"It has _not_!" leaped out the low, savage answer that startled the woman from whom it came. "It has not!" she repeated fiercely.

Her rage was against the feeling that seemed to trick one like that; the way love _got_ one--made one believe that nothing else in the world mattered but just itself. It wasn't fair! It was cruel! That made her savage--savage for telling Mildred the other side of it, the side love blinded her too. In that moment it seemed that love was a trap; it took hold of one and persuaded one things were true that weren't true! Just then it seemed a horrible thing the way love got one through lovely things, through beauty and tenderness, through the sweetest things--then did as it pleased with the life it had stolen in upon. Fiercely she turned the other face, told Mildred what love in loneliness meant, what it meant to be shut away from one's own kind, what that hurting of other lives did to one's self, what isolation made of one, what it did to love. Things leaped out that she had never faced, had never admitted for true; the girl to whom she talked was frightened and she was frightened herself--at what she told of what she herself had felt, feeling that she had never admitted she had had. She let the light in on things kept in the dark even in her own soul--a cruel light, a light that spared nothing, that seemed to find a savage delight in exposing the things deepest concealed. She would show the other side of it! There was a certain gloating in doing it--getting ahead of a thing that would trick one. And then that spent itself as pa.s.sion will and she grew quieter and talked in a simple way of what loneliness meant, of what longing for home meant, of what it meant to know one had hurt those who had always been good to one, who loved and trusted. She spoke of her mother--of her father, and then she broke down and cried and Mildred listened in silence to those only half-smothered sobs.

When Ruth was able to stop she looked up, timidly, at Mildred. Something seemed to have gone out of the girl--something youthful and superior, something radiant and a.s.sured. She looked crumpled up. The utter misery in her eyes, about her mouth, made Ruth whisper: "I'm sorry, Mildred."

Mildred looked at her with a bitter little laugh and then turned quickly away.

Ruth had never felt more wretched in her life than when, without Mildred having said a word, they turned in the gate leading up to Annie's. She wanted to say something to comfort. She cast around for something.

"Maybe," she began, "that it will come right--anyway."

Again Mildred only laughed in that hard little way.

When they were half way up the hill Mildred spoke, as if, in miserable uncertainty, thinking things aloud. "Mrs. Blair has asked me to go to Europe with her for the summer," she said, in a voice that seemed to have no spring left in it. "She's chaperoning a couple of girls. I could go with them."

"Oh, _do_, Mildred!" cried Ruth. "Do that!" It seemed to her wonderfully tender, wonderfully wise, of Edith. She was all eagerness to induce Mildred to go with Edith.

But there was no answering enthusiasm. Mildred drooped. She did not look at Ruth. "I could do that," she said in a lifeless way, as if it didn't matter much what she did.

When they said good-by Mildred's broken smile made Ruth turn hastily away. But she looked back after the girl had driven off, wanting to see if she was sitting up in that sophisticated little way she had. But Mildred was no longer sitting that way. She sagged, as if she did not care anything about how she sat. Ruth stood looking after her, watching as far as she could see her, longing to see her sit up, to see her hold the whip again in that stiff, chic little fashion. But she did not do it; her horse was going along as if he knew there was no interest in him. Ruth could not bear it. If only the whip would go up at just that right little angle! But it did not. She could not see the whip at all--only the girl's drooping back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When Mildred had pa.s.sed from sight Ruth slowly turned toward the house.

She noticed the vegetable wagon there in front of the barn--so Annie had come home. She turned away from the kitchen door she had been about to enter; she did not want to talk to Annie just then. But when she had pa.s.sed around to the other side of the house she saw, standing with their backs to her in the little flower garden, Annie and a woman she was astonished to recognize as her sister Harriett.

She made a move toward the little hill that rose behind the house. She would get away! But Mr. Herman appeared just then at the top of the hill. He saw her; he must see that she had seen the others. So she would have to stay and talk to Harriett. It seemed a thing she absolutely could not do. It had come to seem she was being made some kind of sport of, as if the game were to buffet her about between this feeling and that, let her gain a little ground, get to a clearing, then throw her back to new confusion. That day, anyway, she could bear no more of it.

It was hard to reply to Mr. Herman when he called something to her.

Annie heard their voices and then she had to join her and Harriett.

"Why, Ruth!" Annie cried in quick solicitude upon seeing Ruth's face, "you went too far. How hateful of you," she laughed, as if feeling there was something to laugh off, "to come looking like this just when I have been boasting to your sister about how we've set you up!"

"You do look tired, Ruth," said Harriett compa.s.sionately.

Harriett said she had come for a little visit with Ruth, and Annie proposed that they go up under the trees at the crest of the hill back of the house. It was where Ruth had sat with Annie just the day before.

As she sat down there now it seemed it was ages ago since she and Annie had sat there tying the asparagus into bunches.

Annie had come up with some b.u.t.termilk for them. As she handed Ruth hers she gave her shoulder an affectionate little pat, as if, looking at her face, she wanted to tell her to take heart. Then she went back to the house, leaving the two sisters alone.

They drank their b.u.t.termilk, talking of it, of Annie's place, of her children. In a languid way Ruth was thinking that it was good of Harriett to come and see her; had she come the day before, she would have been much pleased. In that worn way, she was pleased now; doubtless it had been hard for Harriett to come--so busy, and not well. Perhaps her coming meant real defiance. Anyway, it was good of her to come. She tried to be nice to Harriett, to talk about things as if she liked having her there to talk with. But that final picture of Mildred's drooping back was right there before her all the time. As she talked with Harriett about the price of b.u.t.ter and eggs--the living to be had in selling them, she was all the while seeing Mildred--Mildred as she had been when Ruth got into the buggy; as she said, "Love can take its place!"--as she was when she drove away. She had a sick feeling of having failed; she had failed the very thing in Mildred to which she had elected to be faithful in herself. And _why_? What right had one to say that another was not strong enough? How did one _know_? And yet she wanted Mildred to go with Edith; she believed that she would--now. That blighting sense of failure, of having been unfaithful, could not kill a feeling of relief. Did it mean that she was, after all, just like Edith?

Had her venturing, her experience, left her much as she would have been without it? Just before meeting Mildred she was strong in the feeling of having gained something from the hard way she had gone alone. She was going on! That was what it had shown her--that one was to go on. Then she had to listen to Mildred--and she was back with the very people she had felt she was going on past--one with those people she had so triumphantly decided were not worth her grieving for them.

She had been so sure--so radiantly sure, happy in that sense of having, at last, found herself, of being rid of fears and griefs and incert.i.tudes. Then she met Mildred. It came to her then--right while she was talking with Harriett about what Flora Copeland was going to do now that the house would be broken up--that it was just that thing which kept the world conservative. It was fear for others. It was that feeling she had when she looked down at Mildred's feet.

One did not have that feeling when one looked at one's own feet. Fear of pain for others was quite unlike fear for one's self. Courage for one's self one could gain; in the fires of the heart that courage was forged.

When the heart was warm with the thing one wanted to do one said no price in pain could be too great. But courage for others had to be called from the mind. It was another thing. When it was some one else,--one younger, one who did not seem strong--then one distrusted the feeling and saw large the pain. One _knew_ one could bear pain one's self. There was something not to be borne in thinking of another's pain.

That was why, even among venturers, few had the courage to speak for venturing. There was something in humankind--it was strongest in womankind--made them, no matter how daring for themselves, cautious for others. And perhaps that, all crusted round with things formal and lifeless, was the living thing at the heart of the world's conservatism.

Harriett was talking of the monument Cyrus thought there should be at the cemetery; Ruth listened and replied--seemed only tired, and all the while these thoughts were shaping themselves in her inner confusion and disheartenment. She would rather have stopped thinking of it, but could not. She had been too alive when checked; there was too much emotion in that inner confusion. She wondered if she would ever become sure of anything; if she would ever have, and keep, that courage of confidence which she had thought, for just a few radiant moments, she had. She would like to talk to Annie about it, but she had a feeling that she was not fit to talk to Annie. Annie was not one of those to run back at the first thought of another's pain. That, too, Annie could face. Better let them in for pain than try to keep them from life, Annie would say. She could hear her saying it--saying that even that concern for others was not the n.o.blest thing. Fearing would never set the world free, would be Annie's word. Not to keep people in the safe little places, but to shape a world where there need not be safe little places! While she listened to what Harriett said of how much such a monument as Cyrus wanted would cost, she could hear Annie's sharp-edged little voice making those replies to her own confusion, could hear her talking of a sterner, braver people--hardier souls--who would one day make a world where fear was not the part of kindness. Annie would say that it was not the women who would protect other women who would shape the future in which there need not be that tight little protection.

She sighed heavily and pushed back her hair with a gesture of great weariness. "Poor Ruth!" it made Harriett murmur, "you haven't really got rested at all, have you?"

She pulled herself up and smiled as best she could at her sister, who had spoken to her with real feeling. "I did," she said with a little grimace that carried Harriett back a long way, "then I got so rested I got to thinking about things--then I got tired again." She flushed after she had said it, for that was the closest they had come to the things they kept away from.

"Poor Ruth," Harriett murmured again. "And I'm afraid," she added with a little laugh, "that now I'm going to make you more tired."

"Oh, no," said Ruth, though she looked at her inquiringly.

"Because," said Harriett, "I've come to talk to you about something, Ruth."

Ruth's face made her say, "I'm sorry, Ruth, but I'm afraid it's the only chance. You see you're going away day after tomorrow."

Ruth only nodded; it seemed if she spoke she would have to cry out what she felt--that in common decency she ought to be let alone now as any worn-out thing should be let alone, that it was not fair--humane--to talk to her now. But of course she could not make that clear to Harriett, and with it all she did wonder what it was Harriett had to say. So she only looked at her sister as if waiting. Harriett looked away from her for an instant before she began to speak: Ruth's eyes were so tired, so somber; there was something very appealing about her face as she waited for the new thing that was to be said to her.

"I have felt terribly, Ruth," Harriett finally began, as if forcing herself to do so, "about the position in which we are as a family. I'll not go into what brought it about--or anything like that. I haven't come to talk about things that happened long ago, haven't come with reproaches. I've just come to see if, as a family, we can't do a little better about things as they are now."

She paused, but Ruth did not speak; she was very still now as she waited. She did not take her eyes from Harriett's face.

"Mother and father are gone, Ruth," Harriett went on in a low voice, "and only we children are left. It seems as if we ought to do the best we can for each other." Her voice quivered and Ruth's intense eyes, which did not leave her sister's face, dimmed. She continued to sit there very still, waiting.

"I had a feeling," Harriett went on, "that father's doing what he did was as a--was as a sign, Ruth, that we children should come closer together. As if father couldn't see his way to do it in his lifetime, but did this to leave word to us that we were to do something. I took it that way," she finished simply.

Ruth's eyes had brimmed over; but still she did not move, did not take her eyes from her sister's face. She was so strange--as if going out to Harriett and yet holding herself ready at any moment to crouch back.

"And so," Harriett pursued, all the while in that low voice, "that is the way I talked to Edgar and Cyrus. I didn't bring Ted into it," she said, more in her natural way, "because he's just a boy, and then--" she paused as if she had got into something that embarra.s.sed her--"well, he and Cyrus not feeling kindly toward each other just now I thought I could do better without Ted."

Ruth flushed slightly at the mention of the feeling between her brothers; but still she did not speak, scarcely moved.

Harriett was silent a moment. "That's one of the reasons," she took it up, "why I am anxious to do something to bring us together. I don't want Ted to be feeling this way toward Cyrus. And Edgar, too, he seems to be very bitter against. It makes him defiant. It isn't good for him. I think Ted has a little disposition to be wild," she said in a confidential tone.

Ruth spoke then. "I hadn't noticed any such disposition," she said simply.

"Well, he doesn't go to church. It seems to me he doesn't--accept things as he ought to."

Ruth said nothing to that, only continued to look at her sister, waiting.

"So I talked to them," Harriett went on. "Of course, Ruth, there's no use pretending it was easy. You know how Cyrus feels; he isn't one to change much, you know." She turned away and her hand fumbled in a little patch of clover.

"But we do want to do something, Ruth," she came back to it. "We all feel it's terrible this way. So this is what Edgar proposed, and Cyrus agreed to it, and it seems to me the best thing to do." She stopped again, then said, in a blurred sort of voice, fumbling with the clover and not looking at Ruth: "If you will leave the--your--if you will leave the man you are--living with, promising never to see him again,--if you will give that up and come home we will do everything we can to stand by you, go on as best we can as if nothing had happened. We will try to--"

She looked up--and did not go on, but flushed uncomfortably at sight of Ruth's face--eyes wide with incredulity, with something like horror.

"You don't _mean_ that, do you, Harriett?" Ruth asked in a queer, quiet voice.

"But we wanted to do something--" Harriett began, and then again halted, halted before the sudden blaze of anger in Ruth's eyes.