He lingered to chat with her awhile--of the arrangements for the night, various little things about the house, just the things they naturally would talk of; his feeling of embarra.s.sment, diffidence, melted quite away before her quiet simplicity, her warm naturalness. She had seemed timid all day--holding back. Now she seemed just quietly to take her place. He had been afraid of doing or saying something that would hurt her, that had kept him from being natural, he knew. But now he forgot about that. And when Ruth put her hands up on his shoulders and lifted her face to kiss him goodnight he suddenly knew how many lonely nights there had been. "I'm so glad I've got you back, Ted," she said; "I want to talk to you about heaps of things."

And Ted, as he went to bed, was thinking that there were heaps of things he wanted to talk to Ruth about. He hadn't had much of anybody to talk to about the things one does talk to one's own folks about. His father had been silent and queer the last couple of years, and somehow one wouldn't think of "talking" to Harriett. He and Ruth had always. .h.i.t it off, he told himself. He was glad she had found her feet, as he thought of it; evidently talking with Deane had made her feel more at home.

Deane was a bully sort! After he had fallen into a light sleep he awakened and there came all freshly the consciousness that Ruth was back, asleep in her old room. It made him feel so good; he stretched out and settled for sleep with satisfaction, drowsily thinking that there _were_ heaps of things he wanted to talk to Ruth about.

Ruth, too, was settling to sleep with more calm, something nearer peace than it had seemed just a little while before she was going to find in her father's house. Talking with Deane took her in to something from which she had long felt shut out. It was like coming on a camp fire after being overawed by too long a time in the forest--warmth and light and cheerful crackling after loneliness in austere places. Dear Deane!

he was always so good to her; he always helped. It was curious about Deane--about Deane and her. There seemed a strange openness--she could not think of it any other way--between them. Things she lived through, in which he had no part, drew her to him, swung her back to him. There was something between his spirit and hers that seemed to make him part even of experiences she had had with another man, as if things of the emotions, even though not shared, drew them together through the spirit.

Very deeply she hoped that Deane would be happy. She wished she might meet his wife, but probably she wouldn't. She quickly turned from that thought, wanting to stay by the camp fire. Anyway, Deane was her friend.

She rested in that thought of having a friend--someone to talk to about things small and droll, about things large and mysterious. Thoughts needed to be spoken. It opened something in one to speak them. With Stuart she had been careful not to talk of certain things, fearing to see him sink into that absorption, gloom, she had come to dread.

She cried a little after she had crept into her bed--her own old bed; but they were just tears of feeling, not of desolation. The oak tree was tapping against the house, the breeze, carrying familiar scents, blew through the room. She was back home. All the sadness surrounding her homecoming could not keep out the sweet feeling of being back that stole through her senses.

Next morning she went about the house with new poise; she was quiet, but it was of a different quality from the quiet of the day before. Flora Copeland found herself thinking less about maintaining her carefully thought out manner toward Ruth. She told herself that Ruth did not seem like "that kind of a woman." She would forget the "difficult situation"

and find herself just talking with Ruth--about the death of her sister Mary's little girl, of her niece who was about to be married. There was something about Ruth that made one slip into talking to her about things one was feeling; and something in the quiet light of her tired sweet eyes made one forget about not being more than courteous. Even Laura Abbott, the nurse, found herself talking naturally to this Ruth Holland, this woman who lived with another woman's husband, who was more "talked about" than any woman in the town had ever been. But somehow a person just forgot what she really was, she told a friend; she wasn't at all like you'd expect that kind of a person to be. Though of course there were terribly embarra.s.sing things--like not knowing what to call her.

Between Ruth and Harriett things went much better than they had the day before. Ruth seemed so much herself when they met that afternoon that unconsciously Harriett emerged from her uncertainty, from that fumbling manner of the day before. The things holding them apart somehow fell back before the things drawing them together. They were two sisters and their father was dying. The doctor had just been there and said he did not believe Mr. Holland could live another day. They were together when he told them that; for the moment, at least, it melted other things away.

They stood at the head of the stairs talking of things of common concern--the efficiency of the nurse, of Ted, who had been with his father more than any of the rest of them, for whom they feared it would be very hard when the moment came. Then, after a little pause made intimate by feeling shared, Harriett told when she would be back, adding, "But you'll see to it that I'm telephoned at once if--if I should be wanted, won't you, Ruth?"--as one depending on this other more than on anyone else. Ruth only answered gently, "Yes, Harriett," but she felt warmed in her heart. She had been given something to do. She was depended on. She was not left out.

She sat beside her father during the hour that the nurse had to be relieved. Very strongly, wonderfully, she had a feeling that her father knew she was there, that he wanted her there. In the strange quiet of that hour she seemed to come close to him, as if things holding them apart while he was of life had fallen away now that he no longer was life-bound. It was very real to her. It was communion. Things she could not have expressed seemed to be flowing out to him, and things he could not have understood seemed reaching him now. It was as if she was going with him right up to the border--a long way past the things of life that drove them apart. The nurse, coming back to resume duty, was arrested, moved, by Ruth's face. She spoke gently in thanking her, her own face softened. Flora Copeland, meeting Ruth in the hall, paused, somehow held, and then, quite forgetful of the manner she was going to maintain toward Ruth, impulsively called after her: "Are you perfectly comfortable in your room, Ruth? Don't you--shan't I bring in one of the big easy chairs?"

Ruth said no, she liked her own little chair, but she said it very gently, understanding; she had again that feeling of being taken in, the feeling that warmed her heart.

She went in her room and sat quietly in her little chair; and what had been a pent up agony in her heart flowed out in open sorrowing: for her mother, who was not there to sit in her room with her; for her father, who was dying. But it was releasing sorrowing, the sorrowing that makes one one with the world, drawing one into the whole life of human feeling, the opened heart that brings one closer to all opened hearts.

It was the sadness that softens; such sadness as finds its own healing in enriched feeling. It made her feel very near her father and mother; she loved them; she felt that they loved her. She had hurt them--terribly hurt them; but it all seemed beyond that now; they understood; and she was Ruth and they loved her. It was as if the way had been cleared between her and them. She did not feel shut in alone.

Ted hesitated when he came to her door a little later, drew back before the tender light of her illumined face. It did not seem a time to break in on her. But she held out her hand with a little welcoming gesture and, though strangely subdued, smiled lovingly at him as she said, "Come on in, Ted."

Something that the boy felt in her mood made him scowl anew at the thing he had to tell her. He went over to the window, his back to her, and was snapping his finger against the pane. "Well," he said at last, gruffly, "Cy gets in today. Just had a wire."

Ruth drew back, as one who has left exposed a place that can be hurt draws back when hurt threatens. Ted felt it--that retreating within herself, and said roughly: "Much anybody cares! Between you and me, I don't think father would care so very much, either."

"Ted!" she remonstrated in elder sister fashion.

"Cy's got a hard heart, Ruth," he said with a sudden gravity that came strangely through his youthfulness.

Ruth did not reply; she did not want to say what she felt about Cy's heart. But after a moment the domestic side of it turned itself to her.

"Will Louise come with him, Ted?"

"No," he answered shortly.

His tone made her look at him in inquiry, but he had turned his back to her again. "I was just wondering about getting their room ready," she said.

For a moment Ted did not speak, did not turn toward her. Then, "We don't have to bother getting any room ready for Cy," he said, with a scoffing little laugh.

Ruth's hand went up to her throat--a curious movement, as if in defense.

"What do you mean, Ted?" she asked in low quick voice.

Ted's finger was again snapping the window pane. Once more he laughed disdainfully. "Our esteemed brother is going to the hotel," he jeered.

As Ruth did not speak he looked around. He could not bear her face.

"Don't you care, Ruth," he burst out. "Why, what's the difference?" he went on scoffingly. "The hotel's a good place. He'll get along all right down there--and it makes it just so much the better for us."

But even then Ruth could not speak; it had come in too tender a moment, had found her too exposed; she could only cower back. Then pride broke through. "Cyrus needn't go to the hotel, Ted. If he can't stay in the same house with me--even when father is dying--then I'll go somewhere else."

"You'll not!" he blazed, with a savagery that at once startled and wonderfully comforted her. "If Cy wants to be a fool, let him be a fool!

If he can't act decent--then let him do what he pleases--or go to the devil!"

She murmured something in remonstrance, but flooded with gratefulness for the very thing she tried to protest against. And then even that was struck out. She had brought about this quarrel, this feeling, between the two brothers. Ted's antagonism against Cyrus, comforting to her, might work harm to Ted. Those were the things she did. That was what came through her.

The comfort, communion, peace of a few minutes before seemed a mockery.

Out of her great longing she had deluded herself. Now she was cast back; now she knew. It was as if she had only been called out in order to be struck back. And it seemed that Ted, whom she had just found again, she must either lose or harm. And the shame of it!--children not coming together under their father's roof when he was dying! Even death could not break the bitterness down. It made her know just how it was--just where she stood. And she thought of the town's new talk because of this.

"It's pretty bad, isn't it, Ted?" she said finally, looking up to him with heavy eyes.

Ted flushed. "Cy makes it worse than it need be," he muttered.

"But it is pretty bad, isn't it?" she repeated in a voice there was little life in. "It was about as bad as it could be for you all, wasn't it?"

"Well, Ruth," he began diffidently, "of course--of course this house hasn't been a very cheerful place since you went away."

"No," she murmured, "of course not." She sat there dwelling upon that, forming a new picture of just what it had been. "It really made a big difference, did it, Ted?--even for you?" She asked it very simply, as one asking a thing in order to know the truth.

Ted sat down on the bed. He was shuffling his feet a little, embarra.s.sed, but his face was finely serious, as if this were a grave thing of which it was right they talk.

"Of course I was a good deal of a kid, Ruth," he began. "And yet--" He halted, held by kindness.

"Yes?" she pressed, as if wanting to get him past kindness.

"Well, yes, Ruth, it was--rather bad. I minded on account of the fellows, you see. I knew they were talking and--" Again he stopped; his face had reddened. Her face too colored up at that.

"And then of course home--you know it had always been so jolly here at home--was a pretty different place, Ruth," he took it up gently. "With Cy charging around, and mother and father so--different."

"And they were different, were they, Ted?" she asked quietly.

He looked at her in surprise. "Why, yes, Ruth, they certainly were--different."

Silence fell between them, separately dwelling upon that.

"Just how--different?" Ruth asked, for it seemed he was not going on.

"Why--mother stopped going out, and of course that made her all different. You know what a lot those parties and doings meant to mother."

She did not at once speak, her face working. Then: "I'm sorry," she choked. "Need she have done that, Ted?" she added wistfully after a moment.

He looked at her with that fine seriousness that made him seem older than he was--and finer than she had known. "Well, I don't know, Ruth; you know you don't feel very comfortable if you think people are--talking. It makes you feel sort of--out of it; as if there was something different about you."

"And father?" she urged, her voice quiet, strangely quiet. She was sitting very still, looking intently at Ted.

"Well, father rather dropped out of it, too," he went on, his voice gentle as if it would make less hard what it was saying. "He and mother just seemed to want to draw back into their sh.e.l.ls. I think--" He stopped, then said: "I guess you really want to know, Ruth; it--it did make a big difference in father. I think it went deeper than you may have known--and maybe it's only fair to him you should know. It did make a difference; I think it made a difference even in business. Maybe that seems queer, but don't you know when a person doesn't feel right about things he doesn't get on very well with people? Father got that way. He didn't seem to want to be with people."