Part 13 (1/2)

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 was.h.i.+ng! 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; das.h.i.+ng 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 companions.h.i.+p 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,”