It was late when Ruth went to sleep that night; she and Annie talked
through the evening--of books Annie was reading, of the things which
were interesting her. She was rich in interests; ideas were as personal
things to her; she found personal satisfactions in them. She was
following things which Ruth knew little about; she had been long away
from the centers of books, and out of touch with awakened people. A
whole new world seemed to open from these things that were vital to
Annie; there was promise in them--a quiet road out from the hard things
of self. There were new poets in the world; there were bold new
thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the
world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the
old pattern was being shot through with new ideas. Everywhere were new
attempts at a better way of doing things. She had been away from all
that; what she knew of the world's new achievement had seemed unreal, or
at least detached, not having any touch with her own life. But as
disclosed by Annie those things became realities--things to enrich one's
own life. It kindled old fires of her girlhood, fanned the old desire to
know. Personal things had seemed to quell that; the storm in her own
life had shut down around her. Now she saw that she, like those others
whom Annie scorned, had not kept that openness to life, had let her own
life shut her in. She had all along been eager for books, but had not
been fortunate in the things she had come upon. She had not had access
to large libraries--many times not even to small ones; she had had
little money for buying books and was so out of touch with the world
that she had not had much initiative in trying to get hold of things.
She felt now that she had failed miserably in that, but there were years
when she was like a hurt thing that keeps in hiding, most of all wanting
to escape more hurt. It had been a weakness--she clearly saw that now,
and it had been weakening to her powers. Most of the books she had come
upon were of that shut-in life Annie scorned, written from within that
static living, and for it. People in them had the feeling it was right
people should have, unless there were bad people in the book, and then
they were very definitely bad. Many of those books had been not only
unsatisfying, but saddening to her, causing her to feel newly apart from
the experiences of people of her kind.
But now Annie's books let her glimpse a new world--a world which
questioned, a world of protest, of experiment, a world in which people
unafraid were trying to find the truth, trying to build freshly, to
supplant things outworn with the vital forms of a new reality. It was
quickening. It made her eager. She was going to take some of those books
home, she would send for others, would learn how to keep in touch with
this new world which was emerging from the old. It was like breaking out
from a closed circle. It was adventure!
Even after she went to her room that night, late though it was, she did
not go at once to bed. She sat for a time looking off at the lights of
that town for which she had so long grieved, the town that had shut her
out. The fact that it had shut her out had been a determining thing in
her life, to her spirit. She wondered now if perhaps she had not
foolishly spent herself in grieving for a thing that would have meant
little could she have had it. For it seemed now that it had remained
very much a fixed thing, and now she knew that, with it all, she herself
had not been fixed. The things of which Annie talked, things men of this
new day were expressing, roused her like this, not because they were all
new, but because of her own inner gropings. Within herself she had been
stumbling toward some of those things. Here was the sure expression of
some halting thoughts of her own. It was exciting to find that there
were people who were feeling the things that, even in that timid,
uncertain way, she had come to feel by herself. She had been half afraid
to formulate some of the things that had come into her mind. This
gathered together the timid little shoots. She was excited about the
things of which Annie talked--those new ideals of freedom--not so much
because they were new and daring and illumining things, as because they
did not come all alien. There was something from within to go out to
them. In that--not that there were interesting things she could have
from without--but that she, opened to the new stimulus, could become
something from within, was the real excitation, the joy of the new
promise was there. And this new stir, this promise of new satisfactions,
let her feel that her life was not all mapped out, designed ahead. She
went to sleep that night with a wonderful new feeling of there being as
much for her in life as she herself had power to take.
And she woke with that feeling; she was eager to be up, to be out in the
sunshine. Annie, she found, had gone early to town with her vegetables.
Ruth helped eleven-year-old Dorothy, the eldest child, get off for
school and walked with her to the schoolhouse half a mile down the road.
The little girl's shyness wore away and she chatted with Ruth about
school, about teachers and lessons and play. Ruth loved it; it seemed to
set the seal of a human relationship upon her new feeling. What a
wonderful thing for Annie to have these children! Today gladness in
there being children in the world went out past sorrow in her own
deprivation. The night before she had said to Annie, "You have your
children. That makes life worth while to you, doesn't it?" And Annie,
with that hard, swift look of being ruthless for getting at the
truth--for getting her feeling straight and expressing it truly, had
answered, "Not in itself. I mean, it's not all. I think much precious
life has gone dead under that idea of children being enough--letting
them be all. _We_ count--_I_ count! Just leaving life isn't all; living
it while we're here--that counts, too. And keeping open to it in more
than any one relationship. Suppose they, in their turn, have that idea;
then life's never really lived, is it?--always just passed on, always
_put off_." They had talked of that at some length. "Certainly I want my
children to have more than I have," Annie said. "I am working that they
may. But in that working for them I'm not going to let go of the fact
that I count too. Now's my only chance," she finished in that grim
little way as one not afraid to be hard.
Thinking back to that it seemed to Ruth a bigger mother feeling than the
old one. It was not the sort of maternal feeling to hem in the mother
and oppress the children. It was love in freedom--love that did not hold
in or try to hold in. It would develop a sense of the preciousness of
life. It did not glorify self-sacrifice--that insidious foe to the
fullness of living.
Thinking of that, and going out from that to other things, she sat down
on a log by the roadside, luxuriating in the opulence and freshness of
the world that May morning, newly tuned to life, vibrant with that same
fresh sense of it, glad gratefulness in return to it, that comes after
long sickness, after imprisonment. The world was full of singing birds
that morning,--glorious to be in a world of singing birds! The earth
smelled so good! There were plum trees in bloom behind her; every little
breeze brought their fragrance. The grass under her feet was
springy--the world was vibrant, beautiful, glad. The earth seemed so
strong, so full of still unused powers, so ready to give.
She sat there a long time; she had the courage this morning to face the
facts of her life. She was eager to face them, to understand them that
she might go on understandingly. She had the courage to face the facts
relating to herself and Stuart. That was a thing she had not dared do.
With them, love _had_ to last, for love was all they had. They had only
each other. They did not dare let themselves think of such a thing as
the love between them failing.
Well, it had not failed; but she let herself see now how greatly it had
changed. There was something strangely freeing in just letting herself
see it. Of course there had been change; things always changed. Love
changed within marriage--she did not know why she should expect it to be
different with her. But in the usual way--within marriage--it would
matter less for there would be more ways of adapting one's self to the
changing. Then one could reach out into new places in life, gaining new
channels, taking on new things as old ones slipped away, finding in
common interests, common pleasures, the new adjustment for feeling. But
with them life had seemed to shut right down around them. And they had
never been able to relax in the reassuring sense of the lastingness of
their love. She had held herself tense in the idea that there was no
change, would be none. She had a feeling now of having tried too hard,
of being tired through long trying. There was relief in just admitting
that she was tired. And so she let herself look at it now, admitting
that she had been clutching at a vanished thing.
It would have been different, she felt, had the usual channels of living
been opened to them. Then together they could have reached out into new
experiences. Their love had been real--great. Related to living, surely
it could have remained the heart of life. Her seeing now that much of
the life had gone out of it did not bear down upon her with the great
sadness she would have expected. She knew now that in her heart she had
known for a long time that passion had gone. Facing it was easier than
refusing to see. It ceased to be a terrible thing once one looked at it.
Of this she was sure: love should be able to be a part of the rest of
life; the big relationship, but one among others; the most intense
interest, but one with other interests. Unrooted, detached, it might for
the time be the more intense, but it had less ways of saving itself. If
simply, naturally, they could have grown into the common life she felt
they might have gone on without too much consciousness of change,
growing into new things as old ones died away, half unconsciously making
adjustments, doubtless feeling something gone but in the sharing of new
things not left desolate through that sense of the passing of old ones.
Frightened by the thought of having nothing else, they had tried too
hard. She was tired; she believed that Stuart too was tired.
There was a certain tired tenderness in her thinking of him. Dear
Stuart, he loved easy pleasant living. It seemed he was not meant for
the too great tests, for tragically isolated love. She knew that he had
never ceased to miss the things he had let go--his place among men, the
stimulus of the light, pleasant social relationships with women. He was
meant for a love more flexibly related to living, a love big and real
but fitted more loosely, a little more carelessly, to life. There was
always so deep a contrition for his irritations with her. The whole
trouble was indicated right there, that the contrition should be all out
of proportion to the offence. It would have been better had he felt more
free to be irritated; one should not have to feel frightened at a little
bit of one's own bad temper--appalled at crossness, at hours of ennui.
Driving them back together after every drifting apart all of that made
for an intensity of passion--passion whipped to life by fear. But that
was not the way to grow into life. Flames kindled by fear made intense
moments but after a time left too many waste places between them and the
lives of men.
Today her hope for the future was in the opening of new places. She was
going back with new vision, new courage. They must not any longer cling
together in their one little place, coming finally to actual resentment
of one another for the enforced isolation. They must let themselves go
out into living, dare more, trust more, lose that fear of rebuff, hope
for more from life, _claim_ more. As she rose and started towards home
there was a new spring in her step. For her part, she was through with
that shrinking back! She hoped she could bring Stuart to share her
feeling, could inspire in him this new trust, new courage that had so
stimulated and heartened her. Her hope for their future lay there.
Climbing a hill she came in sight of the little city which they had
given up, for which they had grieved. Well, they had grieved too much,
she resolutely decided now. There were wider horizons than the one that
shut down upon that town. She was not conquered! She would not be
conquered. She stood on the hilltop exulting in that sense of being
free. She had been a weakling to think her life all settled! Only
cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for
the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder--but surely one should
not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should
light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now
that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one
lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had
been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to
grant that it had failed. But now it seemed that it failed if it did not
leave her bigger than it had found her. Her eyes filled in response to
the stern beauty of that. Not that one stay with love in the same place,
but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it send one on.
Eyes still dimmed with the feeling of it, she stood looking as if in a
final letting go at that town off there on the bend of the river. It
became to her the world of shut-in people, people not going on, people
who loved and never saw the meaning of love, whose experiences were not
as wings to carry them, but as walls shutting them in. She was through
grieving for those people. She was going on--past them--so far beyond
them that her need for them would fall away.
She was conscious of an approaching horse and buggy and stepped aside;
then walked on, so aglow with her own thoughts that a passing by did not
break in upon her. She did not even know that the girl in the run-about
had stopped her horse. At the cry: "Oh--I'm so glad!" she was as
startled as if she had thought herself entirely alone.
It was a big effort to turn, to gather herself together and speak. She
had been so far away, so completely possessed that it took her an
instant to realize that the girl leaning eagerly toward her was Mildred
Woodbury.
Mildred was moving over on the seat, inviting her to get in. "I'm so
glad!" she repeated. "I went to Mrs. Herman's, and was so disappointed
to miss you. I thought maybe I'd come upon you somewhere," she laughed
gladly, though not without embarrassment.
There was a moment of wanting to run away, of really considering it. She
knew now--had remembered, realized--what it was about Mildred.