Thinking back to that it seemed to Ruth a bigger mother feeling than the old one. It was not the sort of maternal feeling to hem in the mother and oppress the children. It was love in freedom--love that did not hold in or try to hold in. It would develop a sense of the preciousness of life. It did not glorify self-sacrifice--that insidious foe to the fullness of living.

Thinking of that, and going out from that to other things, she sat down on a log by the roadside, luxuriating in the opulence and freshness of the world that May morning, newly tuned to life, vibrant with that same fresh sense of it, glad gratefulness in return to it, that comes after long sickness, after imprisonment. The world was full of singing birds that morning,--glorious to be in a world of singing birds! The earth smelled so good! There were plum trees in bloom behind her; every little breeze brought their fragrance. The gra.s.s under her feet was springy--the world was vibrant, beautiful, glad. The earth seemed so strong, so full of still unused powers, so ready to give.

She sat there a long time; she had the courage this morning to face the facts of her life. She was eager to face them, to understand them that she might go on understandingly. She had the courage to face the facts relating to herself and Stuart. That was a thing she had not dared do.

With them, love _had_ to last, for love was all they had. They had only each other. They did not dare let themselves think of such a thing as the love between them failing.

Well, it had not failed; but she let herself see now how greatly it had changed. There was something strangely freeing in just letting herself see it. Of course there had been change; things always changed. Love changed within marriage--she did not know why she should expect it to be different with her. But in the usual way--within marriage--it would matter less for there would be more ways of adapting one's self to the changing. Then one could reach out into new places in life, gaining new channels, taking on new things as old ones slipped away, finding in common interests, common pleasures, the new adjustment for feeling. But with them life had seemed to shut right down around them. And they had never been able to relax in the rea.s.suring sense of the lastingness of their love. She had held herself tense in the idea that there was no change, would be none. She had a feeling now of having tried too hard, of being tired through long trying. There was relief in just admitting that she was tired. And so she let herself look at it now, admitting that she had been clutching at a vanished thing.

It would have been different, she felt, had the usual channels of living been opened to them. Then together they could have reached out into new experiences. Their love had been real--great. Related to living, surely it could have remained the heart of life. Her seeing now that much of the life had gone out of it did not bear down upon her with the great sadness she would have expected. She knew now that in her heart she had known for a long time that pa.s.sion had gone. Facing it was easier than refusing to see. It ceased to be a terrible thing once one looked at it.

Of this she was sure: love should be able to be a part of the rest of life; the big relationship, but one among others; the most intense interest, but one with other interests. Unrooted, detached, it might for the time be the more intense, but it had less ways of saving itself. If simply, naturally, they could have grown into the common life she felt they might have gone on without too much consciousness of change, growing into new things as old ones died away, half unconsciously making adjustments, doubtless feeling something gone but in the sharing of new things not left desolate through that sense of the pa.s.sing of old ones.

Frightened by the thought of having nothing else, they had tried too hard. She was tired; she believed that Stuart too was tired.

There was a certain tired tenderness in her thinking of him. Dear Stuart, he loved easy pleasant living. It seemed he was not meant for the too great tests, for tragically isolated love. She knew that he had never ceased to miss the things he had let go--his place among men, the stimulus of the light, pleasant social relationships with women. He was meant for a love more flexibly related to living, a love big and real but fitted more loosely, a little more carelessly, to life. There was always so deep a contrition for his irritations with her. The whole trouble was indicated right there, that the contrition should be all out of proportion to the offence. It would have been better had he felt more free to be irritated; one should not have to feel frightened at a little bit of one's own bad temper--appalled at crossness, at hours of ennui.

Driving them back together after every drifting apart all of that made for an intensity of pa.s.sion--pa.s.sion whipped to life by fear. But that was not the way to grow into life. Flames kindled by fear made intense moments but after a time left too many waste places between them and the lives of men.

Today her hope for the future was in the opening of new places. She was going back with new vision, new courage. They must not any longer cling together in their one little place, coming finally to actual resentment of one another for the enforced isolation. They must let themselves go out into living, dare more, trust more, lose that fear of rebuff, hope for more from life, _claim_ more. As she rose and started towards home there was a new spring in her step. For her part, she was through with that shrinking back! She hoped she could bring Stuart to share her feeling, could inspire in him this new trust, new courage that had so stimulated and heartened her. Her hope for their future lay there.

Climbing a hill she came in sight of the little city which they had given up, for which they had grieved. Well, they had grieved too much, she resolutely decided now. There were wider horizons than the one that shut down upon that town. She was not conquered! She would not be conquered. She stood on the hilltop exulting in that sense of being free. She had been a weakling to think her life all settled! Only cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder--but surely one should not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to grant that it had failed. But now it seemed that it failed if it did not leave her bigger than it had found her. Her eyes filled in response to the stern beauty of that. Not that one stay with love in the same place, but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it send one on.

Eyes still dimmed with the feeling of it, she stood looking as if in a final letting go at that town off there on the bend of the river. It became to her the world of shut-in people, people not going on, people who loved and never saw the meaning of love, whose experiences were not as wings to carry them, but as walls shutting them in. She was through grieving for those people. She was going on--past them--so far beyond them that her need for them would fall away.

She was conscious of an approaching horse and buggy and stepped aside; then walked on, so aglow with her own thoughts that a pa.s.sing by did not break in upon her. She did not even know that the girl in the run-about had stopped her horse. At the cry: "Oh--I'm so glad!" she was as startled as if she had thought herself entirely alone.

It was a big effort to turn, to gather herself together and speak. She had been so far away, so completely possessed that it took her an instant to realize that the girl leaning eagerly toward her was Mildred Woodbury.

Mildred was moving over on the seat, inviting her to get in. "I'm so glad!" she repeated. "I went to Mrs. Herman's, and was so disappointed to miss you. I thought maybe I'd come upon you somewhere," she laughed gladly, though not without embarra.s.sment.

There was a moment of wanting to run away, of really considering it. She knew now--had remembered, realized--what it was about Mildred.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Her instinct to protect herself from this young girl was the thing that gained composure for her. At first it was simply one of those physical instincts that draw us back from danger, from pain; and then she threw the whole force of her will to keeping that semblance of composure. Her instinct was not to let reserves break down, not to show agitation; to protect herself by never leaving commonplace ground. It was terribly hard--this driving back the flood-tide of feeling and giving no sign of the struggle, the resentment. It was as if every nerve had been charged to full life and then left there outraged.

But she could do it; she could appear pleasantly surprised at Mildred's having come to take her for a drive, could talk along about the little things that must be her shield against the big ones. Something in her had gone hard in that first moment of realizing who Mildred was. She was not going to be driven back again! And so she forced herself to talk pleasantly of the country through which they went, of Mildred's horse, of driving and riding.

But it was impossible not to grow a little interested in this young Mildred Woodbury. She sat erect and drove in a manner that had the little tricks of worldliness, but was somehow charming in spite of its artificiality. Ruth was thinking that Mildred was a more sophisticated young person than she herself had been at that age. She wondered if sophistication was increasing in the world, if there was more of it in Freeport than there used to be.

They talked of Ruth's father, of Mildred's people, of the neighborhood both knew so well. From that it drifted to the social life of the town.

She was amused, rather sadly amused, at Mildred's air of superiority about it; it seemed so youthful, so facile. Listening to Mildred now pictures flashed before her: she and Edith Lawrence--girls of about fifteen--going over to the Woodburys' and eagerly asking, "Could we take the baby out, Mrs. Woodbury?" "Now you'll be very, very careful, girls?"

Mrs. Woodbury would say, wrapping Mildred all up in soft pink things.

"Oh, _yes_, Mrs. Woodbury," they would reply, a little shocked that she could entertain the thought of their not being careful. And then they would start off cooing girlish things about the cunning little darling.

This was that baby--in spite of her determination to hold aloof from Mildred there was no banishing it; no banishing the apprehension that grew with the girl's talk. For Mildred seemed so much a part of the very thing for which she had this easy scorn. Something in the way she held the lines made it seem she would not belong anywhere else. She looked so carefully prepared for the very life for which she expressed disdain.

She tried to forget the things that were coming back to her--how Mildred would gleefully hold up her hands to have her mittens put on when she and Edith were about to take her out, and tried too to turn the conversation--breaking out with something about Mrs. Herman's children.

But it became apparent that Mildred was not to be put off. Everything Ruth would call up to hold her off she somehow forced around to an approach for what she wanted to say.

And then it came abruptly, as if she were tired of trying to lead up to it. "I've been wanting to see you--Ruth," she hesitated over the name, but brought it out bravely, and it occurred to Ruth then that Mildred had not known how to address her. "When I heard you were here," she added, "I was determined you shouldn't get away without my seeing you."

Ruth looked at her with a little smile, moved, in spite of herself, by the impetuousness of the girl's tone, by something real that broke through the worldly little manner.

"I don't feel as the rest of them do." She flushed and said it hurriedly, a little tremulously; and yet there was something direct and honest in her eyes, as if she were going to say it whether it seemed nice taste or not. It reached Ruth, went through her self-protective determination not to be reached. Her heart went out to Mildred's youth, to this appeal from youth, moved by the freshness and realness beneath that surface artificiality, saddened by this defiance of one who, it seemed, could so little understand how big was the thing she defied, who seemed so much the product of the thing she scorned, so dependent on what she was apparently in the mood to flout. "I don't know that they are to be blamed for their feeling, Mildred," she answered quietly.

"Oh, yes, they are!" hotly contended the girl. "It's because they don't understand. It's because they _can't_ understand!" The reins had fallen loose in her hand; the whip sagged; she drooped--that stiff, chic little manner gone. She turned a timid, trusting face to Ruth--a light shining through troubled eyes. "It's love that counts, isn't it,--Ruth?" she asked, half humble, half defiant.

It swept Ruth's heart of everything but sympathy. Her hand closed over Mildred's. "What is it, dear?" she asked. "Just what is it?"

Mildred's eyes filled. Ruth could understand that so well--what sympathy meant to a feeling shut in, a feeling the whole world seemed against.

"It's with me--as it was with you," the girl answered very low and simply. "It's--like that."

Ruth shut her eyes for an instant; they were pa.s.sing something fragrant; it came to her--an old fragrance--like something out of things past; a robin was singing; she opened her eyes and looked at Mildred, saw the sunshine finding gold in the girl's hair. The sadness of it--of youth and suffering, of pain in a world of beauty, that reach of pain into youth, into love, made it hard to speak. "I'm sorry, dear," was all she could say.

They rode a little way in silence; Ruth did not know how to speak, what to say; and then Mildred began to talk, finding relief in saying things long held in. Ruth understood that so well. Oh, she understood it all so well--the whole tumult of it, the confused thinking, the joy, the pa.s.sion,--the pa.s.sion that would sacrifice anything, that would let the whole world go. Here it was again. She knew just what it was.

"So you can see," Mildred was saying, "what you have meant to me."

Yes, she could see that.

They were driving along the crest of the hills back of the town. Mildred pointed to it. "That town isn't the whole of the world!" she exclaimed pa.s.sionately, after speaking of the feeling that was beginning to form there against herself. "What do I care?" she demanded defiantly. "It's not the whole of the world!"

Ruth looked at it. She could see the Lawrence house--it had a high place and was visible from all around; Mildred's home was not far from there; her own old home was only a block farther on. She had another one of those flashing pictures from things far back: Mrs. Woodbury--Mildred's mother--standing at the door with a bowl of chicken broth for Mrs.

Holland--Ruth's mother--who was ill. "I thought maybe this would taste good," she could hear Mrs. Woodbury saying. Strange how things one had forgotten came back. Other things came back as for a moment she continued to look at the town where both she and Mildred had been brought up, where their ties were. Then she turned back to Mildred, to this other girl who, claimed by pa.s.sionate love, was in the mood to let it all go. "But that's just what it is, Mildred," she said. "The trouble is, it _is_ the whole of the world."

"It's the whole of the social world," she answered the look of surprise.

"It's just the same everywhere. And it's astonishing how united the world is. You give it up in one place--you've about given it up for every place."

"Then the whole social world's not worth it!" broke from Mildred. "It's not worth--enough."

Ruth found it hard to speak; she did not know what to say. She had a flashing sense of the haphazardness of life, of the power, the flame this found in Mildred that the usual experiences would never have found, of how, without it, she would doubtless have developed much like the other girls of her world--how she might develop because of it--how human beings were shaped by chance. She looked at Mildred's face--troubled, pa.s.sionate, a confused defiance, and yet something real there looking through the tumult, something flaming, something that would fight, a something, she secretly knew, more flaming, more fighting, than might ever break to life in Mildred again. And then she happened to look down at the girl's feet--the very smart low shoes of dull kid, perfectly fitted, high arched--the silk stockings, the slender ankle. They seemed so definitely feet for the places prepared, for the easier ways, not fitted for going a hard way alone. It made her feel like a mother who would want to keep a child from a way she herself knew as too hard.

"But what are you going to put in the place of that social world, Mildred?" she gently asked. "There must be something to fill its place.

What is that going to be?"

"Love will fill its place!" came youth's proud, sure answer.

Ruth was looking straight ahead; the girl's tone had thrilled her--that faith in love, that courage for it. It was so youthful!--so youthfully sure, so triumphant in blindness. Youth would dare so much--youth knew so little. She did not say anything; she could not bear to.

"Love can fill its place!" Mildred said again, as if challenging that silence. And as still Ruth did not speak she demanded, sharply, "Can't it?"

Ruth turned to her a tender, compa.s.sionate face, too full of feeling, of conflict, to speak. Slowly, as if she could not bear to do it, she shook her head.

Mildred looked just dazed for a moment, then so much as if one in whom she had trusted, on whom she had counted for a great deal had failed her that Ruth made a little gesture as if to say it was not that, as if to say she was sorry it seemed like that.

Mildred did not heed it. "But it has with you," she insisted.