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<h2>CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR</h2> It was late when Ruth went to sleep that night; she and Annie talked through the evening—of books Annie was reading, of the things which were interesting her. She was rich in interests; ideas were as personal things to her; she found personal satisfactions in them. She was following things which Ruth knew little about; she had been long away from the centers of books, and out of touch with awakened people. A whole new world seemed to open from these things that were vital to Annie; there was promise in them—a quiet road out from the hard things of self. There were new poets in the world; there were bold new thinkers; there was an amazing new art; science was reinterpreting the world and workers and women were setting themselves free. Everywhere the old pattern was being shot through with new ideas. Everywhere were new attempts at a better way of doing things. She had been away from all that; what she knew of the world's new achievement had seemed unreal, or at least detached, not having any touch with her own life. But as disclosed by Annie those things became realities—things to enrich one's own life. It kindled old fires of her girlhood, fanned the old desire to know. Personal things had seemed to quell that; the storm in her own life had shut down around her. Now she saw that she, like those others whom Annie scorned, had not kept that openness to life, had let her own life shut her in. She had all along been eager for books, but had not been fortunate in the things she had come upon. She had not had access to large libraries—many times not even to small ones; she had had little money for buying books and was so out of touch with the world that she had not had much initiative in trying to get hold of things. She felt now that she had failed miserably in that, but there were years when she was like a hurt thing that keeps in hiding, most of all wanting to escape more hurt. It had been a weakness—she clearly saw that now, and it had been weakening to her powers. Most of the books she had come upon were of that shut-in life Annie scorned, written from within that static living, and for it. People in them had the feeling it was right people should have, unless there were bad people in the book, and then they were very definitely bad. Many of those books had been not only unsatisfying, but saddening to her, causing her to feel newly apart from the experiences of people of her kind. But now Annie's books let her glimpse a new world—a world which questioned, a world of protest, of experiment, a world in which people unafraid were trying to find the truth, trying to build freshly, to supplant things outworn with the vital forms of a new reality. It was quickening. It made her eager. She was going to take some of those books home, she would send for others, would learn how to keep in touch with this new world which was emerging from the old. It was like breaking out from a closed circle. It was adventure! Even after she went to her room that night, late though it was, she did not go at once to bed. She sat for a time looking off at the lights of that town for which she had so long grieved, the town that had shut her out. The fact that it had shut her out had been a determining thing in her life, to her spirit. She wondered now if perhaps she had not foolishly spent herself in grieving for a thing that would have meant little could she have had it. For it seemed now that it had remained very much a fixed thing, and now she knew that, with it all, she herself had not been fixed. The things of which Annie talked, things men of this new day were expressing, roused her like this, not because they were all new, but because of her own inner gropings. Within herself she had been stumbling toward some of those things. Here was the sure expression of some halting thoughts of her own. It was exciting to find that there were people who were feeling the things that, even in that timid, uncertain way, she had come to feel by herself. She had been half afraid to formulate some of the things that had come into her mind. This gathered together the timid little shoots. She was excited about the things of which Annie talked—those new ideals of freedom—not so much because they were new and daring and illumining things, as because they did not come all alien. There was something from within to go out to them. In that—not that there were interesting things she could have from without—but that she, opened to the new stimulus, could become something from within, was the real excitation, the joy of the new promise was there. And this new stir, this promise of new satisfactions, let her feel that her life was not all mapped out, designed ahead. She went to sleep that night with a wonderful new feeling of there being as much for her in life as she herself had power to take. And she woke with that feeling; she was eager to be up, to be out in the sunshine. Annie, she found, had gone early to town with her vegetables. Ruth helped eleven-year-old Dorothy, the eldest child, get off for school and walked with her to the schoolhouse half a mile down the road. The little girl's shyness wore away and she chatted with Ruth about school, about teachers and lessons and play. Ruth loved it; it seemed to set the seal of a human relationship upon her new feeling. What a wonderful thing for Annie to have these children! Today gladness in there being children in the world went out past sorrow in her own deprivation. The night before she had said to Annie, "You have your children. That makes life worth while to you, doesn't it?" And Annie, with that hard, swift look of being ruthless for getting at the truth—for getting her feeling straight and expressing it truly, had answered, "Not in itself. I mean, it's not all. I think much precious life has gone dead under that idea of children being enough—letting them be all. We count—I count! Just leaving life isn't all; living it while we're here—that counts, too. And keeping open to it in more than any one relationship. Suppose they, in their turn, have that idea; then life's never really lived, is it?—always just passed on, always put off." They had talked of that at some length. "Certainly I want my children to have more than I have," Annie said. "I am working that they may. But in that working for them I'm not going to let go of the fact that I count too. Now's my only chance," she finished in that grim little way as one not afraid to be hard. Thinking back to that it seemed to Ruth a bigger mother feeling than the old one. It was not the sort of maternal feeling to hem in the mother and oppress the children. It was love in freedom—love that did not hold in or try to hold in. It would develop a sense of the preciousness of life. It did not glorify self-sacrifice—that insidious foe to the fullness of living. Thinking of that, and going out from that to other things, she sat down on a log by the roadside, luxuriating in the opulence and freshness of the world that May morning, newly tuned to life, vibrant with that same fresh sense of it, glad gratefulness in return to it, that comes after long sickness, after imprisonment. The world was full of singing birds that morning,—glorious to be in a world of singing birds! The earth smelled so good! There were plum trees in bloom behind her; every little breeze brought their fragrance. The grass under her feet was springy—the world was vibrant, beautiful, glad. The earth seemed so strong, so full of still unused powers, so ready to give. She sat there a long time; she had the courage this morning to face the facts of her life. She was eager to face them, to understand them that she might go on understandingly. She had the courage to face the facts relating to herself and Stuart. That was a thing she had not dared do. With them, love had to last, for love was all they had. They had only each other. They did not dare let themselves think of such a thing as the love between them failing. Well, it had not failed; but she let herself see now how greatly it had changed. There was something strangely freeing in just letting herself see it. Of course there had been change; things always changed. Love changed within marriage—she did not know why she should expect it to be different with her. But in the usual way—within marriage—it would matter less for there would be more ways of adapting one's self to the changing. Then one could reach out into new places in life, gaining new channels, taking on new things as old ones slipped away, finding in common interests, common pleasures, the new adjustment for feeling. But with them life had seemed to shut right down around them. And they had never been able to relax in the reassuring sense of the lastingness of their love. She had held herself tense in the idea that there was no change, would be none. She had a feeling now of having tried too hard, of being tired through long trying. There was relief in just admitting that she was tired. And so she let herself look at it now, admitting that she had been clutching at a vanished thing. It would have been different, she felt, had the usual channels of living been opened to them. Then together they could have reached out into new experiences. Their love had been real—great. Related to living, surely it could have remained the heart of life. Her seeing now that much of the life had gone out of it did not bear down upon her with the great sadness she would have expected. She knew now that in her heart she had known for a long time that passion had gone. Facing it was easier than refusing to see. It ceased to be a terrible thing once one looked at it. Of this she was sure: love should be able to be a part of the rest of life; the big relationship, but one among others; the most intense interest, but one with other interests. Unrooted, detached, it might for the time be the more intense, but it had less ways of saving itself. If simply, naturally, they could have grown into the common life she felt they might have gone on without too much consciousness of change, growing into new things as old ones died away, half unconsciously making adjustments, doubtless feeling something gone but in the sharing of new things not left desolate through that sense of the passing of old ones. Frightened by the thought of having nothing else, they had tried too hard. She was tired; she believed that Stuart too was tired. There was a certain tired tenderness in her thinking of him. Dear Stuart, he loved easy pleasant living. It seemed he was not meant for the too great tests, for tragically isolated love. She knew that he had never ceased to miss the things he had let go—his place among men, the stimulus of the light, pleasant social relationships with women. He was meant for a love more flexibly related to living, a love big and real but fitted more loosely, a little more carelessly, to life. There was always so deep a contrition for his irritations with her. The whole trouble was indicated right there, that the contrition should be all out of proportion to the offence. It would have been better had he felt more free to be irritated; one should not have to feel frightened at a little bit of one's own bad temper—appalled at crossness, at hours of ennui. Driving them back together after every drifting apart all of that made for an intensity of passion—passion whipped to life by fear. But that was not the way to grow into life. Flames kindled by fear made intense moments but after a time left too many waste places between them and the lives of men. Today her hope for the future was in the opening of new places. She was going back with new vision, new courage. They must not any longer cling together in their one little place, coming finally to actual resentment of one another for the enforced isolation. They must let themselves go out into living, dare more, trust more, lose that fear of rebuff, hope for more from life, claim more. As she rose and started towards home there was a new spring in her step. For her part, she was through with that shrinking back! She hoped she could bring Stuart to share her feeling, could inspire in him this new trust, new courage that had so stimulated and heartened her. Her hope for their future lay there. Climbing a hill she came in sight of the little city which they had given up, for which they had grieved. Well, they had grieved too much, she resolutely decided now. There were wider horizons than the one that shut down upon that town. She was not conquered! She would not be conquered. She stood on the hilltop exulting in that sense of being free. She had been a weakling to think her life all settled! Only cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder—but surely one should not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to grant that it had failed. But now it seemed that it failed if it did not leave her bigger than it had found her. Her eyes filled in response to the stern beauty of that. Not that one stay with love in the same place, but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it send one on. Eyes still dimmed with the feeling of it, she stood looking as if in a final letting go at that town off there on the bend of the river. It became to her the world of shut-in people, people not going on, people who loved and never saw the meaning of love, whose experiences were not as wings to carry them, but as walls shutting them in. She was through grieving for those people. She was going on—past them—so far beyond them that her need for them would fall away. She was conscious of an approaching horse and buggy and stepped aside; then walked on, so aglow with her own thoughts that a passing by did not break in upon her. She did not even know that the girl in the run-about had stopped her horse. At the cry: "Oh—I'm so glad!" she was as startled as if she had thought herself entirely alone. It was a big effort to turn, to gather herself together and speak. She had been so far away, so completely possessed that it took her an instant to realize that the girl leaning eagerly toward her was Mildred Woodbury. Mildred was moving over on the seat, inviting her to get in. "I'm so glad!" she repeated. "I went to Mrs. Herman's, and was so disappointed to miss you. I thought maybe I'd come upon you somewhere," she laughed gladly, though not without embarrassment. There was a moment of wanting to run away, of really considering it. She knew now—had remembered, realized—what it was about Mildred. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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