Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The man who worked for them had gone ahead in the spring wagon with her trunk. She was waiting for Ted to hitch the other horse to the buggy and drive her in to the train. She was all ready and stood there looking about the house she was leaving. There were things in that room which they had had since their first years together—that couch, this chair, had come to them in Arizona in the days when they loved each other with a passion that made everything else in the world a pale thing before their love. She stood picking out things that they had had when love was flaming strong in them and it seemed they two fought together against the whole world. And as she stood there alone in their place in common that she was about to leave she was made sick by a sense of failure—that desolate sense of failure she had tried all along to beat down. That love had been theirs—and this was what it had come to. That wonder had been—and it ended in the misery of this leavetaking. She turned sharply around, opened the door and stood there in the doorway, her back to the place she was quitting, her pale stern face turned to the mountains—to that eastern range which she was going to cross. She tried to draw something from them, draw strength for the final conflict which she knew she would have with Ted while they drove in to town. She looked toward the barn-yard to see if he was most ready, and could not but smile a little at his grim, resolute face as he was checking up the horse. She could see so well that he was going to make the best of his time while driving her in to the train. And it seemed she had nothing left in her for combat; she would be glad to see the train that was to take her away.

Three days before Stuart had gone suddenly to Denver. He went with his friend Stoddard, regarding some of their arrangements for Montana. He had found only at the last minute that he would have to go, had hurriedly driven out from town to get his things and tell her he was going. He had been in the house only a few minutes and was all excitement about the unexpected trip. It was two days after their talk. After their moment of being swept together by the feeling of things gone he had, as if having to get a footing on everyday ground, ended the talk with saying: "I'll tell you, Ruth, you need a little change. We'll have to work it out." The next day they were both subdued, more gentle with each other than they had been of late, but they did not refer to the night before. After he had hurriedly kissed her good-by when leaving for Denver he had turned back and said, "And don't you worry—about things, Ruth. We'll get everything fixed up—and a little change—" He had hurried down to the machine without finishing it.

She had gone to the window and watched him disappear. He was sitting erect, alert, talking animatedly with his friend. She watched him as far as she could see him. She knew that she would not see him again.

And then she hitched up the horse and drove into town and telephoned Ted, who lived about fifty miles to the north. She told him that she was going East and asked him to come down the next day and see her.

She had known that Ted would not approve, would not understand, but she had not expected him to make the fight he had. It had taken every bit of her will, her force, to meet him. Worn now, and under the stress of the taking leave, at once too tired and too emotional, she wished that he would let it rest. But the grim line of his jaw told her that he had no such intention. She felt almost faint as they drove through the gate. She closed her eyes and did not open them for some time.

"You see, Ruth," Ted began gently, as if realizing that she was very worn, "you just don't realize how crazy the whole thing is. It's ridiculous for you to go to New York—alone! You've never been there," he said firmly.

"No. That is one reason for going," she answered, rather feebly.

"One reason for going!" he cried. "What'll you do when the train pulls in? Where'll you go?"

"I don't know, Ted," she said patiently, "just where I will go. And I rather like that—not knowing where I will go. It's all new, you see. Nothing is mapped out."