The train for Chicago was several hours out from Denver when the man who
had decided that it was an uninteresting car began watching the woman
who was facing him from several seats away. He was one of those persons
with a drab exterior but not a similarly colored imagination, and he was
always striving to defeat the meager life his exterior consigned him to
by projecting himself into the possible experiences of people he watched
on the trains.
Afterwards he wondered that he should at first have passed this woman by
with the mere impression of a nice-looking woman who seemed tired. It
was when he chanced to look at her as she was looking from the window
that she arrested him. Her sweet face had steeled itself to something,
she was as if looking out at a thing that hurt her, but looking with the
courage to bear that hurt. He turned and looked from the window in the
direction of her intense gaze and then smiled at himself as he turned
back from the far-reaching monotonous plain of Eastern Colorado; he
might have known that what she was looking at was not spread out there
for anyone else to see.
She interested him all through the two days. She puzzled him. He
relieved the tedium of the journey with speculations on what sort of
thing it was she was thinking about, going over. He would arrive at a
conclusion in which he felt considerable satisfaction only to steal
another look at her and find that she did not look at all like the woman
he had made up his mind she was. What held him was the way feeling
shaped her. She had a delicate, sweet face, but there were times when it
was almost repellent in its somberness, when it hardened in a way that
puzzled him. She would sit looking from the window and it was as if a
dense sadness had settled down upon her; then her face would light with
a certain sad tenderness, and once he had the fancy of her lifting her
head out of gloom to listen to a beautiful, far-away call. There were
long meditations, far steady looks out at something, little reminiscent
smiles that lingered about her sensitive mouth after her eyes had gone
sad again. She would grow tired of thinking and close her eyes and seem
to try to rest. Her face, at those times, showed the wear of hard years,
laying bare lines that one took no count of when her eyes were lighted
and her mouth sensitive. Frequently she would turn from herself and
smile at the baby across the aisle; but once, when the baby was crowing
and laughing she abruptly turned away. He tried to construct "a life"
for her, but she did not stay in any life he carefully arranged. There
were times when he impatiently wondered why he should be wondering so
much about her; those were the times when she seemed to have let it all
go, was inert. But though he did not succeed in getting a "life" for
her, she gave him a freshened sense of life as immensely interesting, as
charged with pain and sweetness.
It was over the pain and the sweetness of life that this woman--Ruth
Holland--brooded during the two days that carried her back to the home
of her girlhood. She seemed to be going back over a long bridge. That
part of her life had been cut away from her. With most lives the past
grew into the future; it was as a growth that spread, the present but
the extent of the growth at the moment. With her there had been the
sharp cut; not a cut, but a tear, a tear that left bleeding ends. Back
there lay the past, a separated thing. During the eleven years since her
life had been torn from that past she had seen it not only as a separate
thing but a thing that had no reach into the future. The very number of
miles between, the fact that she made no journeys back home, contributed
to that sense of the cleavage, the remoteness, the finality. Those she
had left back there remained real and warm in her memory, but her part
with them was a thing finished. It was as if only shoots of pain could
for the minute unite them.
Turning her face back toward home turned her back to herself there. She
dwelt upon home as she had left it, then formed the picture of what she
would find now. Her mother and her grandfather would not be there. The
father she had left would not be there. A dying man would be there. Ted
would be grown up. She wondered if anyone had taken care of the flowers.
Would there be any roses? She and her mother had always taken care of
them. Edith--? Would Terror be there? He was only about three when she
left; dogs did live as long as that. She had named him Terror because of
his puppy pranks. But there would be no puppy pranks now. It would be a
sedate old dog she would find. He would not know her--she who had cared
for him and romped with him through his puppyhood. But they had not
shared experiences.
On the train carrying her back home her own story opened freshly to her.
Again and again she would be caught into it....
* * * * *
Ruth Holland--the girl of twenty--was waiting for Deane Franklin to come
and take her to the dance at the Country Club. She was dressed and
wandering restlessly about the house, looking in mirrors as she passed
them, pleased with herself in her new white dress. There was an
excitement in the fact that she had not seen Deane for almost a year; he
had been away, studying medicine at Johns Hopkins. She wondered if he
would seem any different; wondered--really more interested in this than
in the other--if she would seem any different to him.
She did not think of Deane "that way" she had told Edith Lawrence, her
bosom friend from childhood, when Edith that afternoon had hinted at
romantic possibilities. Edith was in romantic mood because she and Will
Blair were in the happy state of getting over a quarrel. For a month
Ruth had listened to explosions against Will Blair. Now it was made up
and Edith was in sweetly chastened spirit. She explained to Ruth at
great length and with much earnestness that she had not understood Will,
that she had done him a great injustice; and she was going to the party
with him that night. Edith and Will and Deane and Ruth were going
together.
They were singularly unmatured for girls of twenty. Their experiences
had not taken them outside the social life of the town, and within it
they had found too easy, pre-prepared sailing for any real finding or
tests of themselves. They were daughters of two of the town's most
important families; they were two of the town's most attractive girls.
That fixed their place in a round of things not deepening, not
individualizing. It was pleasant, rather characterless living on a
limited little part of the surface of life. They went to "the parties,"
occupied with that social round that is as definite a thing in a town of
forty thousand as in a metropolis. Their emotional experiences had been
little more than part of their social life--within it and of the
character of it. Attractive, popular, of uncontested place in the
society in which they found themselves, they had not known the strivings
and the heart-aches that can intensify life within those social
boundaries. They were always invited. When they sat out dances it was
because they wanted to. Life had dealt too favoringly and too
uneventfully with them to find out what stuff was really in them. They
were almost always spoken of together--Edith Lawrence and Ruth
Holland--Ruth and Edith. That was of long standing; they had gone to
primary school together, to Sunday-school, through the high-school. They
told each other things; they even hinted at emotions concealed within
their breasts, of dissatisfactions and longings there were no words for.
Once Ruth confided that sometimes she wept and could not have said why,
and great seemed the marvel when Edith confessed to similar experiences.
They never suspected that girlhood was like that; they were like that,
and set apart and united in being so.
But those spiritual indulgences were rare; for the most part they were
what would be called two wholesome, happy girls, girls whose lot had
fallen in pleasant places.
Ruth wanted to go to college, but her father had kept her from it. Women
should marry and settle down and have families was the belief of Cyrus
Holland. Going to college put foolish notions in their heads. Not being
able to go had been Ruth's first big disappointment. Edith had gone East
to a girls' school. At the last minute, realizing how lonely she would
be at home without her chum, Ruth had begged to go with her. Her mother
had urged it for her. But it was an expensive school to which Edith was
going, and when he found what it would cost Ruth's father refused,
saying he could not afford it, and that it was nonsense, anyway. Ruth
had then put in a final plea for the State University, which would not
cost half as much as Edith's school. Seeing that it meant more to her
than he had known, and having a particular affection for this younger
daughter of his, Mr. Holland was on the point of giving in when the
newspapers came out with a scandal that centered about the suicide of a
girl student at the university. That settled it; Ruth would stay home
with her mother. She could go on with music, and study literature with
Miss Collins. Miss Collins stood for polite learning in the town. There
was not the remotest danger of an education received through her
unfeminizing a girl. But Ruth soon abandoned Miss Collins, scornfully
informing her parent that she would as soon study literature with a
mummy.
With Ruth, the desire to go to college had been less a definite craving
for knowledge than a diffused longing for an enlarged experience. She
wanted something different, was impatient for something new, something
more. She had more curiosity about the life outside their allotted place
than her friend Edith Lawrence had. She wanted to go to college because
that would open out from what she had. Ruth would have found small
satisfaction in that girls' school of Edith's had her father consented
to her going. It was little more than the polite learning of Miss
Collins fashionably re-dressed. Edith, however, came home with a new
grace and poise, an added gift of living charmingly on the surface of
life, and held that school was lovely.
During that year her friend was away--Ruth was nineteen then--she was
not so much unhappy as she was growingly impatient for something more,
and expectant of it. She was always thinking that something was going to
happen--that was why things did not go dead for her. The year was
intensifying to her; she missed her friend; she had been baffled in
something she wanted. It made her conscious of wanting more than she
had. Her energies having been shut off from the way they had wanted to
go, she was all the more zestful for new things from life. There was
much in her that her life did not engage.
She loved dancing. She was happily excited that night because they were
going to a dance. Waiting for Deane, she wondered if he had danced any
during the year, hoping that he had, and was a little better dancer than
of old. Dear Deane! She always had that "Dear Deane!" feeling after she
had been critical about him.
She wished she did think of Deane "that way"--the way she had told Edith
she did not think of him. But "that way" drew her from thoughts of
Deane. She had stopped before her dressing-table and was toying with her
manicure things. She looked at herself in the glass and saw the color
coming to her cheeks. She sat there dreaming--such dreams as float
through girlhood.
Her mother came in to see how she looked. Mrs. Holland was a small,
frail-looking woman. Ruth resembled her, but with much added. Things
caught into Ruth were not in her mother. They resembled each other in
certain definite things, but there was something that flushed Ruth to
life--transforming her--that did not live in her mother. They were alike
as a beautiful shell enclosing a light may be like one that is not
lighted. Mrs. Holland was much occupied with the social life of her
town. She was light-hearted, well-liked. She went to the teas and card
parties which abounded there and accepted that as life with no
dissatisfaction beyond a mild desire for more money.
She also enjoyed the social life of her daughter; where Ruth was to go
and what she would wear were matters of interest and importance. Indeed
life was compounded of matters concerning where one would go and what
one would wear.
"Well, Sally Gordon certainly did well with that dress," was her
verdict. "Some think she's falling off. Now do try and not get it
spoiled the first thing, Ruth. Dancing is so hard on your clothes."
She surveyed her daughter with satisfaction. Ruth was a daughter a
mother would survey with satisfaction. The strong life there was in her
was delicately and subtly suggested. She did not have what are thought
to be the easily distinguishable marks of intense feeling. She suggested
fine things--a rare, high quality. She was not out-and-out beautiful;
her beauty lurked within her feeling. It was her fluidity that made her
lovely. Her hazel eyes were ever changing with light and feeling, eyes
that could wonderfully darken, that glowed in a rush of feeling and
shone in expectancy or delight,--eyes that the spirit made. She had a
lovely brow, a sensitive, beautiful mouth. But it needed the light
within to find her beauty. Without it she was only a sweet-looking,
delicately fashioned girl.
"That's Deane," said Ruth, as the bell rang.
"I want to see him too," said Mrs. Holland, "and so will your father."
Ruth met him in the hall, holding out both hands with, "Deane, I'm _so_
glad to see you!"
He was not an expressive youth. As he shook Ruth's hands with vigor, he
exclaimed, "Same here! Same here!" and straightway he seemed just the
Deane of old and in the girl's heart was a faint disappointment.
As a little boy people had called Deane Franklin a homely youngster. His
thick, sandyish hair used to stand up in an amazing manner. He moved in
a peculiarly awkward way, as if the jointing of him had not been
perfectly accomplished. He had a wide generous mouth that was attractive
when it was not screwed out of shape. His keen blue eyes had a nice
twinkle. His abrupt, hearty manner seemed very much his own. He was
better dressed than when Ruth had last seen him. She was thinking that
Deane could actually be called attractive in his own homely, awkward
way. And yet, as he kept shaking her hands up and down, broadly
grinning, nodding his head,--"tickled to death to be back," she felt
anew that she could not think of Deane "that way." Perhaps she had known
him too long. She remembered just how absurd he had looked in his first
long trousers--and those silly little caps he had worn perched way back
on his head! Yet she really loved Deane, in a way; she felt a great deal
nearer to him than to her own brother Cyrus.
They had gone into the living-room. Mrs. Holland thought he had
grown--grown broader, anyway; Mr. Holland wanted to know about the
medical school, and would he practice in Freeport? Ted wanted to know if
Johns Hopkins had a good team.
"That's Will, I guess," he said, turning to Ruth as the bell rang.
"Oh, Will," cried Mrs. Holland, "do ask Edith to come in and show us her
dress! She won't muss it if she's careful. Her mother told me it was the
sweetest dress Edith ever had."
Edith entered in her bright, charming way, exhibiting her pretty pink
dress with a pleasure that was winning. She had more of definite beauty
than Ruth--golden hair, really sunny hair, it was, and big, deep blue
eyes and fresh, even skin. Ruth often complained that Edith had
something to count on; she could tell how she was going to look, while
with her--Ruth--there was never any knowing. Some of the times when she
was most anxious to look her best, she was, as she bewailed it, a
fright. Edith was larger than Ruth, she had more of a woman's
development.
Mrs. Holland followed them out to the carriage. "Now don't stay until
_all_ hours," was her parting admonition, in a tone of comfortable
resignation to the fact that that was exactly what they would do.
"Well," said Mr. Holland, who had gone as far as the door, "I don't know
what young folks are coming to. After nine o'clock now!"
"That must be a punk school Deane goes to," said Ted, his mind not yet
pried from the football talk.