Ruth was very quiet through the next week. Stuart was preoccupied with
the plans he was making for going to Montana; when he talked with her it
was of that, of arrangements to be made for it, and his own absorption
apparently kept him from taking note of her being more quiet than usual,
or different. It was all working out very well. He had found a renter
for the ranch, the prospects for the venture in Montana were good. They
were to move within a month. And one night in late April when he came
home from town he handed Ruth a long envelope, with a laughing, "Better
late than never." Then he was soon deep in some papers.
Ruth was sorting a box of things; there were many things to be gone
through preparatory to moving. She had put the paper announcing his
divorce aside without comment; but she loitered over what she was doing.
She was watching Stuart, thinking about him.
She was thinking with satisfaction that he looked well. He had thrown
off the trouble that had brought about their departure from Freeport
twelve years before. He was growing rather stout; his fair hair had gone
somewhat gray and his face was lined, he had not the look of a young
man. But he looked strong, alert. His new hopes had given him vigor, a
new buoyancy. She sat there thinking of the years she had lived with
him, of the wonder and the happiness she had known through him, of the
hard things they had faced together. Her voice was gentle as she replied
to his inquiry about what day of the month it was.
"I think," he said, "that we can get off by the fifteenth, don't you,
Ruth?"
"Perhaps." Her voice shook a little, but he was following his own
thoughts and did not notice. After a little he came and sat across the
table from her. "And, Ruth, about this getting married business--" He
broke off with a laugh. "Seems absurd, doesn't it?"
She nodded, fumbling with the things in the box, her head bent over
them.
"Well, I was thinking we'd better stop somewhere along the way and
attend to it. Can't do it here--don't want to there."
She lifted her hands from the box and laid them on the table that was
between him and her. She looked over at him and said, quietly, in a
voice that shook only a little: "I do not want to get married, Stuart."
He was filling his pipe and stopped abruptly, spilling the tobacco on
the table. "What did you say?" he asked in the voice of one sure he must
have heard wrong.
"I said," she repeated, "that I did not want to get married."
He stared at her, his face screwed up. Then it relaxed a little. "Oh,
yes--yes, I know how you feel. It seems so absurd--after all this
time--after all there has been. But we must attend to it, Ruth. It's
right that we should--now that we can. God knows we wanted to bad
enough--long ago. And it will make us feel better about going into a new
place. We can face people better." He gathered up the tobacco he had
spilled and put it in his pipe.
For a moment she did not speak. Then, "That wasn't what I meant,
Stuart," she said, falteringly.
"Well, then, what in the world _do_ you mean?" he asked impatiently.
She did not at once say what she meant. Her eyes held him, they were so
strangely steady. "Just why would we be getting married, Stuart?" she
asked simply.
At first he could only stare at her, appeared to be waiting for her to
throw light on what she had asked. When she did not do that he moved
impatiently, as if resentful of being quizzed this way. "Why--why,
because we can now. Because it's the thing to do. Because it will be
expected of us," he concluded, with gathering impatience for this
unnecessary explanation.
A faint smile traced itself about Ruth's mouth. It made her face very
sad as she said: "I do not seem to be anxious to marry for any of those
reasons, Stuart."
"Ruth, what are you driving at?" he demanded, thoroughly vexed at the
way she had bewildered him.
"This is what I am driving at, Stuart," she began, a little more
spiritedly. But then she stopped, as if dumb before it. She looked over
at him as if hoping her eyes would tell it for her. But as he continued
in that look of waiting, impatient bewilderment she sighed and turned a
little away. "Don't you think, Stuart," she asked, her voice low, "that
the future is rather too important a thing to be given up to ratifying
the past?"
He pushed his chair back in impatience that was mounting to anger. "Just
what do you mean?" he asked, stiffly.
She picked up the long envelope lying on the table between them. She
held it in her hand a moment without speaking. For as she touched it she
had a sense of what it would have meant to have held it in her hand
twelve years before, over on the other side of their life together, a
new sense of the irony and the pity of not having had it then--and
having it now. She laid it down between them. "To me," she said, "this
sets me free.
"Free to choose," she went on, as he only stared at her. There was a
moment of looking at him out of eyes so full of feeling that they held
back the feeling that had flushed his face. "And my choice," she said,
with a strange steadiness, "is that I now go my way alone."
He spoke then; but it was only to stammer: "Why,--_Ruth!_" Helplessly he
repeated: "_Ruth!_"
"But you see? You do see?" she cried. "If it had _not_ been so much--so
beautiful! Just because it _was_ what it was--" She choked and could not
go on.
He came around and sat down beside her. The seriousness of his face,
something she had touched in him, made it finer than it had been in
those last years of routine. It was more as it used to be. His voice too
seemed out of old days as he said: "Ruth, I don't know yet what you
mean--why you're saying this?"
"I think you do, Stuart," she said simply. "Or I think you will, if
you'll let yourself. It's simply that this--" she touched the envelope
on the table before her--"that this finds us over on the other side of
marriage. And this is what I mean!" she flamed. "I mean that the
marriage between us was too real to go through the mockery this would
make possible now!" She turned away because she was close to tears.
He sat there in silence. Then, "Have I done anything, Ruth?" he asked in
the hesitating way of one at sea.
She shook her head without turning back to him.
"You apparently have got the impression," he went on, a faint touch of
resentment creeping into his voice at having to make the declaration,
"that I don't care any more. That--that isn't so," he said awkwardly and
with a little rise of resentment.
Ruth had turned a little more toward him, but was looking down at her
hands, working with them as if struggling for better control. "I have
no--complaint on that score," she said very low.
"Things change," he went on, with a more open manner of defence. "The
first kind of love doesn't last forever. It doesn't with anyone," he
finished, rather sullenly.
"I know that, Stuart," she said quietly. "I know enough to know that.
But I know this as well. I know that sometimes that first kind of love
leaves a living thing to live by. I know that it does--sometimes. And I
know that with us--it hasn't."
As if stung by that he got up and began walking angrily about the room.
"You're talking nonsense! Why wouldn't we get married, I'd like to know,
after all this time together? We _will_ get married--that's all there is
to it! A nice spectacle we would make of ourselves if we didn't! Have
you thought of that?" he demanded. "Have you thought of what people
would say?"
Again her lips traced that faint smile that showed the sadness of her
face. "There was a time, Stuart," she said wearily, "when we were not
governed by what people would say."
He frowned, but went on more mildly: "You've got the thing all twisted
up, Ruth. You do that sometimes. You often have a queer way of looking
at a thing; not the usual way--a--well, a sort of twisted way."
She got up. One hand was at her throat as if feeling some impediment
there; the knuckles of her clenched hand were tapping the table. "A
queer way of looking at things," she said in quick, sharp voice that was
like the tapping of her knuckles. "Not the usual way. A--sort of twisted
way. Perhaps. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps that was the way I had of
looking at things twelve years ago--when I left them all behind and went
with you. Perhaps that was what made me do it--that queer, twisted way
of looking at things! But this much is true, Stuart, and this you have
got to know is true. I went with you because I was as I was. I'm going
my way alone now because I am as I am. And what you don't see is
this,--that the thing that made me go with you then is the thing that
makes me go my way alone now."
For a moment they stood there facing each other, her eyes forcing home
what she had said. But she was trembling and suddenly, weakly, she sat
down.
"Well, I simply can't understand it!" he cried petulantly and flung open
the door and stood looking out.
"Look here, Ruth," he turned sharply to her after a little, "have you
thought of the position this puts _me_ in? Have you thought of the
position you would put _me_ in?" he contended hotly. "Do you know what
people would say about me? You ought to know what they'd say! They'd say
_I_ was the one!--they'd say _I_ didn't want to do it!"
There was a little catch something like a laugh as she replied: "Of
course. They'll say men don't marry women of that sort, won't they?"
"Oh, you can't do this, Ruth," he went on quickly. "You see, it can't be
done. I tell you it wouldn't be right! It just wouldn't be _right_--in
any sense. Why can't you see that? Can't you see that we've got to
vindicate the whole thing? That we've got to show them that it _does_
last! That's the vindication for it," he finished stoutly, "that it's
the kind of a love that doesn't die!
"And I'd like to know where under the sun you'd go!" he demanded hotly,
irritated at the slight smile his last words had brought.
"What I will do, Stuart, after leaving you, is for me to determine,
isn't it?"
"A nice way to treat me!" he cried, and threw himself down on the couch,
elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. "After all these
years--after all there has been--that's a _nice_ way--" he choked.
She was quick to go over and sit beside him; she leaned a little against
him, her hand on his arm, just as she had sat many times when he needed
her, when she brought him comfort. The thought of all those times rose
in her and brought tears to her eyes that had been burning dry a moment
before. She felt the feeling this had whipped to life in him and was
moved by it, and by an underlying feeling of the sadness of change. For
his expostulations spoke of just that--change. She knew this for the
last hurt she could help him through, that she must help him through
this hurt brought him by this last thing she could do for him. Something
about things being like that moved her deeply. She saw it all so
clearly, and so sadly. It was not grief this brought him; this was not
the frenzy or the anguish in the thought of losing her that there would
have been in those other years. It was shock, rather--disturbance, and
the forcing home to him that sense of change. He would have gone on
without much taking stock, because, as he had said, it was the thing to
do. Habit, a sense of fitness, rather than deep personal need, would
have made him go on. And now it was his sense that it was gone, his
resentment against that, his momentary feeling of being left desolate.
She looked at his bowed head through tears. Gently she laid her hand on
it. She thought of him as he stood before the automobile the other day
lighting up in the gay talk with that girl. She knew, with a sudden
wrench in her heart she knew it, that he would not be long desolate. She
understood him too well for that. She knew that, hard as she seemed in
that hour, she was doing for Stuart in leaving him the greatest thing
she could now do for him. A tear fell to her hand in her clear knowing
of that. There was deep sadness in knowing that, after all there had
been, to leave the way cleared of herself was doing a greater thing than
anything else she could do for him.
A sob shook her and he raised his face upon which there were tears and
clutched her two wrists with his hands. "Ruth," he whispered, "it will
come back. I feel that this has--has brought it back."
The look of old feeling had transformed his face. After barren days it
was sweet to her. It tempted her, tempted her to shut her eyes to what
she knew and sink into the sweetness of believing herself loving and
loved again. Perhaps, for a little time, they could do it. To be deeply
swayed by this common feeling, to go together in an emotion, was like
dear days gone. But it was her very fidelity to those days gone that
made her draw just a little away, and, tears running down her face,
shake her head. She knew too well, and she had the courage of her
knowing. This was something that had seeped up from old feeling; it had
no life of its own. What they were sharing now was grief over a dead
thing that had been theirs together. That grief, that sharing, left them
tender. This was their moment--their moment for leaving it. They must
leave it before it lay there between them both dead and unmourned,
clogging life for them. She whispered to him: "Just because of all it
has meant--let's leave it while we can leave it like this!"