Someone had come into the room; she did not turn at once, trying to make her blurred eyes clear. When she looked around she saw her sister Harriett. Her father had relaxed his hold on her hand and so she rose and turned to her sister.

"Well, Ruth," said Harriett, in an uncertain tone. Then she kissed her.

The kiss, too, was uncertain, as if she had not known what to do about it, but had decided in its favor. But she had kissed her. Again that hunger to be taken in made much of little. She stood there struggling to hold back the sobs. If only Harriett would put her arms around her and really kiss her!

But Harriett continued to stand there uncertainly. Then she moved, as if embarra.s.sed. And then she spoke. "Did you have a--comfortable trip?" she asked.

The struggle with sobs was over. Ruth took a step back from her sister.

It was a perfectly controlled voice which answered: "Yes, Harriett, my trip was comfortable--thank you."

Harriett flushed and still stood there uncertainly. Then, "Did the town look natural?" she asked, diffidently this time.

But Ruth did not say whether the town had looked natural or not. She had noticed something. In a little while Harriett would have another baby.

And she had not known about it! Harriett, to be sure, had had other babies and she had not known about it, but somehow to see Harriett, not having known it, brought it home hard that she was not one of them any more; she did not know when children were to be born; she did not know what troubled or what pleased them; did not know how they managed the affairs of living--who their neighbors were--their friends. She had not known about Harriett; Harriett did not know about her--her longing for a baby, longing which circ.u.mstances made her sternly deny herself.

Unmindful of the hurt of a moment before she now wanted to pour all that out to Harriett, wanted to talk with her of those deep, common things.

The nurse had come in the room and was beginning some preparations for the night. Harriett was moving toward the door. "Harriett," Ruth began timidly, "won't you come in my room a little while and--talk?"

Harriett hesitated. They were near the top of the stairs and voices could be heard below. "I guess not," she said nervously. "Not tonight,"

she added hurriedly; "that's Edgar down there. He's waiting for me."

"Then good night," said Ruth very quietly, and turned to her room.

All day long she had been trying to keep away from her room. "Thought probably you'd like to have your old room, Ruth," Ted had said in taking her to it. He had added, a little hurriedly, "Guess no one's had it since you left."

It looked as if it was true enough no one had used it since she went out of it that night eleven years before. The same things were there; the bed was in the same position; so was her dressing table, and over by the big window that opened to her side porch was the same little low chair she always sat in to put on her shoes and stockings. It took her a long way back; it made old things very strangely real. She sat down in her little chair now and looked over at a picture of the Madonna Edith had once given her on her birthday. She could hear people moving about downstairs, hear voices. She had never in her whole life felt as alone.

And then she grew angry. Harriett had no right to treat her like that!

She had worked; she had suffered; she had done her best in meeting the hard things of living. She had gone the way of women, met the things women meet. Why, she had done her own washing! Harriett had no right to treat her as if she were clear outside the common things of life.

She rose and went to the window and lowering it leaned out. She had grown used to turning from hard things within to the night. There in the South-west, where they slept out of doors, she had come to know the night. Ever since that it had seemed to have something for her, something from which she could draw. And after they had gone through those first years and the fight was not for keeping life but for making a place for it in the world, she had many times stepped from a cramping little house full of petty questions she did not know how to deal with, from a hard little routine that threatened their love out to the vast, still night of that Colorado valley and always something had risen in herself which gave her power. So many times that had happened that instinctively she turned to the outside now, leaning her head against the lowered casing. The oak tree was gently tapping against the house--that same old sound that had gone all through her girlhood; the familiar fragrance of a flowering vine on the porch below; the thrill of the toads off there in the little ravine, a dog's frolicsome barking; the laughter of some boys and girls who were going by--old things those, sweeping her back to old things. Down in the next block some boys were singing that old serenading song, "Good-night, Ladies." Long ago boys had sung it to her. She stood there listening to it, tears running down her face.

She was startled by a tap at the door; dashing her hands across her face she eagerly called, "Come in."

"Deane's here, Ruth," said Ted. "Wants to see you. Shall I tell him to come in here?"

She nodded, but for an instant Ted stood there looking at her. She was so strange. She had been crying, and yet she seemed so glad, so excited about something.

"Oh, Deane," she cried, holding out her two hands to him, laughter and sobs crowding out together, "_talk_ to me! How's your mother? How's your Aunt Margaret's rheumatism? What kind of an automobile have you? What about your practice? What about your dog? Why, Deane," she rushed on, "I'm just starving for things like that! You know I'm just Ruth, don't you, Deane?" She laughed a little wildly. "And I've come home. And I want to know about things. Why I could listen for hours about what streets are being paved--and who supports old Mrs. Lynch! Don't you see, Deane?" she laughed through tears. "But first tell me about Edith! How does she look? How many children has she? Who are her friends? And oh, Deane--tell me,--does she _ever_ say anything about me?"

They talked for more than two hours. She kept pouring out questions at him every time he would stop for breath. She fairly palpitated with that desire to hear little things--what Bob Horton did for a living, whether Helen Matthews still gave music lessons. She hung tremulous upon his words, laughing and often half crying as he told little stories about quarrels and jokes--about churches and cooks. In his profession he had many times seen a system craving a particular thing, but it seemed to him he had never seen any need more pitifully great than this of hers for laughing over the little drolleries of life. And then they sank into deeper channels--he found himself telling her things he had not told anyone: about his practice, about the men he was a.s.sociated with, things he had come to think.

And she talked to him of Stuart's health, of their efforts at making a living--what she thought of dry farming, of heaters for apple orchards; the cattle business, the character of Western people. She told him of the mountains in winter--snow down to their feet; of Colorado air on a winter's morning. And then of more personal, intimate things--how lonely they had been, how much of a struggle they had found it. She talked of the disadvantage Stuart was at because of his position, how he had grown sensitive because of suspicion, because there were people who kept away from him; how she herself had not made friends, afraid to because several times after she had come to know the people around her they had "heard," and drawn away. She told it all quite simply, just that she wanted to let him know about their lives. He could see what it was meaning to her to talk, that she had been too tight within and was finding relief. "I try not to talk much to Stuart about things that would make him feel bad," she said. "He gets despondent. It's been very hard for Stuart, Deane. He misses his place among men."

She fell silent there, brooding over that--a touch of that tender, pa.s.sionate brooding he knew of old. And as he watched her he himself was thinking, not of how hard it had been for Stuart, but of what it must have been to Ruth. That hunger of hers for companionship told him more than words could possibly have done of what her need had been. He studied her as she sat there silent. She was the same old Ruth, but a deepened Ruth; there was the same old sweetness, but new power. He had a feeling that there was nothing in the world Ruth would not understand; that bars to her spirit were down, that she would go out in tenderness to anything that was of life--to sorrow, to joy, with the insight to understand and the warmth to care. He looked at her: worn down by living, yet glorified by it; hurt, yet valiant. The life in her had gone through so much and circ.u.mstances had not been able to beat it down. And this was the woman Amy said it was insulting of him to ask her to meet!

She looked up at him with her bright, warm smile. "Oh, Deane, it's been so good! You don't know how you've helped me. Why you wouldn't believe,"

she laughed, "how much better I feel."

They had risen and he had taken her hand for goodnight. "You always helped me, Deane," she said in her simple way. "You never failed me. You don't know"--this with one of those flashes of feeling that lighted Ruth and made her wonderful--"how many times, when things were going badly, I've thought of you--and wanted to see you."

They stood there a moment silent; the things they had lived through together, in which they had shared understanding, making a spiritual current between them. She broke from it with a light, fond: "Dear Deane, I'm so glad you're happy. I want you to be happy always."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Those words kept coming back to him after he had gone to bed: "I'm so glad you're happy--I want you to be happy always." Amy was asleep when he came home, or he took it for granted that she was asleep and was careful not to disturb her, for it was past midnight. He wished she would turn to him with a sleepy little smile. He wanted to be made to feel that it was true he was happy, that he was going to be happy always. That night was not filled with the sweetness of love's faith in permanence. He tried to put away the thought of how Amy had looked as she said those things about Ruth. Knowing the real Ruth, his feeling about her freshened, deepened, he could not bear to think of Amy as having said those things. He held it off in telling himself again that that was what the people of the town had done, that he himself had not managed well. He would try again--a little differently. Amy was really so sweet, so loving, he told himself, that she would come to be different about this. Though he did not dwell on that, either--upon her coming to be different; her face in saying those things was a little too hard to forget. He kept up a pretence with himself on the surface, but down in his heart he asked less now; he was not asking of love that complete sharing, that deep understanding which had been his dream before he talked to Amy. He supposed things would go on about the same--just that that one thing wouldn't be, was the thought with which he went to sleep, making his first compromise with his ideal for their love. Just as he was falling asleep there came before him, half of dreams, Ruth's face as it had been when she seemed to be brooding over the things life brought one. It was as if pain had endowed her with understanding. Did it take pain to do it?

He had an early morning call to make and left home without really talking to Amy. When he woke in the morning, yearning to be back in the new joy of her love, he was going to tell her that he was sorry he had hurt her, sorry there was this thing they looked at differently, but that he loved her with his whole heart and that they were going to be happy just the same, and then maybe some time they'd "get together" on this. It was a thing he would not have said he would do, but there are many things one will do to get from the shadow back into that necessary sunlight of love.

However, there was not opportunity then for doing it; he had to hurry to the hospital and Amy gave him no chance for such a moment with her. She had the manner of keeping up an appearance of going on as if nothing had happened; as if that thing were left behind--frosted over. She kissed him good-by, but even in that there seemed an immense reservation. It made him unhappy, worried him. He told himself that he would have to talk to Amy, that it wouldn't do to leave the thing that way.

It had been so easy to talk to Ruth; it seemed that one could talk to her about anything, that there was no danger of saying a thing and having it bound back from a wall of opinions and prejudices that kept him from her. There was something resting, relaxing, in the way one could be one's self with Ruth, the way she seemed to like one for just what one was. He had always felt more at ease with her than with anyone else, but now he more than ever had the feeling that her mind was loosened from the things that held the minds of most of the women he knew. It was a great thing not to have those holdbacks in talking with a friend, to be freed of that fear of blundering into a thing that would be misunderstood. He did not face the fact that that was just the way it was with Amy, that there was constantly the fear of saying something that would better have been left unsaid. But he was thinking that being free to say what one was feeling was like drawing a long breath.

And in thinking of it as he went about his calls that morning, in various homes, talking with a number of people, it occurred to him that many of those things he had come to think, things of which he did not often try to talk to others, he had arrived at because of Ruth. It was amazing how his feeling about her, thoughts through her, had run into all his thinking. It even occurred to him that if it had not been for her he might have fallen into accepting many things more or less as the rest of the town did. It seemed now that as well as having caused him much pain she had brought rich gain; for those questionings of life, that refusal placidly to accept, had certainly brought keener satisfactions than he could have had through a closer companionship with facile acceptors. Ruth had been a big thing in his life, not only in his heart, but to his mind.

He had come out of the house of one of his patients and was standing on the steps talking with the woman who had anxiously followed him to the door. The house was directly across the street from the Lawrences'.

Edith was sitting out on the porch; her little girl of eight and the boy, who was younger, were with her. They made an attractive picture.

He continued his rea.s.suring talk to the woman whose husband was ill, but he was at the same time thinking of Ruth's eager questionings about Edith, about Edith's children, her hunger for every smallest thing he could tell her. When he went down to his car Edith, looking up and seeing him, gayly waved her hand. He returned the salute and stood there as if doing something to the car. Sitting there in the morning sunshine with her two children Edith looked the very picture of the woman for whom things had gone happily. Life had opened its pleasantest ways to Edith. He could not bring himself to get in his car and start away; he could not get rid of the thought of what it would mean to Ruth if Edith would go to see her, could not banish the picture of Ruth's face if Edith were to walk into the room. And because he could not banish it he suddenly turned abruptly from his car and started across the street and up the steps to the porch.

She smiled brightly up at him, holding out her hand. "Coming up to talk to me? How nice!"

He pulled up a chair, bantering with the children.

"I know what you've come for," Edith laughed gayly. "You've come to hear about how lovely Amy was at the tea yesterday. You want to know all the nice things people are saying about her."

His face puckered as it did when he was perplexed or annoyed. He laughed with a little constraint as he said: "That would be pleasant hearing, I admit. But it was something else I wanted to talk to you about just now, Edith."

She raised her brows a little in inquiry, bending forward slightly, waiting, her eyes touched with the antic.i.p.ation of something serious. He felt sure his tone had suggested Ruth to her; that indicated to him that Ruth had been much in her mind.

"I had a long visit with Ruth last night," he began quietly.

She did not speak, bending forward a little more, her eyes upon him intently, anxiously.

"Edith?"

"Yes, Deane?"

He paused, then asked simply: "Edith, Ruth is very lonely. Won't you go to see her?"

She raised her chin in quick, startled way, some emotion, he did not know just what, breaking over her face.

"I thought I'd come and tell you, Edith, how lonely--how utterly lonely--Ruth is, because I felt if you understood you would want to go and see her."

Still Edith did not speak. She looked as though she were going to cry.