Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

When she went over to the Lawrences' late that afternoon she had decided that she would tell Edith. It seemed she must. She could not hope to tell it in a way that would make Edith sympathize. There was not time for that, and she dared not open herself to it. She would just say it briefly, without any attempts at justifying it. Something like: "Edith, there's been something you haven't known. I'm not like you. I'm not what you think I am. I love Stuart Williams. We've loved each other for a long time. He's sick. He's got to go away—and I'm going with him. Good-bye, Edith,—and I hope the wedding goes just beautifully."

But that last got through—got down to the feeling she had been trying to keep closed, the feeling that had seemed to seal itself over the moment she saw that she must go with Stuart. "I hope the wedding goes just beautifully!" Somehow the stiff little phrase seemed to mean all the old things. There was a moment when she knew: knew that she was walking those familiar streets, that she would not be walking them any more; knew that she was going over to Edith's—that all her life she had been going over to Edith's—that she would not be going there any more; knew that she was going away from home, that she loved her father and mother—Ted—her grandfather—and Terror, her dog. Realization broke through and flooded her. She had to walk around a number of blocks before she dared go to Edith's.

Miss Edith was up in her room, Emma, the maid, said, taking it for granted that Ruth would go right up. Yes, she always did go right up, she was thinking. She had always been absolutely at home at the Lawrences'. They always wanted her; there were times of not wanting to see anyone else, but it seemed both Edith and her mother always wanted her. She paused an instant on the stairs, not able to push past that thought, not able to stay the loving rush of gratefulness that broke out of the thought of having always been wanted.

She had a confused sense of Edith as barricaded by her trousseau. She sat behind a great pile of white things; she had had them all out of her chest for showing to some of her mother's friends, she said, and her mother had not yet put them back. Ruth stood there fingering a wonderfully soft chemise. It had come to her that she was not provided with things like these. What would Edith think of her, going away without the things it seemed one should have? It seemed to mark the setting of her apart from Edith, though there was a wave of tenderness—she tried to hold it back but could not—for dear Edith because she did have so many things like this.

Edith was too deep in the occupation of getting married to mark an unusual absorption in her friend. She was full of talk about what her mother's friends had said of her things, the presents that were coming in, her dress for the party that night, the flowers for the wedding.

It made Edith seem very young to her. And in her negligee, her hair down, she looked childish. Her pleasure in the plans for her wedding seemed like a child's pleasure. It seemed that hurting her in it would be horribly like spoiling a child's party. Edith's flushed face, her sparkling eyes, her little excited, happy laugh made it impossible for Ruth to speak the words she had come to say.

For three days it went on like that: going ahead with the festivities, constantly thinking she would tell Edith as soon as they got home from this place or that, waiting until this or that person had gone, then dumb before the childish quality of Edith's excitement, deciding to wait until the next morning because Edith was either too happy or too tired to talk to her that night. That ingenuousness of her friend's pleasure in her wedding made Ruth feel, not only older, but removed from her by experience. Those days of her own frozen misery were days of tenderness for Edith, that tenderness which one well along the road of living feels for the one just setting feet upon the path.

She was never able to understand how she did get through those days. It was an almost unbelievable thing that, knowing, she was able, up to the very last, to go right on with the old things, was able to talk to people as if nothing were different, to laugh, to dance. There were times when something seemed frozen in her heart and she could go on doing the usual things mechanically, just because she knew so well how to do them; then there were other times when every smallest thing was stabbed through and through with the consciousness that she would not be doing it again. And yet even then, she could go on, could appear the same. They were days of a terrible power for bearing pain. When the people of the town looked back to it, recalling everything they could about Ruth Holland in those days, some of them, remembering a tenderness in her manner with Edith, talked of what a hypocrite she was, while others satisfied themselves of her utter heartlessness in remembering her gaiety.

It was two days before the wedding when she saw that she was not going to be able to tell Edith and got the idea of telling Edith's mother. Refusing to let herself consider what she would say when she began upon it, she went over there early that morning—Edith would not be up.

Mrs. Lawrence was at breakfast alone. Ruth kept herself hard against the welcoming smile, but it seemed she was surely going to cry when, with a look of concern, Mrs. Lawrence exclaimed: "Why, Ruth dear, how pale you are!"