Part 20 (1/2)

Then Ten blazed out. ”Well, if you want to know what I think, I don't think a little 'countenancing' of Ruth is going to do this community--or anybody else--any harm!”

Cyrus looked at him with that slightly sneering smile that always enraged Ted. ”You're proud of your sister, I suppose?” he inquired politely.

Ted reddened. Then he grew strangely quiet. ”Yes,” he said, ”I believe I am. I've come pretty close to Ruth these last few days, and I think that's just what I am--proud of her. I can't say I'm proud of what Ruth did; I'd have to think more about that. But I'm proud of what she _is_.

And I don't know--I don't know but what it's what a person _is_ that counts.” He fell silent, thinking of what he meant by that, of the things he felt in Ruth.

Cyrus laughed mockingly. ”Rather a curious thing to be proud of, I should say. What she 'is' is--”

Ted jumped up. ”Don't say it, Cy! Whatever it is you're going to say--just don't say it!”

Cyrus had risen and was putting in his pocket a paper Mr. McFarland had given him. ”No?” he said smoothly, as if quite unperturbed. ”And why not?”

At that uncaring manner something seemed to break inside Ted's head, as if all the things Cyrus had said about Ruth had suddenly gathered there and pressed too hard. His arm shot out at his brother.

”That's why not!” he cried.

He had knocked Cyrus back against the wall and stood there threatening him. To the minister, who had stepped up, protesting, he snapped: ”None of _your_ put-in! And after this, just be a little more careful in _your_ talk--see?”

He stepped back from Cyrus but stood there glaring, breathing hard with anger. Cyrus, whose face had gone white, but who was calm, went back to the table and resumed what he had been doing there.

”A creditable performance, I must say, for the day of your father's funeral,” he remarked after a moment.

”That's all right!” retorted Ted. ”Don't think I'm sorry! I don't know any better way to start out new--start out alone--than to tell you what I think of you!--let you know that I'll not take a thing off of you about Ruth. You've done enough, Cy. Now you quit. You kept mother and father away when they didn't want to be kept away--and I want to tell you that I'm _on_ to you, anyway. Don't think for a minute that I believe it's your great virtue that's hurting you. You can't put that over on me. It's pride and stubbornness and just plain meanness makes you the way you are! Yes, I'm glad to have a chance to tell you what I think of you--and then I'm through with you, Cy. I think you're a pin-head! Why, you haven't got the heart of a flea! I don't know how anybody as fine as Ruth ever came to have a brother like you!”

His feeling had grown as he spoke, and he stopped now because he was too close to losing control; he reddened as his brother--calm, apparently unmoved--surveyed him as if mildly amused. That way Cyrus looked at him when they were quarrelling always enraged him. If he would only _say_ something--not stand there as if he were too superior to bother himself with such a thing! He knew Cyrus knew it maddened him--that that was why he did it, and so it was quietly that he resumed: ”No, Cy, I'm not with you, and you might as well know it. I'm for Ruth. You've got the world on your side--and I know the arguments you can put up, and all that, but Ruth's got a--” he fumbled a minute for the words--”Ruth's got a power and an understanding about her that you'll never have. She's got a heart. More than that, she's got--character.”

He paused, thinking, and Cyrus did speak then. ”Oh, I don't think I'd use that word,” he said suavely.

”No, you wouldn't; you wouldn't see it, but that's just what I mean.” He turned to the minister. ”Character, I say, is what my sister Ruth has got. Character is something more than putting up a slick front. It's something more than doing what's expected of you. It's a kind of--a kind of being faithful to yourself. _Being_ yourself. Oh, I know--” at a sound from his brother--”just how you can laugh at it, but there's something to it just the same. Why, Ruth's got more real stuff in her than you two put together! After being with her these days you, Cy, strike a fellow as pretty shallow.”

That brought the color to his brother's face. Stung to a real retort, he broke out with considerable heat: ”If to have a respect for decency is 'shallow'--!” He quickly checked himself as the door opened and Harriett's maid entered.

She paused, feeling the tension, startled by their faces. ”Excuse me, sir,” she said to the minister, ”but Mrs. Tyler said I was to tell you she had gone out for a few minutes. She said to tell you she had gone to see her sister.”

She looked startled at Ted's laugh. After she had gone he laughed again.

”Hard luck!” he said to his brother-in-law, and walked from the room.

He did not go directly home. He was too upset to face Ruth just then; he did not want her to know, it would trouble her. And he wanted to walk--walk as fast as he could, walk off steam, he called it. His heart was pounding and there seemed too much blood in his head. But he wasn't sorry, he told himself. Cy would have it in for him now, but what did he care for that? He could get along without him. But his lips trembled as he thought that. He had had to get along without his mother; from now on he would have to get along without his father. He had a moment of feeling very much alone. And then he thought of Ruth. Yes,--there was Ruth! He wheeled toward home. He wanted to tell her. He hoped Harriett hadn't got it told; he wanted to tell her himself. Bless dad! He loved him for doing that. If only he'd known it in time to let him know what he thought of him for doing it!

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Harriett had been with Ruth for half an hour and still she had not told her what she had come to tell her. She was meaning to tell it before she left, to begin it any minute now, but, much as she wanted to tell it, she shrank from doing so. It seemed that telling that would open everything up--and they had opened nothing up. Harriett had grown into a way of shrinking back from the things she really wanted to do, was unpracticed in doing what she felt like doing.

Acting upon an impulse, she had started for Ruth. There had been a moment of real defiance when she told Mamie to tell Mr. Tyler that she had gone to see her sister. She had a right to go and see her sister! No one should keep her from it. Her heart was stirred by what her father had done about Ruth. It made her know that she too felt more than she had shown. His having done that made her want to do something. It moved her to have this manifestation of a softening she had not suspected. It reached something in her, something that made her feel a little more free, more bold, more loving. His defiance, for she felt that in it too, struck a spark in her. She even had a secret satisfaction in the discomfiture she knew this revelation of her father's--what they would call weakening--caused her husband and her brother. Unacknowledged dissatisfactions of her own sharpened her feeling about it. She had not looked at either her husband or Cyrus when the announcement was made, but beneath her own emotion was a secret, unacknowledged gloating at what she knew was their displeasure, at their helplessness to resent.

Ted was a dear boy! Ted's s.h.i.+ning eyes somehow made her know just how glad she herself was.

So she had hurried along, stirred, eager to tell Ruth. But once with her she held back from telling her, grew absurdly timid about it. It seemed so much else might come when that came--things long held back, things hard to let one's self talk about.