It was in that mood of passionate tenderness for Amy, a glow of
gratitude for love, that he sent his car swiftly toward the hospital.
His feeling diffused warmth for the town through which he drove, the
little city that had so many times tightened him up in bitterness.
People were kind, after all; how kind they were being to Amy, he
thought, eager to receive her and make her feel at home, anxious that
she be happy among them. The picture of Edith as she stood at the head
of the steps making plans for Amy warmed his heart to her. Perhaps he
had been unfair to Edith; in that one thing, certainly, she had failed
as a friend, but perhaps it was impossible for women to go that far in
friendship, impossible for them to be themselves on the outer side of
the door of their approval. Even Amy.... That showed, of course, how
hard it was for women whose experiences had all fallen within the circle
of things as they should be to understand a thing that was--disrupting.
It was as if their kindly impulses, sympathy, tenderness, were
circumscribed by that circle. Little as he liked that, his own mood of
the moment, his unrecognized efforts at holding it, kept him within that
sphere where good feeling lived. In it were happy anticipations of the
life he and Amy would have in Freeport. He had long been out of humor
with his town, scornful. He told himself now that that was a wrong
attitude. There was a new feeling for the homes he was passing, for the
people in those homes. He had a home there, too; it seemed to make him
one with all those people. There was warmth in that feeling of being one
with others.
He told himself that it was absurd to expect Amy to adjust herself all
in a minute to a thing he had known about for years, had all the time
known from within. He would make Amy understand; if Ruth came, Amy would
be good to her. At heart she was not like those others, and happiness
would make her want to be kind.
He saw her face lifted for that second good-by kiss--and quickened his
speed. He hoped he would not have to be long at the hospital, hoped Amy
would not be asleep when he got back home. He lingered happily around
the thought of there being a home to go back to, of how Amy would be
there when he got back.
But it was at a slower speed that, an hour later, he traveled those same
streets. He had lost his patient. It was no failure of the operator, but
one of those cases where the particular human body is not equal to the
demand made upon it, where there was no reaction. He got no satisfaction
in telling himself that the woman could not have lived long without the
operation; she had not lived with it--that was the only side it turned
to him. The surgery was all right enough, but life had ebbed away. It
brought a sense of who was master.
He had been practising for twelve years, but death always cut deep into
his spirit. It was more than chagrin, more than the disheartenment of
the workman at failure, when he lost a patient. It was a real sense of
death, and with that a feeling of man's final powerlessness.
That made it a different town through which he drove upon his return; a
town where people cut their way ruthlessly through life--and to what
end? They might be a little kinder to each other along the way, it would
seem, when this was what it came to for them all. They were kind enough
about death--not so kind about the mean twists in life.
That feeling was all wrapped up with Ruth Holland; it brought Ruth to
him. He thought of the many times they had traveled that road together,
times when he would take her where she could meet Stuart Williams, then
pick her up again and bring her home, her family thinking she had been
with him. How would he ever make Amy understand about that? It seemed
now that it could not be done, that it would be something they did not
share, perhaps something lying hostilely between them. He wondered why
it had not seemed to him the shameful thing it would appear to anyone he
told of it. Was that something twisted in him, or was it just that utter
difference between knowing things from within and judging from without?
To himself, it was never in the form of argument he defended Ruth. It
was the memory of her face at those times when he had seen what she was
feeling.
He was about to pass the Hollands'--her old home. He slackened the car
to its slowest. It had seemed a gloomy place in recent years. The big
square house in the middle of the big yard of oak trees used to be one
of the most friendly-looking places of the town. But after Ruth went
away and the family drew within themselves, as they did, the hospitable
spaciousness seemed to become bleakness, as if the place itself changed
with the change of spirit. People began to speak of it as gloomy; now
they said it looked forsaken. Certainly it was in need of painting--new
sidewalks, general repairs. Mr. Holland had seemed to cease caring how
the place looked. There weren't flowers any more.
In the upper hall he saw the dim light that burns through the night in a
house of sickness. He had been there early in the evening; if he thought
the nurse was up he would like to stop again. But he considered that it
must be almost one--too late for disturbing them. He hoped Mr. Holland
was having a good night; he would not have many more nights to get
through.
He wished there was some one of them to whom he could talk about sending
for Ruth. They had not sent for her when her mother died, but that was
sudden, everyone was panic-stricken. And that was only two years after
Ruth's going away; time had not worked much then on their feeling
against her. He would have to answer her letter and tell her that her
father could not live. He wanted to have the authority to tell her to
come home. Anything else seemed fairly indecent in its lack of feeling.
Eleven years--and Ruth had never been home; and she loved her
father--though of course no one in the town would believe _that_.
His car had slowed almost to a stop; there was a low whistle from the
porch and someone was coming down the steps. It was Ted Holland--Ruth's
younger brother.
"Hello, Deane," he said, coming out to him; "thinking of coming in?"
"No, I guess not; it's pretty late. I was just passing, and wondering
about your father."
"He went to sleep; seems quiet, and about the same."
"That's good; hope it will keep up through the night."
The young fellow did not reply. The doctor was thinking that it must be
lonely for him--all alone on the porch after midnight, his father dying
upstairs, no member of the immediate family in the house.
"Sent for Cy, Ted?" he asked. Cyrus was the older brother, older than
both Ted and Ruth. It was he who had been most bitter against Ruth.
Deane had always believed that if it had not been for Cyrus the rest of
them would not have hardened into their pain and humiliation like that.
Ted nodded. "I had written, and today, after you said what you did, I
wired. I had an answer tonight. He has to finish up a deal that will
take him a few days, but I am to keep him informed--I told him you said
it might be a couple of weeks--and he'll come the first minute he can."
There was a pause. Deane wanted to say: "And Ruth?" but that was a hard
thing to say to one of the Hollands.
But Ted himself mentioned her. "Tell you what I'm worrying about,
Deane," he blurted out, "and that's Ruth!"
Deane nodded appreciatively. He had always liked this young Ted, but
there was a new outgoing to him for this.
"Father asked for her this afternoon. I don't care whether he was just
right in his mind or not--it shows she's _on_ his mind. 'Hasn't Ruth
come in yet!' he asked, several times."
"You send for her, Ted," commanded the doctor. "You ought to. I'll back
you up if Cy's disagreeable."
"He'll be disagreeable all right," muttered the younger brother.
"Well, what about Harriett?" impatiently demanded Deane. "Doesn't she
see that Ruth ought to be here?" Harriett was Ruth's sister and the
eldest of the four children.
"Harriett would be all right," said Ted, "if it weren't for that bunch
of piety she's married to!"