Hilda Lightener's electric stopped before the apartment house where
Bonbright Foote lived, and Hilda alighted. She ignored bell and
speaking tube and ran upstairs to Bonbright's door, on which she
knocked as a warning. Then she opened the door and called: "It's me.
Anybody home?"
Nobody replied. She called again, and walked into the little living
room where Ruth and Bonbright and Dulac had faced one another an hour
before.... She called again. This time she heard a sound, muffled,
indistinct, but recognizable as a sob.
"Ruth!" she called, and went to the bedroom door. Now she could hear
Ruth within, sobbing alarmingly.
"Ruth Foote," said Hilda, "what's the matter?... Where's Bonbright?...
I'm coming in."
She opened the door, saw Ruth outstretched on the bed, face buried in
her pillow, sobbing with a queer, startling dryness. It was not the sob
of a woman in an attack of nerves, not the sob of a woman merely crying
to rest herself, nor the sob of a bride who has had a petty quarrel
with her husband. It was different, alarmingly different. There was
despair in it. It told of something seriously awry, of stark tragedy.
Hilda's years were not many, but her intuition was sure. She did not
demand explanations, did not command Ruth to stop crying and tell what
ailed her, but sat down quietly on the bed and stroked the sobbing
girl's hair, crooning over her softly. "There!... There!..."
Gradually the tenseness, the dry, racking, tearing quality of Ruth's
sobs, softened, ameliorated. Presently she was crying, quietly,
pitifully.... Hilda breathed with relief. She did not know that for an
hour Ruth had sat on the edge of her bed, still, tearless, staring
blindly before her--her soul drying up and burning within her for lack
of tears. She had been unable to cry. She had uttered no sound until
Hilda's voice came in to her. Then she had thrown herself prone in that
paroxysm of wrenching sobs....
"There!... There!..." Hilda crooned.
Ruth's hand crept out fumblingly, found Hilda's dress, and clutched it.
Hilda laid her warm hand over Ruth's cold fingers--and waited.
"He's--gone," Ruth sobbed, presently.
"Never mind, honey.... Never mind, now."
Ruth mumbled incoherently. After a time she raised herself on her arms
and crouched beside Hilda, who put her arms around her and held her
close, as she would have held a troubled child.
"You'll--despise me," Ruth whispered.
"I guess not." Hilda pressed Ruth's slenderness against her more robust
body reassuringly. "I don't despise folks, as a rule.... Want to talk
now?"
She saw that the time for speech had come.
"He won't come back.... I saw it in his eyes."
"Who won't come back, dear?"
"Bonbright." Ruth drew a shuddering breath. Then haltingly,
whimperingly, sobs interrupting, she talked. She could not tell it fast
enough. It must be told, her mind must be relieved, and the story, pent
up so long within her, rushed forth in a flood of despairing,
self-accusing words. It came in snatches, fragments, as high lights of
suffering flashed upon her mind. She did not start at the beginning
logically and carry through--but the thing as a whole was there. Hilda
had only to sort it and reassemble it to get the pitiful tale complete.
"You--you don't mean you married Bonbright like some of those Russian
nihilist persons one hears about--just to use him and your
position--for some socialist or anarchist thing? You're not serious,
Ruth?... Such things aren't."
"I--I'd do THAT again," she said. "It was right--to do that--for the
good of all those men.... It's not that--but the rest--not keeping to
my bargain--and--Dulac. I would have--gone with him."
Hilda shook her head. "Not farther than the door," she said. "You
couldn't--not after Bonbright has been such--such an idiotic angel
about you."
"I would have--THEN."
"But you wouldn't now?"
"I--I can't bear to THINK of him...."
"Um!..." Hilda's expressive syllable was very like her father's. It was
her way of saying, "I see, and I'll bet you don't see, and I'm not
surprised particularly, but you'll be surprised when you find it out."
It said all that--to Hilda's satisfaction.
"He's been gone hours," Ruth said, plaintively, and Hilda understood
her to refer to Bonbright.
"Time he was coming back, then," she said.
"He--won't come back--ever.... You don't know him the way I do." There
was something very like jealousy in Ruth's tone. "He's good--and
gentle--but if he makes up his mind--If he hadn't been that way do you
think he could have lived with me the way he HAS?"
"He must have loved you a heap," Hilda said, enviously.
"He did.... Oh, Hilda, it wasn't wrong to marry him for what I did. ...
I hadn't any right to consider him--or me. I hadn't, had I?"
"I don't belong," said Hilda. "If I wasn't a wicked capitalist I might
agree with you--MAYBE. I'm not going to scold you for it--because you
THOUGHT it was right, and that always makes the big difference.... You
thought you were doing something splendid, didn't you--and then it
fizzled. It must have been tough--I can get that part of it.... To find
you'd married him and couldn't get out of it--and that he didn't have
any thousands of men to--tinker with.... Especially when you loved Mr.
Dulac." Hilda added the last sentence with shrewd intent.
"I don't love him--I don't.... If you'd seen him--and Bonbright..."
"But you did love him," Hilda said, severely Ruth nodded dumbly.
"You're sure Bonbright won't come back?"
"Never," said Ruth.
"Then you'd better go after him."
Ruth did not answer. She was calmer now, more capable of rational
thought. What SHOULD she do? What was to be done with this
situation?... Her brief married life had been a nightmare with a
nightmare's climax; she could not bear a return to that. Her husband
was gone. She was free of him, free of her dread of the day when she
must face realities with him.... And Bonbright--she felt certain he
would not want her to run after him, that, somehow, it would lower her
even farther in his eyes if she did so. There was a certain dignity
attaching to him that she dared not violate, and to run after him would
violate it. There would, of necessity, be a scene. She would have to
explain, beg, promise--lie. She did not believe she could lie to him
again--nor that she could make him believe a lie. ... Pretense between
them had become an impossibility.... She wanted him to know she had not
gone with Dulac, would not go with Dulac. It seemed to her she could
not bear to have him think THAT of her. She had made his love
impossible, but she craved his respect. That was all.... She was freed
from him--and it was better so. The phase of it that she did not
analyze was why her heart ached so. She did not study into that.
"I don't want him--back," she said to Hilda. "It would be just like it
was--before."
"What ARE you going to do, then? You've got to do something."
"I don't know.... Why must I do something? Why can't I just wait--and
let him do what--whatever is done?"
"Because--if I know anything about Bonbright--he won't do a thing. ...
He'll just step aside quietly and make no fuss. I'm afraid he's--hurt.
And he's been hurt so much before."
"I'm--sorry." The words sounded weak, ineffectual. They did not express
her feelings, her remorse, her self-accusation.
"Sorry?... You haven't cut a dance with him, you know, or kept him
waiting while you did your hair.... You've more or less messed up his
life. Yes, you have. There isn't any use mincing words. Your motives
may have been lofty and noble and all that sort of thing--from your
point of view. But HIS point of view is what I'm thinking about now....
Sorry!"
"Don't scold. I can't--bear it. I can't bear anything more.... Please
go away. I know you despise me. Leave me alone. Go away..."
"I'll do nothing of the kind. You're all upset, and you deserve a heap
more than scolding.... But I like you." Hilda was always direct.
"You're more or less of a little idiot, with your insane notions and
your Joan of Arc silliness, but I like you. You're not fit to be left
alone. I'm in charge.... So go and dabble cold water on your eyes, so
you don't look like Nazimova in the last act, and come along with. me.
We'll take a drive, and then I'm coming back to stay all night with
you.... Yes, I am," she said, with decision, as Ruth started to object.
"You do what I say."
Hilda drove Ruth to her own house. "I've got to tell mother I'm going
to stay with you," she said. "Will you come in?"
"No--please," Ruth answered.
"I won't be but a jiffy, then." And Hilda left Ruth alone in the
electric. Alone! Suddenly Ruth was afraid of being alone. She was
thankful for Hilda, thankful Hilda was going to see her through.
Hilda's father and mother were in the library.
"Thought you were going some place with Bonbright and his wife," said
Malcolm Lightener.
"Dad," said Hilda, with characteristic bluntness and lack of preface,
"they're in a dickens of a mess."
"Bonbright?"
"And Ruth."
"Huh!..." Lightener's grunt seemed to say that it was nothing but what
he expected. "Well--go ahead."
Hilda went ahead. Her father punctuated her story with sundry grunts,
her mother with exclamations of astonishment and sorrow. Hilda told the
whole story from the beginning, and when she was done she said: "There
it is. You wouldn't believe it. And, dad, Bonbright Foote's an angel. A
regular angel with wings."
"Sometimes it's mighty hard to tell the difference between an angel and
a damn fool," said Lightener. "I suppose you want me to mix into it.
Well, I won't."
"You haven't been asked," said Hilda. "I'm doing the mixing for this
family. I just came to tell you I am going to stay all night with
Ruth--and to warn you not to mix in. You'd do it with a sledge hammer.
I don't suppose it's any use telling you to keep your hands off--for
you won't. But I wish you would."
"You'll get your wish," he said.
"I won't," she answered.
"Poor Bonbright," Mrs. Lightener said, "it does seem as if about every
misfortune had happened to him that can happen.... And he can't go to
his mother for sympathy."
"He isn't the kind to go to anybody for sympathy," said Lightener.
"Then don't you go to him with any," said Hilda.
"I told you I wasn't going to have anything to do with it."
"I haven't any patience with that girl," said Mrs. Lightener. "Such
notions! Wherever did she get them?... It's all a result of this Votes
for Women and clubs studying sociology and that. When I was a girl--"
"You wore hoop skirts, mammy," said Hilda, "and if you weren't careful
when you sat down folks saw too much stocking.... Don't go blaming Ruth
too much. She thought she was doing something tremendous."
"I calc'late she was," said Malcolm Lightener, "when you come to think
of it.... Too bad all cranks can't put the backbone they use in flub
dub to some decent use. I sort of admire 'em."
"Father!" expostulated Mrs. Lightener.
"You've got to. They back their game to the limit.... This little girl
did.... Tough on Bonbright, though."
Hilda walked to the door; there she stopped, and said over her
shoulder: "Tell you what I think. I think she's mighty hard in love
with him--and doesn't know it."
"Rats!" said her father, elegantly.
At that moment Bonbright was writing a letter to his wife. It was a
difficult letter, which he had started many times, but had been unable
to begin as it should be begun.... He did not want to hurt her; he did
not want her to misunderstand; so he had to be very clear, and write
very carefully what was in his heart. It was a sore heart, but,
strangely, there was no bitterness in it toward Ruth. He found that
strange himself, and marveled at it. He did not want to betray his
misery to her--for that would hurt her, he knew. He did not want to
accuse. All he wanted to do was to do what he could to set matters
right for her. For him matters could never be set right again. It was
the end.... The way of its coming had been a shock, but that the end
had come was not such a shock. He perceived now that he had been
gradually preparing himself for it. He saw that the life they had been
living could have ended in nothing but a crash of happiness.... He
admitted now that he had been afraid of it almost since the
beginning....
"My Dear Ruth," he wrote. Then he stopped again, unable to find a
beginning.
"I am writing because that will be easier for both of us," he
wrote--and then scratched it out, for it seemed to strike a personal
note. He did not want to be personal, to allow any emotion to creep in.
"It is necessary to make some arrangements," he began once more. That
was better. Then, "I know you will not have gone away yet." That meant
away with Dulac, and she would so understand it. "I hope you will
consent to stay in the apartment. Everything there, of course, is
yours. It is not necessary for us to discuss money. I will attend to
that carefully. In this state a husband must be absent from his wife
for a year before she can be released from him. I ask you to be patient
for that time." That was all of it. There was nothing more to say. He
read it, and it sounded bald, cold, but he could not better it.
At the end he wrote, "Yours sincerely," scratched it out, and wrote,
"Yours truly," scratched that out, and contented himself by affixing
merely his name. Then he copied the whole and dispatched it to his wife
by messenger.
It arrived just after Ruth and Hilda returned.
"It's from him," said Ruth.
"Open it, silly, and see what he says."
"I'm afraid...."
Hilda stamped her foot. "Give it to me, then," she said.
Ruth held the note to her jealously. She opened it slowly, fearfully,
and read the few words it contained.
"Oh..." she said, and held it out to Hilda. She had seen nothing but
the bareness, the coldness of it.
"It's perfect," said Hilda. "It's BONBRIGHT. He didn't slop over--he
was trying not to slop over, but there's love in every letter, and
heartache in every word of it.... And you couldn't love him. Wish _I_
had the chance."
"You--you will have," said Ruth, faintly.
"If I do," said Hilda, shortly, "you bet I WON'T WASTE it."