Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

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.