Fidelity Part 30

"Then you can't expect _me_ to stay in your house!" flashed the woman who was outraged.

"As you like, Mrs. Hughes," was the answer.

Mrs. Hughes moved a little away, plainly discomfited.

"I should be sorry to have you go," Mrs. Williams continued courteously, "but of course that is for you to decide."

"I'm a respectable woman," she muttered. "You can't expect _me_ to wait on a person like that!"

"You needn't wait on her, then," was the reply. "Until the nurse comes, I will wait on her myself." And again she turned abruptly away.

Once more her heart was beating too fast.

When the doctor came and began about the arrangement he had been able to make at the hospital, she quietly told him that, if it would be as well, she would rather keep Lily at home. His startled look made her flush.

His manner with her was less brusque as he said good-by. She smiled a little over that last puzzled glance he stole at her.

Then she went back to Lily's room. She straightened her bed for her, telling her that in a little while the nurse would be there to make her really comfortable. She bathed the girl's hot face and hands. She got her a cold drink. As she put her hand behind her head to raise her a little for that, the girl murmured brokenly: "You're so kind!"

She went out and sat in an adjoining room, to be within call. And as she sat there a feeling of strange peace stole through her. It was as if she had been set free, as if something that had chained her for years had fallen away. When in her talk with Mrs. Hughes she became that other woman, the woman on the other side, on compa.s.sion's side, something just fell from her. When that poor girl murmured, "You're so kind!" she suddenly knew that she must have something more from life than that satisfaction of harming those who had hurt her. When she washed the girl's face she knew what she could not unknow. She had served. She could not find the old satisfaction in working harm. The soft, warm thing that filled her heart with that cry, "You're so kind!" had killed forever the old cruel satisfaction in being in the way.

She felt very quiet in this wonderful new liberation. She began shaping life as something more than a standing in the way of others. It made life seem a different thing just to think of it as something other than that. And suddenly she knew that she did not hate Ruth Holland any more; that she did not even hate the man who had been her husband. Hating had worn itself out; it fell from her, a thing outlived. It was wonderful to have it gone. For a long time she sat there very quiet in the wonder of that peace of knowing that she was free--freed of the long hideous servitude of hating, freed of wanting to harm. It made life new and sweet. She wanted something from life. She must have more of that gentle sweetness that warmed her heart when Lily murmured, "You're so kind!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Ruth Holland stood at the window looking out at Colorado in January. The wide valley was buried under snow. It was late afternoon and the sun was pa.s.sing behind the western mountains. From the window where she stood she could not see the western mountains, but the sunset colors had been thrown over to the eastern range, some fifty miles away. When she first came there, five years before, it had seemed strange to find the east lighted at sunset, more luminous than the west. The eastern range was a mighty one. Now there was snow down to its feet and there was no warmth in the colors that lighted it. They only seemed to reveal that the mountains were frozen. It would not have seemed possible for red--those mountains had been named Sangre de Cris...o...b..cause they went red at sunset--to be so dazzling cold. The lighted snow brought out the contour of the mountains. They were wonderfully beautiful so, but the woman looking out at them was not thinking of them as beautiful. She was thinking of them as monuments of coldness. To her it was as if they had locked that valley in to merciless cold.

But it was not the sunset colors that really marked coming night for her. All through that winter something else had marked night, something she tried to keep from looking out at, but which she was not able to hold away from. She was looking at it now, looking off into the adjoining field where the sheep were huddling for the night.

They had begun their huddling some time before. With the first dimming of the light, the first wave of new cold that meant coming night, a few of them would get together; others would gather around them, then more and more. Now there was the struggle not to be left on the outside. The outer ones were pushing toward the center; they knew by other nights that this night would be frigid, that they could only keep alive by that warmth they could get from one another. Yet there were always some that must make that outer rim of the big circle, must be left there to the unbroken cold. She watched them; it had become a terrible thing for her to see, but she could not keep from looking. Many of those unprotected sheep had died that bitter winter; others would die before spring came.

It was a cruel country, a country of cold.

That was their flock of sheep. They had been driven there the summer before from the lambing grounds in the mountains. The day they got there the lambs were exhausted from the long journey. One of them had dropped before the house and died right there beside the field it had come the long way to gain. Her efforts to revive it were useless; the little thing was worn out. They were all of them close to worn out. And now they had the winter to fight; night after night she watched them huddling there, the big pitiful ma.s.s of them out in the bitter cold. It was the way of the country to leave them so; the only way, the sheep men said, that sheep could be made to pay. They estimated that the loss by freezing was small compared with what would be the cost of shelter for droves that ran into thousands, into tens of thousands.

Ruth would wake at night and think of them huddled out there, would lie thinking of them as she drew the covers around herself, think of them when the wind drove against the house, and often, as tonight, when it was every instant growing colder, she wondered if what was before them filled them with terror. Sometimes she could not keep away and went nearer and looked at them; they were unbearably pitiful to her, their necks wrapped around each other's necks, trying to get from one another the only warmth there was for them, so helpless, so patient, they, play-loving creatures, gentle things, bearing these lives that men might finally use them for clothing and for food. There were times when the pathos of them was a thing she could not bear. They seemed to represent the whole cruelty of life, made real to her the terrible suffering of the world that winter of the war.

She watched the sheep until the quick dusk had fallen, and then stood thinking of them huddled over there in the frigid darkness. When she found that her face was wet and realized that she had sobbed aloud she turned from the window to the stove, drew a chair up close to it and put her feet on the fender. It was so bitterly cold that the room was warm only near the stove; over there by the window she had grown chilled. And as the heat enveloped her ankles she thought of the legs of those poor frightened things that had been the last comers and not able to get to the inside of the circle--that living outer rim which was left all exposed to the frigid January night in that high mountain valley. She could feel the cold cutting against their legs, could see their trembling and their vain, frantic efforts to get within the solidly packed ma.s.s. She was crying, and she said to herself, her fingers clenched down into her palm, "_Stop that! Stop that!_" She did not know what might not happen to her if she were unable to stop such thinking as that.

To try and force herself away from it she got up and lighted a lamp. She looked about on her desk for a magazine she had put there. She would make herself read something while waiting for Stuart. He had had to drive into town. He would be almost frozen when he got back from that two-mile drive. She paused in her search for the magazine and went into the kitchen to make sure that the fire there was going well. Then she put some potatoes in to bake; baked potatoes were hot things--they would be good after that drive. The heat from the oven poured out to her, and it swept her again to the thought of the living huddled ma.s.s out there in the frigid darkness. The wind beat against the house; it was beating against them. She bit her lip hard and again she said to herself--"_No!_"

She made some other preparations for supper. She had those things to do herself now. The Chinaman Ted had brought home with him in the fall had left in December. He had appeared before her ready for leaving and had calmly said, "Cold here, missis. And too all alone. Me go where more others are." She had said nothing at all in reply to him, in protest, too held by what he had said--"Cold here, and too all alone!" She had stood at the window and watched him going up the road toward town, going where "more others" were.

She went back now into their main room; it was both living and dining room these days, for since the extreme cold had fastened on them they had abandoned their two little upstairs bedrooms and taken for sleeping the room which in summer was used as living-room. That could be heated a little by leaving the door open, and it had seemed out of the question to go to bed in those upstairs rooms where the cold had been left untouched. Since they had been doing their own work all extra things had had to be cut down; an upstairs fire would mean more work, and it seemed there was already more work than Ruth could get done and have time for anything else. She was tired all the time these days; she would think during the day of the good time she was going to have with a book that evening, and then night would find her so tired she could scarcely keep awake, and she would huddle there before the fire, dreading the cold of the night.

Life had reduced itself to necessities; things had to be ruthlessly rearranged for meeting conditions. She loved her own room to sleep in.

She needed it. But she had given that up because it was too cold, because she could not do any more work. There was something that made her cringe in the thought of their sharing a bed, not because of love of being together, but because of the necessity of fighting the cold. And it made crowded quarters downstairs. She began "picking up" the room now. Things were piled up on the sewing machine, on the reading table.

It seemed impossible to keep them put away. She tried hard to keep the room an attractive place to sit in, but it was in disorder, uninviting, most of the time. Often, after doing the kitchen work, she would clean it all up with the idea of making it attractive to sit in, then would be too utterly tired to enjoy it. She lagged in putting things away now; she would stand holding them helplessly, not knowing where to put them; she got sick of it and just threw some of them into a closet, anything to get them out of sight for the time. She knew that was not the way to do, that it would make it harder another time. She felt like crying. It seemed things had got ahead of her, that she was swamped by them, and somehow she did not have the spirit, or the strength, to get a new start, make a new plan.

Finally she had the room looking a little less slovenly, not so sordid, and was about to sit down with her magazine. But the lamp was flickering, and then she remembered that she had not filled it that day.

She picked the lamp up and slowly, drooping, started for the kitchen.

She gave the can an angry little tilt and the oil overflowed on the table. She was biting her lips as she went about looking for a cloth to wipe it up. She heard sleigh bells and knew Stuart was coming. Hastily she washed the oil from her hands, she always hated herself when her hands smelled of kerosene, and began getting things ready for supper.

Stuart came hurrying and stamping in after putting the horse away, quickly banging the door shut and standing there pounding his feet and rubbing his stiffened hands.

"Fearfully cold?" she inquired, hurriedly getting out the box of codfish she was going to cream for their supper.

"Cold!" he scoffed, as if in scorn for the inadequacy of the word. After a minute he came up to the stove. "I was afraid," he said, holding his right hand in his left, "that it had got these fingers."

He took off his big bear-skin coat. A package he had taken from the pocket of it he threw over on the kitchen table. "Don't throw the bacon there, Stuart," hurriedly advised Ruth, busy with the cream sauce she was making, "I've just spilled oil there."

"Heavens!" he said irritably, shoving the bacon farther back.

His tone made Ruth's hand tremble. "If you think I'm so careless you might fill the lamps yourself," she said tremulously.

"Who said you were careless?" he muttered. He went in the other room and after a minute called out, as one trying to be pleasant, "What we going to have for supper?"

"Creamed codfish," she told him.

"For a little change!" he said, under his breath.

"I don't think that's very kind, Stuart," she called back, quiveringly.

"It's not so simple a matter to have 'changes' here now."

"Oh, I know it," he said, wearily.

She brought the things in and they began the meal in silence. She had not taken time to lay the table properly. Things were not so placed as to make them attractive. Stuart tasted a piece of bread and then hastily put it aside, not concealing a grimace of distaste. "What's the matter?"

Ruth asked sharply.

"I don't seem to care much for bread and oil," he said in a voice it was plainly an effort to make light.

Ruth's eyes filled. She picked up the plate of bread and took it to the kitchen. Stuart rose and went after her. "I'll get some more bread, Ruth," he said kindly. "Guess you're tired tonight, aren't you?"

She turned away from him and took a drink of water. Then she made a big effort for control and went to the dining-room. She asked some questions about town and they talked in a perfunctory way until supper was over.

He had brought papers and a couple of letters from town. Ruth was out in the kitchen doing the dishes when she heard a queer exclamation from him. "What is it, Stuart?" it made her ask quickly, going to the dining-room door with the cup she was wiping.

He gave her a strange look; and then suddenly he laughed. "What _is_ it?" the laugh made her repeat in quick, sharp voice.

"Well, you'll never guess!" he said.

She frowned and stood there waiting.

"Marion's going to get a divorce." He looked at her as if he did not believe what he said.

Ruth put her hand out to the cas.e.m.e.nt of the door. "She _is_?" she said dully.