Fidelity: A Novel

by Susan Glaspell

He was on foot, having left his car down at the garage for some repairs after taking his mother home. As he slowed for a moment from a walk that was half run he thought of how useless his hurrying was. What in the world could he do when he got there? Nothing save assure them he could do nothing. Poor Ruth!—it seemed she had so much, so many hard things. This was a time when one needed one's friends, but of course they couldn't come near her—on account of society. Though—his face softened with the thought—Annie Morris would come, she not being oppressed by this duty to society. He thought of the earnestness of her thin face as she talked of Ruth. That let in the picture of Amy's face as he introduced them. He tried not to keep seeing it. He did think, however, that it was pretty unnecessary of Amy to have talked to his mother about Ruth. All that was unyielding in him had been summoned by the way his mother talked to him going home—"going for him" like that because he had wanted Amy to go and see Ruth. That, it seemed to him, was something between him and Amy. He would not have supposed she would be so ready to talk with some one else about a thing that was just between themselves. There had been that same old hardening against his mother when she began talking of Ruth, and that feeling that shut her out excluded Amy with her. And he had wanted Amy with him.

Hurrying on, he tried not to think of it. He didn't know why Amy had talked to his mother about it—perhaps it just happened so, perhaps his mother began it. He seized upon that. And Amy didn't understand; she was young—her life had never touched anything like this. He was going to talk to her—really talk to her, not fly off the handle at the first thing she would say. He told himself that he had been stupid, hard—a bungler. It made him feel better to tell himself that. Yes, he certainly had been unsympathetic, and it was a shame that anything had come to make Amy unhappy—and right there at first, too! Why, it was actually making her sick! When he went back after taking his mother home Amy said she had a bad headache and didn't want to talk. She was so queer that he had taken her at her word and had not tried to talk to her—be nice to her. It seemed now that he hadn't been kind; it helped him to feel that he hadn't been kind. And it was the headache, being roused in the night when she was not well that had made her so—well, so wrought up about his answering to the call of the Hollands—old patients, old friends. He was going to be different; he was going to be more tender with Amy—that would be the way to make her understand. Such were the things his troubled mind and hurt heart tried to be persuaded of as, thinking at the same time of other things—the death to which he was hurrying, how hard it would be for Ruth if Cyrus didn't speak to her—he passed swiftly by the last houses where people slept and turned from a world tinged with the strangeness of an hour so little known to men's consciousness, softly opened the door and stepped into the house where death was touching life with that same unreality with which, without, day touched night.

Miss Copeland, wrapped in a bathrobe, sat in the upstairs hall. "He's still breathing," she whispered in that voice which is for death alone. In the room Ruth and Ted stood close together, the nurse on the other side of the bed. Ruth's hair was braided down her back; he remembered when she used to wear it that way, he had one of those sudden pictures of her—on her way to school, skipping along with Edith Lawrence. She turned, hearing him, and there was that rush of feeling to her eyes that always claimed him for Ruth, that quick, silent assumption of his understanding that always let down bars between them. But Ruth kept close to Ted, as if she would shield him; the boy looked as Deane had seen novices look in the operating room.

There was nothing for him to do beyond look at his patient and nod to the nurse in confirmation that it would be any minute now. He walked around to Ted and Ruth, taking an arm of each of them and walking with them to the far side of the room.

"There's nothing to do but wait," he said.

"I wish Harriett and Cyrus would get here," whispered Ruth.

"You telephoned?"

"Before I did you—but of course it's a little farther."

They stood there together in that strange silence, hearing only the unlifelike breathing of the man passing from life. Listening to it, Ruth's hand on Deane's arm tightened. Soothingly he patted her hand.

Then, at a movement from the nurse, he stepped quickly to the bed. Ruth and Ted, close together, first followed, then held back. A minute later he turned to them. "It's over," he said, in the simple way final things are said.