Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

Quickly she looked up; her mouth, which had been so complacent, twitched. He started toward her, but just then the doorbell rang. "I presume that's your mother," she said, in matter of fact tone.

Mrs. Franklin was with them for dinner that night. Amy's social training made it appear as if nothing were disturbing her. She appeared wholly composed, serene; it was Deane who seemed ill at ease, out of sorts.

After dinner he had to go to the hospital and when she was alone with his mother Amy was not able to keep away from the subject of Ruth Holland. For one thing, she wanted to hear about her, she was avid for detail as to how she looked, things she had done and said—that curious human desire to press on a place that hurts. And there was too the impulse for further self-exoneration, to be assured that she was right, to feel that she was injured.

All of those things it was easy to get from Mrs. Franklin. Amy, not willing to reveal what there had been between her and Deane, and having that instinct for drawing sympathy to herself by seeming self-depreciation, spoke gently of how she feared she did not altogether understand about Deane's friend Ruth Holland. Was she wrong in not going with Deane to see her?

Mrs. Franklin's explosion of indignation at the idea, and the feeling with which, during the hour that followed, she expressed herself about Deane's friend Ruth Holland, acted in a double fashion as both fortification and new hurt. Mrs. Franklin, leader in church and philanthropic affairs, had absolutely no understanding of things which went outside the domain of what things should be. The poor and the wicked did terrible things that society must do something about. There was no excuse whatever for people who ought to know better. That people should be dominated by things they ought not to feel was perversity on their part and the most wilful kind of wickedness. She had Mrs. Lawrence's point of view, but from a more provincial angle. Deane did not get his questioning spirit, what she called his stubbornness, from his mother.

Added to what she as a church woman and worker for social betterment felt about the affair was the resentment of the mother at her son's having been, as she put it, dragged into the outrage. She grew so inflamed in talking of how this woman had used Deane that she did not take thought of how she was giving more of an impression of her power over him than might be pleasant hearing for Deane's young wife. The indignation of the whole Franklin family at what they called the way Deane had been made a cat's paw was fanned to full flame in this preposterous suggestion that Amy should go to see Ruth Holland. In her indignation at the idea she gave a new sense of what the town felt about Ruth, and she was more vehement than tactful in her expressions against Deane for holding out that way against the whole town. "It just shows, my dear," she said, "what a woman of no principle can do with a man!"

Amy, hurt to the quick in this thought of the mysterious lure of a woman of no principle, remarked casually, "She's wonderfully attractive, I presume."

Mrs. Franklin was not too blunted by indignation to miss the pain that was evident in the indifferently asked question. Hastily—more hastily than subtly, she proceeded to depreciate the attractions of Ruth Holland, but in the depreciation left an impression of some quality—elusive, potent—which more than beauty or definite charm gave her power. Edith too had spoken of that "something" about Ruth; a something one never forgot; a something, she said, that no one else had.

And now, awakened by Deane's having been called by this woman in the night, herself alone there and he hurrying to Ruth Holland, the barriers of pride broke down and she cried because she was sorry for herself, because she was hurt and outraged that she should be hurt, because for the first time in her whole life she was thwarted—not having her way, set aside. She completely lost her hold on herself, got up and stormed about the room. When she looked at her face in the mirror she saw that it was hideous. She couldn't help it!—she didn't care! The resentment, rage, in her heart was like a poison that went all through her. She was something that didn't seem herself. She thought horrible things and ground her teeth and clenched her hands and let her face look as ugly as it could. She hated this woman! She wished some horrible thing would happen to her! She hated Deane Franklin! The passion he had roused in her all turned into this feeling against him. She wouldn't stand it! She wouldn't stay there and play second fiddle to another woman—she, a bride! Fresh tears came with that last. Her mother and father would never have treated her that way. They didn't think Deane Franklin good enough for her, anyway! She would go back home! That would make things pretty hard for him! That would show what this woman had done! And he'd be sorry then—would want her back—and she wouldn't come. She finally found control in that thought of her power over him used to make him suffer.

Deane, meanwhile, was hurrying through the streets that had the unrealness of that hour just before morning. That aspect of things was with him associated with death; almost always when he had been on the streets at that hour it was because someone was fighting death. It was so still—as if things were awed. And a light that seemed apart from natural things was formed by the way the street lights grew pale in the faint light of coming day. Everyone was sleeping—all save those in a house half a dozen blocks away, the house where they were waiting for death.