On the afternoon of her last day in Freeport Ruth took a long tramp with
Deane. She was going that night; she was all ready for leaving when
Deane came out and asked if he couldn't take her for a ride in his car.
She suggested a walk instead, wanting the tramp before the confinement
of travelling. So they cut through the fields back of Annie's and came
out on a road well known to them of old. They tramped along it a long
way, Ruth speaking of things she remembered, talking of old drives along
that road which had been a favorite with all of their old crowd. They
said things as they felt like it, but there was no constraint in their
silences. It had always been like that with her and Deane. Finally they
sat down on a knoll a little back from the road, overlooking pastures
and fields of blowing green.
"I love these little hills," Ruth murmured; "so many little hills," she
laughed affectionately--"and so green and blowy and fruitful. With us
it's a great flat valley--a plain, and most of it dry--barren. You have
to do such a lot to make things grow. Here things just love to grow. And
trees!" she laughed.
"But mountains there," suggested Deane.
"Yes, but a long way off from us, and sometimes they seem very stern,
Deane. I've so many times had the feeling I couldn't get beyond them.
Sometimes they have seemed like other things I couldn't hope to cross."
After a little she said: "These little hills are so gentle; this country
so open."
Deane laughed shortly. "Yes, the hills are gentle. The country is open
enough!"
She laughed too. "It is beautiful country, Deane," she said, as if that
were the thing mattering just then. There was an attractive bit of
pasture just ahead of them: a brook ran through it--a lovely little
valley between two of those gentle hills.
Deane was lying on the grass a little way from her--sprawled out in much
his old awkward way, his elbow supporting his head, hat pulled down over
his eyes. It was good to be with him this last afternoon. It seemed so
much as it used to be; in that moment it was almost as if the time in
between had not been. It was strange the way things could fall away
sometimes--great stretches of time fall away and seem, for a little
while, to leave things as they had been long before.
"Well, Ruth," Deane said at last, "so you're going back."
"Going back, Deane," she answered.
So much they did not say seemed to flow into that; the whole thing was
right there, opened, living, between them. It had always been like that
with her and Deane. It was not necessary to say things out to him, as it
was with everyone else. Their thinking, feeling, seemed to come together
naturally, of itself; not a matter of direction. She looked at Deane
stretched out there on the grass--older, different in some ways--today
he looked as if something was worrying him--yet with it all so much the
Deane of old. It kept recurring as strange that, after all there had
been in between, they should be together again, and that it could be as
it used to be. Just as of old, a little thing said could swing them to
thinking, feeling, of which perhaps they did not speak, but which they
consciously shared. Many times through the years there had come times
when she wanted nothing so much as to be with Deane, wanted to say
things to him that, she did not know just why, there would have been no
satisfaction in saying to Stuart. Even things she had experienced with
Stuart she could, of the two, more easily have talked of with Deane. It
was to Deane she could have talked of the things Stuart made her feel.
Within a certain circle Stuart was the man to whom she came closest;
somehow, with him, she did not break from that circle. She had always
had that feeling of Deane's understanding what she felt, even though it
was not he who inspired the feeling. That seemed a little absurd to
her--to live through things with one man, and have what that living made
of her seem to swing her to some one else.
Thinking of their unique companionship, which time and distance and
circumstances had so little affected, she looked at Deane as he lay
there near her on the grass. She was glad to have this renewal of their
old friendship, which had always remained living and dear to her. And
now she was going away for another long time. It was possible she would
never see him again. It made her wish she could come closer to what were
now the big things in his life.
"I'm so glad, Deane," she said, somewhat timidly, "about you."
He pushed back his hat and looked up in inquiry.
"So glad you got married, goose!" she laughed.
At his laugh for that she looked at him in astonishment, distinctly
shocked. He was chewing a long spear of grass. For a moment he did not
speak. Then, "Amy's gone home," he said shortly.
Ruth could only stare at him, bewildered.
He was running his hand over the grass near him. She noticed that it
moved nervously. And she remarked the puckered brows that had all along
made her think he was worried about something that day--she had thought
it must be one of his cases. And there was that compression of the lips
that she knew of old in Deane when he was hurt. Just then his face
looked actually old, the face of a man who has taken hard things.
"Yes, Amy's gone home for a little while," he said in a more matter of
fact voice, but a voice that had a hard ring. He added: "Her mother's
not well," and looked up at Ruth with that characteristic little
screwing up of his face, as if telling her to make what she could of it.
"Why, that's too bad," she stammered.
Again he looked up at her in that queer way of mixed feeling, his face
showing the marks of pain and yet a touch of teasing there too, mocking
her confusion, looking like a man who was suffering and yet a little
like a teasing boy. Then he abruptly pulled his hat down over his eyes
again, as if to shade them from the sun, and lay flat on his back, one
heel kicking at the grass. She could not see his eyes, but she saw his
mouth; that faint touch of pleasure in teasing which had perversely
lurked in pain had gone now; that twist of his compressed lips was pure
pain.
She was utterly bewildered, and so deeply concerned that she had to get
ahead of Deane some way, not let him shut himself in with a thing that
made his mouth look as if he was bearing physical pain. And then a new
thought shot into her concern for him, a thought that seemed too
preposterous to entertain, but that would not go away. It did not seem a
thing she could speak of; but as she looked at Deane, his mouth more
natural now, but the suggestion of pain left there, she had a sudden new
sense of all that Deane had done for her. She couldn't leave things like
this, no matter how indelicate she might seem.
"Deane," she began timidly, "I don't--in any way--for any reason--make
things hard for you, do I?"
For the moment he did not speak, did not push his hat back so she could
see his eyes. Then she saw that he was smiling a little; she had a
feeling that he was not realizing she could see the smile; it was as if
smiling to himself at something that bitterly amused him. It made her
feel rather sick; it let that preposterous idea spread all through her.
Then he sat up and looked quizzically at her. "Well, Ruth, you don't
expect me to deny, do you, that you did make a thing or two rather
hard?" He said it with that touch of teasing. "Was I so magnanimous," he
added dryly, "that I let you lose sight of the fact that I wanted you?"
Ruth colored and felt baffled; she was sure he knew well enough that was
not what she referred to. He looked at her, a little mockingly, a little
wistfully, as if daring her to go on.
"I wasn't talking about things long ago, Deane," she said. "I
wondered--" She hesitated, looking at him in appeal, as if asking him to
admit he understood what she meant without forcing her to say such a
thing.
For a minute he let the pain look out of his eyes at her, looked for all
the world as if he wanted her to help him. Then quickly he seemed to
shut himself in. He smiled at her in a way that seemed to say, half
mockingly, "I've gone!" He hurt her a little; it was hard to be with
Deane and feel there was something he was not going to let her help him
with. And it made her sick at heart; for surely he knew what she was
driving at, driving at and edging away from, and if he could have
laughed at her fears wouldn't he have done so? She thought of all Deane
had done for her, borne for her. It would be bitter indeed if it were
really true she was bringing him any new trouble. But how _could_ it be
true? It seemed too preposterous; surely she must be entirely on the
wrong track, so utterly wrong that he had no idea what it was she had in
mind.
As they sat there for a moment in silence she was full of that feeling
of how much Deane had done for her, of a longing to do something for
him. Gently she said: "I must have made things very hard for you, Deane.
The town--your friends--your people, because of me you were against them
all. That does make things hard--to be apart from the people you are
with." She looked at him, her face softened with affectionate regret,
with a newly understanding gratitude. "I've not been very good for your
life, have I, Deane?" she said, more lightly, but her voice touched with
wistfulness.
He looked at her, as if willing to meet that, as if frankly considering
it. "I can't say that you've been very good for my happiness, Ruth," he
laughed. And then he said simply, with a certain simple manliness, "But
I should say, Ruth, you have been very good for my life." His face
contracted a little, as if with pain. That passed, and he went on in
that simple way: "You see you made me think about things. It was because
of you--through you--I came to think about things. That's good for our
lives, isn't it?" That he said sternly, as if putting down something
that had risen in him. "Because of you I've questioned things, felt
protest. Why, Ruth," he laughed, "if it hadn't been for you I might have
taken things in the slick little way _they_ do,"--he waved a hand off
toward the town. "So just see what I owe you!" he said, more lightly, as
if leaving the serious things behind. Then he began to speak of other
things.
It left Ruth unsatisfied, troubled. And yet it seemed surely a woman
would be proud of a man who had been as fine in a thing, as big and true
and understanding, as Deane had been with her. Surely a woman would be
proud of a man who had so loyally, at such great cost, been a woman's
friend, who, because of friendship, because of fidelity to his own
feeling, would stand out that way against others. She tried to think
that, for she could not go back to what Deane had left behind. And yet
she could not forget that she had not met Amy.
They walked toward home talking quietly about things that happened to
come up, more as if they were intimate friends who had constant meetings
than as if they had been years apart and were about to part for what
would probably be years more. But that consciousness was there
underneath; it ruled the silences, made their voices gentler. It was
very sweet to Ruth, just before again leaving all home things behind, to
be walking in the spring twilight with Deane along that road they knew
when they were boy and girl together.
Twilight was deepening to evening when they came to the hill from which
they could see the town. They stood still looking off at it, speaking of
the beauty of the river, of the bridge, of the strangeness of the town
lights when there was still that faint light of day. And then they stood
still and said nothing, looking off at that town where they had been
brought up. It was beautiful from there, bent round a curve in the broad
river, built upon hills. She was leaving it now--again leaving it. She
had come home, and now she was going away again. And now she knew, in
spite of her anger of the day before, in spite of all there had been to
hurt her, in spite of all that had been denied her, that she was not
leaving it in bitterness. In one sense she had not had much from her
days back home; but in a real sense, she had had much. She looked at
that town now with a feeling of new affection. She believed she would
always have that feeling of affection for it. It stood to her for things
gone--dear things gone; for youth's gladness, for the love of father and
mother, for many happy things now left behind. But now that she had come
back, had gone through those hard days, she was curiously freed from
that town. She had this new affection for it in being freed of it. She
would always love it because of what it had meant in the past, but love
it as one does love a thing past. It seemed she had to come back to it
to let it lose its hold on her. It was of the past, and she knew now
that there was a future. What that future was to be she did not know,
but she would turn from this place of the past with a new sense of the
importance of the future. Standing there with Deane on the hilltop at
evening, looking off at that town where they had both been brought up,
she got a sense of the significance of the whole thing--the eleven years
away, and the three years preceding those years; a sense too of the
meaning of those days just past, those recent days at home when there
were times of being blinded by the newly seen significance of those
years of living. They had been hard days because things had been crowded
so close; it had come too fast; currents had met too violently and the
long way between cause and effect had been lighted by flashes too
blinding. It had been like a great storm in which elements rush
together. It had almost swept her down, but she had come through it and
this was what she had brought out of it: a sense of life as precious, as
worth anything one might have to pay for it, a stirring new sense of the
future as adventure. She had been thinking of her life as defined, and
now it seemed that the future was there, a beautiful untouched thing, a
thing that was left, hers to do what she could with. Somehow she had
broken through, broken through the things that had closed in around her.
A great new thing had happened to her: she was no longer afraid to face
things! In those last few days she had been tossed, now this way, now
that; it seemed she had rather been made a fool of, but things had got
through to her--she was awake, alive, unafraid. Something had been
liberated in her. She turned to Deane, who was looking with a somber
steadiness ahead at the town. She touched his arm and he looked at her,
amazed at her shining eyes, shining just as they used to when as a girl
she was setting out for a good time, for some mischief, excitement.
"Well, anyway, Deane," she said in a voice that seemed to brush
everything else aside, "we're alive!"