The summer had gone by and Ted Holland, who had gone West with Ruth in
May, was back in Freeport "breaking up the house." The place was offered
for sale; things had to be cleared out in one way or another. What none
of the children wanted was being sold to anybody who did happen to want
it; what nobody wanted was to be given away to such people as had to
take what they could get. And there was a great deal of it not even in
the class for giving away; "just truck" Ted kept callously calling it to
Harriett and their Cousin Flora. He whistled vigorously over some of the
"truck,"--a worn dog's collar, an old pair of the queer kind of house
shoes his mother wore, a spectacle case he had used to love to hear his
father snap shut, dusty, leaky sofa-pillows that had bristled with
newness in the "den" which was the delight of his sixteen-year-old
heart. He kept saying to Cousin Flora that there was no end to the
junk--old school readers, Ruth's party slippers. Just burn it all up, he
said, in a crisp voice of efficiency; what was it good for, anyhow?
Certainly it had taught him a lesson. He'd never keep anything.
They had been at it for a week--sorting, destroying, disbursing,
scattering what a family's life through a generation had assembled,
breaking up "the Hollands." Ted, in his own room that morning, around
him the things he was going to put in his trunk for taking back West,
admitted to himself that it was gruesome business.
Things were over; things at home were all over. This pulling to pieces
drove that home hard. Father and mother were gone and now "their stuff"
was being got out of the way. After this there would not even be a place
where the things they had used were. But he would be glad when they
could get through with it; he was finding that there was something
wrenching about things that were left, things that had been used and
that now there was no longer any use for. The sight of them stabbed as
no mere thinking about things could do. It was hard work throwing away
"truck" that something seemed to cling to. It was hard to really _get_
it, he was thinking; a family lived in a place--seemed really a part of
that place, an important part, perhaps; then things changed--people
died, moved away, and that family simply _wasn't_ any more--and things
went on just about the same. Whistling, he put some shirts in his trunk,
trying to fix his mind on how many new shirts he needed.
He was going back West--to live, to work. Not right where Ruth was, in
southwestern Colorado, but in the country a little to the north. He and
a fellow he had made friends with out there had bought an apple
orchard--the money he was to have from his father would go into it and
some of Ruth's money--she wanted him to invest some of hers with his. It
was that had made it possible for him to go in with this fellow. He was
glad he could do it. The West had "got" him. He believed he could make
things go.
And he shouldn't have liked staying on in Freeport. Too many things were
different for him to want to stay there. And too many things hurt. Ruth
had come to mean too much to him to let him be happy with people who
felt as the people there did about her.
He heard Harriett downstairs and went down to speak to her about the
price the stove man offered for the kitchen range. He remembered his
mother's delight in that range as new; somehow it made him hate selling
it for this pittance.
Harriett thought, however, that they had better let it go. One couldn't
expect to get much for old things, and they didn't want it on their
hands.
They stayed there awhile in the dining-room, considering the problem of
getting out of the way various other things there was no longer any use
for. Harriett was looking at the bay window. "If the Woodburys take the
house," she said, "they won't want these shades."
"Oh, no," replied Ted, "they wouldn't be good enough for Mildred."
The Woodburys had been there the night before to look at the house; they
thought of buying it and Mildred, just recently home from Europe with
Edith Blair--they had had a hard time getting home, because of the
war--had, according to his own way of putting it, made Ted tired. She
was so fretful with her father and her ideas of how the place could
perhaps be made presentable by being all done over had seemed to Ted
"pretty airy." He'd rather strangers had the house. He heard that
Mildred was going about a lot with Bob Gearing--one of the fellows in
town who had money.
Ted pulled out his watch. "I want to get down and see Deane at his noon
office hours," he said.
Harriett turned from the window. "What have you got to see him about?"
she asked sharply.
"Why--just see him," he answered in surprise. "Why shouldn't I want to
see him? Haven't seen him since I got back. He'll want to hear about
Ruth."
Harriett seemed about to speak, then looked at the door of the kitchen,
where a man was packing dishes. "I don't think I'd go to him for
_that_," she said in lowered voice.
Ted looked at her in bewildered inquiry.
"Mrs. Franklin has left him," she said shortly. She glanced at the
kitchen door, then added in a voice that dropped still lower: "And the
talk is that it's because of Ruth."
For a minute Ted just stood staring at her. Then his face was aflame
with angry blood. "The _talk_!" he choked. "So that's the new 'talk'!
Well--"
"S--h," warned Harriett, and stepped over and closed the kitchen door.
"I'd like to tell some of them what I think of their 'talk,'" he blazed.
"Oh, I'd like to tell some of these _warts_--"
"Ted!" she admonished, nodding her head toward the closed door.
"What do I care? I'd like to have 'em hear me! I _want_ them to know
that I--" He broke off and stood looking at her. "It doesn't seem to
worry you much!" he thrust at her.
"It did, Ted," she said patiently. "I--it did." She looked so
distressed, so worn as she said it that it mollified him until she
added: "And still, you mustn't be too hard on people. A woman who has
put herself in that position--"
"There you go! 'Put herself' in that position! Put herself!" he jeered
angrily, "in that position! As if the position was something Ruth got
into on purpose! And after all these years!--still talking about her
'position.' Let me tell you something! I'll tell you the woman that's
'put herself' in the position I'd think would make her hate herself!
That's Mrs. Williams! _She's_ the one that's 'put herself'--"
"Ted," she broke in sternly, "you must _not_!"
But, "You make me _sick_!" he flung back at her and snatched hat and
coat from the hall rack and left the house with a violent bang of the
front door.
He did not go down to Deane's office. He stalked ahead, trying to hold
down the bitter rage that was almost choking him. At one time when he
looked up he saw that he was passing the house Deane Franklin had built
before his marriage and noted that it was closed, all the shades were
clear down. Flower beds that had been laid out in the spring had been
let go. It looked all wrong to see a new place so deserted, so run down.
He remembered seeing Deane working out in that yard in the spring. He
hurried on by. His heart was hot with resentment--real hatred--of the
town through which he walked. He loathed the place! he told himself.
Picking on Ruth for _this_--ready to seize on her for anything that put
her in bad! He had been with Ruth for four months. He knew now just how
things were with her. It gave him some idea of what it was she had gone
through. It made him hate the town that had no feeling for her.
He had walked out from town, not giving any thought to where he was
going, just walking because he had to be doing something. He was about
to cross a little bridge and stepped to the side of the road to let the
vehicle right behind him get ahead. He stood glaring down at the creek
and did not look up until he heard the wagon, just as it struck the
bridge, stop. Then he saw that it was a woman driving the market wagon
and recognized her as Mrs. Herman, who had been so good to Ruth.
He stepped up eagerly to greet her; his face quickly cleared as he held
out his hand and he smiled at her with a sudden boyish warmth that made
her face--it was thin, tired--also light with pleasure. He kept shaking
her hand; it seemed wonderfully good of her to have come along just
then--she was something friendly in a hostile world. He went out
eagerly, gratefully, to the something friendly. He had had about all he
could stand of the other things, other feelings. He had told Ruth that
he would be sure to go and see Mrs. Herman. He got in with her now and
they talked of Ruth as they jogged through the country which he now
noticed was aflame with the red and gold of October.
He found himself chatting along about Ruth just as if there was not this
other thing about her--the thing that made it impossible to speak of her
to almost anyone else in the town. It helped a lot to talk of Ruth that
way just then. He had seemed all clogged up with hatred and resentment,
fury at the town made him want to do something to somebody, and pity for
Ruth made him feel sick in his sense of helplessness. Now those ugly
things, those choking, blinding things fell away in his talking about
Ruth to this woman who wanted to hear about her because she cared for
her, who wanted to hear the simple little things about her that those
other people had no interest in. He found himself chatting along about
Ruth and Stuart--their house, their land, the field of peas into which
they turned their sheep, the potatoes grown on their place that summer.
He talked of artesian wells and irrigation, of riding western horses and
of camping in the mountains. Thinking of it afterwards he didn't know
when he had talked so much. And of course, as everyone was doing those
days, they talked about the war. She was fairly aflame with feeling
about it.
He rode all the way home with Mrs. Herman, stayed for lunch and then
lingered about the place for an hour or more after that. He felt more
like himself than he had at any time since coming home; he could forget
a little about that desolate house that was no longer to be his home,
and the simple friendly interest of this woman who was Ruth's friend
helped to heal a very sore place in his heart.
But afterwards, back there at home where it was as if he was stripping
dead years, what came over him was the feeling that things were not as
they had seemed out there with Mrs. Herman. She was like that, but in
being that way she was different from the whole world, at least from
practically the whole of the world that he knew. Working with old things
cast him back to it all. He brooded over it there in the desolate place
of things left behind; the resentful feeling toward the town, together
with that miserable, helpless feeling of passionate pity for Ruth
settled down upon him and he could not throw it off.
He saw Deane that night; he saw him at the Club where he went to play a
game of pool, because he had to get away from the house for awhile.
Deane was sitting apart from the various groups, reading a magazine. Ted
stood in the door of that room looking at him a minute before Deane
looked up from the page. He saw that his face was thinner; it made him
look older; indeed he looked a good deal older than when, just the
spring before, Ted used to see him working around that place that was
all shut up now. And in that moment of scrutiny he saw something more
than just looking older. If you didn't know Deane you'd think--well,
you'd think you didn't want to know him. And he looked as if he didn't
care about your knowing him, either; he looked as if he'd thank people
to let him alone. Then he glanced up and saw Ted and it seemed there
were a few people he didn't want to have let him alone.
But though he brightened on seeing him, looked like himself as he came
quickly up to shake hands, he was not like himself in the talk that
followed. It was as if he wanted to be, tried to be, but he was
constrained in asking about the West, "the folks." He seemed to want to
hear, yet he wasn't like himself, though Ted could scarcely have defined
the difference. He was short in what he said, cut things off sharply,
and in little pauses his face would quickly settle to that moroseness.
Ted told of his own plans and Deane was enthusiastic about that. Then he
fell silent a moment and after that said with intensity: "I wish _I_ was
going to pull out from here!"
"Well, why don't you?" laughed Ted, a little diffidently.
"Haven't got the gumption, I guess," said Deane more lightly, and as he
smiled gave Ted the impression of trying to pull himself out from
something.
Later in the evening a couple of men were talking of someone who was
ill. "They have Franklin, don't they?" was asked, and the answer came,
"Not any more. They've switched."
Walking home, he thought it had been said as if there was more to it, as
if there had been previous talk about other people who had "switched."
Why, surely it couldn't be that because--for some reason or other--his
wife had left him people were taking it out on his practice? That seemed
not only too unfair but too preposterous. Deane was the best doctor in
town. What had his private affairs--no matter what the state of
them--got to do with him as a physician? Surely even _that_ town
couldn't be as two-by-four as that!
But it troubled him so persistently that next morning, when they were
alone together in the attic, he brought himself to broach it to
Harriett, asking, in the manner of one interested in a thing because of
its very absurdity, just what the talk was about Ruth and the Franklins.
Harriett went on to give the town's gossip of how Deane had gone to
Indianapolis to see his wife, to try and make it right, but her people
were strongly of the feeling that she had been badly treated and it had
ended with her going away somewhere with her mother. Harriett sighed
heavily as she said she feared it was one of those things that would not
be made right.
"I call it the limit!" cried Ted. "The woman must be a fool!"
Harriett sadly shook her head. "You don't understand women, Ted," she
said.
"And I don't want to--if _that's_ what they're like!" he retorted hotly.
"I'm afraid Deane didn't--manage very well," sighed Harriett.
"Who wants to manage such a little fool!" snapped Ted.
"Now, Ted--" she began, but "You make me _tired_, Harriett!" he broke in
passionately, and no more was said of it then.
They worked in silence for awhile, Ted raising a great deal of dust in
the way he threw things about, Harriett looking through a box of old
books and papers, sighing often. Harriett sighed a great deal, it seemed
to Ted, and yet something about Harriett made him sorry for her. From
across the attic he looked at her, awkwardly sitting on the floor,
leaning against an old trunk. She looked tired and he thought with
compassion and remorse for the rough way he had spoken to her, of how
her baby was only a little more than two months old, that it must be
hard for her to be doing the things she was doing that week. Harriett
had grown stout; she had that settled look of many women in middle life;
she looked as if she couldn't change much--in any way. Well, Ted
considered, he guessed Harriett couldn't change much; she was just fixed
in the way she was and that was all there was to it. But she did not
look happy in those things she had settled into; she looked patient. She
seemed to think things couldn't be any different.
She was turning the pages of an old album she had taken from the box of
her mother's things she was sorting. "Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice,
bending over the pages. Her tone brought Ted over to her. "A picture of
Ruth as a baby," she murmured.
He knelt down and looked over her shoulder into the dusty, old-fashioned
album at a picture of a baby a year or so old whose face was all screwed
up into a delighted laugh, tiny hands raised up and clenched in the
intensity of baby excitement, baby abandonment to the joyousness of
existence.
"She _was_ like that," murmured Harriett, a little tremulously. "She was
the _crowingest_ baby!"
They bent over it in silence for a minute. "Seems pretty tickled about
things, doesn't she?" said Ted with a queer little laugh. Harriett
sighed heavily, but a moment later a tear had fallen down to one of the
baby hands clenched in joyousness; the tear made him forgive the sigh,
and when he saw her carefully take the picture from the album and put it
in the pocket of her big apron, it was a lot easier, somehow, to go on
working with Harriett. It was even easy, after a little, to ask her what
he wanted to know about Deane's practice.
It was true, she feared, that the talk had hurt him some. Mrs. Lawrence
had stopped having him. It seemed she had taken a great fancy to Amy
Franklin and felt keenly for her in this. She had made other people feel
that Deane had not been fair or kind and so there was some feeling
against him.
"I suppose she can't claim," Ted cried hotly, "that it hurts him as a
doctor?"
"No," Harriett began uncertainly, "except that a doctor--of course the
personal side of things--"
"Now, there you _go_, Harriett," he interrupted furiously. "You make me
_tired_! If it wasn't that you've a sneaking feeling for Ruth you'd fall
for such a thing yourself!"
"There's no use trying to talk to you, Ted," said Harriett patiently.
Two days later the house was about dismantled. Ted was leaving the next
day for the West. He was so sick of the whole thing that it had gone a
little easier toward the last, blunted to everything but getting things
done. When Harriett, her eyes reddened, came downstairs with a _doll_
and wanted to know if he didn't think Ruth might like to have it, saying
that it was the doll Ruth had loved all through her little girl days,
and that she had just come upon it where her mother had carefully packed
it away, he snatched the doll from her and crammed it into the kitchen
stove and poked at it savagely to make it burn faster. Then he slammed
down the lid and looked ruthlessly up at Harriett with, "We've had about
enough of this sobbing around over _junk_!"
Harriett wanted him to come over to her house that last night but he
said he'd either go home with one of the fellows or bring one of them
home with him. She did not press it, knowing how little her brother and
her husband liked each other.
He went to the theatre that night with a couple of his friends. He was
glad to go, for it was as good a way as he could think of for getting
through the evening. They were a little early and he sat there watching
the people coming in; it was what would be called a representative
audience, the society of the town, the "best people" were there. They
were people Ted had known all his life; people who used to come to the
house, people his own family had been one with; friends of his mother
came in, associates of his father, old friends of Ruth. That gathering
of people represented the things in the town that he and his had been
allied with. He watched them, thinking of his own going away, of how it
would be an entirely new group of people he would come to know, would
become one with, thinking of the Hollands, how much they had been a part
of it all and how completely they were out of it now. As he saw all
these people, such pleasant, good-looking people, people he had known as
far back as he could remember, in whose homes he had had good times,
people his own people had been associated with always, a feeling of
really hating to leave the town, of its being hard to go away, crept up
in him. He talked along with the friend next him and watched people
taking their seats with a new feeling for them all; now that he was
actually leaving them he had a feeling of affection for the people with
whom he sat in the theatre that night. He had known them always; they
were "mixed up" with such a lot of old things.
Some people came into one of the boxes during the first act and when the
lights went up for the intermission he saw that one of the women was
Stuart Williams' wife.
He turned immediately to his friends and began a lively conversation
about the play, painfully wondering if the fellows he was with had seen
her too, if they were wondering whether he had seen her, whether he was
thinking about it. His feeling of gentle regret about leaving the town
was struck away. He was glad this was his last night. Always something
like this! It was forever coming up, making him feel uncomfortable,
different, making him wonder whether people were thinking about "it,"
whether they were wondering whether he was thinking about it.
Through the years he had grown used to seeing Mrs. Williams; he had
become blunted to it; sometimes he could see her without really being
conscious of "it," just because he was used to seeing her. But now that
he had just come home, had been with Ruth, there was an acute new shock
in seeing her.
During the first intermission he never looked back after that first
glance; but when the house was darkened again it was not at the stage he
looked most. From his place in the dress circle across the house he
could look over at her, secured by the dim light could covertly watch
her. It was hard to keep his eyes from her. She sat well to the front of
the box; he could see every move she made, and every little thing about
her wretchedly fascinated him. She sat erect, hands loosely clasped in
her lap, seemingly absorbed in the play. Her shoulders seemed very white
above her gauzy black dress; in that light, at least, she was beautiful;
her neck was long and slim and her hair was coiled high on her head. He
saw a woman bend forward from the rear of the box and speak to her; it
brought her face into the light and he saw that it was Mrs. Blair--Edith
Lawrence, Ruth's old chum. He crumpled the program in his hand until his
friend looked at him in inquiry; then he smiled a little and carefully
smoothed the program out. But when, in the next intermission, he was
asked something about how he thought the play was going to turn out, he
was at a loss for a suggestion. He had not known what that act was
about. And he scarcely knew what the other acts were about. It was all
newly strange to him, newly sad. He had a new sense of it, and a new
sense of the pity of it, as he sat there that last night watching the
people who had been Ruth's and Stuart's friends; he thought of how they
had once been a part of all this; how, if things had gone differently it
was the thing they would still be a part of. There was something about
seeing Edith Lawrence there with Mrs. Williams made him so sorry for
Ruth that it was hard to keep himself pulled together. And that house,
this new sense of things, made him deeply sorry for Stuart Williams. He
knew that he missed all this, terribly missed the things this
represented. His constant, off-hand questionings about things--about the
growth of the town, whether so and so was making good, who was running
this or that, showed how he was missing the things he had turned away
from, of which he had once been so promising a part. Here tonight, among
the things they had left, something made him more sorry for Ruth and
Stuart than he had ever been before. And he kept thinking of the
strangeness of things; of how, if there had not been that one thing, so
many things would have been different. For their whole family, for the
Williams' family, yes, for Deane Franklin, too, it would have been all
different if Ruth had just fallen in love with some one else. Somehow
that seemed disloyalty to Ruth. He told himself she couldn't help it. He
guessed _she_ got it the worst; everything would have been different,
easier, for her, certainly, if she, like the other girls of her crowd,
had fallen in love with one of the fellows she could have married. Then
she would be there with Edith Lawrence tonight; probably they would be
in a box together.
It was hard, even when the lights were up, to keep his eyes from that
box where Ruth's old friend sat with Mrs. Williams. He would seem to be
looking the house over, and then for a minute his eyes would rest there
and it would be an effort to let go. Once he found Mrs. Williams looking
his way; he thought she saw him and was furious at himself for the quick
reddening. He could not tell whether she was looking at him or not. She
had that cool, composed manner she always had. Always when he met her so
directly that they had to speak she would seem quite unperturbed, as if
he stirred in her no more feeling than any other slight acquaintance
would stir. She was perfectly poised; it would not seem that he, what he
must suggest, had any power to disturb her.
Looking across at her in the house darkened for the last act, covertly
watching her as she sat there in perfect command of herself, apparently
quite without disturbing feeling, he had a rough desire to know what she
actually _did_ feel. A light from the stage surprised her face and he
saw that it showed it more tired than serene. She looked bored; and she
did not look content. Seeing her in that disclosing little shaft of
light--she had drawn back from it--the thought broke into the boy's
mind--What's _she_ getting out of it!
He had never really considered it purely in the light of what it must be
to her. He thought of her as a hard, revengeful woman, who, because hurt
herself, was going to harm to the full measure of her power. He despised
the pride, the poise, in which she cloaked what he thought of as her
hard, mean spirit; he thought people a pretty poor sort for admiring
that pride. But now, as he saw her face when she was not expecting it to
be clearly seen, he wondered just what she was actually like, just what
she really felt. It would seem that revenge must be appeased by now; or
at least that that one form of taking it--not getting a divorce--must
have lost its satisfaction. It would not seem a very satisfying thing to
fill one's life with. And what else was there! What _was_ she getting
out of it! The question gave him a new interest in her.
Caught in the crowd leaving the theatre he watched her again for a
moment, standing among the people who were waiting for motors and
carriages. The thin black scarf around her head blew back and Edith
Lawrence adjusted it for her. Her car came up and one of the men helped
her into it. There was a dispute; it seemed someone was meaning to go
with her and she was protesting that it was not necessary. Then they
were saying goodnight to her and she was going away alone. He watched
the car for a moment as it was halted by a carriage, then skirted it and
sharply turned the corner.
He had intended to take one of his friends home with him, had thought it
would be too dismal alone there in the bare place that last night. But
now he did not want anyone with him, did not want to have to talk.
Though when he let himself in the front door he wished he was not alone.
It was pretty dismal to be coming into the abandoned house. He had a
flashing sense of how absolutely empty the place was--empty of the
people who had lived there, empty even of those people's things. There
was no one to call out to him. His step made a loud noise on the bare
stairs. He went back down stairs for a drink of water; he walked through
the living-room, the dining-room, the kitchen. There used to be people
there--things doing. Not any more. A bare house now--so empty that it
was _queer_. He hurried back upstairs. At the head of the stairs he
stood still and listened to the stillness from the bedrooms. Then he
shook himself angrily, stamped on to his own room, loudly banged the
door behind him and whistled as he hurriedly got ready for bed.
He tried to go right to sleep, but could not get sleepy. He was thinking
of the house--of things that had gone on there. He thought of Ruth and
Stuart--of the difference they had made in that house. And he kept
thinking of Mrs. Williams, thinking in this new way of the difference it
must have meant to her, must have made in _her_ house. He wondered about
the house she had just gone home to, wondered if she got lonely,
wondered about the feeling there might be beneath that manner of not
seeming to mind. He wondered just what it was made her keep from getting
a divorce. And suddenly the strangest thought shot into his mind--Had
anyone ever _asked_ her to get a divorce!
Then he laughed; he had to make himself laugh at the preposterousness of
his idea. The laugh made such a strange sound in the bare room that he
lay there very still for a moment. Then loudly he cleared his throat, as
if to show that he was not afraid of making another noise.
But the house was so strangely still, empty in such a queer way; it was
too strange to let him go to sleep, and he lay there thinking of things
in a queer way. That preposterous idea kept coming back. Maybe nobody
ever _had_ asked her to get the divorce; maybe it had just been taken
for granted that she would be hard, would make it as hard as she could.
He tried to keep away from that thought, something made him want to keep
away from it, but he could not banish that notion that there were people
who would be as decent as it was assumed they would be. He had noticed
that with the fellows. Finally he got a little sleepy and he had a
childish wish that he were not alone, that it could all be again as it
had been long ago when they were all there together--before Ruth went
away.
He slept heavily toward morning and was at last awakened by the
persistent ringing of the doorbell. It was a special delivery letter
from Ruth. She said she hoped it would catch him before he started West.
She wanted him to stop in Denver and see if he could get one of those
"Jap" men of all work. She said: "Maggie Gordon's mother has 'heard' and
came and took her home. I turn to the Japanese--or Chinese, if it's a
Chinaman you can get to come,--as perhaps having less fear of moral
contamination. Do the best you can, Ted; I need someone badly."
He was to leave at five o'clock that afternoon. The people whom he saw
thought he was feeling broken up about leaving; he had to hold back all
feeling, they thought; it was that made his face so set and queer and
his manner so abrupt and grim.
He had lunch with Harriett. She too thought the breaking up, the going
away, had been almost too much for him. She hated to have him go, and
yet, for his sake, she would be glad to have it over.
At two o'clock he had finished the things he had to do. He had promised
to look in on a few of his friends and say good-by. But when he waited
on the corner for the car that would take him down town he knew in his
heart that he was not going to take that car. He knew, though up to the
very last he tried not to know, that he was going to walk along that
street a block and a half farther and turn in at the house Stuart
Williams had built. He knew he was not going to leave Freeport without
doing that. And when he stood there and let the car go by he faced what
he had in his heart known he was going to do ever since reading Ruth's
letter, turned and started toward Mrs. Williams', walking very fast, as
if to get there before he could turn back. He fairly ran up the steps
and pushed the bell in great haste--having to get it pushed before he
could refuse to push it.