"And you thought _this_--" She broke off with a short laugh and sat there a moment trying to gain control of herself. When she spoke her voice was controlled but full of pa.s.sion. "I don't think," she said, "that I've ever known of a more monstrous--a more insulting proposal being made by one woman to another!"

"Insulting?" faltered Harriett.

Ruth did not at once reply but sat there so strangely regarding her sister. "So this is your idea of life, is it, Harriett?" she began in the manner of one making a big effort to speak quietly. "This is your idea of marriage, is it? Here is the man I have lived with for eleven years. For eleven years we've met hard things together as best we could--worked, borne things together. Let me tell you something, Harriett. If _that_ doesn't marry people--tell _me_ something. If that doesn't marry people--just tell me, Harriett, _what does_?"

"But you know you're not married, Ruth," Harriett replied, falteringly--for Ruth's burning eyes never left her sister's face. "You know--really--you're not married. You know he's not divorced, Ruth. He's not your husband. He's Marion Averley's."

"You think so?" Ruth flung back at her. "You really think so, do you, Harriett? After those years together--brought together by love, united by living, by effort, by patience, by courage--I ask you again, Harriett,--if the things there have been between Stuart Williams and me can't make a marriage real--_what can_?"

"The law is the law," murmured Harriett. "He is married to her. He never was married to you."

Ruth began hotly to speak, but checked it with a laugh and sat there regarding her sister in silence. When she spoke after that her voice was singularly calm. "I'm glad to know this, Harriett; glad to know just what your ideas are--yours and Edgar's and Cyrus's. You have done something for me, after all. For I've grieved a great deal, Harriett, for the things I lost, and you see I won't do that any more. I see now--see what those things are. I see that I don't want them."

Harriett had colored at that, and her hand was fumbling in the little patch of clover. When she looked up at Ruth there were tears in her eyes. "But what could we do, Ruth?" she asked, gently, a little reproachfully. "We wanted to do something--what else could we do?"

Her tone touched Ruth. After all, what else--Harriett being as she was--could she do? Monstrous as the proposal seemed to her, it was Harriett's way of trying to make things better. She had come in kindness, and she had not been kindly received. It was in a different voice that Ruth began: "Harriett, don't you see, when you come to look at it, that I couldn't do this? Down in your heart--way down in your heart, Harriett--don't you see that I couldn't? Don't you see that if I left Stuart now to do the best he could by himself, left him, I mean, for this reason--came creeping back myself into a little corner of respectability--the crumbs that fall from the tables of respectability--! You _know_, Harriett Holland," she flamed, "that if I did that I'd be less a woman, not a better one?"

"I--I knew it would be hard," granted Harriett, unhappily. "Of course--after such a long time together--But you're not married to him, Ruth," she said again, wretchedly. "Why"--her voice fell almost to a whisper--"you're living in--adultery."

"Well if I am," retorted Ruth--"forgive me for saying it, Harriett--that adultery has given me more decent ideas of life than marriage seems to have given you!"

Her feeling about it grew stronger as the day wore on. That evening she got the Woodburys' on the telephone and asked for Mildred. She did not know just what she would say, she had no plan, but she wanted to see Mildred again. She was told, however, that Mildred had gone to Chicago on a late afternoon train. At the last minute she had decided to go to Europe with Mrs. Blair, the servant who was speaking said, and had gone over to Chicago to see about clothes.

Ruth hung up the receiver and sat looking into the telephone. Then she laughed. So Mildred had been "saved."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

On the afternoon of her last day in Freeport Ruth took a long tramp with Deane. She was going that night; she was all ready for leaving when Deane came out and asked if he couldn't take her for a ride in his car.

She suggested a walk instead, wanting the tramp before the confinement of travelling. So they cut through the fields back of Annie's and came out on a road well known to them of old. They tramped along it a long way, Ruth speaking of things she remembered, talking of old drives along that road which had been a favorite with all of their old crowd. They said things as they felt like it, but there was no constraint in their silences. It had always been like that with her and Deane. Finally they sat down on a knoll a little back from the road, overlooking pastures and fields of blowing green.

"I love these little hills," Ruth murmured; "so many little hills," she laughed affectionately--"and so green and blowy and fruitful. With us it's a great flat valley--a plain, and most of it dry--barren. You have to do such a lot to make things grow. Here things just love to grow. And trees!" she laughed.

"But mountains there," suggested Deane.

"Yes, but a long way off from us, and sometimes they seem very stern, Deane. I've so many times had the feeling I couldn't get beyond them.

Sometimes they have seemed like other things I couldn't hope to cross."

After a little she said: "These little hills are so gentle; this country so open."

Deane laughed shortly. "Yes, the hills are gentle. The country is open enough!"

She laughed too. "It is beautiful country, Deane," she said, as if that were the thing mattering just then. There was an attractive bit of pasture just ahead of them: a brook ran through it--a lovely little valley between two of those gentle hills.

Deane was lying on the gra.s.s a little way from her--sprawled out in much his old awkward way, his elbow supporting his head, hat pulled down over his eyes. It was good to be with him this last afternoon. It seemed so much as it used to be; in that moment it was almost as if the time in between had not been. It was strange the way things could fall away sometimes--great stretches of time fall away and seem, for a little while, to leave things as they had been long before.

"Well, Ruth," Deane said at last, "so you're going back."

"Going back, Deane," she answered.

So much they did not say seemed to flow into that; the whole thing was right there, opened, living, between them. It had always been like that with her and Deane. It was not necessary to say things out to him, as it was with everyone else. Their thinking, feeling, seemed to come together naturally, of itself; not a matter of direction. She looked at Deane stretched out there on the gra.s.s--older, different in some ways--today he looked as if something was worrying him--yet with it all so much the Deane of old. It kept recurring as strange that, after all there had been in between, they should be together again, and that it could be as it used to be. Just as of old, a little thing said could swing them to thinking, feeling, of which perhaps they did not speak, but which they consciously shared. Many times through the years there had come times when she wanted nothing so much as to be with Deane, wanted to say things to him that, she did not know just why, there would have been no satisfaction in saying to Stuart. Even things she had experienced with Stuart she could, of the two, more easily have talked of with Deane. It was to Deane she could have talked of the things Stuart made her feel.

Within a certain circle Stuart was the man to whom she came closest; somehow, with him, she did not break from that circle. She had always had that feeling of Deane's understanding what she felt, even though it was not he who inspired the feeling. That seemed a little absurd to her--to live through things with one man, and have what that living made of her seem to swing her to some one else.

Thinking of their unique companionship, which time and distance and circ.u.mstances had so little affected, she looked at Deane as he lay there near her on the gra.s.s. She was glad to have this renewal of their old friendship, which had always remained living and dear to her. And now she was going away for another long time. It was possible she would never see him again. It made her wish she could come closer to what were now the big things in his life.

"I'm so glad, Deane," she said, somewhat timidly, "about you."

He pushed back his hat and looked up in inquiry.

"So glad you got married, goose!" she laughed.

At his laugh for that she looked at him in astonishment, distinctly shocked. He was chewing a long spear of gra.s.s. For a moment he did not speak. Then, "Amy's gone home," he said shortly.

Ruth could only stare at him, bewildered.

He was running his hand over the gra.s.s near him. She noticed that it moved nervously. And she remarked the puckered brows that had all along made her think he was worried about something that day--she had thought it must be one of his cases. And there was that compression of the lips that she knew of old in Deane when he was hurt. Just then his face looked actually old, the face of a man who has taken hard things.

"Yes, Amy's gone home for a little while," he said in a more matter of fact voice, but a voice that had a hard ring. He added: "Her mother's not well," and looked up at Ruth with that characteristic little s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up of his face, as if telling her to make what she could of it.

"Why, that's too bad," she stammered.

Again he looked up at her in that queer way of mixed feeling, his face showing the marks of pain and yet a touch of teasing there too, mocking her confusion, looking like a man who was suffering and yet a little like a teasing boy. Then he abruptly pulled his hat down over his eyes again, as if to shade them from the sun, and lay flat on his back, one heel kicking at the gra.s.s. She could not see his eyes, but she saw his mouth; that faint touch of pleasure in teasing which had perversely lurked in pain had gone now; that twist of his compressed lips was pure pain.

She was utterly bewildered, and so deeply concerned that she had to get ahead of Deane some way, not let him shut himself in with a thing that made his mouth look as if he was bearing physical pain. And then a new thought shot into her concern for him, a thought that seemed too preposterous to entertain, but that would not go away. It did not seem a thing she could speak of; but as she looked at Deane, his mouth more natural now, but the suggestion of pain left there, she had a sudden new sense of all that Deane had done for her. She couldn't leave things like this, no matter how indelicate she might seem.

"Deane," she began timidly, "I don't--in any way--for any reason--make things hard for you, do I?"

For the moment he did not speak, did not push his hat back so she could see his eyes. Then she saw that he was smiling a little; she had a feeling that he was not realizing she could see the smile; it was as if smiling to himself at something that bitterly amused him. It made her feel rather sick; it let that preposterous idea spread all through her.

Then he sat up and looked quizzically at her. "Well, Ruth, you don't expect me to deny, do you, that you did make a thing or two rather hard?" He said it with that touch of teasing. "Was I so magnanimous," he added dryly, "that I let you lose sight of the fact that I wanted you?"

Ruth colored and felt baffled; she was sure he knew well enough that was not what she referred to. He looked at her, a little mockingly, a little wistfully, as if daring her to go on.

"I wasn't talking about things long ago, Deane," she said. "I wondered--" She hesitated, looking at him in appeal, as if asking him to admit he understood what she meant without forcing her to say such a thing.

For a minute he let the pain look out of his eyes at her, looked for all the world as if he wanted her to help him. Then quickly he seemed to shut himself in. He smiled at her in a way that seemed to say, half mockingly, "I've gone!" He hurt her a little; it was hard to be with Deane and feel there was something he was not going to let her help him with. And it made her sick at heart; for surely he knew what she was driving at, driving at and edging away from, and if he could have laughed at her fears wouldn't he have done so? She thought of all Deane had done for her, borne for her. It would be bitter indeed if it were really true she was bringing him any new trouble. But how _could_ it be true? It seemed too preposterous; surely she must be entirely on the wrong track, so utterly wrong that he had no idea what it was she had in mind.

As they sat there for a moment in silence she was full of that feeling of how much Deane had done for her, of a longing to do something for him. Gently she said: "I must have made things very hard for you, Deane.

The town--your friends--your people, because of me you were against them all. That does make things hard--to be apart from the people you are with." She looked at him, her face softened with affectionate regret, with a newly understanding grat.i.tude. "I've not been very good for your life, have I, Deane?" she said, more lightly, but her voice touched with wistfulness.

He looked at her, as if willing to meet that, as if frankly considering it. "I can't say that you've been very good for my happiness, Ruth," he laughed. And then he said simply, with a certain simple manliness, "But I should say, Ruth, you have been very good for my life." His face contracted a little, as if with pain. That pa.s.sed, and he went on in that simple way: "You see you made me think about things. It was because of you--through you--I came to think about things. That's good for our lives, isn't it?" That he said sternly, as if putting down something that had risen in him. "Because of you I've questioned things, felt protest. Why, Ruth," he laughed, "if it hadn't been for you I might have taken things in the slick little way _they_ do,"--he waved a hand off toward the town. "So just see what I owe you!" he said, more lightly, as if leaving the serious things behind. Then he began to speak of other things.

It left Ruth unsatisfied, troubled. And yet it seemed surely a woman would be proud of a man who had been as fine in a thing, as big and true and understanding, as Deane had been with her. Surely a woman would be proud of a man who had so loyally, at such great cost, been a woman's friend, who, because of friendship, because of fidelity to his own feeling, would stand out that way against others. She tried to think that, for she could not go back to what Deane had left behind. And yet she could not forget that she had not met Amy.

They walked toward home talking quietly about things that happened to come up, more as if they were intimate friends who had constant meetings than as if they had been years apart and were about to part for what would probably be years more. But that consciousness was there underneath; it ruled the silences, made their voices gentler. It was very sweet to Ruth, just before again leaving all home things behind, to be walking in the spring twilight with Deane along that road they knew when they were boy and girl together.

Twilight was deepening to evening when they came to the hill from which they could see the town. They stood still looking off at it, speaking of the beauty of the river, of the bridge, of the strangeness of the town lights when there was still that faint light of day. And then they stood still and said nothing, looking off at that town where they had been brought up. It was beautiful from there, bent round a curve in the broad river, built upon hills. She was leaving it now--again leaving it. She had come home, and now she was going away again. And now she knew, in spite of her anger of the day before, in spite of all there had been to hurt her, in spite of all that had been denied her, that she was not leaving it in bitterness. In one sense she had not had much from her days back home; but in a real sense, she had had much. She looked at that town now with a feeling of new affection. She believed she would always have that feeling of affection for it. It stood to her for things gone--dear things gone; for youth's gladness, for the love of father and mother, for many happy things now left behind. But now that she had come back, had gone through those hard days, she was curiously freed from that town. She had this new affection for it in being freed of it. She would always love it because of what it had meant in the past, but love it as one does love a thing past. It seemed she had to come back to it to let it lose its hold on her. It was of the past, and she knew now that there was a future. What that future was to be she did not know, but she would turn from this place of the past with a new sense of the importance of the future. Standing there with Deane on the hilltop at evening, looking off at that town where they had both been brought up, she got a sense of the significance of the whole thing--the eleven years away, and the three years preceding those years; a sense too of the meaning of those days just past, those recent days at home when there were times of being blinded by the newly seen significance of those years of living. They had been hard days because things had been crowded so close; it had come too fast; currents had met too violently and the long way between cause and effect had been lighted by flashes too blinding. It had been like a great storm in which elements rush together. It had almost swept her down, but she had come through it and this was what she had brought out of it: a sense of life as precious, as worth anything one might have to pay for it, a stirring new sense of the future as adventure. She had been thinking of her life as defined, and now it seemed that the future was there, a beautiful untouched thing, a thing that was left, hers to do what she could with. Somehow she had broken through, broken through the things that had closed in around her.