Fidelity. Susan Glaspell

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СКАЧАТЬ and that it was nonsense, anyway. Ruth had then put in a final plea for the State University, which would not cost half as much as Edith's school. Seeing that it meant more to her than he had known, and having a particular affection for this younger daughter of his, Mr. Holland was on the point of giving in when the newspapers came out with a scandal that centered about the suicide of a girl student at the university. That settled it; Ruth would stay home with her mother. She could go on with music, and study literature with Miss Collins. Miss Collins stood for polite learning in the town. There was not the remotest danger of an education received through her unfeminizing a girl. But Ruth soon abandoned Miss Collins, scornfully informing her parent that she would as soon study literature with a mummy.

      With Ruth, the desire to go to college had been less a definite craving for knowledge than a diffused longing for an enlarged experience. She wanted something different, was impatient for something new, something more. She had more curiosity about the life outside their allotted place than her friend Edith Lawrence had. She wanted to go to college because that would open out from what she had. Ruth would have found small satisfaction in that girls' school of Edith's had her father consented to her going. It was little more than the polite learning of Miss Collins fashionably re-dressed. Edith, however, came home with a new grace and poise, an added gift of living charmingly on the surface of life, and held that school was lovely.

      During that year her friend was away—Ruth was nineteen then—she was not so much unhappy as she was growingly impatient for something more, and expectant of it. She was always thinking that something was going to happen—that was why things did not go dead for her. The year was intensifying to her; she missed her friend; she had been baffled in something she wanted. It made her conscious of wanting more than she had. Her energies having been shut off from the way they had wanted to go, she was all the more zestful for new things from life. There was much in her that her life did not engage.

      She loved dancing. She was happily excited that night because they were going to a dance. Waiting for Deane, she wondered if he had danced any during the year, hoping that he had, and was a little better dancer than of old. Dear Deane! She always had that "Dear Deane!" feeling after she had been critical about him.

      She wished she did think of Deane "that way"—the way she had told Edith she did not think of him. But "that way" drew her from thoughts of Deane. She had stopped before her dressing-table and was toying with her manicure things. She looked at herself in the glass and saw the color coming to her cheeks. She sat there dreaming—such dreams as float through girlhood.

      Her mother came in to see how she looked. Mrs. Holland was a small, frail-looking woman. Ruth resembled her, but with much added. Things caught into Ruth were not in her mother. They resembled each other in certain definite things, but there was something that flushed Ruth to life—transforming her—that did not live in her mother. They were alike as a beautiful shell enclosing a light may be like one that is not lighted. Mrs. Holland was much occupied with the social life of her town. She was light-hearted, well-liked. She went to the teas and card parties which abounded there and accepted that as life with no dissatisfaction beyond a mild desire for more money.

      She also enjoyed the social life of her daughter; where Ruth was to go and what she would wear were matters of interest and importance. Indeed life was compounded of matters concerning where one would go and what one would wear.

      "Well, Sally Gordon certainly did well with that dress," was her verdict. "Some think she's falling off. Now do try and not get it spoiled the first thing, Ruth. Dancing is so hard on your clothes."

      She surveyed her daughter with satisfaction. Ruth was a daughter a mother would survey with satisfaction. The strong life there was in her was delicately and subtly suggested. She did not have what are thought to be the easily distinguishable marks of intense feeling. She suggested fine things—a rare, high quality. She was not out-and-out beautiful; her beauty lurked within her feeling. It was her fluidity that made her lovely. Her hazel eyes were ever changing with light and feeling, eyes that could wonderfully darken, that glowed in a rush of feeling and shone in expectancy or delight—eyes that the spirit made. She had a lovely brow, a sensitive, beautiful mouth. But it needed the light within to find her beauty. Without it she was only a sweet-looking, delicately fashioned girl.

      "That's Deane," said Ruth, as the bell rang.

      "I want to see him too," said Mrs. Holland, "and so will your father."

      Ruth met him in the hall, holding out both hands with, "Deane, I'm so glad to see you!"

      He was not an expressive youth. As he shook Ruth's hands with vigor, he exclaimed, "Same here! Same here!" and straightway he seemed just the Deane of old and in the girl's heart was a faint disappointment.

      As a little boy people had called Deane Franklin a homely youngster. His thick, sandyish hair used to stand up in an amazing manner. He moved in a peculiarly awkward way, as if the jointing of him had not been perfectly accomplished. He had a wide generous mouth that was attractive when it was not screwed out of shape. His keen blue eyes had a nice twinkle. His abrupt, hearty manner seemed very much his own. He was better dressed than when Ruth had last seen him. She was thinking that Deane could actually be called attractive in his own homely, awkward way. And yet, as he kept shaking her hands up and down, broadly grinning, nodding his head—"tickled to death to be back," she felt anew that she could not think of Deane "that way." Perhaps she had known him too long. She remembered just how absurd he had looked in his first long trousers—and those silly little caps he had worn perched way back on his head! Yet she really loved Deane, in a way; she felt a great deal nearer to him than to her own brother Cyrus.

      They had gone into the living-room. Mrs. Holland thought he had grown—grown broader, anyway; Mr. Holland wanted to know about the medical school, and would he practice in Freeport? Ted wanted to know if Johns Hopkins had a good team.

      "That's Will, I guess," he said, turning to Ruth as the bell rang.

      "Oh, Will," cried Mrs. Holland, "do ask Edith to come in and show us her dress! She won't muss it if she's careful. Her mother told me it was the sweetest dress Edith ever had."

      Edith entered in her bright, charming way, exhibiting her pretty pink dress with a pleasure that was winning. She had more of definite beauty than Ruth—golden hair, really sunny hair, it was, and big, deep blue eyes and fresh, even skin. Ruth often complained that Edith had something to count on; she could tell how she was going to look, while with her—Ruth—there was never any knowing. Some of the times when she was most anxious to look her best, she was, as she bewailed it, a fright. Edith was larger than Ruth, she had more of a woman's development.

      Mrs. Holland followed them out to the carriage. "Now don't stay until all hours," was her parting admonition, in a tone of comfortable resignation to the fact that that was exactly what they would do.

      "Well," said Mr. Holland, who had gone as far as the door, "I don't know what young folks are coming to. After nine o'clock now!"

      "That must be a punk school Deane goes to," said Ted, his mind not yet pried from the football talk.

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