We do not live wholly through ourselves. What is called fate is but the
outcome of the spinning of other individuals twisted into the woof of
our own making; so no life should be judged as a unit.
Ruth Levice was not alone in the world; she was neither recluse nor
a genius, but a girl with many loving friends and a genial home-life.
Having resolved to bear to the world an unchanged front, she outwardly
did as she had always done. Her mother’s zealous worldliness returned
with her health; and Ruth fell in with all her plans for a gay
winter,--that is, the plans were gay; Ruth’s presence could hardly be
termed so. The old spontaneous laugh was superseded by a gentle smile,
sympathetic perhaps, but never joyous. She listened more, and seldom now
took the lead in a general conversation, though there was a charm about
a tete-a-tete with her that earnest persons, men and women, felt without
being able to define it. For the change, without doubt, was there.
It was as if a quiet hand had been passed over her exuberant, happy
girlhood and left a serious, thoughtful woman in its stead. A subtile
change like this is not speedily noticed by outsiders; it requires usage
before an acquaintance will account it a characteristic instead of a
mood. But her family knew it. Mrs. Levice, wholly in the dark as to the
cause, wondered openly.
“You might be thirty, Ruth, instead of twenty-two, by the staidness
of your demeanor. While other girls are laughing and chatting as girls
should, you look on with the tolerant dignity of a woman of grave
concerns. If you had anything to trouble you, there might be some
excuse; but as it is, why can’t you go into enjoyments like the rest of
your friends?”
“Don’t I? Why, I hardly know another girl who lives in such constant
gayety as I. Are we not going to a dinner this evening and to the ball
to-morrow night?”
“Yes; but you might as well be going to a funeral for all the pleasure
you seem to anticipate. If you come to a ball with such a grandly
serious air, the men will just as soon think of asking a statue to dance
as you. A statue may be beautiful in its niche, but people do not care
to study its meaning at a ball.”
“What do you wish me to do, Mamma? I should hate the distinction of a
wall-flower, which you think imminent. I am afraid I am too big a woman
to be frolicsome.”
“You never were that, but you were at least a girl. People will begin
to think you consider yourself above them, or else that you have some
secret trouble.”
The smile of incredulity with which she answered her would have been
heart-breaking had it been understood. No flush stained the ivory pallor
of her face at these thrusts in the dark; Louis was never annoyed
in this way now. Her old-time excited contradictions never obtruded
themselves in their conversations. A silent knowledge lay between them
which neither, by word or look, ever alluded to. Mrs. Levice noted with
delight their changed relations. Louis’s sarcasm ceased to be directed
at Ruth; and though the familiar sparring was missing, Mrs. Levice
preferred his deferential bearing when he addressed her, and Ruth’s
grave graciousness with him. She drew her own conclusions, and accepted
Ruth’s quietness with more patience on this account.
Louis understood somewhat; and in his manliness he could not hide that
her suffering had cost him a new code of actions. But he could not
understand as her father did. Despite her brave smile, Levice could
almost read her heart-beats, and the knowledge brought a hardness and a
bitter regret. He grew to scanning her face surreptitiously, looking
in vain for the old, untroubled delight in things; and when the
unmistakable signs of secret anguish would leave traces at times, he
would turn away with a groan. Yet there was nothing to be done. He knew
that her love had been no light thing nor could her giving up be so;
but feeling that no matter what the present cost, the result would
compensate, he trusted to time to heal the wound. Meanwhile his own
self-blame at these times left its mark upon him.
For Ruth lived a dual life. The real one was passed in her quiet
chamber, in her long solitary walks, and when she sat with her book,
apparently reading. She would look up with blank, despairing eyes,
clinched hands, and hard-set teeth when the thought of him and all her
loss would steal upon her. Her father had caught many such a look upon
her face. She had resolved to live without him, but accomplishment is
not so easy. Besides, it was not as if she never saw him. San Francisco
is not so large a city but that by the turning of a corner you may not
come across a friend. Ruth grew to study the sounds the different kinds
of vehicles made; and the rolling wheels of a doctor’s carriage behind
her would set her pulses fluttering in fright.
She was walking one day along Sutter Street toward Gough from Octavia.
The street takes a sudden down-grade midway in the block. She was
approaching this declension just before the Boys’ High School when a
carriage drove quickly up the hill toward her. The horses gave a bound
as if the reins had been jerked; there was the momentary flash of a
man’s stern, white face as he raised his hat; and Ruth was walking down
the hill, trembling and pale. It was the first time; and for one minute
her heart seemed to stop beating and then rushed wildly on. Whether she
had bowed or made any sign of recognition, she did not know. It did
not matter, though; if he thought her cold or strange or anything, what
difference could it possibly make? For her there would be left forever
this dead emptiness. These casual meetings were inevitable; and she
would come home after them worn-out and heavy-eyed. “A slight headache”
was a recurrent excuse with her.
They had common friends, and it would not have been surprising had she
met him at the different affairs to which she went, always through her
mother’s desire. But the dread of coming upon him slowly departed as
the months rolled by and with them all token of him. Time and again she
would hear allusions to him. “Dr. Kemp has developed into a misogynist,”
pouted Dorothy Gwynne. “He was one of the few decided eligibles on the
horizon, but it requires the magnet of illness to draw him now. I really
must look up the symptoms of a possible ache; the toilet and expression
of an invalid are very becoming, you know.”
“Dr. Kemp made a splendid donation to our kindergarten to-day. I have
not seen him since we were in the country, and he thought me looking
very well. He inquired after the family, and I told him we had a
residence, at which he smiled.” This from Mrs. Levice. Ruth would have
given much to have been able to ask after him with self-possession, but
the muscles of her throat seemed to swell and choke her while silent.
She went now and then to see Bob Bard in his flower-store; he would
without fail inquire after “our friend” or tell her of his having passed
that day. Here was her one chance of inquiring if he was looking well,
to which the answer was invariably “yes.”
She sat one night at the opera in her wonted beauty, with her soft,
dusky hair rolled from her sweet Madonna face. Many a lorgnette was
raised a second and a third time toward her. Louis, seated next to her,
resented with unaccountable ferocity this free admiration that she did
not see or feel.
As the curtain went down on the first act, he drew her attention to
some celebrity then passing out. She raised her glass, but her hand fell
nerveless in her lap. Immediately following him came Dr. Kemp. Their
eyes met, and he bowed low, passing on immediately. The rest of the
evening passed like a nightmare; she heard nothing but her heart-throbs,
saw nothing but his beloved face regarding her with simple courtesy.
Louis knew that for her the opera was over; the tell-tale bistrous
shadows grew around her eyes, and she became deadly silent.
“What a magnificent man he is,” murmured Mrs. Levice, “and what an
impressive bow he has!” Ruth did not hear her; but when she reached
her own room, she threw herself face downward on her bed in intolerable
anguish. She was not a girl who cried easily. If she had been, her
suffering would not have been so intense,--when the flood-gates are
opened, the river finds relief. Over and over again she wished she might
die and end this eager, passionate craving for some token of love from
him, or for the power of letting him know how it was with her. And it
would always be thus as long as she lived. She did not deceive herself;
no mere friendship would have sufficed,--all or nothing after what had
been.
Physically, however, she bore no traces of this continual restraint. On
the contrary, her slender figure matured to womanly proportions. Little
children, seeing her, smiled responsively at her, or clamored to be
taken into her arms, there was such a tender mother-look about her. By
degrees her friends began to feel the repose of her intellect and
the sympathy of her face, and came to regard her as the queen of
confidantes. Young girls with their continual love episodes and
excitements, ambitious youths with their whimsical schemes of life and
aspirations of love, sought her out openly. Few of these latter dared
hope for any individual thought from her, though any of the older men
would have staked a good deal for the knowledge that she singled him for
her consideration.
Arnold viewed it all with inward satisfaction. He regarded memory but
as a sort of palimpsest; and he was patiently waiting until his own
name should appear again, when the other’s should have been sufficiently
obliterated.
It was a severe winter, and everybody appreciated the luxury of a warm
home. December came in wet and cold, and la grippe held the country in
its disagreeable hold. The Levices were congratulating themselves one
evening on their having escaped the epidemic.
“I suppose the secret of it lies in the fact that we do not coddle
ourselves,” observed Levice.
“If you were to coddle yourself a little more,” retorted his wife, “you
would not cough every morning as you do. Really, Jules, if you do not
consult a physician, I shall send for Kemp myself. I actually think it
is making you thin.”
“Nonsense!” he replied carelessly; “it is only a little irritation of
the throat every morning. If the weather is clear next week, I must go
to New York. Eh, Louis?”
“At this time of the year!” cried Mrs. Levice, in expostulation.
“Some one has to go, and the only one that should is I.”
“I think I could manage it,” said Louis, “if you would see about the
other adjustment while I am gone.”
“No, you could not,”--when Levice said “no,” it seldom meant an ultimate
“yes.” “Besides, the trip will do me good.”
“I shall go with you,” put in Mrs. Levice, decidedly.
“No, dear; you could not stand the cold in New York, and I could not be
bothered with a woman’s grip-sack.”
“Take Ruth, then.”
“I should love to go with you, Father,” she replied to the questioning
glance of his eyes. He seemed to ponder over it for a while, but shook
his head finally.
“No,” he said again; “I shall be very busy, and a woman would be a
nuisance to me. Besides, I wish to be alone for a while.”
They all looked at him in surprise; he was so unused to making testy
remarks.
“Grown tired of womankind?” asked Mrs. Levice, playfully. “Well, if
you must, you must; don’t overstay your health and visit, and bring us
something pretty. How long will you be gone?”
“That depends on the speediness of the courts. No more than three weeks
at the utmost, however.”
So the following Wednesday being bright and sunny, he set off; the
family crossed the bay with him.
“Take care of your mother, Ruth,” he said at parting, “and of yourself,
my pale darling.”
“Don’t worry about me, Father,” she said, pulling up his furred collar;
“indeed, I am well and happy. If you could believe me, perhaps you would
love me as much as you used to.”
“As much! My child, I never loved you better than now; remember that. I
think I have forgotten everybody else in you.”
“Don’t, dear! it makes me feel miserable to think I should cause you a
moment’s uneasiness. Won’t you believe that everything is as I wish it?”
“If I could, I should have to lose the memory of the last four months.
Well, try your best to forgive me, child.”
“Unless you hate me, don’t hurt me with that thought again. I forgive
you? I, who am the cause of it all?”
He kissed her tear-filled eyes tenderly, and turned with a sign to her
mother.
They watched to the last his loved face at the window, Ruth with a sad
smile and a loving wave of her handkerchief.
Over at the mole it is not a bad place to witness tragedies. Pathos
holds the upper hand, and the welcomes are sometimes as heart-rending as
the leave-takings. A woman stood on the ferry with a blank, working face
down which the tears fell heedlessly; a man, her husband, turned from
her, drew his hat down over his eyes, and stalked off toward the
train without a backward glance. Parting is a figure of death in this
respect,--that only those who are left need mourn; the others have
something new beyond.