Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

She had, without any plan for doing so, turned down the little street where she used to go to meet Stuart. And when she realized where she was going thoughts of other things fell away; the feeling of those first days was strangely revivified, as if going that old way made her for the moment the girl who had gone that way. Again love was not a thing of right or wrong, it was the thing that had to have its way—life's great imperative. Going down that old street made the glow of those days—the excitement—come to life and quicken her again. It was so real that it was as if she were living it again—a girl palpitating with love going to meet her lover, all else left behind, only love now! For the moment those old surroundings made the old days a living thing to her. The world was just one palpitating beauty; the earth she walked was vibrant; the sweetness of life breathed from the air she breathed. She was charged with the joy of it, bathed in the wonder. Love had touched her and taken her, and she was different and everything was different. Her body was one consciousness of love; it lifted her up; it melted her to tenderness. It made life joyous and noble. She lived; she loved!

Standing on the spot where they had many times stood in moments of meeting a very real tenderness for that girl was in the heart of this woman who had paid so terribly for the girl's love. It brought a feeling that she had not paid too much, that no paying was ever too much for love. Love made life; and in turn love was what life was for. To live without it would be going through life without having been touched alive. In that moment it seemed no wrong love could bring about would be as deep as the wrong of denying love. There was again that old feeling of rising to something higher in her than she had known was there, that feeling of contact with all the beauty of the world, of being admitted to the inner sweetness and wonder of life. She had a new understanding of what she had felt; that was the thing added; that was the gift of the hard years.

And of a sudden she wanted terribly to see her mother. It seemed if she could see her mother now that she could make her understand. She saw it more simply than she had seen it before. She wanted to tell her mother that she loved because she could not help loving. She wanted to tell her that after all those years of paying for it she saw that love as the thing illumining her life; that if there was anything worthy in her, anything to love, it was in just this—that she had fought for love, that she would fight for it again. She wanted to see her mother! She believed she could help the hurt she had dealt.

She had walked slowly on, climbing a little hill. From there she looked back at the town. With fresh pain there came the consciousness that her mother was not there, that she could not tell her, that she had gone—gone without understanding, gone bewildered, broken. Her eyes dimmed until the town was a blur. She wanted to see her mother!

She was about to start back, but turned for a moment's look the other way, across that lovely country of little hills and valleys—brooks, and cattle in the brooks, and fields of many shades of green.

And then her eye fixed upon one thing and after that saw no other thing. Behind her was the place where the living were gathered together; but over there, right over there on the next hill, were the dead. She stood very still, looking over there passionately through dimmed eyes. And then swiftly, sobbing a little under her breath, she started that way. She wanted to see her mother!

And when she came within those gates she grew strangely quiet. Back there in the dwelling place of the living she had felt shut out. But she did not feel shut out here. As slowly she wound her way to the hillside where she knew she would find her mother's grave, a strange peace touched her. It was as if she had come within death's tolerance; she seemed somehow to be taken into death's wonderful, all-inclusive love for life. There seemed only one distinction: they were dead and she still lived; she had a sense of being loved because she still lived.

Slowly, strangely comforted, strangely taken in, she passed the graves of many who, when she left, had been back there in the place of the living. The change from dwelling place to dwelling place had been made in the years she was away. It came with a shock to find some of those tombstones; she found many she had thought of as back there, a few hills away, where men still lived. She would pause and think of them, of the strangeness of finding them here when she had known them there—of life's onward movement, of death's inevitability. There were stones marking the burial places of friends of her grandfather—old people who used to come to the house when she was a little girl; she thought with a tender pleasure of little services she had done them; she had no feeling at all that they would not want her to be there. Friends of her father and mother too were there; yes, and some of her own friends—boys and girls with whom she had shared youth.

She sat a long time on the hillside where her mother had been put away. At first she cried, but they were not bitter tears. And after that she did not feel that, even if she could have talked to her mother, it would be important to say the things she had thought she wanted to say. Here, in this place of the dead, those things seemed understood. Vindication was not necessary. Was not life life, and should not one live before death came? She saw the monuments marking the graves of the Lawrences, the Blairs, the Williams', the Franklins,—her mother's and her father's people. They seemed so strangely one: people who had lived. She looked across the hills to the town which these people had built. Right beside her was her grandfather's grave; she thought of his stories of how, when a little boy, he came with his people to that place not then a town; his stories of the beginnings of it, of the struggles and conflicts that had made it what it was. She thought of their efforts, their disappointments, their hopes, their loves. Their loves.... She felt very close to them in that. And as she thought of it there rose a strange feeling, a feeling that came strangely strong and sure: If these people who had passed from living were given an after moment of consciousness, a moment when they could look back on life and speak to it, she felt that their voices, with all the force they could gather, would be raised for more living. Why did we not live more abundantly? Why did we not hold life more precious? Were they given power to say just one word, would they not, seeing life from death, cry—Live!

Twilight came; the world had the sweetness of that hour just before night. A breeze stirred softly; birds called lovingly—loving life. The whole fragrance of the world was breathed into one word. It was as if life had caught the passionate feeling of death; it was as if that after consciousness of those who had left life, and so knew its preciousness, broke through into things still articulate. The earth breathed—Live!