An hour later she had to get away from that room. She did not know where
she was going, but she had to have some escape. Just the physical act of
getting away was something.
Ted and Harriett were talking in the lower hall. They looked in inquiry
at the hat she held and her face made Ted lay a hand on her arm. She
told them she had to have exercise--air--and was going out for a little
walk. She thought Harriett looked aghast--doubtless preferring Ruth be
seen as little as possible. But she could not help that; she had to get
away--away from that room, that house, away from those old things now
newly charged. Something left with them shut down around her as a fog in
which she could not breathe. Ted asked if he should go with her, but she
shook her head and started for the side door, fearing he might insist.
He called after her that Harriett was going to have Cyrus stay at her
house, that she could make room for him. He said it with a relief which
told how he had really hated having his brother go to the hotel. As she
turned with something about that being better, she noticed how worn and
worried Harriett looked, and then hurried on, wanting to get away, to
escape for a little while from that crushing realization of how hard she
made things for them all. But she could not shut out the thought of the
empty rooms upstairs at their house--Cyrus's old home--and the crowded
quarters at Harriett's. Yet of course this would be better than the
hotel; she was glad Harriett and Ted had been able to arrange it; she
hoped, for their sakes, that Cyrus would not, to emphasize his feeling,
insist upon staying downtown.
She walked several blocks without giving any thought to where she was
going. She was not thinking then of those familiar streets, of the times
she had walked them. She was getting away, trying, for a little while,
to escape from things she had no more power to bear. She could not have
stayed another minute in her old room.
A little ahead of her she saw a woman sitting in a market wagon, holding
the horse. She got the impression that the woman was selling vegetables.
She tried to notice, to be interested. She could see, as she came along
toward the wagon, that the vegetables looked nice and fresh. She and
Stuart had raised vegetables once; they had done various things after
what money they had was exhausted and, handicapped both by his lack of
ruggedness and by the shrinking from people which their position bred in
them, they had to do the best they could at making a living. And so she
noticed these vegetables, but it was not until she was close to her that
she saw the woman had relaxed her hold on the lines and was leaning
forward, peering at her. And when she came a little nearer this woman--a
thin, wiry little person whose features were sharp, leaned still further
forward and cried: "Why, how do you do? How d'do, Ruth!"
For a moment Ruth was too startled to make any reply. Then she only
stammered, "Why, how do you do?"
But the woman leaned over the side of the wagon. Ruth was trying her
best to think who she was; she knew that she had known her somewhere, in
some way, but that thin, eager little face was way back in the past, and
that she should be spoken to in this way--warm, natural--was itself too
astonishing, moving, to leave her clear-headed for casting back.
And then, just as she seemed about to say something, her face changed a
little. Ruth heard a gate click behind her and then a man, a stolid
farmer, he appeared, came up to the wagon. The woman kept nodding her
head, as if in continued greeting, but she had leaned back, as though
she had decided against what she had been about to say. Ruth, starting
on, still bewildered, stirred, nodded and smiled too; and then, when the
man had jumped in the wagon and just as the horse was starting, the
woman called: "It seems awful good to have you back on these streets,
Ruth!"
Ruth could only nod in reply and hurried on; her heart beat fast; her
eyes were blurring. "It seems awful good to have you back on these
streets, Ruth!" Was _that_ what she had said? She turned around, wanting
to run after that wagon, not wanting to lose that pinched, shabby, eager
little woman who was glad to have her back on those streets. But the
wagon had turned a corner and was out of sight. Back on those streets!
It opened her to the fact that she was back on them. She walked more
slowly, thinking about that. And she could walk more slowly; she was
less driven.
After a block of perplexed thinking she knew who that woman was; it
flashed from her memory where she had known that intent look, that
wistful intentness lighting a thin little face. It was Annie Morris, a
girl in her class at the high-school, a plain, quiet girl--poor she
believed she was, not in Ruth's crowd. Now that she searched back for
what she remembered about it she believed that this Annie Morris had
always liked her; and perhaps she had taken more notice of her than
Edith and the other girls had. She could see her now getting out of the
shabby buggy in which she drove in to school--she lived somewhere out in
the country. She remembered talking to her sometimes at recess--partly
because she seemed a good deal alone and partly because she liked to
talk to her. She remembered that she was what they called awfully bright
in her classes.
That this girl, whom she had forgotten, should welcome her so warmly
stirred an old wondering: a wondering if somewhere in the world there
were not people who would be her friends. That wondering, longing, had
run through many lonely days. The people she had known would no longer
be her friends. But were there not other people? She knew so little
about the world outside her own life; her own life had seemed to shut
down around her. But she had a feeling that surely somewhere--somewhere
outside the things she had known--were people among whom she could find
friends. So far she had not found them. At the first, seeing how hard it
would be, how bad for them both, to have only each other, she had tried
to go out to people just as if there were nothing in her life to keep
her back from them. And then they would "hear"; that hearing would come
in the most unforeseen little ways, at the most unexpected times;
usually through those coincidences of somebody's knowing somebody else,
perhaps meeting someone from a former place where they had already
"heard"; it was as if the haphazardness of life, those little accidents
of meetings that were without design, equipped the world with a powerful
service for "hearing," which after a time made it impossible for people
to feel that what was known in one place would not come to be known in
another. After she had several times been hurt by the drawing away of
people whom she had grown to like, she herself drew back where she could
not be so easily hurt. And so it came about that her personality changed
in that; from an outgoing nature she came to be one who held back, shut
herself in. Even people who had never "heard" had the feeling she did
not care to know them, that she wanted to be let alone. It crippled her
power for friendship; it hurt her spirit. And it left her very much
alone. In that loneliness she wondered if there were not those other
people--people who could "hear" and not draw away. She had not found
them; perhaps she had at times been near them and in her holding
back--not knowing, afraid--had let them go by. Of that, too, she had
wondered; there had been many lonely wonderings.
She came now to a corner where she stopped. She stood looking down that
cross street which was shaded by elm trees. That was the corner where
she had always turned for Edith's. Yes, that was the way she used to go.
She stood looking down the old way. She wanted to go that way now!
She went so far as to cross the street, and on that far corner again
stood still, hesitating, wanting to go that old way. It came to her that
if this other girl--Annie Morris--a girl she could barely remember, was
glad to see her back, then surely Edith--_Edith_--would be glad to see
her. But after a moment she went slowly on--the other way. She
remembered; remembered the one letter she had had from Edith--that
letter of a few lines sent in reply to her two letters written from
Arizona, trying to make Edith understand.
"Ruth"--Edith had written--she knew the few words by heart; "Yes, I
received your first letter. I did not reply to it because it did not
seem to me there was anything for me to say. And it does not seem to me
now that there is anything for me to say." It was signed, "Edith
Lawrence Blair." The full signature had seemed even more formal than the
cold words. It had hurt more; it seemed actually to be putting in force
the decree that everything between her and Edith was at an end. It was
never to be Ruth and Edith again.
As she walked slowly on now, away from Edith's, she remembered the day
she walked across that Arizona plain, looking at Edith's letter a
hundred times in the two miles between the little town and their cabin.
She had gone into town that day to see the doctor. Stuart had seemed
weaker and she was terribly frightened. The doctor did not bring her
much comfort; he said she would have to be patient, and hope--probably
it would all come right. She felt very desolate that day in the
far-away, forlorn little town. When she got Edith's letter she did not
dare to open it until she got out from the town. And then she found
those few formal, final words--written, it was evident, to keep her from
writing any more. The only human thing about it was a little blot under
the signature. It was the only thing a bit like Edith; she could see her
making it and frowning over it. And she wondered--she had always
wondered--if that little blot came there because Edith was not as
controlled, as without all feeling, as everything else about her letter
would indicate. As she looked back to it now it seemed that that day of
getting Edith's letter was the worst day of all the hard years. She had
been so lonely--so frightened; when she saw Edith's handwriting it was
hard not to burst into tears right there at the little window in the
queer general store where they gave out letters as well as everything
else. But after she had read the letter there were no tears; there was
no feeling of tears. She walked along through that flat, almost
unpeopled, half desert country and it seemed that the whole world had
shrivelled up. Everything had dried, just as the bushes along the road
were alive and yet dried up. She knew then that it was certain there was
no reach back into the old things. And that night, after they had gone
to bed out of doors and Stuart had fallen asleep, she lay there in the
stillness of that vast Arizona night and she came to seem in another
world. For hours she lay there looking up at the stars, thinking,
fearing. She reached over and very gently, meaning not to wake him, put
her hand in the hand of the man asleep beside her, the man who was all
she had in the world, whom she loved with a passion that made the
possibility of losing him a thing that came in the night to terrorize
her. He had awakened and understood, and had comforted her with his
love, lavishing upon her tender, passionate assurance of how he was
going to get strong and make it all come right for them both. There was
something terrible in that passion for one another that came out of the
consciousness of all else lost. They had each other--there were moments
when that burned with a terrible flame through the feeling that they had
nothing else. That night they went to sleep in a wonderful consciousness
of being alone together in the world. Time after time that swept them
together with an intensity of which finally they came to be afraid. They
stopped speaking of it; it came to seem a thing not to dwell upon.
The thought of Edith's letter had brought some of that back now. She
turned from it to the things she was passing, houses she recognized, new
houses. Walking on past them she thought of how those homes joined. With
most of them there were no fences between--one yard merging into
another. Children were running from yard to yard; here a woman was
standing in her own yard calling to a woman in the house adjoining. She
passed a porch where four women were sitting sewing; another where two
women were playing with a baby. There were so many meeting places for
their lives; they were not shut in with their own feeling. That feeling
which they as individuals knew reached out into common experiences, into
a life in common growing out of individual things. Passing these houses,
she wanted to share in that life in common. She had been too long by
herself. She needed to be one with others. Life, for a time, had a
certain terrible beauty that burned in that sense of isolation. But it
was not the way. One needed to be one with others.
She thought of how it was love, more than any other thing, that gave
these people that common life. Love was the fabric of it. Love made new
combinations of people--homes, children. The very thing in her that had
shut her out was the thing drawing them into that oneness, that many in
one. Homes were closed to her because of that very impulse out of which
homes were built.
She had, without any plan for doing so, turned down the little street
where she used to go to meet Stuart. And when she realized where she was
going thoughts of other things fell away; the feeling of those first
days was strangely revivified, as if going that old way made her for the
moment the girl who had gone that way. Again love was not a thing of
right or wrong, it was the thing that had to have its way--life's great
imperative. Going down that old street made the glow of those days--the
excitement--come to life and quicken her again. It was so real that it
was as if she were living it again--a girl palpitating with love going
to meet her lover, all else left behind, only love now! For the moment
those old surroundings made the old days a living thing to her. The
world was just one palpitating beauty; the earth she walked was vibrant;
the sweetness of life breathed from the air she breathed. She was
charged with the joy of it, bathed in the wonder. Love had touched her
and taken her, and she was different and everything was different. Her
body was one consciousness of love; it lifted her up; it melted her to
tenderness. It made life joyous and noble. She lived; she loved!
Standing on the spot where they had many times stood in moments of
meeting a very real tenderness for that girl was in the heart of this
woman who had paid so terribly for the girl's love. It brought a feeling
that she had not paid too much, that no paying was ever too much for
love. Love made life; and in turn love was what life was for. To live
without it would be going through life without having been touched
alive. In that moment it seemed no wrong love could bring about would be
as deep as the wrong of denying love. There was again that old feeling
of rising to something higher in her than she had known was there, that
feeling of contact with all the beauty of the world, of being admitted
to the inner sweetness and wonder of life. She had a new understanding
of what she had felt; that was the thing added; that was the gift of the
hard years.
And of a sudden she wanted terribly to see her mother. It seemed if she
could see her mother now that she could make her understand. She saw it
more simply than she had seen it before. She wanted to tell her mother
that she loved because she could not help loving. She wanted to tell her
that after all those years of paying for it she saw that love as the
thing illumining her life; that if there was anything worthy in her,
anything to love, it was in just this--that she had fought for love,
that she would fight for it again. She wanted to see her mother! She
believed she could help the hurt she had dealt.
She had walked slowly on, climbing a little hill. From there she looked
back at the town. With fresh pain there came the consciousness that her
mother was not there, that she could not tell her, that she had
gone--gone without understanding, gone bewildered, broken. Her eyes
dimmed until the town was a blur. She wanted to see her mother!
She was about to start back, but turned for a moment's look the other
way, across that lovely country of little hills and valleys--brooks, and
cattle in the brooks, and fields of many shades of green.
And then her eye fixed upon one thing and after that saw no other thing.
Behind her was the place where the living were gathered together; but
over there, right over there on the next hill, were the dead. She stood
very still, looking over there passionately through dimmed eyes. And
then swiftly, sobbing a little under her breath, she started that way.
She wanted to see her mother!
And when she came within those gates she grew strangely quiet. Back
there in the dwelling place of the living she had felt shut out. But she
did not feel shut out here. As slowly she wound her way to the hillside
where she knew she would find her mother's grave, a strange peace
touched her. It was as if she had come within death's tolerance; she
seemed somehow to be taken into death's wonderful, all-inclusive love
for life. There seemed only one distinction: they were dead and she
still lived; she had a sense of being loved because she still lived.
Slowly, strangely comforted, strangely taken in, she passed the graves
of many who, when she left, had been back there in the place of the
living. The change from dwelling place to dwelling place had been made
in the years she was away. It came with a shock to find some of those
tombstones; she found many she had thought of as back there, a few hills
away, where men still lived. She would pause and think of them, of the
strangeness of finding them here when she had known them there--of
life's onward movement, of death's inevitability. There were stones
marking the burial places of friends of her grandfather--old people who
used to come to the house when she was a little girl; she thought with a
tender pleasure of little services she had done them; she had no feeling
at all that they would not want her to be there. Friends of her father
and mother too were there; yes, and some of her own friends--boys and
girls with whom she had shared youth.
She sat a long time on the hillside where her mother had been put away.
At first she cried, but they were not bitter tears. And after that she
did not feel that, even if she could have talked to her mother, it would
be important to say the things she had thought she wanted to say. Here,
in this place of the dead, those things seemed understood. Vindication
was not necessary. Was not life life, and should not one live before
death came? She saw the monuments marking the graves of the Lawrences,
the Blairs, the Williams', the Franklins,--her mother's and her father's
people. They seemed so strangely one: people who had lived. She looked
across the hills to the town which these people had built. Right beside
her was her grandfather's grave; she thought of his stories of how, when
a little boy, he came with his people to that place not then a town; his
stories of the beginnings of it, of the struggles and conflicts that had
made it what it was. She thought of their efforts, their
disappointments, their hopes, their loves. Their loves.... She felt very
close to them in that. And as she thought of it there rose a strange
feeling, a feeling that came strangely strong and sure: If these people
who had passed from living were given an after moment of consciousness,
a moment when they could look back on life and speak to it, she felt
that their voices, with all the force they could gather, would be raised
for more living. Why did we not live more abundantly? Why did we not
hold life more precious? Were they given power to say just one word,
would they not, seeing life from death, cry--Live!
Twilight came; the world had the sweetness of that hour just before
night. A breeze stirred softly; birds called lovingly--loving life. The
whole fragrance of the world was breathed into one word. It was as if
life had caught the passionate feeling of death; it was as if that after
consciousness of those who had left life, and so knew its preciousness,
broke through into things still articulate. The earth breathed--Live!