Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

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.