."

The look of old feeling had transformed his face. After barren days it was sweet to her. It tempted her, tempted her to shut her eyes to what she knew and sink into the sweetness of believing herself loving and loved again. Perhaps, for a little time, they could do it. To be deeply swayed by this common feeling, to go together in an emotion, was like dear days gone. But it was her very fidelity to those days gone that made her draw just a little away, and, tears running down her face, shake her head. She knew too well, and she had the courage of her knowing. This was something that had seeped up from old feeling; it had no life of its own. What they were sharing now was grief over a dead thing that had been theirs together. That grief, that sharing, left them tender. This was their moment--their moment for leaving it. They must leave it before it lay there between them both dead and unmourned, clogging life for them. She whispered to him: "Just because of all it has meant--let's leave it while we can leave it like this!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The man who worked for them had gone ahead in the spring wagon with her trunk. She was waiting for Ted to hitch the other horse to the buggy and drive her in to the train. She was all ready and stood there looking about the house she was leaving. There were things in that room which they had had since their first years together--that couch, this chair, had come to them in Arizona in the days when they loved each other with a pa.s.sion that made everything else in the world a pale thing before their love. She stood picking out things that they had had when love was flaming strong in them and it seemed they two fought together against the whole world. And as she stood there alone in their place in common that she was about to leave she was made sick by a sense of failure--that desolate sense of failure she had tried all along to beat down. That love had been theirs--and this was what it had come to. That wonder had been--and it ended in the misery of this leavetaking. She turned sharply around, opened the door and stood there in the doorway, her back to the place she was quitting, her pale stern face turned to the mountains--to that eastern range which she was going to cross. She tried to draw something from them, draw strength for the final conflict which she knew she would have with Ted while they drove in to town. She looked toward the barn-yard to see if he was most ready, and could not but smile a little at his grim, resolute face as he was checking up the horse. She could see so well that he was going to make the best of his time while driving her in to the train. And it seemed she had nothing left in her for combat; she would be glad to see the train that was to take her away.

Three days before Stuart had gone suddenly to Denver. He went with his friend Stoddard, regarding some of their arrangements for Montana. He had found only at the last minute that he would have to go, had hurriedly driven out from town to get his things and tell her he was going. He had been in the house only a few minutes and was all excitement about the unexpected trip. It was two days after their talk.

After their moment of being swept together by the feeling of things gone he had, as if having to get a footing on everyday ground, ended the talk with saying: "I'll tell you, Ruth, you need a little change. We'll have to work it out." The next day they were both subdued, more gentle with each other than they had been of late, but they did not refer to the night before. After he had hurriedly kissed her good-by when leaving for Denver he had turned back and said, "And don't you worry--about things, Ruth. We'll get everything fixed up--and a little change--" He had hurried down to the machine without finis.h.i.+ng it.

She had gone to the window and watched him disappear. He was sitting erect, alert, talking animatedly with his friend. She watched him as far as she could see him. She knew that she would not see him again.

And then she hitched up the horse and drove into town and telephoned Ted, who lived about fifty miles to the north. She told him that she was going East and asked him to come down the next day and see her.

She had known that Ted would not approve, would not understand, but she had not expected him to make the fight he had. It had taken every bit of her will, her force, to meet him. Worn now, and under the stress of the taking leave, at once too tired and too emotional, she wished that he would let it rest. But the grim line of his jaw told her that he had no such intention. She felt almost faint as they drove through the gate.

She closed her eyes and did not open them for some time.

"You see, Ruth," Ted began gently, as if realizing that she was very worn, "you just don't realize how crazy the whole thing is. It's ridiculous for you to go to New York--alone! You've never been there,"

he said firmly.

"No. That is one reason for going," she answered, rather feebly.

"One reason for going!" he cried. "What'll you do when the train pulls in? Where'll you _go_?"

"I don't know, Ted," she said patiently, "just where I will go. And I rather like that--not knowing where I will go. It's all new, you see.

Nothing is mapped out."

"It's a fool thing!" he cried. "Don't you know that something will happen to you?"

She smiled a little, very wearily. "Lots of things have happened to me, Ted, and I've come through them somehow." After a moment she added, with more spirit: "There's just one thing might happen to me that I haven't the courage to face." He looked at her inquiringly. "Nothing happening,"

she said, with a little smile.

He turned impatiently and slapped the horse with the reins. "You seem to have lost your senses," he said sharply.

He drove along in silence for a little. Ruth looked at him and his face seemed hard. She thought of how close she and Ted had come, how good he had been, how much it had meant. She could not leave him like this. She must make the effort, must gather herself together and try and make Ted see. "Perhaps, Ted," she began tremulously, "you think I have taken leave of my senses because you haven't tried very hard to understand just what it is I feel." She smiled wanly as she added, "You've been so absorbed in your own disapproval, you know."

"Well, how can I be any other way?" he demanded. "Going away like this--for no reason--on a wild goose chase! Isn't Stuart good to you?"

he asked abruptly.

"Yes, Ted," she answered, as if she were tired of saying it, "Stuart is good enough to me."

"I suppose things aren't--just as they used to be," he went on, a little doggedly. "Heavens!--they aren't with anybody! And what will people say?" he broke out with new force. "Think of what people in Freeport will say, Ruth. They'll say the whole thing was a failure, and that it was because you did wrong. They'll say, when the chance finally came, that Stuart didn't want to marry you." He colored but brought it out bluntly.

"I suppose they will," agreed Ruth.

"And if they knew the truth--or what I know, though heaven knows I'm balled up enough about what the truth really is!--they'd say it just shows again that you are different, not--something wrong," he finished bitterly.

She said nothing for a moment. "And is that what you think, Ted?" she asked, choking a little.

"I don't understand it, Ruth," he said, less aggressively. "I had thought you would be so glad of the chance to marry. I--" he hesitated but did not pursue that. He had never told her of going to see Mrs.

Williams, of the effort he had made for her. "It seemed that now, when your chance came, you ought to show people that you do want to do the right thing. It surprises me a lot, Ruth, that you don't feel that way, and--Oh! I don't get it at all," he concluded abruptly.

Tears were very close when, after a little, she answered: "Well, Ted, maybe when you have less of life left you will understand better what it is I feel. Perhaps," she went on in answer to his look inquiry, "when the future has shrunk down to fewer years you'll see it as more important to get from it what you can."

They drove for a little time in silence. They had come in sight of the town and she had not won Ted; she was going away without his sympathy.

And she was going away alone, more alone this time than she had been twelve years before.

She laid her hand on his arm, left it there while she was speaking.

"Ted," she said, "it's like this. This has gone for me. It's all gone.

It was wonderful--but it's gone. Some people, I know, could go on with the life love had made after love was gone. I am not one of those people--that's all. You speak of there being something discreditable in my going away just when I could marry. To me there would be something discreditable in going on. It would be--" she put her hand over her heart and said it very simply, "it would be unfaithful to something here." She choked a little and he turned away.

"But I don't see how you can bear, Ruth," he said after a moment, made gentle by her confidence, "to feel that it has--failed. I don't see how you can bear--after all you paid for it--to let it come to nothing."

"Don't say that, Ted!" she cried in a voice that told he had touched the sorest place. "Don't say that!" she repeated, a little wildly. "You don't know what you're talking about. _Failed?_ A thing that glorified life for years--_failed_?"

Her voice broke, but it was more steadily she went on: "That's the very reason I'm going to New York--simply that it may _not_ come to nothing.

I'm going away from it for that very reason--that it may not come to nothing! That my life may not come to nothing. What I've had--what I've gone through--lives in me, Ted. It doesn't come to nothing if I--come to something!" She stopped abruptly with a choking little laugh.

Ted looked at her wonderingly; but the hardness had gone out of his look. "But what are you going to do, Ruth?" he asked gently.

"I don't know yet. I've got to find out."

"You must see that I can't help but worry about it," he went on. "Going so far away--to a place absolutely unknown to you--where I'm afraid it will be so much harder than you think."

She did not answer him, looking off to that eastern range she was going to cross, as if the mountains could help her to hold on to her own feeling against the doubts he was trying to throw around her.

"You see, Ruth," he went on, as if feeling his way, not wanting to hurt her, "what has been may make it hard to go on. You can't tell. You'll never know--never be sure. Old things may come up to spoil new ones for you. That's what I'm so afraid of. That's what it seems you aren't seeing. You would be so much--safer--to stay with Stuart."

She turned to him with a little laugh, her lashes wet. "Yes, Ted dear, I suppose I would. But I never did seem to stay where I was safest--did I?"

"Don't worry about me, Ted," she said just as they were coming into town. "I'm going to take some of father's money--yes, yes, I know it isn't a great deal, but enough for a little while, till I get my bearings--and I'm going to make things come alive for me again. I'm not through yet, that's all. I could have stayed with life gone dead; it would have been safer, as you say. But you see I'm not through yet, Ted--I guess that's the secret of it all. I want more life--more things from life. And I'm going to New York just because it will be so completely new--so completely beginning new--and because it's the center of so many living things. And it's such a wonderful time, Ted. It seems to me the war is going to make a new world--a whole new way of looking at things. It's as if a lot of old things, old ideas, had been melted, and were fluid now, and were to be shaped anew. That's the way it seems to me, and that makes me the more eager to get some things from life that I haven't had. I've been shut in with my own experience. If I stayed on here I'd be shut in with my own dead experiences. I want to go on! I can't stop here--that's all. And we have to find our way for going on. We must find our own way, Ted, even," she choked, "though what we see as the way may seem a wild goose chase to some one we love. I'll tell you why I'm going to New York," she flashed with sudden defiance.

"I'm going because I want to!"

She laughed a little and he laughed with her. Then she went on more gently: "Because I want to. Just the thought of it has made life come alive for me--that's reason enough for going to the ends of the earth!

I'm going to _live_ again, Ted--not just go on with what living has left. I'm going to find some work to do. Yes I _can_!" she cried pa.s.sionately in response to his gesture "I suppose to you it seems just looking out for myself--seems unfaithful to Stuart. Well, it isn't--that's all I can say, and maybe some day you'll see that it wasn't. It isn't unfaithful to turn from a person you have nothing more to offer, for whom you no longer make life a living thing. It's more faithful to go. You'll see that some time, Ted. But be good to Stuart,"