Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

"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.